George Scialabba gets hammered in (on? by?) Gawker
Great Moments in Journalism: All Broccoli Edition
Great Moments in Journalism are submitted by readers, and can be sent
to this address. Today’s Moment comes from a recent Nation review
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070129/scialabba of a bunch of books
about the state of the electorate and what Democrats can do to win it
over. It goes beyond your usual Nation nap-inducing prose (although
see if you can stay awake during even this excerpt) to bring you
through some kind of C.S. Lewis-style armoire into a thicket of
metaphor from which you emerge, squinting, into some strange new
world full of delusional liberals and arrogant vegetarians. It’s a
world not unlike Berkeley, CA, actually. We’ve placed it after the
jump, but please do click through: We’ve yet to see a better test of
endurance thus far this year:
Waldman looks at recent presidential elections and is dismayed to
find “a progression of Democratic candidates desperately pleading
with voters to eat the political broccoli of position papers and
policy proposals, while Republicans respond with the red meat of fear
and anger.” One sees what he means, of course, and he’s right. Still,
it’s worth pausing over this piquant formulation. For one thing,
broccoli is a lot more nutritious than red meat (which isn’t always
really red–some factory-produced meat is so pasty that it must be
artificially colored), as well as tastier (e.g., when steamed with
black mushrooms, baby corn, water chestnuts and tofu, seasoned with
tamari and served over brown rice… mmm). But never mind that. I
have no objection to carnivores clogging their arteries and degrading
their palates, any more than to smokers blackening their lungs.
That’s what freedom’s for. As for the billions of animals (and
thousands of illegal aliens) leading a wretched existence in meat
factories before being slaughtered (or deported)–I sympathize, of
course, but animals and illegal aliens don’t vote, much less
contribute to political campaigns. No, the real, unsentimental, non-
goo-goo objection to meat factories (read: propaganda mills) is that
they produce gigantic quantities of reeking manure, noxious gases and
toxic feed additives (i.e., stereotypes, clichés and non sequiturs),
which befoul the environment (i.e., the civic culture).
Okay, shh, you just rest a little bit. We’ll wake you up in time for
gossip.