Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Have you noticed that male chauvinism is making a comeback? Thirty years after the feminist revolution, if you look at the rap videos on MTV or BET, you’ll find that “ho” and “bitch” are just about the nicest words used to describe young women.

That’s just the opening of
“The Return of the Pig”, an essay by David Brooks in the April issue of Atlantic Monthly magazine. So how is the Left defending women, including women of color? The Left can’t figure out what to do, says Brooks:

Many progressive thinkers, having inherited a century of radical European thought, assume that the most oppressive and reactionary parts of society are the rich, the powerful, and the well-born. …The rise of misogynistic rap culture dramatizes the inadequacy of that approach. … Rap and hip-hop came from the urban lower class. N.W.A., 2 Live Crew, Tupac Shakur, and Eminem … emerged authentically from the streets. …

It is the least privileged parts of society that are often the most sexist, reactionary and even materialistic. We have a dynamic urban culture that treats women like whores and that regards owning a Mercedes as the highest possible human aspiration, and the leading articulators of progressive opinion have almost nothing to say about it…

[Leftists] can’t seem to bring themselves to admit out loud that their most effective ideological enemies have turned out to be the same underprivileged people they wanted to rescue from exploitation.

Brooks may be stymied, but the Left need not be.
I found this eloquent bumpersticker on David Weinberger’s blog. To me, it embodies the way Leftists can get past the dead end where they, by which I mean we, are stuck.

Moral absolutes–they’re easy to ridicule when they’re the “absolute” morals of born-again Baptists from Birmingham, Alabama. But we on the Left have our own cherished absolutes–and we need to refresh our ambivalence about them too.

Is any remark claimed as “authentically Black” immune from criticism? If so, does that make any XX type who ever had sex a ho? Or should we switch perspective, and say any statement that degrades women is evil, deserving of powerful retaliation? If so, does that mean we should demand lip service to middle-class ideals before any kid from the ghetto gets to speak?

No–absolutes make for fast and powerful moral judgments, but not for intelligent moral judgments. Because….

Moral means ambivalent.

‘You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,’ said Aslan. ‘And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor in earth.’

(C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian)