I have probably written more enraged letters to the Times over the inanities and self-important nonsense written by David Brooks than anyone. Usually, I find him both smug and utterly wrong at the same time. But there was a kernel of truth in his column today (note: I said a kernel, not the whole column, some of which smacks of his usual blather) that made me stop and read it again. He was using a retail model to explain the gulf between many of Obama's supporters and many of Clinton's.
It started with this idea:
Listen, the essential competition in many consumer sectors is between commodity providers and experience providers, the companies that just deliver product and the companies that deliver a sensation, too. There’s Safeway, and then there is Whole Foods. There’s the PC, and then there’s the Mac. There are Holiday Inns, and there are W Hotels. There’s Walgreens, and there’s The Body Shop.
Since my family was in the retail business for generations, from my grandfather's pushcart on the Lower East Side through my own short-lived attempt to run a store, that divide makes sense to me. Since his examples were major chains, our businesses didn't really fill the bill, but it was always our decision to bridge the gap between these two ends of the spectrum. Now, although Brooks' article could be perceived as trying to fan a class conflict, many of his points were well taken. He explained how many voters chose between these candidates in relation to their level of education, with high school graduates choosing Clinton and college grads opting for Obama by large percentages.
Why? According to Brooks, Clinton belongs to the Safeway side of things. She
offers voters no frills, just commodities: tax credits, federal subsidies and scholarships. She’s got good programs at good prices.
Whereas Obama is more the Whole Foods model. His voters
want cultural signifiers that enrich their lives with meaning.
And he says that voters split this way because of the difference in their life experiences:
It’s happening because the educated and uneducated lead different sorts of lives. Educated people are not only growing richer than less-educated people, but their lifestyles are diverging as well. A generation ago, educated families and less-educated families looked the same, but now high school graduates divorce at twice the rate of college graduates. High school grads are much more likely to have kids out of wedlock. High school grads are much more likely to be obese. They’re much more likely to smoke and to die younger.
Their attitudes are different. High school grads are much less optimistic than college grads. They express less social trust. They feel less safe in public. They report having fewer friends and lower aspirations. The less educated speak the dialect of struggle; the more educated, the dialect of self-fulfillment.
Now, I understand this divide very well, because both my husband and I are artists. We are well-educated, and our cultural instincts definitely fall with the Obama camp. This is why he appeals to me so much. But we have also always been poor, as artists are usually deemed to be. So the view of the world as a tough place that rewards the wrong people is very understandable to me. Perhaps that's why I can see the positives in both candidates, while so many can't.
Now, Brooks and I diverge because he is so sarcastic in describing the Obama camp (as if he weren't a highly-educated, well-off person himself!), and he resorts to his usual baloney. He has left out what I would call the poor but hopeful group. I think I fit into this category, which is one of the reasons I opt for Obama. But I think that there is some value in recognizing that different views of the potential our lives can realistically offer us might be part of the divide between these two candidates. Considering the overheated fighting on this site and elsewhere between these two camps, we might want to pause and consider that not all of us have the same life experiences or view of the possible.
I can't believe I agree with this guy on anything! It was worth a diary for me to say so.
If you need a link, the article is here
http://www.nytimes.com/...