What do Van Jones, Bruce Springsteen and a humanist author from the 1980s have to do with the future of America? Let's find out.
Art by Pete Whitehead
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Story performed by: Aaron Calafato
Audio Production: Ken Wendt
Original Art: Pete Whitehead
Podcast Coordinator: Cori Birce
Creative Consultant: Anthony Vorndran
Source Material:
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985) . A book by educator Neil Postman. Published by Viking Penguin
Renegades: Born in the USA - A Spotify Original Podcast From Higher Ground
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:03.610] - Cori Intro
You're listening to 7 Minute Stories with Aaron Calafato. Please keep on subscribing and leaving those five star ratings and reviews. It helps others find our podcast and that helps us out. Also, we want to hear from you. We set up a number you can call or text. It's 216-352-4010. Use it and share some feedback about one of Aaron's stories or a story of your own. We might feature your message on an upcoming episode.
[00:00:31.330] - Aaron Story
This episode, Born in the USA.
[00:00:44.390]
A couple of weeks ago, Van Jones, who you may know from CNN, you may know him from his activism work, and he's also been a special guest on this podcast.
[00:00:54.080]
Well, he took some serious flack during an interview that he did on the television show The View. Now, before we unpack this, I have to read a passage for you from a book that changed my life. It's called "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business." And it's by Neil Postman.
[00:01:14.630]
When people watch television, they're watching moving pictures, millions of them of short duration and dynamic variety. It is in the nature of the medium that it must suppress the content of ideas in order to accommodate the requirements of visual interest, that is to say, to accommodate the values of show business.
[00:01:35.930]
Film, records and radio are, of course, equally devoted to entertaining the culture and their effects in altering the style of American discourse are not insignificant. But television is different because it encompasses all forms of discourse. No one goes to a movie to find out about government policy or the latest scientific advances. No one buys a record to find out the baseball scores or the weather or the latest murder. No one turns on radio anymore for soap operas or a presidential address (if a television set is at hand). But everyone goes to television for all of these things and more, which is why television resonates so powerfully throughout our culture. Television is our culture's principal mode of knowing about itself. Therefore, and this is the critical point, how television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged. It is not merely that on the television screen entertainment is the metaphor for all discourse. It is, that off the screen, the same metaphor prevails. As typography once dictated the style of conducting politics, religion, business, education, law and other important social matters. Television now takes command in courtrooms, classrooms, operating rooms, boardrooms, churches and even airplanes. Americans no longer talk to each other. They entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas. They exchange images. They do not argue with propositions. They argue with good looks, celebrities and commercial. For the message of television as metaphor is not only that all the world is a stage, but that the stage is located in Las Vegas, Nevada.
[00:03:31.100]
So what does this have to do with Van Jones and the title of this episode, Born in the USA? Van was criticized on The View for being a political opportunist. The interviewer said, you're cozying up...It's perceived that you're cozying up to folks on the political right. People in the Trump administration. And those optics are making your supporters doubt your intentions, the folks that are in the black community that support you and so on and so forth. And look, I'm not here to defend Van Jones. I don't need to defend Van Jones. He's a grown ass man who can defend himself. And frankly, he doesn't need to. What I'm interested in is...What I'm interested in is the nature of the criticism. That somebody' talking and working with people he doesn't agree with is seen as a dangerous act. You can look it up. But the reason why Van is working across the aisle with certain folks that he's politically and diametrically opposed to is that he's working on criminal justice reform. That's been his life's work. And he's found common ground with these folks across the aisle. And in order to get things done and legislation passed, you got to work across the aisle to figure out a way through it.
[00:04:41.180]
Here's the reality. To get anything done politically or otherwise, you have to talk to people you don't agree with. I don't understand why this is a crazy concept. But then I realize at least in the last 10 or 15 years, to some, that is a crazy concept because it's not part of the echo chamber, because it's not part of the world that Postman actually foretells in the passage that I read you. And you can look at that metaphor on the television and you can apply it to what we're seeing now in the digital age and the Internet and social media and television today.
[00:05:15.080]
It's a world in which, you only want to be surrounded with people that speak your language. And you only want to be surrounded with people that agree with you. And anybody that doesn't you can't speak to. That's tribalism. Here's the crazy thing, and trust me, I have lost optimism in this too. Especially in the political cycle where I felt so strongly about certain things. And I found myself saying even to friends like, I can't understand how you would support somebody like this or that or your political choice. And listen, it's not a problem to disagree. And I really think that some of my viewpoints are correct. But here's the problem, though. You can't stop talking to each other even when it seems like it's impossible, because that's how a society crumbles. And I found myself being challenged with that. And here's the deal, instead of me saying, I can't understand why you did this or that. Why don't I start wit.. Why did you do this or that? Or, why is it important to you to support this candidate? Because, listen, I may not get the answer that I want. Even with that approach, I may still totally disagree with the person even after that approach. I may not understand the person even after that approach, but at least I don't lose my humanity in the process. It's human nature to be curious. Children are born in this world, naturally curious to seek the other. To understand what's around them somehow over time in our society that's been degraded and that process of conversation and persuasion and all these things, that's discourse. And the discourse in America is in the freaking toilet right now.
[00:06:56.970]
So now what? I mean, if the very thing that keeps a society sane and healthy is in the toilet, how do you fix that? You know, I was going to give you a whole list of things I was committed to do personally. But I recently heard a conversation on a podcast between President Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen. And there was a quote that Bruce had that stuck with me. When referring to his complicated relationship to his hometown of Freehold, New Jersey.
[00:07:25.770]
He says: "These were the people that I loved. With all of their limitations, all of their blessings, all of their curses, all of their dreams, all of their nightmares. These were the people that I loved." I think maybe that's a good place to start.
