Nancy Scola: Crisis of Imagination on Family Values

Matthew Yglesias and Amy Sullivan and Garance Franke-Ruta have been having a somewhat heated discussion about popular culture and Democrats. In brief, Amy started it by citing a Dan Gerstein op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (paying customers only) that criticizes Democrats' dismissiveness of concerns about the media bath that kids find themselves in today and then Matt said that he sees no policy response to such concerns and thus finds attentiveness to these concerns to be just political pandering and then Garance cited such dismissiveness as one reason that Democrats have failed to connect to married parents.

I started thinking about all this at an event yesterday on low frequency FM radio when Jan Schakowsky described how she was more concerned about her children having freedom of speech than she is about them seeing Janet Jackson's nipple.

As am I.

But I do also have concerns about my beautiful three year old nephew watching Janet and Justin gyrate. As a breast-fed baby, he's seen plenty of boobies. But it's possible that that sort of overt sexuality is more than is appropriate for him at his age. I'd rather he not start nursery school with images of bustiers dancing in his head.

But, as all good Democrats should, I abhor censorship. Just hate it. Matt calls this position feckless posturing a la Joe Lieberman because I'm expressing a concern to which I wish to see no policy response. No policy response, but I would like things to change. I want the TV programmers to use better judgment about what to put on before a certain hour. I want there to be more television shows that are funny without being stupid. I want a morning news program on network television that reports world news and explores issues beyond that week's missing white woman -- not having cable shouldn't be a barrier to getting a decent news program. Would I like the government to do anything to make that happen? No, except to take down the barriers that keep smaller voices from being heard.

But politics just isn't all about offering policy responses. If it were, John "I have a plan for that on my website" would be President. Republicans just get this so much better than we do. Politics to them is the simple art of getting a voter to huddle closer to those who believe in roughly the same things that they do. If normal people are anything like I am, they want the people that they vote for to acknowledge how important their families are to them and they want their concerns about their families to be validated.

And goddamn it, Democrats do believe in the family. We're the very party of the family! We believe that grownups in the family should have jobs and good ones (relevant policy: whole range of economic plans; relevant cultural issue: a return to valuing an honest day's work). And the kids should be healthy (universal health care; getting kids to eat less crap junk food) and a decent free education (strong public schools; little girls not wearing skimpy skirts and tube tops at nine years old). We think that they should have a chance to grow up to be the best that they can be, whatever that is (civil liberties; valuing even the weirdest of the weird kids). Even if they're women (title IX; writing better parts for older women in movies). We believe that our doggies should be free to swim in clean rivers and streams (strong environmental regulations; neighborhoods built around open spaces). We want all of our grandmas to be able to live out their lives in peace and with dignity (affordable prescription drugs; valuing what old people have to say). Those are our family values.

Amy's right to call it a crisis of imagination if we can't see that there is a difference between caring about family values and being the Traditional Values Coalition.

If we can't convince people that we're as concerned about their families as they are in the way that they are, we're in trouble. If we aren't, as a party, actually as concerned about their families as they are in the way that they are, then we're really screwed.