The American promise, of course, is now and has been freedom.
And, as in centuries past, the struggle for the soul of America today
is a struggle over the definition of human freedom. In 21st century
America, it sometimes seems that struggle is over. The freedom of
the marketplace has banished all opposition. Freedom, we are told, is
simply the license to purchase and consume and, perhaps, make rude
noises in public.
Freedom carries responsibility," some old, 20th-century scold or
another will intone. But this sermon falls on deaf ears. After 50
years of commercial television, our national impulse-control has
regressed to "Why ask why?" as the old beer commercial used to
say; just buy, buy, buy.
But that's not the whole picture, either. Yes, freedom carries
responsibility, but responsibility presumes power. The great paradox
of American life today is that we suffer from the curse of freedom
without power. We are allowed to buy, sell, or say anything we
please, so long as we do it within the elastic walls of the corporate
system. Step outside those walls, and you are not just silenced; for
all practical purposes, you no longer exist.
Ralph Nader seemed to understand all this. I suspect he was
beginning to feel a little nonexistent himself, and that is why, at the
center of his 2000 campaign message, he posed an alternative
definition of freedom. "Freedom," he said, "is participation in power."
And he was absolutely right. Everything else is bread and circuses. If
we don't have our hands on the decision-making process-in the
economic and cultural spheres, as well as the political-then we are
not free citizens, we are just spoiled children.
Among other things, that affirmative definition of freedom calls us
to break the cycle of endless nattering about bloody images and
dirty words, or the inalienable right to flaunt the same, and instead
forces us to ask: "Who owns our culture? Who decides what our
songs and stories will be?" And the $64 billion question, "How can
more of us become part of that process?"
Joe Leiberman and Lynn Cheney trooped to Washington this fall,
summoned by an also-outraged John McCain, to make outraged
noises about the marketing of violent and degrading cultural artifacts
to children. But, in all the hours of on-camera emoting, no one
asked the one question that matters: "Why do American parents
have to work so many hours, leaving their kids to be raised by the
wolves of the media industry?"
The answer to that one, of course, is that the vast majority of those
parents are shopping in Year 2001 stores with a 1971 paycheck. All
the sound and fury of our culture-commercial and political-is
ultimately designed to obscure that simple mathematical fact.
I'm reminded of some recent especially annoying
commercial in which a fragrance called "freedom" is "dedicated"
to the youth of America, i.e. the all-important cash heavy 12 to 20 year old consumer group. What was enraging about it was the
use of Aretha's "
