On Frank Luntz and Word Choice

Interesting new article over at Yahoo News on the GOP's messaging response to Occupy Wall Street. As is customary, media guru Frank Luntz has been brought in to massage the conservative message in order to blunt the impact that OWS is having on the national conversation. Luntz is something of an interesting character, especially to those of us housed in communication studies: rhetoricians tend to have a love/hate relationship with him, and this is particularly true of rhetoricians with a progressive bent. For many, Luntz represents the worst kind of vision of communication: dupe the masses with the right kind of word and frame, and to follow up on Carl Weather's infamous proclamation with a difference, "you've got yourself a stew" of conservative messaging. Luntz's semi-regular appearances on Fox News, especially during campaign season, feature audiences responding to debates in real time with clickers that allow them to voice their happiness or displeasure with the goings on. For all the groans that Luntz is nothing more than a charlatan, however, there is often a sense of envy for his abilities. Whether its his invocations against "climate change" rather than "global warming" or his move to rename the estate tax the "death tax," progressives often wonder where "our Frank Luntz" is in these discussions. (George Lakoff, not an elephant, comes to mind as a potential counterpoint here.) To put it shorter: the response to Luntz is "Hey, I can't believe he's doing that! I wish WE could do that!"

Well now, Luntz is advising the GOP how to handle the Occupy movement. That Luntz is thinking about this messaging is important, and it indexes the extent to which Occupy has actually influenced the national conversation. Luntz indeed declares his terror that Occupy might actually begin to change the national conversation and opinion about capitalism. Some of his proposals:

-Don't say "capitalism"

-Say "takes" not "taxes"

-Replace "middle class" with "hardworking taxpayers"

-Replace "jobs" with "careers"

-Call "government spending" waste

-"Cooperate" but don't "compromise"

-Elicit empathy by identifying with the "obviousness" of inequality

-"Job creators" not "entrepreneurs"

-Don't ask folks to "sacrifice"

-Blame Washington for everything

What's remarkable about these suggestions is that, in comparison with Luntz's previous moves like reframing the estate tax as a death tax, these suggestions are actually somewhat banal. I think they index the extent to which the conservative position's discursive pivots have been eroded by Obama's relatively centric political discourse. To some degree Luntz's moves also reveal something of a poverty in conservative political discourse as well. Lest you think I'm just some sort of Lefty "concern troll" speaking flippantly think about it this way: A MAJOR CONSERVATIVE OPERATIVE JUST TOLD PEOPLE THAT CAPITALISM IS NOT A STRATEGIC WORD IN AMERICA. IN THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND AND ELEVEN. QUITE A WHILE AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION.

That's quite a thing there. See, the brilliance of Luntz's previous moves, like replacing the phrase "global warming" with "climate change" was his ability to move away from or into words and phrases with a sort of polarizing power: "warming" signals heat, "estate tax" doesn't generate the same emotional resonance as "death tax" etc. In this case, however, Luntz is unable to move either away from or towards more polarized terms. I mean, "job creator" instead of "entrepreneur"? Are we just back to bashing the French? And I'm pretty sure "Blame Washington" was already on the conservative messaging menu.

Anyway, the point of this post isn't to clown on Frank Luntz (who is quite smart), but instead to make one point: the rather tepid options available for reframing the national conversation in the wake of Occupy indicate that the movement really has put the idea of inequality back on the table. Obama's jobs speech also helped: he didn't shy away from marking differences either, talking about class in a rather meaningful way. This may be because the economy "seems" different to people than say global warming: its effects are experienced regularly every day. Once you can no longer deny the existence of a problem with a tactic like an epistemic filibuster, you are left to debate the causes. The acknowledgement of inequality forces Luntz and others to double down on the figure that makes so much conservative politics possible: the hardworking, right thinking, and infallible citizen whose good work and effort affirm at every turn the political commitment to limited government. So long as economic problems persist, alternate interpretations of events can be subjected to more scrutiny through choices made by rhetors whether in sloganeering or in political speech.

James O'Keefe and the Gendered Politics of Radical Publicity

He's like Saul Alinsky's worse nightmare in argyle. His ubiquitous presence offers that what counts as a "radical" politics might not always be associated with radical methodologies for social protest. His own form of conservatively bent but guerilla inspired political intervention certainly operates in with a pitch perfect ear for our current media environs, even if his escapades occasionally end up trading in subtle sexism if not outright misogynistic. If the fevered images of a frat boy gone political went mainstream, they would certainly bear a slinking resemblance to O'Keefe.

Two things interest me about this: 1) the link between O'Keefe's status as a young male and the recent dust-ups with respect to the sexist characteristics of fraternity hazing at Yale, and 2) O'Keefe's embrace of what Saul Alinsky calls the "Rules for Radicals," a play book of none other than the famed Chicago political scene thought to have birthed Bill Ayers, Barack Obama, and any number of other activist stalking horses for the political right. These two points are connected.

First, the gender issue. O'Keefe is a young, good looking man. He looks like your neighbor's kid, who probably weeded your garden for about 10 bucks a weekend until he got old enough to steal away in a moderate suburban sedan to try and sell his plans for world domination to his peers. He is straightforward about the nature of his political pranks. He espouses a philosophy that makes it clear that he believes liberal hegemony of the social is a fact. Keefe is marked as straight (at least, straight to the extent that he wants to protect the nuclear family from ACORN and he wants to seduce CNN reporters aboard the U.S.S. dildo), and I imagine the only thing that distinguishes him in the minds of many liberals from an investment banker are his level of notoriety and pay.

O'Keefe's "sex boat" scheme was deplorable and highly objectionable to say the least. Yet his other successful pranks continue to receive coverage, with nary a mention of how his pranky past is clouded by as much bad judgment as good. I think what we see here, as in the case of knee jerk reactions against feminist interventions against misogynistic chants by frat boys at Yale, is a clear case of how young masculinity receives certain freedoms and permits to "play", a kind of freedom that is not guaranteed for any number of other subject positions. If you "don't get" that O'Keefe's moves were pranks, you "just don't know how to have fun," and take everything too seriously. This language articulates very neatly to the standard set of conservative arguments against political correctness, which claim that the PC movement drains any fun out of social spaces, removing the charge and risk that comes with humor and sex in public and professional spaces.

I see O'Keefe, and I mostly am depressed that liberals keep falling for the hoaxes. But my depression runs deeper. Because I remember how many young men like O'Keefe loved movies like Fight Club, especially because those movies gave young white men a sense of being victimized (in the film by corporate capitalism, but in experience, it seems, that sense of anger and displacement may be easily transfered to other causes). I remember, how as a kid in college and a young masters student, how I sometimes chuckled at the various tales of internet celebrity Tucker Max, who was outright celebrated as a hero of sorts by a certain, mostly male, subset of the university population, for his "winning" stories of casually misogynistic behavior. And indeed, I shudder at the strange embrace of Charlie Sheen, a clear perpetuator of domestic violence and probably sex slavery, for having the "courage" to produce a public persona that says NO to discourses of therapy. And lest you believe that I mistake the popularity of his insanity for actual support it is worth mentioning in our digital environs that in this economy of celebrity circulation, a retweet is akin to giving the figure a certain kind of currency.

Second point: O'Keefe embraces a radical leftist/guerilla sensibility when it comes to his pranks. He and his film crew insinuate themselves as real people, seeking support from ACORN or Planned Parenthood, in order to eviscerate these organizations of their credibility. His mechanisms play upon the social trust that these organizations have to give to those who come to them, the trust of sincerity. But I confess: when each prank is revealed, my blame and concern is not generally for O'Keefe, it is rather directed at those who fall for the tricks of the camera crews. Because what O'Keefe's performances reveal, clearly, is that nobody is perfect. For every ten legitimate pap smears or dozen pieces of sound advice given to a confused young sexually active woman, there are undoubtedly instances in which the actors located within Planned Parenthood fail to act responsibly and in civically defensible ways. Of course this goes both ways: not every troop in Iraq went "Abu Ghraib" on interned Arabs. The point is that it takes a long time to build up social capital and trust, but it takes very little to erode these, whether this is trust for public, semi-public, or private institutions. Just as community organizers who were inspired by Alinsky's tactics would sneak rotting fish into safety deposit boxes at the end of the close of the business day to protest bank takeovers, so to do O'Keefe's take advantage of the open ethos of organizations that provide a public service.

The key in this case, however, links my first and second points. O'Keefe has not only appropriated radical methods and put them into action, but he has done them in a social and political climate where the straight white male is thinkable as a victimized subject (the recent controversy at the University of Iowa over Conservative Coming Out Day is just another example). Ultimately, the more questionable tactics that O'Keefe takes can be excused, because critics "take all the fun out of everything." The political successes he scores, however, count as palpable hits because they reveal the possibilities of institutional failure that underwrite criticisms of big government. They are visible. A video of a woman receiving a pap smear would not be newsworthy, nor is it even possible to succintly put together into a 10 second video clip a sound bite that explains how because Suzie wore a condom, she got her BA in four years. But these stories are the other side of O'Keefe's interventions. In this case, however, the clean cut, educated, straight white male has again ventured over to the "dark side" to reveal that the dark underbelly of liberalism is, to take another pundit's words, "what we thought it was." His full on embrace of radical and misleading political methods (somewhat creepy and carrying odd violent implications in the case of the "bondage dungeon" stunts) reads as so much white noise to the conservative base because the hypocrisy that he reveals hits home. O'Keefe is a crusader for a victimized American-ness, and his embrace of radical political tactics well suited for the 60's only hammer home that indeed, the American tradition is one in crisis, one that calls for a temporary suspension of the conservative criticism of "radical" methods in order to expose the real truths of the political left.

All this being said: Planned Parenthood needs to report sex slavery. That is true. It is also true that what O'Keefe does reproduces a certain set of normative beliefs about America that contribute to a potentially problematic political environment, by eliminating through quickly promulgated video-ready enthymeme much good work done by institutions for people in need.

Why Can't the People Be Wrong? Or, On Popular Egotism

Since Plato, the prospect of popular rule summons up a terrifying demophobia. Whether understood as a distrust of the masses as a kind of idiotic hoi polloi, concerns for how a majoritarian tyranny might take advantage of the minority, or the Arendtian worry that mass society with no check brings the risk of fascism, these claims consistently attend critiques of democratic rule.

Contrast the suspicion of the people with the also-constant suspicion of elites that in part explains democracy's appeal. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely!" shout maxims. "Let them eat cake!" signifies the inability of the ruling class to ever connect with the concerns of people. One reason the printing press really mattered was because it offered up the possibility of a popularized, rather than centrally controlled, understanding of religion and God. This historical keystones find substantial sympathy within the academy: Theodor Adorno's radical distrust of expertism, Michel Foucault's critical investigation of expert mantles as discursive assemblages rather than as absolute pieces of armor, and however many Marxist demands against those in power illustrate that a lack of faith in the empowered is common enough.

Contemporarily, however, only one of these discourses circulates popularly enough that we might think of it as hegemonic, or at least strongly influential. That is, I think, the suspicion of elites. Lets attempt an analogy: Clintonian "Third Way" politics have taken their share of criticism because of the compromises made with neoliberalism in the name of political necessity. Welfare reform and free trade, it was said, were the cost of business, of pushing other policies friendly to progressive politics. Surely Clinton-era successes like the Patient's Bill of Rights, increased taxes on fossil fuel companies, and tax cuts for the poor and tax hikes on the rich are understood as political victories from a progressive standpoint. Many have claimed that the rhetorical concessions made to neoliberalism (economic growth as a premiere policy goal, neutral assumptions about opportunity and effort at the individual level, and support for free trade as a lever of change) undermined the important old progressive political coalition, eradicating the rhetorical resources (notions of class, race, gender etc.) necessary for constituting a political coalition capable of decisively influencing public policy.

We might benefit from asking: was there ever a similar phase in American politics where the resources necessary for making the demophobic critique of "the people" were lost, concessions made for some other instrumental political good? Its certainly easy to pinpoint at least one golden age for government management, stretching from the administration of FDR (emboldened by the Great Depression) into the Great Society era of Lyndon Baines Johnson. During this time government did many things for many people: social security, welfare, civil rights, and countless and innumerable expansions of governmental policy. While the exigence of the depression might have authorized a good deal of FDR's policies, the discourses outlived him in presidents who created national highway systems, raised the minimum wage and strengthened social security, and went on the fight the war on poverty in the name of a Great Society.

Like any political movements, these policies made sense within their particular times. FDR's great policies were considered necessary given the extreme threats of economic collapse. Truman and Eisenhower presided over post-war booms but the specter of the depression continued to stalk the American landscape. And JFK and LBJ had nations on fire, with evental political epidemics of discrimination and crime that necessitated large visible social policy.

By the time of the Reagan Revolution, however, social policy was on the defense. The economy was devastated in the late 70's by a combination of foreign oil crunch and the notorious "stagflation" of American currency. Reagan's administration, while it did not succeed in radically shirnking the size of the federal government (it continued to grow at a solid rate) did commit rhetorically to hollowing out the government's committment to social policy and functionally doing so by making massive tax cuts. All this during "Morning in America", a time of new beginnings for an old and hallowed place full of bright and motivated individuals simply yearning to break free and make a new life for themselves.

What could explain this shift? This is a blog post, not a history book, but the other day over a drink my friend Patrick brought up a good point: that during the 50's and 60's, there was a political consensus against communism and its embodiment in the Soviet Union. Certainly this consensus mostly emerged in the shadow of the threat of thermonuclear extermination, but it could directly articulate itself as such (perhaps the psychoanalytic trauma of the horror was too great, necessitating a displacement, but it is also likely that the threat of big government control threatened by Stalin's purges and the related horrors of WW2 legitimized this anxiety, which still needed to find its basis in democratic and relatively genocide-free America in what new social policies COULD prefigure). So whatever domestic policies could be associated with the kind of big government social managerialism characteristic of both America AND the Soviet Union could then be linked, however complexly, to these existential anxieties about the threat to America posed from abroad.

So while a liberal, managerial politics is consistent both with the fact of America (so many policies embody this ideology) and its history (we did, after all, ditch the Articles of Confederation for a reason) it is highly likely that the appeal of such policies diminished as the Cold War began to increasingly overdetermine the idea of what "America" went during a period that saw numerous proxy conflicts and an imaginary colonized by the threat of nuclear extermination. In order to differentiate American from the Soviet menace, its ideological discursive committments (equality, planned economics, state intervention, socialist policy) had to be taken as absolute terrors, co-equal with the threat of Soviet dominance (always articulated as an ideological/absolute clash).

So one thing we might glean from this admittedly brief and too broad reading is at least one insight: the horrors of big government have far more punch and verve than the benefits big government supplies. The discursive economy privileges threats of evental genocide, nuclear annhiliation, and economic collapse much higher than the values provided to individual's everyday lives by a powerful and vibrant welfare state. Not to sound like broken record of some terrible K debate or anything, but we seem to lack a language to describe why exactly goods like equality or health care ought to matter as much as others. The necessary supplement to this reading is to figure out how "the American people" came to always be on the one side rather than the other, which I shall pursue in my next post.

On the Midterm Election and your Facebook Rhetoric

Previously, other commentators and this blogger have noted how the roots of the Tea Party are based in a lineage that comes directly from the 20th century's suspicion of communism: particularly, the suspicion of elite managerialism that accompanied the John Birch movement and the Red Scare. Critiques of various communist nations centered around their committment to large government programs that reduced people to numbers in order so that they could be aggregated and liquidated through collectivization. "The Great Leap Forward" or "The Five Year Plan" or any other such sloganeering today strikes us as ironic and grim, in light of how public political discourse memorializes the violence of the great political turns to communism.

Little surprise, then, that the distrust of big government (which has always been a powerful American meme) blew up starting with the bailouts and health care debate ("too big to fail" and "death panels"). This discourse plays easily in the contemporary American landscape because while temporally we are increasingly distanced from the threat of "actually existing" communism (the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe collapsed, Cuba seems a failure, China is Red but also seems to be increasingly liberalized by market forces), spatially we find ourselves still inhabiting a political space defined by its opposition to communism. This history cannot be easily disavowed.

Discourses suspicious of managerialism, then, are more than mere rhetorics; they are constitutive of American political space in the sense that that always conjure an authentic people who knows better than the government by virtue of not being the government. Hence the circulation of the images and stories of the Founders; they are the ultimate embodiment of a people who never trusted that the government "knew best".

For whatever reason (despite a long history of our government doings lots of good things for people) the presumption politically seems to be against governmental action. This presumption seems to operate ideologically as opposed to contingently; the people are greater than the government is a widely accepted American enthymeme (our status as a democratic republic notwithstanding).

So on the day after a midterm election that has shattered Democratic dreams and elected a host of new Republicans office, a healthy reminder: the more your opinions and Facebook posts and complaints assert in advance that people could not possibly support the Tea Party, or about how Barack Obama is so obviously a great president, the more you contribute to the production of the distance between your own political (probably Democratic) position and that of the Republicans, because you're assuming in advance that you're right rather than figuring out the perhaps even honest or sincere political opinions of others. Don't allow your belief in the superiority of your own political opinions to substitute for making a rigorous judgment about political arguments. Because that substitution that comes off as somehow elite or superior; the result is that it activates that very same sort of "elite/people" divide that drove divisions during the Cold War. So just be careful, is all I'm saying.

The GOP's "America Speaking Out" Program

Something that I've been focusing on a lot (and blogging about some) is the fundamental tension that drives the American political scene, the tension between Republicanism and Democracy that is woven into our own founding myths. Jennifer Mercieca's book Founding Fictions examines some of the ways that the contradictory character of the American political system has been forgotten, as we find ourselves in a political scene that is discussed as a democracy but functions mostly as a Republic.

What makes this tension interesting from a rhetorical standpoint is that the democratic narrative overdetermines much of the popular and media reading of governmental action. There are a lot of potential reasons for this explanation but perhaps the one that makes the most sense to me is this: individuals (particularly individuals sensitized and raised in a liberal culture that promotes individualism as a central value, if not a sinthome that helps a whole social narrative cohere), do not like to be told that they are wrong. Because at any moment as individual imagines their understanding to be one intelligible to a broader audience (this is the act of imagination necessary to formulate something like "the people", unless we are talking about an avowed polemicist) individuals are not encouraged to approach their own viewpoints with humility: instead, they conceive of their own thoughts and opinions as brilliant flowers that deserve to bloom.

Indeed, a democracy that purely celebrates "the people" encourages us to imagine that these opinions can explode in full bloom. We don't, of course, have to go very fall down the ol' linguistic turn to see that there is a problem with this belief: Chantal Mouffe, for example, argues in The Democratic Paradox and elsewhere with Ernesto Laclau that interpreting political discourse as a product of agonistic conflict is preferable to interpreting conflict as a clash between competing truth claims that are resolvable by some objective judgment. This is because there is no external arbitator capable of resolving the competing truth claims--we are, to some extent inhabting a relative space. This is somewhat liberating, however, because the understanding that we occupy a space where "everything is permitted so nothing is permitted" at least frees subjects to make arguments/produce opinions that are not "determined in the last instance" by some calcified or hardened social structure whose force or power masquerades as an essential or guaranteed truth.

To return to Hannah Arendt in On Revolution, it may be that out task in a rhetorical democratic republic is to figure out how citizens might begin to understand themselves as humble combatants rather than figures who posess an absolute truth. One might counter this assertion by pointing to The Human Condition's aggressive defense of agonistic political space to prove that humility is not a desired trait because it might act to discourage individuals from attempting to write their name into history by producing a lasting force. To put it into Mouffian terms we might ask the question: how do we facilitate the transition from antagonism to agonism without abolishing the difference that drives both?

The benefits of highlighting the republican aspects of our government are clear in light of this objection: republican governments affirmatively defend that some kind of line must be drawn between the people and their representatives while democratic modes of thinking defer the willingness to make a judgment, relying instead upon an inchoate/spectral idea (for example, a Rawlsian "public reason") to tie up any loose ends with regards to harmonizing the social. Bringing this back to Arendt's argument in On Revolution (as explicated by Andreas Kalyvas) we see the danger in promulgating something like a theory of public reason: public reason, because it refuses to claim to be made out of a decision and instead to constantly aid and abet public formation, might be the source of just as much violence as forms of acknowledged decisionism, but rather than humbly acknowledging this decisionistic character of thought and action, something like public reasons consistently denies that it is the product of decisionistic thinking because its virtues arise from its ability to exist external from critique/the social--if it were revealed as decisionism, the reasons to prefer it would fade to black.

Recall how the roots of rightist populism are in the mid 20th century anti-Communist movement: McCarthy, the Birchers, the "get out the vote" Goldwater crowd, and the general creeping suspicious of liberal management as an intellectual tactic that relies on a docile and unthinking public--these roots are visible today in something like Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism for example, which is something of a modern bible for the NRO crowd.

The GOP's new "America Speaking Out" program operates according to democratic principles but does on a democratic/republican plane of battle. The program, intended according to Senator John Boehner is intended to give the American people "a megaphone" so that their voice can be heard amidst the hustle and bustle of Washington. The website features a fair number of comments (although some quite clearly are not from conservatives, and instead are both sarcastic and genuine liberal suggestions) and the comments touch on traditionally conservative political positions: reducing federal support for abortions, solutions for illegal immigration, cutting taxes, banning the IRS, etc.

The genius of the plan is, of course, that no one likes to be told that they are wrong. And so with a handy vox populi that generally supports conservative positions, we see an organ for the GOP to position its arguments as unassailable: how dare you disagree with the people! Moreover, this program boxes the Left into a difficult argumentative position: if they don't wish to argue with "the people" they must prove that the voices present on the website are NOT the people or attempt a more nuanced argument that takes into account the plurality of voices in a democracy and then claims to properly sort them. The former argument risks tapping into a sort of intellectual elitism that haughtily disregards "average Americans" (a particularly risky situation given how effectively "elite thinking" has been critiqued by American conservatives since people were skeptical about The End of Ideology etc.) while the latter demands a certain complexity that may not function properly in our digital Twitterverse.

You might say that the mad genius of the "America Speaking Out" initiative is that it continues to insist upon the fundamentally democratic character of America while denying its opponents access to the inventional resources available in a republic. Following Mercieca's work in Founding Fictions, we might hazard that the frame taken up by the conservative strategists behind this initiative is a solidly romantic one--one that believes that a committed people can have their will properly represented by the system. This abolishes the possibility of any ironic distance from the system because of how these discourses circulate: it is never "the President judged the will of the people and found them wanting" but instead it is "the people's voice has again been trampled".

The task for progressives, then, is to figure out just how we might encourage a humility rather than an arrogance in our democratic subjects. How might we encourage people to take a comic perspective about everything that is happening in the political world? And for now I say: how might we do the impossible?

The Politics of "Breaking Bad", Or, How I Learned to Love Victimized White Masculinity

I've been riveted by the AMC series Breaking Bad since last spring. This post will address plot developments, many from this season, so, if you are still planning on watching the show but haven't yet, stay away for there be spoilers here, ye matey.

We are, it seems, in a television era of the anti-hero. HBO helped start and perfect the trend--Tony Soprano and Jimmy McNulty were two of the most seductive and yet simultaneously troubled leading characters of recent memory. Showtime's Dexter is not centered on what you would call a "good" guy although there is a perverse morality there, an even darker shade of what we see from McNulty in the fifth season of The Wire. Mary Louise Parker's character on Weeds stands out as one of a few female anti-heroes in this mold. AMC boasts two contenders for this anti-hero mantle: the womanizing, dapper, and self-interested Don Draper of Mad Men and Breaking Bad's Walter White. White stands out to me from the other men on this list because, when the series begins, he seems perfectly average--he is a science teacher, rather than a mob boss, an advertising executive, or a cop.

Walter has a pretty and smart wife, Skyler, a good kid struggling with MS, named Walter Jr., and a brother-in-law in the DEA. Oh, and cancer. To make a long story short, Walt's family is struggling to make the payments, so Walt does what any high school chemistry teacher with an exceptional background would do--he starts making meth with one of his old students, Jesse Pinkman. Initially Walt does it to make ends meet, and to provide for his family once he is gone. But a funny thing happens once Walt's body beats the cancer--he doesn't stop making meth. He, in fact, becomes obsessed with how "cooking" is his own art form, a way for him to make his name in the world, to take his exceptional education and mix his labor with goods to really produce something. This decision is contextualized by some backstory we receive in the first two seasons about Walt's involvement with what is now a highly successful company, which he apparently left on bad terms and before it made it big.

Once Walt's wife finds out he's a drug producer, she immediately takes steps to expel him from her and his children's life. Quite legitimately, I might add. He has brought all sorts of potential legal trouble to his home, not to mention the violence and risk associated with the drug trade. Yet persistently, on message boards, Facebook statuses, casual conversations--there is a coterie of the shows fans who continue to identify with Walter White, and cheer his drug dealing alter ego ("Heisenberg", one of the shows funniest gags). Moreover, even if you are not someone who actively roots for Walter, there is certainly an element of identification with Walter White that enables people to continue to enjoy the show even once Walt has really "broken bad".

But really, what is noble and ok about what Walt has done? He has a chance to stop cooking once he is cancer free. It is carefully and clearly revealed that "I'm doing it for my family" is really just another excuse for Walter to continue to adopt his Heisenberg persona, and stroke his own ego in the process. Walt is repeatedly confronted with the collateral damage of his decision (the threats to his marriage, the preposterous plane crash to end season 2, Combo's death, Jesse's traumas) yet continues to cook.

I contend that we should be completely revolted by Walter White's actions. Yet our ability to consume the show and enjoy it testifies to something like Walter in many of us. Let me give an example--you would probably not be that interested in watching a movie about a serial killer told from the serial killer's point of view. Something like the story of John Wayne Gacy told from his perspective presumably would offer little to us for two reasons: 1) the "simple" pathologies of serial killers are the sorts of things we prefer to experience externally, and probably can only understand externally because we ourselves are not serial killers and moreover, defines ourselves positively over and against "that sort" of being--we're very serious about the importance of categories like killer and criminal have in defining our own normalcy or something like it (though the upcoming film version of The Killer Inside Me has some potential to operate inside and outside these categories), and 2. a serial killer's world would be extremely boring, all pathology and no grey area or nuance--at best anyone who enjoyed consuming it would be a fan or Hostel or some such torture-porn drivel.

Back to our friend Walter White. He has blood on his hands. He has violated his family's trust. He is wanted by the Mexican cartel. He is continuously complicit in enabling Jesse's abusive behavior. His actions indrectly lead to Hank's paralysis in season three. "Mr. White", as Jesse calls him, is a bad dude. Sure, he drives a nifty Pontiac SUV, has a neat house, cute baby, had to beat cancer, all that stuff. But at the end of the day, his actions are indefensible to even a light, relative morality. Killing criminals is one thing, but not his only crime.

I contend that Walt as a character is only intelligible to the viewer within the frame of the American Dream. There have been some interesting studies done on the opinions that people have about tax policy. One reason why tax increases on the upper class remain somewhat unpopular is because a lot of people imagine that even if they are not currently well off, they will be one day, and they don't want the government taking their wealth. Moreover, American culture is very, very bad at teaching people to be happy with what they have. And hey, thats's capitalism--one needs to not be satisfied with one's position because that lack of satisfaction is what produces the drive to innovation and ingenuity that ultimately underwrites advances in technology and civilization. We need to be dissatisfied because that dissatisfaction produces the motivation for more labor to occur. I'm not saying its bad or good--just trying to map that model for a minute, to show how Walt's actions might only make sense to us through that frame.

Walter White is not wealthy, but once he beats the cancer he should be able to go back to work and the family could make it. His continual insistence that Skyler not be the family breadwinner reeks of a kind of lingering idea of a masculine hero capable of providing for his family (notwithstanding Skyler's affair with her boss, the status of which in the anterior is unclear). Walt's son, Walt Jr., has his name but not his working legs. One of the most depressing moments in the show is when Walt is trying to show his son how to drive with only one foot, even though the MS makes it very difficult to do--Walt is insisting that his son be "normal" even in the face of that impossibility. Walt's condescending rants to his high school students, about how he was a world class scientist, indicate a dangerous narcissism. His refusal in season one to take his former partner Elliott's money reflects a debilitating heap of pride and indignance. Walter had an exit strategy that did not involve making meth and he kept doing it.

Walt is not a serial killer but when presented in these terms he is a figure from whom we should seemingly want a lot of distance. To the extent that we identify with Walt we suffer from this "disease of more". To the extent that we revel and cheer his badass actions as the dapper and capped "Heisenberg" we are celebrating his temporary escape from the toil and drudgery of responsibility and normalcy. When we are astonished at the potency and purity of his meth we are not "buying the magic of science" but instead are authorizing his astonishingly puerile ego trips. How far away from the "angry white male" of 1994 are we? Walter lives well above a subsistence level--by all appearances, it is a fine middle class existence, one of privilege relative to the lives of many others in the country. He is getting to live a life that many would envy. Yet Walt is dissatsified. Walt is furious that he is normal. Furious that he is unmarked, his genius unacknowledged, that his personal struggles are not the stuff of legend.

Walt would fit in very nicely at a Tea Party rally.