Mark Morford

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Down With Fancy Book Learnin'
What's it mean that the big cities and college towns of America all voted blue?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, November 12, 2004

Is this why everything's so mangled? Is this why we're so divided?

Is this why we're so damned confused and bothered and itchy and wondering why we are ever at each others' throats and ever snickering in each others' direction and ever sighing heavily and wishing we could somehow have a magic glimpse into the year 2104 to see how the hell we survive it all?

Because there remains this astonishing and yet ever present fact: all the major cities of America, the great cultural centers and the places with the most concentrated populations and the most extraordinary restaurants and the highest percentage of college graduates and the most progressive laws and the truest sense of the arts and food and sex and music and dance and money and technology and lubricant and drugs and porn and love and fashion and spirituality, well, it seems they all voted blue.

True. From terrorism-ravaged New York to Botox-ravaged Los Angeles, Chicago to San Francisco, Philly to Portland, Seattle and Miami and Boston and Minneapolis and Detroit -- blue as the sky, blue as the Danube, blue as the color of your soul-crushin' wine-slammin' I-need-a-bath-and-an-emetic postelection melancholy.

And what's so frighteningly cute in a slit-your-karmic-wrists sort of way about this whole election thing is how astoundingly vicious and ingrained and apparent the Great American Culture War has become, has evolved, has mutated and grown and smiled and is right now eating us alive and belching out a great cloud of regressive, conformist exhaust.

The stats bear it out. One look at this astounding 3-D map used by CBS News the day after the election (a.k.a.: "Black Wednesday") and you can see how the various cities and towns of America voted and you sit there and go oh my freaking God wouldja look at that, it's not blue state versus red state after all, but more like blue urban versus red rural, skyscraper versus church house, Chez Panisse versus Denny's.

That is to say, it's all about population density, cultural hub, all about the much-touted "redneck revenge" on the "liberal elite" for unleashing, I suppose, small European cars and artisan cheese and "Queer Eye" and "The West Wing" on them without their express written consent. It is, in short, all about Retro vs. Metro.

But wait, it wasn't just the big cities that went blue. It was also the tiny progressive oases, the small but potent gay-friendly intellectually curious America college towns -- almost anyplace, really, that possesses an above-average university -- that are stuck like glimmering gemstones in a sea of conservativism, that stick out like sore thumbs, like beacons, like hot blue tongues from the very mouth of regressive neocon red.

Kansas City and St. Louis and Iowa City and New Orleans, and Athens, Georgia, Austin, Texas, Durham, North Carolina, Buffalo, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin. All blue. All towns known to be relatively quirky and progressive and safe and kid friendly and beautiful and all-American and replete with big universities and mediocre Thai restaurants and underground music scenes and healthy smatterings of gay culture and lots of gul-dang book-learnin', and every single one of 'em seems to be right in line with the big cities in understanding that Bush is utter poison to anything resembling true juicy spiritual hope or intellectual progress or really exceptional semidrunken sex.

Is this really still the rule? The bigger and more vibrant and more vigorous and more culturally dynamic the city, or the more educated and progressive and literate the small town, the more likely they were to vote blue, Democrat, progressive, open minded, less fearful? Have we progressed almost not at all from the days prior to the Civil War, when the nation was split almost exactly as it is now? Verily, it would appear not, not so much. In fact, it's only getting worse.


Of course, there are plenty of exceptions, plenty of well-educated culturally astute people across the land who somehow still voted for Bush, often against their own interests or deeper conscience and often for antiquated "fiscally conservative" reasons or because it's just how they're wired or because they think Dubya's a "good Christian" and therefore are willing to overlook his mountain of policy failures, or because they just can't bring themselves, even in the face of astounding proofs of Bush's incompetence, to vote for the party of Hillary and Ted Kennedy and Michael Moore.

No, not all city dwellers voted blue. The metropolises are, of course, teeming with conservatives and lib-haters and homophobes, Republican CEOs and phallically challenged Hummer owners and decent Christian folk who don't read the newspaper. And it's also true that liberals and lesbians, tofu eaters and tree huggers, dot the country's rural burgs like sparkles on a heifer, like nails in the tire of the great conservative SUV. The divide is never, despite BushCo's insistence, that clean cut, or that obvious.

The cultural war has always raged on one level or another, has always been a part of the blotchy American complexion. But it has never, until now, penetrated the highest positions of the land. It has never, until now, become the defining element of our society. It has never, sadly, dominated our Congress, our houses of law, our White House, our position in the world.

But there's more to it than that, more to it than the conservative Right's hatred of same-sex marriage or French restaurants or fancy book learnin'. What to make of the astounding fact, for example, that the very places that are most in danger of attack from terrorism -- that is, places like New York, D.C., Los Angeles -- all went overwhelmingly blue?

Put another way, if terrorism was, for the fear-drunk red states, indeed the most galvanizing issue this election, why did those places most susceptible to attack (or, in New York's case, still reeling from one) vote for Kerry in such astounding numbers? What do they know that, say, Kentucky doesn't?

Could it be they understand that Bush has, by way of some of the most irresponsible and violent and disastrous foreign policy in American history, actually increased the chances of another terrorist attack in these places? Or that his policies will transform the current anti-Bush sentiment now raging across Europe into full-blown anti-Americanism? Or that there is more to the world than swearwords on prime-time TV or gay men sharing a wedding cake or Janet Jackson's nipple?

Yes indeed, the Culture War has now penetrated the highest corridors of power, and the red tide has stormed in, taken control, entrenched itself, demanded regression and rollbacks and a return to old-fashioned American values, the ones that demand you read the Bible and fear foreigners and keep your damn legs closed and your mouth shut and quit asking so many prickly questions that make the president blink all confused-like.


Yessir, I guess they showed those goddamn liberals. Guess they showed those damn college boys who's boss. Guess they showed those of us who are most at risk of terror attack and most open to change and most welcoming to the various variations of love and marriage and art and culture in this country who really owns the big stick.

How very unfortunate, then, that we are all to be beaten with it.


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