by Jeff Salzman
Last week Bill Clinton went off the reservation and said something positive about Mitt Romney. Predictably, media madness ensued. Out of the hubbub I noticed the pernicious force of snark once again emitting from the Queen of Mean Green herself, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. And once again she deeply undermines the progressive agenda. I recorded some thoughts about it (to listen, click on the player below). Here are the key ideas …
One of the jobs of green is to de-construct power politics, and to burst the balloon of any kind of grandiosity. It’s an important job, but it does bring on a certain flaccidity that we need to overcome as we move forward into integral consciousness.
Last week Bill Clinton said a nice word about Mitt Romney. Literally, one nice word: “sterling” (regarding Romney’s business record). There was a big to-do, because in our tribal politics we’re not allowed to say that.
One of the markers of tribal politics is that it is a zero sum game; one tribe conquers the other. This is a strata of human development that is still very much on line within us. We play it out now not with guns and clubs, but with words and character assassination. (Progress!)
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about, from the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. Her thesis statement: “On Thursday, Bill Clinton once more telegraphed that he considers Obama a lightweight who should not have bested his wife.”
This is in keeping with Dowd’s current characterization of Obama as being feckless, too introspective, aloof, a naif in the White House. I notice many of my liberal friends buying into this.
Maureen Dowd conducted this kind of character assassination before, in 2000, with her long series of columns presenting Al Gore as a man getting in touch with his feminine, wearing earth tones, and as having a questionable masculinity that Dowd seems to project on men in general.
Unfortunately, in 2000 many of my liberal friends downloaded Dowd’s view of Al Gore. As a result, they were lukewarm about him, they voted for Ralph Nader, or they just didn’t fight the good fight during the election. As so in one of the closest elections in American history, we elected George W. Bush. Not the outcome we libs wanted.
I point this out not to denounce Maureen Dowd. She’s a terribly entertaining writer, I read her faithfully. Developmentally, I think it’s safe to say she’s green. And she also appears to be an Enneagram Four, which exhibits a tragic-romantic orientation where everything has a sexual subtext. (After all, she wrote a book called “Are Men Necessary?”) So everything is a psychodrama for her. It’s kind of fun, and there’s a piece of the truth to it; life does have a psychodramatic aspect that we are all enriched by seeing. But it can also be a negative force in terms of actually promoting the progressive agenda.
Realizing this becomes a point of practice for us integralists, a pushing off point. We see that “this is where green is, and this a place where I can say ‘that’s not me; I can move beyond that.’” … to a world that is actually more hopeful and whole-hearted, where we can actually get behind somebody without worrying that we are buying into a delusion. As we face another consequential election, this is a good thing to keep in mind.
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Jeff, I’ve been meaning for some time to write and tell you how valuable your commentaries are to me. Your even-handedness is SO refreshing, and your grounded optimism is so appealing it could almost make me buy green bananas again. The world needs you, and I need you. Keep up the good work!
Gosh, Teri, thanks! Deeply encouraging. Just stay away from the green tomatoes!
“it’s safe to say she’s green” “She also appears to be Enneagram Four.” “So everything is a psychodrama for her.”
Really?
Statements like these are why I cannot take as seriously as I might the simplistic, sweeping categorizations and the overly chart-dependent nature of integral understanding and language. You make statements like this with such confidence and, I presume (I may be wrong) that you’ve never even met Dowd or had a one-on-one conversation with her. How do you know “what” she is on any one of your charts or diagrams (assuming that any one of them actually mirrors or accurately captures anything as complex as human nature)?
I write columns/blogs for a large metropolitan paper and I get this kind of simplistic feedback all the time. People fail to remember that, as writers, we are a “persona” and that all our columns, blogs, etc. reflect not our actual selves in their fullness and nuance, but the persona we have constructed for the medium for which we write. At best, the critics are dealing with a “character” or “spin-off” of the actual person – not the person herself.
So, if you said “Dowd’s column here represents Enneagram 4” or “green” that would be more accurate in my view – also more sophisticated and less presumptuous.
But, the drive to categorize and locate on a scale and place in a quadrant blah blah blah is so strong . . . . What is that about? Is it because you want a theory of everything and everybody?
This doesn’t seem very “evolved” to me.
No, I’ve never met Maureen Dowd, or spoken to her. I guess I am responding to her writing “persona,” which is well-established, and floridly, brilliantly crafted after many years. I doubt it represents an actual person who is substantially different typologically. At any rate, she’s a public figure, well-celebrated, and part of my goal here is to make integral theory more useful by pointing out its manifestations in real life.
And no, of course integral charts and diagrams don’t “capture” anything as complex as human nature, any more than any map captures the territory it represents. But they sure are useful! And the higher the resolution of the map, the more useful (go to a Google map and move the cursor toward the plus-sign, and you’ll see what I mean). Thus integral’s drive to “locate on a scale and place in a quadrant blah blah blah…”
Finally, I disagree that a theory of everything is necessarily not “very ‘evolved’”. If it helps us see more deeply and clearly than before, it certainly is.