Futuríveis
sábado, novembro 27, 2004
Marketing bem feito de produtos culturais derivados de um conceito mediático (ou algo mais ?): "Metro vs Retro América"
"The Great Divide: Retro vs. Metro America, by John SperlingThis groundbreaking book explains why our nation is so bitterly divided into what the authors call Retro and Metro America. With hundreds of informative full-color maps, charts, and graphs, dramatic editorial and historical photography, incisive political cartoons and illustrations, this book acts as a blueprint for the reform of the Democratic party. "
from the book web site
"The more valuable half is the interior, effectively a detailed appendix to the barging introductory chapters. Indeed, its discussion of the disconnect between wage growth (or the lack of it) and productivity growth, to choose just one example, ought to be read by all management theorists, Wall Street gurus and CNBC pundits before their next pronouncements on the magic powers of the unfettered free market to enrich us all. Unfortunately, the insides don't seem to have been read by the authors of the book's bluster-packed opening section. Here the goal is to blend together two of the worst big ideas of recent years -- the new economy fantasy of the 1990's and the red/blue thesis of the last few years -- into a universal narrative that can simultaneously direct the electoral strategy of the Democratic Party and inform future scholarship. The essential cleavage in American life, the authors argue, is not between left and right or business class and working class; instead, it is a regional matter, a cultural divide between the states, polarized and unbridgeable. One America, to judge from the book's illustrations, works with lovable robots and lives in ''vibrant'' cities with ballet troupes, super-creative Frank Gehry buildings and quiet, tasteful religious ritual; the other relies on contemptible extraction industries (oil, gas and coal) and inhabits a world of white supremacy and monster truck shows and religious ceremonies in which beefy men in cheap clothes scream incomprehensibly at one another.
A stereotype, to be sure, but a stereotype that we must not underestimate; versions of it have been floating around in the new economy and New Democrat literature for years; and for a large number of centrist Democratic thinkers, this may be the real deal, a Rosetta stone to decipher and to win over America. ''The Great Divide'' furnishes them with demographic, poll-based vindication for the strategy they have been pursuing all along: forget the focus on class conflict that defined the party in the old days, and rebrand the Democrats as the voice of enlightened industry versus dirty industry; of sensitive, artistic billionaires versus loathsome, racist billionaires. "
Thomas Frank, no NYT
from the book web site
"The more valuable half is the interior, effectively a detailed appendix to the barging introductory chapters. Indeed, its discussion of the disconnect between wage growth (or the lack of it) and productivity growth, to choose just one example, ought to be read by all management theorists, Wall Street gurus and CNBC pundits before their next pronouncements on the magic powers of the unfettered free market to enrich us all. Unfortunately, the insides don't seem to have been read by the authors of the book's bluster-packed opening section. Here the goal is to blend together two of the worst big ideas of recent years -- the new economy fantasy of the 1990's and the red/blue thesis of the last few years -- into a universal narrative that can simultaneously direct the electoral strategy of the Democratic Party and inform future scholarship. The essential cleavage in American life, the authors argue, is not between left and right or business class and working class; instead, it is a regional matter, a cultural divide between the states, polarized and unbridgeable. One America, to judge from the book's illustrations, works with lovable robots and lives in ''vibrant'' cities with ballet troupes, super-creative Frank Gehry buildings and quiet, tasteful religious ritual; the other relies on contemptible extraction industries (oil, gas and coal) and inhabits a world of white supremacy and monster truck shows and religious ceremonies in which beefy men in cheap clothes scream incomprehensibly at one another.
A stereotype, to be sure, but a stereotype that we must not underestimate; versions of it have been floating around in the new economy and New Democrat literature for years; and for a large number of centrist Democratic thinkers, this may be the real deal, a Rosetta stone to decipher and to win over America. ''The Great Divide'' furnishes them with demographic, poll-based vindication for the strategy they have been pursuing all along: forget the focus on class conflict that defined the party in the old days, and rebrand the Democrats as the voice of enlightened industry versus dirty industry; of sensitive, artistic billionaires versus loathsome, racist billionaires. "
Thomas Frank, no NYT
posted by CMT, 2:35 da tarde
