8
PARTISAN REVIEW
argue. But they are obliged to put on a good show for as large an
audience as possible, and, as I came to realize during my own radio
interviews, tend to draw in people who are more or less uninformed,
listeners who don't want to give up their
parti-pris
positions - many of
these "learned" from other media events.
For instance, immediately after the Chairman of the National En–
dowment for the Humanities, Lynne Cheney, and the Dean of the
Graduate Faculty at Rutgers University, Catharine Stimpson, had their
heated dialogue about "political correctness" on public television, friends
from outside the university asked me what I thought of the exchange
and proceeded to give me their own opinions. Invariably, those on the
so-called left were appalled that Cheney had interrupted Stimpson while
those on the so-called right pointed out that Stimpson was purposely
hugging the screen, being unnecessarily long-winded to keep Cheney
from talking. They commented on Stimpson's sugary tone and on
Cheney's belligerent one. Very few of my friends any longer questioned
the notions and validity of political correctness, multiculturalism, and
diversity as the means of addressing the larger problems we face - how to
educate an ever-expanding college population many of whom, for a va–
riety of reasons, are unprepared for college.
Nor did my friends realize that their own fervor and interest in these
discussions, in a vague sense, were replicating the positions they used to
take towards communism and anticommunism before the collapse of the
Soviet empire. And while those on the left - correctly - pointed out
that their opponents on the right had not engineered this collapse all by
themselves, as some of them claimed or implied, they chose to forget that
before 1989 they themselves had applied the word "empire" to America
alone. Now, they chose to ignore their former excuses for repression in
what used to be the countries behind the Iron Curtain, and they started
to focus their not inconsiderable political savvy only on what's wrong
with America. The fact that their stranglehold on faculty and adminis–
trations (not on students, as seems to be the emphasis in media events)
was being challenged, just at the time when they did not know where to
position themselves in the larger arena, and when those who used to be
our enemies started to look to us as the most liberal society, led some to
jump ship.
It
led others to question their positions and yet others to
concentrate on political correctness, on "multiculturalism" as the
weapon against existing racism, and on the teaching of "diversity" as the
equivalent of tolerance. (How this position will "translate" into dealing
with the upsurge of nationalism and racism in Central and Eastern Eu–
rope remains to be seen.)
No one questions the good intentions and the ends.
It
is un–
fortunate, however, that once again our national agenda is being set in
