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


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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 Athens, Georgia, Austin,
Texas, Raleigh, 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.