Civics

By Crispin Sartwell

Each wondrous day brings with it a civics lesson. Ah, the joy of learning.

Rupert Murdoch's FX cable network is assembling a political "American Idol." The competition - to be held in conjunction with the 2004 election - will choose a "people's candidate" for President of the United States.

Meantime, according to the Washington Post, in Brazil, the largest slums in the Western hemisphere are governed by drug cartels, who provide public transportation and day care, and prevent shoplifting.

Boys and girls, what does this all mean? Well, it teaches us valuable lessons about the nature of government, the nature of politics, and the nature of democracy.

In the USA, government is strictly a branch of the entertainment industry. The real problem with American politics is simply that it is not entertaining enough. Dick Cheney and Al Gore, for example, have all the charisma of a granola bar. What we need is younger, skinnier, sexier, and more telegenic spokesmodels for the common wisdom.

The job of the American politician, like the job of the members of N'Sync or an NFL coach, is simply to mutter cliches into the camera.

It is Rupert Murdoch's great insight that no experience or gravitas is needed in order to dish out pablum. Indeed, an arbitrarily chosen street person could intone "make no mistake" with more sincerity than Elizabeth Dole.

And surely we must greet enthusiastically anything that disrupts or in the most optimistic view destroys the two-party system and replaces the Democrats and the Republicans explicitly with large corporations such as Murdoch's.

My only concern is that "American Idol" was essentially boring, and though in a vague way I liked the pretty, talented young people who competed, the material was the worst sort of mechanical pop. That made the show dull, but it would be duller still without the music. That's why I'm hoping for some highly eccentric candidates in the political version: white supremacists and lesbian separatists, topless dancers and Barney, robust farm girls and juvenile delinquents.

And I'm praying that one of them will govern America.

In Brazil, too, politics is entertainment, but there it's salsa concerts and one-dollar lines. And as is the case everywhere, you are governed by whoever controls your neighborhood, or, to put it briefly, whoever has the guns.

An old friend of mine grew up on South Central LA, where, he said, there were three street gangs: the Crips, the Bloods, and the LAPD. Whichever one deployed the most violent thugs that day was the government, and that has been the origin and legitimating factor in state power since the days the neanderthals walked the earth and ran for president. (Of course, neanderthals still run for president.)

And while you might not want, as an abstract proposition, to be governed by drug lords, you might welcome the day care and transportation, and you might vote with your nose. And as is the case everywhere, you can love or leave the Rocinha slum in Rio de Janeiro. If you stay, you are agreeing to abide by the drug lords' decrees. That's what we in the political philosophy trade call "the social contract."

You might notice that the governments of most American states are in the gambling business, and are raking off massive cash from booze and tobacco. And you might notice that the relations of the Federal government to the world drug cartels is, um, complicated: we're all about the coke when it's helping fund a friendly dictator.

So what have we learned today, kids? We've learned that the dignity of the law must be respected. We've learned that public service is an admirable expression of deep concern for others. We've learned that John Ashcroft is an American hero. Above all, we've learned to relax and try to enjoy it.

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Crispin Sartwell teaches philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art.