About a week ago, I saw the window decal above on a Ford F-150 pickup truck driving through my rarefied Upper East Side neighborhood.
It bothered me.
Not its crudeness.
Not even the fact that Trump is President.
What bothered me is that a group I find myself affiliated with is so despised.
(Of course, being a Jew I'm used to this. But I've never thought liberalism would evoke such similar amounts of bile.)
It got me thinking.
Mostly about how liberals are regarded by at least some of the 60 million people who voted for Trump, as arrogant and piss-on-able.
What are we doing wrong?
How did we become so out of touch with 60 million people?
Why do they hate us?
Surely, some of that is because populist anti-Semitism conflates all liberals with Jews. And all Jews as owners of the banks and Hollywood and the news media.
Some more, probably, is due to arrogance. That we liberals believe that we have all the answers, and that our way is the only way. We laugh at every place that isn't New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles or San Francisco as "fly-over" country.
Hatred toward those with education and experience is a dangerous thing. In the public sphere it leads to be declaring that vaccines aren't effective or that climate change, or evolution isn't real, or the curvature of the earth is a conspiracy, or that a political neophyte is qualified to hold the most powerful job in the world.
Arrogance is equally dangerous. Treating people as anonymous blocs of "deplorables" is "class-ist" and Soviet.
Our nation deserves better than a pissing match.
In advertising, it's been all-the-rage to express the same feelings about agencies and creatives as the window decal above expresses about liberals.
Like liberals are to be disparaged for their Ivy League educations, advertising people are disparaged by their training in their craft. The easiest way to put down a creative is to assert "anyone can be creative." Or, "a good creative idea can come from anywhere."
In advertising disparaging training, taste and talent often leads to crap. Badly produced. Badly conceived. Badly acted. Off brand. Crap.
You dismiss agencies and the people who populate them at your peril. Just as not everyone can ski, or spelunk, or scuba, not everyone can make a watchable video.
Arrogance, of course, is bad. Dismissing people is bad. The denial of experience, denial of training, denial of the power of education leads to nowhere good.
No solution here, except openness. Be aware if you're acting haughty. Be aware if you're embracing dismissiveness.
Both are dangerous.
What are we doing wrong?
How did we become so out of touch with 60 million people?
Why do they hate us?
Surely, some of that is because populist anti-Semitism conflates all liberals with Jews. And all Jews as owners of the banks and Hollywood and the news media.
Some more, probably, is due to arrogance. That we liberals believe that we have all the answers, and that our way is the only way. We laugh at every place that isn't New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles or San Francisco as "fly-over" country.
Hatred toward those with education and experience is a dangerous thing. In the public sphere it leads to be declaring that vaccines aren't effective or that climate change, or evolution isn't real, or the curvature of the earth is a conspiracy, or that a political neophyte is qualified to hold the most powerful job in the world.
Arrogance is equally dangerous. Treating people as anonymous blocs of "deplorables" is "class-ist" and Soviet.
Our nation deserves better than a pissing match.
In advertising, it's been all-the-rage to express the same feelings about agencies and creatives as the window decal above expresses about liberals.
Like liberals are to be disparaged for their Ivy League educations, advertising people are disparaged by their training in their craft. The easiest way to put down a creative is to assert "anyone can be creative." Or, "a good creative idea can come from anywhere."
In advertising disparaging training, taste and talent often leads to crap. Badly produced. Badly conceived. Badly acted. Off brand. Crap.
You dismiss agencies and the people who populate them at your peril. Just as not everyone can ski, or spelunk, or scuba, not everyone can make a watchable video.
Arrogance, of course, is bad. Dismissing people is bad. The denial of experience, denial of training, denial of the power of education leads to nowhere good.
No solution here, except openness. Be aware if you're acting haughty. Be aware if you're embracing dismissiveness.
Both are dangerous.
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