I looked forward to Bret Baier’s documentary (Charles Krauthammer: A Life That Matters, 10-25-13) in honor of Charles Krauthammer’s just published book of collected essays, partly because I look up to Krauthammer as the wise man of FNC, but partly because I knew little of his family background, other than that he had suffered a terrible disabling accident when still a young man, yet had gone on to become a psychiatrist and a political pundit who famously switched from liberal to neoconservative (i.e., the very liberal anticommunist became a moderate man leaning toward the Right).
CK’s Wikipedia page has nothing about his family background (or his intellectual influences such as favorite reading), but we learned from the Baier doc that his father and mother were Jewish immigrants from Europe, that his father spoke 9 languages, and that his older brother (who died at 59 of cancer) was worshipped by his sibling, and that big brother had shown him the ropes, initiating him into manhood as something of an athlete. One could conclude that CK’s private life would remain very private. No mention of the accomplishments or character of CK’s mother; only a brief appreciation of his artist wife; and an allusion to a baby son. His private life remains private, and was perhaps the condition of his being interviewed. Given his career aspirations and chosen universities, I guessed that his family was haute bourgeois in Europe (it was briefly mentioned that father was a real estate developer).
Upon being questioned about his education, I was surprised to learn that CK started out in “political theory” but finding it “too abstract” he switched to medicine (following his brother?), which he said was more reality oriented and more philosophically challenging. CK further insisted that he remained “in denial” regarding both his accident and his “interior life,” which seemed to amuse him and Baier alike, though I found it bizarre for a self-described “psychiatrist.”
Political science, like its materialist fellow-disciplines (sociology, history, economics, anthropology) is anything but boring to one who seeks to understand contemporary political affairs. It occurred to me that CK might be highly invested in personal power and influence, even if it costs him something in self-understanding. The rest of this blog is about what I gathered from the CK show.
Fox News Channel, like the Wall Street Journal, is owned by Rupert Murdoch, a businessman who profits from maximum eyeballs and circulation, not unlike the rest of mass media. Hence the “moderate” direction of both enterprises. The search for truth takes back seat to the “fair and balanced” mantra. To CK (at least in the Baier show), the Tea Party is not like other social movements, an object of contemplation and analysis as to social base, tactics, objectives, organizational structure, numbers, etc., but rather fanatical and extreme (I am using my words, not quoting CK’s). And yet a few days ago, while promoting this show, the same CK assessed the GOP-Tea Party split as over, celebrating its “fusion.” (CK did the same on Greta’s show 10-31-13.)
This is what I mean by the search for unity at all costs; besides denying the family dynamics that may create lifelong ambivalence and other distortions, the search for unity implies an underlying belief in the neutral state and in the organic nation. Bret Baier’s panels of experts, like Chris Wallace’s, sometimes break out in vociferous disagreement, but we are reassured that beneath the high dudgeon, they and we are all friends. (The same goes for the hit show The Five.)
And yet, the Democratic Party loathes the GOP, ignoring the progressive origins of both modern capitalist parties. It was no big deal for the wise elder statesman of Fox News Channel to switch. (For material on the populist origins of the moderate men/progressives see https://clarespark.com/2009/09/19/populism-progressivism-and-corporatist-liberalism-in-the-nation-1919/. For some thoughts on how fast switches between topics can cause the loss of focus in the viewer, see https://clarespark.com/2013/05/10/losing-focus-and-mass-media/. Not just tabloids, but all news media suffer from this structural problem. For two recent blogs that address the illusion of national or group unity see https://clarespark.com/2013/01/21/citizen-obama-political-pluralism-and-the-elusive-search-for-unity/, and https://clarespark.com/2013/09/17/the-illusion-of-national-unity/.)
[Added 10-27-13: It seems that CK deferred to three men in his life: his father (to whom he gave his Pulitzer medal on his death bed) , the older brother Marcel, and the nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi, who predicted that any civilization advanced enough to figure out [atomic fission] would end up destroying itself. This strain of cultural pessimism is disturbing to me, and perhaps owes more than a little to CK’s life-transforming disastrous accident while still a very young man. In any case, having renounced “psychiatry” and the inner world of feelings, he should not trot out his credentials as a psychiatrist while making political judgments. For more on his attachment to his older brother Marcel see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/26/AR2006012601471.html.]
The Clare Spark Blog 
[…] That Matter); that “documentary” produced a blog that focused on CK’s search for unity https://clarespark.com/2013/10/26/krauthammer-fox-news-channel-and-the-search-for-unity/. This search for coherence in a polarized polity would suggest that he is an organic conservative, […]
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Jews seem to generate intellectuals disproportionately. Perhaps there is in Jewish culture there is something that encourages intellectualism. If so, this may be something other culture might want to emulate. I wonder if the experience of the Popular Front and the cultural revolution — in which the culture and counter-culture switched roles — had some part in the leftward movement of moderation and the rightward movement of populism?
Comment by marklarochelle — September 9, 2014 @ 12:07 am |
Jewish culture, if such a thing exists, values intellectual combat. It has always been thus, to my knowledge.
Comment by clarelspark — September 9, 2014 @ 12:17 am |
“Cultural pessimism”? I’m not sure about that (see the last essay in his current book ). (one item I do disagree with CK is his assessment of Obama. In an interview on Sun News Network, on the Ezra Levant show, CK suggested to Ezra that he (Ezra) should never chalk up Obama’s policies as a result of malice — always attribute it to Obama’s sheer incompetence. Ezra has suggested that Obama’s policies are the result of a deep seated malice/hatred of America/Israel.)
Comment by J.S. — March 17, 2014 @ 9:58 pm |
“Cultural pessimism” was something that I mentioned only in connection with CK’s admiration for Enrico Fermi. It was hardly the theme of my blog.
Comment by clarelspark — March 17, 2014 @ 10:05 pm |
Krauthammer belongs to a long line of Jewish intellectuals, formerly of the left, who has had the courage to declare publically that leftist so-called solutions have failed, 45 years after the War on Poverty and Affirmative Action our underclass has not diminished but has grown exponentially, There were 100 times as many Asians qualifying for Bronx High School of Science, and elite schools like it, this year as blacks. If that does not signal failure, I do not know what does.
Jewish Republicans like Irving Kristol and Norman Podheretz and many others started out, if not as outright Trotskyites, then at least as far left Democrats and defected when it became apparent to them that making the population more and more dependent on the state was, indeed, the road to serfdom. You, Clare, also belong in that class as do I.
I disagree with you about the Tea Party. They have a point of view that is consistent with small government. Maybe a little noisy for my taste but I would no more criticise them than the Democrats would criticise MoveOn,org which is far more radical, although you would never know it from the MSM.
Comment by Bob Ennis — October 27, 2013 @ 5:13 pm |
I did not trash the Tea Party; rather Krauthammer did in his interview with Bret Baier (a view that he had altered earlier last week. I simply criticized Krauthammer’s limitations for not analyzing TP as a political scientist or other materialist would. And I wonder why you single him out as a particularly Jewish intellectual.
Comment by clarelspark — October 27, 2013 @ 5:39 pm |