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Understanding the American ethos

Shahid Alam studies a work that exercises minds
« T MPATIENCE with theories, ideas I — the entire practice and pro JL cess of abstract thought is perhaps the most common manifestation of anti-intellectualism throughout American popular culture and average zVnericans' day-to-day lives. Therefore, it should be no surprise when that attitude is found even in magazine coverage of higher education --- the one institution in which Americans have expected (not to say preferred) and perhaps even tolerated this core requirement of intel lectual activity." Although these lines are to be found towards the end of an absorb-ing book, in a chapter (6) pertinently titled “Unreflective Instrumentalism, Hedonism, Sexism, and Age Discrimination", they encapsulate the general drift of Anti-Intellectualism in American Media: Magazines & Higher Education. And the author, while ending the previous chapter (5), entitled “Populist Anti-Elitism and Higher Education", bemoans such a state of affairs thus: "However, the needs and opportunities in the United States in the areas of arts, sciences, government, journalism, retail politics, and the overall American culture and American society --- even the complexity of day-to-day life for the average citizen --■ suggest that more citizens, not fewer, should be learning, and not only a finite amount for a degree, but learning more and more over a longer period of time. Unfortunately. zVnerican antiintellectualism makes the idea of even necessary, let alone optional, lifelong learning a tough sell."
Dane S. Claussen is Associate Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Point Park College. Pittsburg. Pennsylvania, USA He is a newspaper management consultant, and a former editor and publisher of daily, weekly and monthly newspapers. In addition to a PhD in the media field, Claussen has an MBA degree to boot, thereby combining within himself the qualifications of a practising journalist, academic, and a high educational background in both the media and business studies. He has evidently brought all these attributes into the mix that has gone into the writing of Anti-Intellectualism in zVnerican Media. And his has not been a bad effort either, although the book reads more like an extensive review of literature and content analysis on the subject rather than a
lengthy discourse of his thoughts. The literature review is formidable, though, and Claussen uses it judiciously to arrive at his conclusion that the news media has fed vocationalism and self-doubt in higher education, and anti -intellectualism throughout American culture. His criticism on this count is striking, though probably right on die money: "Several times 1 have been asked my opinion about life in a hypothetical United States that is "too intellectual" rather that (sic) "too anti-intellectual." Such a possibility is so infinitely remote that none of us need to worry about it" (note 1, Chapter?).
Claussen draws liberally on the classic work of Richard Hofstadter. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, to present his views, but he also refers to other writers and commentators to delve into the roots of Anerican anti-intellectual propensity. For example, he presents Heidi K. Goar’s profound observations that being an intellectual in American culture is the same to being un-American, and, therefore, unpatriotic, and that anti-intellectual ideologies may be internalised by Americans "through the fear of being seen as deviant and therefore ridiculed or ostracized." As Claussen provides a number of evidence on the issue, there is good reason to believe that in the country of Harvard. Yale, Princeton, et al, widespread anti-intellectualism should not come as that big a surprise. Hofstadter maintains that the US had almost always been antiintellectual, while Daniel Rigney, in discussing Hofstadter's thesis, demonstrates that, in Claussen's words, "if it was anti-elitism and religious fundamentalism that originally caused the U.S. population to be anti-intellectual and uninterested in (or even hostile to) formal education. economic considerations perpetuated it.”
And it would not be remiss to remind ourselves that the United States has a religious fundamentalist root in the form of the Puritan English colonists (it comfortably remains the most religion-minded of all the advanced Western countries), and that it has all along been a country with a healthy preference for material pursuit and economic considerations. Little wonder, then, that Hofstadter has found that American educational institutions in general push narrow vocationalism, discourage purely theoretical work and devalue intrinsic
rewards of learning. "Useful intelligence" is preferred over the "pure intellectual”, and the mass media follows the routine. Claussen elaborates on this point: “...while the mass media may sometimes portray intellectuals regarded as “theoretical" or "abstract" as overly idealistic, out-of-touch, and so on, others who are highly educated and often quite intelligent (physicians, engineers, lawyers, MBAs, and so on) are shown as valued for their skills --- while their education and intelligence often go unremarked. More commonly intellectuals are simply not covered at all.... Surely part of this picture is America's common confusion of education with intelligence (and) professors and experts with intellectuals."
Claussen sets forth “a comprehensive study of the role of media in U.S. antiintellectualism that would answer two general questions. First, are mass media a primary actor in creating and/or perpetuating anti-intellectualism? Second, do the mass media have significant potential to resist pervasive American anti-intellectualism?" These are questions not lightly asked, if just a sampling of media coverage of presidential candidates' attributes is perused. In 1828 John
Quincy Adams had been criticised for "book learning”, and, in 1952, the cerebral Adlai Stevenson, as well as Adams in 1828, were ridiculed for their "gifts of language". On the other hand, Dwight Eisenhower's non-intcllcctual, and Andrew Jackson's anti-intellectual qualities both received more coverage than Stevenson and Adams' intellectual quali-ties. Thc point is t ha t a n 11 -intellectualism in American culture Is pervasive, and has its roots in Puritan colonial times. The brilliant English philosophy professor Isaiah Berlin shrewdly observed that a n t i -intellectualism is rampant even among American scholars. And the media have consistently given prominent coverage to such distinctly non-intellectual activities in colleges and universities like sports, tomfoolery, campus protest, joining fraternities and sororities, and, most significantly, Finding jobs.
Heidi K. Goar finds that the popular media is a major factor in American antiintellectualism. Her rationale for holding such a view is worth quoting: “The media influences not only Individual tastes and desires, it seems to affect the entire mood of die country. It tells people what they should find important; it shows them how to behave; it informs them what to value and what not to value. What an ideal climate of antiintellectualism for those in control!” She argues that anti-intellectual ideologies arc so ingrained in American social institutions that intellectuals have little power in comparison with corporate executives, religious leaders, politicians and other prominent figures who are not intellectuals. As the media extol the nonintellectual facets of college students, the students, including many of the brightest, give primacy to careerism, which will provide them with social status and prestige, job security, high income and public recognition. The common denominator is that, to the average American, intellectualism is only worthwhile pursuing if it leads to material benefit. It all fits in perfectly with the American no-nonsense, consumerist, materialistic, any venture leading to a clear and productive end result psyche. Intellectualism will have to conform to that scheme.
Therefore, as David Brooks, another author cited by Claussen, finds, today's intellectuals are savvy enough to develop
policy and research niches, then market themselves to and through TV appear ances, op-ed pieces and conferences, “often ending up making high incomes while still not saying or writing anything original, helpful, or even interesting." And Norman Birnbaum believes that today s journalists have become like career foreign service bureaucrats in that "they combine abject servility to power and complacent ignorance in equal measure." Claussen elucidates on another anti-intellectual dimension of the media: “...profit-driven media seeking large audiences naturally tend toward lowest common denominator content and audiences, which would be nonintellectual anywhere and likely antiintellectual in a broadly anti-intellectual culture." In their book, Manufacturing Consent (1988), Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman provide a compelling rationale for such media behaviour: that the mass media in the US, far from being defiant of ruling circles, are in fact supportive and compliant towards those who hold power.
Dane Claussen is manifestly unhappy about anti-intellectualism in general in the US, and, in particular, the media's role in it. “The American public's longtime anti-intellectual attitude eventually was reflected in and by a presidential candidate, and then president (George W. Bush),” he says, "who was perhaps the least intellectual occupant of the White House in more than seventy-five years and perhaps the most anti-intellectual one in about 165 years." And "today... journalists should be asking themselves to what extent their profession is at fault for a man such as George W. Bush becoming a presidential nominee and then president." He has offered several suggestions to redress the unsatisfactory state of affairs, but one feels that he does not expect anything significant happening in the way of making intellectualism more acceptable to the general American public. Perhaps Claussen might want to resign himself to the words of one of the authors he has cited, Jacques Barzun: "We should expect that in an age of egalitarian democracy 'anti-intellectualism' would increase, for everyone now has the right to resent whatever looks like privilege and eminence.”
Shahid Alam is Head, Media and Communication Department, Independent University, Bangladesh.