Re: Give a Break to Americans Giving Birth

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Nov 4, 2006, at 2:02 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

> Male leftists in the West, various as they are, have more in common
> with one another than, say, "SUV drivers" in marketing research or
> "Americans" in Richard Hofstandter's work, to take two categories you
> are fond of using.  If it is possible to speak of a predominant
> tendency in the latter, surely it's possible to speak of one in the
> former.

The market research comes from surveys and focus groups commissioned
by auto companies who have an economic incentive to get it right.
Hofstadter was a historian who named names and quoted texts; you may
not like what he did with them (though I'm guessing you haven't
actually read his work), but there's a body of evidence to respond
to. You have yet to name or quote any of these bad western left boys,
a category that would include, I presume, Slavoj Zizek, Ramsey Clark,
Leo Panitch, Dennis Kucinich, Alex Callinicos, Antonio Negri, Robin
Blackburn, Jim Robertson, Serge Halimi, "Angelus Novus" on lbo-talk,
Jeff St Clair, Carrol Cox, Lou Proyect, Michael Perelman, and me. Who
on that list embodies any of the positions you attribute to your
phantasmic category?

Doug