Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America

I bought this book years ago, and surprisingly, it holds up very well for a political/current affairs book. Most political stuff is immediate and topical, and dates withing hours nowadays. But Robert Hughes, an Australian that has been living in the US for a while now, has managed to make a book that's lasting in its critiques of America, its government, its liberal and conversative elites, and its electorate. He blasts both the left and the right, but it's not just the easy "they're all corrupt" line. He gives many examples of their intolerance of each other and anything that may disagree with their ideology. In the 1990's, the American people were subjected to a two sided repression in which the right wing and the left wing colloborated (probably unconsciously), but both sides were conscious in their quest for power and influence. The right employed their usual "sex is evil, liberals are godless" stuff, but the left came up with their obsession with PC language, victimhood, and forced, not natural, multiculturalism. He also writes of the politicization of the arts, and how those who created "art" simply used it as a soapbox to preach to the choir and accuse anyone who disagreed with them of being a right wing fascist, racist pig. This is a really well thought out book, not just an ignorant diatribe, and Hughes can actually write. Many political writers just churn out books that end up in the bargain bin, both literally and figuratively. Despite the fact that this book is out of print, it still holds up very well, and Hughes's criticques are still valid today.

Granted, attacking contemporary America's cultural love for the debased, the self-indulgent extreme, the hapless and unskilled mediocrity as well as the insipid cults that have risen around exhalting the helpless victim, nurturing the stunted "inner child" and bandaging the wounded self-esteem seems too obvious.Fortunately TIME Magazine Art Critic and writer extraordinaire Robert Hughes laces his acid-dripping pen with adroit observations and incredible verbal acrobatics in an all-out attack that provides hints of solutions and actual celebrations of all that is good in America.Hughes pulls no punches and spares no prisoners as he lambasts (always with great aplomb and wit) extremism from both sides. Liberals and Conservatives receive broadsword swashes and pin-point snipes in equal measures. Hughes calls ultimately calls for true eclectism as opposed to multi-culturalism- a movement in his mind that wrongly excludes other cultures in favor of often fictious historical revisionism.The rich bounty of American Culture, Hughes claims-the very culture that inspired him to leave Australia and settle in New York- lies in her melting pot of culture. America, in Hughes' expert eye, is a beautiful amalgamation of many cultures: European, Native, African, Spanish, Asian and so forth. He sees history as a complex organism made up of many diverse parts. Effective scholarship, debate and production must incorperate all while eschewing the demagoguery and finger pointing that tragically seems to prevail in so much public discourse.Make no mistake,like any good critic or thinker, Hughes is out to pick a fight and he certainly challenges all comers. One may not agree with all of his points or supports, but that isn't the point. Hughes' number one objective is to confront American apathy with an electo-shock to the system.In short, Hughes does indeed call for a certain brand of elitism in both art and public life. An elitism bred not of social class, race or economics but rather an hierarchy based upon skill, intelligence and vision.THE CULTURE OF COMPLAINT will challenge the reader as well as entertain. A magnificent read.

From the title of Hughes' book you might think this is a tale of woe; a malady of national discontent. Not so. It's too concise, humorous, and ultimately, optimistic, to be a Jeremiad. Nevertheless, Mr Hughes does spend a lot of time lamenting what's wrong with American culture, politics, and the society at large. His focus, and some of his wittiest criticisms are directed at the political ideologues; in academics, the arts and sciences, journalism, and of course party politics. He is dismissive of both extremes; the politically correct left and what he calls the patriotic correct right. He disabuses both sides of any idea that we are enthralled with their message. "One would rather swim than get in the same dinghy as the P.C. folk. But neither would one wish to don blazer and top-siders on the gin palace with it's twin 400-horsepower Buckleys, it's Buchanan squawk box, Falwell & Robertson compass, it's Quayle depth finder and it's broken bilge pump, that now sits listing on the Potomac..." Mr Hughes trains his critical spotlight on dogma, hypocrisy, biases, and bigotry; the opinion makers, spin-doctors, jargon generators and euphemists that have obfuscated the issues, and worse, have sacrificed consensus on the altar of ideology. He is ultimately optimistic as the problem does not lie with citizenry, as we are 'America' The problem remains squarely with ideologues. "The fact remains that America is a collective work of the imagination whose making never ends, and once that sense of collectivity, and mutual respect is broken the possibilities of Americanness begin to unravel. If they are fraying now, it is because the politics of ideology has for the last 20 years weakened and in some cases broken the traditional American genius for consensus, for getting along by making up practical compromises to meet real social needs". In a word - balance! Exactly the approach we need, and precisely the type of analysis in this well written and incisive book.

This is probably the best of the anti-PC books that came out in the early 1990s. Others like Arthur Scheslinger's "The Disuniting of America" are boring by comparison. Who knows how or when this debate about the "culture wars" will resolve itself, but I think later scholars will see this as a book that stands out from the scores of simplistic anti-PC rants that are published each year. (Oxford University Press hasn't really cornered that market.)And this is for one simple reason... Hughes attacks the "politically correct" Left and the "patriotically correct" Right equally in this manifesto. They are two sides of the same coin, he argues. Religious fundamentalists and PC revisionists are appealing to the same sense of anti-reason. This book is more than just another right-wing, anti-PC rant. He asks, what it is about Ronald Reagan's attack on the mythical Welfare Queen and the Left's charge that Christopher Columbus is a "murderer" that makes them both popular on their respective sides of the political spectrum? How are the two arguments, and by extension, the people who make them, similar?This is not a the-world-is-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket book either. Hughes predicts that the high tide of PC will recede, leaving behind its scum of dead words on the beach, ready to wither away and die in the sunlight of reason. One last reason why the book gets five stars is that Hughes only takes 200 or so pages to get to this conclusion, but you still feel like you got hit by a wall of solid evidence. Sometimes I wish the book did have footnotes (the original hardback doesn't at least) so that I could track down some of the erudite Hughes' more obscure targets. But then again, this book is just a collection of addresses delievered at Yale, not an academic tome. It's the best of both worlds-- a cri de coeur that never gets fluffy or emotional.

I thoroughly enjoyed Hughes' lively and pointed skewering of the apostles of PC and their tiresome love of victimhood. I must question how closely the Kirkus Reviews writer (cited above) read "Culture of Complaint" because the reviewer takes Hughes to task for not addressing some issues in more ponderous depth. The explanation is simple and is provided in the preface: "Culture" was drawn from a series of three lectures Hughes gave at Yale University, and the lectures are presented in the book with a minimum of editing. Heavily-footnoted lectures would have been a sure path to mass narcolepsy among Hughes' original sudiences.