andrewmcintyre.ca

Reading talkingpointsmemo.com, one of my favorite American news and politics blogs, I came across both this controversial comment made by New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin discussing the General Motors bankruptcy on MSNBC’s Morning Joe: 

“Name a successful unionized company. Think. You’re going to go to [commercial] break before you come up with one. And that’s the problem.”

Perusing the instantly crowdsourced  long and obvious list of profitable unionized companies, I found this issue particularly thought provoking, especially in light of current economic and financial circumstances.

I have always been fairly luke warm in my support for unions. Although, I have long recognized their important historical role in raising the wages, living standards (even of non-union employees), and in addressing issues like health and safety concerns for your average Joe (or Josephine), I also grew up to have a healthy dose of skepticism regarding union leadership’s motives given their propensity towards corruption and their potential defense of lazy and/or incompetent “good ol’ boys,” (i.e. the very sort of conventional wisdom expressed by Sorkin). 

Given my nuanced “double edged sword” view of this issue, I was incredibly impressed with the insightfulness of a TPM reader’s response, eviscerating much of this conventional wisdom: 

Sorkin’s comments on media bias are one component of a reigning narrative about economic policy in America that we’ve been stuck with for a very long time that has always betrayed a very specific class bias among journalists. It’s a story that many of us have heard from our upper middle class baby boomer Dads over and over again and inevitably goes something like this:

Liberalism in the 60′s and ’70s were well-intentioned and of course the civil rights movement was necessary, but “interest groups” (read: unions and minorities) “went too far” and the government tried to do “too much.” Government over-regulated and over-taxed and spent too much on programs that didn’t work. Unions choked our competitiveness. Liberals didn’t properly account for unintended consequences of government programs and the degree to which the government would interfere with the free market and it screwed up the economy. Plus, the social programs alienated “mainstream Americans” (read: white Christians). It turned out we needed Reagan to cut taxes, break the unions (ie air traffic controllers), and deregulate to fix things again.

Whether some of that is true or not is beside the point (based on my recent reading of Matusow’s “Unraveling of America,” its not all untrue). But I was seven in 1980, Sorkin was three. This view of the world is frozen in an era that’s been gone for three decades. Its as if nothing has happened since, like a major opening in the wealth inequality gap, the rise in competition from heavily unionized Western Europe, the failure of supply side economics, or the shift in the economy from heavy manufacturing of goods to the provision of services.

To marry yourself to this narrative for all time no matter what happens in the world seems to be, well, pretty bad journalism for starters. It was kind of understandable, if not excusable, when it resulted from the fact that mainstream journalists themselves came of age through the era of the ’60s and ’70s that manifested this narrative. But when it results from their privileged children recycling the narrative, it makes me wonder why those children, who are supposed to be journalists, aren’t formulating their own views of the world based on the three decades since the ’70s in which they themselves have lived.

What does the New York Times pay Andrew Ross Sorkin for if he hasn’t formed a view of unions in America based on events that have occurred in his lifetime? Couldn’t we just keep paying Cokie Roberts to come on morning shows if all we wanted was recycled, conventional baby boomers wisdom devoid of any observation or original thought?

We’re in the midst of a vicious war of ideas on many issues. With politics, finance, business, media, the environment and climate change, it is the positions advanced by camps defending the conventional wisdom that often seem to be holding back real change and progress needed to create the type sustainable, permanent future we need. And it looks like we have just stumbled across another clear articulation of a piece of conventional wisdom destined for the scrap heap… that is, until these worn out ideas are recycled by future generations.

On that  note, perhaps my own jaded cynicism needs some rethinking too.