Living Like A Liberal
It’s hard work, politicizing your whole life.
BY MATT LABASH
July 19, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 41
This is a long article about Jason Krebs’s new book: 538 Ways to Live Work and Play Like a Liberal.
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The 32-year-old Krebs didn’t just write this book, which comes complete with a 538-item checklist. He’s lived it. He sharpened his liberal-living iron on the mean conservative streets of Highland Park, New Jersey; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and, finally, that repository of red state madness, the island of Manhattan. Girding him for battle were his parents—two good liberals, who sent him to a cooperative preschool, where he called all the other kids’ moms and dads by their first names.
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Upon graduating from Harvard, Krebs had his liberal ticket punched repeatedly. He served in the office of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. He blogs on the progressive blog OpenLeft. He is one of the founding directors of The Tank, “a non-profit arts presenter in the heart of Manhattan.” But his enduring legacy, his gift to all of us really, was hatched over a pitcher of beer.
Seven years ago, like many a good liberal, Krebs and his friends were driven to drink by the “arrogance and authoritarianism of the Bush administration.” What started as an informal vinegar session in a Hell’s Kitchen dive was formalized into a “Drinking Liberally” club, which met every Thursday, a place for activist types to talk progressive politics, network, plot strategy, and get hooched up (though its organizers remind us, “As you drink liberally, always drink responsibly”). As the club gained more members, it begat chapters nationwide and led to offshoot Eating Liberally clubs for foodies, Screening Liberally clubs for film buffs, Reading Liberally clubs for bookworms, and Laughing Liberally clubs that use “humor and laughter to spread understanding of liberal ideas and advance progressive values.” (Sounds like a scream!)
There are now 330 Living Liberally chapters in 50 states and around the globe. It’s no longer just a few longhairs knocking back pitchers of cheap suds, bitching about the Patriot Act. Living Liberally has become a way of life. There’s even a Liberal Card, a membership card which is “about showing your liberal pride, joining the liberal community and claiming your liberal discounts.” It’s printed on renewable green “CornCards,” rather than the petroleum that is blackening not only the brown pelicans of the Louisiana marshlands, but also our souls.
When I first skimmed over this, I thought it was satire. (The Krebs name reminded me of Maynard J Krebs. ) But no, its for real. The 538 things liberals should do remind me of the 613 commandments Orthodox Jews are to follow. I'm not sure which would be harder to follow. The idea that liberals are forming clubs and issuing each other membership cards blows my mind.
livingliberally.org
As Krebs writes, Drinking Liberally “has never been about drinking .??.??. it’s about progressive politics in a social setting.” It’s about all of us being “in this together.” It’s not just about “how you vote on Election Day.” It’s about “how you vote with your wallet every day.” It’s not just about “what you chant at a rally, but what you laugh at or rock out to on your iPod.” It’s about saying “it’s about” a lot, and then saying something real meaningful afterwards. Like this: “Living like a liberal is never just about making politics personal, but about making personal politics public.” It’s about alliteration.
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The 538-item checklist was daunting. As Krebs admits, “Some of the ideas are hard, or even uncomfortable. You don’t have to do them all. Just think about them.” The article is way too long to post - here's a taste:
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But Krebs asks us to take the library experience further. He not only wants us to read progressive magazines such as Mother Jones and the Nation. In a tip he gleaned from a book called 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Fight the Right (pick progressive themes for 4th of July parades, park in church parking lots with your Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker), he wants us to read these publications at the public library and then leave one open on the table. Not only are you conditioning others to read liberally, but when your librarians clean up after you, they’ll see that the title is popular, thus increasing its chances of renewal.
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With that reading assignment crossed off, I tackle something I’ve been dreading: reading left-wing blogs. It’s not that I hate most blogs, though I do. It’s more that back in my conservative days, the only time liberal blogging really entered my consciousness was when they were calling me or other conservatives I know “douchebags.” Not that I have anything against feminine hygiene products. Even as a conservative, I wasn’t some kind of sexist, but it sort of hurt my feelings.
I plunge in anyway and quickly learn that lefty bloggers’ douche-centricness wasn’t in my imagination. On Daily Kos, there is talk of “douching your day away as a teabagger,” Fox’s Neil Cavuto should stop “moping around like a total douche,” and there are headlines such as “Hand to God, Not ALL Texans are Douche Nozzles.” One Feministing blogger uses the d-word so much, that she wrote a mini-essay on the etymology of d-bags, complete with a link to the Museum of Menstruation and a vintage, 1928 douche ad.
On Firedoglake, a sort of Platonic ideal of douchery, one “macpibbles” authors a post titled “America is full of blood-sucking douchebags (Rant).” The douchebag roll-call then lists everyone from Ben Bernanke to Bill Kristol to Tim Pawlenty to Blanche Lincoln to Nancy Pelosi to Anderson Cooper to Joe Lieberman, with the powerfully argued conclusion: “There’s so much douchin douchebaggery, it’s dbaggin crazy. It’s too bad America’s being run by douchebags because us regular folks are drowning in douchiness. We’re totally douched.”
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Parenting Liberally
In Krebs’s world, it is not enough just to live liberally yourself, you must raise little liberals, too. A full 30 of his suggestions have to do with parenting liberally, everything from explaining to your children the causes you support to participating in collective childcare to finding “games that inspire creative thinking” since “we need liberals to be able to creatively solve the problems we’re inheriting from the right wing.”
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Once they finally settle down, I read them a story called “Zachary’s Divorce,” about a kid named Zachary, whose parents have just gotten divorced, and whose mom reassures him that it’s not his fault. “If your mom and I ever get a divorce,” I say, “just know that you two are to blame.”
“Really?” asks Luke.
“Don’t be so dumb,” admonishes his wised-up brother.
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I figure we might have better luck playing nonelimination games of inclusion I get from Terry Orlick’s book Cooperative Games and Sports. But something about the Nerf nature of playing games with titles like “Cooperative Musical Hugs” and “Collective Score Blanketball” brings out my sons’ inner hooligan, causing several shoving matches, a mini-fistfight, and declarations that “Victory is mine,” even though we’re all supposed to be winners.
At one point, playing “Grasshopper in the Blanket” on our deck, which involves us throwing up Dean’s stuffed monkey, Stevie, and catching him in a blanket, as many times as we can to see if we can achieve a high collective score, Luke finally drops his corner of the blanket as Stevie flies off into the grill. Luke’s worried the neighbors might see us: “Dad, this is gay.”
“Don’t say gay in that context,” I reprimand, ever the dutiful progressive father.
“It used to mean ‘happy,’?” protests Luke.
“Well it doesn’t anymore,” I say.
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No, I say, trying to bring it home. I explain to them that my assignment is to live liberally, and that classic liberalism was all about fighting for freedoms to do things (for voting rights, for civil rights, etc.). But that modern liberalism is mostly about people telling you what you can’t do—no smoking, no sodas in schools, no trans fats, no biking in parks.
“Some people tell you to question authority,” I explain, “But if you never ask authority for permission in the first place, they can’t tell you no.”
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One night, I go to a “Laughing Liberally” comedy show at an America’s Future Now! conference of progressives in Washington, D.C.
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Krebs himself is there—he looks a little like the actor Adrian Grenier with a ponytail—greeting people at the door. He kicks off the comedy by informing everyone that the left is funnier than the right: “We all know that conservatives cannot keep up with us in comedy. So what you’re about to see for the next hour is our greatest structural advantage as a movement.” If that’s so, the movement is in trouble.
While there’s one funny comedian—Lee Camp—it’s a dreary parade of weak comics telling too-easy groaners about Teabaggers and Fox News and Pat Buchanan and fat Americans. All of these are ripe for satirizing, they’re just not being satirized particularly well. Krebs and my new friends on the left like to think they’re comedically superior to the right because they have Jon Stewart on their side. And even if you think Stewart is a douche-nozzle—to borrow the lefty blogger term of endearment—he is pretty funny. Though just because Jon Stewart is funny, and you share his politics, doesn’t make you funny by osmosis.
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Sometimes, Krebs’s commandments are in conflict. He wants us to cover our televisions, but also wants us to watch more Keith Olbermann. So I combine the two by turning on Keith Olbermann while covering my television. I can’t see him, which is definitely an improvement. Though I can still hear his “You, sir!” Eyebrows of Outrage, which rustle like a man in the bushes in a public park, having unprotected sex with the sound of his own voice.
Krebs also wants us to watch political television with our neighbors. He’s big on being neighborly, even suggesting we celebrate “Won’t You Be My Neighbor Day,” in which you wear a cardigan and act like Mr. Rogers, committing random acts of neighborliness. I decide to skip that one on account of being straight.
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