Useless Stereotype Comparisons

By now, most people who will read them have taken in the Washington Post comparison of a Red State household and a Blue State household. The parallels are, to put it mildly, problematic.

Rich Tucker, to whom Lane Core links, notes that the media elite "sees liberals as normal people, and conservatives as some strange species from somewhere 'out there'":

This seems like a whitewash. If the paper could find a "typical" red state voter who fit all the stereotypical traits, it ought to have been able to find a "typical" blue stater who did, as well. Maybe a limousine liberal from the Upper East Side ("How could George W. Bush have been elected? Nobody I know voted for him!") Or an anti-war activist who marches for every cause that comes down the pike (there must have been at least one such liberal here in D.C. for the pro-abortion rally this past weekend...)

Instead, as Michael Graham puts it, the liberal piece introduces "a straight, white, blue-collar, never-divorced Catholic couple with two happy, straight adult children... and who don't even drink." I forget who said it, but this brings to mind a comment about Al Gore, that despite his paean to families "joined at the heart," he has a traditional family and, presumably, understands that it provides the optimal structure for raising children and pursuing real happiness as an adult.

Perhaps the most telling aspect of the two Wapo pieces is the difference in underlying narrative: journalist David Finkel first accompanies Red Stater Britton Stein through his morning Internet rounds for the conservative talk of the day. We hear a story about the parents' playing a practical joke on their children. Then, we head off to church and hear about community and being "like-minded people." For the closing scene, Finkel follows the Red State father out of the house, leaving the family behind, to go out drinking at Hooters with buddies. (That's the photo accompanying the story online.) Finkel ticks off the rounds, and the suspicous reader can only imagine him, sitting in that bar, anticipating the material to come. Oh well. The dads stopped at four, still articulate, if a little uncareful with their tales about planned-community life.

The Blue State family is introduced — in contrast to the preceding story — as a family: "the Harrison family." The online picture? "Tom and Maryanne Harrison and their daughter, Heather, walk from church to Sunday breakfast in their San Francisco neighborhood." We get anecdotes of handing out dollars to homeless children and realizing — gosh darn it — it just isn't enough: "beyond that one man were dozens of homeless people in the neighborhood, thousands in the city, millions in the country." A job so big, only a big government can accomplish it.

We find out that the empathetic man of the house learned tolerance listening to the stories of fellow participants in a month-long detox program. (Conservatives might suggest that only for a liberal could the lesson of a struggle with alcoholism be the importance of striving for "tolerance toward whatever a person wants to do, even if he wouldn't necessarily do it himself.") For this article, we find out that — believe it or not — the wife has a life and biography as well, one of compassionate activism. The daughter is preparing to be married; the son proposes to a woman during the period of his family's interviews with Finkel.

Apart from these differences of presentation, one could argue endlessly about whether the two families are truly typical of the groups that they are meant to represent. Personally, I find the problem to be that the Harrisons are typical, while the Steins are emblematic. Finkel could easily have found more-emblematic liberals; he could also have found more-typical conservatives. Finkel could have provided more individual and family background for the Steins, and he could have spent more time discussing the environment of the Harrisons. Beyond the problems of San Francisco, is it any less the case that they live among "like-minded people"? If not, how then are they comparably typical?

Because of this imbalance, and because it was such a sure bet, I wasn't going to comment on the series... until I saw Sheila Lennon's take on the Steins:

This town sounds to me like the past, a past I wanted desperately to explore beyond, in the '60s ...

Britton Stein, the father of the family and main subject of the piece, is a churchgoing, Drudge-reading, junk-food eating, Fox News watcher.

During the fourth round of beers at Hooter's, he and his friends get to the core of Sugar Land...

This could be Thornton Wilder, writing in 1938. It could be Our Town.

I'm awfully glad it's not mine.

In conformity, they hope to find safety. To me, it sounds like condo hell, living by the rules of the crankiest co-owner.

I want the wild sprouts, the signs of life. I want copper-colored roses and unapproved plants. Spring's dandelions turn my lawn to a field of yellow, with the purple tops of bugleweed following suit. After they're gone, we mow.

I've got news for Ms. Lennon: even here in her home state of Rhode Island — which is pushing out everybody but the rich and the poor — there is "condo hell." Just try to put the wrong-colored shed in my brother-in-law's neighborhood. Similarly, there are, no doubt, Drudge readers who don't keep a meticulous lawn. Even ignoring her presumptions about the relationship between neighborhoods and the politics of the people who inhabit them, I find it worth a chuckle that Lennon includes the following, casually, within her ode to the free-spirited block:

On trash night in my neighborhood, on the curb you can see what everyone's tossing out, and an informal recycling program swings into action.

What is entailed in the garbage inspection and "informal recycling program," I don't know, but such details would have certainly helped Finkel, had he wished to offer a balanced comparison, to offset this:

"The first time I put my trash out, I put it by the curb, and my neighbor came out and said, 'We don't curb our trash here in Sugar Land.' " Lannom says, laughing. "I had some cinch bugs in my front yard or something, my neighbor says, 'Craig, I want to talk to you about your brown patch.' "

"It's so predictable here," Stein says.

Sides of a coin.