Book Proposal: Dinner Table Politics: The myths that make us stupid

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Book Proposal Dinner Table Politics: The Myths That Make Us Stupid January 5, 2009

Submitted by Michael K. Alex 31 Winnifred Avenue Toronto, ON M4M 2X2 Home: (416) 487-6404 E-mail: michaelalex@rogers.com


Michael K. Alex

Proposal Overview

Dinner Table Politics: The Myths That Make Us Stupid Michael K. Alex

I. THE CONTENT A. Premise Do you avoid talking politics at social gatherings or the family dinner table because it is so painful? Have you stopped watching or reading the news because it seems pointless? Although you recognize that our world faces many serious problems, do you find politics too boring to take an interest or get involved? Are you sick of the heavily scripted political talk we are served daily in lieu of authentic ideas or debate? Does the fact that apathy and mental vacancy are celebrated as virtues make you angry? Are you concerned that self-interest and moral indignation trump finding solutions to eminently solvable political problems? Do you wonder: how did we all get to be so damned stupid? If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, then Dinner Table Politics is a book that you should read, talk about and put on the menu at your own dinner table. Dinner Table Politics: The Myths That Make Us Stupid, makes an impassioned case for improving the quality, content and form of political talk in everyday life. It argues that the questions posed above share a common answer: the power to address political dysfunction lies within the grasp of non-expert, non-academic, non-professionally political people in everyday situations. Dinner Table Politics exposes the extent to which self-interested elites – and everyday people acting as their unthinking accomplices – have created a political culture that is increasingly apathetic, illiterate, uncritical and proudly apolitical. The book shows how people too often voluntarily accept the politics of stupidity by transmitting and reinforcing the various myths that make us stupid. This irreverent book illustrates how the ability to make political change rests as much in the how people think and talk – or fail to talk – about politics every day. It argues that this popular power is every bit as influential as that which lies in the hands of the powerful elites typically blamed for political problems or credited for solutions. Dinner Table Politics is an antidote to politics as usual. It is equal parts self-help guide to achieving political competence, media literacy, and taking control of one’s own political education. It provides a scathing critique of various myths that help

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Michael K. Alex

Proposal Overview

maintain status quo stupidities. At turns humorous, incredulous and impassioned, Dinner Table Politics provides a thought-provoking and intellectually satisfying ‘meal’ for those starving for political sustenance. It is an indispensable tool for the politically dissatisfied, discouraged and disengaged. Dinner is being served – come and get it! B. Unique Selling Proposition If consumers in the target market purchase and read Dinner Table Politics: The Myths That Make Us Stupid, Then they will: •

Better understand how and why political myths are manufactured, transmitted and circulated throughout our society and be able to critically assess for themselves common, recurrent myths people are sold and unthinkingly consume on a daily basis.

Recognize how these myths create particular groups of winners and losers, as well as how the failure to challenge them makes losers of anyone who cares about having a fair, effective and engaged political culture.

Possess a starting point for their own political actions, starting first at their own dinner tables and ultimately into branching into other aspects of their own lives and larger political arenas.

Because the book will: •

Provide specific examples of how common political myths are created by political elites, transmitted through schools and news media, and reinforced in conversations at family dinner tables and casual social situations.

Illustrate how a variety of privileged groups with entrenched interests benefit from a political culture that is vapid, apathetic and disengaged; it will expose how stupidity is encouraged as a political power play to ensure that the status quo is rarely questioned let alone challenged.

Make politics understandable and accessible by exposing as a myth the idea that politics is something done only by politicians – it will empower nonexpert people to ask intelligent questions and model a variety of simple techniques for getting political.

C. Overview The manuscript is divided into four distinct parts:

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Michael K. Alex

Proposal Overview

Part I: Understanding the Problem: The Dangers of Trying to Keep Conversation Apolitical. The book starts by considering numerous taboos and limitations on informal political talk and examines the dangers of polite silences at our dinner tables by providing a story about the author’s own efforts to bring politics to his family’s Christmas dinner. Using simple case studies, it defines ‘dinner table politics’ and explains how the myths that make us stupid are originated, transmitted, and entrenched in everyday, informal situations where people talk. It makes the case that all people have the ability to debunk politically motivated nonsense and that sustained change from the political status quo is impossible without a public that is actively thinking and talking about politics. Part II: A Critical Analysis of Rampant Stupidity: Why it is Encouraged and How it is Created. The second section investigates how self-interested elites in the news media, school systems, dominant economic institutions and pop culture create and promote a variety of myths that result in mass stupidity, apathy and political disengagement. It illustrates how these myths are not only avoidable, but are part of a system of undemocratic and highly strategic political power plays that immobilize most people as effective political actors. In a series of entertaining examples, it demonstrates the danger of politics as usual and makes a number of concrete suggestions for challenging the myths that make us stupid – not only in the press, at school, in economic matters and popular entertainment – but in our own everyday talk that has underrated political power and significance. Part III: Just Desserts?: How Dinner Table Politics is Used Strategically to Defend the Political Status Quo. This section argues that well-intentioned people and their counterpart representatives in government are immobilized by a system of ‘professionalized’ democracy that freezes out popular participation. It illustrates how politicians increasingly rely on stage-managed public relations and poll-driven decision-making and profiles the contradiction between the values that people espouse publicly versus the use of dinner table politics to scapegoat others while protecting their own privilege. To address these trends, it calls for an end to politics as usual by actively engaging citizens in substantive political conversation, making the case for more effective community and suggesting ways to improve government through increased and meaningful democratic participation. Part IV: Conclusion: Setting a New Menu for a Healthier Political Diet. The final section provides interested readers with a series of suggestions about what they can do to address dinner table politics and introduce a progressive politics at their own dinner tables. For those new to political talk or lacking confidence, it details specific, easy to use strategies for starting political discussions and provides sample topics for readers’ own dinner tables. D. Manuscript Manuscript status: Three chapters are completed and two others have been drafted and are currently being revised.

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Michael K. Alex

Proposal Overview

Special Features: Several pictures, graphs and cartoons taken from online sources and an excerpt taken from a Toronto restaurant menu. The book will also include a “Now What?” section that will provide concrete suggestions for readers hoping to bring politics to life at their own dinner tables. It will include: suggested conversation starters for readers’ own dinner table discussions, some simple strategies for keeping conversation constructive and techniques for dealing with problems that the politically inexperienced commonly face in initiating or participating in political discussion. Anticipated manuscript length: Approximately 80,000 words. Anticipated manuscript completion date: Six to twelve months after receiving a commitment from a publisher. II. THE MARKET A. Characteristics Dinner Table Politics: The Myths That Make Us Stupid will engage a broad audience of the engaged and educated public. The intended audience is interested in global, national and/or community politics and follows the news on a regular basis. In addition, the audience for this book includes students (and parents of students) currently studying in, or graduates from, university or college. This book will be attractive to a general audience that enjoys popular and accessible non-fiction. The book’s broadly political subject matter will appeal particularly those who read cultural and political studies. Dinner Table Politics will sell well at popular booksellers like Chapters-Indigo, as well as finding a home in independent and alternative bookstores. B. Motivations This book has been written in a way that is accessible to people who feel intimidated by politics, who want to become involved in the discussion, but don’t know where to start or don’t feel qualified to speak up. Though it will enjoy a general audience, this book will appeal in particular to students who have returned home from study and who are encountering difficulty in talking about current affairs with family or at social events. It will also be relevant to consumers of popular news media and political talk shows, newspapers and political magazines, particularly those who are dissatisfied with mainstream press coverage of politics. C. Affinity Groups •

Book clubs interested in reading and discussing provocative non-fiction.

People who are frustrated by unproductive and confrontational discussions at family gatherings, but who are interested in engaging in discussions of politics and current affairs in productive ways.

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Michael K. Alex

Proposal Overview

Newcomers to political issues, in particular, an audience of less educated or experienced consumers of political content who have become interested by Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

People who are interested in critiques of the mass media.

Students, parents and those concerned with declining effectiveness of public education. People who are seeking alternatives to traditional schools and pedagogies.

Citizens who worry about declining levels of democratic engagement, declining voter turnouts or lack of community engagement in contemporary society. The book will speak directly to those seeking solutions to improve popular engagement in politics.

Those who are alienated by systemic problems that exist in government, particularly people who are interested in investigating alternatives that would improve the quality and effectiveness of government.

D. Competition There is a proven and significantly sized market demand for books that deal with the themes and subject matter of Dinner Table Politics: The Myths That Make Us Stupid. It shares a market with several books that speak to the ample evidence of human folly in our globalized, post-Cold War, hyper-consumer contemporary society. That stupidity is a highly saleable product is well established, as a source of entertainment, critique and satire. This is illustrated in these recent titles: Laura Penny’s Your Call Is Important To Us: the truth about BULLSHIT (McClelland & Stewart, 2005), Michael Bywater’s book, Big Babies: Or: Isn’t it about time we all grew up? (Granta, 2006), David Mindich’s, Tuned Out: Why Americans under 40 don’t follow the news (Oxford, 2004), Rick Shenkman’s Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter and Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupifies Young Americans and Endangers Our Future, both published in 2008. However, Dinner Table Politics departs from mere complaining. Dinner Table Politics follows a rough structure of ‘What? – So What? – Now What?’ that lends itself not merely to mocking or decrying stupidities, but to providing constructive approaches for addressing them that the above list rarely provide. Their largely documentary nature often lack – or treat as a mere afterthought – specific strategies for addressing the social dysfunctions they profile. As alluring as the opportunity to engage in schadenfreude is, without an argument for change, such exercises merely indulge knowing cynicism and fail to offer an alternative to the very things that cause so much angst on the part of both these authors and their readers. This deficiency in both books creates a niche that can be filled by Dinner Table Politics. The audience for such increasingly popular books wants to do more than review political abuses. They want to empower themselves and engage in addressing the myths that make so many in our society stupid. This practical aspect of

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Michael K. Alex

Proposal Overview

Dinner Table Politics will make it an attractive book for sale. Dinner Table Politics also shares an audience with a number of recent books that provide commentary and critique of the cult of individualism that has precipitated widespread social disconnection, alienation and decline in engaged, democratic communities. A few representative examples are Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter’s The Rebel Sell: why the culture can’t be jammed (Harper Perennial, 2004), Benjamin Barber’s book Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizen’s Whole (Norton, 2007) and Hal Niedzviecki’s 2004 book, Hello, I’m Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity (Penguin Canada), as well as Robert Putnam’s seminal tome, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Simon & Schuster, 2000). However, these works are largely diagnostic in nature; are far more concerned far more with illustrating the dissolution of effective citizenship than moving toward concrete next steps for addressing root problems. This is an area where Dinner Table Politics builds upon these earlier studies and polemics and offers concrete suggestions for change that readers can pursue after reading the book. A last category of dense academic texts that are germane to the topics and themes of Dinner Table Politics should also be noted. Like Putnam’s work this group is concerned with analysing the sociological and political implications of micro politics. In its own way, each deals with everyday political discourse or table talk: Jeffrey Goldfarb’s The Politics of Small Things (2006), Katherine Cramer Walsh’s Talking About Politics: Informal Groups and Social Identity in American Life (2003), Nina Eliasoph’s Avoiding Politics: How Americans produce apathy in everyday life (Cambridge University, 1998) and Henry C. Boyte’s Everyday Politics: Reconnecting Citizens and Public Life (University of Pennsylvania, 2004). These books have provided invaluable theoretical background and empirical studies that in part inform Dinner Table Politics. However, these texts have been published for academic audiences. While informative, they are much too dense and theoretically situated to be popular with a broad audience, even one already interested in politics. In particular, more than one provides substantial literature reviews and annotation that, while required for the academy, detract from overall readability. Dinner Table Politics has been written for an audience ranging from sixteen to eighty-six. It provides a witty an engaging read for the uninitiated and will still be useful and fresh for more experienced readers of political books. By including numerous references to interesting news stories and informed pop culture references, Dinner Table Politics is an antidote to dry academic texts. III. THE AUTHOR A. Background I have both professional and educational background that has prepared me for completing this project. I am a teacher, social critic, recovering political news junkie and writer living in Toronto. I received a Masters degree in Canadian history from York University in 2003, where my primary research interest was in legal and extralegal regulation of political and labour activism over the course of the twentieth century. While studying at York, I completed a Master’s thesis that investigated the

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Michael K. Alex

Proposal Overview

roles played by Prime Minister Chrétien’s office and the RCMP in the crackdown on student protesters at the 1997 APEC summit in Vancouver. This thesis was completed while teaching full-time. For the past decade, I have taught in a wide variety of public school situations: as grade six math teacher, junior high gym coach, history teacher at my own former high school, law and society teacher at an esteemed North Toronto high school and finally in an alternative high school. I have also been active working in cooperative education and in developing teaching resources for the social sciences. In addition, I have been active at work and in my community as a political volunteer, union steward, sometime activist and have developed and delivered educational workshops for teaching colleagues and students. B. Previous Writing Though my written work is unpublished to date, I have previously completed an academic thesis of over eighty pages as a requirement for a Master of Arts degree. I also publish a blog related to the Dinner Table Politics book project that provides case studies inspired by the book’s more comprehensive scope. It can be accessed at: http://dinnertablepolitician.blogspot.com/.

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Dinner Table Politics: The Myths That Make Us Stupid Michael K. Alex

PART ONE: UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM: THE DANGERS OF TRYING TO KEEP CONVERSATION APOLITICAL Introduction: Appetizer: An Unapologetically Political Introduction The introduction asks: why is it considered bad form to talk politics over dinner? It considers numerous taboos and limitations on informal political talk and examines the dangers of such polite silences. The case is made that political discussions held in everyday situations are too important and powerful to ignore, which it frequently they are, in favour of focusing strictly on the power of government and politicians. Chapter 1: First Course: A Dinner Table Politics Primer This chapter begins by defining ‘dinner table politics.’ Using a simple case study, it explains how dinner table politics are originated, transmitted, and made popular in informal situations – like the dinner table. The case is made that though dinner table politics create a variety of myths that make us stupid, all people have the ability to debunk politically motivated nonsense. It concludes by making specific suggestions about how to remedy failed political discourse. PART TWO: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF RAMPANT STUPIDITY: WHY IT IS ENCOURAGED AND HOW IT IS CREATED Chapter 2: Second Course: Why the Media Transmits Stupidity and the Case for Democratically Motivated Journalism The second chapter investigates the news media’s central role in the dissemination of dinner table politics. Using Jon Stewart’s attack on mainstream political news journalism as a starting point, it investigates what the news is, why it is, who benefits from current practices and assumptions. It considers how news coverage of politics tends to discourage both effective government and everyday interest in politics. To do this, it examines how professional standards of ‘objective’ journalism, corporate monopolization of the press and the demands of our hyper-saturated media environment have acted in concert to make news boring, partisan, foolish and irrelevant. It concludes with a checklist of

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suggestions for effective media analysis – a political skill set for those who wish to become engaged through effective analysis of political media. Chapter 3:Third Course: Education’s ‘Critical’ Failure – School and other Misguided Efforts that Encourage Stupidity Working from the proposition that to navigate our current media environment people require a high-quality education grounded in critical thinking skills, this chapter argues that perhaps no social institution is as poorly situated as schools to meet this challenge. It considers how most schools teach lessons antithetical to effective political engagement: uncritical obedience, unthinking respect for authority and discouraging ownership of one’s education. It investigates how poorly schools’ institutional organization and curricula are connected from the society they promise to prepare students for and the myth of ‘stupid’ students. The chapter concludes by challenging attacks on ‘politicized classrooms’ and argues that engaging students in politics is the best hope for revitalizing our schools and reinvigorating our democracy heritage. Chapter 4: Fourth Course: Why Blind Faith in a Diet of Cheap Crap and Vapid Nonsense make Dinner Table Politics so Appetizing The fourth chapter contends that a chief source of our political apathy and disengagement is increasingly found in unreflective obedience in twin fundamentalisms: unsustainable hyper-capitalist consumption and celebration of a spiritually bankrupt celebrity pop culture. It debunks the myth of meritocracy in our economic system and makes connections to how the archetypal myth of bootstrapism underlies so many instances of reactionary dinner table politics. Moreover, selected case studies of celebrity worship are critiqued with reference to how they trivialize politics, encourage political indifference and undermine the power of the non-famous majority to be effective political actors. It argues for a renewed political culture that emphasizes economic fairness and sustainability. It concludes by providing readers with entertaining alternatives to pointless and politically problematic cult of celebrity. PART THREE: JUST DESSERTS?: HOW DINNER TABLE POLITICS IS USED STRATEGICALLY TO DEFEND THE POLITICAL STATUS QUO Chapter 5: Fifth Course: Why Does Our Political System Reward Politicians Who Act Stupidly Instead of in the Public Interest? Moving on to consider formal political institutions, this chapter challenges the myth that the problem with government is merely corrupt politicians. Instead, it argues that wellintentioned people and their counterpart representatives in government are immobilized by a system of ‘professionalized’ democracy that freezes out popular participation; one that does so by privileging established elites through entrenchment of a cottage industry of lobbyists, professional political handlers and partisan attack dogs. It illustrates how politicians increasingly rely on stage-managed public relations and poll-driven decisionmaking that turn politics into game where those who would most benefit from effective

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democracy are the biggest losers. To address these trends, it calls for an end to politics as usual by actively engaging citizens in substantive political conversation and makes suggestions for improving government through increased and meaningful democratic participation. Chapter 6: Sixth Course: Family Values and ‘Good People’ – Myths that Obscure Resistance to Making Equitable Political Change This chapter examines how so-called family values are used to make political talk a taboo and immobilize popular organizing that seeks to address the problems our communities face. It profiles the contradiction between the values that ‘good people’ espouse publicly versus the use of dinner table politics to protect their own privilege by stigmatizing and marginalizing conveniently supplied scapegoats for common political problems. It argues for some simple, community-based solutions to discourage the ‘us versus them’ thinking that so often leads to a selfishly-motivated political status quo that hurts not only the poorest and weakest, but the larger political community as a whole. PART FOUR: CONCLUSION: SETTING A NEW MENU FOR A HEALTHIER POLITICAL DIET Conclusion: Politics for Dessert: Menus of Politics at the Dinner Table, not Dinner Table Politics The concluding chapter ties together the topics dealt with in the rest of the book and moves more explicitly from the ‘What?’ and ‘So What?’ questions to the “Now What?” In it, a series of specific suggestions are made for dealing with the myths that make us stupid according in turn to the book’s previous chapters. More fundamentally, this chapter gives a series of suggestions to politically interested people in terms of what they can do to address dinner table politics and introduce a progressive politics at their dinner tables.

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