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TechnoratiThis City Is Not Nearly As Liberal or Different As New Yorkers Believe
The frontrunning presidential candidates show that the US is no longer polarised between heartland and coast
New Yorkers like to think of their home town less as a city than as a nation unto itself. They refer to the country in which they reside as little more than a geographical accident of little relevance. "I don't live in America," they'll tell you. "I live in New York."It's not difficult to see why. New York is an impressive and distinctive global city. It moves like a disco without the music - the aficionados try to stick with the rhythm but so long as you're into it nobody much cares. For a European visitor it has more in common with London, Paris or Rome than it does with Phoenix, San Antonio or San Jose, which are among America's 10 largest cities.
Long the nation's primary portal to the rest of the world, it is the Dominican Republic's second largest city, home to more Italians than Palermo, and more Irish than Galway and Cork combined. It's the city people come to make it in and, ostensibly, only leave because they have failed. "When you leave New York," goes the saying, "you ain't goin' nowhere."
Politically, the last seven years have made New Yorkers feel particularly estranged from their fellow Americans. With three quarters of them voting for John Kerry in 2004, they discuss what has been going on in the rest of the country as though Ohio and Florida were foreign states. In some ways, they almost pride themselves on being out of touch.
But judging by presidential primary races, New Yorkers might be disappointed to discover they are not quite as different as they would like to think. The frontrunners for both the Democratic and Republican nominations - Hillary Clinton and Rudolph Giuliani - both have their campaigns based here. Giuliani was the city's mayor from 1994 to 2001; since 2000 Clinton has been the senator for the state - a disparate, more conservative entity than the city, but the farther you are from the Hudson, the more that becomes a distinction without a difference. Even the possibility that they may face off against each other in 2008 raises some serious challenges to the conventional wisdom that has dominated American political thinking over the last seven years.
If Bush's victory illustrated a nation polarised between the heartlands and the coasts, how is it that two candidates most identified with the city that most symbolises one of those poles could hold such sway nationally? If values and morality were so central to Bush's victory, why are two pro-choice, pro-gay candidates who are both lukewarm on guns and immigration control, doing so well from Iowa to South Carolina? In short, if New York is different, why are agendas and candidates that have proved so popular here doing so well elsewhere?
Part of the answer is in the candidates themselves. Both are from their party's centre and neither were inculcated in partisan dogma. As a teenager Clinton volunteered for the most conservative post-war Republican presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater, in 1964. Eight years later Giuliani backed the most liberal post-war Democratic candidate, George McGovern.
Clinton may be the senator for New York state but in the public imagination she is from a land called Politics. Home for the Clintons is pretty much wherever they can legislate from. She has spent more time in Arkansas and the White House than she has in New York.
The Democratic base is comfortable with her New York credentials, but for independents it may be a drawback. "She's carrying huge negatives out here," a Colorado pollster, Floyd Ciruli, told the Los Angeles Times. "It's that liberal east coast image that is so hard to sell in the west." Hence her emphasis on midwestern roots: "I grew up in a middle-class family in the middle of America in the middle of the last century," goes the stump speech.
Things are tougher for Giuliani. Thrice married with two estranged children, he has a much harder job selling himself to a base dominated by Christian conservatives. In August in New Hampshire he was asked by one woman why he should expect loyalty from the voters when he does not even command it from his own children (his daughter has indicated she might support Democratic hopeful Barack Obama). Giuliani shot back: "The best thing I can say is kind of, 'leave my family alone, just like I'll leave your family alone'."
Unable to run away from New York - his brash swagger is too much of a giveaway - he instead pulls it close like a bear hug, pushing his success in fighting crime and "turning the city round".
But central to Giuliani's candidacy is his identification not with a place but a day - 9/11. His performance in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks is what earned him the title "America's mayor", Time's Person of the Year and 78% approval ratings even a year later. That was when, in the public mindset, he went from being a New Yorker to a full-blown American. His success will depend on how much conservatives will trade his social liberalism for his statist authoritarianism.
But beyond the candidates is the fact that New York is nowhere near as liberal or as different as most New Yorkers would like to believe. One of the problems of the conventional wisdom of the past few years is that it has mistaken an ideological divide for a geographical one. The nation's not divided into red (for Republicans) and blue (for Democrats) but is a blur of purple. Its faultline was never values but security.
In 2004 Bush did better in Staten Island (one of the city's five boroughs) than he did in Houston. According to the census, New York is more residentially segregated than New Orleans and poverty rates in the Bronx and Brooklyn are higher than in Mississippi or West Virginia. A recent New York health department report showed that one in six adult New Yorkers do not have health insurance - in line with the national average. New York has a moderate Republican mayor; Salt Lake City, in the most conservative state in the country, has a radical Democrat.
New York is far more in lockstep with the rest of the nation than it admits for good reason - its livelihood depends on it. Bush's economic policies, which have been the scourge of liberal America, have most benefited, and in no small part been executed by, Wall Street. As the national centre for the commerce, publishing, advertising and broadcasting industries it sells goods, images, narratives and desires to the rest of the country. "New York has always been where America happens first," wrote Kevin Baker in Harper's magazine last month. "As the nation's most populous city, as its financial and intellectual capital, and as a magnet for ambitious and creative immigrants from all points, domestic and foreign, it has set the course for most of the nation's history."
Maybe. But it's not where America ends. If New York sets trends it also follows them. The impressive architecture and museums provide shade for a corporate takeover. With a Starbucks on every corner and a Gap nearby, Manhattan may look different but it feels much like everywhere else in the country. Wal-Mart has yet to arrive. But its theatrical equivalent is already here. Broadway used to show 200 original shows a year; now it mostly sets Disney to music. New York is more in tune with the rest of the country than it's ever been.
Gary Younge, the Alfred Knobler Journalism Fellow at The Nation Institute, is the New York correspondent for the Guardian and the author of No Place Like Home: A Black Briton's Journey Through the Deep South (Mississippi) and Stranger in a Strange Land: Travels in the Disunited States (New Press).
© 2007 The Guardian
15 Comments so far
Show AllWow! Quite a story Siouxrose, I am also married to a much younger man (almost nine years my junior) although he is fairly political and shares many of my views. I wish CD had a more user friendly message system. Something like an ez board style where you can send private messages and follow threads in a more user friendly way.
I think Mr. Younge should have mentioned that Giuliani is a completely media-created candidate and Hillary has certainly been greatly aided and abetted by the corporate media, and the corporate media is centered in New York. The corporate media has given us these candidates, war mongering fascistic empire builders who are liberal on the social issues (which is supposed to make them acceptable to a percentage of the population, particularly the gullible youth).
When you know that most Americans would agree with Kucinich if they knew all the candidates' positions and were informed on the issues, and of the so-called "top tier" candidates they would probably agree with Edwards, and yet you know the corporate media is going to give us Giuliani vs. Clinton, can you really maintain any hope in the US political system? I am hoping the pot is simmering...
KRISTINA: I am in Florida, so is Poet. I think Ezeflyer is, too. If anything we could decide on a SE "get together." I'll give that some thought, in the meanwhile, I do enjoy chatting with you and others here virtually. I am dating a much younger man and he does not understand my fascination with commondreams. He'd rather go to a bar and hang out with guys and talk about sports, or the job, or whatever. Ironically, he's from NY so I figure what were the odds of the universe sending a young, funny, attractive person from my original neck of the cosmic woods right into my backyard? Plus, I had been working on a script earlier this year whose main character has HIS name. This is not the first time I wrote a story that came to life! When I first moved to "the black hole" in l995, I wrote a musical entitled, "Born Again." I was proof-reading part of it at my favorite coffee spot and a gorgeous young waiter asked me what I was working on. I said it was the story of a boy named Adam, son of a reverend, who fell for my character's daughter, Alma. He promptly educated me to the fact that his name was Adam and he was the son of a reverend. LIFE MIRRORS ART!
Siouxrose, I hope for all our sakes you are right. Your idea sounds great, I would love to meet some of the posters here and exchange ideas. Didn't you say you are in Florida? I am as well, Panama City, maybe we could get a Florida group together?
KRISTINA: I call good conversation and evocative discussions "the other good head." I think many of like this forum for that reason! And I have asked the CD masters if they would be interested in sponsoring an event, or series--in different parts of the US--which could be a source of fund raising and also allow us all to meet, have coffee, or drinks, or hors d'oeuvres and maybe see what generates... when I was in high school I rented a school bus so that I could deliver 22 females my age to the Fillmore East. I loved being boss lady as my father kept telling me I was going to lose money, the idea would fail, etc. The bus drove us to NYC (from Long Island), and delivered us at a French restaurant, yours truly told the driver WHEN we were to be picked up and driven to the Fillmore. I forget who was performing that night, but I feel so PRIVILEGED to have come of age in that remarkable time of hope, "free" love, revolution, chants everywhere of peace, the palpable sense that in the company of so many thousand vibrant young people we were BUILDING a new world. That vision, that momentary breath of Renaissance seems to have faded, but I take heart in believing that a lot of its esoteric messages, messages of a truly progressive measure in their wish to unite people across the ancient divides (those pesky ism divisions) have just gone underground and/or taken other forms. Eventually THAT wave will build momentum and carry mankind forward again.
The event, by the way, was such a success that the 22 young women begged me to plan another, even said I should start a sorrority (I hate that type of thing) and be its president. Those were the days... but thankfully, they will return, for ALL things recycle. That's tonight's "bed time story," as in sweet dreams, commondreamers.
Neither is California.
"In 2004 Bush did better in Staten Island (one of the city's five boroughs) than he did in Houston."
Demand a recount.
Despite the insane cost of living, the pollution, the obscene wealth versus abject poverty, the driving of artists and non yuppie and immigrant cultures off Manhattan--New York is still amazing and beautiful and vital to me.
Most everyone I know has both thrived, been wildly successful and failed badly with hard times in new york. There's something manic depressive about the city. Or maybe just me!
I think I'd like to hang out with Siouxrose! It sounds like you enjoy things in a way that I do as well. I'd much rather sit outside and eat at a sidewalk cafe or just be outside period.
New Yuck Duck!
Try it, you like it!
This is a President who is a lame duck, BEFORE he or she gets into office.
Rudy and Hillary are New Yuck Duck!!
yeah that's true about your run down city and it's character, and I wish I could be anywhere in Louisiana with something vital to do.
and ny city has less and less character except here and there in small pockets.
but it's the center of the world!!! you can see because there's a big eddy where it's all going down the drain and it's right there in mid town.
I left out trekking in Nepal. NOT for the faint hearted!
I have only actually been in Manhattan once, for the February 15, 2003 protests.
My impressions were the incredible vitality - packed sidewalks on Broadway and Times Square even at midnight on a -5F winter night. But also the apparently well-rehearsed police supression of mass dissent, and, more than anything the incredible corporatized phoneyness of the whole place. Try to get a cup of coffee at anything but a Starbucks and you are out of luck. My tired, run down rust belt city, has more chraacter.
If New Orleans wants to fear what it might turn into, if it isn't already along that path, it doesn't need to look any further than nyc.
Personally I've been here since '77 and at least at that time it was fighting for the right to be artistic and outlandish. Then real estate, finance, everything is gone that once was. Someone told me the blues line, "all that I once had is gone." Art, culture, jazz, it's borderline utterly fake, phony, built on profit margins, not so much on inspiration and freedom like it ideally should be. Which I think you could find in New Orleans until Katrina.
I see that photo of the jazz musicians on the sidewalk in Harlem, and this town ain't what it used to be brothers, sisters. It's dead.
When I go into the museums, speaking of the museums, I'm reminded of what has been stolen from other cultures as much as I am that it's a storage facility for the world's treasures.
In new york now what you see, and be forewarned new orleans, is a bizarre collection of individuals either living the life, or stuck here like prisoners watching the final, greatest show on earth go down.
Hey it's still the center of the universe, whadya want?
Yet another CD article where Clinton and Giuliani are listed as front-runners (I'd prefer 'supposed frontrunners' or M$M Annointed Frontrunners) when a vast majority of registered Dems & GOP would pick Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul (in a Blind Taste Test of course)
Anyway, I like the attitude of NY thinking it's more liberal because it has to maintain that image, rather than the 'facts on the ground'. We are being shown that our differances are moving from (rural vs urban) and (red vs blue) to the Poor vs Rich (I of course prefer the Divided-and-Conquered People vs the Facist Corporate Elite)
I am reminded of New Orleans and the racial/economic choices that led to it's ruin (ok and global warming) in which a city that actually looked different than the rest of the country was wiped away.
All cities and towns I've been to in this country look the same. Skin tones differ, but ther's always a Starbucks.
PDJ: I am a native New Yorker (live in Florida since l986), and when I visit NYC I walk, and I mean walk, from the 80's down to Little Italy. You see tiny worlds unfold as the ethnic regions come to life as the patchwork quilt that they are. You want the best coffee ever had, take a walk to Little Italy and sit outside. I believe the cafe I like best is called PALERMO. And then it's a hop skip to China town.
Wherever I go I make it a habit to walk from city to city, or town to town, or neighborhood to neighborhood. I've done this in Singapore, San Francisco, San Juan, Puerto Rico, NYC, and parts of Florida. It's not only good exercise, but when on foot, you truly do connect with a place in a way that allows all senses to commune and become a part of these micro-cosmic worlds that make up this planet of intended unlimited diversity.