A lot of Volvos? Part 2

The other day, Leigh alerted me to this piece in New Orleans Magazine. (We later learned that we're not really supposed to show people the terrible stuff they say)

At the time, my response was to refuse to respond because I found the biases in the article to be so offensive that it wasn't worth my time.

One passage in particular was especially elementary:

The protesters themselves were the subject of much of the controversy. Several prominent New Orleanians, including a couple of council members, charged that many of the protesters were out-of-town, Birkenstock-clad agitators who had never set foot inside a New Orleans housing development until news cameras showed up.

Recent developments seemed to bolster that claim.

After a three-hour standoff at B.W. Cooper – the old Calliope project – SWAT officers arrested two 50-something-year-old protesters from Brooklyn. Other public housing activists turned out to be Ivy League college students on Christmas break.

“We’ve seen a lot of Volvos,” one city official said.

That last quote clearly seemed to strike me. That's why I'm still clearly bothered by it. That it was the language of a city official and not the author was maybe the reason it stuck with me so hard.

By the way, the author of that "article" is actually an outside agitator himself. His name is Chuck Hustmyre and he lives in Baton Rouge. He also is a frequent contributer to Fox News and has appeared on the prestigious The O'Reilly Factor.

I'm sure he's a nice guy.

Anyways, there was still something that irked me about that Volvo quote.

There was something I had read one time...

... in one of them books.

Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left Wing Freak Show by Geoffrey Nunberg.

A preview is available online for free with google books!

Here's a passage:

At it's inception, "Volvo liberal" was just another one of those pop marketing descriptions like "baby boomer" and "soccer mom," but it rapidly became a disparagement. By 1981, Pat Buchanan was accusing his radio sparring partner Tom Braden of the "Volvo, white wine and cheese set."

The brand image of the Volvo was ideal for this sort of stereotyping: not only was it an unglamorous car from socialist Sweden that people bought simply because it was safe, but its name had a serendipitous gynecological resonance - probably the main reason Volvos rather than Saabs were singled out for political stereotyping.

----
In fact, lifestyle and consumer preferences aren't nearly as good as a predictor of political affiliation as the right likes to pretend. It's true that Volvo owners skew Democratic, but only by about 4-to-3, not very big when other factors like geography are added into the mix, and one that has been shrinking as Volvos become more expensive and luxurious - among buyers of new Volvos, Democrats have only a slight edge. As indicators of party affiliation go, owning a Volvo is a somewhat less reliable than rooting for a baseball team with a blue uniform.

Funny, the city official quoted in the article had to resort to a right-wing talking point label in order to trash activists in a city full of Democratic voters.

(That is, making the sketchy assumption that the official didn't skew his or her comments special for New Orleans Magazine, which is not likely to be financially supported by many Democratic voters in Orleans Parish.)

(That is, making the sketchy assumption that the official didn't skew his or her comments special for Chuck Hustmyre, frequent guest of Fox News Channel.)

It is also funny to note, as Geoffrey Nunberg does in the passage, that Volvos are quite expensive.

Most activists you'll meet in the city are actually poor. A lot of those public housing activists wear old, raggedy clothing and otherwise look as though they invest less in their hygiene. The hippie labels work better than the 'a lot of Volvos' label. You wouldn't tend to see New Orleans activist types of people in Volvos or any other new car. More likely, they're living out of their cars. Or off of Americorps stipends. Or they're otherwise volunteering in different recovery-related programs and limiting their own ability to create the type of income necessary to purchase a fancy new Volvo's. It's all about bicycles.

I thought a lot of those activists that I just labeled in another set of broad generalizations made some major tactical errors during the public housing demolition hearing process and it made me mad at them.

This New Orleans Magazine Article doesn't qualify as journalism.

The "city official" needs to be told about his or her mixed metaphors.