I Have A Lady In The Balcony, Dr. Retail

A weekly radio show (1939 - 1950) of my childhood was "Dr. IQ." The basic premise of the game was very simple. Assistants would wander the theater, looking for audience members to play the game. When the assistant found someone willing to play, he or she would tell the "doctor," "I have a gentleman in the balcony, Doctor!" or something similar. The host would then say, depending on the difficulty of the question: "Two (more or less) silver dollars and a box of Mars Bars (the show's sponsor) if you can answer this!" Then he would pose a general-knowledge question to the contestant. A correct answer would win the stated dollar amount and candy in the first part of the game, and $20 in the second part; incorrect answers would result in a $1 consolation prize. All prizes were paid in silver dollars, as noted by the host. The only game feature that carried over from week to week was "The Lady in the Balcony." A female contestant in the theater balcony would be chosen, and would be asked a series of five questions. She would be allowed five incorrect answers. If she had any misses still available after five questions, she would return the following week to face five more questions with the remaining misses in play. If she was able to survive four weeks without incorrectly answering five questions, she won a jackpot prize. The radio version of "Doctor IQ" did not have a set studio. Instead, it traveled from city to city and was recorded in large concert halls and theaters. Now, David Brooks, a practitioner of the New Journalism, who gave us the memorable "Bobos" (Bohemian Bourgeois) as an alternative to "Yuppies," takes aim on the wacko idea that we can buy our way back to prosperity by adopting the persona of "Dr. Retail." His take on the Democrat bloodletting is guided by market economic theory. Several times, Brooks made me LOL (laugh out loud). If this is (fair & balanced) drollery, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
Questions for Dr. Retail
By David Brooks

QUESTION: Dr. Retail, now that the Democratic presidential race has entered its long, bloody slog phase, I figured it was time to get a fresh perspective. Can you explain to me what it’s all about?

DR. RETAIL: Why do you bother me with simple problems? Listen, the essential competition in many consumer sectors is between commodity providers and experience providers, the companies that just deliver product and the companies that deliver a sensation, too. There’s Safeway, and then there is Whole Foods. There’s the PC, and then there’s the Mac. There are Holiday Inns, and there are W Hotels. There’s Walgreens, and there’s The Body Shop.

Hillary Clinton is a classic commodity provider. She caters to the less-educated, less-pretentious consumer. As Ron Brownstein of The National Journal pointed out on Wednesday, she won the non-college-educated voters by 22 points in California, 32 points in Massachusetts and 54 points in Arkansas. She offers voters no frills, just commodities: tax credits, federal subsidies and scholarships. She’s got good programs at good prices.

Barack Obama is an experience provider. He attracts the educated consumer. In the last Pew Research national survey, he led among people with college degrees by 22 points. Educated people get all emotional when they shop and vote. They want an uplifting experience so they can persuade themselves that they’re not engaging in a grubby self-interested transaction. They fall for all that zero-carbon footprint, locally grown, community-enhancing Third Place hype. They want cultural signifiers that enrich their lives with meaning.

Obama offers to defeat cynicism with hope. Apparently he’s going to turn politics into a form of sharing. Have you noticed that he’s actually carried into his rallies by a flock of cherubs while the heavens open up with the Hallelujah Chorus? I wonder how he does that.

QUESTION: But why would Democratic votes break down so starkly along educational lines?

DR. RETAIL: The consumer marketplace has been bifurcating for years! It’s happening because the educated and uneducated lead different sorts of lives. Educated people are not only growing richer than less-educated people, but their lifestyles are diverging as well. A generation ago, educated families and less-educated families looked the same, but now high school graduates divorce at twice the rate of college graduates. High school grads are much more likely to have kids out of wedlock. High school grads are much more likely to be obese. They’re much more likely to smoke and to die younger.

Their attitudes are different. High school grads are much less optimistic than college grads. They express less social trust. They feel less safe in public. They report having fewer friends and lower aspirations. The less educated speak the dialect of struggle; the more educated, the dialect of self-fulfillment

Did you hear the message of Clinton’s speech Tuesday night? It’s a rotten world out there. Regular folks are getting the shaft. They need someone who’ll fight tougher, work harder and put loyalty over independence.

Then did you see the Hopemeister’s speech? His schtick makes sense if you’ve got a basic level of security in your life, if you’re looking up, not down. Meanwhile, Obama’s people are so taken with their messiah that soon they’ll be selling flowers at airports and arranging mass weddings. There’s a “Yes We Can” video floating around YouTube in which a bunch of celebrities like Scarlett Johansson and the guy from the Black Eyed Peas are singing the words to an Obama speech in escalating states of righteousness and ecstasy. If that video doesn’t creep out normal working-class voters, then nothing will.

QUESTION: Your cynicism is really interfering with my vibe. I don’t think you’re feeling the fierce urgency of now.

DR. RETAIL: Believe me, those of us who bill by the hour completely feel the fierce urgency of now. As John Edwards would say, this is personal with me.

QUESTION: So does this mean the Democrats are fundamentally divided?

DR. RETAIL: Why do you political people always think in either/or terms? No. Safeway and Whole Foods people shop in each other’s stores. They just feel less at home.

QUESTION: So who’s going to win?

DR. RETAIL: Observe the marketplace. The next states on the primary calendar have tons of college-educated Obamaphile voters. Maryland is 5th among the 50 states, Virginia is 6th. But later on, we get the Hillary-friendly states. Ohio is 40th in college education. Pennsylvania is 32nd.

But it’ll still be tied after all that. The superdelegates will pick the nominee — the party honchos, the deal-makers, the donors, the machine. Swinging those people takes a level of cynicism even Dr. Retail can’t pretend to understand. That’s Tammany Hall. That’s the court at Versailles under Louis XIV.

[David Brooks's column has appeared on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times since September 2003. He is also currently a commentator on "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer." Mr. Brooks is the author of Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There and On Paradise Drive : How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense, both published by Simon & Schuster.

Brooks graduated from the University of Chicago in 1983, and worked as a police reporter for the City News Bureau, a wire service owned jointly by the Chicago Tribune and Sun Times.

His articles have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Forbes, the Washington Post, the TLS, Commentary, the Public Interest, and many other magazines. He is editor of the anthology Backward and Upward: The New Conservative Writing (Vintage Books).]

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company

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