LiP: I was wondering about your critique of postfeminism. Do you think there are some current leaders or movements that show some promise, coming out of postfeminist publications like Bitch and Bust, now that people are turning 30 and having to face issues beyond lipstick questions and glam?

Right.

I guess I want to be for them, to praise them, because I think it's always good when people are speaking for themselves, and I like it that it's not corporate-controlled or dominated media, and has a handmade feel. I know many young women who really like Bust. One of my students said that there is just so much negativity about femaleness, about being a woman out there, and Bust is so positive and cheerful that she loves it.

My own feeling is that the zines are all right as far as they go, but I wish that they would go a little farther. I don't see why every page has to be devoted to clothing and the critique thereof, movie stars and the critique thereof, forgettable novels and the critique thereof…and salted with autobiographical stories that are not really of great interest to very many people.

For me, information is the key to life, and I think that information is very much what people do not have enough of at this moment in time. I would like the zines a lot more if at least one article an issue was devoted to some actual political or feminist subject about, you know, what you should do if you're sexually harassed, what the issues are surrounding legal abortion… [for example] people say that abortion causes psychological trauma; why do they say that, and what is the truth?

I think that the zines in a funny way mirror the magazines they make fun of, because they have the same set of concerns as the mainstream women's magazines: sex, boys, clothes, your body. I think that there's more to life than that.

I was asking just because I've recently been pleased to see, at least in Bitch, a lot more in-depth features and interviews of people like bell hooks. I'm about the same age, and I'm seeing some people maturing, becoming mothers, getting married, and starting to confront some of the non-twentysomething issues.

Well, a zine I like very much is Hip Mama, which I think is much more about the nitty-gritty of life, with a great spirit and wonderful politics.

What about rising feminist activists, women who are in their 20s and early 30s and trying to incorporate some of the critiques of Second Wave feminism, but actually going out and creating a ruckus, or doing something new. Do you know of any examples?

Well, Third Wave, I think they see themselves as doing what you're talking about. I'm actually in a little group called History in Action, which is supposed to be intergenerational feminism. We have women all the way from 75 to in their 20s, but it is true that after awhile the young women want to go off and do their own thing.

To me it feels like things are stagnating in feminism.

I have a little bit of the same feeling. What I do see is that there are some very interesting young women who are working at places like the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy. I've had a few students who worked there, and I would really like to think that there were all of these exciting young women's organizations—I think that there may be some, but they're pretty small still. I think there's stuff going on on campus around reproductive rights.

Well, I think The Nation, unfortunately, has decided to have its major intellectual problem be "what should our relationship to the Democratic party be?" It's like, has anyone told the Democratic party that The Nation is wondering about this relationship? Do they care? It's a little bit of the tail wagging the dog, or tail thinking that it could wag the dog, when in fact, the dog is running off in another field.

…being fed treats by somebody else.

Yeah.

A related question: in a couple of the essays, you express some frustrations about both the hypocrisy of the left in terms of speaking about but not doing things, and also the self-limiting universe of both Nation readers and writers—in terms of race, in terms of class—I'm wondering...do you think the situation is hopeless? Is this the perpetual state of the left, to be upper-middle-class, white, educated, and somewhat isolated? Or are you seeing some cross-pollination?

I think that there are a lot of people in every social class who will be interested in the left when it seems like the left can actually accomplish something.

I sometimes think that you are never going to get a lot of people signing up for left-wing politics, or even "progressive" politics as long as there's a very strong economy. Its true that a lot of people are not doing well; it's a myth that everyone is doing well. But enough people are doing well, and more than that, enough people think that they are going to be doing well, that they are not going to want to spend a lot of energy on projects that are going to raise their taxes, or that mean that they can't have great big SUVs, that kind of thing.

Now, with the stock market going down, who knows? The left could be in for a big revival. But I really think that the percentage of people in this country that are really interested in politics is very small. I think it's true that people are pretty alienated. They don't vote, they don't read the newspaper…maybe they watch the TV news, but mostly that's just murders, car crashes, and gossip. So, I think that for people to become more interested in politics, it would have to seem a lot more practical. It has to seem like, "If I become interested in this, I can actually use it to make a change that I want."

The question then becomes, in an entertainment-saturated populace, how do you convince people that what is practical is not boring? How do you entice people to see the practicality in political action?

Part of me wants to say that maybe those other people are right—that it isn't very practical to be a leftist right now, and that's why the people who are leftists tend to be university students and upper-middle-class people, and working class people fit into it a different way…they're union organizers, they're plugged in on issues like race.

…at points in their lives where they can actually see the impact or disparities.

Right…also, I was going to say, most people are working pretty hard. When you talk about entertainment, you have to think, "Well, when are people indulging in all of this frivolous entertainment consumption?" It's after they come home from their two jobs, after they put the kids to bed. Most people don't have a lot of leisure for activities that are both not fun and seem pointless…and it's kind of hard to argue with them.

Definitely. I guess that's where the the mediated moral scandal comes in…it's entertaining, and people also get to feel involved politically, whether it's about Eminem, or the OJ Simpson trial, which you wrote a lot about in the book.

Well, these are spectacles, and people find them fun to watch. They seem to dramatize various conflicts and nightmares of our society, so they're interesting in that way.

But it's always interesting to me that…you take the public schools. Now, you would think that this is an issue that everyone could get together on. My daughter's in public school, and she goes to one of the better ones—by public school standards, pretty good. But they don't have the resources of private schools. Then, you go a few steps below that, and it's a nightmare.

You would think that this is the perfect issue for people to be radicalized around: it's very immediate, you don't have to have read a whole lot of Karl Marx to think that your child should have a teacher who can teach the kids to read, and all the rest of it, and yet there really isn't that much going on around it. There is a bit. ACORN is a very active group in New York…they did excellent work in Brooklyn—and these are all working-class people—in which they tested the access of black and Hispanic children to gifted and talented programs. They would send white people and black people, and what they found is that the white parents got a welcome, and the black parents were told, "oh, it's too late, you can't apply." It was just completely naked discrimination.

I think that was a very valuable service, and the next thing that should happen is general outrage. But this is not happening on the scale you would expect.

It would be interesting to know why that was; I don't know what the answer is. Is it that people understand that, in fact, the Board of Ed in New York City is a completely impenetrable bureaucratic dictatorship, and they're not going to get anything out of it, or what?

I'll tell you one thing: I've decided I want to be more of an activist, and my group, History in Action, which is supposed to be an activist group…it took us four months to put on one abortion speakout. It's really hard to do these things!

Is it the group dynamics?