The late Sen. John McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, has become increasingly unhinged on The View. Her dual role of “anti-Trumper” and GOP-defender has become increasingly impossible. She keeps defending indefensible positions. The show thrives on tensions between liberals like Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, the somewhat more moderate Sunny Hostin, and the conservatives Abby Huntsman (daughter of former Utah gov. and current ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman) and McCain. But those tensions are more often becoming shouting matches as McCain insists on defending untenable right wing positions (including the kidnapping of children at the border).
Lately, she’s been joining in the chorus of attacks against the “socialism” of Democrats. When Joy Behar tried to explain the kind of Democratic Socialism espoused by the likes of Bernie and AOC, Meghan McCain shouted back “I’m a highly educated woman!” First, none of us is an expert in everything and degrees don’t equal brilliance. Malcolm X was self-educated, but I’d rank him against George W. Bush’s 2 Ivy League degrees any day. Likewise, because he was twice expelled on “morals charges” (gay sex back when that was literally illegal in all 50 states), the extremely brilliant black Quaker, Bayard Rustin (architect of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and co-founder of the Congress on Racial Equality), never earned a degree either. He WAS a socialist and I would put his explanations up against any right winger with multiple degree pedigree.
Second, McCain’s claim of being “highly educated” doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny. She has a B.A. in art history—period. Now, that B.A. is from Columbia University which deserves its reputation, most days, as an extremely tough school. And the Columbia core curriculum, like that of the University of Chicago and a few other institutions, is built around the classics of the Great Books of the Western World, so that even students in the School of Engineering (or art history students) have to wrestle with Plato and Aristotle, Machiavelli, Marx, Rousseau, Einstein, etc.--primary sources, not summaries in textbooks. But, still, McCain’s “highly educated” claim is more one of class privilege than an actual record of achievement.
Third, it is a conversation stopper. It silenced Joy Behar and that was the intention. Dialogue and debate over the substance of the supposed “socialism” of Democrats was stopped. The audience was not allowed to decide for themselves whether or not the views of, say, Ocasio-Cortez, are or are not a form of “socialism” or are/are not a good thing for the nation because the offered explanation was silenced by the “highly educated” (and nearly unhinged) Meghan McCain.
I know this tactic. I’ve seen it my whole life. Now, as a straight, white, Southern, (liberal form of) Christian, cis-male, I benefit from many systems of privilege. Much of my life has been spent trying to find all the ways I participate in such privileges and resist that, standing instead with the marginalized and oppressed—but it’s always a work in progress. But, like Elizabeth Warren, I grew up in a family that kept moving back and forth from “working poor” to “lowest level of middle class.” I am the first generation to go beyond high school in my family. I grew up class conscious. I had to work my way through a long and winding road to end up with an M.Div. from a once-liberal-now-fundamentalist seminary (where I met my wife), two M.A. degrees (one in history from Florida State University where my thesis was on the Tallahassee Bus Boycott as a model for the more famous Montgomery Bus Boycott; the other in philosophy from the University of Louisville where I wrote on the reappropriation of Aristotle by some in “post-modern” virtue ethics), to finally earning a Ph.D. in philosophy (concentrations in ethics and political philosophy) at the University of Chicago. At each step, I had to work harder because of not having the background that those from more affluent classes did. At each step, those with privilege tried to silence those they thought “did not belong” among their “highly educated” elites—and I watched those from more marginalized communities than mine struggle even harder—for reasons that had nothing to do with how smart or not they were.
McCain’s cry of being a “highly educated woman” was not that of a woman tired of “man-splaining” by a man. No, she was shouting down-silencing—a woman she perceived as having less credentials than her. It was a cry of GOP class privilege and hubris. How DARE Joy Behar (who, by the way, has a B.A. from Queen’s College and an M.A. from Stony Brook University, and who has been both an English teacher as well as a published author, Meghan!), comic from working class Queens attempt to explain ANYTHING to the daughter of the “great” Senator McCain, son and grandson of Naval admirals!
This hubris will backfire on Republicans. Mark my words.
Friday, Mar 1, 2019 · 9:51:43 AM +00:00 · SouthernLeveller
Let’s take this a step further: There are highly educated people who are anti-vaxxers because they believe the (completely discredited) conspiracy theory that vaccines cause autism.
Intelligence and education SHOULD be extremely correlated, but it isn’t always the case. Further, many brilliant people are brilliant only in their narrow areas—e.g., Ben Carson, M.D., a brilliant neurosurgeon and a complete idiot on all things political.
Nor is wisdom (or even the virtue of reading widely and staying widely informed) taught in institutions of higher education.
As an academic, I am biased in favor of education—but education should not be used to shut down debate and is no substitute for being well informed.
McCain’s answer to Behar about why she and other GOPers stick with Trump boils down to this: I’m rich and I’m in favor of rich people keeping all their money and I’m against poor people being able to afford health care or to retire with dignity or to educate their children without going deeply in debt. I’d rather have the traitor in the WH than a Democrat who might raise my taxes for Medicare for All or something equally radical!
But rather than let her audience realize that, she used her “highly educated” status to silence Joy Behar.