I just had the pleasure of re-reading
Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis. In case you've forgotten, the title character is a middle-aged Realtor® in a medium-sized Midwestern city. He's a glad-hander whose philosophy is "go along to get along" and whose goals are social standing and wealth for himself and his family.
Sinclair Lewis created a character so unforgettable that he was given the ultimate honor. No, not the Nobel Prize for literature, which he won in 1930. Rather, his own entry in the dictionary: "babbitry," which means self-satisfied conformism. Only the very brightest are so honored.
In Chapter 14, Babbitt airs his political views in their full glory when he delivers a long, windy speech to the Zenith Real Estate Board. Some of his slanguage is obsolete, but much of what he said in 1921 has an eerie resemblance to what pours forth from today's Republican Noise Machine.
On cars, sprawl, and progress:
"I don't mean to say we're perfect. We've got a lot to do in the way of extending the paving of motor boulevards, for, believe me, it's the fellow with four to ten thousand a year, say, and an automobile and a nice little family in a bungalow on the edge of town, that makes the wheels of progress go round!
"That's the type of fellow that's ruling America to-day; in fact, it's the ideal type to which the entire world must tend, if there's to be a decent, well-balanced, Christian, go-ahead future for this little old planet!
What would Babbitt drive? My guess is a Ford Expedition, with at least two yellow "Support the Troops" ribbons and a snappy "W 04" sticker on the back window.
On art and commerce:
"In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent business man; and I, for one, am only too glad that the man who has the rare skill to season his message with interesting reading matter and who shows both purpose and pep in handling his literary wares has a chance to drag down his fifty thousand bucks a year [about $500,000 a year in today's money].
Were Babbitt alive today, I'm guessing that he'd would be a big fan of Tom Clancy; his wife, Myra, would devour romance novels written by women with three names; and he'd make sure his children had the latest DVDs, video games, and downloadable pop tunes. Ringtones, too.
On red-blooded American manhood:
"With all modesty, I want to stand up here as a representative business man and gently whisper, 'Here's our kind of folks! Here's the specifications of the Standardized American Citizen! Here's the new generation of Americans: fellows with hair on their chests and smiles in their eyes and adding-machines in their offices...
"So! In my clumsy way I have tried to sketch the Real He-man, the fellow with Zip and Bang. And it's because Zenith has so large a proportion of such men that it's the most stable, the greatest of our cities. New York also has its thousands of Real Folks, but New York is cursed with unnumbered foreigners. So are Chicago and San Francisco....
"But it's here in Zenith, the home for manly men and womanly women and bright kids, that you find the largest proportion of these Regular Guys, and that's what sets it in a class by itself
The modern version of Babbitt slips out to the local Hooters on NFL Sundays, judges a man by the size and price tag of his barbecue grill, and once got roped into Promise Keepers by his next-door neighbor.
On Old Europe:
"Some time I hope folks will quit handing all the credit to a lot of moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps, and give proper credit to the famous Zenith spirit, that clean fighting determination to win Success that has made the little old Zip City celebrated in every land and clime, wherever condensed milk and pasteboard cartons are known! Believe me, the world has fallen too long for these worn-out countries that aren't producing anything but bootblacks and scenery and booze, that haven't got one bathroom per hundred people, and that don't know a loose-leaf ledger from a slip-cover.
Today's Babbitt got a chuckle out of "Freedom Fries," and that he told Myra "I told you so" when he saw footage of the French riots on the evening news.
On the homogenization of America:
"I tell you, Zenith and her sister-cities are producing a new type of civilization. There are many resemblances between Zenith and these other burgs, and I'm darn glad of it! The extraordinary, growing, and sane standardization of stores, offices, streets, hotels, clothes, and newspapers throughout the United States shows how strong and enduring a type is ours.
On their summer vacation, today's Babbitts stay at Holiday Inns, eat at Applebees, and go to Disney World.
On the liberal menace:
"But the way of the righteous is not all roses. Before I close I must call your attention to a problem we have to face, this coming year. The worst menace to sound government is not the avowed socialists but a lot of cowards who work under cover--the long-haired gentry who call themselves "liberals" and "radicals" and "non-partisan" and "intelligentsia" and God only knows how many other trick names!
Watch him nod his head in approval when Bill O'Reilly denounces "elitists."
On left-wing college professors:
"Irresponsible teachers and professors constitute the worst of this whole gang, and I am ashamed to say that several of them are on the faculty of our great State University!...
"Those profs are the snakes to be scotched--they and all their milk-and-water ilk! The American business man is generous to a fault. but one thing he does demand of all teachers and lecturers and journalists: if we're going to pay them our good money, they've got to help us by selling efficiency and whooping it up for rational prosperity!
Don't even get him started on affirmative action.
America, love it or leave it:
"Not till that is done will our sons and daughters see that the ideal of American manhood and culture isn't a lot of cranks sitting around chewing the rag about their Rights and their Wrongs, but a God-fearing, hustling, successful, two-fisted Regular Guy, who belongs to some church with pep and piety to it, who belongs to the Boosters or the Rotarians or the Kiwanis, to the Elks or Moose or Red Men or Knights of Columbus or any one of a score of organizations of good, jolly, kidding, laughing, sweating, upstanding, lend-a-handing Royal Good Fellows, who plays hard and works hard, and whose answer to his critics is a square-toed boot that'll teach the grouches and smart alecks to respect the He-man and get out and root for Uncle Samuel, U.S.A.!
While tooling around in his Expedition--real-estate people do a lot of that--Babbitt spends hours listening to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. That's where he gets his talking points.
On religion:
Babbitt didn't make much mention of religion in his speech, but Lewis tells us that he was a Presbyterian. His church was a Jazz Age version of those big-box megachurches you find all over exurbia:
"[Pastor Drew] made his church a true community center. It contained everything but a bar. It had a nursery, a Thursday evening supper with a short bright missionary lecture afterward, a gymnasium, a fortnightly motion-picture show, a library of technical works for young workmen--though, unfortunately, no young workman ever entered the church except to wash the windows or repair the furnace--and a sewing-circle which made short little pants for the children of the poor while Mrs. Drew read aloud from earnest novels."
Today, Pastor Drew also would keep his publication rack well-stocked with Christian Coalition voter guides.
