Lovely day in LI. Just enough time to check e-mail and dash out a quick post before I have to nuke some Trader Joe's fish sticks and briani for dinner.
I'm a big fan of Trader Joe's. I like their burritos and organic stuff. I can spend five minutes nuking some frozen cod and still feel warm inside for giving my kids the good stuff.
It's also worth the trip just to see white people in dreadlocks. There is absolutely no counterculture out in here in the heartlands of New Jersey, and I'm craving it having lived on a Pottery Barn and Gap diet for far too long.
Actually, there doesn't seem to be a counterculture anywhere. A couple of days ago, we drove down the Bowery on our way to Chinatown and found that they put a Whole Foods there. Now, there isn't wrong with a Whole Foods. It just doesn't belong there. I used to step over junkies on the way to poetry slams there back in the mid-80s. Of course, I was scared out of my mind that I was going to get jumped at the next corner, but that's not the point.
Amidst my e-mail are two notes from my dad. He points to a new book, Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, ... America (or at least the Republican Party)
I haven't read it, but it appears that the main argument is that there are a group of conservatives who, like liberals, reject consumerism and embrace environmentalism, while retaining certain core conservative values. Has anybody else looked at it?
Dad then forwarded a comment by Jon Podhoretz about this book. It also provides a big-tent excuse for "sanctimommy" parenting, which is not so much about raising your own kids as you see fit but more about finding other mothers and fathers wanting because they're not as austere and controlling as you are. There's a lot of sanctimommying over at the Crunchy Con blog.
Two points for JPod for giving me the term "sanctimommying." Snort.
UPDATE: I'm looking forward to reading what Russell has to say about the book.
UPDATE2: OK, so I've been getting up to speed on the conservative blogs about this book. I'm enjoying the debate about crunchiness sans politics avec class. Read Ross Douthat:
Sure, the three dollars extra for the free-range chicken isn't a lot, but over time the cost of a Whole Foods (or "Whole Paycheck," as a friend calls it) lifestyle tends to add up, especially when you're talking about the kind of working-class families that are most likely to have the kind of traditional instincts we're interested in cultivating. There's a reason that birkenstocks and free-range chickens and rambling old Victorian houses and energy-efficient cars tend to be associated with the lifestyle of upper-middle-class liberals, and it's that somewhere in the last half-century, the "crunchy" lifestyle got really expensive. And I think this is one of the dangers hidden in the whole "crunchy" meme (if I'm allowed to use a Richard Dawkins-coined word on a "crunchy" website), which is that it runs the risk of being assimilated too easily into the culture of consumer capitalism, as just another "lifestyle choice" for upper-middle-class people who like that sort of thing, and can afford to choose it.