New School Book Club: In Conversation With Claire Potter
Earlier this spring, we launched the New School Book Club. In a time filled with separation and uncertainty, we wanted to find a way to get our community on the same page — literally — and what way to do that than through reading?
Our most recent Book Club pick was New School for Social Research Professor of History Claire Potter’s new book Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy. Published on July 7, 2020, during a time when political engagement has never been greater and trust has never been lower, Potter provides a guide to understanding how we got here.
After reading the book, we had the opportunity to gather questions for Claire from our community, and she answered them over video from her home.
“I hoped to make it a book that everyone would like regardless of their political predilections, but I found it was actually necessary to write the book that way. It was necessary to write a book with liberals and conservatives in it because they were actually looking at each other and talking to each other the whole time.” — Claire Potter
New School Book Club: What made you want to write about people’s obsession with politics?
Claire Potter: A big part of that is the fact that I have been on social media since about 2004–05. I was an early Facebook adopter then I was a blogger, and had a very popular blog called Tenured Radical, so I have been enmeshed in a world of political talk online, in a world of alternative media, for somewhere around 15 years. I became very interested in the dynamics, and how the alternative media atmosphere seemed to be challenging the mainstream media atmosphere. These questions were all swirling around in my head when the 2016 election struck.
I watched many of my friends just go baserk, and ended up getting caught up in very contentious conversations on Facebook with friends that turned sour very quickly, and I didn’t really understand. I began to realize that social media was very deep in the heart of our political life at that moment. So, because I’m a historian and we have a hashtag #everythinghasahistory, I began to investigate where this all started and took it all back to Isadore F. Stone and realized there was a tradition of alternative media that the internet was actually building on, it hadn’t really created it, and it had been core to moving our politics for well over 60 years.
NSBC: This book contains so much history, a ton of research must have gone into writing it; how long did it take you to write and was there a rush in getting it out before the election?
CP: Yes! You should have been in my home last summer, I was the least popular person who lived here (laughter).
I got the contract in late 2017, and the manuscript was due in January 2019, so that was twi years. It did take a ton of research, but I unfortunately didn’t have a lot of time as I would have liked to dig into archives… but because this was a book about alternative media, a lot of the stuff I needed was actually in the alternative media, particularly when you get to the 1990s and the emergence of blogging. It also meant reading a lot of sociology, a lot in political science and the history of communications, and that’s key to doing any kind of recent history is knowing the social scientists are way ahead of the historians in developing a critical perspective of things.
And was it to come out before the election? Absolutely. That was the big push. I did something like five drafts in 2019 to get the final manuscript in late October so we could go into production production and be out before the conventions. It does give a platform for the book, but it also gives people something reflect on as the media for the campaign is rolling out.
NSBC: What was one of the things you found most interesting/surprising while conducting research for Political Junkies?
CP: Great question. I think my discovery of public television as an alternative media. As I began reading about public television, I realized there was a huge contest in the 1960s and 1950s to develop an alternative to the three major stations. That first alternative was public television. It forms because Fred Friendly goes to the Ford Foundation — which you know if you’ve ready the book — but what was really interesting was that I hadn’t understood that the creation of an informed, neutral viewpoint for a smaller audience was a form of alternative TV. So that was a big surprise.
I also got to interview Robin McNeil who is one of my heroes. He’s also very generous. I would say the other thing I found most surprising about the book is how interesting conservative media was and how much conservative and liberal alternative media were feeding off of each other.
I had hoped to make it a book that everyone would like regardless of their political predilections, but then I found it was actually necessary to write the book that way, it was necessary to write a book with liberals and conservatives in it because they were actually looking at each other and talking to each other the whole time.
NSBC: When did you become a Political Junkie?
CP: I can tell you exactly: it was when I was 14 years old and Robin McNeil and Jim Lehrer broadcast the Watergate hearings. I spent the summer watching the Watergate hearings, watching all the commentary. I was hooked. After that I would watch the political conventions and I just couldn’t get enough of political life and political history. What’s interesting was, I then went to college and became an English major. Part of that was because politics were my fun, they were my distraction, and I thought, English is really serious work, and it wasn’t until I graduated from college and I realized I could take my political junkie work and become a historian.
“One thing I think is going to be important to our political life is for all of us to have criteria for what counts as knowledge and what doesn’t count as knowledge.” — Claire Potter
NSBC: If people take one thing away from Political Junkies, what would you hope that one thing is?
CP: That’s a fabulous question. I would say the one thing I would hope you would take away from it is looking at your own digital media consumption. By that I mean social media, mainstream platforms on the web, that you would take your own digital media consumption more seriously and critically and be able to recognize what was useful and what was not. One of the things I’m most disturbed by on the left and on the right, is that there are plenty of platforms that make arguments about politicians by insinuation, but without evidence. You’ll see that the argument of the piece is in a sort of click-baity headline, and then the article itself doesn’t really support the headline and very few people actually dig below the headline. They’ll open the story maybe and read a few paragraphs, but they don’t actually read through it and ask ‘Does this story really support what the reporter says the argument is?’ and one thing I think is going to be important to our political life is for all of us to have criteria for what counts as knowledge and what doesn’t count as knowledge.
It has reached a certain cartoon phase in the Trump administration where the president just lies nonstop, and I would hate to see us take that situation and say, ‘Oh that’s just what politicians do.’ Because it isn’t what the world has to be.
NSBC: Your stance throughout the book, for the most part, remains pretty neutral. Was it difficult to write it that way during such a heated moment in American politics?
CP: Yes, yes, and yes. And I would say it was necessary, however, I’m not one of those historians who says ‘just the fact’s, only the facts.’ But I did believe if I was to understand, particularly conservative media in the way I needed to to write a good book and a well argued book, I needed to immerse myself in it. And by good fortune I have a number of very good conservative friends, one of whom is a journalist, who was reading my stuff and commenting on it. So I got a lot of feedback from a lot of people, and what I really wanted to do was tell a story that seemed true about everybody, not use the book as a vehicle for relitigating the 2016 election.
I would say, that final chapter on the Clinton campaign and trump’s victory in 2016 was absolutely the hardest to write in part because it was still painful and it grew more painful as the trump administration has disintegrated basically as a policy making vehicle, but the other thing is that there were so many books coming out about the Trump campaign, the Muller report, then there was the Muller report, so figuring out what story that chapter would have to tell was very difficult because I knew had to limit it.
“One of the things we need to do is separate political talk from political action because there is more political talk than ever before but political action, until quite recently, was on a steady decline.” — Claire Potter
NSBC: It seems like people are more politically active than ever. What do you think is contributing to that? Is it just that we’re more connected than ever before or something more?
CP: I think one of the things we need to do is separate political talk from political action because there is more political talk than ever before but political action, until quite recently, was on a steady decline. From 1972 forward, there were fewer people voting, fewer people volunteering. The book Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone (Simon & Schuster, 2000), says the most dangerous thing about our tendency to not associate with one another anymore is that nobody is staffing political campaigns and that nobody is talking about politics.
I do think political engagement rose among conservatives steadily throughout the Obama administration in part because it was being funded, but in part because of long simmering frustrations among a certain group of conservatives. They were compiling grievances not just with the democrats, but within their own party. The Bush administration affectively locked out a whole wing of the Republican party, so they activated around that and they did it in ways that are instructive to us. I think since 2016, progressives have obviously become more active because the full weight of what it means to have this kind of administration fell on us. In the Bush administration, OK, we protested the war in Iraq, but the Bush administration left much of life unchanged for the middle and upper classes, and I think finally Trump went after things that were impossible for people to live with ethically, so that has been a big motivator.
“That push of people into motion began with the Women’s March the day after Trump was inaugurated.” — Claire Potter
NSBC: How do you think the upcoming election is/will be affected (both negatively and, maybe, positively) by people who consider themselves political junkies?
CP: I think there will be a lot of negative stuff, and it’s already started around Kamala Harris, it’s already started coming out of the Trump administration, but I actually think if there is a lesson that the book gives you about politics and that is that no campaign is the same. A campaign really builds off the achievements and the errors of a previous campaign season, so it’s kind of a four year cycle in which you have to invent something new or your campaign is not going to succeed. I don’t think the Trump campaign has invented anything new, and that means they’re kind of a sitting duck from the democratic side. The flip side of that is, I think, a lot of us who were engaged in political talk during the last Obama administration are now engaged in political action, I mean, I myself, while I was writing a book, I was also working for Elizabeth Warren and I hadn’t been a part of a political campaign since 2004, Howard Dean, so I think that’s a big change, and I think a lot of us regret having done less for Hillary Clinton than we should have. That push of people into motion began with the Women’s March the day after Trump was inaugurated.
“As an American historian I have been pushed a lot harder to think about what I teach in a global and international way by the very fact that there are often students from eight or nine different countries in the classroom.” — Claire Potter
NSBC: What’s your favorite part about teaching at The New School?
CP: The students. I love the students. They are so different, so unusual. They bring so much to the table. Having an art school and a school of performance embedded in your university brings amazing things into the classroom. Students with amazing talents who so intellectual work in entirely different ways that I hadn’t even thought of before I give an assignment. The other thing I love about The New School is how international it is. I think as an American historian I have been pushed a lot harder to think about what I teach in a global and international way by the very fact that there are often students from eight or nine different countries in the classroom. I find that very energizing, and I learn a lot from them.
NSBC: This fall might not be what we all expected, but what is one thing you’re looking forward to about the Fall 2020 semester?
CP: I’m looking forward to (New School President) Dwight McBride. I’ve had the opportunity to have dinner with him and have had a couple interactions with him. I think he’s been giving an enormously heavy lift, I’ve never seen a new president be challenged the way he’s being challenged, and I think he’s the guy for the job. I’m very, very excited to see what President McBride is going to do leading us into the next 100 years of The New School.
There’s a lot of other things to look forward to when you have a job you love, but I think President McBride is the biggie.
Claire Potter is a Professor of History in the Schools of Public Engagement and The New School for Social Research, and is the Executive Editor of Public Seminar, a digital magazine of politics and culture based at The New School. Claire also hosts the podcast Exiles on 12th Street, and writes Political Junkie, the Public Seminar newsletter. Her main research and teaching areas focus on United States political history after 1970, the history of gender and sexuality, mass culture, media and internet Studies.
Thank you, Claire, for taking part in The New School Book Club!
Stay tuned for the next New School Book Club pick later this Fall!
