Jonah, why the Smiley Face?
Many liberal blogs have spent the last few weeks mocking a book by National Review editor Jonah Goldberg called Liberal Fascism. To get a taste of said mockery, go here and here.
What perplexes me is why Goldberg and/or his publisher decided to use a Smiley Face to represent “liberalism” on the cover. I did a little bit of digging into the history of the smiley face and couldn’t find many traditionally-liberal connections to it.
For me, a person living in the 21st century, the Smiley Face invokes a connection to Walmart, which has used the face heavily in its advertising. Wouldn’t Walmart — and the smiley face’s historical background with its creation by Harvey Ball — be associated with pure capitalism? In fact, the story of how Ball lost out on millions of dollars because he failed to copyright the image seems like an anecdote right out of the corporate handbook. “This is why we must sue everyone who even mentions our copyrighted material!” I picture the company executive saying.
I did a little bit of Google searching and came across this explanation from Goldberg himself:
The cover, the smiley face with the mustache, is a play on something I explain on basically Page One of the book, and it’s a reference to what George Carlin and Bill Maher call smiley-face fascism. And if you can’t get past the cover and the title, then you’re not a serious book reader and you’re not really a serious person.
Right, so you ignore the widely known connotation of the Smiley Face — both its origin and current-day association — in favor of some obscure reference so unheard of that Googling the term “smiley face fascism” brings up mostly references to your book on the first page of the search results?
Does any one else find it funny that Goldberg uses the words “serious book reader” in connection to a book that is ludicrously called Liberal Fascism?
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My diagnosis: Jonah stumbled across a book in the library full of literary devices with long, Greek names. He got all tangled up with oxymorons, paradoxes, and antitheses, and decided that if you want to seem REALLY SMART and impress mommy you should put opposites together whenever possible. So “Liberal” with “Fascism”, and “Smiley” (good) with “Hitler” (bad).
I very much doubt that it’s any deeper than that….
To be fair to Goldberg, he’s noted that the cover wasn’t of his own invention, and in general authors aren’t given much say in their covers. He’s trying to work with the cover he’s got.
I’m always happy to hear about someone mocking a book they haven’t read. Maybe you should mock Juno too? I’d like to read a greater breakdown of why the title Liberal Fascism means that something isn’t a “serious book.” Many books use titles that combine concepts that you disagree with. If the book happens to be an argument that there is a such thing as Liberal Fascism, then it seems like an applicable title, even if written by someone from The National Review. There have been numerous books written with arrogant titles about Pres. Bush and Republicans and Democrats, many written by respected journalists. But he’s from the National Review, he is biased, so the book can’t be serious. People from the National Review twist the facts. Luckily, none of the Liberal Facists do.
Plus, when I think of smiley faces, I think of IMs. Smiley faces are emoticons to me. I honestly didn’t think of walmart until you mentioned it.
Joel-
Go to Orcinus for an explanation of why that title is such a joke. Or, if you don’t want to do that, go to your dictionary. The generally accepted definitions of “fascism” essentially preclude “liberalism”. Orcinus argues the nuance. But to call liberals fascists is to completely strip both words of their essential meanings. Other than that, the title is fine.
FYI on the Smiley Face Hitler: An artist named John Baldessari did a poster titled “Smile….It’s Nothing” in 2000 that showed the regular yellow smiley face, followed by the black and white smiley face, followed by the black and white smiley face with Hitler’s hair and mustache. I would be surprised if Baldessari would have foreseen his work being appropriated by a rightwing hack publisher. But who knows?