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on liberalism, lebowitz and the dangers of being culturally bulletproof

It’s a strange list — who strangers at parties have felt compelled or drunk enough to compare me to. None, however, has been more often pointed out to me than the comparison to writer Fran Lebowitz. The superficial similarities are obvious — both Lebowitz and I are chain-smoking, myopic writers with a penchant for bluntness. Yet, it’s almost boring in its obviousness — barely a compliment and too weak of an insult. Like being compared to Daria, if Daria was a smug liberal.

Maybe I should get contacts.

Still, I look to her as a broken mirror, a warning. The comparison between us is lazy, but she remains something of an example for me — a what not to do, a proof perfect of the many neutered American writers who now happily serve a liberal agenda via class publications and prestige TV; cultivating the empty moral superiority and snark that encourages entitled, self-satisfied behavior that is so prevalent within bourgeois circles. Yes, she reminds me that being a writer has always meant being a threat. We can neutralize ourselves and become assets for the very worst — sometimes without intending to.

Andy Warhol, perhaps one of the world’s most notorious culture dictators (I said what I said), hired Lebowitz to write for Interview Magazine in 1971. She was twenty-one years old. Interview, in many ways, helped to usher in a new era of faux-alternative media. Which was meant to, once again, produce a feeling of distinction for the growing in-crowd of moneyed artists and personalities who were flocking to NYC and turning the focus away from the political and into the cult of personality worship that we still see so prevalent in American “counterculture” today. 

In her column for Interview — titled “I cover the waterfront,” Lebowitz wrote about whatever the fuck she wanted — an incredible amount of freedom and importance to bestow on one voice, and such a young one at that. The Warholian cult worshipped not only personality but youth and petulance, encouraging indifference toward the bigger picture while insisting on the details.

Similarly to what we see today with newer vehicles for parasocial influencing — podcasting, vlogging, twitch streaming — it is rarely about the political intent or impact (even when it presents itself as such, ex: Chapo Trap House, etc) but rather simply about who we choose to make kings and gods of culture, who we wish to see ourselves reflected in. God is a good line, a funny tweet, someone you wish to befriend.

By making New York the entire world, she and the column shifted the focus away from the political and into the Personal. Agency is boiled down to aesthetic choices. The signaling of this specific east coast superiority, as it spread like some kind of authority and barometer across states, tangled with ideas about respectability, became a sort of cultural sword of Damocles. One could argue that it still hangs there today, over the fragmented US.

In a 2016 conversation with Francesco Clemente, Lebowitz recalls working with illustrator Marc Balet on her column.

“At one point, I don’t know why I had this idea, but it was probably after Andy did those big Maos—I had this idea to do this wallpaper of Mao, and we made this fake wallpaper. That was one. Karl Lagerfeld did this, I don’t know what you’d call it, this project, where he and his publishing company made this crate.”

The dangerous and intentional “memeification” of Mao in the west continues today and is tied to red scares and cold war agendas, which Warhol gleefully participated in. This ironic detachment’s influence was as potent on his immediate surroundings as it was at large.

Though Lebowitz and Warhol were never huge fans of each other, they ran in the same crews, and it is precisely this collaboration that made Lebowitz one of the most profitable of the personalities of Warhol’s legacy, extending and being made a pundit for so much more.

After her time at Interview, she would go on to shill for Conde Nast, writing for Mademoiselle and becoming a frequent contributor to the New Yorker. Eventually, after the publication of two books, she would mostly abandon writing for tv, citing writer’s block and becoming less of a critic and more of a face, a presence. Having established herself as a reassuring icon for the smug individualism that feeds and nurtures American liberalism, all that was required of her now was to have an opinion.

Of course, those opinions should never be too disruptive and always tastefully reflect the so-called progressive agenda of her various employers. Lebowitz is a democrat and was a perfect mouthpiece to fuel the indignant, virtue-signaling liberal outrage at the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Once again, she became a beacon of comfort and reassurance for the NPR tote bag carrying, New Yorker reading, pussy-hat wearing audience she cultivated over the years. A vaguely political voice of reason for those who hating the big bad orange man had become an entire personality and political idealogy.

Lebowitz’s opinion on Bernie Sanders, that he is “an unbelievably irritating narcissistic old man,” is kind of funny but primarily reflective of a hardened liberal whose corporate ties are more visible than she believes. An unabashed Hilary Clinton supporter, it’s not difficult to place Lebowitz on the political spectrum, nor is it to see what exactly got her there.

Still, her credibility persists — not only in insufferable Conde Nast talks, Netflix documentaries, or liberal circles — but at large. The triumph of her personality has launched many more. It is the writer to cultural figure, the critic to actor pipeline. From Lebowitz’s sardonic ramblings to Dasha N*krasova caustic laissez-faire, the cultural actor’s job is to set the tone (or, in N*krasova case, to blur it), and it is paid in clout until it is rewarded with a more glamorous social position.

The pipeline is both profitable and consistently evolving ways of seducing writers and thinkers into a life of corporate servitude. New serfdom. Working for the blue check. It will always learn to mimic and parrot the moods of the moment.

The consequences of a culture that can only recognize individual worth will see a subsequent inability to organize and value community. The greater good will be impossible to identify. Once more, the myth of scarcity and talent continues to dominate culture as we look to fragments to fix a (w)hole.

Don’t tell anyone Lebowitz is a millionaire. They’ll tell you she earned it, but they’ll never ask you how much it costs to become culturally bulletproof.

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