Ted Gioia on a recent oral history of the countercultural touchstone, The Village Voice:
At the start of her oral history of The Village Voice, author Tricia Romano provides a “cast of characters”. It goes on for 15 pages, and includes 216 people — each with some connection to the alternative newspaper.
Many people nowadays have never lived in a society with such a vibrant counterculture. In a time when official sources all seem part of a predictable Disney-fied monoculture, just reading this list of names and mini-bios can be a revelation.
Many of these individuals are now revered as historic figures who changed society. They had power and prestige. It’s easy to forget that most of them operated as outsiders.
That’s how they wanted it.
These renegades at The Village Voice knew that working outside the system — and typically against the system — was their superpower. They could criticize ruling institutions. They could speak harsh truths. They could go against the grain.
One thing is certain: They didn’t align their interests with globalist corporate CEOs, billionaire technocrats, the surveillance state, and establishment bureaucracies. They would have laughed at journalists who did that — believing, rightly, that honest media requires distance, or even an adversarial stance, vis-à-vis entrenched powers.
Because that’s what a counterculture does. That’s what it’s expected to do.
Romano captures the peculiar vibe in the title of her book The Freaks Came Out to Write. She makes clear that The Village Voice wasn’t The New York Times and it definitely wasn’t The New Yorker.
Nobody ever stepped into its madcap offices and said “Ah, the Gray Lady”. No reader ever picked up a copy and expected to see Eustace Tilley on the cover.
Can you tell the difference between culture and counterculture?
And The Voice was heard. Even establishment insiders knew they needed to listen to these “Freaks”. Sometimes they feared The Voice, sometimes they secretly agreed with it, but they always treated it as a force deserving respect.
Until recently that’s how it worked. The tension between insiders and outsiders was a source of creative energy in society. The upstarts provided alternative views and new ideas. They kept everybody accountable.
I’m pointing this out because this no longer happens. This is the world we’ve lost.
