Politicians are always offering to "listen to the people". But all too often they are intent on hearing only what they want to hear - as in the staged managed stitch-ups that sometimes pass for "consultations". Or alternatively, they are listening obsessively, compulsively, in order simply to echoe back the last sentence (the populist moralising of the Daily Mail ) but without really having heard, or still less understood, anything at all. Listening, really listening, is a great skill.
It is sad that the veteran American broadcaster and oral historian Studs Terkel did not live long enough to see over a million people flock to his home city of Chicago to await the outcome of their young black senator's audacious bid to make history as the first black president of the United States. But it is fitting that Terkel's passing is being commemorated at a time of great popular hope - when the marginalised and dispossessed are registering their desire for change. As a young man growing up in the 1930s, he witnessed at first hand the great sufferings and tribulations of the ordinary American in times of great economic hardship. He never forgot the dignity and quiet courage of working men and women and would, in later life, assiduously encourage people from all walks of life to refelect upon and share their experiences. Terkel's genuine interest in the lives of others, his deep-hearted sense of a life lived in common radiates through his work. People are encouraged to find their own voices, to speak of the world as they find it. This interviewer is not struggling to assert his own presence, or trying to tell others what they should be thinking. Even when Terkel encounters views he clearly found disturbing or shocking, he does not strike a judgemental tone, but allows others to situate such voices amidst the wider social conversation.
Perhaps it is no wonder that as a young man Terkel found himself under the suspicion from the McCarthyite witchunters. His ethic could not be more different from the "Every man for himself", "Greed is Good" philosophy of unbridled capitalism. But at the same time, the idea that he was anti-American is ludicrous. His was a voice in solidarity with the American people - their hopes, dreams, hardships and daily experiences. So Terkel wanted to see Obama win out over the reactionary face of American neoconservatism - but, what's more, he understood that it was essential - in triumph or despair - never to stop listening to ordinary people.
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