Theologian Chris Roberts, commenting on the First Things discussion over capitalism between Rusty Reno and Robert Miller, notes that unlike in the Great Depression, today’s US media culture doesn’t see the poor:

Our media culture today does not draw its oxygen from the poor. That should worry us, because even if Christians are a dissenting minority, we live in this culture and our imaginations are formed by it.

As we follow the debate between Reno and Miller, I think it matters why we’re interested in capitalism. It matters who we love, what we’re trying to conserve, who we know, and who are friends are. Where do we get our oxygen?

The “oxygen” metaphor comes from someone who said if you want to know the air Pope Francis breathes, you need to go to the slums of Argentina. That is to say, the Pope’s thinking about what the Church is and should be is profoundly shaped by his experiences there. I think Chris asks a great question of us American Christians. When I think about where I get my own “oxygen,” it’s primarily through the experience of raising children in this culture, and thinking long-term about the kind of structures, beliefs, and traditions that shape them, and that will shape them and their descendants. I know, though, that that is not sufficient, at least not for me as a Christian. I don’t think about my faith and how it should affect my views on economics as thoroughly as I should. In this way, I fail to breathe with both lungs.

I think it’s telling of our time and the kind of people who create journalism that the media are far, far more interested in questions and issues of personal identity, especially sexual, race, and gender identity, than in economic issues. The last three popes had a lot to say about poverty, inequality, and the moral nature of economic man, but it often seemed that our media were only capable of listening to them when they talked about sexuality and gender. From my own experience, I would say that most Americans who go into journalism are middle class, especially middle-class suburbanites. That class is taught to think in terms of race, sex, and gender, which, I would imagine, can seem incredibly narcissistic to someone struggling with chronic poverty. A few years back, I read a screed by the social critic J.H. Kunstler — a man of the secular left who cannot stand the religious right — who said it drove him crazy that his own side cared more about things like gay marriage than about economics and energy (Kunstler is a big peak-oil guy), which affected far more people. But these people are invisible to the media, Kunstler argued. Interesting.

Anyway, where do you think our media gets its oxygen? I’d say from the concerns of the overclass, which is to say, from the social issues that obsess them (race, sexuality, gender) and from the economic figures that entrance them (Wall Street elites). Where do you get your oxygen? Answer honestly.