cheese it, the cops!

my creators column  last week was a bit of an anarchist manifesto.

trouble

you know you're in trouble when you've got a choice between a bishop appointed by the vatican and a bishop appointed by the chinese government. 

pretty fucking flat

video: how flat is the world? flat as a pancake. flat as dick cheney's affect. flat as kansas after a tornado. real, real flat. flat as billy joel on a bad night. flat as a sheet of tracing paper. flat as an idea in the mind of thomas friedman. flat as a white person's butt. flat as...oh whatever.

shootings

the recent  school shooting plots prompt me to say what i always say: they have an insurrectionary element, and they are directed at the most profoundly authoritarian instirtutions in our country short of prisons. one element of the repression is the direct exercise of authority, another is the forced association of people who can't deal with one another.

Revenge for being picked on by other students and dislike of the school staff motivated the unidentified students, Lindhag said.

death of the blog

thought i'd put up my creators column from last week, since it's about blogging.




Ponder with me, if you feel like it, the sad fate of the blog.

There was a time when "blog" meant that almost anyone could publish almost anything she wanted, when it seemed that the media of political discourse were being radically decentralized with incredible rapidity, when no one could control what people were writing and reading or its remarkable and strange effects.

The mainstream media (msm) would become obsolete, their tepid opinions and colorless language swamped in a sea of free, beautiful, anarchic ranting. And by sheer vastness and variety, all this talk would be self-correcting; everybody could participate everywhere, and every mistake would draw a hundred subversions.

It seemed a remarkable realization of democratic ideals.

But the blogosphere is now under full-scale consolidation and colonization. Most of the most-read "blogs" are simulations. Let's consider a few examples.

The "Daily Kos" is perhaps the most visited political blog on the net. The discussion is lively and, apparently, freewheeling -- there's even the occasional cuss word. But, truth to tell, it is the mouthpiece of the Howard Dean wing of the Democratic Party, and taken all in all, it is painfully orthodox and unanimous ("with a Democrat like [Joe Lieberman] on the Armed Services Committee, why do we need Republicans?"). Of course, there are dozens of official right-wing versions, as well.

That is one form of the contemporary pseudoblog: the tool of a political party or issue organization (pro.lifewithchrist.com).

Another genre is the "blog" put up by an msm outlet. These things are multiplying like mad, and newspaper websites are quickly mutating into blog collages, on specific subjects or driven by specific personalities.

Washingtonpost.com lists 25 "blogs." The New York Times has taken to publishing guest columnists such as Sarah Vowell and Stanley Fish in blog format. The Los Angeles Times keeps you abreast of the news and gossip from Vegas, for example, with a blog. Time magazine has signed up long-time blogger Andrew Sullivan, among others.

These are best thought of as slightly reformatted msm opinion columns and news stories.

A genuine blog, it seems to me, is unedited; it is someone specific. It's probably riddled with typos, etc., but it represents the unadulterated voice of an individual rather than the flattened prose and predictable range of opinions of a bureaucracy.

But an msm pseudoblog is ultimately subject to all the same constraints as the rest of the publication. The publication is just as suable there as anywhere else, and so everything questionable is going to have to get through the legal department. Cautious and conscientious professionals edit these things, and the "bloggers" know the constraints before they write.

These faux blogs can be good; I very much enjoy Joel Achenbach's at washingtonpost.com, for example. But even their liveliness is just a trifle disturbing. They are attempts to simulate a freewheeling, idiosyncratic voice and point of view. They take the little frisson that accompanied the first efflorescence of the blog and try to clone or replicate it in a context that is anything but free.

And just let's not deal with commercial flogs, beautifully designed sites with bold entries such as "Giorgio Armani Croc-Embossed Tote & Embellished Satin Halter." Amazon.com has instituted "plogs"; there, Meg Wolitzer is telling us that she's almost finished Ayelet Waldman's "Love and Other Impossible Pursuits," "which is really smart and tender." Nike and Microsoft blog. At the same time, there is more and more advertising on actual blogs (intapundit.com: "HELP RE-ELECT SENATOR GEORGE ALLEN"), which can be expected to have the effect of toning down content.

Perhaps this is the fate of all media -- indeed, all signs of life or communication -- bludgeoned by bureaucracy, corporate, organizational, and governmental. I think it's fair to say the blogosphere is liable to come under FEC and FCC regulation, the traditional death rattle of any form of human expression.

This particular communication revolution is over. But if you felt like pondering with me, I don't want merely to leave you melancholy. After all, every repression is the occasion of the next resistance, and human communication is essentially uncontrollable. So bring on the next idea.

so the good thing about doing anne rice's books on stage with songs by elton john and bernie taupin is that it might keep these people occupied and hence briefly insulate the rest of the culture from their productions. the bad part is...well, it's all bad parts after that.

perhaps the deepest, most profoundly moving moments in brokeback were the scenes of jake "selling big equipment." anyway, every second, every frame, every idea (true, there was only one) was entirely devoted to political correctness. if stalin was still making movies, he'd have mad bm. anyway, i actually agree with the political agenda. only i object to being subjected to an endless string of cliches, or a mechanical reversal of cliches, in the service of any agenda. maybe you should try to tell a story. maybe you should construct a cogent argument. maybe you should think of these as different operations.

i think what i admired most about brokeback mtn was the characters' passive acquiescence in their own misery. of course, the fact that neither of them could utter an english sentence may have reduced my empathy. but that of course was the key part of the movie's brave, yet entirely mechanical, reversal of stereotypes. i'm working up a script for brokeback 2, just because i don't understand how the heath ledger character escaped being beaten to death.

proud mary

we all owe a debt of gratitude to mary o. mccarthy. she did what she was absolutely morally obligated to do. there has never been a better leak.

victory in iraq

finally. the cia has been following this guy around for weeks with a video camera, and they finally got him on tape accepting bribes/smoking hashish/screwing a she-male: all at the same time!

home economics

it's cute to think, as hu meets with bill gates and advertises starbucks, that china and the us have precisely the same economic system. that's cute because one is allegedly based on the principles of marx, the other of adam smith. both are massively regulated entrepreneurial capitalist communism. china probably has a few more of its cf and ceos who are nominally government officials, but that's just a little matter of titles.

god and me

so, like i was talking to god the other day and i kept asking Him questions, like: how could you make me into crispin sartwell? why are people dying in darfur? did you really disapprove of new orleans? etc etc. but i couldn't get His attention. he just kept rolling the damn dice, yelling shit like "baby needs new clothes!"

still free

check it out: writing "still free" on airforce 1!

so i finally saw "brokeback mountain" last night, and here's my review: slow, dull, depressing, pretty, and pervasively didactic.

yow.

yow!

it never really occurred to me to  commit suicide with an ax , if that's what this guy was contemplating. still, you got to admit it'd be pretty manly.

chad

you know, if the motive for intervening were actually humanitarian, we'd have selected the sudan for regime change. obviously.

for the first time in a while, i'm in the latimes this morning.

plamethrower etc

surely, surely, this presidency is disintegrating.

cynthia, cynthia

a bit late on this, but though cynthia mckinney may not be the brightest bulb in the lamp store, you have to acknowledge that, as a general principle, slapping cops is a good idea, and we can all learn from her bold spirit of courage and independence.

adopt-a-warzone

and this will entail expunging every trace of the human beings who once lived here.

"Cleanness  must  become a cult respected by all Chechens," Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov told Interfax on Sunday.

it is what it is

it's not hard to say what's wrong with the basic philosophical position that our language produces our reality, evidently now a universally acepted truth. you end up yapping for years about questions like: is it amnesty? is it civil war? assmonkeys. it is what it is.

evil, evil

The conservative magazine Human Events recently published a list of the most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries, as selected by "a panel of 15 conservative scholars and public policy leaders." It was a predictable list, including tomes by conservative betes noirs Marx, Keynes, Kinsey, and Freidan. It was also wildly inaccurate. Herewith, the real and true list, as compiled by a panel of dozens of important experts, all of them myself.

(1) A.A. Milne, "The House at Pooh Corner"

Charming. Yet in its slight insipidity lurked the horrific possibility of the Care Bears.

(2) Roger Tory Peterson, "A Field Guide to the Birds"

"Mein Kampf" for bird watchers.

(3) Lao Tzu, "Tao Te Ching"

This book was so destructive that it literally wasn't written in the 19th or 20th centuries.

(4) Crispin Sartwell, "The Art of Living"

No one ever read this book. But after it came out, the world continued to crumble into a meaningless nightmare of pain.

(5) James Joyce, "Ulysses"

Don't ever let anyone tell you that this is a good book.

(6) Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, "Sympathy for the Devil"

This book was literally so destructive it wasn't even a book.

(7) Irma Rombauer, "The Joy of Cooking"

My mother's "bible."

(8) novels

There were way too many novels in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

(9) Ken Bain, "What the Best College Teachers Do"

They subvert your children's intellects with a bunch of subversive blabber, that's what.

(10) J.K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban"

First I had to read this twice to children. Then I dropped it on my foot and had to see the podiatrist.

The failure of corruption

Crusader Mike is profoundly, deeply cynical about human nature. Perhaps that is due to my own feet of clay, that come to mid-waist -- still, I get convinced at times that someone is at least what they seem; and then I am disappointed. Sadly, I think that is happening with John McCain.

Ariana Huffington considers the McCain conundrum this week and I think she is right on target. He's convinced that the only way he can be president and cause the changes he believes we need to make is to soften his stance toward things that dismay and disgust him. Referring to Bush's recent speeches as "fairly eloquent" is a really telling example. When McCain embraced Bush in 2004 over Kerry, he looked pained and disgusted every time Bush touched him. Given the Bush inability to craft a coherent sentence, McCain's "fairly eloquent" is not damning with faint praise; it's damn near Steven Colbert Level Presidential Worship given where he started from.

His brief appearance on The Daily Show where Jon Stewart went after his rapprochement with Jerry Falwell was possibly hopeful.  When Stewart asked him if he was "freakin' out on us and going into crazy base world," McCain smiled and said yes. Now, McCain offered to invite Jon to Liberty University for the commencement speech so that he could sit next to Falwell as McCain spoke to the students. If I were Stewart, I'd call him on it. And, take a camera crew...

I am reminded of the line from A Man for All Seasons, where Thomas More learns that his friend and former protege Richard Rich has turned informer and betrayed him in return for appointment as governor of Wales. "Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales?"  

judas is cool

what's funky about the "gospel of judas" is that it indicates that there was supra-moral or "beyond good and evil" stage or movement within christianity, in which the greatest sins are conflated with the greatest moral heroism. there are such movements and moments in many religions. an interesting analogy would be tantrism, which prescribes moral transgression, including various sexual activities (but at its most extreme: murder, even), as means to enlightenment.

mit vs caltech

this is a great story.

civil rights

i think we ought to stat thinking of the "illegal immigrant" problem as a straight-up civil rights deal: comparable to the black rights movement of the fifies and sixties. the prejudice, dehumanization, exploitation are as palpable. focus for a moment on the fact that you're dealing with actual human beings. we need immigrant martin luther kings and malcolm xs. or maybe we have them already; we just can't speak their language, and they are subject to deportation.

um, no

this is pathetic. so i guess we assume that the gospel accounts are true, and that there was this dude walking around the mideast performing miracles. then, having gone with that, we try to dissolve the miracles with naturalistic explanations: he, um, floated across the sea of galilee on a block of ice, but it kind of looked to idiot peasants like he was walking on water. of course he turned water into wine: but probably this had to do with a well that was dug into a wine cellar etc. look. either believe the whole kit and caboodle, or assume there is nothing to explain. idjit.

Combining evidence of a cold snap 2,000 years ago with sophisticated mapping of the Sea of Galilee, Israeli and U.S. scientists have come up with a scientific explanation of how Jesus could have walked on water.

tap tap

if you don't think they've already been doing this, you're even sweeter and more innocent than i thought you were.

illegal, perhaps (perhaps not) but hardly unusual. but what needs to be shown is that what bush/cheney were leaking was something they had good reason to think was false, or valerie plame's job description.