Susan Boyle on "Britain's Got Talent" -- subsequent success and co-optation by the music industry tabled for the moment -- is probably the most uplifting media event the world has seen in the last several years. I might be biased, since "Les Mis" was the first musical I ever listened to, saw, and remains seminal for me as a person. And yet -- the fact that this middle-aged woman could walk out there with the confidence she had, to the complete disbelief of Piers, Amanda, and Simon who, very much in reflection of the sort of world in which we live, dismissed her immediately solely on the basis of her appearance -- is irrefutably a poignant rejoinder against the sort of jaded cynicism that I and so many among my generation affect.
Because the fact of the matter is -- and this seems to be so rare among at least the disaffected 20-somethings to whose cohort I too often belong -- that was a moment that couldn't be... cynicized. When she belted out the lyric "I had a dream my life could be/So different from this hell I'm living," that wasn't a jaded, polished singer just rehearsing lines. That was a woman who's lived something similar to Fantine's hell singing her heart. It's heartbreaking to watch and insanely inspiring. More importantly, it's completely genuine. There is zero in the way of shit that is affected during that entire performance.
What Susan Boyle did and has since done is confirm the essential human-ness of we humans. What makes us who we are, at our best, is an ability to be naive. Naturally, this ability, too, has been exploited, parodized et al many many times over the brief course of our history. Irony has sort of become its own religion among my generation, but it shouldn't be. Sincerity, the capability to feel and feel deeply -- these are what make us who we are, and are not to be fucked around with. It's rare that a media blockbuster affords the chance to celebrate that sort of innocence, nowadays at least. The Daily Show, 30 Rock, Colbert, Parks and Rec -- all trade (quite brilliantly) in professional cynicism. Yet, I can't watch this video without getting all verklempt, and for a good reason -- this may sound odd, but Susan Boyle provides an antidote to cynicism, and a desperately needed one.
Interjection first: Susan's version was likely the most inspiring, but Ruthie Henshall kicked the living hell out of that song, to a degree I, as a decidedly non-musician of any sort, can only wonder at: http://bit.ly/Y3RvP
Interjection the second: /clearlywatchinglesmisyoutube videos but holy fuck Lea Salonga is so talented.
4.22.2011
Nine Types of Light
New TV on the Radio album = very good. Return to Cookie Mountain remains the album of theirs that stopped me in my tracks and was the iPod reboot of choice once takeoff was done. In 2006, at least. Nine Types seems a little bit more pop accessible than Dear Science, which was inevitable. The entire album is... down? Every track seems elegiac, which is probably appropriate for this strange era in which we live -- and TV on the Radio has, to their credit, been on top of what America didn't know it felt, though it felt it deeply.
"Will Do" is a genuine pop hit. My inner elitist recoiled a bit when (I think it was) Stan Levy referenced it on SportsCenter the other night, but it's a fantastic song and deserves some popular play. This band is too good to keep locked up in the skinny jeans and ironic or not moustaches crowd. I'm sort of adamant about this -- if you have a moustache and you're under thirty, chances are you're an insecure douche. "Will Do" seems genuine, some sort of plea from a wounded heart capable of actual feeling and actual pain.
That aside, "Return to Cookie Mountain" with its opening refrain of "I was a lover before this war" and "Dear Science" are most likely the best musical perspectives on this extremely weird era from say 2003-2011 in which my generation has come of age. Come of age meaning that we understand pop culture and what it means, we understand politics and the shell game it is, and we understand that money is fungible and is at the end of the day what separates the skins from the shirts. It's a fucking strange era to be youngish in.
All of that aside, and take this for the first record review it is -- Nine Types of Light is good.
"Will Do" is a genuine pop hit. My inner elitist recoiled a bit when (I think it was) Stan Levy referenced it on SportsCenter the other night, but it's a fantastic song and deserves some popular play. This band is too good to keep locked up in the skinny jeans and ironic or not moustaches crowd. I'm sort of adamant about this -- if you have a moustache and you're under thirty, chances are you're an insecure douche. "Will Do" seems genuine, some sort of plea from a wounded heart capable of actual feeling and actual pain.
That aside, "Return to Cookie Mountain" with its opening refrain of "I was a lover before this war" and "Dear Science" are most likely the best musical perspectives on this extremely weird era from say 2003-2011 in which my generation has come of age. Come of age meaning that we understand pop culture and what it means, we understand politics and the shell game it is, and we understand that money is fungible and is at the end of the day what separates the skins from the shirts. It's a fucking strange era to be youngish in.
All of that aside, and take this for the first record review it is -- Nine Types of Light is good.
4.21.2011
Elif Batuman on writing
Awesome essay by Elif Batuman, author of The Possessed (which is an excellent book), about the life of a young writer, how it feels to be caught for the first time in the whirlwind of having published a bestseller, and asking Jonathan Franzen for weed at the National Book Critics Circle awards.
4.18.2011
The Mortenson Debacle
I have to admit, I haven't been following the growing furor over what 60 Minutes and Jon Krakauer allege to be severe factual errors and downright fabrications in Mortenson's super-mega-best-selling... humanitarian memoir (?) Three Cups of Tea that closely, nor have I actually read the book. So I don't really have much to say about the specifics of the case -- although Krakauer's 78-page expose is available as a .pdf at Byliner Magazine (I'm going to try to squeeze it in at some point this evening).
What I do find interesting about the whole thing, though, is 1) how eerily it resembles the James Frey fiasco a few years back with regard to his "memoir" of recovery from drug and alcohol addiction A Million Little Pieces; 2) how the social ritual of fame/fall from grace/mea culpae/rehabilitation/resumption of fame (hell, even Frey is publishing again) is so ingrained into our entertainment culture (and yes, this book counts as an artifact of entertainment culture); and 3) the desperation of the publishing industry to find the next big thing to shoot to the top of the bestseller list -- no matter how implausible the story -- so long as it's a page-turner, and tells a story that is (pick an adjective) heartwarming, uplifting, inspirational, profound, etc. Side thought: do publishers ever vet "too good to be true" stories?
Of those, I think 2) is probably the most interesting, as it's a phenomenon that seems never to die. Every time one of these stories comes along, the entertainment media falls all over itself to shame the individual responsible, knowing full well what course the story will take, and exactly how efficiently they'll be able to make bank off it. It's a pattern of exploitation exploiting exploitation -- in this case, media (amplified more than ever by its "social" variety) exploiting Mortenson's exploitation of his sources, audience, publisher, and donors in order to create this lurid spiral of publicity that will end up serving both the media and -- in the end, provided he plays by the rules -- Mortenson, while sucking the rest of us into a simulacrum of an ethical lesson about artistic integrity. Entertainment propagates entertainment all under the guise of a misplaced moralism. The media gets paid, Mortenson doesn't really suffer anything in the end, and the rest of us get to chatter about each step of the process, from downfall to renewal.
The real "lesson," if there is one, is to take one's art (broadly defined) seriously enough to practice it with integrity in the first place.
Addendum: It's also worth mentioning that Krakauer went on 60 Minutes last night with an already-prepared 78-page article ready to be posted the next day. Even the accusers are complicit in the publicity game. (h/t Kathleen Schmidt @bookgirl96 for pointing this out)
What I do find interesting about the whole thing, though, is 1) how eerily it resembles the James Frey fiasco a few years back with regard to his "memoir" of recovery from drug and alcohol addiction A Million Little Pieces; 2) how the social ritual of fame/fall from grace/mea culpae/rehabilitation/resumption of fame (hell, even Frey is publishing again) is so ingrained into our entertainment culture (and yes, this book counts as an artifact of entertainment culture); and 3) the desperation of the publishing industry to find the next big thing to shoot to the top of the bestseller list -- no matter how implausible the story -- so long as it's a page-turner, and tells a story that is (pick an adjective) heartwarming, uplifting, inspirational, profound, etc. Side thought: do publishers ever vet "too good to be true" stories?
Of those, I think 2) is probably the most interesting, as it's a phenomenon that seems never to die. Every time one of these stories comes along, the entertainment media falls all over itself to shame the individual responsible, knowing full well what course the story will take, and exactly how efficiently they'll be able to make bank off it. It's a pattern of exploitation exploiting exploitation -- in this case, media (amplified more than ever by its "social" variety) exploiting Mortenson's exploitation of his sources, audience, publisher, and donors in order to create this lurid spiral of publicity that will end up serving both the media and -- in the end, provided he plays by the rules -- Mortenson, while sucking the rest of us into a simulacrum of an ethical lesson about artistic integrity. Entertainment propagates entertainment all under the guise of a misplaced moralism. The media gets paid, Mortenson doesn't really suffer anything in the end, and the rest of us get to chatter about each step of the process, from downfall to renewal.
The real "lesson," if there is one, is to take one's art (broadly defined) seriously enough to practice it with integrity in the first place.
Addendum: It's also worth mentioning that Krakauer went on 60 Minutes last night with an already-prepared 78-page article ready to be posted the next day. Even the accusers are complicit in the publicity game. (h/t Kathleen Schmidt @bookgirl96 for pointing this out)
Michael Sheehan on The Pale King
Michael Sheehan [who knows what he's talking about (I never know what to do with multiple links when there aren't enough to match each word... "knows" and "about" seemed the two most authoritative choices) when it comes to DFW] has a really good and thoughtful review of The Pale King up at The Rumpus.
Hopefully, if I can accomplish at least a few of the things I have in store for today, my reward will be cracking it open tonight. It's sitting there with that king of clubs on the cover staring at me.
Hopefully, if I can accomplish at least a few of the things I have in store for today, my reward will be cracking it open tonight. It's sitting there with that king of clubs on the cover staring at me.
Anne Frank Discovers Her Clitoris and Who Knew?
I had heard vaguely that the version of The Diary of Anne Frank that we all read in eighth grade had been censored, but I really didn't know in what way, or what content had been expurgated in the name of upright American values.
Turns out -- and go figure -- the excised sections include a passage in which she contemplates her genitals and discovers her clitoris. This would seem to be a normal process for any fifteen-year old, and although it's entirely unsurprising that moralists terrified of sex would censor that passage, and it helps humanize a young girl who for many has become a sort of reified personification of the struggle between "innocence" and evil.
Turns out -- and go figure -- the excised sections include a passage in which she contemplates her genitals and discovers her clitoris. This would seem to be a normal process for any fifteen-year old, and although it's entirely unsurprising that moralists terrified of sex would censor that passage, and it helps humanize a young girl who for many has become a sort of reified personification of the struggle between "innocence" and evil.
3.18.2011
Citizen Radio
Just discovered these guys, but if you're in the market for a free and people-powered progressive radio program, check out Citizen Radio. It's produced by Allison Kilkenny and Jamie Kilstein, who are both hilarious and incisively insightful (I just wanted to go for the rare "i" alliteration). Trying to figure out where I'm going to find room for them in my daily media binge, but it'll definitely happen. They get cool guests like Rachel Maddow, Matt Taibbi, Amy Goodman, et al. Woot!
2.17.2011
People Power
Headed to Madison atm to protest Scott Walker's assault on public workers. Quick point though -- the right's assault is on the concept of publicality itself -- their idea, utopia even, is one in which corporations hand down the terms always already. Egypt was a setback, Bahrain, Tunisia, Libya, can be blamed on brown people. Individuals asserting their rights is not okay. Revolutions must be monitored and controlled -- the people might fuck up and assert their own rights. And if that, god help us.
2.11.2011
Short point on Egypt and the Need for Independent Media in the USA
I'll keep this brief, since I think most of the wonderful individuals active in this community are well aware of the desperate need in the United States for non-corporate media. But having been glued to the amazing coverage by Al-Jazeera English and Democracy Now! pretty much for the last two weeks, it's a point that I can't emphasize enough.
Al-Jazeera English, currently available in Ohio, Burlington, VT, and Washington, DC is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to understand the Middle East on its own terms -- something which cannot be stressed enough, given the Islamophobia that currently permeates our political culture, and, by extension, the stenographers of that culture which get their paychecks from the mainstream media. As brilliant as Richard Engel's reportage has been from that region, and as cogent and incisive (as always) Rachel's commentary has been on the last two weeks in Egypt, nothing can top reportage and commentary that come from individuals steeped in the history and culture of that region. Frankly, the only reason Al-Jazeera English isn't more widely available in the U.S. is due to direct and unabashed Islamophobia among our more listened-to "pundits."
It's no secret that Americans are, in general, woefully underinformed of the histories, cultures, and mores of the rest of the world. Empire has its privileges, after all, and the prism through which the rest of the world is reflected to us on our terms is one of them, I guess. But the world is changing -- it always has been, and to keep our heads in a hole is no longer acceptable. Keith Olbermann's move to Current TV is exciting and most welcome -- Current is an independent channel that simply goes places and reports events in ways no mainstream channel does. I distinctly remember watching their report on the anti-gay bill in Uganda, and learning more in that hour than I had from any other mainstream media source, TV, radio, or print.
And finally, the members of this community really should support the heroic work that Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, and Anjali Kamat have done covering this crisis for Democracy Now! Democracy Now! presents what's best and most important about independent media in this country -- listener-supported, fact-based news that does not fear the powerful or those with vested interests -- a courage that corporate media, by definition, cannot display. Their coverage of the events in Egypt has been thorough, fair, and frankly, riveting. Kouddous is an Egyptian, and was on the ground on January 26th, one day after the protests began against the Mubarak regime. Not a corporate media transplant trying to catch up on facts and flavors particular to those events, but someone who, though he left Egypt when he was three, knows that country and that region inside out. Goodman is simply the best journalist out there -- listen to her every day, and the amount of information you will learn about the world is just staggering.
In all -- and again, this isn't a surprise to DailyKos members -- the best information available comes from independent media. Support them, follow them, because journalism is in danger, and its continued relevance is no less evident than it was in Addison's England.
Request Al-Jazeera English in your town here.
Support Democracy Now! here.
The Christian Taliban
Digby is right on so many things, it feels criminal to link just to this post, but her point that extremist Christianity in this nation has as its primary goals well, quite a bit similar to other authoritarian religious extremists around the globe. The term "Christian Taliban," while hyperbolic, is out of bounds if and only if the extreme wing of evangelical Christianity shares nothing or very little in common with Islamists in Afghanistan. That test is not met.
2.04.2011
This Will Not Save Them
Via the New York Times, this will not save publishers. What matters isn't the "accessibilty"or the "convenience" of the e-reader. What matters is the compelling nature of the story. The entire e-reader business remains a scam designed to prop up the top-down nature of corporate rights when it comes to creative licenses. Narnia is enchanting at 10 regardless of the format -- it's the story, not the licensing format.
1.28.2011
The Shell Economy and Crisis Theory
Came across this excellent essay by Benjamin Kunkel of n+1 on the London Review of Books blog, reviewing Marxist scholar David Harvey's two most recent books, The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism and A Companion to Marx's 'Capital.' I haven't read any Harvey, though I'm certainly going to check him out after reading this essay. Harvey, formally trained in geography, has become a leading scholar of "crisis theory," which examines turbulence, instability, and ultimately, well, crisis in the global economy through the prism of Marx's critique of capitalism as laid out in Das Kapital and the Grundrisse.
My familiarity with Das Kapital is basic, but Kunkel's main point -- that mainstream and even "progressive" accounts of the economic crisis of the last three years rarely cross the left boundary demarcated by economic Keynesianism and political left liberalism -- is trenchant and telling. Now it seems to me that there are any number of reasons for this -- in the American media, at least, the rightward shift of media and politics in general occasioned by corporate monopoly over the main media channels -- but the question is relevant. We hear the crisis framed in technocratic terms, according to which regulations were lax, oversight dysfunctional when present, individual incentives misaligned with corporate/social incentives, etc. But we rarely hear any question of whether or not the crisis was not a dysfunction of capitalism, but rather a feature. I'm skeptical as to whether that conversation can take place in the United States outside of explicitly socialist channels on the fringe, but perhaps it's time to ask those questions again.
My familiarity with Das Kapital is basic, but Kunkel's main point -- that mainstream and even "progressive" accounts of the economic crisis of the last three years rarely cross the left boundary demarcated by economic Keynesianism and political left liberalism -- is trenchant and telling. Now it seems to me that there are any number of reasons for this -- in the American media, at least, the rightward shift of media and politics in general occasioned by corporate monopoly over the main media channels -- but the question is relevant. We hear the crisis framed in technocratic terms, according to which regulations were lax, oversight dysfunctional when present, individual incentives misaligned with corporate/social incentives, etc. But we rarely hear any question of whether or not the crisis was not a dysfunction of capitalism, but rather a feature. I'm skeptical as to whether that conversation can take place in the United States outside of explicitly socialist channels on the fringe, but perhaps it's time to ask those questions again.
1.27.2011
Nabokov right after all
This is pretty rad -- Nabokov is one of my favorite writers in any language, and his passion for butterflies is well-documented... but who knew that he developed a theory to explain the evolution of an entire class of butterfly species, and that more than 30 years after his death, contemporary genetics has vindicated him? Nazdarovya, Vladimir.
1.25.2011
SOTU
And... whiff. On the whole, Obama's rhetoric is good as always. He's invariably eloquent, but this entire frame of "winning" and "losing" misses the point. It's not a matter of beating a 22-year-old Beijing University with the hammer of a 22-year-old Columbia University student. When he talks about bringing electricity to rural areas and creating jobs that didn't exist before... those were active government programs. Anything like the TVA that would be proposed today would give the entire right a collective heart attack... not that it didn't then, but at least FDR had the cojones to point out that the collective good benefits by the arbiter of the collective good -- yeah, the G-word.
The broader point though, is that you can't talk up high-speed rail in terms of "competitiveness" when you have governors in major states responding to extremists to veto such projects. You can't credibly discuss lowering corporate tax rates when you've kept the top rate solid and whine about the deficit. It's just not credible.
Then again, that would require rationality in these here United States, and we know that's not happening any time soon.
The broader point though, is that you can't talk up high-speed rail in terms of "competitiveness" when you have governors in major states responding to extremists to veto such projects. You can't credibly discuss lowering corporate tax rates when you've kept the top rate solid and whine about the deficit. It's just not credible.
Then again, that would require rationality in these here United States, and we know that's not happening any time soon.
SOTU
here comes the immigration thang, good shot for a relevant, non-centrist, non-boilerplate point. just say it, barack -- building a fence is stupid and a waste of money. just say it, pleeeeease.
K Hill's
who doesn't love a dictator in his 80s? go ahead and legitimate that regime. http://bit.ly/ihObtX
New Green Revolution?
Mobarak going down to dispossessed Egyptians would be the world's headline. This is worth watching.
And now Egypt
Holy shit, this might just be a transformational moment in the Middle East -- not one engineered by Condi, mind you, but based on genuine populist outrage. I tweeted this earlier, but that's at least 3 regimes that have been threatened/brought to their knees by new technology. Not to fellate social media -- it is and remains a matter of profit -- but wow. This would not have happened 15 years ago in a different era.
Great Interview with Feingold
Plenty of folks more eloquent than I have discussed the fact -- and frankly, it's a fact -- that we're living in the second Gilded Age. This great interview from ThinkProgress highlights an interview with former Wisconsin Senator and progressive hero Russ Feingold. Check it out.
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