DagSeoul: Positions, Populations, Punk, Poetics

This is a hilarious attempt at theory by a right wing pundit who implements a discussion of liberal relativism and root causes. Perhaps we should be discussing “root causes” and “liberalism” because both are important and problematic topics for US discourse about almost anything historical and political. But this is a rather glaring miss.

FOXNews’ “The Five” is produced to look like it’s a panel of intellectuals speaking intellectually about American Life. Actually, it’s a lame attempt at the same shtick Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow attempt to pull off on MSNBC. There are no intellectuals on corporate news channels; there is no intellectual discourse. It’s strictly prohibited. Dig the sexism in the video clip, too, as they focus on one woman’s response. You have to watch until the end to see how they end it with a misogynist sneer.

OK, well Marco Rubio has now weighed in on the suggestion that we should stop offering Muslim students Visas. Go figure. After Boston, he’d consider it. This is how conservative capitalist mind works. Something bad happens that gets international recognition and then they decide to think about it, by which they mean to choose the most reactionary and least helpful options out of all possible options to publicly reflect on. Both the panel’s and Rubio’s responses illustrate—it’s without fail ALWAYS the way they think about social problems. It’s as if Rubio woke up and said, “Well, I guess NOW is the time to consider NOT granting VISAs to Muslim students. Makes sense, right?”

Rights or Freedoms*, for right libertarians and conservatives, is always in the negative. The Freedom FROM Muslims, in this case. Or, they’d say, the right to not have those hateful violent people around.

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*When conservative say rights, they mean to say “freedoms”. When they use the word “right” they are attending to their bullshit notions about natural law. When they use they word “freedom” they are attending to their bullshit notions about human law. They improperly use the two words interchangeably, conflating the concepts of human and natural laws.

dagNotes: on The Mindy Project and Girls

I’m not going to write a super long post about this, but Praise and I have been enjoying The Mindy Project and talking about it. She suggested I write down a couple of things we’re both thinking about this morning during a 30-minute subway ride across town.

It’s very cool to see a new show co-written, co-produced, and created by a woman of color who also stars in the show. I don’t want what I’m writing here to be seen as reducing Mindy Kaling’s work as a contrast to Lena Dunham’s show, Girls, which I’m going to discuss below. Kaling’s program stands on its own for many reasons. I wish Praise would write about her thoughts. I don’t like the idea of speaking for her via the blog, so I’m not going to do it. Much of our conversation and enjoyment is not about what I’m going to write below. On the other hand, what I’m getting at below is important. Contrasting the two shows and their stars offers us a way to see how media appeals to viewers and authenticity.

While riding the subway this morning, we talked about how The Mindy Project is really quite audacious and warm. There is a concern and care about all the characters on the show that we both appreciate. Two things:

1. So much of hip television insists viewers and writers are in on a meta-narrative joke about the production itself that claims we can critically think about media and culture, in general, while watching television. This permits a rather cold representation of kinds of individuals as characters that actors inhabit. Hipster culture always constructs a rhetoric that forgives itself for its failures, the biggest being its reliance on traditional oppressive state apparatuses to tell stories. To be a Girls fan is to be an insider or a pretender to it and is to participate in the culture the show examines. In other words, the show forgives itself and others for the shitty and shallow behavior it pretends to make fun of. Let’s be honest, that is not comedy. It’s hip appropriation of a generic narrative that insinuates itself as a necessary part of culture. One must consume it to be a part of it. Moreover, Dunham, the show, and its fans imply, without actual evidence, that the insider culture is self-critical, self-examining, organic, and intellectual. They imply both the fans and production team populate a special liminal space organized above and around consumer culture. They are supra-cultural, shaping it rather than being shaped by it. The Mindy Project doesn’t bother with the pseudo-intellectual insider consumerism present in Girls and its fandom.
2. Girls insists, in every episode, that it’s both critical—that is both intellectual and smart—and authentic—Dunham is packaged as “the voice of a generation” creating a space for a collective of voices under-represented in conventional media. It’s one massive marketing campaign that white hipsters are only too happy to embrace and masturbate about. The fans are, after all, as self-loathing as the characters on their favorite show. The Mindy Project is not concerned with authenticity and identification. The writing and production are concerned with the narrative space its characters inhabit and the comedy that results as they interact within everyday situations.

I can flesh out the points above a little more, without a doubt. It’s not the simplest thing to write about. One thing is crystal clear. Because so much of hipster consumerism is wrapped up in authenticity and ironic consumption, it’s clear why a young, white woman would be picked to be marketed as The Voice of a Generation rather than a young woman who looks like Mindy Kaling. After spending two days watching the aired episodes for The Mindy Project it’s only too clear that, while Dunham’s talent lies in the market-wise production of her show and much less on her talents as a writer, Kaling’s talents are much more important to her success. Dunham occupies (I choose this verb for a reason) a role—a legacy—that was long-ago constructed for her to fill, a role women of color are traditionally prohibited from accessing because white women fit the demands of its representation with no effort. Kaling, in many ways, is being asked to prove her value on her own. She’ll have to exceed market expectations in a way Dunham never will.

I often wonder why white feminists can’t see appeals to authenticity are traditionally racist appeals.

This is a good summary of half of our conversation. Praise’s appreciation of the show led me to it and her admiration for it is a story I’ll let her tell. I am quite fond of the show, to be honest. I hope it’s picked up for a second season. 

recommended reading from public high-school teacher, Jesse Hagopian. follow the link and read the entire letter.

Dear Mr. Bill O’Reilly,

On election night, as it became increasingly clear that Mitt Romney was going to lose the election to Barack Obama, I watched Fox News host Megyn Kelly ask you, “How do you think we got to this point?”You responded by saying,

Because it’s a changing country. The demographics are changing. It’s not a traditional America anymore and there are 50 percent of the voting public who want stuff, they want things. And who is going to give them things? President Obama. The white establishment is now the minority. And the voters — many of them — feel that this economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. You’re going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama, overwhelming Black vote for President Obama and women will probably break President Obama’s way. People feel that they are entitled to things. And which candidate between the two is going to give them things?

It is my hope that a great artist takes brush to canvas to capture the contours of your furrowed brow when you uttered the words, “It’s not a traditional America anymore.” It was a look of depraved beauty that made my heart sing. Watching you, Mr. O’Reilly, before a national audience, realize that all of your racist lies and hatred could not change the fact that people of color exist and will not be bowed by your insane denunciations, was an inspiration to me and millions of others.

Yet, on one account, O’Reilly, you are utterly correct: Black people definitely do want “stuff” and “things” as you so eloquently put it. And I am one of them. To very loosely paraphrase the rap crooner of the West Coast, Warren G: I want it all, money, fast public transportation, fully funded public schools, Medicare for all, Social Security, an end to all wars, and every damn thang.

While you are right that Black people do want “stuff” and “things,” your paranoid fears (refracted through the racially outdated retina you use to view the president) that we will receive a cornucopia of benefits from President Obama is merely another thing about the election you incorrectly predicted.

dagNotes: what armed right-wing militant movement?

just watch how those soldiers are going to be referred to as anarchists and not as armed and racist separatists.

Scotland’s “impartial” media strikes again

thebhoywhowasntthere:

It’s interesting to note that the media has chosen to focus on Celtic manager Neil Lennon pointing and shouting at a couple of his team’s fans, which lasted for about two seconds, and not on the 40 or so self-confessed Rangers supporters who sat among the Dunfermline fans in the away end last night, waving Union Flags and Rangers scarves, and shouting abuse for 90 minutes. Nope, not a word on that, it never happened, but the video of the uppity Fenian bringing it all on himself will be on the BBC website for another month.

Not a big thing, but the latest in a long line. It’s also worth remembering the flak Lenny took in the press for his (pretty reserved) post-match comments after Dougie-Dougie-Gate, whereas the inflammatory comments made by Peter Houston after the same game received no attention. See also Terry Butcher on Saturday, and one of his players who Tweeted that Celtic play with 14 men. Nothing to see here, Declan, move along…

As long as we’re here, well done to the Green Brigade last night. I wonder what Mr. Traynor, Mr. Leckie and Mr. Keevins will have to say about the lack of atmosphere they created, with their completely unobjectionable and non-political chants?

I expect the silence to be deafening.

(Source: thebhoywiththearabstrap)

Flooding in Thailand

Please find some way to spend a little time thinking about the horrific flooding in Thailand right now. This is going to a horrible human tragedy. Get online and read a little about it. Find out how to help. Send messages to all your favorite media and ask why they are not telling the story.

History is longer than your bourgeois conception of it and its movement.

(slightly revised and edited at 0750)

Convenience. That’s what I’m reading about in articles published in mainstream and alternative journals and blogs about the Occupy movement(s). The general consensus is that the movement should be more diverse, more focused, more active. I recently read an author chiding the participants of Occupy Wall Street to pay attention to history. The author titled her blog, “Keeping it Real”. No shit. We have a new social movement and it’s hope is for organic and radical transformation of capitalist culture—in other words, vague, optimistic, idealistic, unfocused—and an article in the alternative media admonishes the activists to keep it real. It can’t possibly get more white, middle class and patriarchal than that. Well, on the same site, a blog bragging about “being there” when the Occupation began was published. We already have a cred check going on.

“Pay attention to history” is not what the authors actually mean. The authors mean “Hurry up, already, we want change now.” We want demands. We want action. We want it now: each stupid things for a writer to insist for a movement as an observer. After all, showing up and participating would preclude the need to write about the movement from a disctance and as an observer. And then there would be no need to make claims about reality, history, credibility.

I suggest the hipsters step back and realize that they’ll be old by the time anything useful happens. We’re not talking armed insurrection here. Americans will not experience Greece or Egypt or Syria. Know what I mean? We’re talking old-fashioned civil disobedience inspiring slow and determined transformation of public discourse about how we live our lives and about how our government should function. That’s the Occupy movement. It’s an insistence that we talk about how to implement reform. We simply don’t know. We do know we should and are finally acting on it.

I’m an anti-capitalist, so readers will know how I feel about a movement to reform capitalism. But that doesn’t mean I can’t participate and it doesn’t mean that I should dismiss the social action because I want the system it seeks to reform to fall apart. If we were paying attention to history, we’d be ready for a multi-generational effort to radically transform the way we legislate and think about social welfare, shared goods, labor, and the exchange of economic goods and services. 

But the stupid writing on Occupy, implementing a consumer’s construction of history and social movements straight out of a conservative civic’s textbook, is already bored with the movements. Fact is, the Occupy protests will dwindle as the weather grows cold and cops begin making mass arrests. At some point, we’re going to see the Occupy movement become something coordinated and more traditionally political. We’ll see a lot of action next year during the election season and the movement will struggle to keep the party’s from coopting it. If it outlasts the election, a year from now, we’ll be able to see what we have. As the movement learns to organize beyond its occupied parks and plazas, it will be able to distribute its grievances and demands in a more efficient manner to more people, but it will not look like it did last week. As the occupiers struggle to reach consensus about movement, it’s ridiculous for writers to insist movement has already occurred.

Nothing wrong with asking people what reforms they seek. To insist a movement develop, organize, educate, distribute, and reform society in three months is unfair and unreasonable. The last successful populist movement in the US worth looking at would be from the late 19th Century. It’s grievances and demands took decades to materialize as useful reforms. If we look at a more recent and smaller, less successful though infamous, populist movement, we could examine socially conservative populism. It’s been most active since the 70s, with roots in the late 50s, and didn’t find political strength until the late 80s and didn’t see real attempts at radical reform until the Contract with America in 1994. That failed. They’re still working at reform, and now they have a GOP who has attempted hundreds of times within the last several years to institute radical reforms.

We need to consider how democracy works: slowly and according to consensus. Without the mortgage crisis and the incredibly unstable economy, let’s admit it, this new movement with its opportunity for the birth of an economic justice movement would not have occurred. The bourgeois media—this includes alternative writers implementing traditional media—needs to lay off the occupiers and do its job, report the news of the events that occur within the movement. The media needs to stop insisting the movements produce results.

Who’s Responsible For All of This? (Hint: It’s not the people rioting.)

The next idiot who writes in exaggerated disgust that the people rioting are “responsible for all of this“—this being the devastation, the disorder, the chaos, the havoc—should be asked if they have ever given two shits about the devastation, the disorder, the chaos, the havoc his or her government daily wages on foreigners, laborers and the poor all over the world.

In this case, the British government and police are responsible for all of this. As are the British citizens who idly observe. As are all of us, really. Riots certainly don’t have anything to do with notions of innocence and guilt. Riots are chaotic expressions without order, as I have explained in prior posts. You can join in, or get the fuck out the way.

Pointing fingers while watching televised images of violence between commercials is absurd.

Anyway, it’s a stupid statement to make. Don’t let people get away with it.

Trad Media, White Power & Order

We’re already seeing traditional media attempt to establish an order to the rioting. In other words, attempt to explain that the riots were actually organized. This false and externally constructed order will likely be applied to poor and non-white youths using technology to organize the attacks on police and business.

We should get out ahead of these stories, which are already appearing. I’ve already read about rioters using Twitter & Blackberries to outwit cops.

TV DINNER

Watching a riot on TV is rather ironic, don’t you think? I mean, all the normalized violence that a TV represents, from its production and distribution to its purchase, is incredible.

All that violence coheres in an object in such a transparent way that we’re shocked when we see looting through it. It’s no accident that the common image of looting is a man running through a broken shop window with a TV.

Anti-Bicycle Man Resigns

Penis is much more  popular than poverty these days. An asshole liberals loved to love has to resign because all of a sudden everyone began to realize that he, like all the other professional politicians, doesn’t really give a shit about Americans. He actually is just a repressed self-promoting capitalist. Apparently, working out everyday with the Republican closet-cases in the Congressional gym. When they’re not insulting each other in front of cameras, they’re underneath it all together—drinking, eating, exercising, and masturbating.

Now Rachel Maddow will have to work really hard to show how hypocritical Republicans are. Extra hard. You might ask why a woman with a platform like that doesn’t non-stop talk about the poor, the imprisoned, the killed, the tortured. Doesn’t each night remind her fans about the everyday life for the majority of Americans. You might wonder. But liberals want to talk about politicians. She has to cover the wealthy, legacy-ed elite. She has to cover the sheen of power, not anything having to with everyday lives of millions of people suffering the result of libertarian capitalism.

But she’s a liberal, isn’t she. She thinks the liberal social order of the market can equally work for everybody. It’s like a cult, isn’t it? I’m rather fed up with all of this gaming of the vote, the media, the government: the public discourse. Why would anyone want to be “left of center”? It just isn’t going to change anything. (Sorry for the liberal bashing.)

I’ve kind of had enough of people “telling the truth” about power. It’s all a part of reaffirming the oppressive ideological apparatus. “Telling the truth” in the public sphere usually amounts to little more than bargaining with the power structure. You cannot convince anyone who would vote for Michele Bachmann, but you really cannot convince an Obama fan either. And this represents a consensus in the majority of voters that represents the best interests in the status quo.

No bargaining. Only confrontation. No peace. Only conflict. That’s always on my mind. Confront, conflict, disrupt. Insist on it.

Anthony Weiner illustrates what politicians are. That’s the story. He’s a perfect symbol. And we’re forced to deal with a media that wants to ignore that symbol and/or rehabilitate it.

Politics is Killing US

It’s really very simple. As long as we’re talking about Republicans, Libertarians, Obama, Democrats, et al., we’re not addressing people. In a society cultivated from a principle that insists working together achieves greater freedom and happiness, it behooves us to act on behalf of people who have little or no representation.

Whenever we talk about free markets, we’re actually talking about regulation. When we talk about Federalism, we’re talking about regulation. Libertarianism is regulation, too. That’s the stupidity of American Libertarians. Turns out they’re as coercive as it gets: they’ve long ago figured out that their pet concept, the free market, has to be legislated. It needs a warrant because there’s nothing natural in capitalism.

Moreover, the political discourse focused on individual politicians and their parties is a tactic that permits us, as a nation, to excuse our ignorance about the plight of real individuals, families and communities across the United States, and around the world. More people are concerned about Anthony Weiner’s reputation and Andrew Breitbart’s alcohol-feuled, manic vendettas, for example, than direct action in local communities.

How do I know this? Because voters elected politicians who have the nerve to make it more difficult for poor people, students and minorities to vote. And it’s now pretty much illegal for workers to strike and collectively bargain in many regions across the US. The electorate is white power and capitalist mad. The white, male, ownership class is once again the enshrined ideal for a diverse population that has never, quite frankly, had access to such status.

Where’s one politician—well, besides Bernie Sanders—who’s out there speaking out about this? Not one. They are, every one of them, careerists and apologists. I’m still fuming over the criticism of Cornel West’s righteous rebuke of President Obama’s work. It’s as good a sign as any lately that media is organized for the benefit of the wealthy elite, their corporations and the politicians who, whether they intend to or not, end up working for them.