November 2008
The Producers
Eight hours ago Steve Shaviro wrote the following on Twitter:
The great Jewish film about the Holocaust is not Schindler’s List, but rather The Producers (original version).
I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. At first it didn’t make any sense, but the more I think about it, the more brilliant it seems.
Terror in Mumbai Leaves 102 Children Dead
Bernard Chazelle:
The terrorist killers who took 102 innocent lives, all under the age of 1, have been identified. They are called malnutrition, dysentery, and respiratory infections. Indian authorities expect more deadly attacks in the days ahead. About 700 children are born every day in Mumbai: 34 of them will die in their first year — only 2 of them if they lived in France. “Which only shows,” said Friedman, “that India is 17 times flatter than France.”
Globalization has worked wonders for India: child mortality is on the rise and still higher than in that other economic powerhouse: Bangladesh. Despite economic growth averaging 9%, four in every 10 children in India are malnourished.
The comments section for the post is kind of annoying, but abb1 makes a good point, too:
Why, terrorism is a symptom of something, and high infant mortality is definitely a symptom of something. And they are probably symptoms of the same thing, except that nobody seems to care about the infant mortality. And what’s wrong with pointing this out?
The Deadly Jester
The New Republic has a great essay on Zizek:
The cover of his book The Parallax View reproduces a Socialist Realist portrait of “Lenin at the Smolny Institute,” in the ironically unironic fashion made familiar by the pseudo-iconoclastic work of Komar and Melamid, Cai Guo-Jiang, and other post-Soviet, post-Mao artists. He, too, expects you to be in on the joke. But there is a difference between Zizek and the other jokesters. It is that he is not really joking.
It’s great to finally see someone decrying the threat Zizek poses to liberalism. All too frequently he slips by the radar under the guise of ironic postmodern humor. This distracts many vigilant liberals—but not Adam Kirsch—from understanding Zizek’s true—deadly—purpose. But it may be too late.
Of course Kirsch is right, but not for any of the reasons he thinks he is.
Via Adam Kotsko.
The Assault on Mumbai
Tariq Ali on the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai:
Why should it be such a surprise if the perpetrators are themselves Indian Muslims? Its hardly a secret that there has been much anger within the poorest sections of the Muslim community against the systematic discrimination and acts of violence carried out against them of which the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in shining Gujarat was only the most blatant and the most investigated episode, supported by the Chief Minister of the State and the local state apparatuses.
Add to this the continuing sore of Kashmir which has for decades been treated as a colony by Indian troops with random arrests, torture and rape of Kashmiris an everyday occurrence. Conditions have been much worse than in Tibet, but have aroused little sympathy in the West where the defense of human rights is heavily instrumentalised.
On that note, too, the action-packed coverage in the media (particularly, CNN’s “Terrorism in India!”/Quantum of Solace coverage) is completely preposterous. Not to say that acts of terrorism ought to be celebrated or anything like that, but it’s unfortunate that the kind of coverage we’re subjected to is listening to ex-FBI consultants ramble on about what the proper procedure is for securing evidence in a crime scene, all as a thinly veiled effort to promote their various private defense consulting firms.
Decrying the media for promoting broad, unintelligent, half-assed coverage is something of a common place on the blogosphere, but would it really be that difficult for a network to, you know, do some real journalism? This might entail, for example, focusing on how the terrorist attack impacts the structure of wealthy, urban “space,” of which the Taj Hotel functioned as the epitome of, against public/poor space directly outside the area surrounding Mumbai. Instead we get an endless repeat of the hostage count and how many U.S. nationals may or may not be impacted by the attack, which then allows the media to conveniently segue into a pathetic series of human interests stories.
Via Matthew Yglesias.
$7.7 trillion dollars
Remember that old post comparing the bailout cost, then projected at $4.28tn, to various other large financial undertakings? Well, it was wrong, but not because the estimated costs were too high, but because they were too low. Bloomberg reports that the latest figure is just under $8tn! (Via Lenin.)
Criterion Collection Streaming Festival
You can watch several ad supported movies from the Criterion Collection for free online if you sign up at The Auteurs. Extremely cool, and you don’t even have to worry about ruining your upload ratio…
Cab Calloway & Betty Boop
Cab Calloway sings “St. James Infirmary Blues” in an old Betty Boop cartoon:
Sean Penn Talks to Chavez and Castro
Paddling all the way across the Gulf Coast and North Atlantic Ocean to single-handedly rescue the benighted masses from tyranny and oppression with drunken sidekick Christopher Hitchens and some other guy, wily Liberal Activist Sean Penn chronicles his recent trips to Venezuela and Cuba in The Nation.
I thought this was a great quote from his conversation with Fidel Castro:
With our dinner finished, I walk with the president through the sliding glass doors onto a greenhouse-like terrace with tropical plants and birds. As we sip more wine, he says, “There is an American movie—the elite are sitting around a table, trying to decide who will be their next president. They look outside the window, where they see the gardener. Do you know the movie I’m talking about?” “Being There,” I say. “Yes!” Castro responds excitedly, “Being There. I like this movie very much. With the United States, every objective possibility exists. The Chinese say: ‘On the longest path, you start with the first step.’ The US president should take this step on his own, but with no threat to our sovereignty. That is not negotiable. We can make demands without telling each other what to do within our borders.”
Anyone taking any bets on how long it will take the National Review’s “The Corner” blog to post a thorough and scholarly “deconstruction” of Hal Ashby’s film—ghost-written by the Sandanistas! All of them!
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
Terry Pinkard has the complete copy of his new translation of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit available online. Check out the double-sided version (English on the left, German on the right). (Via Larval Subjects.)
Frightening Joe the Plumber Video Urges You to Switch to Digital
Joe says it best:
America, we’ve never had a transition of this magnitude in the United States. The DTV transition affects the public safety of the United States, so it’s imperative that all Americans come together and learn all we can about the DTV transition…
It’s time to throw away that analog TV you’ve been clutching on to for the past three decades in order to defend the homeland. This is change all of America can believe in! (Via Wonkette.)
Paul McCartney Defends Experimentation
A short response article to a recent Guardian critique of McCartney. In the first piece, the author wondered why McCartney had a need to prove to the audience that he was experimental by releasing an electronic album and a sideways sounding Beatles jam. McCartney replies:
The thing about experimenting is that it’s good fun. It’s interesting to do something you don’t do normally. It takes you into places you didn’t plan to go to. That’s quite an interesting aspect. Linda always liked to go for a drive and try and get lost. Most drivers don’t want to get lost - but she’d like it. And that idea of losing your bearings, as long as it’s not in deepest Africa, is something I like. I’ve always liked it. Because when you don’t always know what’s going on, that’s when you can really surprise yourself.
Two Adam Green Songs
He’s Adam Green, the Jewish James Dean.
Hugo Chávez: Stalinist Totalitarian Part IV
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez faces setbacks after yesterday’s regional elections (he won 17 out of 22, although it should be noted that two of the regions that voted against him contain roughly half of the country’s population), as the New York Times bravely chronicles through its stunningly even-handed prose. But clearly this must all be part of a grand, elaborate plan to usurp democracy in the name of his Evolving Revolutionary Ideology.
I wonder, too, how much of the Venezuelan tax-payers’ money has recently gone toward bailing out wealthy speculators and large financial institutions.
Bourgeoisie
I’d like to suggest placing a moratorium—maybe even a ban—on the noun “bourgeoisie,” as well as the adjectival form, “bourgeois,” and any other possible configurations that I haven’t thought of yet. Whatever usefulness this word has ever had seems to have been completely effaced by the fact that it has become synonymous with trite, yuppie college banter over cheap wine and discount organic food. It has that certain hint of ’60s faux radicalism, what with its vague allusion to class conflict and perhaps even the dreaded specter of Marxism.
It seems that the only group of people—the only class!—that uses the word “bourgeoisie” anymore is the bourgeoisie itself. On the other hand, you almost never hear anyone use the words “proletariat” and “proletarian” anymore. It’s an asymmetrical relationship: a surplus of the former, a lack of the latter. I wonder if this is because we’ve blown up every site of production in our action films?
So, to recap: eliminate the use of the word “bourgeoisie,” revive the word “proletariat”!
No Cognitive Mapping
Jodi Dean:
The economic news continues to be unfathomably grim… It’s also confusing. Every few days there is news about billion dollar bailouts. Today it’s Citigroup—too big to fail. And why did 700 billion become the magic number? The Obama reconstruction plan is estimated to cost that much.
The language is always that of immediate crisis and chaos—if X doesn’t happen right away, “it would create chaos.” I guess they keep repeating that line because it works—it gives more money to the banks. More and more and more and more. Apparently more than 10 trillion dollars of wealth has been wiped out. Where did it go? It seems to have something to do with imagination land.
I don’t think I understand it either.
The View From Wall Street
Robert Reich on the difference between bailing out GM and CitiGroup:
Nonetheless, Citi is about to be bailed out while GM is allowed to languish. That’s because Wall Street’s self-serving view of the unique role of financial institutions is mirrored in the two agencies that run the American economy — the Treasury and the Fed. Their job, as they see it, is to keep the financial economy “sound,” by which they mean keeping Wall Street’s own investors and creditors reasonably happy.
(Via Josh Marshall.)
Networks vs. Structures
Dr. Sinthome at Larval Subjects has been on a role recently. I’ve wanted to post links to pretty much everything he’s written this week, but I’ve narrowed it down to these two posts on networks vs. structures.
The first post is a link to a paper detailing the various ways in which Zizek and Badiou’s structuralism fails to adequately account for change, relying instead on the notion of a “void” within said structure as the sight of revolutionary politics. Sinthome’s Deleuzian criticism of structuralism is that such a position cannot offer any rigorous insight into how a movement, or “collective assemblage,” might arise or what it might look like.
The second post is a more detailed explanation on what the difference between a structure and a network is.
Both are worth reading. I really like the idea of differentiating between structures and networks, but I’m still skeptical that a “network” offers any additional insight than a void within a structure might, i.e., I don’t know if I find it to be the case that Sinthome has demonstrated that a politics of the void is truly lacking in comparison. This might simply be a result of me having read lots of Zizek and no Deleuze (though I have a copy of Difference & Repetition sitting next to me, waiting to be read).
Obama’s Two Constituencies
Lenin:
To the extent that Obama has to offer something to his majority supporters, he tends toward vagueness, and is already under immense pressure to back off from anything specific. Corporate America is getting terribly worked up about the Employee Free Choice Act, a moderate piece of legislation that they are working to ensure will either be bottled up and killed or watered down to near vacuity. Obama’s efforts to ‘tweak’ the borderline criminal TARP plan includes redirecting some funds to help homeowners, while also protecting US auto manufacturers (to the chagrin of Gordon Brown). But so far the only concrete proposal is $25bn for the car companies. It is simply impossible to imagine that any ‘bail-out’ for working class households that gets passed will be remotely adequate. It will be better than nothing but, at best, like the modestly redistributive measures Obama has proposed, it will sweeten a lousy deal.
…The one advantage that the Left has now is that Obama needs his active constituents. He could not have won ‘blue-collar’ Pennsylvania as well as Jesse Helms’ old state of North Carolina without them, and he can’t necessarily repeat his success in 2012 without giving them something. So, there is an opportunity now to decisively shape the agenda of the new administration, precisely because their aim is to contain social movements and stabilise American capitalism. Silence and passivity at this point will simply be rewarded with condescending lectures, put-downs, attacks, and the occasional bit of flattery.
This reminds me of a blog post I read recently, although I now forget where, which argued that the liberal optimism about Obama being the next FDR ignores historical reality. FDR did not initiate the New Deal program out of the kindness of his heart, but in order to quell revolution during a time in which union membership was exploding and worker militancy was on the rise, with many joining the ranks of the CPUSA.
Nothing comes to my mind that might be even close to matching those kinds of circumstances in the present, but Lenin’s right to add that the majority of Americans who voted for Obama do want him to implement universal healthcare, do want him to expand the availability of education, and do want him to end the war in Iraq, and so if Obama wants to get re-elected in 2012 he has to, in some way, honor these obligations, even if they do end up getting watered-down as a result of his administration bowing to corporate lobbyists.
Teen Commits Suicide with Live Web Audience
Biggs was not the first person to commit suicide with a webcam rolling. But the drawn-out drama — and the reaction of those watching — was seen as an extreme example of young people’s penchant for sharing intimate details about themselves over the Internet.
Was seen by who? I don’t see the problem as young people sharing intimate details with others. I see the problem as one young man who committed suicide. Another problem is the development of this into some sort of media culture incident.
As a matter of fact, this obsession the media gets with individual cases of personal drama is far more common and disturbing than “young people’s penchant for sharing intimate details about themselves over the internet.” Think about how certain cases get turned into serial dramas.
For example, Jean-Benet Ramsey and Lacy Peterson are victim celebrities– individuals who had no interest to the public until they became the victims of gruesome murders. After they had been killed, they were developed into archetypes by local and national media so that they fit into generated story lines.
We are meant to believe these murders and suicides are indicative of national problems. This is probably a defense mechanism. As a culture we have a hard time accepting random acts of violence, derangement, or death. We become obsessed with motives and storytelling to try to squeeze some sort of moral out of personal tragedy because we refuse to accept the possibility of meaningless violence and chaos.
(Isn’t Batman supposed to punch me now?)
Spectacle with Elvis Costello
Check out the guest list for the forthcoming Elvis Costello talk show. I’ve heard he performs with many of the musical guests after the interview section. It should be very interesting.
01- Elton John
02- Lou Reed + Julian Schnabel
03- Bill Clinton
04- James Taylor
05- Tony Bennett
06- The Police
07- Rufus Wainwright
08- Kris Kristofferson, Rosanne Cash, Norah Jones, John Mellencamp
09- Renée Fleming
10- Herbie Hancock
11- She & Him, Jenny Lewis, Jakob Dylan
12- Diana Krall
13- Smokey Robinson
@+@ ALWAYS ≠ %
You’ve seen this– RIGHT?
DJIA Holiday Savings: Now 44% Off!
In less than 2-years, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gone from it’s all time high of 14,164 to today’s value of 7,990. In other words, it has lost 44% of it’s value.
At least social security savings aren’t in the market.
Unions and the Collapse
Matthew Yglesias debunking the conservative meme about how unions are responsible for bringing down the auto industry:
I would add that it’s hardly as if German carmakers are operating in the conservotopia of unregulated, union-free labor markets where cars are made by eleven year-olds earning minimum wage. IG Metall is a powerful union, and German autoworkers are well-compensated. What’s more, if you go back a few decades to a time when the “Big Three” were more successful, you’ll see that the UAW contract was actually more generous to the workers back then. The reason for all this is that the car business is, by its nature, a promising field for union activity.
Check out the rest of the post for more info.
The Devolution of Mickey Mouse
Here is a fantastic Guardian slideshow with commentary by Neal Gabler on the creation and devolution of Mickey Mouse, marking the 80th year of the character. It makes a great case study in creativity and popularity induced erosion.
$4.28 trillion dollars
The amount the federal government has spent bailing out corporate America as a result of the latest financial crisis, according to CNBC. That’s more money, adjusted for inflation, than all the money spent on World War II. Check out their horrifying slideshow of what else it’s worth more than. Some examples include: The New Deal, the Vietnam War, the Panama Canal, and all the money ever spent on NASA.
The Treasury Asset Relief Program (TARP), aka the infamous “$700 bn. bailout,” is itself worth more than any other U.S. government endeavor dating back to the Louisiana Purchase. Via Think Progress.
A Victory in Defeat
Dr. Sinthome:
In his introduction to the work of Mao, Žižek writes,
The true victory (the true ‘negation of negation’) occurs when the enemy talks your language. In this sense, a true victory is a victory in defeat: it occurs when one’s specific message is accepted as a universal ground, even by the enemy. (Slavoj Žižek Presents Mao On Practice and Contradiction, 17)
In what sense is this to be understood as the true victory? After all, the simple fact that the enemy is using your “language” does not count as much of a victory if the structure of power remains the same. However, perhaps we can understand Žižek’s point in terms of making alternatives available, of creating possibilities within the social space that were not there before.
I think to some extent Žižek is also making a meta-point about his use of Lacan: even if, say, he loses on some specific theoretical point of contention, in a way he already succeeded by getting his opponent to “speak Lacanian.”
Capital: The Hegelian Subject
Benjamin at No Useless Leniency:
One way to return to the question of capitalism and agency posed by the work of Deleuze and Guattari is via the work of Chris Arthur, Roberto Finelli, and Moishe Postone. Each argues that Marx analyses the operations of capitalism as instantiations of the Hegelian dialectic. This means that Capital is the (Hegelian) Subject. To summarise Chris Arthur’s useful discussion:
- capital subsumes singulars under the universal of value
- capital is a self-valorising system of accumulation
- capital is a concrete universality
Check out the rest of the post for a discussion on Capital and agency.
Use Your Illusions
Žižek offers hope for those of us burdened by cynicism. He also touches on genocide, farming and the importance of awakening from our dreams. (Tom Waits might counter, “you’re innocent when you dream” and Zizek may reply, “Shut up you’re not real!”)
I wanted to be the one who links to a Žižek article for a change. I even went to Wikipedia to copy the funny Z’s.
Obama’s victory is a sign of history in the triple Kantian sense of signum rememorativum, demonstrativum, prognosticum. A sign in which the memory of the long past of slavery and the struggle for its abolition reverberates; an event which now demonstrates a change; a hope for future achievements. The scepticism displayed behind closed doors even by many worried progressives – what if, in the privacy of the voting booth, the publicly disavowed racism will re-emerge? – was proved wrong. One of the interesting things about Henry Kissinger, the ultimate cynical Realpolitiker, is how utterly wrong most of his predictions were. When news reached the West of the 1991 anti-Gorbachev military coup, for example, Kissinger immediately accepted the new regime as a fact. It collapsed ignominiously three days later. The paradigmatic cynic tells you confidentially: ‘But don’t you see that it is all really about money/power/sex, that professions of principle or value are just empty phrases which count for nothing?’ What the cynics don’t see is their own naivety, the naivety of their cynical wisdom which ignores the power of illusions.
…It is unlikely that the financial meltdown of 2008 will function as a blessing in disguise, the awakening from a dream, the sobering reminder that we live in the reality of global capitalism. It all depends on how it will be symbolised, on what ideological interpretation or story will impose itself and determine the general perception of the crisis. When the normal run of things is traumatically interrupted, the field is open for a ‘discursive’ ideological competition. In Germany in the late 1920s, Hitler won the competition to determine which narrative would explain the reasons for the crisis of the Weimar Republic and the way out of it; in France in 1940 Maréchal Pétain’s narrative won in the contest to find the reasons for the French defeat. Consequently, to put it in old-fashioned Marxist terms, the main task of the ruling ideology in the present crisis is to impose a narrative that will not put the blame for the meltdown on the global capitalist system as such, but on its deviations – lax regulation, the corruption of big financial institutions etc.
Song 320: Festering Gospels & Costume Jewelry
I just got my new telecaster and I’ve been abusing it with my dumb fingers. I especially like the way this verbose idiocy turned out, so I’m going to link it here.
I’ve had enough of you false prophecy- With your festering gospels and costume jewelry- Your incest and your nonchalance- Your commercialized pragmatic finger-pointing Idealism-
“Planet Finance”
This Niall Ferguson article published in the December 2008 issue of Vanity Fair is worth reading for anyone interested in learning a little bit more about economic history and the current financial crisis, like finding out what a derivative is and how it relates to the real estate market.
The one thing I found peculiar was that Ferguson, apparently a leading proponent of counterfactual history, never mentions the word “capitalism” throughout the entire article, despite the fact that it tracks the historic development and evolution of crises from some “obscure” point in the Middle Ages to the present. He then chooses to euphemistically refer to late (virtual/financial) capitalism as “Planet Finance,” some far, far away, imaginary place that may or may not exist.
My hermeneutical advice for our readers is to read the article and whenever he uses the stupid, meaningless phrase “Planet Finance,” substitute in “capitalism.”
(Via 3QD.)
Appearances Matter
Matthew Yglesias quotes this recent Megan McArdle piece, “Keep bailing…,” in The Atlantic:
Not that being a CEO is easy, or that they don’t do valuable work; I venture to say that 100% of the commentators who think that running a major company is a matter of riding around on the corporate jet and stealing from the workers and shareholders would be surprised at how quickly the company sank under them if they were thrust into that cushy sinecure.
Yglesias writes in response:
I think that running a major company is largely a matter of riding around on the corporate jet, etc., etc. But at the same time, I’m 100 percent sure that if you put me in charge of Proctor & Gamble, the company would sink like a stone. But that’s because there’s a big element of bluff to the whole thing…
…It’s just not the skill of beating the market through canny stock-picking, it’s the skill of tricking people into thinking they have that skill. That a lot of the people succeeding in business are sort of frauds (needless to say, other people get rich by inventing stuff that turns out to be incredibly lucrative and that’s a whole different sort of thing) doesn’t detract from the fact that the most successful among them are good at being frauds and that most people couldn’t do nearly as well.
Worth linking back to this article by Michael Lewis in Condé Nast Portfolio.
Dick Cavett Beats a Dead Horse
Yet, it’s an eloquent beating.
A woman in one of Palin’s crowds praised her for being “a mom like me … who thinks the way I do” and added, for ill measure, “That’s what I want in the White House.” Fine, but in what capacity?
Do this lady’s like-minded folk wonder how, say, Jefferson, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, et al (add your own favorites) managed so well without being soccer moms? Without being whizzes in the kitchen, whipping up moose soufflés? Without executing and wounding wolves from the air and without promoting that sad, threadbare hoax — sexual abstinence — as the answer to the sizzling loins of the young?
Nostalgia
Adam Kotsko:
One nice thing about the auto makers asking for a bailout is that we’re getting a return to all the harrowing tales of how the evil labor unions raped and pillaged US industry. If they hadn’t gotten too big for their britches, Flint might still be a vibrant city rather than a ghost town with a criminal and former car dealer as mayor. Oh, those greedy workers! When will enough be enough?! When will they stop cutting into the bosses’ profit margins and forcing them to relocate?
Growing up in Flint, I of course heard stories like this constantly. The basic message: Unions did good things in their time, but they overreached, meaning that we were all screwed in the long term. The assumption seems to be that the owners’ short-sighted pursuit of profit was just a brute fact, but workers should’ve known better than to try to get the best contract they could get — i.e., workers should’ve been looking out for the owners’ best interests rather than their own. Psychologists have a name for this particular style of thought: Stockholm Syndrome.
After living in Michigan for about three or four years now and with all of the sturm und drang surrounding the auto industry over the past several decades (but especially now), I’ve heard these same ridiculous anti-union claims on more than one occasion. The problem that I have with the bailout is that it seems to be an extension of this absurd logic that bosses just naturally act out of greedy self-interest, which is a good thing, but workers must constantly sacrifice for the industry and never demand higher wages, because that would be unproductive and unpatriotic.
The bailout seems to reward the idiotic decisions made by the bosses, who’ve mismanaged these once successful companies into the ground in under four decades, by turning the auto industry into state capitalist zombie corporations. The auto industries should be allowed to fail and declare bankruptcy. Any of the potential bailout money that would be used to save the companies (in the billions) ought to instead go towards providing welfare for the workers who would be potentially laid off as a result. This seems to be far more equitable, which is also why it probably won’t happen because it would be like declaring “CLASS WARFARE”!
What’s Left After Obama?
Simon Critchley has a new article on Obama in Adbusters that’s much better than his crappy reading of Dreams From My Father. Here’s an excerpt that I thought was really well put:
This is perhaps the tragedy concealed in the events of the late evening of November 4th: as I walked to the subway at about 10 p.m. a vast United States flag was being unfurled in Union Square; there were spontaneous parties in the streets of my part of Brooklyn, and many others can testify to much more exotic, collective experiences. This was a moment when people, no longer cowed by the power of the state and held in check by the police, suddenly become aware of their power and the power of their activity, which is nothing less than the activity of liberty. At such a moment, no force can stop them and a demonstration or street party erupts into being. This is collective joy. There is the potential for a political moment here, but it is a potential whose actualization is denied by the very representative process which is being celebrated. At the moment when people become aware of their power through the activity of the vote, they are simultaneously rendered powerless by the representative process. Liberty slips from the hands of those who have suddenly become aware of its power. In the face of such human fireworks, it is not surprising that Obama cancelled the firework display planned to accompany his victory speech. The message is clear: ‘The victory is yours. But when you’ve finished celebrating, dancing and crying, return to your homes and be quiet. Thanks to you, the business of government is ours and we will take it from here. We’ll let you know how it goes. P.S. Please don’t take popular sovereignty too literally’.
(Via I cite.)
“What Is Wrong With Everyone?”
It’s such hell here especially at night. I don’t get any sleep practically at all nowadays … The people in my dormitory are foul. Goodness they are horrid, I don’t know how anyone could be so foul. They throw slippers all night long or hit me with pillows or rush across the room and hit me as hard as they can, then beetle back again as fast as they can, waking up everyone else in the dormitory at the same time. I still wish I could come home. It’s such a hole this place!
—Prince Charles, From Gordonstoun, circa 1964
(Via the Guardian.)
Auto Industry Bailout is Annoying on All Levels
Check out Jim Newell’s snarky and in-depth outline of the latest series of bailout foibles over at Wonkette. Be prepared for major ethical quandaries, as well as being overcome by intense hatred for the Treasury, Congress, and everybody else.
Rise to the Moment
The New Republic:
The greatest risk for Democrats is not that Obama will try to do too much, but that their terror of failure will lead them to waste an historic opportunity. This is not a Clintonian moment. It is more like the moment Lyndon Johnson inherited in 1965, or the one Franklin Roosevelt faced in 1933—a chance to reshape American government. The Democrats have it in their grasp to master the great problems of public life if they can summon their collective nerve. The only thing they have to fear is fear itself.
As all of the other progressive bloggers are chanting ad nauseam: Obama ought to seize this historic opportunity not to reassert traditional Clintonian political commitments by “triangulating” policies and hence conceding enormous political capital to the discredited GOP, but to redefine the terms upon which the entire political debates are framed. As soon as Obama has succeeded in framing the debates on progressive grounds, redefining such terms as “center” and “bipartisan,” in a way he will have already won and whatever cabinet choices he picks will be peripheral in this regard. (Via TPM.)
The End of Wall Street’s Boom
Michael Lewis, author of Liar’s Poker, has a great write-up on the recent financial crisis. Here’s the introduction from his latest article featured in Condé Nast Portfolio:
To this day, the willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grownups remains a mystery to me. I was 24 years old, with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and bonds would rise and which would fall. The essential function of Wall Street is to allocate capital—to decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadn’t the first clue.
In a way his story is both wildly unbelievable and about what you’d expect from Wall Street. (Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
The First 100 Days
All of this talk about “First Hundred Days” is really irritating, but here’s a cool graphic by GOOD Magazine:
(Via Matthew Yglesias.)
The Electronic Wasteland
Global capitalism at work.
Keep On Screaming About Larry Summers
Jonathan Schwarz at a Tiny Revolution:
In 2000, when Summers was Treasury Secretary, he made a very specific claim: that from 1980-2000, developing countries had “moved to the market and seen rapid growth in income.”
The problem is this simply wasn’t true. The countries that had most “moved to the market” had had far worse income growth from 1980-2000 compared to 1960-1980. Soon afterward Summers was asked about this at a think tank event, and he used all his brilliance to tap dance around for five minutes without answering the question.
Make sure Larry Summers doesn’t play a role in a future Obama administration: sign this OpenLeft petition to oppose him!
The Failure to Theorize Obama
As if it wasn’t already abundantly clear from this weeks series of posts, I think it’s obvious to any person who thinks of themselves as a member of the political “Left” that Obama is not one of them. He seems like a great guy and will hopefully be a decent president, despite all of the things Bush has done to irreparably fuck up the country, but Obama could only be considered a “progressive” in a very loose sense of the term. I forget what blogger made this comment, but his politics seems to evoke Jimmy Carter more so than FDR.
Nevertheless it seems like some theorists on the Left have taken a “daring” contrarian position regarding Obama, believing his supporters to be wild-eyed fanatics who see him as a harbinger of a utopia-in-becoming and/or a suspicious messianic figure whose election heralds the dawn of post-political Christian salvation. I can’t think of a single Obama supporter that I know of or have spoken to, even the die-hard DailyKos-visiting ones, who seem to harbor any of these straw-man political fantasies. Clearly, Obama is a charismatic political figure, but isn’t there something about politicians that is supposed to make them charismatic? And although it seems that Obama’s campaign generated intense enthusiasm for electoral politics, it’s also the case that he only scored a mere percentage point more of the youth vote (as a percentage of total voting) than Clinton did.
Anyhow I only wrote this post to make fun of two…
Corporate America Gears up for Labor Battle
Now that we’ve all finished celebrating Obama’s victory, it’s time to start concentrating on the real battles that lay ahead. The Financial Times of London reports:
Corporate America is preparing for a landmark political battle with the new Obama administration and a Democratic Congress over proposed labour union reforms, while expressing concerns about the direction of trade policy, healthcare and a range of other issues.
The business community has stepped up its oppositon to the union-backed Employee Free Choice Act, which Mr Obama has said he supports. It could revitalise the US labour movement by enhancing the ability of unions to organise.
(Via Lenin’s Tomb.)
The Office: Customer Survey
It was dark, funny, subtle, and completely relatable. This was the best episode of the last few seasons. Definitely a return to the longing tone of Season 2 and the original British show. The Office can be disappointing at times, but this is the sort of episode that redeems it, proving that it has an amazing writing staff and great acting.
Theme Time Blog Post: Elections, Part 3
Had McCain-Palin somehow won, this was going to be the election night video, with the secret phrase being “Barrack Obama lost.”
Jack Bruce on Led Zeppelin
Jack Bruce, the vocalist and bass player for Cream, in a recent interview:
“Everybody talks about Led Zeppelin, and they played one fucking gig – one fucking lame gig – while Cream did weeks of gigs. Proper gigs, not just a lame gig like Zeppelin did, with all the [vocal] keys lowered and everything.
“We played everything in the original keys. [Becoming animated]: Fuck off, Zeppelin, you’re crap. You’ve always been crap and you’ll never be anything else. The worst thing is that people believe the crap that they’re sold. Cream is 10 times the band that Led Zeppelin is.”
Interviewer: That’s a bold opinion.
Bruce: “What? You’re gonna compare Eric Clapton with that fucking Jimmy Page? Would you really compare that?”Interviewer: To be fair, they’re different kinds of player, aren’t they?
Bruce: “No! Eric’s good and Jimmy’s crap. And with that I rest my case.”
Ouch! I think I agree that Eric Clapton did more with a Guitar than Page and Cream was a much more innovative group that built a groundswell for “heavy” rock out of nothing. I don’t think Page is “crap,” he’s just not in the same league as the big three rock guitar expressionists, who used their instruments to craft unique and powerful sounds with real feeling and combined that with technical prowess. Those three are of course in no particular order…
Eric Clapton
Jimi Hendrix
Jeff Beck
(Yeah, I know Page plays on this too.)
Page…
The End of the GOP Ticket
I feel bad for John McCain. I think he’s a great person who’s done great things. On the trail he had to concede some of his McCain-ness (I’d like to avoid that other M-word which became meaningless as soon as the whole GOP started to embrace it) and I definitely don’t agree with him on most policy issues.
But, he was the best Republican candidate in my lifetime, and maybe the last Rockefeller Republican the GOP will run for a long time. Unfortunately he ran against the best Democratic candidate in a lifetime.
His running mate on the other hand… you know the drill.
And when McCain and Palin split up in Arizona Wednesday, the personal differences were stark.
McCain drove himself home in a Toyota sport utility vehicle. Palin’s departure was a grander event. She left with an entourage of 18 family members and friends and a Secret Service detail, heading to the airport in a motorcade stretching more than a dozen vehicles, flanked by a dozen more cops on motorcycles.
Hope?
Maybe not so much. As Mike Davis put it:
Second, after the brief Woodstock of an Obama inauguration, millions of hearts will be broken by the administration’s inability to manage mass bankruptcy and unemployment, as well as end the wars in the Middle East.
Trying to Bury Her
Pretty great to finally hear all of the dirty details from inside the McCain campaign about Palin. Check out this Fox News interview with Carl Cameron, where he reveals that Palin apparently thought Africa was a country and didn’t know which countries were involved in NAFTA:
On the odious subject of Sarah Palin:
The Obama campaign was provided with reports from the Secret Service showing a sharp and disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October, at the same time that many crowds at Palin rallies became more frenzied. Michelle Obama was shaken by the vituperative crowds and the hot rhetoric from the GOP candidates. “Why would they try to make people hate us?” Michelle asked a top campaign aide.
What Next for the Struggle in the Obama Era?
Thoughts from Howard Zinn, Mike Davis, Tariq Ali, and a bunch of other prominent socialist thinkers on Obama’s victory and its implications for the future of progressive politics, workers’ rights, etc. Definitely worth checking out.
Nina Simone on Freedom
Previously unreleased footage of Nina Simone put out today:
Bob Dylan on The Election
“I was born in 1941,” he said, a wavering sentimentality in his scratchy voice. “That was the year they bombed Pearl Harbor. I’ve been living in darkness ever since. It looks like things are going to change now.”
If Bob says so, it’s good enough for me.
PUMA’s Damn America, Move to Canada
Some of the most interesting reactions in last night’s election came from the supposed Hillary Clinton holdouts who chose personality over ideology and decided they just couldn’t vote for Obama. Here are last night’s comments from Hillaryis44, which quickly go from cocky to sad and then onto racist with the eventual cry of “God Damn America,” a phrase which was abhorrent to these bitter people, just weeks ago. I guess they hate America now because someone they think hates America was elected President, if that makes any sense.
They still claim his supporters must be puppets of the media. Even after an overwhelming victory, they refuse to accept the existence of rational support for Obama and denounce most of America.
These are the scum of the American Electorate. Swayed by personal attacks, rumors, and misdirection. Seemingly unattached to any real issues and more concerned with phony narratives and firsts than the direction of the country.
6 PM: Obama Simply Can’t Beat McCain.
moononpluto Says:
No way in hell is obama plus 15 in pa, noone ever has had it more than 5
wbboei Says:
What’s with Hillbuzz asking us all to “be nice” to Obots if Oliar loses??
Are they kidding me with that shit? I plan to gloat my head off and give the subtle O’liar finger to every bot I run across.
Right on. We will treat them with the same love and respect they treated us and hillary after
…
Chickens Coming Home to Roost
Matthew Yglesias:
Early word on the shape of the Obama administration:
- Chief of Staff: Jeremiah Wright
- Secretary of State: Rashid Khalidi
- Secretary of Defense: Bill Ayers
- Attorney-General: Bernardine Dohrn
- Secretary of the Treasury: Tony Rezko
Obviously, that still leaves a lot of posts to be filled, but the feeling is that given the current state of crisis in the country the new administration needs to act swiftly to fill the major jobs and these are them.
“America the Conservative”
So last night I tried really hard to write a post explaining how there needed to be two victories, one at the level of reality (being elected president) and one at the level of the symbolic. The latter ought to be understood in good-old Maoist terms as how we should “properly think” of this victory: what is its meaning? The forces of the Right, predicting a McCain defeat for some time, have already been mustering the resources to try and make it seem, as ridiculous as it sounds to those on the Left, that an Obama victory somehow “proves” the notion that America is a “conservative nation” at heart, whatever that means.
Anyhow, here is a great graphic David Sirota made over at Open Left, juxtaposing Newsweek’s most recent cover with the electoral map from last night:
Here’s a progressive take on the meaning of the victory.
(Via Matthew Yglesias.)
Taking It to the Streets
People are so happy with the election results that they’re marching through the streets here in Ann Arbor. I just ran from E. William St. to State St. on Central Campus. Probably over a thousand people marching and cheering for Obama. Apparently the rally is moving towards City Hall now, near Kerry Town. It’s really amazing. I haven’t seen anything like this since I went to the big D.C. Peace Rally in 2004 to protest against the Iraq War, but even that was really mixed. This is definitely something different.
The Meaning of an Obama Victory
Apologies for this post—the spirit here in Ann Arbor is one of optimism and, particularly, drunkenness. It’s comfortable for us to congratulate ourselves on an Obama victory, on a world-historical moment in American history, but the path for a truly progressive victory has not yet achieved itself. The next struggle will be one over the actual “meaning” of this victory: what does it mean that Obama has won? The Right will try and convert this Obama victory into an argument that American is, essentially speaking, a “center-right country.” It is up to the Left to appropriately engage in the struggle over this meaning, over what Hegel refers to as “objective Spirit.” The true struggle is before us, the next four years is open, despite being electorally settled tonight.
The far-Right insinuations of a vote for Obama being a vote for “socialism” already suggest a path for how the Left might confront this kind of a confrontation over the true “meaning” of an Obama victory: if Obama is “truly” a “socialist,” as the Right contends, then the meaning of an Obama victory is that American has officially condoned “socialism.”
An electoral victory is only the first step towards a truly progressive platform for the U.S.
Obama is the President
About ten months ago I was having dinner in Glasgow, Scotland. After the waiter realized my girlfriend and I were American, he asked us what we thought of the election. We told him we were Obama supporters. He told us that Obama will never be elected. “A black man will never be president in America. I like Ron Paul, though.” I just have to laugh.
Theme Time Blog Post: Elections, Part 1
Okay Wonkette, I see your election day theme time musical jamboree and offer more election music for your consideration.
First, Hank Williams, the father of the football guy, sings to us. Singing about You’re Gonna Change (Or I’m Gonna Leave), because who can’t agree with that?
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Next, let’s go with Lie To Me by Tom Waits, because, MY FRIENDS, YES WE CAN have federally financed enemas, fancy Neiman’s jackets and balance the budget, too.
And of course John Zorn’s magical Ballad of Hank John McCain, because an angry man goes blind and knocks his head against the wall.
For the undecided voter, some inspiration from Scott Walker’s 30 Century Man.
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Pipe Wrench Fight
YouTube goes Situationist.
This Fucking Election
One day! (Via Daring Fireball.)
Fight the Future
Screw the Economist’s “bold choice” to strike out against the grain by “daringly” choosing to endorse Secret Muslim candidate Barry Hussein “Bomber” Obama less than a week before the election. Wonkette’s editor-in-chief, Ken Layne, has just endorsed John McCain for President. Great stuff. (Via Wonkette.)
Patti Smith in Paris
I’ve had this article sitting minimized in my dock for a day now, and I just got around to reading it. Turns out Paris has both Patti Smith and David Lynch. We need to get them back. If there was a better reason to try to restore America’s reputation on the world stage, I can’t think of it.
The lights are turned up and the empty bar suddenly becomes busy. ‘Let’s see where we can go,’ says Smith. She suggests her ‘small and messy’ hotel room and we head for the lift. From behind a pillar someone tries to get her attention. ‘Hey, Patti! It’s David!’ And there’s the American film director David Lynch, with a smart black suit and a magnificent silver quiff, beaming. ‘How you doing, Patti?’ She smiles. ‘I’ve got a hell of a headache. It’s nice to see you. You look terrific.’ He is excited about the series of concerts she will be giving, starting the following night at one of the oldest churches in Paris, Saint-Germain-des-Prés. ‘It’s cool. I’ll see you there, Patti. Rock on.’
From Midwest to M.T.A., Pain From Global Gamble
Probably one of the best New York Times pieces I’ve read in a long time. The story is about global capitalism and the financial crisis, but what makes it interesting is that they chose to look at how two incredibly discrete cases, five Wisconsin school boards and the New York City M.T.A., were mutually impacted by risky loans from the same Irish bank. As they write:
The trail through Wisconsin, New York and Europe illustrates how this financial crisis has moved around the world so fast, why it is so hard to tame, and why cities, schools and many other institutions will probably struggle for years.
It’s one of those things that’s hard to believe. Given the incredibly “virtual” nature of our present stage of late capitalism, it’s striking to see the various ways in which the chaotic movement of capital, its restlessness and self-destruction, can actually harm people’s lives in very concrete ways, particularly people and/or entities that did not intend to engage in the kind of risk that they found themselves in as a result of capital’s constant ebb-and-flow between wealth creation and wealth destruction.
I wonder if we can even imagine what it would be like if Bush’s social security reform had passed.
(Via A Tiny Revolution.)
Jokerman
Jokerman done in a riff-rock style. Pretty cool stuff.
Sarah Palin and The Masked Avengers
How… what?
NY Times Book Review: “Revolution in Mind”
A new book on Freud that sounds interesting, although the review is somewhat mixed. The author is George Makari, whom I’ve never heard of before, but apparently he’s the director of Cornell University’s Institute for the History of Psychiatry, although I’ve never heard of that either. Anyhow this bit sounded interesting:
In “Revolution in Mind,” Makari argues that we’ve been blinded to the cultural reach of psychoanalysis by the magnitude of Freud’s stature and the magnetic pull or repulsion of his personality and theories. In Makari’s view, much contemporary discussion about the relevance of psychoanalysis is based on a false choice: “Freud as everlasting genius, or Freud as relic and fraud.” To Makari, the director of Cornell University’s Institute for the History of Psychiatry, this dichotomy is artificial. Instead, he argues, we should look to the rich, polyphonous context that gave birth to and was influenced by the analytic enterprise: “the culture of Kant; the assumptions of Geisteswissenschaft and a European classical education,” along with “evolutionary biology, positivism and Newtonian physics.”
Sounds similar to what I’m trying to do with my own thesis on Lacan.