Long Sunday

On the passing of William F. Buckley, Jr.

(X-posted to pas au-delà .)

Probably it would be better to say nothing, but as man is currently being lionized beyond belief...my family has a telling story about the real William F. Buckley.  So I'll tell it briefly in a minute.  Given the shameless right-wing bias of the obituaries in our SCUM these days, let's start with a few timely comments from this thread which will always bear re-emphasizing (my father–as it happens–made them more than twenty years ago)...the first from professional blog-commenter John Emerson:

Besides being wrong and right wing, Buckley made a lot of extremely unpleasant statements, especially about race.  His civility was limited to those whom he deigned to recognize as peers and who were willing to play his game, and did not extend, e.g., to queers like Gore Vidal.  Or most other people.

I'€™ve always thought of him as someone who provided a veneer of class for tacky people with unpleasant attitudes.  A bit like Hugh Hefner as a marketer of a cultural trend to people who needed training wheels.  His intellectual accomplishments seem to have been at the level of a generic second rank English or History professor who has a knack for popular writing.  Nothing very interesting, though better than Jonah Goldberg.  His affectation of aristocratic mannerisms was parodic.  Without his inheritance and his claque, he wouldn'€™t have been anything.

That should cover the motherfucker.

Get the man an editorial column, congressional seat, something...

I've voted for Ralph Nader several times,

Changes to the sidebar

Just  a quick note to say there's been a (not so) short column added for "past contributors" on the sidebar, which seemed an appropriate thing to do.  If by any chance we've missed someone or your name appears as other than you would prefer, please notify someone here immediately; thanks!  (A general question:  how accessible is this site to you?)

Also the blogroll has been updated.  See especially Meta-Philosophy, a new group project of John Protevi et al., including generous posts by John McCumber (whose work has probably been mentioned here more than once).

working days

(What follows is by Chris Okane, a graduate student in social and political thought.  His blog is here.)

As the punditry weighs in on how Hilary Clinton's inevitability became evitable, Clinton has responded in a number of desperate ways.  The brash attacks have got the headlines- as they always do- but I want to focus on her new commercial running in Ohio, as it is far more illuminating for those of us interested in the politics that underlie neo-liberal posturing.

I believe Clinton's new ad was introduced following her speech in Youngstown, a steel town, which has been particularly devastated by the effects of globalization.  This setting reflects the Ad's purpose:  to appeal to the traditional democratic base of lower income workers i.e. the working class.  But the content of the ad backfires because Clinton's attempt to identify with working class is made palpably ludicrous, first by her patronizing empathy, then by the way she identifies with their lives:

America is at Risk

Resigns in Dignity

Here's to the pursuit of a future beyond neoliberalism. Hear, hear.

"There's never been a paper bag for drugs. Until now." Or, What Is "Real Police Work"?

        (The following is by guest post author Rodney Herring, an assistant instructor in English and Rhetoric, whose weblog may be found here.)

What's up with the title The Wire? I mean, having a wire up provides the detectives with a kind of talismanic assurance, and the capacity to surveil their "targets" is fundamental to the Major Crime Unit's operations. Still, doesn't the title reflect an almost unsupported (and unearned) privileging of the police? The series is nearly unique and certainly daring in showing the ineptitude of the police, sometimes from external forces and sometimes from individual incompetence or corruption, so it's not particularly pro-BPD. Moreover, many of the episodes involve no wire at all, and plotlines such as the atrophy of the Baltimore port, the Stringer/Avon business/gangster showdown, and the Hopkins study of Tilghman Middle School all proceed smoothly with or without a wire. And yet, the show is called The Wire. Why?

That's one of the questions that has been on my mind since I began watching the series. Another has to do with what is far and away the most common evaluation I hear: "The Wire is the best television show. Ever." A couple of friends have muttered this dispassionately and a bit wearily, as though they've come to the conclusion (which they should have all along recognized as unavoidable) only after sustaining vigorous disputation from other fans. (One friend tried to sell the show to me by saying, "It's like Deadwood, but more relevant." Hmm.) In any case, at a certain point, I began to wonder about these people's judgments. Although I can't find any reason to say they're wrong, something still bothered me.

That point and that something roughly coincide with the end of Season 3. But I probably should have seen it coming, at least as early as this moment in All Due Respect (3.2):

Cinematic Betrayal in Joe Wright's Atonement (2007)

(Cross-posted at Become What You Behold)
Atonement is too pretty. I liked most of the film, but couldn’t take my eyes off of Keira Knightly. She was too elegant. Her language was too perfect. I didn’t pay much attention to Briony, and focused instead on the budding picture perfect romance between Cecilia and Robbie. Joe Wright’s new film has all of the visual elements of a Jane Austen novel, something that made his Pride and Prejudice so compelling (or so I am told) and his adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel a little too polished. The movie included a scene depicting 1940 evacuation of Dunkirk that Roger Ebert called “one of the great takes in film history.” I agree, and this is precisely the problem. Wright’s adaptation of McEwan’s novel is too enamored with its own beauty and sacrifices the complexities of the novel for an obsession with its celebrity proponents.

Wright’s choice to direct a McEwan novel after his adaptation of Austen is somewhat appropriate, as Atonement begins with a quote from Austen’s Northanger Abbey. McEwan’s novel is concerned with the themes Austen employs in her novels, including the negative side of unbounded imagination and the need for maturity and rational thinking instead of Romantic enthusiasm. While the book focuses on Briony’s journey towards adulthood and understanding, the film focuses much of its attention on the twin stories of separated lovers. Briony as an adult is portrayed in the film by the frumpified Romola Garai. Garai fades into the background, demurely accepting the harsh criticism of Cecilia and Robby’s failed love. This aspect of Atonement could be read as an allegory of celebrity culture. Briony looks like a World War II version of Tina Yothers compared to the beauty of Cecilia and the neatly rough-hewed masculinity of Robbie.

On Being Partisan

But I am running for President because I believe that to actually make change happen - to make this time different than all the rest - we need a leader who can finally move beyond the divisive politics of Washington and bring Democrats, Independents, and Republicans together to get things done. That's how we'll win this election, and that's how we'll change this country when I am President of the United States...

Many will recognize this as part of the standard stump speech of Senator Barack Obama.  He has often been referred to as the "Cum Bi Ya" candidate or the "Can't we all just get along" politician.  Our own Jodi Dean has ridiculed him as advocating "Let us rejoice and be glad that we are one." I must admit that I myself have struggled with the issue of democrats appealing to bi-partisanship and a message of unity.  With the issues we face as a country so large, and stakes so high, can we afford to white wash the real economic and political divisions in the United States?

Abstract: Marx and Individualism

Here's the abstract to a paper submission to "Marx's Vitalism and Its Relation to Individualism"

Topic: Marx and Philosophy Society fifth annual conference Final call for papers

Conference Title: Is there a Marxian philosophy?

Location: London, Saturday 24th May 2008

Keynote speaker: Andrew Feenberg (Simon Fraser University)

Marx had a theory of individualism that is a surprise for many people to learn about. His belief was that the crowning achievement of the proletarian movement would not be the production of a socialist state that would organize society's product in such a way as to benefit the greatest number of people possible, thus producing a picture of Marx as a radical or revolutionary utilitarian, but rather that the dynamics of development and struggle that characterized modern bourgeois society would result in a situation where, for the first time, real individuals would be created that were liberated from the restrictions of class existence. Membership in a class, Marx believed, led to the creation of what he called "average individuals"; individuals who didn't really have their own individuality at their disposal, but rather people who had to live out the life of an average member of a class, taking on the opinions, the world view, the newspapers, the popular beliefs associated with a particular class, rather than developing their own and independent ideas and understandings of the world around them. Precisely the point of the proletarian movement was to create a situation in which individuals were created who were not defined by their class position and by membership in a class. This paper will explore Marx's theory of individualism and its relationship to his peculiar brand of vitalism. [end of abstract]

Everyone wish me luck!