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

I've voted for Ralph Nader several times,

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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:

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"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):

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World's Best Rejected/Banned Advertisements

... 

Some of these may warrant commentary.   Thoughts, anyone?        ...

Needless to say, some are undeniably in poor taste.  Many clichégenically, unapologetically, sexist.  For instance, these from our very own (rabidly right-wing and very wealthy) hosting service, GoDaddy:

Why we are still hosting with these jerks, I sure dunno.

Others, largely philanthropic, fall into a different, mildly more interesting category of censorship.  See for example this one or this one.  These ads seem to pose an actual threat/provocation to the comfort of, you know, whatever Zizek is calling it these days. 

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"universal is for everybody" - oprah discovers socialism

(xposted, belatedly, from adswithoutproducts)

Absolutely amazing moment the other day on tv. I had heard that Cormac McCarthy was going to be on Oprah to discuss The Road - which seemed like an unlikely and interesting thing to see so I taped the show. But as it turned out, the McCarthy section was by far less interesting than the first segment, which featured Michael Moore discussing his new movie about the American health care situation, Sicko.

The moment when it felt like the ground was giving way beneath my feet comes about 1:30 into this video (which is bound not to last on-line, so get it while the getting's good)...

Here's a transcript of the exchange in question:

O:

OK this is what I was going to say about the film - that I got it in a way that I hadn't gotten it before. Now don't you love when that happens. When you just go "Ooo! I got it!" Because you know the word "socialism" really stirs up...

MM:

[Scarily] Socialized Medicine...

O:

Socialized Medicine

MM:

[Scarily] Ooo...

O: And then when you showed the example of [how] we have socialized activities in this country. The fire department - we don't pay for a fire department. We don't pay for the police department. We don't pay for public schools.

MM:

And it's universal.

O:

We don't pay for the library. And it's universal - universal is for everybody.

MM:

Right.

O:

And so the very idea of extending that to the care of people is really something that I have to honestly say that I hadn't thought about it because I'm one of those people, "I got mine," so I wasn't thinking about who didn't have theirs. Really. Right.

MM:

And we don't expect the fire department to turn a profit. It would be an appalling thought, and the reason we don't is because it's a life and death issue. Well, health care is a life and death issue.

O:

Yeah.

MM:

And that's why turning a profit has to be removed from the system.

Good Christ, that's amazing. The slow but distinct re-discovery of what that word, "socialism," might mean by a figure obviously not associated with words like that. The discovery that we already very much have elements of it all around us, elements that we would never willingly part with. The emergence that a better synonym for "socialism" would be "universality," rather than "Stalinism" or "gulag" or "bread-lines" that it's usually equated with, when it's mentioned at all, in the US. The revelation of the fact that "socialism" in fact provides very simple, but persuasive answers to issues that only at first seem incredibly complex, impossible to repair, and as if natural, inevitable features of our sociopolitical landscape.

In short, I think this little episode renders abundantly clear why exactly socialized medicine is such an important - perhaps the important - issue today in the US. Just as the right has own Overton Window games that they've long played with school prayer and vouchers and the like, a nation with a public medical system funded by even a large fractional amount that the US currently spends on health care today would be a nation on its way, I believe, toward a whole branching set of public sector reinvestments.

And it further, Moore's appearance on Oprah puts to shame ten thousand cute and clever forms of aestheticized intervention - simple, spirited explanation may have set us on a path toward improvement that no act of detournement or deconstruction, no dialectical ruse, nor metatextual abyssalism could accomplish.

This is a sobering, yet inspiring thing to realize, if you're someone who does what I do for a living. 

I've really liked Michael Moore for a long time, but he is now officially one of the patron saints of my blog. As is, in her own way, Oprah for playing this out in this way...

maybe ten years ago . . .

There's a lazy tendency to slander the past when something happens in the present. In today's New York Times David Carr writes that the firing of Don Imus for his racist remarks is a "sign of the times."

Mr. Imus is an old-school radio guy caught in a very modern media paradigm. When he started 30 years ago, if he made the same kind of remark, it would have floated off into the ether — the Federal Communications Commission, if it received complaints, might have taken notice, but few others.

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Here's to Dorks

Watch the whole shebang.   The tenor it is striking.   He's trying reeeal hard, but his ratings are up 69%.  Must be doing something right.   Four years too late, and better late than never.   What a blowhard, God bless 'im.

Update:   In other news (not that this be a news blog, for after all who could ever hope to compete with the mighty Huffington, or Digby):

(Right.  This is worthy of investigation but the president of Diebold saying he was determined to deliver Ohio to Bush in 2004 was just a figure of speech.)    The fact that the government is investigating Hugo "sulphur" Chavez's alleged interest in election machines may very well be part of an emerging post-election GOP narrative.   I have believed that Republicans might claim vote fraud in this election for some time.   

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George Bush singing "Sunday Bloody Sunday"

Thanks to onegoodmove andthepartyparty.

Germany vs Argentina France vs Whomever Open Thread!

Apologies to CR for being frivolous (then again post-not, complain-not; and for seriousness' sake, as you well know, there is Zizek in the summertime.)  I haven't the faintest idea how these things work, but all half-grudging respects to champions aside, do sort of enjoy the fanciful thought of Germany playing France. 

Brian Lamb's got a great post from Zagreb, in which he recommends TomDispatch on the politics of the game.  For an alternate take, and a few apposite remarks on the Global North's crumbling faith in 'Brazil' manifesting itself in endless laments over Ronaldo's lion lethargy/mediocrity, see over here.  All references to philosophers in comments –if they be other than soccer players – strictly banned.  Have at it, if you care to.

Spivak on Spivak

Not to jump the gun, but that lecture Jon points to (from 2004, I believe) is certainly worth a look.  So here's that link again.  Hopefully others will jump in this week with posts on other subjects, in the meantime.

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Total Normality

To the right is the front page of Argentine daily newspaper Clarín, from March 25th 1976, thirty years ago, the day after the coup d'état that ushered in the so-called "Process of National Reconstruction." A "Process" in which some 30,000 would be killed.

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Look Now, Pay Later

For a time and  time and time and time and time and time of fear, he already had a few brave words:

Perhaps we should warn you that there is one thing you won’t read, and that is a pat answer for the problems of life. We don’t pretend to make this a spiritual or psychological patent-medicine chest where one can come and get a pill of wisdom, to be swallowed like an aspirin, to banish the headaches of our times.

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An Emergent Meritocracy?

Via Alphonse, Al Gore is calling for a renewal of the public sphere.  Invoking the ghost of Habermas, he dares to speak out against the "refeudalization of the public sphere:"

The German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, describes what has happened as "the refeudalization of the public sphere." That may sound like gobbledygook, but it's a phrase that packs a lot of meaning. The feudal system which thrived before the printing press democratized knowledge and made the idea of America thinkable, was a system in which wealth and power were intimately intertwined, and where knowledge played no mediating role whatsoever. The great mass of the people were ignorant. And their powerlessness was born of their ignorance. American Democracy in Trouble

He goes on to summarize how television, and market based concerns, has come to dominate the "marketplace of ideas."  In fact, Gore believes "it effectively no longer exists."  The absence of this realm leaves those in government without an essential check on their power.

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Mythologies

The latest advert for the National Lottery shows two young women walking down a street, one looking chirpy, the other looking distinctly down in the dumps. Whilst the first greets each passer-by or passing dog with a sunny disposition, the second runs into bad luck at every juncture, from catching her heel in a crack in the pavement to having food spilled down her front, so that when her lucky friend goes into the corner shop to buy a lottery ticket she is left a distraught mess outside. The voiceover tells the unfortunate young woman that she is too negative, never takes a chance. And the viewer is left to connect her bad luck with her failure to buy a lottery ticket. Thus a new moral: you, oh recalcitrant customer, you don’t take part in the lottery because you don’t believe you can win; if only you were more positive fate would actually be kinder to you. Why are sales of lottery tickets down? Because of you. You have made your own bad luck. You didn’t take that chance, that one in 5 million chance.

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