"Read my lips, no new services. Thank you, President Bush."

Tom Friedman makes some good points, although I think he's willfully overlooking the fact that a lot of Americans right now see the services getting cut as other people's services, so why should they care? The bit at the end is all good, though:

To name something is to own it. And the Democrats, for too long, have allowed the Bush team to name its radical reduction in services, and the huge dependence it is creating on foreign capital, as an innocuous "tax cut." Balderdash.

This is something the left seems to be forgetting. Of course, we're at a bit of a disadvantage, since not only does the President have a lot of agenda-setting power, but the next best option is the legislature, which is also under opposition control. So I can sympathize with Dems trying to get their message out there, but it also seems like they really aren't trying that hard since there's, well, there's not much of a Democratic message, seems like. You can't just be reactive to Bush's agenda; you have to start going out on limbs and talking up subjects that the Republicans aren't, so that at least you can have the first say, and maybe even define the (ugh) paradigm (sorry) under which they're discussed.

That said, while naming something may give you power over it, the problem is that you may be doing it in a language that won't resonate with or be understood by your target audience. So libs have defined a lot of stuff real good (i.e. "to death") but when you shout "Manufacturing consent!" a lot of people are either going to go "Buh?" or roll their eyes. The other option, then, is to redefine the structure behind a term people already like.

To use an analogy, let's say there's a policy of giving everyone free ice cream and this policy is called "The Welcome Wagon." (I'm envisioning it in a wagon. Just run with it, OK?) But then the Blue Meany party decides it doesn't like giving everyone free ice cream because it takes away tax dollars from hard-working etc., decreases productivity, and so forth, and so they want to cut it. But who's going to accept cutting a program like that? No one, that's who.

But there are a number of other techniques wherein you retain the name--use the power of the initial naming--and repurpose it either to drive other policies or to decrease the power of the name. So, for instance, you could require everyone who wants free ice cream to register for a national ID card, or you could put methamphetamines in the ice cream to boost worker productivity back up, and even if people knew about this, they might think, "Well, it's the Welcome Wagon, so it's still good." On the other hand, you could steadily decrease funding for the ice cream trucks so that the flavors were bad, they ran out of stock, and the workers were grumpy and rude, so that people started to think, "The Welcome Wagon, that's not so great. Why are we paying for shitty ice cream and rude workers?"

The parallels to contemporary policy are obvious. (And, honestly, not intentional--I just pursued the analogy to its conclusion.) But let me focus for a second on a whole other kind of redefinition: the redefinition of federal departments. Take the FCC, for example, which has drifted so far from its original mandate of serving the public interest that it's not even funny, but it's still staying true to itself because whatever the FCC does is whatever the FCC is supposed to do. This is one of the big problems with bureaucracies, especially as regards long-seated civil organizations. So while I might be all for killing the FCC and rebuilding it anew (and that's not a bad message to pursue), unless they sponsor an Al-Quada terrorist they're not going to get defunded anytime soon (a Christian terrorist would be OK, though). So instead you have to get into power and redefine its mandate from the inside. This takes a lot longer. So it goes.
posted by Mike B. at 1:06 PM 0 comments

I do hate Pitchfork sometimes.

As Yorke put it in Meeting People Is Easy: "English people aren't impressed. There's this automatic assumption that any degree of success means that you've cheated. Or you're full of shit."

That's a cross Thom no longer has to bear, since whatever shit he was full of was kicked out of him-- in his hometown, no less-- one night in 2000. Like Johnny, the similarly bloodied main character from Mike Leigh's Naked, the assault appears to have Thom dealing with reality for possibly the first time. Protected from street-level human misery-- first by privilege, and then as a celebrity-- by a misguided belief in the world as something definite and easily changed, Yorke's pummeling rightly refocused an unparalleled modern songwriter on more immediate and emotionally resonant issues, stuffing him back in boots he was growing too big for.

Firstly: huh?

Secondly: I think this is a critical attempt to draw a narrative that doesn't exist, or at best, to draw a counter-narrative to the one the boys in the band are trying to push. So "we wanted to rawk more" does battle with "Thom got beat up and it changed his life" and, Occam's Razory, the first one comes out triumphant. I just don't buy that this album is more emotionally resonant, or personal, or immediate. There are more slow ballads, but that's not the same thing. Thom's voice is more prominent in the mix, but that's not the same thing. Ott wouldn't say this if he had listened to Amnesiac more, I suspect (he says he didn't like that one) since there was a whole lot more emotional immediacy on that one.

Here's the thing: I'm a musician. And I've had the crap kicked out of me. And it didn't make me write more emotional songs. Hell, I didn't even write a song about having the crap kicked out of me. It's just a strange thing to suggest. I do think that Thom knew about "street-level human misery" previously; indeed, a more reactionary (and probably more accurate) interpretation for the lessened political content on this album (again, kind of questionable, but I'll go with it) would be that it's a reaction against ingratitude from the people he's trying to help. Of course, I think that interpretation is bullshit, too, but it's still more valid than Ott's. Getting beat up changes your social behavior (you're generally a bit more leery of large men from then on, in my experience) but I don't think it has a damn thing to do with your songwriting--or, at least, I don't see any evidence of that on HTTT.

As for politics: if he thinks OK Computer portrays "the world as something definite and easily changed," I wonder whether he got some secret reviewer-only copy with different lyrical and music content. "No Surprises" anyone? Honestly, one of the big criticisms I've had of Radiohead's 'political' song (No Surprises, You and Whose Army) is that they primarily express resignation and impotence, not exactly the best base for political action.

Later in the review, he writes, "Kid A and Amnesiac were written and recorded before Thom was attacked, before he became a father, before the world became a lot smaller, when nothing really mattered. Hail to the Thief is almost four years removed from the reality Yorke last wrote about..." Now seriously, Chris, what kind of "9/11 changed everything!!!" (and, holy christ, "Being a father changes everything!!!") bullshit is this? You think the pre-HTTT albums don't represent a stultifying, enclosed, suffocating reality? Sheesh. The songs are different, but they're always different from album to album with Radiohead; that's one of the big reasons why we like 'em. And we all know that the leap between Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief is just not as big of a jump from OKC to Kid A--or, hell, not even as big as the jump from The Bends to OK Computer.

It's an OK review otherwise, but the opening and the framing device is just horrible. I can only assume (as he more or less states at the outset) that he's trying to prevent this narrative in order to counteract the band's, but people, people, how many times do I have to say it--don't write reactionary reviews. Eek.

posted by Mike B. at 12:27 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

The new Fountains of Wayne album is...well, I do this from time to time, and it's kind of embarassing, but fuck it: the thing made me cry last night. It's that good, and I've only gotten through five songs because I keep having to go back and listen to them again. "Mexican Wine" might have the best opening verse I've heard all year, and all the great little character sketches in the lyrics and the attention to detail with the production...man, it's good. If you like power-pop, you'll like this. I wish I could write a more coherant review, but...fuck. It's just way too good.

I also picked up the Children's Hour album, Prince's "Sign O' the Times" and the limited edition Radiohead package, which has a very nice fold-out map thing that makes my geek heart go pitter-pat.

posted by Mike B. at 2:33 PM 0 comments

From an interview with Hilary Clinton:

NP: So what is your book about?

HC: ABOUT? What is my book ABOUT? It's about America, jack, and how we live in it despite everything. It's about the big themes, which writers today are too pussy-whipped to address. I mean, fuck Jonathan Safran Foer, with his little magical-realist eponymous narrator shit. Fuck Jonathan Franzen. That's not a social novel. It's just a book about a professor who can't get his dick straight and then some other people. American literature today is just about belly-gazing. My book is about the grand things, like death, life, and fucking. Big topics for a big woman. Fuck everyone else. I really can't give a fuckety-fuck-fuck about them. I've got too much other shit on my plate. You know what I'm saying?

NP: I do. What do you think of James Frey?

HC: Oh. I love his stuff.

NP: What about Heidi Julavits' essay in the first issue of The Believer, where she calls for the end of snark?

HC: Fuck that. It's bullshit. I don't have time for that shit. I'm HILLARY CLINTON. Do you think I have time for literary party games? I swear, that whole McSweeneys thing is so forced. Do I want to go to church or read a fucking book? I want literature about real things, not some fucking sacrificial hipster rite. Who cares if it's well-designed? Mein Kampf is well-designed, and that fucking book caused a lot of trouble. Dave Eggers is really just a better-looking Hitler who doesn't hate Jews.

Not that there's any moral equivalence between Dave Eggers and Hitler or anything. I'd hate to appear to be endorsing that.

Anyway, very good piece by Neal there, especially liked the James Frey ref. James Frey is pretty funny. I also liked the fact that Hil gets Tourettic. But what I really liked is that it allows me to segue into my own subject, viz:

I did me a reading Sunday night

This reminded me of two things, which I say in total honesty and without any false modesty: 1) that I am unusually good at doing readings, and 2) why I do not do readings anymore. The first goes without saying (I'm fabulous, witty, mind-numbingly handsome, etc.) but let me explicate the second a bit more.

I hate writers. I know, I know, all writers say that, but I hate writers so much that I stopped writing. Well, not really--of course I still write lyrics, and a decent number of my songs are basically spoken-word pieces--but it definitely drove me away from my original New York goal of being a writer to the new goal of being a working musician. A large part of it was the experience of playing to a crowd; I had been one of those bedroom musician kids, but once I got out and played in front of people who were reasonably interested in hearing what I did, it became quickly apparently that it was just plain ol' a lot more fun than doing a reading to a bunch of people, even if you were pretty good at readings and keeping a crowd involved and friendly and etc.

The problem is that since writers don't get the energy and feedback of a crowd or set of listeners driving them, they seem to compensate in other ways. Most notably, they create some sort of "transgressive" personality (c.f. Frey) and go with it, which aside from being annoying in and of itself also tends to influence their non-public persona and thence gets into the writing. And we have enough crappy Bukowski imitators already, it seems to me. Now, I don't mean writers who actually write (or try to write) for a living--freelancers, media folk, etc. These can be annoying but in a much different, and, I think, much smaller way. The "I'm a writer" writers, though...I mean, they're not unlike the people who are protesters because they like the culture of protesting, or who start a band because they think it would be cool to be in a band. They might actually be talented, but all too often that tends to be obscured by the persona, and quite frankly I can't stand to be around them, much less participate in readings with them. I'll probably start focusing on writing again at some point, but for now, I'm much happier with my music crowds.

posted by Mike B. at 2:29 PM 0 comments

Monday, June 09, 2003

I'm not going to blame Matt Y. for this entry, but the other two he links to make some pretty retarded claims saying that (gasp) Derrida is a Straussian!

#1:

By the way, am I the only one to have noticed the similarities between Leo Strauss and Jacques Derrida? Both believe in the importance of close readings of classic philosophical texts, both find hidden meanings in these texts which become available only after careful study by the cognoscenti, and both are interested in how surface or ordinary readings of a text are undermined and even reversed by these close readings. (And both have a problematic relationship to the Enlightenment, and a particular love for the classics.)

#2:

Indeed, Straussianism has long been one of the two pathologies of "political philosophy" as practiced in U.S. political science departments (the infection has not spread to the U.K. or Australasia); the other, of course, is "postmodernism." This "odd couple" actually has much in common, notwithstanding the unpostmodern commitment of Straussians to "the immutability of moral and social values" (as the Times put it). Straussians and postmodernists produce relatively little competent scholarship; the quality of argumentation (for or against "the immutability of moral and social values") is very low in both Straussian and postmodernist political theory; the political motivations of Straussians and postmodernists are usually transparent; and, perhaps most strikingly, Straussian and postmodernist political philosophy simply can't be found in major philosophy departments.

So let me get this straight: Derrida is like Strauss because he likes classical texts (are all Plato scholars Straussian?), he finds "hidden meaning" (are all practitioners of close reading Straussian?) and he thinks this hidden meaning is available only to the chosen few. Presumably my parentheticals have knocked off the first two, but as for the last: as Jason said, "I think they're projecting." I've never found Derrida to claim--and maybe I'm missing it--that only a select few can deconstruct, but at the very least that assertion is disproved by contemporary evidence (who doesn't "deconstruct" nowadays?). I know a lot of nerds dislike Derrida because he's too mainstream (I joke, I joke, I know he's not particularly intellectually rigorous) but it seems inaccurate to group him in with a pretty roundly hated conservative doctrine just because they're bitter that the cool pomo kids won't let them sit at their lunch table with the cute girls. I know, I know, you feel like you can't deconstruct because you're not hep to the lingo, but that's just social anxiety. Derrida is pretty inclusive.

As for #2, I'm a bit lost here. Seems to me that Straussianism is unique less because it's "one of the two pathologies" but because it's the only contemporary strain of political philosophy that has a name. I'd say that the major philosophical viewpoint taught in politics departments is liberalism ("in the classical sense," as I'm required to say here). They could actually use a wee bit more postmodernism. Perhaps he means "multiculturalism" instead of postmodernism? And surely he knows that those aren't even remotely the same thing? If there's a problem with postmodernism, it would be that it doesn't have a particular political viewpoint most of the time; when political views are expressed in postmodern criticism, it all too often sits outside the critical viewpoint and is just this annoying jab wedgeed in there to win brownie points. Postmodernism in and of itself is pretty anti-political, you ask me.

So yeah--leave Derrida alone. He didn't start the whole rimless-glasses thing, and he definitely doesn't believe in a Rhodesian secret society, thank you very much.

UPDATE: Honestly, as to #2, I have a paltry grasp of the ideological makeup of most politics departments, and I should have been a bit less shrill. (Although let me add: uh, Marxists?!) So maybe there are a lot of joint Straussian-Pomo departments in the country, but it seems unlikely to me. That said, who does qualify as a postmodern political philosopher? I can think of lots of feminists/multiculturalists, but not really any pomos. Wollin?

I guess a lot of my political theory could be described as "postmodern" in the sense that it does incorporate a decent bit of Foucault and other suspects who I wholly abuse for my own purposes, and the indeterminacy of policy-as-text is sort of a wayback assumption of a lot of my thinking, but generally I only get to the pomo arena by combining literary theorists with political theorists. Is Foucault a pomo political theorist, or is he just a cultural theorist-slash-historian?

posted by Mike B. at 5:59 PM 0 comments

Phrases I particularly like today would include:

"The sound of thousands of underpants hitting the floor."
"Metaphysics. Love. Urban America."
"Buff capital."

posted by Mike B. at 5:40 PM 0 comments

The whole Ari Fleisher-Helen Thomas thing is particularly funny in small bits:

I'm happy to take your questions. Helen. (April 14, 2003)
Always interested in your opinion, Helen. (Nov. 27, 2001)
I'm not sure what you're driving at, Helen. (Jan. 16, 2002)
I'm not answering the question, Helen. (Dec. 10, 2002)
You're mixing up two stories, Helen. (Dec. 14, 2001)
It's a wily paraphrase, Helen, wily. (Jan. 23, 2003)
Go stand in the corner, Helen. (Feb. 26, 2003)
What's next, Helen? (Oct. 1, 2001)
Helen? We're back to Helen? (July 3, 2002)
Helen, your views on this are well known. (Oct. 9, 2002)
Helen, we all know you have opinions. (May 17, 2002)
Helen, with your support, the answer will be yes. (June 20, 2001)
Helen, I've addressed the question. (Sept. 28, 2001)
Helen, Helen. (May 14, 2002)
Helen? Helen? (July 3, 2002)
Helen. (May 29, 2003)

posted by Mike B. at 5:36 PM 0 comments

Ftrain (via Gawker reprints a NYT advertisement from 1869:

Its EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT will be conducted in a spirit of fairness and impartiality, free alike from personal rancor or undue favoritism; and will be the production of the ablest and most experienced writers upon all the subjects treated.

Yeah, it's almost as if journalistic standards have changed since eighteen sixty fucking nine. They don't have editorials in verse anymore, like they used to. (They do have editorials about verse, however.) Oh well. I like my editorials with a little impartiality.

posted by Mike B. at 5:33 PM 0 comments