Obama called Kanye West a jackass for interrupting a meaningless awards show with a rude (albeit aesthetically justified) outburst, but didn’t seem to mind when Van Jones was forced to resign after calling the infinitely more contemptible Republicans assholes. Obama also accepted Joe Wilson’s apology for a similarly rude outburst (remember, when he called [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Pop Culture’
October 30, 2008
National Funk Day
It occurs to me that there are only four US holidays in honor of a single individual: President’s Day (which is George Washington’s birthday), Columbus Day, Martin Luther King Day and Christmas. Not that I’m one to complain about a day off, but doesn’t Columbus Day sit uneasily with the other three?
Follow-up question: if you [...]
October 11, 2008
“…but life imitates TV…”
Exhibit A: Things have gotten so ridiculous that we’re now at a point where political satire can succeed by merely replicating the exact content of reality in humorously exagerated style. Bush Jr. is clearly the individual most responsible for this shift.
Exhibit B: When this guy announces his candidacy, we’ll have reached a point where [...]
July 7, 2008
I am the lizard king, I can do anything…
…except figure out what (if anything) these have to do with each other:
1.
‘I am the Lizard King
I can do anything
I can make the earth stop in its tracks
I made the blue cars go away…’
–from ‘Celebration of the Lizard King’ by Jim Morrison 1968
2.
Homer: Kids, let me tell you about another so-called “wicked” guy. He had [...]
June 30, 2008
The Ethical Substance of Self-Help Culture
I
I’m currently working through Michel Foucault’s three-part History of Sexuality. In the introduction to the second volume, he tells us that his labors therein will be
“devoted to the manner in which sexual activity was problematized by philosophers and doctors in classical Greek culture of the fourth century B.C. [...] The domain I will be analyzing [...]
