Eenie, Meenie, Mynie… genres of film over time.
Smoking the Wrong End
I couldn’t write anything for a couple of days, but not because I couldn’t top ‘pinyon’ in the subject line, thank you very much.
With all the gloating about Romney’s Doofus Act this far out from the election, we should remember not to play in their hands. The reality of Romney, the entire dimensions of its scandalous fraudulence, is the fault of the Republican Party and its insanity refineries around the southern parts of the country, as much if not more than any of it actually belongs to him. Pierce:
The biggest problem with Romney’s campaign is its utter incoherence, which stems from the fact that he had to romance a Republican primary electorate that is clearly demented. The root of the campaign’s fundamental dishonesty, which is what has led to its incoherence in the first place, is the fact that the Republican primary electorate forced Romney to renounce the only real achievement he has as an elected politician — the Massachusetts health-care reform. Once you find you have to lie about all the good you did, what does the rest of it really matter?
Yes, do tell. And now, in a bit of very hopeful convergence, what I would really like is for some reporter to ask the President what he thinks about the NFL right about now. And I would like for the President to say that, of course he likes the NFL, likes to drink beer and watch it like some others do, and so he hates what is going on now with the owners trying to turn the refs’ pensions into 401(k)s but that this sort of thing has been happening for a while now. Let’s let that discussion burst out into the open now, too, while we’re at it.
That’s what I would like.
‘Till the pinyons get ripe
The 30th anniversary of Banned Books Week is coming up on Sept.30, and it’s amazing how scary words can be. Banning knowledge is exemplary of fear and weakness, Genesis 2:17 notwithstanding. Or sitting.
In that spirit, because it’s Friday and you’re the priest, here’s a little Upton Sinclair. I know The Jungle was banned at one time, though I don’t know about this one, maybe it’s time is coming. This is the beginning section 3 from the novel King Coal, by Sinclair.
Hal Warner started to drag himself down the road, but was unable to make it. He got as far as a brooklet that came down the mountain-side, from which he might drink without fear of typhoid; there he lay the whole day, fasting. Towards evening a thunder-storm came up, and he crawled under the shelter of a rock, which was no shelter at all. His single blanket was soon soaked through, and he passed a night almost as miserable as the previous one. He could not sleep, but he could think, and he thought about what had happened to him. "Bill" had said that a coal mine was not a foot-ball field, but it seemed to Hal that the net impress of the two was very much the same. He congratulated himself that his profession was not that of a union organiser. At dawn he dragged himself up, and continued his journey, weak from cold and unaccustomed lack of food. In the course of the day he reached a power-station near the foot of the canyon. He did not have the price of a meal, and was afraid to beg; but in one of the group of buildings by the roadside was a store, and he entered and inquired concerning prunes, which were twenty-five cents a pound. The price was high, but so was the altitude, and as Hal found in the course of time, they explained the one by the other--not explaining, however, why the altitude of the price was always greater than the altitude of the store. Over the counter he saw a sign: "We buy scrip at ten per cent discount." He had heard rumours of a state law forbidding payment of wages in "scrip"; but he asked no questions, and carried off his very light pound of prunes, and sat down by the roadside and munched them. Just beyond the power-house, down on the railroad track, stood a little cabin with a garden behind it. He made his way there, and found a one-legged old watchman. He asked permission to spend the night on the floor of the cabin; and seeing the old fellow look at his black eye, he explained, "I tried to get a job at the mine, and they thought I was a union organiser." "Well," said the man, "I don't want no union organisers round here." "But I'm not one," pleaded Hal. "How do I know what you are? Maybe you're a company spy." "All I want is a dry place to sleep," said Hal. "Surely it won't be any harm for you to give me that." "I'm not so sure," the other answered. "However, you can spread your blanket in the corner. But don't you talk no union business to me." Hal had no desire to talk. He rolled himself in his blanket and slept like a man untroubled by either love or curiosity. In the morning the old fellow gave him a slice of corn bread and some young onions out of his garden, which had a more delicious taste than any breakfast that had ever been served him. When Hal thanked his host in parting, the latter remarked: "All right, young fellow, there's one thing you can do to pay me, and that is, say nothing about it. When a man has grey hair on his head and only one leg, he might as well be drowned in the creek as lose his job." Hal promised, and went his way. His bruises pained him less, and he was able to walk. There were ranch-houses in sight--it was like coming back suddenly to America!
Move on
The original idea behind the name of the group Moveon.org was aimed at Congress to get past nominal indiscretions perpetrated by Bill Clinton in the Oval Office and deal with more pressing issues. Balance on climate change is largely the same problem for PBS, which cannot seem to accept global climate change as settled science and so must continually provide denialists a counterpoint to…? I don’t know what but it’s very annoying.
Last night, PBS NewsHour turned to meteorologist and climate change contrarian Anthony Watts to “counterbalance” the mainstream scientific opinions presented by the program. This false balance is a disservice to PBS’ viewers, made worse by the program’s failure to explain Watts’ connection to the Heartland Institute, an organization that receives funding from some corporations with a financial interest in confusing the public on climate science.
While PBS mentioned that 97 percent of climate scientists agree that manmade global warming is occurring, it did not reflect this consensus by giving significant airtime to Watts’ contrarian views. The segment presented Watts as the counterbalance to scientists that believe in manmade global warming — every time a statement that reflects the scientific consensus was aired, in came Watts to cast doubt in viewers’ minds.
As Revkin explains and is mentioned in the MM piece, the goal of groups like the Heartland Institute is segments just like this. They don’t exist to further the science, but to distract from solving the problem. That’s a story; that the fossil energy industry doesn’t buy AGW is not. I’ll soon be hosting an interview show on PBS affiliate and so don’t know whether this makes my criticism more or less valid. But come on.
And this is the rubber-glue Romney strategy as employed by Watts in the PBS piece, accusing global warming of becoming a big business as Watts does when it’s denial that has actually become an industry in its own right, funding astro think tanks and employing former TV weathermen to further a controversy that serves the interests of more of the same, in terms of polluting, non-renewable energy.
Why we do it
It’s not just green, but it’s not not just for green that authors are turning to self-publishing and e-books. International digital distribution rights is the mouthful of the moment, and everyone seems to know this. Since going down this path, I’m continually learning about a process that keeps seeming new, that differs significantly from former perceptions as vanity publishing though it is essentially the same thing. Maybe that, too, was a sham:
Much has already been written about the earthquake in conventional publishing caused by these technological advances. The enormous increase in the number of self-published books is one of its primary aftershocks. According to Publishers Weekly, the number of self-published titles in the U.S. jumped from 133,036 in 2010 to 211,269 in 2011. Of these roughly 45 percent were fiction. And some significant proportion of this impressive number must be literary fiction.
By “literary” I mean the kind of novels that vie for the literary prizes, the pool of serious, high-quality fiction out of which emerges the books that last. What does the rise of literary self-publishing mean for the future of literature?
It is no longer possible to dismiss the kind of self-publishing McBurney practises as vanity publishing. The mainstream can no longer claim to be the only quality stream. Self-publishing has simply become too attractive an option.
There are several good reasons a novelist chooses to self-publish:
And she goes on to list them. The thing to notice about this is that it’s working. People are buying e-books. You still have to have a really good story AND you have to work to get it read and reviewed. Other than, sure, everything has changed.
You are the World Trade Center
Otherwise, this whole thing was completely unnecessary.
Future, less tense
So in my recap from San Francisco earlier this summer, this bit from Julian Castro at the DNC this week is part of what I was talking about:
What the president did in allowing the children of undocumented immigrants to become citizens was Marco Rubio’s idea, but only Julian Castro got to brag about it at a convention. Only Castro got to make the incontrovertible point that, “In the end, the American Dream is not a sprint, or even a marathon, but a relay. Our families don’t always cross the finish line in one generation. But each generation passes on to the next generation the fruits of their labors…. My mother fought for civil rights so that instead of a mop, I could hold this microphone.”
Emphasis added.
Climate change politics
So far, so mum, regarding climate change at the DNC. Just as it’s amazing to see Democrats completely uninhibited on social issues for probably the first time ever – indeed, the extent to which the other side is afraid to attack on marriage equality or women’s rights is encouraging to the point of a new sort of confidence in the country – it is disheartening to see how marginalized the climate change discussion is. Sort of a Matrix-ish “there is no climate change discussion.”
And that’s no good, because it, too, can be a convincing argument. And this is not to complain about Democrats per se, but about the country in general. A good example of this will be the concern-trolling that comes from opinionistas like David Brooks:
New York Times columnist David Brooks may be a (sorta kinda) conservative. But by all accounts, he also has the ear of President Obama. And in his column today, Brooks — trying to imagine some big initiatives that the president might push as he prepares to accept his party’s nomination for a second term — offers Obama a bold idea: put climate change at the top of his policy agenda.
I’m not going to link to Brooks, but you can read the passages in question at the Grist link. This must be viewed skeptically. Republicans are looking for anything to make a talk radio snack out of for a while, so long has their cupboard been bare. And it’s not that Obama shouldn’t take the bait; just that it deserves to be re-tied with an anvil and passed pack to them.
There is no such thing as clean coal, nor energy independence at current usage rates. Start the conversation there and talk like an adult. Be broad and bold and optimistic. Other adults are listening.
Hating their odds
I read earlier this week about how Republicans realize this is likely the last election that they will be able to win with a full-court press for the bigot vote, which is so encouraging and why they are rolling out all the code words on the way to ni-clang! The whole spectacle is horrible and embarrassing, even for people with no shame and nothing left but their resentments to shake at all the rest of us.
And if you want to see a demonstration of why the so-called ‘politics of race’ are so difficult for them, look no further:
“The demographics race we’re losing badly,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.). “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”
Actually, that’s just stupid, run-of-the-mill idiocy (from a sitting senator, no less). But from the same article:
Many Republicans, however, worry about making overt racial appeals to minorities.
“Amongst politicians, amongst people who cover politics, there’s an overwhelming tendency to silo voters,” said Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker at a breakfast hosted by The Post and Bloomberg News. “As Republicans, we take on a huge risk if we try to appeal to voters .?.?. within a mind-set of silos instead of making direct appeals on the issues that they’re actually talking about in their household — not necessarily in their category, but in their household.”
Look, I’ll type slowly, because here’s what I guess they don’t get. They think that Democrats must be making overt appeals to race and so that’s what they must do – but they don’t want to. 1) You already are. 2) You shouldn’t do this any way and it’s not what Democrats are actually doing – you just see it that way because you insist on seeing anything that helps anyone else as a threat to you and yours. You must get over this part, though it will effectively destroy what’s left of a dying party, which you are slowly beginning to recognize (it seems, though this is not inevitable). We (the future America) are moving beyond race and thinking about the country as a whole – its problems remain serious and difficult. But continuing to think you need to address distinct racial groups in it is the path to oblivion. It is indeed difficult to be hopeful about this situation for Republicans – precisely because of the power of resentment and victimization, division and fear, on which their whole enterprise is predicated. As long as they continue to traffic in these currencies, elections and voting can only be seen by them as a threat. They are cornered and this one will be nasty. I take no solace in their long term prospects because of the damage they seem willing to inflict in the near present.
But their fundamental misunderstanding of the situation is the key to their predicament. Unfortunately for us all, the only thing they appear capable of is doubling down.
Categorically Re-thought
This is funny, disagreeably agreeable and general snack for thought:
Contemporary art is an easy thing to hate. All the meaningless hype, the identikit openings in cities that blur into one long, banal, Beck’s beer fuelled anxiety dream from which there is no escape. The seemingly endless proliferation of biennials—the biennialization or banalization of the world. One begins to think that everything aspires to resemble the opening of a Frieze art fair and every culture wants its own cheeky Damien or spunky Tracey. Glamour, celebrity, business, and radiant superficiality blend together to give each location the patina of globality with just a frisson of local color. People talk excitedly of what’s hot and what’s selling for millions. Capricious and seemingly tyrannical übercurators wander around quickly with their assistants talking on cell phones. The sharp eyes of eager young gallerists track them like prey, waiting for the moment to pounce. Everyone is either on the make or wants to be on the make. Contemporary art has become a high-end, global culture mall, which requires very little previous literacy and where the routine flatness of the gossip allows you to get up to speed very quickly. People with the right connections or serious amounts of money or sheer stubborn persistence or who are prepared to do anything can quickly gain access to what has the appearance of a cultural experience. God, it’s awful isn’t it? And I haven’t even mentioned how this art system is fed by the seemingly endless proliferation of art schools, M.F.A. programs, and the progressive inflation of graduate degrees, where Ph.D.s in fine art are scattered like confetti.
It is difficult not to be cynical about contemporary art. Maybe the whole category of the “contemporary” needs much more reflection. Maybe it needs replacing. When does the contemporary cease to be contemporary and become something past? When did the modern become the contemporary? Will the contemporary one day become modern or will there, in the future, be museums of postmodern art: MOPMAs? Why not call contemporary “present art” or “actual art” or “potential art,” or, better, “actually potential art” (APA)? At least it sounds more Aristotelian. But, then again, why use temporal categories at all? Why not use spatial terms instead? Some have spoken of visual art as spatial art, which is an attractive idea. Whichever way one approaches it, however, the categories need to be seriously rethought through research that is historiographical, institutional, and anthropological. The problem with contemporary art is that we all think we know what it means and we don’t. As a consequence, the discourse that surrounds it is drastically impoverished.
But despite such confusions of reference and the horrors of the contemporary art business model—or perhaps even because of it—I want to defend contemporary art, up to a point. It is simply a fact that contemporary art has become the central placeholder for the articulation of cultural meanings—good, bad, or indifferent. I am middle-aged enough to remember when literature, especially the novel, played this role and when cultural gatekeepers were literary critics, or social critics, often from literary backgrounds. That world is gone. The novel has become a quaint, emotively life-changing, and utterly marginal phenomenon. The heroic critics of the past are no more. I watched this change happen slowly when I still lived in England in the sensation-soaked 1990s and recall, as a kind of cultural marker, the opening of Tate Modern in 2000 and immensely long lines queuing up to see a vast spider by Louise Bourgeois in the Turbine Hall. It was clear that something had shifted in the culture.