Glenn Beck prompts the president (29 July 2009)

Our prompts? Our tools?

I think these right-wing flare-ups are ways of communicating to a president that "they" (i.e., the people) want more leadership--of the epic kind. These "agents" test the president's mettle, he meets the test, they fade away. I think we might forget just how fast certain at one point very pressing and visible enraged populist figures all of a sudden so quickly vanish, once their role in the public narrative, their forwarding of the plot, is done with. McCarthy, Gingrich--larger than life, "king of the hills!," then essentially, poof!--gone!--mostly nowhere to be found. The President "gets it right"; qualms disappear and certainty stands and stays: we no longer need these guys. And so to help excuse our quick dumping of them, make it a bit less guilt-arousing, we start hearing/encouraging stories that make these figures seem a bit too embarrassing to justify having in our presence--sordid personal stories, of the dumped his wife while on the deathbed, kind; and they're more-or-less not to be found, forever or for quite the time (until we have the notion their kind of service might again prove useful). They're our tools, prompts--even true for many of us lefties.

Note: Ignore the picture of the guy on the right. Pretend he's (Joseph) McCarthy.

Link: Right-Wing Racism on the Rise (Joan Walsh)

Comments

Discussion over the fate of Jolenta, at the Gene Wolfe facebook appreciation site

Patrick McEvoy-Halston November 28 at 10:36 AM Why does Severian make almost no effort to develop sustained empathy for Jolenta -- no interest in her roots, what made her who she was -- even as she features so much in the first part of the narrative? Her fate at the end is one sustained gross happenstance after another... Severian has repeated sex with her while she lay half drugged, an act he argues later he imagines she wanted -- even as he admits it could appear to some, bald "rape" -- but which certainly followed his discussion of her as someone whom he could hate so much it invited his desire to destroy her; Severian abandons her to Dr. Talus, who had threatened to kill her if she insisted on clinging to him; Baldanders robs her of her money; she's sucked at by blood bats, and, finally, left at death revealed discombobulated of all beauty... a hunk of junk, like that the Saltus citizens keep heaped away from their village for it ruining their preferred sense

Salon discussion of "Almost Famous" gang-rape scene

Patrick McEvoy-Halston: The "Almost Famous'" gang-rape scene? Isn't this the film that features the deflowering of a virgin -- out of boredom -- by a pack of predator-vixons, who otherwise thought so little of him they were quite willing to pee in his near vicinity? Maybe we'll come to conclude that "[t]he scene only works because people were stupid about [boy by girl] [. . .] rape at the time" (Amy Benfer). Sawmonkey: Lucky boy Pull that stick a few more inches out of your chute, Patrick. This was one of the best flicks of the decade. (sawmonkey, response to post, “Films of the decade: ‘Amost Famous’, R.J. Culter, Salon, 13 Dec. 2009) Patrick McEvoy-Halston: @sawmonkey It made an impression on me too. Great charm. Great friends. But it is one of the things you (or at least I) notice on the review, there is the SUGGESTION, with him being so (rightly) upset with the girls feeling so free to pee right before him, that sex with him is just further presump

Too late -- WE SAW your boobs

I think we're mostly familiar with ceremonies where we do anointing. Certainly, if we can imagine a context where humiliation would prove most devastating it'd probably be at a ceremony where someone thought themselves due an honor -- "Carrie," "Good Fellas." "We labored long to adore you, only so to prime your hope, your exposure … and then rather than a ladder up we descended the slops, and hoped, being smitten, you'd judged yourself worthless protoplasm -- a nothing, for letting yourselves hope you might actually be something -- due to be chuted into Hades or Hell." Ostensibly, nothing of the sort occurred during Oscars 2013, where the host, Seth Macfarlane, did a number featuring all the gorgeous Oscar-winning actresses in attendance who sometime in their careers went topless, and pointed this out to them. And it didn't -- not quite. Macarlane would claim that all obscenity would be directed back at him, for being the geek so pathe

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