Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Now There's a Courtyard with an Abject Knight Yodeling His Head Off for the Hell of It




On slowness. The above is my lack of slowness' theme song. Yes, this gag again. A different sort of hell: a 24 page drawing of the Battle of the Somme. Salon has been waving Confederate flags in threes and fours daily the past week. Every day there's an article on Ted Cruz, Ron Paul, their shameless pandering to old white Republicans angry their privilege is expiring. Pandering, man that Salon is against pandering. One man's 4AD Top Ten. Live Julia Holter. Here is Seth Ackerman in Jacobin reproducing a faithful Liberal history of the hard Conservative strain in American politics since whenever. I've had no apostasies about the hard core fans of the hard Conservative strain in American politics and the fulfillment of martyr's scripture they're enjoying, the if I can't you can't either that the American Left has lost and in losing is fearful of any others' martyr's scripture. Satie piano pieces played by Poulenc and Fervier on the invaluable UbuWeb. So yes, we're being played; so envious of the powerfully emoted powerlessness, we fear powerfully emoted powerlessness. So maybe retro culture is the reinvestment of surplus capital. Oh, the Greenwald comment from a few days ago: here's Arthur, here's more Tarzie (specifically on the next link) - am I glad revelations were made, yes. Does it matter that Greenwald's motives aren't pure? I don't know. Is it reflective of fanboys' and fangirls' (e.g. me) willingness to justify motives and behaviors in sham heroes if the immediate effect is to penalize the other side by code of one's own side's martyr's scripture (which is the same subclausy bullshitty subclause as the other side)? Is it part experiment, part theater? Isn't everything? Does it matter if our heroes capitalize in capitalism? I don't know - I spent an hour yesterday screaming at an Apple employee because Apple's latest software has totally fucked up my iPhone. Berryman/Eminem mash-up. What you can buy me for Giftmas, the Incredible Sestina Anthology. On drones and the global war on tribal Islam. Hey, a Zombie rising! Dear god, librarians show of their tattoos. So, on slowness: I don't know how. Dan played this last night, I haven't Seefeeled in a few months, it's still in my head this morning:







AMOUR HONESTUS

Edward Hirsch

The nights were long and cold and bittersweet,
And he made a song for the hell of it.

She stood by the window, a heavenly light
Who created havoc for the hell of it.

He used to fondle every skirt in sight,
Then he fell in love--that's the hell of it.

Now there's a courtyard with an abject knight
Yodeling his head off for the hell of it.

O poor me, my Lady, my hopeless plight!
She married a prince for the hell of it.

Honorable, unsatisfied, illicit--
Why bring it up? Just for the hell of it.

The fever spread from poet to poet
Who burned in the high-minded hell of it.

But the Untouchable had him by the throat,
And he stopped singing for the hell of it.

Love is a tower, a trance, a medieval pit.
When I lost you, I knew the hell of it.



9 comments:

  1. Does it matter that Greenwald's motives aren't pure? I don't know. Is it reflective of fanboys' and fangirls' (e.g. me) willingness to justify motives and behaviors in sham heroes if the immediate effect is to penalize the other side by code of one's own side's martyr's scripture (which is the same subclausy bullshitty subclause as the other side)?

    That might be a decent question if the effect of Greenwald's labored self-promotion masquerading as "revelations" actually were "penalizing the other side." Unfortunately Greenwald's work is not doing that. But you're free to imagine it is, courtesy of hero-worship lenses on your eyeglasses. Everyone's at liberty to engage in self-delusion, it's one of the last true freedoms left for Americans.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi, Oxtrot. Looking for something else back in archives two days ago I came upon a post I wrote four+ years ago in which I had alerted the Oxtrot Alert System, complete with Charlie Chan avatar you used, when you were not only the regular daily reader you have been for years and still are to this day but a friend and regular contributor and commenter at this shitty blog but you had gone on one of your hiatuses and I was asking Stringtown if anyone knew if you were OK.

      Delete
  2. Does it matter that Greenwald's motives aren't pure? I don't know

    I appreciate the links, but I am really surprised you're encapsulating it this way. My concerns and Arthur's concerns are not about the purity of his motives. It's about the dishonest, authoritarian character of his alleged dissidence. And my biggest problem of all is that for every heavily redacted page he leaks (300 total, so far, of a trove containing 60,000+ documents) we get ten times that in lessons about the crucial role of the journalist in mediating whistleblowing. My problem is there is absolutely one could credibly identify as left in any of Greenwald's rhetoric or in his top-down custodianship, and quite a lot you could identify as deeply conservative.

    Does it matter if our heroes capitalize in capitalism?

    It does if in doing so they hoard leaks to leverage the movie and book deals which is, I believe, what Greenwald is doing. Then there is the whole aspect of how dangerous and disruptive is someone, really, that HBO and Sony are competing for the rights to? I would say not very, putting aside the taming effect huge influxes of corporate cash tend to have on people once the deal is made.

    "Is it reflective of fanboys' and fangirls' (e.g. me) willingness to justify motives and behaviors in sham heroes if the immediate effect is to penalize the other side"

    If what you mean by 'The other side' is the national security state, my answer is yes, because I don't think Greenwald is seriously penalizing them with his custodianship of Snowden's trove, characterized as it is by a 'strategy' of barely leaking. I think this is a complete bust and what it shows more than anything else is that people just want to enjoy a spectacle of dissidence involving a beloved celebrity left, no matter how toothless it is.






    Is it reflective of fanboys' and fangirls' (e.g. me) willingness to justify motives and behaviors in sham heroes if the immediate effect is to penalize the other side

    ReplyDelete
  3. My apologies, I was speaking to my concerns about whether I should worry about his motives vis a vis my past lazily unexamined fanboy support for Greenwald over the years. I meant for you and Arthur's post to provide examples of exactly as you describe them - "the dishonest, authoritarian character of his alleged dissidence" - and by extension *mine* in my fanboy-ness. I certainly didn't intend to mis-characterize either your and Arthur's thoughts which are clearly as you describe them in your comment.

    ReplyDelete
  4. it is disappointing that greenwald is not a hero - 'here he comes to save the day' - but just some other poor schmuck who has a habit of kidding us/and or himself about the purity of his motives

    but in this way he is not so different from you or me or everyone we know

    Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping?

    unselfishness and sincerity are inferred and can be argued about at length, of course - with respect to overt actions, as lawrence berra said, 'you can observe a lot just by watching'





    ReplyDelete
  5. but in this way he is not so different from you or me or everyone we know

    I love how this works. Some left-wing hero turns out to be a gatekeeping, self-dealing shit, and it's not because the kind of turd the system selects for, it's because he's just one man, and simply flawed like the rest of us.

    Same for Bill Keller, I guess, another bully who sat on leaks.

    I feel quite confident that Greenwald and I are very different -- I very rarely lie, for instance, while he does it habitually, and I can't remember the last time I was extremely reckless in pursuit of personal gain. But I think it was never.

    So speak for yourself.

    ReplyDelete
  6. my comment was not intended to evaluate how similar you and greenwald (and myself) are with regard to how frequency of lying, reckless behavior, etc -

    the point i hoped to make is that some of greenwald's actions are useful from the point of view of giving people more info about the surveillance regime currently operative - as the cartoon caption said, "this glass is 3/16ths full"

    you could be a much better person than i am or greenwald is, and someone on my level may not even be capable of accurately assessing how similar or different you, me, greenwald, and our blog host are in terms of our moral qualities

    There is an old adage, “When a thief meets a saint, all he sees are his pockets.”

    ReplyDelete
  7. I never understood why a short blowhard like Greenwald had any following. That said, Greenwald Exits 'Guardian' http://gregmitchellwriter.blogspot.com/2013/10/greenwald-exits-guardian.html

    ReplyDelete
  8. And I see by the latest news that Mr. Greenwald will be starting his own news organization *eyeroll* He has little enough credibility now. But I guess he can't get along with others well enough to work in some established environment. http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/exclusive-glenn-greenwald-will-leave-guardian-to-create-new

    ReplyDelete