If you read any rant today, make sure it’s “The Bitch Is Back”. (Be warned: should you happen to think Objectivism is nifty, you may not appreciate it quite as much.) Andrew Corsello’s essay for GQ concerning author/philosopher Ayn Rand’s followers and her work’s lingering influence over global economics and politics is a raw, rambunctious, damning piece of work. Here’s a choice excerpt:
In the end, it’s not the books but the smug, evangelical certainty of Ayn Rand Assholes that causes me to loathe Ayn Rand in a personal way. The thing I liked most about college was being around so many young people who were as earnest as they were dauntingly smart. People who didn’t (yet) feel the need to own every room they walked into. People who knew how to ask questions. That was it. All that elevated question-asking, and the pliancy of temperament it entailed.
We were children. Then came Rand, “the Rosa Klebb of letters,” as entertainment journalist Gary Susman calls her, to body-snatch some of the best of them. Rhetorical question: Is there anything more irritating than a 20-year-old incapable of uttering the words “I don’t know”?
Actually, there is: an 82-year-old Alan Greenspan admitting in October 2008—at least ten years too late—that he’d found “a flaw in the model that I perceived as the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works.”
WORD. Wish I still had the email address for this kid in my high school econ class who used to carry Rand’s photo around in his wallet and habitually referred to people as “subnormals”, just so I could send him the final, frothing paragraphs of Corsello’s essay.
Can one of you guys please get me this Yulia Tymoshenko doll for my birthday? A $53K porcelain representation of Lady Yu as Robin Hood, complete with a bow and arrow and leather boots fitted with spurs, isn’t too much to ask for this year, is it? Anyone? …guys? Okay, fine. I’ll settle for the homemade Barbie version. (Unless Marina Bychkova decides to take a stab at it.)
The dolly above, along with other figures of prominent Ukrainian politicians, was crafted by artist Yelena Kuznetsova for yesterday’s Ukrainian Doll Parade, an auction aimed towards raising money for the construction of an orphans’ rehabilitation center. Tymoshenko’s doll was by far the most popular; it was auctioned off for ten times the estimated price, according to news source RT.
Top row: L: Yulia shows the babybats how it’s done. R: Yulia and the Prince of Darkness. Bottom row: L: Yulia and her pet tigress, Tigrulya. R: Yulia knows how to accessorize.
The Coilhouse obsession with Tymoshenko (and, more recently, her tribe of Amazonian defenders) dates back to 2007. Since then, she’s been busy – negotiating oil disputes with Russia, campaigning for health reform, and galvanizing global support for leg-o-mutton sleeves and black lace. After falling out with President Yushchenko earlier this year, Tymoshenko announced her bid to run in the January 2010 Presidential Elections. While I’m neutral on Tymoshenko as a politician, I’m a staunch supporter of her hair and its commitment to solving the gas crisis.
Today is Tymoshenko’s birthday, so here’s wishing our Ukranian Dune Priestess the very best on her special day. Your update on Yulia’s gothic agenda, after the jump.
As you may or may not know Lou Dobbs — journalist, Birther, and cranky old man — resigned from CNN last week for the second time, for reasons that have not been made clear though it is speculated that he wanted more time to devote to his hobbies, like hunting illegal immigrants for sport; a hobby which has single-handedly kept this wonderful nation of ours from being overrun by a merciless tide of humanity intent on taking all the jobs that no one like Lou Dobbs wishes to do. Besides his outdoor hobbies, however, there are whispers that Mr. Dobbs may seek some sort of public office, thereby helping him to protect even more of America than he could alone in a tree stand armed with only his trusty rifle.
With that in mind, Mr. Dobbs has been making the rounds, getting his fleshy face out there and shaking his jowls gravely for the benefit of the public so that they may become more accustomed to his craggy, experienced folds. No appearance thus far typifies the direction that the Lou Dobbs Express will take than this recent interview on Fox News’s The O’Reilly Factor in which the GOP’s favorite amateur pornographer asks the Border Baron — without even the slightest hint of irony — if he thinks that Barack Obama is the devil to which Lou, sounding every bit the glorious statesman he is destined to be, answers that no, Barack Obama is not the devil. He is just a terrible president. And a terrible person. Also, he may eat babies. In fact, he likes the taste of babies so much that he may mandate that every heterosexual couple in America must produce an extra baby which will be harvested by illegal, Mexican laborers for his sole, gastronomic satisfaction.
Or not, I’m just still flabbergasted that this question can be asked in full view of the public with a seriousness usually reserved for matters that are, well, not insane.
Coilhouse is pleased to introduce a new project by Jeff Wengrofsky (Agent Double Oh No). Jeff explains: “The Syndicate of Human Image Traffickers (SHIT) is an independent film production nexus whose mission is to provide exposure to art, cialis artists, movements, events, and organizations that we believe are unusual, timely, and provoking. Our current project is a series of short (10 minute) documentary films that examine the politics and aporias of creativity. “The Gospel According to Reverend Billy” is the first in this series. It is being published on the Coilhouse blog and is very much an extension of my work for you folks. We hope to web publish a little film once a month until the close of 2010.”
“Man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains.” – Rousseau
The prime, often countervailing logics of 21st century America – capitalism and democracy – seem dangerously out of balance today. Meanwhile, vestigial factors, like Puritanism, sometimes affect public life in surprising ways. Since the Giuliani years, America’s largest city – New York – has seen lower crime, infrastructural investments, an infusion of capital, a proliferation of chain stores, a vast profusion of surveillance devices and, perhaps, the general evisceration of democracy. Just recently, Mayor Michael Bloomberg ignored widespread opposition to the construction of two billion dollar stadiums and the much-maligned Atlantic Yards construction project. More egregiously, he bullied our City Council into overturning a term limits law that had been passed fifteen years earlier by public referendum. Now running for his third term, Bloomberg’s campaign war chest has intimidated all prominent Democratic challengers.
As politics appears as (yet another) massively-financed spectacle of buzzwords, scandals, outsized personas and deep psychology, is it possible to enter the political fray without selling your soul? Can you get the attention of the public eye by taking on an identity at once striking and also familiar to our public culture? Fifteen years ago, William Talen began the process of becoming a New Yorker and re-inventing himself as “Reverend Billy.” Today, armed with this identity, he enters churches of consumption – like the Disney store in Times Square – to project a powerful message opposing corporate retail, a culture of consumerism, and the encroachment of our public spaces.
Reverend Billy’s charisma, energy, and smarts have gathered him a gospel choir, the attention of CNN, a documentary film by Morgan Spurlock, and now the nomination of New York’s Green Party for the 2009 mayoral race. Reverend Billy combines a Nixonian charm with the overly stylized tropes of a preacher, and, perhaps as prime mover, a rich Calvinist heritage. America has a long history of Calvinist preachers – you may know them as “Puritans” – who rail against impure desires, “the moneychangers,” and fret mightily for the souls of their congregants.
COILHOUSE: Words like “community” and “neighborhood” have a special resonance for your choir. Are you a New Yorker? REVEREND BILLY: I grew up in Watertown, South Dakota and Rochester, Minnesota, and I always dreamed of being a New Yorker, the way you can dream of New York on the prairie. When the satellites would go up across the night sky, I used to think they were New York City flying through space. I first moved here in 1974, stayed a couple of years. Moved back again in the early 80s and, for a longer period of time, in the late 80s. I was like a hitchhiker, I would come and crash in the Lower East Side. In March of 1994, I don’t know why exactly, my commitment became permanent.
Do you feel like a New Yorker?
I do now because I perform in so many neighborhoods. I marry, baptize and bury New Yorkers in so many different boroughs. We – me and Savitri and the choir – some of us were born here and many of us are immigrants, we like the idea of a homemade spirituality that does not necessarily come from an organized religion. That idea became a New York idea after 9-11. Many of us gathered in rooms. The Reverend Billy idea of a different God or Goddess every day with another name, staying out of trouble with deities that cause us to kill each other, that kind of fellowship, I needed it, too.
The above is a short but fascinating trailer for Dreamworlds 3, an hour-long documentary on the use and abuse of women’s bodies in modern-day pop music videos. You needn’t be a scholar of gender studies or media literacy to appreciate what you see here. If you’re a fan of thoughtful video editing, deadpan humor, or the ladiiiiies, this one’s for you.
Narrating over a relentless cascade titillating music-video imagery, Jhally finally explains the problem of sexual objectification in our culture in a way that does not, unlike many other texts that deal with this, make you feel like a real shit for objectifying others in your mind, or for wanting to be objectified. This point comes into clarity at the 29:30 mark:
There is nothing inherently wrong with [the techniques of objectification] in and of themselves. It is not that it is always negative to present women as ready to be watched, or wanting to be watched. We all – men and women – present ourselves to be watched, to be gazed at. We all – men and women – watch attractive strangers with sexual desire. To treat another as an object of our desires is part of what it means to be human. The problem in music video and in the culture in general is that women are presented as nothing else. If the story about femininity could be widened beyond sexual objectification to include many other qualities of individuals – [intellectual, emotional, spiritual, creative, etc] – then there would be no problem with a little objectification as a sexual aspect of femininity, to be balanced out and integrated with many other human qualities. The problem is that in our contemporary culture, the complexity gets crowded out by a one-dimensional femininity based on a single story of the body.
Click here for the full-length feature. It has a stupid watermark on it, but the documentary’s compelling enough that it really doesn’t matter. Even if you don’t have time to watch the whole thing, the 5-minute version included here stands as a fascinating vignette on the subject on its own.
Dreamworlds 3 is only one of several media literacy titles that Jhally’s produced or contributed to over the years. Here are a few other favorites:
Dreamworlds 2 – Same as the above, but retro! Made in 1995.
Advertising & the End of the World – A discussion of advertising’s promise to deliver happiness, society’s high-consumption lifestyle and the coming environmental crisis.
Reel Bad Arabs – On the vilification of Arab characters in the American cinema.
Wrestling with Manhood: Boys, Bullying & Battering – Focuses on “professional wrestling and the construction of contemporary masculinity, they show how so-called “entertainment” is related to homophobia, sexual assault and relationship violence.”
Jimi Hendrix performs “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Woodstock Festival in upstate New York, 1969. You can hear the bombs, screams and ear-splitting jetfire of Vietnam in that guitar.
At first, I just figured I’d take a minute to mark the occasion of this country’s birth with the above clip of Hendrix’s string/mind/soul-bending rendition of the U.S. National Anthem. It’s been almost exactly 40 years since the footage was shot at Woodstock, during late summer, in the astoundingly eventful year of 1969.
Then I got to thinking a bit more about 1969. Egads, what a dense historical American nerve cluster! Over the course of those twelve months, one seriously heavy, snaking cultural current swept humanity in some exhilarating and alarming directions. Countless aspects of life as we now know it were irrevocably changed, and it all happened overnight.
In a piece written recently for USA Today, cultural anthropologist Jeremy Wallach called 1969 “the apotheosis and decline of the counterculture” and Rob Kirkpatrick, author of 1969: The Year Everything Changedsaid: “I don’t think it’s even debatable. There’s an America before ’69, and an America after ’69.”
To give me and mah feller ‘Merkins something to chew on today besides corn on the cob, here’s a list of just a few of the country’s more momentous occurrences, circa 1969:
The whole world watched, breathless, as the lunar module Eagle landed and Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the Moon. Dr. Denton Cooley successfully implanted the first temporary artificial heart in Texas. Four months after Woodstock, the infamously violent, miserable Altamont Free Concert was held at the Altamont Speedway in northern California, ostensibly bringing an end to the idealistic sixties. In NYC, the Stonewall riots kicked off the modern gay rights movement in the U.S. Members of the Manson Family cult committed the Tate/LaBianca murders, horrifying Los Angeles and goading a prurient media circus. The first message was sent over ARPANET between UCLA and Stanford. L. Ron Hubbard had his organization’s name officially changed to The Church of Scientology, and they started litigating. Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography and the Thoth Tarot Deck were both republished, and Kenneth Anger shot his lesser known –but deeply resonant– film Invocation of My Demon Brother. Barred from reentering the states to hold their planned New York City “Bed-In”, John Lennon and Yoko Ono relocated the event to the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Quebec, where they recorded “Give Peace a Chance”. Everybody got nekkid in the Broadway muscial production, Hair…
We’ve all seen the photo. Some of us have put it up on our wall. There are few more primal symbols of the power of individual rebellion than Jeff Widener’s single shot of one unidentified Chinese man standing in front of a line of tanks.
There had seemed so much right with their movement, their ideals, the spontaneous coming together across political creeds and backgrounds to demand freedom, to build a towering “Goddess of Democracy,” which they then brought forth to challenge Mao’s old, looming portrait.
For a shining moment, it seemed like she was winning.
It is 20 years since June 5, 1989. Twenty years since a peaceful uprising of students, intellectuals, rebels and working people that seem poised to set free the world’s most populous nation finally ended in blood and tragedy in Tiananmen square.
Below the fold are some photos that you may not have seen. Some are, to give fair warning, quite gruesome, but they reflect reality: over a thousand people that lost their lives trying to push their part of the world in a better direction.
In a time when most interest in China involves how much money can be squeezed from it, Tiananmen has faded into memory for far too many. It is more important than ever to remember the atrocities its government committed — and still commits — to keep its stranglehold on power. News of the Chinese government ramping up censorship before the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacres serve as a stark reminder of the things that have not changed.
The truth cannot die. Nothing will erase the reality of what was done. It is a reminder too, that there is nothing inscrutable about the East, that hundreds of thousands were willing to risk and sacrifice for the same goals sought around the world.
Some things should never be forgiven — or forgotten.
In the wake of the California Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Proposition 8, banning gay marriage, I found this 2004 documentary by Rosa von Praunheim about gay men in Germany who belong to ultra right-wing, nationalist organizations interesting, if only for the dichotomy it seems to represent. It may boggle the mind to imagine someone who, as a member of an oppressed group or subculture, would choose to associate with a group who champions a way of thinking that is so diametrically opposed to that individual’s well-being; a way of thinking that went so far as to sanction their extermination. That they themselves don’t appear to see this conflict of interests is strange, but that they would not sympathize with the groups that they speak against may strike one as stranger.
It is, I think, a blind spot for many of the more liberal minded of us. The quest for equality, as noble and necessary as it is, will always have a less savory side; for while we are all indeed the same regardless of skin color, or belief, or sexual orientation, we can also fear the same way, and hate the same way, and discriminate the same way. It seems that for many — many more than should be — equality does not apply to everyone and just because they deserve the same rights and privileges as “everyone else”, doesn’t mean there aren’t those lower on the totem pole who don’t deserve the same; those who can still remain quantified as “other”.
It is, perhaps, a cynical take on human nature but one that bears some truth. Hopefully in time it, like Prop 8, will be nothing but a sad and embarrassing memory.
Today is IDAHO, 2009. On this date not too long ago (1992), homosexuality was finally removed from the International Classification of Diseases of the World Health Organization (WHO). This year, in a gesture of pride and solidarity, hundreds of folks from 48 countries across six continents around the world participated in a video message produced by the Parisian IDAHO committee in conjunction with the Hong Kong-based site, Gays.com.
“Participants submitted videos in all of the world’s key languages, including Afrikaans, Arabic, Cantonese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tamil and even American Sign Language.”
Unfortunately, you can’t actually watch the video (or anything else) on the official Gays.com site right now because they’re experiencing a big ol’ DDoS attack that hit the site approximately 48 hours ago, shortly before various global IDAHO celebrations were set to begin. Coincidence? Um, no. Gays.com spokesperson Kenneth Tan, who spoke to Pitch Engine earlier today, says that “this is a well-timed, well-orchestrated assault by a large botnet with tens of thousands of PCs sending requests to our site. Engineers with our Internet Service Provider remarked they have never seen an attack of this intensity before.”
Okay, who else is getting REALLY effin’ sick of irony? Thankfully, Gays.com has been able to upload and share the video on many other sites. Ooo! AND… via Calpernia Addams’ Twitter, I just found out that (with a nod to the weekend’s worldwide IDAHO celebrations) France has just become the first country in the world to officially depathologize transexualism as a mental illness. Woot!
Two steps back, three steps forward. Let’s keep on dancing, shall we?
OK, so about that interview with Ross the other day. Despite the fact that some of you seem to have found it amusing, we don’t do that sort of thing for shits and giggles. When we ask a man if he prefers sushi or tacos, we mean business. That, friends, was a Coilhouse job interview. And he’s hired. Ladies and gentlemen, put your tentacles together for our newest guest blogger, Ross Rosenberg!*
Few subjects are as tiresome to discuss in a public forum as politics. It is an arena which I make a concerted effort to avoid whenever possible. Indeed, should I have the urge to debate matters of a political bent I do it alone, in the privacy of my own cave. So devoted am I to the idea that I have cultivated a rather well-conceived alter ego; a personage of conservative persuasion who I merely call Dermot. This personality, combined with the hand-puppet I fashioned in secret just for these occasions, provides the perfect foil for my decidedly liberal views and many times I have debated, long into the night after everyone has retired for the evening, in a dual toned, hushed and angry whisper, subjects ranging from stem-cell research, to corn subsidies, to what I should have for breakfast.
The reason for disclosing this tedious and potentially embarrassing information is to assure you, dear readers, that I do not dwell wistfully on this area of our society; that I do not haunt the same vicious corners of the internet as the detestable and frail “political junkie”; and that I certainly do not watch C-Span.
