Scorsese Decoded
Mar 11, 2010 Culture Wars, Directors, Kulturkampf, Scorsese, Twitteratti, movies
Via Roger Ebert’s new voice comes this summation of the director’s work:
Every one seems to be about a man who has realized the dichotomy of his life and making a choice. Once blind, now seeing… for better or worse.
I noticed this years ago. Scorsese’s always taken a very personal approach to the gospel; I was more offended by the Brooklyn accents in “Last Temptation” than the material, which was pretty tame compared to Genesis. I may add it is strange how that movie was vilified, considering Scorsese’s entire life’s work has been a redemption of Christian parable.
Morning Breakfast
Feb 10, 2010 11-Dimensional Chess, Consensus, Culture Wars, Kulturkampf, President Barack Obama, The Peace of 2008
I’m having eggs and bacon and biscuits with toast and coffee. It’s cold outside and dammit, this is the south.
There will be new FDA rules to end the days of misleading nutritional information because Obama is just like Bush.
Frank Rich recognizes the 11-D chess move that is Obama’s DADT strategy:
In another, milder cross-examination — on “Meet the Press” last weekend — John Boehner, the House G.O.P. leader, fended off a question about “don’t ask” with a rhetorical question of his own: “In the middle of two wars and in the middle of this giant security threat, why would we want to get into this debate?” Besides Mullen’s answer — that it is the right thing to do — there’s another, less idealistic reason why President Obama might want to get into it. The debate could blow up in the Republicans’ faces. A protracted battle or filibuster in which they oppose civil rights will end up exposing the deep prejudice at the root of their arguments. That’s not where a party trying to expand beyond its white Dixie base and woo independents wants to be in 2010.
Obama is turning the demographics of social change into a wedge between Republicans and independent voters as well as the military — which also affirms my thesis that Kulturkampfers have already lost, and that Obama knows exactly how to use opinion polls. When he described an end to the culture wars in his inaugural speech, he wasn’t kidding.
Obama understands the concept of “divide and conquer.” In the politics of consensus, it is called “wheat from chaff.”
Dear Glenn Beck: The Meaning of “Barack”
Feb 5, 2010 Culture Wars, Faux Noise Channel, Faux Noise™, Glenn Beck, Kulturkampf, Obama Derangement Syndrome, Obama antichrist, Obama smears, Obama's middle name, Scare Words, progressives
Okay, that’s it Glenn. You’ve gone too far:
BECK: He chose to use his name, Barack, for a reason. To identify, not with America — you don’t take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical? Really? Searching for something to give him any kind of meaning, just as he was searching later in life for religion.
Meanings of barack and derivations: to kneel, to bless, to invoke blessings, to sanction, to be blessed, to enjoy or find pleasure or delight, to ask a blessing, to seek a blessing, to be praised, to be sublime.
A bierka is a pool or small pond, which is a sacred item in desert cultures. Check the Old Testament and you’ll find that Hebrews had some harsh treatments for anyone who poisoned a well; it was considered a crime against humanity.
There are other nouns based of the root barak: blessing, benediction, bounty. There is a negation meaning “misfortune” or “bad luck.” There are several parts of speech made from the root: when an Arab needs congratulations, you should say mabrook.
This information comes from from my taxpayer-supplied copy of the Hans-Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, which still smells of Kuwaiti sand.
Glenn, I understand your problem: you are a clown with a circus. You are forced to top yourself each and every weekday. Every morning, you must pray to god for inspiration to top the boiled frog episode. This would just be entertainment if not for the fact you serve a rotten agenda: to rally racists, idiots, lunatics, and otherwise good Christians to the banner of the Republican Party.
Not that I mind; you’re helping to marginalize your own side. But along the way, you’ve stolen the act of every wacknoggin in the history right-wing media from Alex Jones to Father Coughlin, and now you’re channeling Jack Van Impe. You never know what the hell you’re talking about because your reading list consists of John Bircher paranoia, Atlas Shrugged, and — apparently — Hal Lindsey. Not a far stretch for someone who believes in golden plates and spirit-wives, I know — but still, it would all be fine except for the part where you constantly fill the heads of millions with this kind of dangerous garbage.
Glenn, you’re pandering to religious extremism and invoking the culture wars somewhere they absolutely don’t belong. I get the timing, because religiosity is hot: first there was Brit Hume, then Rush Limbaugh, and of course we have the highly-questionable testimony of Tim Tebow’s mom coming up in the midst of the f***ing SuperBowl this Sunday.
But this is really, really dangerous. You are telling your cult of worshipful know-nothings that the president serves the dark side, and by doing so you encourage very un-Christian divisions. Fear and hate are the tools of darkness. The truth is that YOU serve the dark side, Glenn. Your entire line of attack on Obama is psychological projection, like when you call Obama a “racist” and then pander to racism.
In fact, as long as we’re on the subject of things you project, consider your employer’s cozy relationship with the Chinese communist party. Hey, look — I connected YOU to actual, living, breathing, non-imaginary commies in one step — and without a chalkboard prop to make people think I maybe know what the fuck I’m talking about.
As long as I’m on a roll: the president might have changed his name to Joe Wilson or Bobby Jindal; but he instead chose to keep his birth name “not (as) some assertion of my African roots … not a racial assertion. It was much more of an assertion that I was coming of age. An assertion of being comfortable with the fact that I was different and that I didn’t need to try to fit in in a certain way.”
Get that, Glenn? Barack Hussein Obama kept his name because America is already enlightened enough to vote for a black man with a funny foreign name. Which just goes to show that you’ve already lost. The most you and your colleagues in the wingnutosphere can hope to accomplish is to make it as likely as possible to come to violence — just like the fight against progress did in the 1860s and 1960s.
Oh, which reminds me of one other thing: I’m sick of you pretending to know what “progressive” means. You’ve filled up endless hours of airtime with horse manure about a movement you don’t understand one tiny bit. I’ve done a better job of explaining the history of the progressive movement in a five-minute rock video than you have done in your entire career:
We’ve all been in those mind-numbing, stomach-churning, sleep-inducing conversations with people whose brains seem to be smaller than their mouths. They’re always endlessly long, painfully agonizing and hopelessly futile. I’d attempt to get past the screeners and tell you all this myself, Glenn, but it would be pointless. Just grow the hell up, you stupid racist bastard.
Prejean Flakes Out on Larry King
Nov 12, 2009 Culture Wars, Kulturkampf, Michele Bachmann Crazy Counter™, sarah palin
My favorite part? She’s afraid to take questions from callers. Hello, you’re on a talk show…
It’s not the first flaky behavior we’ve noticed in female culture warriors, is it? Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Miss California have a lot in common. All three are creatures of the strange nexus of right-wing evangelical movement conservatism and beauty pageants. Coincidence?
Adding: Prejean’s 15 minutes are officially over. Can’t we all just move along?
Bachmann’s Last Stand
Nov 5, 2009 Culture Wars, Kulturkampf, Last Stands, Michele Bachmann Crazy Counter™
Flight of King James II after the Battle of the Boyne
Later today, Michele Bachmann (R-Crazyland) will bring Faux Noise and teabaggers into the halls of Congress in what she calls a “last stand” against health care reform legislation. In previewing this event, Talking Points Memo chronicles the language of desperation:
“The attitude we’re facing right now is very hostile,” Tea Party Patriot national organizer Jenny Beth Martin said… “The [members] don’t even want to hear from us on these issues.”[...]“There are no other rabbits to pull out of the hat,” Bachmann said. “This is the only thing I can think to do.”
[...](S)ome on the calls warned protesters to expect House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to bring the full force of her office to stop them. Organizers spoke of rumors that Pelosi had ordered Capitol Police to force protester buses to park far away from the Capitol and told police to deny them the chance to deliver letters based on trumped up fears of “anthrax.”
At one point, protestors were told not to dress “too nicely” for fear the media would characterize them as a “Brooks Brothers riot,” after the astroturfed RNC protests that shut down the election recount in 2000.
“The SEIU guys will do their best to send people in suits in there to make it look like we’re spray-painting the Capitol or something,” one national organizer said.
Bachmann didn’t confirm the protesters’ fears, but she didn’t do much to alleviate them either. “Don’t bring your pitchforks — bring your video cameras,” she said to organizers. “That will absolutely scare your Representatives so much it will kill the bill.”
Bachmann called tomorrow’s protest a “desperate act,” but one that grew from a fear among the public of what might happen if the Democratic health reforms come to pass. “There’s no organization here,” she told the callers. “It’s a total organic act.” (Emphasis mine)
The last bit is funny, since Bachmann has “organized” this whole thing herself. The rest is a standard mix of fearmongering identity politics: “real” Americans bravely face the power of the state and throw themselves in the way of Teh Obamanon™ in an act of self-sacrificing patriotism. Which puts me in mind of what I wrote back in February about these culture warriors:
Kulturkampf is both means and end to the Culture Warriors. It is no coincidence that their target demographic has bought 60,000,000 copies of the apocalyptic Left Behind series: this is their political End Times. The stakes cannot be higher. What we’re seeing right now is a classic Last Stand,
a loose military term used to describe a body of troops holding a defensive position in the face of overwhelming odds. The defensive force usually takes very heavy casualties or is completely destroyed, while also inflicting high casualties on the opponent. Except in rare exceptions, such as Rorke’s Drift and the Battle of Longewala, the defending force is usually annihilated. (Emphasis mine)Leaders invariably tout these suicidal battles as ‘the last hope.’ In the last stand of an authoritarian regime (Hitler’s Berlin being the obvious, though clichéd, example) the defending force is exhorted to believe victory is still possible, that the enemy can still be beaten. Indeed, Republican opposition to the stimulus bill represents exactly this sort of thinking.
But last stands usually fail. If they are truly dedicated, the survivors turn to guerilla warfare. Representative Pete Sessions, R-Tx, exemplified this last week when he favorably compared Republican opposition to the Taliban insurgency. This is what ‘legacy projects’ and think tanks are for: they are the madrassahs of future insurgency.
Unless Obama takes the stimulus package experience as a lesson in what the Republicans will do to his agenda — and gives up on the pipedream of ‘bipartisanship’ with a party interested only in obstruction — the organs of Republican orthodoxy will create their own version of history. Just as the Lost Cause mythology of the Confederacy eventually culminated in the GOP’s Southern Strategy, the Republicans will raise a new generation of recruits to continue the Kulturkampf.
That is exactly what Bachmann and company are doing today. However their “last stand” plays out in the news cycle, it will inevitably return many cycles later in the narrative of Lost Cause mythology.
Meanwhile, Bachmann’s media aide is leaving for less crazy pastures. Politico:
A conservative Republican House member, speaking on the condition of anonymity, suggested that Bachmann’s views — and her willingness to state them — make it hard for her to keep staff.“When your captain’s crazy, it’s time to find a new ship,” the lawmaker said. (Emphasis mine)
That “crazy captain” is trying to lead the news cycle today.
The Uterus as Birth-Cannon for Jesus
Oct 21, 2009 Culture Wars, Eliminationist Rhetoric, Kulturkampf, hostile birth movement
Why would anyone, least of all Newsweek and Washington Post, give culture warrior Bill Donohue a forum? This is Kulturkampf:
The culture war is up for grabs. The good news is that religious conservatives continue to breed like rabbits, while secular saboteurs have shut down: they’re too busy walking their dogs, going to bathhouses and aborting their kids. Time, it seems, is on the side of the angels.
Just to be perfectly clear, Donohue doesn’t think anyone has the right to use birth control, much less get an abortion. Yet he’s shocked and angry that American popular culture portrays his “values” as small-minded, stupid, and more than a little fascist — which they are.
Donohue was just ranting at our popular culture, but his post comes a day Rush Limbaugh launched a rather outrageous attack on a month-old blog post by the NYT’s Andrew Revkin: “Are Condoms the Ultimate Green Technology?“
More children equal more carbon dioxide emissions. And recent research has resulted in renewed coverage of the notion that one of the cheapest ways to curb emissions in coming decades would be to provide access to birth control for tens of millions of women around the world who say they desire it.
Here is Rush Limbaugh throwing his lot in with the hostile birth movement, inviting Revkin to kill himself:
Kulturkampf is all about power. The culture warriors know they’re out of touch; the new plan is to outnumber us the old-fashioned way.
Bring On The Suffragettes
Oct 1, 2009 Coelocanth Conservatism, Culture Wars, John Derbyshire
And the fire hoses of Birmingham. National Review’s John Derbyshire thinks women should lose the right to vote and civil rights laws should be overturned. Saying America would “probably” be better, Derbyshire declared:
“The conservative case against it is that women lean hard to the left,” Derbyshire responded nonsensically. “They want someone to nurture, they want someone to help raise their kids, and if men aren’t inclined to do it — and in the present days, they’re not much — then they’d like the state to do it for them.”[...]Later in the interview, Derbyshire said there’s also a case to be made for repealing the 1964 Civil Rights Act because you “shouldn’t try to force people to be good.”
Culture Warriors do have some strange ideas. What logically follows a repeal of the 19th Amendment is that Michelle Malkin would shut up, Michelle Bachmann would go home to her umpteen foster kids, and Sarah Palin could not run in 2012. As wonderful as that might be, I won’t trade them for Nancy Pelosi, flawed as she might be.
Derbyshire’s reasoning — that women should depend on men instead of the government — is an impressive male chauvinism that one would think entirely dead in America. It’s beyond “paleo-conservative.” Hell, this is Coelocanth Conservatism.
Exploiting Economic Ignorance
Sep 17, 2009 Culture Wars, Kulturkampf, Producerism, Southern Strategy, deficit spending
aTimothy Egan of the New York Times describes the rhetoric of a tea party pundit:
Who is Williams? A garden variety demagogue who calls Obama “an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug” and the Democratic party “a domestic enemy” of America. He also refers to the president as “racist in chief.” That says all you need to know about leaders of the Tea Party movement.
Williams repeatedly invoked the “working stiffs” who feel left out. Working people are always the last to get aboard the gravy train, and the first to be used in campaigns that will not advance their cause. And with these demonstrators, and the hucksters trying to distract them from real issues, history repeats itself. (Emphasis mine)
Over at The American Prospect, Michelle Goldberg recounts the evangelical movement’s shameful history on Civil Rights and its now-erased 1990s bid for redemption.
Producerism has often been a trope of right-wing movements, especially during times of economic distress, when many people sense they’re getting screwed. Its racist (and often anti-Semitic) potential is obvious, so it gels well with the climate of Dixiecrat racial angst occasioned by the election of our first black president. The result is the return of the repressed.
[...]As racism grew politically unacceptable, the Christian right was able to channel resentment over the decline of white male privilege into a Kulterkampf directed at more acceptable enemies, like gays and lesbians. The movement borrowed heavily from Catholic theology and convinced itself that it was in a righteous struggle against a culture of death, not a culture of diversity. Now the mask is off.
Egan and Goldberg have recognized a time-honored right-wing rhetorical strategy of divide-and-conquer. A strange, toxic mix of Randian individualism and pious Culture War has allowed Cessna conservatives to exploit the ignorance and prejudices of working-class Americans to turn them against their own interests. It’s the basis of the Southern Strategy created by Nixon and perfected by Reagan.
The Southern Strategy has begun to crumble, yet Republicans hold out hope that Teh Stupid™ will have its usual power. After all, how many teabaggers were quoted on deficits and debt last Saturday, for example? Yet the facts have that well-known liberal bias once again:
If they are ever to truly take power back from the right, American progressives must do a better job of public education on issues like this.
I’m raising $500 for some investigative journalism. Click here to help!
Out Of Money, Operation Rescue Targets Obama Kids
Sep 17, 2009 Culture Wars, Obama kids, Randall Terry
Operation Rescue is running low on funds. What better way to fill the coffers than to get some publicity out of picketing the Obama daughters? Arch-Kulturkampfer Randall Terry has a press release:
One protest will occur at Sidwell Friends School in Washington DC, where many high powered politicos send their children.
“We will not be intimidated into silence. We will continue to show images of aborted babies at high schools, no matter what the cost.
The Obamas are still in grade school, but hey — the pictures will be educational for the little kiddies. The press release continues:
“President Obama condemned Jim Pouillon’s murder – which is good – but he said nothing about protecting pro-lifers. At least by going to Sidwell Friends School, we know we will have police protection. ” Randall Terry, Director, Operation Rescue Insurrecta Nex.
Ah. So it’s the anti-abortion crusaders who need protecting now, not the abortion doctors. Or elementary school children.
I’m raising $500 for some investigative journalism. Click here to help!
The Permanent Campaign
Sep 9, 2009 Culture Wars, Permanent Campaign, stovepiping
Mark Bowden, author of Blackhawk Down, investigated the strange coincidence of all the TV networks having Sonya Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” speech cued up the instant her nomination was announced, finding that:
The reporting we saw on TV and on the Internet that day was the work not of journalists, but of political hit men. The snippets about Sotomayor had been circulating on conservative Web sites and shown on some TV channels for weeks. They were new only to the vast majority of us who have better things to do than vet the record of every person on Obama’s list. But this is precisely what activists and bloggers on both sides of the political spectrum do, and what a conservative organization like the Judicial Confirmation Network exists to promote. The JCN had gathered an attack dossier on each of the prospective Supreme Court nominees, and had fed them all to the networks in advance. (Emphasis mine)
Bowden focuses on the rise of web-based partisan journalism and the MSM’s new habit of stovepiping propaganda, but what I find interesting is his identification of the 24-7 news cycle as “post journalistic. It sees democracy, by definition, as perpetual political battle.” He’s talking about the permanent campaign:
Who created this state of affairs? Risking Bowden’s wrath for taking a partisan position, I have to say that after studying American politics for a quarter-century it’s clearly the doing of Culture Warriors. The reactionary right has been making this happen since 1973 through direct mail, talk radio, and the evangelist-political complex. Scrutinizing every detail of every politician they disagree with, a vast field of right-wing propaganda has radicalized the conservative movement and made American politics toxic to democracy. In the age of the blog, that propaganda machine has been de-professionalized by the Michelle Malkins of the world — who have, if anything, heated up the rhetoric.
It’s only in the age of the internet that we’ve seen anything like that from the left. Bowden’s article comes just as a right-wing meme emerges about Obama as the “perpetual candidate” — which is ironic, since only a community-organizer-in-chief could possibly counter the perpetual smear machine of the right. We’re seeing that right now with health care and the public option; we’ve had a farcical object-lesson in Obama’s back-to-school speech. He is the candidate the right created.
They made it this way, and want to complain about the way things are.
