Fuck you CNN, the remix

[lapsedmodernist]

Daryl Kagan, a CNN anchor just remarked on how this is the first time two Vietman veterans are running for President. That's, like, a soundbite equivalent of making four errors in a three-word sentence (as, I believe, the Catherine The Great managed to do once upon a time, unless the instructional story in my third-grade "Russian Language" textbook was totally aporcryphal, the probability of which, given the completely insane nature of the Soviet rhetoric machine, falls somewhere between "possible" and "likely"). That sentence simultaneously implies that
a) Dubya is a Vietnam Vet
b) Al Gore is not a Vietnam Vet

The 2000 election was not a race between two Vietnam Vets, but by her incorrect logic it would have been, except she says that it was not, whereas this one is, except that it's not.

Wow, the more I think about it, the more it breaks my brain. It's like that sentence "Their are three mistakes in this sentance" where the paradox is, there are only two orthographic mistakes, and the third mistake is the mis-counting, which, however, makes the sentence true. They made us diagram shit like that in Logic class.

I say you all join me in sending a little email to daryl.kagan@turner.com, or go here and alert her to the fact that unless in an in-house coup the GOP has handed the nomination over to McCain, she owes the CNN audience a retraction and Al Gore an apology.

Comments

Their is three mistakes...

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

...in the conjunction of your post and this comment on it.

(This is what I meant to say, anyhow: as a way of trying to say how right-on your post is. But I spazzed it. Sorry.)

Re: Their is three mistakes...

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

heh! and thanks...

[never-the-less.livejournal.com]

This is a complete non-sequitor and i apologize (there is nothing more annoying than a comment that has nothing to do with your post), but LOOK AT YOUR NEW DEFAULT ICON! HAHAHA.

BTW, and this is not a complete non-sequitor,
a long long long long time ago you posted a question about the logical accuracy of the statement "I am a different person than I was ten years ago." There was a question I think about whether the first "I" collapses a referent onto a distinct (active) subject (and then the second "I" would be the same referent but not the same subject). Anyway, I never told you this but there is a discussion of this very issue, I believe w/r/t to the classic "This is a false statement," via Lacan, problem (I forget the official name for this) near the beginning of the Zizek (surprise!) essay "Cogito and Sexual Difference." This post reminded me that I don't think I ever told you that.

See you in the streets....of Greenpoint! hahahaha. (sorry i couldn't resist ending with something even more annoying)

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Heh, yeah. I thought it was an appropriate icon for the Pain that is This Week.

That is a very Lacan way to tackle that question. As opposed to, say, Michael. J. Fox "Back to the Future" way.

For a second I thought you were talking about something like the paradox of "framing" Gregory Bateson tackles in one of the essays in "Steps to an Ecology of Mind" which goes like this:

the following statement is true
the above statement is false

Which just made me want coffee even more. Boil, little pot of water, boil.

I had a dream the other night from which I don't remember much except that I was apparently dating Lacan. Obviously, I am beyond nightmares and/or help.

[never-the-less.livejournal.com]

ugh sorry to hear about your week from hell. i read your post after i made this comment last night and then i felt really bad -- the last thing you needed was my sarcasm! of course what is really the last thing you need is to have to try to navigate a relationship with jaques lacan, even if only in your dreamworld. i used to think it would be fun to try to find a lacanian analyst (there is a reason that they don't really exist), but i realized that would really only serve to make me crazier than i already am. much better to stick with safe freudian repressed childhood stuff.

anyway, i hope your week gets better. just think it will all be over soon.

[thomas-rain.livejournal.com]

You know... I have been floating amidst the people of this country for a year now. All the way from New York to Florida to Colorado to California and damn near everything in between... and what I've discovered is that the majority of Americans are sick of our incumbent war-for-money president, and would vote for any chimpanzee that could beat him. This is good and bad.

Good because, Dubya will lose and be tossed out on his ass, chased by vicious leftists and terrorists from every direction. His life will exist in a bubble, because the world's loathing of his dishonorable, horrific presidency will never be fully quenched of its thirst. He will die a lonely death, and I will laugh.

Bad because, Kerry is not the answer to our Prayers. We will be in a shit hole for years to come, Kerry/Bush or no President whatsoever... We, the american people - have an enormous task of restoring our credibility as well as restoring our utility as a nation. Utility as a nation means simply, (hydrocell).

Holler if ya hear me?

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Yes, Kerry is reactionary, hawkish and in general the
worst Democratic candidate I could have hoped for in this sorry "election" year, he will perpetuate the Empire, but he is not a PNACer.  And as Chomsky said about PNACers, "they are not conservatives, they are radical reactionaries." In other words, Total Apocalypse and Four More Wars. We will have to keep striving for change regardless of who is in office. With Kerry in office we will perhaps be able to make attempts at reparations, rather than continue spinning headfirst into an Irreversible Global Nightmare.

[thomas-rain.livejournal.com]

Word.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

word.