Your regularly scheduled installment of "Fuck You, CNN" has been preempted by "Fuck You, NYT"

[lapsedmodernist]

Another shining moment for the New York Times

I would also like to add that I have met a surprising amount of people who rightfully laugh at the idea of the Democratic Party being "progressive" yet stubbornly defer to the New York Times as a bastion of journalistic integrity that serves as a check against the bias of the corporate media that has been bought and paid for by Rupert Murdoch.

In some Orwellian brain pretzel-twist people keep thinking that The NYT actually covered the war in a way that could be considered something other than spin. Hey, rememeber the Mea Culpa, their post facto "self-critique" that was positively channeled from Soviet Party meetings where such "day late and dollar short" wrist-slapping was a sine qua non?

When I saw "The Battle of Algier" last winter I was struck by the portrayal of the French media in the film. During the press conference scenes the reporters, um, do their job and examine Lt. Colonel Mathieu, the fictionalized counterparty of General Massu, demanding answers about his policies of repressing the insurgency, which include illegal arrests and torture. The reporters are aggressive, confident and hold the Lt. Colonel accountable for everything he says. On August 23rd 2003 Pentagon held a special screening of this film as a part of their Special Operations training program, designed, I guess to educate about urban warfare in the context of acolonial military occupation in Iraq, I mean Algier. The screening was advertised with a flyer that read "How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film.". Obviously they learned a lot from it. Kind of my like my ex-boyfriend learned that revisionist history is totally cool and very useful from the copy of 1984^* that I misguidedly lent to him. But anyway, my point is, as long as this film is being used as an educational aid, the people who could stand to learn something from it are the White House Press Corps and the Associated Press at large. United they could stand. Divided they will all be Dan Rathered for whatever atavistic inklings to "report" that may stir within.

Incidentally, in my ongoing masochistic reading project, the Left Behind series, one of the first things the Antichrist does is eliminate independent publications and instead establishes a global press network that is part of his all-encompassing Global Community (that is based out of New Babylon, natch). All the reporters can write is Antichrist´s spin. This is one of those freaky "strange bedmates" Venn diagram points of overlap between the progressive left and the Fundies, kind of like when the Fundies mark down the proliferation of Walmarts in the "apocalyptic signs" category in their Rapture Index. I mean, the reporter who bucks this new Antichrist system in the seires (and his name is Buck, people! Buck!!) is, like, an amalgam of Woodward and Redford and Mr. Smith in Washington. Except that, you know, he is a 30-year old virgin.

^*This relates both to my idea of "poisonous books" and to my firmly held belief that people should have to undergo personality testing before being allowed near certain books. Or at least be carded. I mean, I don´t think anyone under 35 should be allowed to read Nietzsche. And teenagers who only read Marx must have their reading lists supplemented, otherwise you will get an ideological equivalent of that Ray Bradbury short story, "The Veldt" where the kids in the future have a special bedroom that can morph into any place the kids imagine, and the kids get stuck on playing in the African veldt for so long that the parents get concerned and try to shut down the room, but the kids lock them in the room and the African lions eat the parents. Any questions?

Comments

Poisonous Books, Pop Culture Age Limits

[fengi.livejournal.com]

I've had similar thoughts, which began when I was an undergrad with many male journalism major friends who seemed to have been permanently damaged by "Fear in Loathing in Las Vegas" not understanding that even Hunter himself called it a "failed experiment" in a self-analytical essay (which did not prevent him from repeating the joke in various forms for the rest of his life). This was in the 80s, gender politics were still evolving and by my senior year I thought NO j-student should be permitted to read Thompson until 30. About the time I'd read the billionth essay which was a direct rip-off of F&L's structure.

Once I was a poetry host, I decided male poets should have to undergo a psyche evaluation to ensure they had a fully formed identity before being allowed to see Barfly. I used to think "read Bukowski" but then I realized most of them didn't. Same with the entire Beat output and, in a few instances, Tom Waits. While I toyed with the idea of a similar rigorous screening for girls and Ani Difranco, I decided a better option would be a rule that any woman exposed to Difranco before age 30 should not be allowed to read poetry aloud.

I had a friend who was a half native american half african american kid who was a good poet except for this bizarre Beat fixtation, like he used the talk and dressed the part all the time, daddy-o, which morphed into a swinger/Bogart thing which thankfully mixed with some Langston/Robeson so he could pass unnoticed amongst the hipsters. I saw him years later, he was muttering like he had a headcold and saying "bad craziness" and - I suddenly realized - dressed exactly like Johnny Depp in F&L. Dude had been living in Denver and he'd transformed into Raoul Duke (not Hunter) so completely his original persona was gone.

Any rational person would also ban the following items until senior year in college, if not for the sake of the readers, then the people who have to listen to them: Sylvia Plath, Ayn Rand, Tolkien (come on, you've thought it), Douglas Adams, Monty Python...oh, I could go on.

I've noticed this proliferation of references to Gregory Corso's "On Marriage" over the years and I realize several colleges must be like mine and teach it as part of some performance and poetry class. Again, it spawns a wealth of bad imitators and should had an mental formation requirement.

Finally, for years my school screened "His Gal Friday" as part of freshman orientation for J-school, which is why for a long time we had this flood of sassy fast talking female graduates. Not that this is a bad thing, but it was still kind of peculiar.

Re: Poisonous Books, Pop Culture Age Limits

[rootlesscosmo.livejournal.com]

Corso imitators, bad. Roz Russell devotees, not so bad.

But imitation, as a first step toward sort of triangulating a mature self as the resultant of intersecting signals from diverse models, is pretty standard, and maybe even necessary, except in the fantastically rare cases where extreme youth and real originality coincide. I don't know where bebop would have been without all those ardent Charlie Parker imitators (though it would have been less sad if fewer of them had imitated his heroin use.)

Re: Poisonous Books, Pop Culture Age Limits

[fengi.livejournal.com]

Actually the Roz Russell thing was a net benefit, just peculiar in how they sort of programmed into the gals.

I can't begrudge anyone their influences, as I had more than my share growing up. There's are dangerous moments, however, when one is tempted to appropriate the persona of whoever you admire.

Which can result in extended if not permanent pretention if one is older than 16. Which is why, for example, potential SF should have to qualify against a susceptability index before reading Douglas Adams, Terry Prachett, Tom Robbins or any of the other "quirky digression" writers. If they get a score of "cookie cutter," they wait a year before being tested again.

Re: Poisonous Books, Pop Culture Age Limits

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

While I toyed with the idea of a similar rigorous screening for girls and Ani Difranco, I decided a better option would be a rule that any woman exposed to Difranco before age 30 should not be allowed to read poetry aloud.
Hahahaha. Touche. Indeed. I know just what you mean because I went to Oberlin College. I think there is a programme waiting to be assembled yesterday. I was discussing this very issue with apropos over AIM yesterday and she made a suggestion that young girls' readings of books on witchcraft should be similarly curtailed or at least monitoried.

Ayn Rand and Marx are both okay in conjunction with each other, because I imagine they would cancel each other out?

There should be gendered rules, too. No Plath for girls and NO KEROUAC for boys. And if I had my way, no Hemingway for anyone, ever. No Hemingway, period. An alternative universe where Hemingway never existed.

[never-the-less.livejournal.com]

i took a semester's long seminar on nietzsche (luckily at 23 not 18). maybe i should start deferring more blame for the things i do to that experience....as in, don't blame me -- blame my prolonged exposure to nietzsche. actually, the prof. for the seminar was actually this super great enthusiastic guy who also was fond of a more positive, life-affirming reading of nietzsche that somehow married the the positive aspects of both the subjectivity stuff and the ubermensch stuff. of course other readings were allowed and represented, but his personal love of nietzsche probably rescued me from drowing in the nihilism that could come out of it.

also, people that i know who only read marx as a teenager are the same ones whom i mentioned earlier that are like, anti-music. (the marx probably begat a lot of adorno at 19).

and thanks for the nytimes story/link.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I guess at moments I have found Nietzsche an affirming force, but really, unless you are down with an ubermeinsch trip, the only positivity is really abstract and meta, to be derived from the amor fati kind of stance that he articulates in The Gay Science, which is, like, something that could maybe keep you from wanting to kill youself on Nov. 3rd but not really a blueprint for Living Well, or at least not a good one.

[monkey-flower.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I agree with that, though. I think amor fati goes way deeper and broader than that and also much further into joy. I don't think it's a complete blueprint for Living Well, but I do think that it is a foundational and absolutely necessary piece, and that all of the other pieces, (many of them articulated by interlocutors against-and-with Nietzsche including Irigaray and Deleuze, and along Deleuzian lines, Spinoza) will amount to nothing.

Of course when I read this, I wondered if I wasn't a breathing example of why people in their early twenties should be kept from Nietzsche... but the concept of ressentiment resonates everywhere and so powerfully. When we begin to say yes, when we throw off ressentiment, where do we go? And that's an ethical question that I need someone besides Nietzsche to help me with. The thing is, we can't even ask those questions or go anywhere without saying yes.

[mjmj.livejournal.com]

"The New York Times killed a story that could have changed the election -- because it could have changed the election"

the elephant in the room that is this article is that no news event would have changed the "outcome." the people who stole the election wouldn't have cared what was printed or reported on television. the central fact of existence in the u.s. at this time is that there is no democracy.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

well, yeah, there is no democracy, and the title of the article is hyperbole, but it still showcases NYT's rapid progression in its "fall from grace." Or, um, I guess towards grace? Grace is creepy.

[mjmj.livejournal.com]

agreed. but for me, so long as judith miller's complicity in pro-assault propaganda isn't acknowledged and dealt with (starting with her dismissal), then they haven't so much fallen (further) from grace as they have remained unredeemed.

their lack of reporting on the stolen election is nearly of the same magnitude in failing as a news organization -- an institution that is supposed to recognize and report on the major events that are occurring in the world at nearly the same time as their occurrence, or at least, once they have been learned. it would be a failing of greater magnitude if it weren't for the fact that killing and destruction eventually resulted from miller's reporting. so far, no one has died who wouldn't have as a result of the stolen election. (i'm assuming that kerry wouldn't have resolved the situation in iraq at this point, a few weeks after he would have been sworn in.) but, of course, there's still time...

p.s.,
hear, hear for your remarks about t.f. he gets my vote for most overrated thinker writing in any of the major publications. (edward said referred to him in public as "the jejuene t.f." -- i'd like to have heard what he said about t.f. in private) how he won three pulitzers is beyond me.

[mycrust.livejournal.com]

Every time you post about Left Behind, I reflect on my own fundamentalist Christian upbringing and inch closer towards indulging in what would certainly be the exquisite torment of reading the books myself.

Can you say anything at this point to discourage/encourage me?

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

oooh, that is hard. I feel like I am in a poor position to advise you on it, since LB are totally allopathic to me. I don't know what kind of weird abject issues they could bring up in me if that kind of stuff was part of my upbrining. On the other hand it might be cathartic and amazing. To me it's alternately horrifying and amusing as total radical alterity because I grew up in a secular household, in a family that practiced Islam and Judaism but no Christianity ever, in a country that was officially atheistic. I guess my question would be, do you generally prefer avoidance or confrontation? Inferences about whether to read the series may follow from that assessment.

TLF

[chelvis.livejournal.com]

I never read the New York Times, but in their defense: Thomas L Friedman (http://www.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/thomaslfriedman/index.html)

• Besides being occasionally sloganeering or maybe overly-simplistic, (he does have a 750 word limit per column) what can you possibly say bad about TLF? To me, Friedman is beyond reproach; there is literally no one whose understanding of the global scene is more complete - and I have never disagreed with his views on controversial issues like terrorism, israel/palestine, out-sourcing, globalization, the EU, neo-cons in america, etc., etc.,

The rest of the paper is cat-box liner.

Re: TLF

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Thomas Friedman? The "liberal" warhawk? The Bloood for Oil is Fine by Me Friendman? Sorry, don't really want anything to do with him, he is part of the NYT Op-ed Turd Collection that over the years has featured the self-appointed English Language Maven, David Brooks whose codas are like fortune cookies turds themselves, that chia pet Nicholas Kristof, Maureen Dowd who makes me hate the previously beloved adjective "sassy," etc. If it weren't for Paul Krugman and occasional guest writers like Barbara Ehrenreich the Op-Ed would have no redeeming qualities. Oh, yeah, Bob Herbert is good too. But the issue here isn't the op-ed, it's what gets reported or buried, y'know?

Re: TLF

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

did you just delete the reply you posted?

Anyway, Friedman is a hawk, he was pro-war from the get-go covering for Washington, then when it got to be too much even for him he copped to the fact that the war was, in fact, about oil, but also wrote about how it´s okay, because it´s noblesse oblige or whatever to protect the world oil resources from a crazy maniac. Needless to say his definition of a crazy maniac does not include Our President.

And of course NYT has an ideology. It just shouldn´t prance around like it´s above all that.

[chelvis.livejournal.com]

yeah, my reply got garbled, so I deleted it. My reply is below.

[chelvis.livejournal.com]

whoa, uh, so what are you saying, you don't like Friedman?

/de-friended!

Hey just kidding... but, dismissing him as a "liberal war-hawk" who believed that the war was merely for oil is really not capturing his views. He's for opening trade, transparency in finance & governance, reducing global inequality, palestinian statehood, ethical and earth-friendly globalization ..... but because he's to the "right" of your extreme "leftness", he's dead to you? Not much of a coalition builder, miss chica.

[mjmj.livejournal.com]

if you're interested in an alternate theory about the bulge, there is this, with pictures at the start and end:

http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2004/12/35839.php