http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Wed, 21 Sep 2005 01:29:36 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. 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Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/21/012936.php John ZorabedianAriel Levy's book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture takes on pop culture's objectification of women, and the new breed of Paris Hilton wannabes who willingly go along, exploiting their own bodies and degrading their sexuality.The rise of the "raunch culture," embodied by the ubiquitous Girls Gone Wild videos and the mainstreaming of pornography, represents a backlash against the anti-porn feminism of the 1970s. The popular culture now glorifies women as sexual beings, for sure, but at a price: women's liberation is now bound up in high-heeled combat boots, S&M leather and lace, and body images that fulfill male fantasies of lascivious women with no agenda beyond the bedroom.When teenaged girls (and even younger) where thongs and t-shirts that proclaim the wearer as a "porn star," and real porn stars like Jenna Jameson are lauded as feminist icons, Levy argues, something is desperately wrong. Women have traded the Feminist Mystique for the erotic boutique.Levy's dissection of these pop trends hints at a deeper problem with our culture's conception of what is rebellious and what is cool. Instead of agitating for equality in women's health care or equal pay for women, today's version of anti-establishment action is to pierce your naval and learn how to perform a strip-tease, what Levy coins "raunch feminism."In an interview with Playboy CEO Christie Hefner (daughter of Hugh), Levy elicits this response to a question of why women are so interested in posing for the iconic men's magazine: ... The post-sexual revolution, post-women's movement generation that is now in their late twenties and early thirties--and then it continues with the generation behind them, too--has just a more grown-up, comfortable, natural attitude about sex and sexiness that is more in line with where guys were a couple generations before. The rabbit head symbolizes sexy fun, a little bit of rebelliousness, the same way a navel ring does ... or low-rider jeans! It's an obvious "I'm taking control of how I look and the statement I'm making," as opposed to "I'm embarrassed about it," or, "I'm uncomfortable with it." Levy chides a group of self-proclaimed feminists, founders of the group CAKE, who argue that throwing elaborate parties featuring strippers and pornography is, in fact, radical feminism.The authors of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future, Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, tell Levy that dancing at a strip club, or even watching the cult TV show"Xena" is akin to volunteering at a rape crisis center or speaking out at Take Back the Night.Levy writes:Throwing a party where women grind against each other in their underwear while fully-clothed men watch them is suddenly part of the same project as marching on Washington for reproductive rights. According to Baumgardner and Richards, "watching TV shows (Zena! Buffy!) can ... contain feminism in action." Based on these examples, it woul seem raunch feminism is easy to achieve: The basic requirements are hot girls and small garments.Feminism comes to mean sexiness as lionized by the popular culture. And women who buy into these commercialized images of liberation are choosing style over substance. When fighting oppression means buying the right type of clothes, or watching pornography and "feminist" TV programs like Xena or Desperate Housewives, politics becomes irrelevant.This has been an essential formulation of the counter-culture since the 1960s, when wearing jeans or long hair was a political statement. In the last 40 years, however, fashion and other trappings of pop consumerism have served no one better than the companies who learned to use '60s iconoclasm as a marketing tool. The Revolution has been commoditized.This discussion makes a lot of sense, especially when we consider the work of authors Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, who thoroughly trash the counter-culture and its critique of consumerism in their book Nation of Rebels.The authors say that the tired popular critique of consumerism is that it requires conformity: "The central idea is quite simple. Capitalism requires conformity to function correctly. As a result, the system is based upon a generalized system of repression. Individuals who resist the pressure to conform therefore subvert the system, and aid in its overthrow."These old counter-cultural theories include a sexual aspect, described by Heath and Potter as a misguided form of liberation from the repressive capitalist regime: "Capitalism requires sexual repression. In its drive to stamp out individuality, capitalism denies the full range of human expression, which includes sexual freedom. Because sexuality is erratic and unpredictable, it is a threat to the established order. This is why some people thought the sexual revolution would undermine capitalism."As Heath and Potter go on to demonstrate, however, this critique points to the exact opposite of what drives consumerism: the desire to be cool, unique, and rebellious."What we need to see is that consumption is not about conformity, it's about distinction. People consume in order to set themselves apart from others. To show that they are cooler (Nike shoes), better connected (the latest nightclub), better informed (single-malt Scotch), morally superior (Guatemalan handcrafts), or just plain richer (bmws).The problem is that all of these comparative preferences generate competitive consumption. "Keeping up with the Joneses," in today's world, does not always mean buying a tract home in the suburbs. It means buying a loft downtown, eating at the right restaurants, listening to obscure bands, having a pile of Mountain Equipment Co-op gear and vacationing in Thailand. It doesn't matter how much people spend on these things, what matters is the competitive structure of the consumption. Once too many people get on the bandwagon, it forces the early adopters to get off, in order to preserve their distinction. This is what generates the cycles of obsolescence and waste that we condemn as "consumerism." Levy approaches this analysis when she describes the pressures on young women, as young as middle school girls, to compete with others to be the "sluttiest" and "skankiest" in order to be cool. Young women will give up sex to men in order to acquire or "buy sex," much like the women on the HBO series Sex and the City acquire shoes and other trappings of the consumer lifestyle.Levy interviews the feminist author Erica Jong, who introduced the idea of the "zipless fuck," in her 1973 novel Fear of Flying, a notion of consequence-free sex for a woman like a man might enjoy:I had to create the zipless fuck to rebel against my fifties upbringing. I told my daughter the other day, "Your generation does it, my generation only talked about it." I look at my daughter and her friends in their twenties and they are reveling in their sexuality. They don't feel guilty, and why should they? Men never did. Right now they're young and beautiful and full of energy and they don't necessarily want to have a relationship, or even have a guy stay the whole night!But I would be happier if my daughter and her friends were crashing through the glass ceiling instead of the sexual ceiling. Being able to have an orgasm with a man you don't love, or having "Sex and the City" on television, that is not liberation. If you start to think about women as if we're all Carrie on "Sex and the City," well, the problem is: You're not going to elect Carrie to the Senate or to run your company. Let's see the Senate fifty-percent female; let's see women in decision-making positions&#8212that's power. Sexual freedom can be a smokescreen for how far we haven't come. The answer to the conditions of women is not more or better sex. The only solution is political. Unfortunately for progressive feminists and the left, the Christian conservative backlash against the crass popular culture of drugs, violence and sex has led to victories for pro-market Republicans, who have dominated American politics for the last 30 years. And the anti-abortion and anti0sex education agenda of the far right is hurting women even more.As Thomas Frank, author of One Market Under God and What's the Matter With Kansas?, argues in "Red-State America Against Itself," conservative backlash against the crass consumer culture has led to more victories for the populist right, even as the real political solutions to our coarsening culture are taken off the table by neo-liberal Democrats:Behold the political alignment that Kansas is pioneering for us all. The corporate world&#8212for reasons having a great deal to do with its corporateness&#8212blankets the nation with a cultural style designed to offend and to pretend-subvert: sassy teens in Skechers flout the Man; hipsters dressed in T-shirts reading "FCUK" snicker at the suits who just don't get it. It's meant to be offensive, and Kansas is duly offended. The state watches impotently as its culture, beamed in from the coasts, becomes coarser and more offensive by the year. Kansas aches for revenge. Kansas gloats when celebrities say stupid things; it cheers when movie stars go to jail. And when two female rock stars exchange a lascivious kiss on national TV, Kansas goes haywire. Kansas screams for the heads of the liberal elite. Kansas comes running to the polling place. And Kansas cuts those rock stars' taxes.As a social system, the backlash works. The two adversaries feed off of each other in a kind of inverted symbiosis: one mocks the other, and the other heaps even more power on the one. This arrangement should be the envy of every ruling class in the world. Not only can it be pushed much, much farther, but it is fairly certain that it will be so pushed. All the incentives point that way, as do the never-examined cultural requirements of modern capitalism. Why shouldn't our culture just get worse and worse, if making it worse will only cause the people who worsen it to grow wealthier and wealthier?Female Chauvinist Pigs serves as further warning to political progressives: when women rebel against their roles in our society with their pocketbooks instead of their voices, with their bodies and not their minds, and when politics takes a back seat to projecting a mere image of the radical, look out. The consequences are a debasement of our culture, a degradation of our roles as citizens in a democracy, and a vapid politics of "Red State vs. Blue State." See more thoughts at count dookie. ed: JH Edited: PC Books36558@blogcritics.org Wed, 21 Sep 2005 01:29:36 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/15/053158.php John ZorabedianGeorge Galloway, the controversial British MP who excoriated the US Senate in May while defending charges that he had a hand in the oil-for-food cookie jar, luanched a US book tour Tuesday, Sept. 13 in Boston's Fanueil Hall.Eagerly positioning himself alongside the ghosts of American revolutionaries, and likening himself to a persecuted parliamentarian named Fox, who opposed the British Crown in favor of the American colonies, Galloway labeled President George Bush the biggest recruiter for terrorism worldwide.Issuing a call for an end to the British and US occupation of Iraq, Galloway blasted the Atlantic allies' foreign policy in Israel and stumped for book sales of Mr. Galloway Goes to Washington, his screed against the Iraq war and Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair.The crowd of 400 anti-war activists in Boston went wild at Galloway's condemnations of Bush-Blair. I have to admit he was rather entertaining.What bothers me about Galloway is not his prescription for a foreign policy that creates less terrorists than it destroys, but his self-promoting bombast and shaky ethical credentials. Greg Palast exposes some unpleasant questions that Galloway neglected to speak of in Boston.As Palast reports, the self-styled revolutionary Galloway sucked up to Saddam in 1994, when he told the brutal dictator, "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength your indefatigability. And I want you to know that we are with you until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem."Poor Galloway, after debating his blustering alter-ego in New York, Christopher Hitchens, he'll be hooking up with Jane Fonda on his US tour. Fonda, of course, is "Hanoi Jane" in many American eyes, for her own cozy posture with the Viet Cong.With such a pair of tainted anti-war voices filling a void left by the complicit Democrats, the anti-war movement is failing to find a positive PR spokesperson to score points against the right.The ideal spokesperson for the anti-war movement has a pure voice, whose motives and standing is unimpeachable. Who could such a spokesperson be?Cindy Sheehan?But wait: is the Bush-scorned mother of a slain soldier cashing in now, too?A press release from PR Web Wednesday announced that Sheehan signed with Speaking Matters LLC, a speaker's bureau, whose clients also include Medea Benjamin of Code Pink. I wonder, how much money are anti-war speeches going for these days? ed: JH Politics36208@blogcritics.org Thu, 15 Sep 2005 05:31:58 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/08/19/061914.php John ZorabedianHal Lindsey's 1970 best-seller, The Late Great Planet Earth, boldly predicted the imminent final confrontation, Armageddon. Thirty-five years later, he's still predicting the apocalypse is just around the corner. The Lindsey school of apocalyptic Christian Zionism holds that war in the Middle East is a sign of Armageddon and the coming of the Antichrist. The doomsday "oracle" has written several other books of note on this topic, including The 1980s: Countdown to Armaggedon and recent titles such as The Everlasting Hatred: The Roots of Jihad, and Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth.In an essay by Stephen Sizer, "Hal Lindsey: Father of Apocalyptic Christian Zionism," Lindsey is explicitly linked with far-right Zionism in the US and Israel:Lindsey's particular kind of reading of history, coloured by a literal exegesis of highly selective biblical scriptures, is essentially polarised, dualistic, racist and confrontational. He justifies the continued demonisation of Russia, China, Islam and the Arab nations; he encourages the continued military and economic funding of Israel by the United States; he urges Israelis to resist negotiating land for peace and instead, maintain their apartheid policies, settling and incorporating the Occupied Territories within the State of Israel; and he incites fundamentalist groups committed to destroying the Dome of the Rock and rebuilding the Jewish Temple. In so doing Lindsey identifies unconditionally with the political as well as religious far right both in the United States as well as in Israel. Ironically, as the 'father' of 'armageddon theology' his attempts to defend Israel and to refute anti-Semitism may actually be leading to the very holocaust he abhors but repeatedly predicts.The recent postings on Lindsey's website include denouncements of Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a declaration that "land for peace" means encouraging rather than undermining Palestinian suicide bombers.Lindsey proclaims, "thus, the Antichrist cometh," and references "stark facts:"The "Land for Peace" equation, by its very definition, legitimized terrorism as a form of political persuasion. Over the last dozen years, Israel has in effect given up almost all of its hard-won 1967 land in exchange for nothing that even resembles an illusion of peace.Here are some of the stark facts:(1) Palestinian leaders have made no effort to disarm or dismantle the existing terror groups.(2) There has been no recognition of Israel's right to exist, which is the most basic premise upon which any peace can be based. This has been rewarded by the Bush administration embracing them as worthy peace partners. The Palestinians aren't expecting that they will ever destroy Israel. They are using terror to force the world to do it for them.Lindsey's "facts" are disputable in that the Palestinian leadership successfully kept the Palestinian population of Gaza, over 1 million people, from using violence to expel Jewish settlers. The violence in Gaza has come from Jewish protestors refusing to leave the settlements.This report from the Financial Times website on Friday, August 18, 2005:Israeli security forces seized two synagogues in violent scenes in the Gaza Strip yesterday, ousting their occupants and breaking the back of the resistance of settlers to their forcible expulsion from the territory. Forty four people were injured, including police who had acid thrown at them as they evacuated hundreds of settlers and their supporters from a synagogue in Kfar Darom. Paramilitary border police with riot gear stormed the synagogue after the protesters refused to leave.Police said about 160 people were arrested. "What we saw here crossed all boundaries," said Major General Dan Harel. Hamas and other extremist elements have done little more than demonstrate and proclaim responsibility for what Israel says is a political decision, not related to Palestinian attacks.Many Palestinians no doubt are forced to recognize Israel's existence each and every day as they grapple with military occupation. Lindsey holds in his latest column that these events are the signs prophesied in the Bible that will lead to the coming of the Antichrist, and the end of the world.The prophet Ezekiel predicts a period of time just before he Messiah comes when Israel would be "a land of unwalled villages at rest, dwelling safely without walls, having neither bars nor gates." (Ezekiel 38:1-11)In this same context, he prophesied that an army from Israel's extreme north would lead a confederacy of nations to invade. All of the nations in this confederacy are Muslim today. The Muslim leader is foreseen as Persia or modern Iran.But Lindsey was not always so certain these invading armies would be Muslim. In The Late Great Planet Earth, written during the Cold War, that the Soviet Union would invade Israel.Lindsey preaches to his considerable audience that the enemies of Israel are enemies of God, and that the Christian faith will save its converts from destruction at the end of the world.Lindsey has sold millions of copies of his more than a dozen books, and his website and radio show preach hatred toward Muslims to millions of evangelicals in the United States. A book on Linsdey's politics and prophesies, Hal Lindsey and Biblical Prophecy, by C. Vanderwaal, is reviewed by Robert Knetch on Amazon: I picked this book up at a used book sale and, alas, it is an out of print book at Amazon. Meanwhile, Hal Lindsey decades after the Late Great Planet Earth is still flourishing as a fear-mongering millionaire. The Christian faith needs more authors who can incisively analyze people's work such as that of Lindsey. What is great about Vanderwaal is that he does much more than give an intelligent critique of Hal Lindsey; he also helps the reader develop a proper understanding of biblical prophecy. He uses clear, understandable language that is refreshing in the evangelical world which seems to want ear candy. This is good theological work for a good reason. Lindsey is one of the many authors who make grave errors in their approach to biblical prophecy. Perhaps it is not fair for Vanderwaal to focus especially on him; on the other hand, Lindsey affected a whole generation with his unfounded and inaccurate predictions. Vanderwaal is quick and effective to point these out. If you wish to read Hal Lindsey, then read this first to give yourself a balanced perspective. Vanderwaal is opinionated and holds fast to his critique. But much of what he says rings true. Lindsey's hatemongering and warmongering resonate with his audience because he is able to connect world events, tenuously but convincingly, to Biblical prophesies; and his paranoid views vilifying Muslims have reached fever pitch in the era of the "war on terrorism." pub/NB,REF:Aaman Books34425@blogcritics.org Fri, 19 Aug 2005 06:19:14 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/08/18/070411.php John ZorabedianProfessional sports is intertwined with American socio-politics, including the historic movements for civil rights and to counter imperialist war. Dave Zirin's recent book, What's my Name Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States examines this history with a progressive's eye on racism, sexism, and homophobia in sports, along with the profound connection between sports and patriotic nationalism.As the 2004 World Series champion Boston Red Sox have traded in on their popularity to become one of the more profitable franchises in sports, it is important to recognize the history of racism in Boston and the organiation itself. The Red Sox were the last team in Major League Baseball to integrate, more than 10 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947. Zirin, and others, suggest that the 86-year "Curse of the Bambino," is just punishment for this racist record.The taint of racism is apparent in Boston even today, when radio call-in guests and hosts routinely batter the Sox' superstar Dominican players with a racist tone: last winter on Boston's most popular sports radio network, WEEI (the highest-rated in the country, they proudly proclaim on-air as they openly seek advertisers), the station aired a racist "comedy bit" on former Red Sox star pitcher Pedro Martinez, who opted to sign with the New York Mets for more money than the Sox were willing to offer.The bit used an actor who portrayed a stereotyped Dominican, with a racist, phony accent, depicting a greedy, foolish Martinez.Zirin points out another recent example: John Dennis, a WEEI host, commented on a photo of an escaped gorilla standing near a city bus stop. He said it was "probably a Metco gorilla waiting for a bus to take him to [the affluent white suburb] Lexington." Metco is a program for inner city kids, mostly black students, to attend public schools in the suburbs.Professional baseball, football, and to a lesser degree other sports, are also a consistent source of nationalistic propaganda during half-time shows and beyond, particularly at the Super Bowl, the most-watched program on television every year and a bonanza for advertising dollars for the broadcast media.Since September 11, 2001, every baseball game has stopped for an obligatory singing of "God Bless America" in the middle of the seventh inning stretch: many nationally broadcast Yankee games have not cut away to commercial while tenor Ronan Tynan belts out a rousing if now-tired version that has boosted his popularity immensely.Taken together with flyovers by military fighter jets and military flag-bearers, this amounts to pro-war propaganda for the consumption of sports fans. When these games are broadcast nationally, by media companies like Fox or Disney/ABC/ESPN, the companies are promoting war and patriotic nationalism to millions of fans watching TV. These dislays are perhaps a way of further selling their product as "truly American," or buying favor with an administration whose business is war.The NFL season opener last year between the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts displayed so much military pomp, a viewer could be forgiven for thinking the players were about to run on to the field in fatigues and start shooting.As Zirin puts it in the book's introduction: "In many cities, the average Sunday NFL game contains more patriotic overkill than a USO show in Kuwait." In fact, the all-sports nework ESPN (owned by Disney) broadcast its popular SportsCenter program for an entire "Salute to Our Troops Week," from a military base in Kuwait during the summer of 2004.War is the metaphor most often used in describing football, when quartebacks throw "bullet passes" and "bombs," and linemen "battle in the trenches."Zirin cites many contemporary examples of athletes, like baseball player Carlos Delgado, who have spoken out and resisted the war in Iraq. The book also features fascinating, Studs Terkel-style interviews with past players who resisted the Vietnam War.By far the most intriguing and inspiring American athlete to resist war and racism was Muhammad Ali. Ali's resistance to the war in Vietnam, coupled with his Black Power politics via the Nation of Islam, was an explosive and central part of U.S. social upheaval in the 1960s. Ali's refusal to obey the draft and fight in Vietnam in 1965 may have launched the antiwar movement to new heights, and resulted in a backlash that cost Ali his heavyweight boxing title and three years of being banned from the sport when he was at his athletic peak.The book's title What's My Name Fool? is a phrase from Ali, as he famously taunted opponent Floyd Patterson, who refused to recognize his name change from Cassius Clay. Ali pummeled Patterson for nine rounds, at one point shouting: "Come on America! Come on white America ... what's my name? Is my name Clay? Whats my name, fool?"Zirin mourns the passing of "The Greatest," the brash, beautiful and politically radical Ali who slowly decayed with age and Parkinson's Disease. Today's Ali is a shadow of his radical self, a man who has in recent years succumbed to the will of others who want to use him as a symbol of all that he stood against in the 60s. Ali agreed to appear in a government-sponsored commercial aimed at selling the Afghan war to Muslims in 2002, and appeared at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games to light the ceremonial torch, 36 years after he threw away his gold medal in protest of segregation.From the efforts of ballplayers to organize into labor unions, to the struggles of minorities and women to be treated fairly, Zirin makes clear in this gem of a book that the playing field is not any more even in sports than it is in our society as a whole. The fact that young black men and women can make millions of dollars as professional athletes is no compensation for the racism and sexism that endures in the United States.The book offers hope, however, that change is possible, when brave individuals and collections of individuals risk everything to resist injustice.Sports fans of all stripes should read this book. It's an entertaining read, full of fascinating interviews and original insights on the meaning of sports in our society."What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States" By Dave Zirin Haymarket Books 2005 293 pages Ed/Pub: NB Sports34339@blogcritics.org Thu, 18 Aug 2005 07:04:11 EDT