I’ll add to the huge number of editorials and blogs on Obama’s “big speech on race.” I read the transcript and watched a bit of it, but not without some regret that it had come to this moment. Why did Obama have to give this sort of speech? Who provoked it and why? But it was provoked. No going back from that. And he gave what, to my mind, was a solid and actually quite brave account of his relation to all sorts of pain. Read the rest of this entry »
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First, as a fan of the show, I’m totally shocked – and even a bit scandalized – at the booting of Shauna from the competition. I think it is clear that the judges are committed, for whatever reason, to keeping a good number of ballroom dancers on the show. Not my judgment, but, hey, that’s how it goes.
Now, on to more interesting things…not unrelated. Read the rest of this entry »
Yet again, we are treated to the distracting and delicious hypocrisy of the Right’s attack dogs. Yes, it again turns out that those self-appointed to watch over our morality have been doing the naughty stuff behind closed doors. Ted Haggard was an especially tortured case, and I felt conflicted about pouncing on his hypocrisy. But no such hesitation with David Vitter, conservative kook and prostitute lover from Louisiana. What more is there to say, really, than that Vitter is a big fake and pervert (defined with his terms alone)? Read the rest of this entry »
Slate.com has an interesting write-up on a new technology, you know, the one making it possible to never menstruate again. Like the author, I’ll pass over the debate about the relation between womanhood, nature, and the body – not really my place to make a comment. Except this: I’m wary about the whole “keep technology off our bodies” rhetoric, not because of the politico-economic suspicions underlying the rhetoric (sound enough), but simply because technology is so deeply inside our bodies that we should talk more about boundaries than abolition. Rather, my main interest in this reflection is a familiar name: Jerry Falwell. What would Jerry think? Read the rest of this entry »
Foucault would surely recognize television talk shows as a sort of confessional for a secular society, taking up the Christian demand that we both know the truth of ourselves and make that truth over and over again through a constant narrativizing of the self and confession of sin. Read the rest of this entry »