I’ve already written here a bit on how The Beatles carry a thin, largely fictitious politics through music history and, at Cypher & Syllable, how The Clash might offer another kind of politics of music. Now this piece by David Shumway – apparently a precis of sorts for his forthcoming book on (rock) music icons – brings the issue back with another question: what has happened to music stars as culture and politics makers? And so I’m brought back to my question: how did this whole myth of political rock stars get started, and how does it continue to be read as true? Read the rest of this entry »
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The Duke Lacrosse players accused of the kidnap and sexual assault of a woman hired to “entertain” at a team party have been found innocent, the prosecutor in the case has resigned and will most likely be disbarred, and the players themselves now have an undisclosed settlement with Duke University that surely nets them some serious cash to make up for their having to endure this miscarriage of justice. Read the rest of this entry »
Paris Hilton is out of jail after serving three (but technically five?) days of her 23 (or is it 40?) day sentence. Released for medical reasons–most likely caused by her refusal to eat or a nervous breakdown–Hilton will spend the next 40 days under house arrest. Rather than discuss the double standard that allows her to escape the incarceration while over two million other people do hard time, I want to argue that Hilton should be out. Read the rest of this entry »
Is baseball still America’s sport – that is, where we take “America” to be the United States? I think so, especially in light of the new discussion of race and baseball. The new discussion: the crisis (for better or worse, that’s the rhetoric) of falling African-American participation at all levels. The statistics have taken a pretty simple and straightforward trajectory: from 17.25 percent in 1959 (year following integration) to 30 percent in the mid-seventies to 8 percent this season. That’s stark. That’s strange. That’s certainly worth thinking about. What does it all mean? Some thoughts… 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 »