No one following the Democratic primary will be surprised that John Edwards stepped out of the race today. It didn’t happen and certainly wasn’t just wasn’t about to happen. I find his withdrawal sad, not because I’m especially enthused about him, the Democratic party, or our particular brand of democracy, but only because he was such an uncanny presence – he talked about poverty. And this is part though not nearly enough, of the Time magazine story on his candidacy: why Edwards did not catch on… Read the rest of this entry »
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We still have some months left in 2007, so we surely haven’t heard the end of the nostalgic chit-chat about the Summer of Love. You know, how it’s been forty years since “that generation” was defined by certain rock albums, protest movements, and sexual liberation. Todd Gitlin’s fantasies have spilled out everywhere in the popular media. And so on. I’ve already talked about this stuff in a few write-ups: on the “demise of pop music,” celebration of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s album, and that other anniversary, the thirty years since The Clash’s self-titled album. Let me add another critical site: the anniversary this week of the Detroit riots. Read the rest of this entry »
Let me add to the way-too-many posts around the internet concerning Cindy Sheehan. She’s such an odd player on the media-politics scene, really. Few real vocal sympathizers in the image-media scene – though, it is worth saying, her take on the War in Iraq has been pretty much mainstream for the past year: back that shit up and come home.
What has been so divisive, if not uniformly hostile, about Sheehan’s presence? I get the hostility from the Right. They want her to go away because she’s too public and too sensitive of a figure for blunt, mean-spirited critique. You could almost hear the Right’s sigh of relief when she met with Chavez. Read the rest of this entry »