Yet another post topic about which the internet needs no more words: Barry Bonds. I’ve been trying to figure out what to think about the Bonds scandal, which is really just baseball’s so-called “steroid era” bundled into one person at one particular moment. You know, breaking the really big record in baseball, the career homerun record, arguably the only record in American sports that matters. Everyone excited is faking: this is nothing but uninspiring.
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It takes a lot to get people suspicious these days. I mean, seriously, think of all the strange goings-on with Libby, et. al. and how presidents somehow stay in power. So it shouldn’t surprise me that Borders booksellers refuse to stop selling racist cartoons of Tintin in their stores, opting instead to move them to the “adult” section in the U.K. (Does Borders have an adult section in the U.S.? Don’t think so.) Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
You know it is a strange day when I find myself in agreement with one of the editors at The National Review. Well, it is strange if you’re me or know me personally, though this agreement is not so substantial. I just like that he made the following comment on Sam Brownback’s editorial in the New York Times: “Here is Sam Brownback talking about evolutionary biology. That’s a bit like saying: ‘Here’s Paris Hilton talking about partial differential equations.’ ” Nice. While Derbyshire is disinclined to respond in detail to Brownback’s “theory” of evolution (though he does, quite well), it is worth a comment. Here it goes… 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 »