Apparently medieval bigotry > pseudo-democracy

I’ve been looking to get back in the blogging swing but it’s seemed like there’s just too many places to start so I’d like to thank my local ABC affiliate for providing me with a two-fer and for pissing me off.

I wanted to tune in to the democratic debate tonight, which is 8pm EST, or 5pm here on the left coast.   Except it wasn’t on when I turned on the teevee.  Instead it was the evening ‘news’ which was actually running an extended segment special on the pope.  What.  The.  Fuck.

Poking around I found that ABC is not only tape delaying the debate, but they’re also restricting use to 30 second clips.  Their reason?  They’re paying for it.  So I guess this is an official acknowledgment of a pay-per-view democracy.  I know it doesn’t exactly fit but if ABC is treating a public debate as their intellectual property, because they funded it, than at the very least they shouldn’t have been given the debate.

And as for the local affiliate and their fawning treatment of the pope that’s just salt in the wound.  You’re taking away my entertainment sham democracy and replacing it with singing the praises of former fascist who now heads up the single most repressive and undemocratic organization on a global scale?  Fuck you very much.  And for anyone wanting to defend the pope or the church I’d point you to the highpoint of my day yesterday, this clip from the local npr station about the church and the pope (it’s a realplayer clip).  It’s hilarious and includes such highlights as:

Birth control is degrading to women, no really, it is.

Christianity is about suffering, not being joyous, so evangelical churches are… bad?  Worse?

The only thing that would have made it even better is if they’d attempted to blame the sex abuse on homosexuals like they have in the past, so hey, progress.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not singling out Catholics, I find all religions equally ridiculous.  I’m still pissed off that the FLDS scandal in Texas is being spun as a polygamy thing and not a crazy fucking religious nutbag compound thing.  They didn’t rape children and abuse women because they were polygamous, they did it because they were religious.

Spitzer is caught between morality and law

Hah!  Let’s swerve away from our (kinda) usual programming and talk about what’s obsessing America.  Namely, Elliot Spitzer paying for it.  Our ever insightful media is running full steam with this and why not, it’s been a while since we’ve had a good sex story like this (Larry Craig barely counts since he denied everything and stonewalled) especially since Spitzer is a man who has presented himself as such a moral pillar.  He is going to go down.  There seems little debate about this now, but the why is the interesting bit.  He’s going down for two related reasons.

The Law.  Spitzer is a man who built his career enforcing the law.  And now he has broken it.  At the end of the day, when all else has been dissected and discussed this is the fact that will remain.  Prostitution is illegal.  When he solicited sex for money he broke the law and this is what will kill him in the end.  And it’s a shame, it’s a bad law and it’s no where near the kinds of laws he’s used to put away corporate criminals but in the eyes of the public he is the same as those who he’s prosecuted.  And when I saw the prostitution law is a bad law I mean in it’s intent.  Hardly any prostitution laws on the books are there to help women, they are there to legislate morality, a particular antiquated conservative form of morality, and that is the second thing that will bring him down.

Morality.  Yes he broke the law, but that’s not what fascinates people about this.  We barely care about the law these days, at least the sanctity of it.  Most Americans’ knowledge of the law extends only into those laws they find interesting or those which they can use to disapprove of the behavior of their fellows.   And so Spitzer will be vilified, particularly among the more conservative and judgmental among us for violating morality.  And why?  What he really did wrong was break the law, the issue of sex outside of marriage is not one usually legislated (as much as some would wish it) and not what he did wrong here.

But in the end he will go down because he did something that offends our American morality and because the way he did it broke the law.  The people who are in a feeding frenzy of gossip would hardly care if he had been caught cheating on his taxes, and Spitzer’s career would probably not have been over if he’d been like every other politician and just fucked his intern.  But the combination of the two is what’s going to kill him.  He broke the law, and he did it in a morally spectacular fashion.

These disciples of a jewish zombie want you to hate sex

For about the last week and a half campus hereabouts has been bombarded with flyers, posters, and earnest fresh faced kids pushing something called “Porn Nation” and encouraging people to go to My Sex Survey. It’s obnoxious and in your face and supposedly hip and cool but it’s also more than a wee bit deceptive and sketchy as all hell.

To start with Porn Nation is bankrolled by Bravehearts LLC, an organization that seeks to raise awareness of ‘porn addiction’ but also to bring “the gospel of Jesus Christ” to thousands. But the flyers make no mention that this is basically a religious pitch to a sense of guilt and shame using bullshit statistics to coerce people into thinking that they are a) addicted to porn and b) can only be saved by getting down on their knees and praying fervently to some made up dude in the sky.

Blogging! What is it good for?

Self-introspective post here. Consider yourself warned.

So I have, oh I don’t know, let’s say 8 or 9 blogs. These are either blogs I have solo or share with other people. There may be more but 9 or so is a good number to think about so let’s keep it there.

The problem is that I’m not too particularly good at keeping up with any of them. Partially this is a problem of time and motivation. Blogging is something that takes time and sometimes I don’t feel like I should be spending my time blogging.

But mainly it’s a question of audiences. Who do I blog for? This is a problem because as much as I’d like to believe I blog for me the fact is that if that were true I wouldn’t be blogging. I’d just write in a journal. So take, for example, this blog. VF is for me, mostly. But it’s also stuff I wouldn’t mind other people seeing.  I talk about academics, I talk about politics, I talk about things I share with other people.  These are all social activities and should be shared with people.

But there is the problem of audiences.  From past blog experience I’ve learned that audiences definitely have an affect on how often and what you might blog about.  And the question of audiences is one that’s going to grow increasingly important.  I’ve seen people lose out on jobs because of things they’ve blogged about, it’s that chilling effect that occasionally worries me and keeps me from posting the really personal stuff.

Of course you could always go with filters but the problem with filters is that they’re only as good as the people who access to them.  Anyone who can see past the filter can cut and paste to share with anyone else on the other side.  As long as it’s in print it can, hypothetically, get out there.

So what’s the point?  Good question.  I’m kinda bad about the whole ‘point’ thing.  But if pressed I’d have to say that this is probably my primary blog but will remain a bit impersonal on the whole.

Thoughts on the alt culture

Warren Ellis has a column up at Suicide Girls where he ponders the disappearance of alt culture.  There are some interesting points in there but few thoughts it sparked for me were the following.

1.  I’m not sure I agree with the premise that there is no more alt culture.  Just because some uberhip netgeeks wave their hands and dismiss current culture as all having been absorbed by the monoculture we’re supposed to nod along and agree?  I think not.  Yes the monoculture is voracious, but it often eats bits and pieces it finds hard to digest and occasionally spits them back out.  I also think Warren and company probably spend too much time immersed on the cusp of cultural production.  Just because something is the meme of the moment on the internet doesn’t always translate into being absorbed by the monoculture.

2.  Following from this there is also the idea that alt culture has always been, and will continue to be, highly derivative of the monoculture.   Alt culture needs the monoculture as mirror to ape and often the lines between mash-up, new creation, and ironic parody become confusing.  Then there’s alway the retro-cool that comes about as the monoculture tosses fads away after their 15 min.  What do we do with these?  Are they automatically out of consideration as alt?  Or only alt if we alter them significantly from the original?  How often has alt culture taken something of it’s own that was initially intended for consumption for the monoculture, look no further than your favorite TV show.

3.  Ok, as a last ditch cognitive bulwark let’s assume that the monoculture is eating everything at a faster and faster rate and the alt culture is dwindling.  What then?  Take it back to origins.  Do you like what you like because you, well, like it?  Or do you like it because no one else does?  Or only a very narrow sampling of people who inhabit used clothing stores on Melrose and you like it?  Is the purpose of alt culture to be different for difference’s sake?  If so I don’t see it going away entirely, but likely becoming more shrill and extreme in the sense of really pushing taboos.  Everyone dyes their hair?  Then shave it.  Brittney shaved her hair?  Fine, I’m getting tats and scarification.  That’s being done now by someone in Nebraska (because if you live in Nebraska you can never ever be cool ‘natch)?  Fuck that, I’m gonna bolt big stupid chunks of metal to my head.  I mean if we’re ever really afraid that something is too mainstream and monoculture just head over to BME.  It’s like a giant fucking pissing contest where instead of distance they go for spikey metal bits and permanently degraded neural endings.

In the end ponder this.  Is it possible for the alt culture to go to a place you don’t really want to go.  And does this mean that the default position then becomes agreeing with the monoculture because you don’t want to hack your cock off or listen to the most horrid sounds a cat makes as it dies?