It must be ignorance, an ignorance I once shared. The NAACP crowd sees the Confederate battle flag as a flag of slavery. If that's so, the United States flag is even more so. Slavery thrived under the United States flag from 1776 to 1865, while under the Confederate flag a mere four years.
man, i wish there had been ruthless twitter shaming in 1999. this is just laughable.
― goole, Tuesday, 23 June 2015 21:46 (eight years ago) link
huh I wonder what happened during those four yeasr
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 23 June 2015 21:47 (eight years ago) link
weirdly that puts me in mind of this awesome article about the connection between the CIA and the Iowa Writers' Project:
http://chronicle.com/article/How-Iowa-Flattened-Literature/144531/
Creative-writing pedagogues in the aftermath of World War II, without exception, read Partisan Review, The Kenyon Review, The Hudson Review, and The Sewanee Review. They breathed the intellectual air of New Critics, on the one hand, and New York intellectuals on the other. These camps, formerly enemy camps—Southern reactionaries and Northern socialists at each other’s throats in the 1930s—had by the 50s merged into a liberal consensus that published highly intellectual, but at the time only newly "academic," essays in those four journals, all of which, like Iowa, were subsidized by the Rockefeller Foundation. John Crowe Ransom, who believed in growing cotton and declined to apologize for slavery, found common ground with Lionel Trilling, who believed in Trotsky—but how?
The consensus centered on a critique of instrumental reason as it came down to us from the Enlightenment—a reaction against the scientific rationality that led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the bureaucratic efficiency that made the death camps in Poland possible, and the materialism behind the increasingly sinister Soviet regime.
Ransom and his fellow Southerners had developed their ideas in the 1920s as agrarian men of letters resentful of the specter of Northern industrialism. Meanwhile, Trilling and his fellow socialists were reeling from all that had discredited the Popular Front: the purge of the old Bolsheviks in the late 1930s, the Soviet conduct of the Spanish Civil War, the nonaggression pact that the Soviets signed with the Nazis in 1939, and so on. These were chastened radicals who believed in the avant-garde and saw in totalitarianism the consequences of pure ideas unchecked by the irrational prerogatives of culture.
So the prewar left merged with the prewar right. Both circles thought that the way to avoid the likes of Nazism or Stalinism in the United States was to venerate and fortify the particular, the individual, the situated, the embedded, the irreducible. The argument took its purest form in Hannah Arendt’s essays about the concentration camps in Partisan Review.
You probably can see where this is going: One can easily trace the genealogy from the critical writings of Trilling and Ransom at the beginning of the Cold War to creative-writing handbooks and methods then and since.
(sorry, hueg -- but it kind of mirrors the new deal-cold war democratic coalition)
― goole, Tuesday, 23 June 2015 21:52 (eight years ago) link
Adding "encouraging introspective, individual-centered expression and making people emphasize their personal narrative" is another evil I am going to blame on U of I now
― Upright Mammal (mh), Wednesday, 24 June 2015 00:58 (eight years ago) link
wow goole that essay is all kinds of amazing
*apologies for spoiling one of the best lines, but I O_O'd and @_@'d overIt [Iowa fiction] was like going to an arboretum with a child. You want exactly that from life, and also more.
― Heroic melancholy continues to have a forceful grip on (bernard snowy), Wednesday, 24 June 2015 01:12 (eight years ago) link
ha, that was good but also kinda unintended lol; lots to unpack, take apart, & contest there
his own ‘genealogizing’ is as tendentious & reductive as 50s genealogizing he critiques & makes fun of
while agree some re provincialism of dominant mfa style, it’s very convenient to diagnose literary style not his own or not preferred by him as ideologically suspect
clearly he has his own ideological & personal axe to grind, issues as ‘ambitious & frustrated’ writer/academic
like, no one (not even frank conroy) is preventing you from writing great novel of ideas dude, go for it
btw cia also fostered & promoted abstract expressionism
― drash, Wednesday, 24 June 2015 12:03 (eight years ago) link
strange cold-war bedfellows thing sorta goes to my general point upthread re argument via ‘affiliations’ (amateurist otm that rightwing frequently engages in this mode of arg too)
problem not just potential overgeneralization, but flattening & essentializing ideological constellations which (historicized) are to an extent contingent; correlation (though significant) does not = necessity
e.g. to say “anti-communism went hand in hand with opposing the Civil Rights Movement,” or (example from another thread) to equate “gun culture” (or pro-2nd amendment sentiment) with segregationism; those conflations are shorthand for longer political/genealogical args (which may or may not be valid), but those kinds of shorthand equations by themselves, i tend to find problematic
& on a pragmatic political level may be counterproductive (in terms of political persuasion, changing policy, e.g. wrt gun control, etc)
― drash, Wednesday, 24 June 2015 13:18 (eight years ago) link
Frances Stonor Saunders' The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters is the book to read about the CIA, New Criticism, Robert Lowell, and how the Cold War made possible the flowering of AMerican arts and letters.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 24 June 2015 13:23 (eight years ago) link
Yeah, I reviewed that book when it came out. It's insane.
― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Wednesday, 24 June 2015 13:26 (eight years ago) link
That Chronicle author has, ah, some hangups: Raymond Carver, trained by writers steeped in anti-Communist formulations, probably didn’t realize that his short stories were doing ideological combat with a dead Soviet dictator.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 24 June 2015 13:29 (eight years ago) link
(xps)The anti-communism/anti-civil-rights linkage is pretty straightforward though?? Like, we have plenty of documentation of southern whites who could *only* conceive of demonstrations as "communist agitation", because their worldview left no room for an independent/grassroots Black political movement.
― Heroic melancholy continues to have a forceful grip on (bernard snowy), Wednesday, 24 June 2015 13:31 (eight years ago) link
xp ^lol, exactly
― drash, Wednesday, 24 June 2015 13:32 (eight years ago) link
bernard, true; but you've spelled out the linkage in a concrete, specific, localized sense (i.e. unpacked the shorthand)
it may be 'straightforward' but it's qualified
― drash, Wednesday, 24 June 2015 13:43 (eight years ago) link
Don't make things more complex than they are, just to make them more complex. If a connection is true, shorthand is obviously acceptable. Learn why the connection is true, don't take everything for granted, but you don't need to spell every little thing out, that just makes the discussion that much slower. And when we're talking race, where black people are killed due to racism pretty often, the discussion should not be slowed down for no reason at all.
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 24 June 2015 13:57 (eight years ago) link
Fundamentally, racism isn't a question of logic. It's a question of power.
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 24 June 2015 13:58 (eight years ago) link
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, June 24, 2015 8:29 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
guys this is a wry joke at Engle's expense
― goole, Wednesday, 24 June 2015 14:45 (eight years ago) link
"hangups" lol is this the 70s or something
you're right – let's have a rap session about it
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 24 June 2015 14:47 (eight years ago) link
http://blog.teeter-inversion.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Roger_50-Thumbs-Up.jpg
― how's life, Wednesday, 24 June 2015 14:51 (eight years ago) link
groovy
goole it’s wry, but author does mean to draw straight line from cia funding to carver’s style
frederik, wasn’t thinking of ilx so much as political argumentation in general. & imo sometimes slowing down & seeing things as more complex isn’t just matter of logic, but pragmatic politics (to have effect on minds & policies & relations of power). but i take your point
― drash, Wednesday, 24 June 2015 15:11 (eight years ago) link
And I take your point too. It's def about pragmatism for me as well. And learning the historical connections behind the shorthands is always important, and telling them if people ask (though I guess every everyone who debates racism or anti-semitism or feminism knows the deal with correcting the same historical misconception for the 1000th time, and being ignored).
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 24 June 2015 17:03 (eight years ago) link
Fundamentally, racism isn't a question of logic. It's a question of power.― Frederik B, Wednesday, June 24, 2015 8:58 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― Frederik B, Wednesday, June 24, 2015 8:58 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
word porn
― wizzz! (amateurist), Wednesday, 24 June 2015 18:31 (eight years ago) link
sry i meant why do i hate that artist thing that people keep posting on my facebook so much? why am i such a jerk?
― wizzz! (amateurist), Wednesday, 24 June 2015 18:32 (eight years ago) link
missed the thread till now and posted this elsewhere:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/06/misty-copeland-athlete/397364/i would welcome some thoughts on if this is trolling, poor consideration or a reasonable point― like a giraffe of nah (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, July 1, 2015 3:07 PMnot sure. is the point of the article that her career breakthrough goes hand in hand with her total commercialization?― Nhex, Wednesday, July 1, 2015 3:41 PMjust that the first black prima ballerina at ABT is presented as an "athlete" not an artist; seems like charged language― like a giraffe of nah (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, July 1, 2015 4:14 PM
i would welcome some thoughts on if this is trolling, poor consideration or a reasonable point― like a giraffe of nah (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, July 1, 2015 3:07 PM
not sure. is the point of the article that her career breakthrough goes hand in hand with her total commercialization?― Nhex, Wednesday, July 1, 2015 3:41 PM
just that the first black prima ballerina at ABT is presented as an "athlete" not an artist; seems like charged language― like a giraffe of nah (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, July 1, 2015 4:14 PM
― like a giraffe of nah (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, 1 July 2015 16:41 (eight years ago) link
Clickhole totally nailed it with this one. oh wait...
http://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000003773643/a-conversation-with-white-people-on-race.html?action=click>ype=vhs&version=vhs-heading&module=vhs®ion=title-area
― scott seward, Wednesday, 1 July 2015 19:47 (eight years ago) link
i don't see how ballet can be considered a "sport" even if it involves something we might consider "athleticism"
― wizzz! (amateurist), Wednesday, 1 July 2015 20:29 (eight years ago) link
There's no was a competitive element to it, but what if there was?
― holger sharkey (Tom D.), Wednesday, 1 July 2015 20:41 (eight years ago) link
LOL, again:
There's no competitive element to it, but what if there was?
― holger sharkey (Tom D.), Wednesday, 1 July 2015 20:42 (eight years ago) link
Bobby Jindal releasing a t-shirt to troll Hari Kondabolu wrt Twitter allegations of being a race traitor probably deserves a mention in this thread:
http://i.imgur.com/FjBLVKN.jpg?1
http://mic.com/articles/121382/bobby-jindal-hari-kondabolu-twitter-so-white
― who epitomises beta better than (ShariVari), Wednesday, 1 July 2015 20:44 (eight years ago) link
that J logo looks weird. like a hook or something. some sort of wall fastener...
― scott seward, Wednesday, 1 July 2015 20:49 (eight years ago) link
looks like a water slide
― wizzz! (amateurist), Wednesday, 1 July 2015 20:49 (eight years ago) link
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31wGVaDMC%2BL.jpg
― drash, Wednesday, 1 July 2015 21:55 (eight years ago) link
haven’t followed or looked into jindal thing (beyond passing online refs), so hesitate to comment
but, of all things to criticize (or mock) jindal for…
dunno, generally speaking, more often than not, find political criticism based on ‘race traitor’ or ‘whitewashing’ theme… nagl
of course, conservative politician is likely to have certain views on certain issues related to race—insofar as those views are objectionable, criticize those views; but race-betrayal, race-denial angle seems like form of 'racial-identity policing' which bothers me
related trope bothers me in other areas than politics, cf criticism of mindy kaling’s show (which i haven’t seen) bc, apparently, it didn't thematize her race sufficiently
so maybe some counter-trolling is justified…? maybe i’m wrong
― drash, Wednesday, 1 July 2015 21:58 (eight years ago) link
Jindal's official governor's portrait looks like it was literally whitewashed tho
http://images.dailykos.com/images/127268/large/jindalportrait.jpg?1423001935
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 1 July 2015 22:00 (eight years ago) link
xp, Yes, i think it's pretty unhelpful. Jindal is clearly a piece of work but there's plenty of room to call him out on his politics (including his political statements on race) without going down that road. For a start, positioning social conservatism and crass racial politics as "white" ignores how common those things are within sections of the Indian-American (and wider NRI) community.
The weird portrait's apparently not the official one.
― who epitomises beta better than (ShariVari), Wednesday, 1 July 2015 22:09 (eight years ago) link
xp ^def true, and works as jokebut extending that into serious criticism?ah but then none of this is v serious, it's twittertown
― drash, Wednesday, 1 July 2015 22:12 (eight years ago) link
agree, sharivari
― drash, Wednesday, 1 July 2015 22:13 (eight years ago) link
― who epitomises beta better than (ShariVari), Wednesday, July 1, 2015 6:09 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark
yeah i feel like calling them 'white' and excluding them from the community masks the fact that those sentiments areprevalent in the community - i think it's better to try and wrestle and unearth them within the community rather than to just sweep it under the rug. same goes for conservative east asian americans imo
― 龜, Wednesday, 1 July 2015 22:28 (eight years ago) link
you think that Jindal portrait's bad, you should see the one they've got in the capitol of Huey Long.
http://i.imgur.com/kkyVPEu.jpg
― pplains, Thursday, 2 July 2015 00:49 (eight years ago) link
what's happening to skinny elvis over there?
― wizzz! (amateurist), Thursday, 2 July 2015 01:30 (eight years ago) link
Not really a portrait, obv.
But it depicts Long's assassination. The other unfortunate fella is Carl Weiss, the assassin, getting mowed down by Long's bodyguards.
That illustration hangs in the capitol hallway where it all happened. You can even stick your finger into one of the bulletholes.
― pplains, Thursday, 2 July 2015 01:45 (eight years ago) link
did they assassinate him with a poison that made his hand swell up and cause an aneurysm
― j., Thursday, 2 July 2015 02:04 (eight years ago) link
wow what a weird paintingweiss as sorta hipster saint sebastianand (uncropped below) scary eye-bulging statue looking on
http://hdtd.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/01/30/huey1_2.jpg
― drash, Thursday, 2 July 2015 03:25 (eight years ago) link
long doesn't seem in such bad shape there (aside from hand swelling), for a guy who's about to be dead.
― wizzz! (amateurist), Thursday, 2 July 2015 05:23 (eight years ago) link
Long's bodyguards returned fire, hitting Weiss 62 times
holy fuck
― wizzz! (amateurist), Thursday, 2 July 2015 05:24 (eight years ago) link
pplains, isn't one of the bullets still in the wall? could have sworn someone said that. the animatronic huey long at the desk that will perform speeches is still the best theme attraction in a government building I've seen.
― Upright Mammal (mh), Thursday, 2 July 2015 13:38 (eight years ago) link
looks like the famous painting of the zoot suit riots:
http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/columns/assets_c/2014/02/ZootSuitRiots-thumb-630x414-69618.jpg
― goole, Thursday, 2 July 2015 16:48 (eight years ago) link
wau @ Long portrait, that's incredible
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 2 July 2015 16:50 (eight years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOHaJizzjdghttp://everysinglewordspoken.tumblr.com/
― like a giraffe of nah (forksclovetofu), Friday, 3 July 2015 21:35 (eight years ago) link
that movie focuses on like 3 people
― supreme problematics (D-40), Saturday, 4 July 2015 20:00 (eight years ago) link