for lefties too stubborn to quit
…in either case you may get some value out this.
The list of cultural reference points about half way down the post is spot on too for generating maximum irritation.
| banjoagbeanjoe on What you want to say – 8th May… | |
| banjoagbeanjoe on Brendan Ogle’s site for… | |
| banjoagbeanjoe on No big deal! | |
| Wes Ferry on Compare and contrast: Elphicke… | |
| Fergal on What you want to say – 8th May… | |
| Tomboktu on What you want to say – 8th May… | |
| tomasoflatharta on Compare and contrast: Elphicke… | |
| tomasoflatharta on Compare and contrast: Elphicke… | |
| Colm B on Compare and contrast: Elphicke… | |
| WorldbyStorm on Compare and contrast: Elphicke… | |
| Colm B on Brendan Ogle’s site for… | |
| Tomboktu on What you want to say – 8th May… | |
| Tomboktu on What you want to say – 8th May… | |
| Wes Ferry on What you want to say – 8th May… | |
| Wes Ferry on Compare and contrast: Elphicke… |
worldbystorm2014ATgmailDOTcom
The Cedar Lounge Revolution
reminds me of when my then girlfriend told me she’d never heard of Christy Ring . I was gobsmacked. She’s my wife now …so I think we got over it.
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Heheh. But was she joking?
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No she wasn’t ! and now she lives in a house full of hurls and helmets . Don’t think she’s heard of Zizek either – for whom Chomsky has shown a rather entertaining lack of love: https://roarmag.org/essays/noam-chomsky-replies-to-zizeks-fantasies/
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This is the kind of writing that is impossible to escape from these days and it really gets my goat. 1500 words of signalling the author’s cleverness and cultural and moral superiority at someone else’s expense. Inviting the reader to snigger along. And beyond that, basically nothing. The tone sometimes varies, but that’s the format.
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I know the stuff you’re talking about, but isn’t this trying to work the dynamic the other way. That some people do assume a superiority in conversations or can be hectoring?
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I’m not so sure, I would include this under the general heading of “self-satisfied moralism thinly disguised satirical observation”. That is the genre that is rampant these days.
It isn’t just that she mocks something very mockable – the blithe self-unawareness of over-serious young men. That’s absolutely fine, and to be welcomed.
It is the way she inscribes herself into the story as the hero of the scene. And then invites identification with her triumph to an extraordinarily explicit degree – “here, reader, is how to do this too.”
And in general, taking the piss out of “white indy heroes” doesn’t really take much in the way of Zivilcourage, it just kind of poses as if it does (Yay! Bravely taking down the mansplainer.)
One final point, before I bore even myself to tears… Even on her own terms, the whole conceit is based on a fundamental and unexplained dishonesty. She could have said to the guy “Look I’m tired of hearing about fucking Zizek, I don’t want to talk about him, or it, here is 30 seconds explanation of why not, and then we don’t discuss it any more. OK?”
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I do take your point, though is it intended quite as seriously as that or just a bit light-heartedly… On the other hand having once been an overly serious young man I kind of think poking fun isn’t the worst thing, for them either. There’s conversations I remember which even twenty five years later make me wince. 🙂
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Too true… There are ones I remember which even twenty five years later make me wake in the night in a cold sweat, shrieking. 😉
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Its funny isn’t it, the good ones which there were at least a few tend to vanish from memory – most of them. Defined by our failures. Okay not quite that bad but human minds are weird.
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Stop will yez and dont be reminding me – thank Christ there was no Facebook around at the time
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The selection of which memories to maintain are surely indicative of personality type than an universal behaviour? Trumps memories are no doubt the greatest ever.
Sure it’s no bad thing to have a few things to twinge the conscience, a little regret or guilt can really help bend our future decisions to the better for us and our community.
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Very wise words, Gendjinn.
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I must be getting old or else im just plain ignorant but about these from her list I can honestly say I know nothing:
Afrika Burn, “garbage person,” Steampunk ,“Gilmore Girls,” bongs, Cards Against Humanity, trance parties, bunting, William Gibson, burlesque, the Beats, “The Mighty Boosh,”
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Ok I know burlesque and think I know bunting
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I actually like some of the things on the list. Though frankly not burlesque. Always seemed a bit hipster to me. But Mighty Boosh, Gilmore Girls and Gibson I do like. And while I slag Morrissey off there’s a few songs of his I’m fond of.
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AfrikaBurn is a South Africa based event based on that American Burning Man arty event.
Least anyone think I’m well up on these kind of culture touchstones I only learned of AfrikaBurn yearly this week in a Travel programme; my only thoughts were that it’s amazingly white, not that the participants are the likely sort of backers of apartheid, just quite white.
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There’s an amusing running gag about Zizek in Maggie’s Plan, Rebecca Miller’s rather good alt-rom com out at the moment. Makes you wonder what other public facing intellectuals have the appropriate level of name recognition to work in such a context. Chomsky, certainly. Judith Butler?
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Yeah, he’s an oddly high profile. Chomsky more so I’d hazard a guess. Butler perhaps.
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Eoghan Harris ?
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okay too obvious a joke. A serious contender for the role in Ireland might by FOT, in France the execrable BHL and in Germany Habermas
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How about Martha Nussbaum ?
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Butler had a long profile in New York magazine a couple of weeks back.
http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/06/judith-butler-c-v-r.html#
Quite a marker that, as far as popular recognition goes.
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How on earth can Butler be a public intellectual? Her prose in impenetrable.
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Didn’t you just answer your own question there?
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With regard to popular culture,many people joked for years about the English judge who claimed to have never heard of the Beatles.I myself deemed this to be impossible but I now find myself in the same position.I honestly could not name one “hit” record” for the past decade or more and the “celebryties” of the British tabloids fail to register with me at all.Several years ago when the Tyrone team was at the height of it’s success, local news reported that Eoin Mulligan had met “Jordan”.I assumed without doubt that he had been at a sports event where he had a yarn with Formula one’s Eddie Jordan but several weeks passed before I discovered that Jordan was in fact a non vehicular “model”!
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With a creature who is into Babymetal and sort of growing into various bits of contemporary popular culture what I find is that after a desert of disinterest on my part since say 2005 I’m suddenly getting up to speed on a lot of stuff I wouldn’t have heard otherwise. But I know what you mean, there’s always stuff that just drops out of sight or hearing. And we’re none the worse off for it!
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I’m the same wbs. after a few decades of being happily disconnected from the world of pop culture I’ve recently been drawn back in. My 8yo has recently discovered pop videos on youtube and I’m actually beginning to distinguish between the different singers, and even have same favourites.
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I’ve found the time it takes me to find what I want in the Spar is enough to keep me up to date with current pop music.
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In college I once name dropped Marcuse , author of One Dimensional Man. My pal thought I was referring to the Man. U and Wales striker who’s now managing Stoke City.
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One Dimensional Manager.
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bravo ! trust its all your own work SoS and not already a chant of bookish West Brom fans
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The Intertextuality Firm….
No my own, and unfair on Mark Hughes actually. Stoke can play nice football.
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Fairness has nothing to do with it when a good joke presents itself.
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musical tastes always correspond with your age bracket.In the 1960’s a farmer in his late 30’s informed my father that Jim Reeves had just been killed.He enthused about Jim’s singing and then declared “if it had have been one of those God cussed Beatles,it would’nt have been a damn bit of odds”!
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