(The title is from a poet named Tao Lin in a collection called this emotion was a little e-book).
The Internet is like a small town, especially when there's something to disagree about. Recently, some of my favorite Internet citizens got into it over Obama's decision to have poetry at his inauguration.
I've always liked George Packer, the New Yorker's man on the ground in the early days of Iraq. I devoured his book about the first year of the occupation, The Assassins' Gate. It tells the stories of a few Iraqis who put their necks on the line to support us when we arrived in 2003, and it comes to mind whenever a conversation turns to the need to find a way out of Iraq. I also read his blog, Interesting Times. He's the kind of journalist who always does his homework, which made it all the more puzzling when he somewhat flippantly criticized Barack Obama's decision to ask Elizabeth Alexander to read a poem at his inauguration:
For many decades American poetry has been a private activity, written by few people and read by few people, lacking the language, rhythm, emotion, and thought that could move ...
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06 Jan 09 · filed under: lit, politics · 
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Incoming White House chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel recently discussed the next administration's approach to the financial crisis, telling the Wall Street Journal, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Linking politics, crisis and opportunity, Emanuel's sentiments evoked either Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom or Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, depending on your level of paranoia/distrust of the federal government.
I'll admit that I've only skimmed Friedman, but Klein's book is a provocative interpretation of social crisis and the ways in which corporations benefit (and people are exploited) in the wake of a disaster. She holds Friedman accountable for the rise of "disaster capitalism," and she identifies his philosophies as the origin of numerous crises precipitated by governments around the world in the past fifty years:
This is how the shock doctrine works: the original disaster—the coup, the terrorist attack, the market meltdown, the war, the tsunami, the hurricane—puts the entire population into a state of collective shock ... Like the terrorized prisoner who gives up the names of his comrades and renounces his faith, shocked societies often gives up things that they would otherwise fiercely protect.
Anyway, what's especially interesting about Emanuel's invocation is that (I ...
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10 Dec 08 · filed under: ideas, politics · (0) ·
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They call it the White House, but that's a temporary condition.
05 Nov 08 · filed under: flickr, politics · (0) ·
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Like most Democrats in the United States, I am actually a socialist. I vote for Democratic candidates in the hope that, after sweet-talking their ways around the real issues, they'll get down to the real work of redistributing wealth and nationalizing businesses. So when John McCain announced that Barack Obama is a socialist, it came as no surprise to those of us who already know the secret handshake.
The problem is, an essential plank in the secret socialist platform is the promise that those who have never worked a day in their lives will receive an equal share of society's spoils. Republicans quibble over semantics, saying that wage-earners "work harder," or "have more skills." Fine. These people can succeed anywhere. But what about the people who would rather not work? How are they going to pay for digital cable? They have a lot of time on their hands, and they need to be able to entertain themselves and be comfortable. This is one problem that I have with Senator Obama's plan; he seems to think that those in need of the boost are in the middle class, i.e. skillful people who are likely already working hard. I am left ...
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03 Nov 08 · filed under: politics · (0) ·
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Photo: Joshua Lott
Last June, Mara organized a bake sale to raise money for Barack Obama. It was a typically chilly summer day in San Francisco, but we made a fistful of cash, AND we got our picture taken by a passerby who happened to be a professional photojournalist. His name is Joshua Lott, and he posted it on a blog called The Stumping Grounds, which features one photo per day from one of the many photojournalists covering the campaign. Ours was posted on June 24th.
I had to include this; it's the current photo, and it's awesome. It was taken by Scout Tufankjian, and her site is well worth a look. She's posted a series on the Secret Service which is both revealing and kind of scary.
02 Nov 08 · filed under: politics, san francisco · (0) ·
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