This image is a powerful and concise depiction of the impact of consumption of entertainment on our childhood psyches, specifically, the way we handicap little girls with pernicious stories which portray them as passive actors with no interior life and meanwhile allow boys to remain developmentally stunted all the way into adulthood.
It found me on Facebook via a group called "Nerds do it better." Well, that changes the meaning. I guess lifetime Dragon Ball Z (DBZ) cartoon watching is better than even brief Twilight watching.
What's it called when someone tries to say one thing, and says something else altogether? When someone tries to celebrate something as cool, and instead celebrates something totally fucked up? When they promote a particular understanding of reality, and expose their blindness to particulars of reality? Is it satire?
“Voluntary work can be conducted in all fields and this can contribute to the society’s development,” he said. He added that volunteers felt the taste of giving and communication with other fellow citizens. Abbas, then, listened to the students' suggestions and thoughts about voluntary work."
Personally, I prefer non-compulsory work, but then again, I love the taste of giving. I also noticed that all the women in that photo are wearing black while the men, in the minority, sport a little more diversity. They're getting college educations and wear burkas—that isn't surprising—but they're all uniform, save their colorful lanyards. And that room looks as inviting as an abraded womb. I've excerpted this part of a press release/blog post from the University of Bahrian webpage because I found this photo more compelling than any that might go along with the real subject of this post.
Andrew W.K. & U.S. Department Of State: Entertainer Named Cultural Ambassador To The Middle East
This link, which I assumed would take me to the Onion, goes to a post on Huffington Post, announcing "Andrew has been invited by the State Department to travel to the Middle Eastern country of Bahrain and share his music and partying with the people there. Andrew will begin his journey the first week of December, 2012 and will visit elementary schools, the University of Bahrain, music venues, and more, all while promoting partying and world peace." Andrew W.K. is this guy:
At first I was shocked, then I realized I was staring at the Huffington Post. HuffPo is hardly authoritative. In fact, it seems to be little more than a link aggregator at this point. Demonstrating its deep committment to quality, The first link in the Huff post looks like this:
Referencing the Department of State, in fact, linking directly over its name, would suggest the link goes to something authoritative about the Department of State, or at worst, a link to http://www.state.gov/. Inexplicably, it goes to an almost identical post on Pitchfork.com, a website about music and not the State Department or cultural ambassadorships.
Would the U.S. really send a post-career hairy rocker to another country as a cultural ambassador? Especially a country in the Middle East? While it behooves me to mention that Bahrain is the most liberal country there, doing so feels kind of like mentioning I was oldest person in my kindergarten class--it's not untrue, but might help us miss the truth. Don't we have gatekeepers in the Department of State whose job it is to keep people like Andrew W.K. away from cameras? Perhaps an entire office tasked with selecting around real American culture while projecting it abroad? I'm fully aware businesses will thrust their cultural products anywhere someone will take them (I once had a Tibetan tell me about his favorite Martin Lawrence movies for an hour), but I assume cabinet level departments do not typically lend their stately imprimatur to:
What the hell though, that video makes me smile my ass off. Still, determined to discover if HuffPo and Co. were trying co-opt Onion copy as a means to greater page views, I went to Andrew W.Ks website. Though the most likely source of any satire shenanigans, it also was probably the most likely place to find it important to provide evidence of official collaboration. The opening line of this post had some important nuances.
The US Department of State in partnership with the US Embassy in Manama, Bahrain, has invited Andrew to visit the Middle East to promote partying and positive power. In the tradition of the American Jazz Ambassadors who traveled the world in the mid 20th century as examples of American culture and spirit,
It's a partnership with Department of State, not a request by Hilary Clinton. The embassy in Manama probably has substantial leeway in directing its own programs, and while partners, could be pulling the cart on this decision. Moreover, Andrew W.K. isn't coming so much as a consultant on head thrashing and partying as he is a musician. Oh, well that makes more sense. He's a muscian who isn't so popular he's appearing at halftime shows but isn't so underground he's never been on MTV. Also, he's not a pop star whose tits contribute to album sales, or a rap star whose message rarely intersect with family values. By the way, if you google for "lil wayne," the related searches are: lil wayne quotes, lil wayne smoking, lil wayne album, lil wayne haircut, lil wayne jail, lil wayne shot. With that in mind, its harder not to support Andrew W.K. representing the U.S..
The problem is, there's no other evidence on Andrew W.K.'s site that this invitation is for real. Nor is there on the State Department webpage, the U.S.-Bahrainian embassy, or even on the page of University of Bahrain, where he is supposedly performing. Granted, there's almost nothing on the University of Bahrain's English webpage, not even a working link to the site map.
At the moment, there's no evidence Andrew W.K. is really going to Bahrain as a cultural ambassador. Perhaps within the week or the first week of December after he arrives. But after learning more about the nature of his "appointment," it's not as big a deal as suggested by the HuffPo headline that's making everyone ask, is it satire? (Andrew W.K. as a cultural ambassador, not Huffington Post as a news site)
Eric Dondero, a Libertarian Republican you have no reason to know exists, is trying to get your attention. He has a message about the election results he wants to share with you. The message is simple, ostensibly for easy communication and not because a more nuanced outlook is outside his capability.
"I am going to un-friend every single individual on Facebook who voted for Obama, or I even suspect may have Democrat leanings. I will do the same in person. All family and friends, even close family and friends, who I know to be Democrats are hereby dead to me. I vow never to speak to them again for the rest of my life, or have any communications with them. They are in short, the enemies of liberty. They deserve nothing less than hatred and utter contempt.
I strongly urge all other libertarians to do the same. Are you married to someone who voted for Obama, have a girlfriend who voted 'O'. Divorce them. Break up with them without haste. Vow not to attend family functions, Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas for example, if there will be any family members in attendance who are Democrats." -source-
Eric Dondero can pull off this extreme protest because he has no girlfriend, wife, family, or facebook friends, having reduced them all to charcoal outlines on the walls around his compound with his brilliant ideological purity. He cannot control the rays of his righteous zeal anymore than Cyclops can control his optic blast without a ruby-quartz lens. Nor should he have to. This democratic republic was founded on, and achieved greatness, as consequence of its refusal to tolerate differences of opinion. Our forefathers, oppressed by the universal tolerance in England and impoverished by the prices in the marketplace of ideas, left to form a more perfect union. A union of one. One people, united by sameness, led by the self-evident truth that debate is a waste and governance is easy. Individuals who disagreed back then were denied the right to exercise free speech, and individuals who disagree now deserve to have their bodies vaporized by blasts of the Truth from Eric Dondero's mouth. Or, he suggests, "you could take a crap on their lawn," anyway.
Eric Dondero unironically advocates boycotting participation in civil society by utilizing the same political tool wielded by Gandhi, the 1960's civil rights movement, and Occupy. He views new ideas as a threat and hopes to pressure those who entertain them to abandon that fool's errand. He is counting on intellectual poverty being more attractive than never receiving another one of his forwarded emails again. His boycott puts a price on your Democratic intransigence; that price is that he will never again swoop down onto your facebook wall and make a careful comparison between the United States and Nazi Germany.
If you are willing to break the chain anchoring you to Obama's throne, Eric Dondero will forgive you, anoint you with oil, and then rise up on wings of glory, to resume his stoney perch atop liberty's tabernacle and keep a vigilant lookout for our future.
"There were UNITED NATIONS POLL WATCHERS at our polling places yesterday. If that isn't proof enough how far we've gone towards the dark side of international socialism, I don't know what is."
But if you don't, prepare to be proven a hater by the hater-prover.
If we don't acknowledge that most Americans are now liberty-haters we will never, ever progress as a movement.
We have to look in the mirror now, and fess up. Most Americans are fascists, socialists, communists, and at the least welfare moocherists.
But if he's harsh, he's not unfair. His criticism extends to all haters of liberty, even those closely associated with the GOP.
What I fuckin' hate are all these pussy conservatives like Sean Hannity now saying, "Aww, it ain't that bad. We will bounce back... American will turn to the right again... It's just one bad election."
Bull-fucking-shit! America died yesterday. It's over. There's no coming back.
236 years of history gone in one single day and night.
SPARE ME YOU'RE FUCKING GOOD TIDINGS YOU CONSERVATIVES. This is a castrophe for libertarians and conservatives. The worst of our lifetimes.
The Nazis and Communists have just seized control of the United States of America, and you fuckers are trying to convince me it ain't that bad!
We have to consider the possibility, however, that Eric Dondero is wrong about some things.
I say we've got two to three years left before they start rounding up dissenters and sending us off to Nazi-style concentration camps. I've got a little more time, cause I live in Texas.
And if he's wrong, perhaps very, very wrong, we have to wonder whether anyone has alerted him to this fact.
John Denver said...
You do realize that real communists and socialists laugh at you people when you talk about America being taken over by communists, right?
Eric Dondero said...
John, no sir. I will not be a "decent human being," from here on out. As I say in the post, it's pure unadulterated hatred for everybody and anybody I know or ever run into who is a Democrat. I will spit on the ground in front of them. I will shun them. I will badmouth them. I will cuss their very existence.
Republicans, Libertarian Party people, Conservatives, other Rightists, even some moderates, are my friends.
Democrats are now my enemy til the day I die.
It seems that his position operates not on a level of policy or basic connections between words and their meanings, but on a sort of philosophical plane. Eric Dondero seems to forgo knowledge in favor of Cartesian skepticism: I am partisan, therefore I am. If I am, then I exist. If I exist then what I think is True. If I can't comprehend an idea, then it is false.
In a black and white dichotomy, extreme libertarianism is actually a sensible position.
The problem is, there's no reason to think Eric Dondero is being serious.
Not sure Obama is a communist or socialist. In my eyes he's more like a Nazi. One look at his pals in the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, is all you need to know on that.
There are no connections between the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas, and Nazis. Eric Dondero is just sayin' stuff. The question is what he gets out of being a sort of Godwin's 8-ball. Is it simple entertainment, or does he have artistic intent? Is Eric Dondero trying to challenge his reader's assumptions by saying the most insane things he can come up with? Is he trying to disparage Libertarian Republicans by posing as one of them? Is he trying to drive page views, which I and many others are happily sending him in exchange for the chance to react to something unabigously ridiculous? If we criticize Eric Dondero for his facile ideology and insane presentation, are we just sublimating our own compulsion for black-and-white beliefs? Is Eric Dondero an excuse to act like Eric Dondero? Is it satire?
