Recording Surface

Mike has forced me to participate in the page-123 meme that’s been going around. (more…)

Like all left believers in the essential progressiveness of capitalism, Simon Critchley thinks that the “truth of Marx’s work” lies in its conviction that the “dislocatory power of capitalism must be affirmed.” The alternative, as it’s usually presented is in these stories, is “a retreat into some sort of Rousseauesque and ultimately reactionary romantic anti-capitalism.” (more…)

I watched the Clinton-Obama debate last night, the first one I’ve tuned in for. It’s pretty funny to see the two of them trying to convice people that there are actual differences between them when clearly there aren’t: both are DLC-beholden, centrist Bill Clinton-oids. Which is to say, ideal CEOs of the neoliberal state. The candidates themselves think that their positions on health care are, as Obama said last night, “substantively different.” Indeed. Clinton’s plan makes people who are unemployed or don’t receive insurance from their employers buy government insurance that they can’t afford so that they can pay copays they can’t afford so that they can maybe eventually receive care from a doctor. Obama wouldn’t make people buy government insurance and take on the burden of premiums and copays, but if they don’t and they show up at an emergency room to receive treatment, they will be fined, severely, as he made clear last night. These are the politics that are inspiring such great passion among Democrats this year.

(As an aside, it’s hilarious to hear Clinton rail against medical profiteering, since the lone accomplishment of her health-care reforms of the early 90s was to set in motion the process by which HMOs and drug companies, those mind-bogglingly profitable administrators of life and death in the United States, came to rule the delivery of health care.)

Some people think it’s significant that the two finalists for the Democratic nomination are a woman and a black man. Apparently the candidates don’t, as race and sex seem to be off-limits topics for them. That is, unless you count Obama’s passing references to his growing up without a father (read: I’m just like every other black person) or Clinton’s intimations about her essentially nurturing nature (read: I’m just like every other woman) as vigorous discussions of race and sex. Obviously, I do think race and sex are significant, but the discursive terrain on which this discussion is taking place is so debased and idiotic — Clinton’s voters and supporters are racists, and Obama’s voters and supporters are sexists — that it’s hard to find any purchase that doesn’t entail buying into the banality. The debate about the intersections of race and sex inspired by Clinton-Obama, a debate that should be about difference and dissenion, has already, in its singular way, erased difference and dissension. It’s now about who is the better American.

The Thomas Frank inside of me wants to get worked up about the awfulness of the Democrats. But that would be insincere. They are, after all, just doing their job. It would be like getting angry at leopards because they have spots.

In the United States, the third Monday in February is Presidents’ Day. Every few years, like this one, the third Monday in February is also my birthday. So in a nod to a president I actually like and as a reminder to myself, a couple of things: (more…)

(For the Love of Hate)

A few days ago I finally heard, a mere twelve years after it was released, Kathy McCarty’s Dead Dog’s Eyeball, her record of Daniel Johnston songs. The versions are nice as far as they go, but like most covers of Johnston’s songs I’ve heard, they are animated by one mistaken motivation: to realize the potential of the songs. (more…)

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. Allergyseason is upon central Texas (though really, it’s always that time in the allergy capital of the U.S.), and what for a couple of weeks has had a light grasp on me has in the last few days strangled my head: brutal, neverending headaches, snotgreen discharge, all that. Hopefully its deathgrip will pass soon. So my only tribute on James Joyce’s birthday will have to be the use of the word snotgreen and other created compound words.