Viacom gets to know what I watch on YouTube?
Here’s a new rule: Judges who don’t use computers and don’t surf the Internet are permanently banned from ruling on any case that involves the Internet….
Ever since I saw Wall-E last week (opening night), I’ve been meaning to write a long post about a) how great it is, and b) the apocalypse as a theme in literature and film of the Bush years. (Think: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Jim Crace’s Pesthouse, Kevin Brockmeier’s very fine The Brief History of the Dead.
I’m too tired now to write much about the apocalypse theme, except to say that while every era has its apocalyptic culture, (Fail-Safe, Dr. Strangelove, War Games), I bet that if you could quantify this, the number of people fretting about the apocalypse at the moment is probably higher than any time since the Cuban missile crisis. If George Bush were smart—well, if George Bush were smart, a lot of things would be different—but if he were, he’d pay attention to some of the issues raised in this genre of art (environmental disaster, for one) and realize that these are issues that affect his own approval rating. When the most popular movie in the country features Earth as a planet populated only by a lonely robot and his unkillable cockroach friend, maybe it’s time for the president to realize that people actually do worry about the environment.
I’d like to see an academic trace presidential popularity and its correlation to art of the apocalypse. And I’d like to see a president who, every once in a while, asked academics questions about this sort of thing, and actually listened to the answers.
We have 9/11 to thank for some of this anxiety, but even more, I think, it’s Bush fault. We feel like the world really is going to hell, and Bush is fiddling away (while Dick Cheney lights the matches). Can we survive the rest of the Bush administration? How much more damage can he do on his way out?
Now, back to Wall-e. It is surely the best movie of the year so far, and it’s hard to imagine that there will be a better one in the next few months. It is intelligent, moving, funny, sad, bittersweet, satirical, kind, generous, and, ultimately, optimistic. Its creativity is staggering.
After seeing Wall-E, I left the theater and thought, Yes! Americans can do something right. There remains intelligent life in this country. We do have something to offer the world other than war, debt, and shitty cars.
Sound hyperbolic? See the film. You’ll see what I mean.
I’ll miss the 4th of July this year; I’ll be in the air the entire day, taking off on the 3rd and, thanks to the magic of time zones, landing in Singapore on the 5th.
But on this independence day, I’ll be thankful for the Yankees and the Red Sox, Barack Obama, and Wall-E. Other things as well, of course. But that’s a start.
The Times reports that lefty professors, shaped by the ’60s, are starting to retire from their academic sinecures in droves, initiating a profound change in American academic culture.
Baby boomers, hired in large numbers during a huge expansion in higher education that continued into the ’70s, are being replaced by younger professors who many of the nearly 50 academics interviewed by The New York Times believe are different from their predecessors — less ideologically polarized and more politically moderate.
“There’s definitely something happening,” said Peter W. Wood, executive director of the National Association of Scholars, which was created in 1987 to counter attacks on Western culture and values. “I hear from quite a few faculty members and graduate students from around the country. They are not really interested in fighting the battles that have been fought over the last 20 years.”
Imagine that.
Att Harvard, though, there seems to be an ascension of ’60s-influenced politics into positions of high leadership….
I’m headed to Bali for the wedding of a dear friend. (I’m writing this from a lounge at Newark Airport.)
Posts over the next few days will probably be, well, intermittent. But I’ll do my best to keep in touch from the far side of the world….
My post mocking the Globe’s online request for men who wear body-shaping underwear to the office drew this response….
It’s not that I wouldn’t read about men wearing body-shaping underwear, Peter. I’m as interested in weird cultural trends as the next guy. (Heck, probably more.)
What I seriously doubt is that this is a trend at all, rather than a desperate concoction of reporter and editor….
You folks are up in arms! First, I pointed out that Cindy McCain looks not unlike a space alien. Then I said that Larry Summers’ remarks about women’s genetic intelligence are still resented by many of “them.”
As the late great Phil Rizzuto would say, holy cow. The response has been—oh, all right, I won’t say hysterical—vehement.
So, to clarify:
To reiterate: there is something odd and off-kilter about Cindy McCain. She looks like she’s on psychotropic drugs, for one thing (which is fine, whatever), and she manifests none of the authenticity of, say, Michelle Obama. Physically, she’s obviously had a lot of cosmetic surgery and stares off pleasantly into space. We know none of her beliefs about anything except that she shouldn’t have to disclose her income tax returns.
In a campaign where Michelle Obama is faulted for being too real, isn’t it worth pointing out that the alternative is, by all appearances, a GOP fembot?
Now, as to the question of whether Larry Summers could become Treasury secretary when (I wrote) many women still resent his remarks…I’m sure that some men are still upset about them as well. I happen to think that Summers has gotten something of a bum rap for that incident, and in any event, he’s apologized for it about a million times. Time to move on.
In any case, as a practical political matter, any opposition to Summers being re-appointed Treasury secretary would come from women who have not forgiven him those remarks.
Like it or not, men would not mobilize to block that appointment; women would.
That was my point, and I’m sticking to it.
Now, will everyone who’s cranky go back and look at that Monday Morning Zen? It’s such a gorgeous image, an angelfish and a triggerfish swimming next to each other. To my mind, the triggerfish is about the most beautiful fish in the ocean, its markings so ethereal and otherworldly that sometimes the fish doesn’t even look three-dimensional…(which, biologically speaking, may be exactly the point).
According to US magazine, they’ve been, um, hitting it off….
Writing in the FT, Larry Summers says, It is quite possible that we are now at the most dangerous moment since the American financial crisis began last August.
His remedy: the government should pass the housing bill, pump the economy, reform energy policy, and prepare for other Wall Street meltdowns.
The policy choices made in the next few months will matter to the lives of millions of Americans, to America’s economic strength and to the global economy.
Harvard donor Jeffrey Epstein is headed for the big house, where he will likely not be receiving sexual massages from underage girls….
Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m kind of looking forward to seeing Oliver Stone’s George W. Bush biopic.
Your snobbery is amazing. I’m sorry, but if there are suddenly a large amount of men wearing body shaping underwear, to me, that marks a tremendous change in the image of men in the work place and in the world; and actually, I think that would be a phenomenal story. If there is any point of criticism, it’s that the Boston Globe reporters aren’t resourceful enough to find men wearing body shaping underwear on their own, and must resort to asking for sources online. But then again, this could be a great way of incorporating the reader into the story — I feel like today, many of the news sources I read are dictated strongly by the people leaving comments online. Why not ask them for sources? I really don’t see anything wrong with what you pointed out in this blog post, except that you clearly need to be ushered into the 21st century where people want every cultural phenomena articulated in print by an esteemed newspaper.