The Democratic Party; Born to Lose?

From Tiny Revolution The Democratic Party as "The Washington Generals". The Harlem Globetrotters would whip their asses -- it was ceremonial. Do we have a ceremonial democracy? Just wondering...I don't think it's over yet...I dislike apocalyptic pronouncements. Maybe the Democrats deserve to lose, but democracy?

Cult studs will call me reactionary, radicals will no doubt call me a liberal.

To cult studs, I'm a reactionary,

but I don't care. Read the article in The Common Review and decide for yourselves.

I think that cultural studies of the American brand is profoundly anti-intellectual and a-historical while promoting at the same time a new brand of academic/professional virtue "I don't criticize what's popular, unlike Theodor Adorno" seems to have been their mantra. In this piece, I compare Andrew Ross's take on the New Age and Theodor Adorno's critique of superstition, modernity and Enlightenment.

I can't stop myself

from linking to this Scoop! about Zizek's wedding, and the comments are as brilliant as the post and pictures. I know this is old news to some of you, but I am a little slow.

Zizek's Wedding, cont'd.

I am going to go for the tabloid moment and continue in the same vein as the last post. Thanks to Jost who directs us to Idiocentrism, where Modeste Mussorgsky's and Slavoj Zizek's uncanny resemblance is noted alongside another ravishing pic of bride and groom.

Get a load of "Body Studies" !

Body Studies is the big new thing at Birbeck College's new Humanities Institute, but we would like to remark that this institution's most eminent recent hire, Slavoj Zizek has recently gotten married to a former underwear model in Argentina. Mazel Tov!!!

This wedding picture is soooo 80s. I'm loving it! The black T-shirt and the white suit - very Miami Vice. And the bride is very, well, Princess Bride!

This image helped me grasp the full significance of the "The Bodies Studies" featured by the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. Body Studies not outdated and tired, it's RETRO! Birkbeck is reviving the 80s theory star charisma theory thing and asking those same pseudo-profound questions I myself posed during many a very late night out, sprawled on some dingy pouf at some club or other, after one too many blankety blanks (I'm a mother now so I'm trying to keep this blog PG) : "Are we our bodies or are our bodies merely our tools?" I'm tripping on this whole CONCEPT -- let's get back to that strange moment of delightful insouciance and total irrelevance when we believed that theory could be popular and that the popular was theory and history was like some freaky place that in the words of eighties theory, always needed to be "revisited."

And here I thought body studies could not be considered a respectable academic field, since it has absolutely no intellectual parameters or structures to speak of - distinguished as it is by a neglect of the concept of modernity or even the most basic notion of the unconscious. I thought "body studies" lacked both a sense of history and any political significance - because of its superficial reading of Foucault and its studied ignorance of any notion of the commodity (they'll talk a blue streak about the human genome, but nary a peep about the gadget, or the body politic)... BUT now I'm realizing that Birkbeck may just be part of a Dickensian nightmare , where I am forced to relive over and over again all my bodies past and present and future - while cringing through every theory and fashion mistake ever made in the 80s!!!