Taibbi on Friedman

If Thomas Friedman had any sense of honor, integrity, or human decency, he surely would have committed seppuku by now. But since there is a void in Mr. Friedman's soul where those qualities reside in the rest of us, he continues to degrade the written word with machine-like consistency. Fortunately, Matt Taibbi has his tanto sharpened. Enjoy.

Ruling Class Media Turns Against the Republicans

Finally! Though it's been evident for about two years now that there's been a major shift of ruling class support away from the Republicans (who've fouled things up not a little for the American Empire), I've been quite disappointed so far this election cycle with the timidity of ruling class attacks on the conservatives. Remember Mark Foley in 2006? Why haven't the institutions of ruling opinion begun trotting out the skeleton's in the Republican closet yet this time around? While I don't have an answer for that, I think it is has finally begun.

CNN has regularly been carrying "Fact Check" segments where it subjects McCain campaign claims about Obama to empirical verification, where they typically come up quite thin. The latest regards Obama and gun control.

McCain's campaign hasn't helped itself by going on the attack against the ruling class media, calling the New York Times "a pro-Obama organization that every day attacks Sen. McCain, attacks Gov. Palin, and excuses Sen. Obama.” The irony here is that there is a rational kernel to McCain and co's conspiracy theories of the liberal media. The media's owners have made a real shift to the Democrats, and the Republicans are finally beginning to pay.

CNN On Why Deportation is Inhumane

This CNN article is quite remarkable. It's an effective illustration of the brutal inhumanity that results from the "enforcement" discourse on immigration. Yes, it ends up being a sop for some Christian philanthropist whose group, Organization to Help Citizen Children, does as much as damage as good by framing the issue around citizenship, but nonetheless it's extraordinary that an article which treats undocumented workers like people should be headlining on CNN.

A Coup by Any Other Name...

I was perusing CNN tonight before I went to bed, and couldn't help but notice the discrepancy between its coverage of Pakistan's coup and its coverage of Venezuela. CNN essentially hands a megaphone to disgruntled Chavista Raul Baduel, who describes Chavez's proposed constitutional amendment as a coup. The amendment in question would remove the term limit for Venezuelan presidents. Making it a country just like England or Germany, neither of which has a term limit for its chief political figure. The proposed amendment also has to be approved in a popular referendum. Not to mention, of course, that Chavez has to actually be re-elected for the amendment to mean anything like the right wingers are construing it as, and his re-election is far from a foregone conclusion.

It would, however, be such a conclusion if he acted like President Musharraf in Pakistan. When the Mush got word that the Supreme Court would likely invalidate his re-election last month (due to a constitutional conflict between his holding of positions as both President and Chief of Staff of the Army) he simply declared martial law and arrested everyone who had a word to say otherwise. Compare such treatment with how Chavez handled a massive protest against him today. CNN, however, never uses the term coup in its article on Pakistan. President Bush merely urges Musharraf to hold elections. Undoubtedly he would call on Chavez to hold elections if he weren't sure that the Bolivarian revolution would win yet again.

Why I Don't Watch Reality TV

This isn't particularly political. But it is a noteworthy plea for some kind of dignity and compassion in our media.

However, since I am political, I shall add an addendum (does one ever do anything else with them?)

Reality TV, it seems to me, demonstrates perfectly the tendency of different modes of production to eventually become fetters on human development. The relevant passage from Marx is here:

At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.

(Those unfamiliar with Marxese can consult the Marxist Internet Archive glossary here).

What Marx is saying, more or less, is that a good way of doing things in one era becomes a bad way of doing things as time progresses and new technology develops. For example, Newtonian mechanics were a tremendous advance over previous physical theories, but Einstein showed their limitations (just as Einstein is currently being shown his own). The same applies to economic systems. Though capitalism unleashed enormous creative powers (especially when contrasted with the stagnation of feudalism), it too has become quite obsolete, as readers of this blog are no doubt fully aware.

What does this have to do with reality tv? EVERYTHING! The culture of any society is bound to be influenced by its mode of production, capitalism no less than the others. Just as feudal art until the renaissance depicted Great Chains of Being which justified the rule of kings, so capitalist art ultimately is produced within the sphere of capitalist society. The aforementioned obsolescence of capitalism surely affects its art.

Reality TV is, I think, ultimately that obsolescence expressed in the television format. It's almost as if, given capitalism's stultifying influence, it's harder and harder to find some new kind of art which can resonate on a broad level. Hence the trends towards subcultures. Reality tv is an attempt to recapture the societal imagination on a broad level by turning the camera inwards. There aren't any new ideas that are working, so why not just watch ourselves in a mirror. Of course this mirror is monstrously warped by ideology, but it's a mirror nonetheless. Reality tv is, in short, our culture smelling its own farts.

There is hope, however. I think that the success of Heroes (and its clones) bespeaks something significant and new in American culture: ordinary people's desire for power to change the world. For the last thirty years, people have been convinced nothing could change. I think this is starting to change. Of course, this desire for change is transmuted in the television program and infused with all different kinds of ideology, but the very fact that they have to warp it in such a way speaks to its power.