Category Archives: Pop-Culture

Updated: On Bloggerel

Barely A Blog, IlanaMercer.com, Internet, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

I resisted blogging with all my might. In August 2002, I wrote this in “The Importance of Boundaries”:

“Virginia Postrel appears to confer the web-diary with a mystic, cosmic rhythm, calling it ‘one of the most interesting new spontaneous orders in the world of the Web.’ … The fact that millions of people are moved to mouth daily on the web is no more significant than the fact that billions of humans have a bowel movement every day.”

“Chances are that if you are blogging, a part of you believes that your impromptu daily thoughts ought to be public. Chances are you are not terribly concerned that, of the cyberspace ejaculate you emit, stuff will come back to haunt you like a nasty paternity suit.”

Unfortunately, I was in no position to let this expression of spontaneous disorder pass me by. Ann Coulter is in that position; I’m not. Probably never will be. So here I am. (Still, this blogger “speaks” only “when she has something to say,” to comport with my daughter’s description of her mom years back. Which is why this is Barely a Blog.)

Thomas Fleming has had a similar experience. Here are his impressions of the blogosphere and its intellectually disemboweling effects:

“… answering the blog-responders is like arguing with a retarded child who thinks breaking wind is a witty response.”

“I described the blogger mentality as a form of Narcissism, but even that is a compliment. Narcissus was so handsome that he fell in love with his own reflection. The proper parallel would be the writers and political intellectuals who are so brilliant and clever that they have fallen in love with their own voices, but bloggers are like a hideously ugly person who looks in the mirror and says: ‘The rat’s looking good.’ [Note, I have to check the quotation from the recent film of Charlotte’s Web, which I watched on a flight to Rome.]”

“… if we took the trouble to start a conversation, the blogospheroids would jump in, agreeing or disagreeing–it hardly matters–with opinions by the truckload. This might not be so bad, if the truck were not a garbage truck.”

The post is “Silly Chickens and Rotten Eggs.” As with all Dr. Fleming’s writing, it’s well-worth the read.

Update (March 22): This is not to say that there aren’t good blogs; I’d hope BAB is one. Rather, the objection here is to the meta-process the web diary stands for–the loose, let-it-all-hang out, diarrheic process of diarizing in public, as I said in the essay, has broken down boundaries between the private and public:

“The upshot of populism in punditry, at least, is that bad commentary is promiscuously outed. Few and far between are the commentators and conversationalists who have honed their craft.”

Updated: Exporting Soft Porn

Aesthetics, America, China, Family, Morality, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

A great deal of carping goes on about the crap China exports to us (by popular demand). Very little is said about the sh-t we ship over there. Here Glenn Beck reports on the little American Lolitas, courtesy of Disney, who help sell sexy underwear to China’s children.

Beck describes (and later shows on screen) a

“White girl, 12 years old, reclining in a matching bra and panties set with Disney’s signature mouse ear design in a particular creepy detail, the pigtailed child is playing with a pair of Mickey Mouse hand puppets. In the left-hand corner is the familiar script of a Disney logo.”

The child sports cleavage which might have been enhanced digitally.

The Chinese should give Americans a hard time over this.

American children appear to be party to a very sexual vibe cultivated in sexually inappropriate family interactions and nurtured at schools. Watch any Hollywood film and you see girls being overtly sexual with their dads and vise versa.

(Why do so many American parents kiss their kids on the mouth? Absolutely inappropriate. Why do so many parents let their daughters walk around looking like “pint-sized tarts”?)

As an example, consider the Vanity Fair Miley Cyrus photo, where the girl, in various states of undress, nestles in the arms of father Billy Ray Cyrus, and looks up at him seductively. Major creep-out.

When I was growing up the instinct was to try and stay a little girl a little longer—especially around dads.

To be honest, a country exporting cheap electronics has a leg up on a country that peddles porn, don’t you think?

In case libertarians get confused, as they are wont to do, between cultural commentary and libertarian legal theory—of course peddling porn, soft and hard, ought to remain legal. The law should stay out of all voluntary exchanges between consenting adults.

Update (May 6): I must admit that, although I’ve never watched the program “Hanna Montana,” the girl Miley strikes me as anything but sweet and innocent. Perhaps my idea of nice is different. The Cyrus girl is loud, overbearing and extremely precocious. For such a twit, she’s also full of herself. The little I’ve seen of the “family” doing its wholesome-values shtick, the more they’ve struck me as shallow and showy, not wholesome. Then again, I’ve not had the chance to plumb the depths of “Hanna Montana” and her handlers.

Whenever the Fox-News folks have oozed over the wholesomeness of this girl is and then cut to actual footage of Cyrus carrying forth—my impression has been the opposite. When I think of wholesome (and as pretty as a picture), I think Martina McBride.

As to the whole blame Dad and Disney thing, I’ve expressed my views before: “The paternalistic depiction of women as passive agents, demeaned by male-driven appetites, is a humbug shared by conservatives and liberals alike.”

Cyrus may be 15, but she’s a single-minded exhibitionist, propelled and driven by the fame thing. In all likelihood, she originated the idea of posing for Vanity Fair and would not stop pestering her pappy until he relented. Anyone who has a teenager and handles her as does the typical American parent—like a demigoddess—knows I’m right.

Those who persist in the poor-teen-is-a-victim routine don’t have children. Or are oblivious to the reversal in parent-child roles that has come to typify the dynamics in the American family.

Updated: Deifying the Dalai Lama

Celebrity, Hollywood, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Pop-Culture, Pseudo-intellectualism, Reason

“… While the Dalai Lama seems a sweet enough fellow down to his conventional, simplistic, unoriginal quips, he is, nevertheless, a caricature, the creation of pseudo-spiritual, faux-intellectual liberal elites…”

More poignantly: “The story of Tibet is a story with more twists than a serpent’s tail. Unfortunately, most Americans are as unequipped as Lauren Caitlin Upton of the 2007 Miss Teen USA fame to locate Tibet on a map, much less preach about its politics…”

Read the rest in “Deifying the Dalai Lama,” my new WorldNetDaily.com column. (Readers of Barely a Blog will be familiar with the theme.)

Update (April 24): There’s an interesting new letter in our Comments Section from a skeptical (read: thinking) health-care professional who’s recently encountered the Lama.

Oscar Offal

Aesthetics, Film, Hollywood, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

I haven’t seen any one of the films nominated, so I’ll withhold judgment. I’m curious about what appears outwardly to be a thriller, “No Country for Old Men.” Although it’s not impossible, knowing Hollywood’s devotion to the Goddess Gaia, that it’s a disguised message about global warming.

I’m certainly not likely to put myself through a “sensitive” flick that deals with teen turmoil. “Juno” was written by Hollywood’s latest IT girl. You know Diablo Cody is an authentic individualist, at least as defined by Hollywood hollow heads and public school pedagogues. Her “originality” is evident from her outré sense of dress, tattoos, and the knack for spluttering mind-numbing clichés. She also speaks in that Anna-Marie-Cox (Wonkette) inflection used in commercials directed at the cool crowd that reads the New York Times.

Marion Cotillard: a delightful French singer/actress who portrayed Edith Piaf in “La Vie En Rose.” Not my idea of a fun film, but the lady was delightful and was dressed ever-so elegantly. How long before she gets skankified? Make haste, Marion, go back to France.

All the hype about red gowns, notwithstanding, no one but Heidi Klum can carry off bright red. Klum is indeed a ravishing beauty, but she’s looking like a “Muselmann”—her total weight must equal the weight of her bones.

Cameron Diaz: The John Galliano frock did not finesse those flat, coarse features and thick leathery skin. All in all, the off-the-shoulder look requires perfect neck-jaw-bosom line. Although I don’t much care for Cruz, Penélope’s off-the-shoulder black number did it for me; she looked lovely. The dress didn’t plunge, but had been softened with a few fluffy plumes. Bedsides which she has the slight build to pull it off.

I am none the wiser about the silly, slushy movie “Enchanted” and its stars, but I’ll say this much about Amy Adams, who ever she is: The reddish locks, white flawless skin, and greed gown made for a beguiling blend.

Not well turned-out was Daniel Day-Lewis in gold pirate earring and a carefully disheveled coiffe. He is compared to Robert De Niro, but the latter is as manly as you get. A good actor too.

This here is a photo of a very great beauty. Here Julie Christie is again. This here is a photo of someone who is not a great beauty: The large, manly, expanses of forehead, the stupid smile, and the less-than-chiseled jaw. The eyes are more cow-like than captivating. It’s fine to find this common Hispanic look attractive, but it isn’t beautiful.

America’s idea of beauty now resembles its idea of good food; cheap and nasty.

The less said about Nicole Kidman the better. I liked her when her hair flowed in red ringlets, her blue eyes pierced, and her lips were thin. I tried to locate photos of Kidman before her make-over, but my PC was mysteriously assailed, and, subsequently crashed. Seriously, it’s impossible to find old images of the woman on the Internet. Oh, here are some from Malice.

Her acting too has become awfully affectatious. I watched Kidman in “Birth” (on TV; I’d never pay to see that bit of torture) with the fascination with which you’d watch maggots crawl in and out a CSI corpse. She was repulsive: she must have just had her mouth inflated, because she wouldn’t stop working it—the drooling thing assumed a life of its own. The object of her spittle was a ten year old boy—yeah, I know.

Lastly, Jon Stewart was rather weak.