Category Archives: The Zeitgeist

On Grief And The Aggrieved

Crime, Democrats, Etiquette, Pop-Culture, Republicans, The State, The Zeitgeist

In the aftermath of the Arizona shootings, our masters in modern Rome are foregoing “partisanship” (read principle) and are coming together to spend funds not their own to secure their sorry asses against the statistically minuscule chance that these royal behinds will come to harm. Curiously, House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson is commending House Speaker John Boehner for being “extraordinary in setting the right tone” for “a more enlightened way.”

“A more enlightened way” than what?” It’s almost as though Larson is the aggrieved party and Boehner a member of the offending group. Both parties have assumed these respective roles.

Indeed: “Republicans are clearly responding as if they feel somewhat incriminated,” said University of Michigan political science professor Lisa Disch. “On the one hand, they are acting very quickly to distance themselves from the incident, but on the other hand, they seem to be feeling as if they have been caught at something; caught at using rhetoric that is incendiary.”

On the topic of grief: A day after their child’s dreadful demise, the parents of the “9-year-old girl gunned down in Saturday’s shooting rampage outside an Arizona grocery store” were liberally granting interviews.

To me this is unsettling. We once used to grieve privately—at least initially. These days, there is nothing people will not share and express in public, and ASAP. They have no private selves.

This is part of our festering cultural commons.

Cultural Foot-And-Mouth Can Kill

Art, Music, Pop-Culture, Technology, The Zeitgeist

An abundance of flying objects and a minimalist script, as far as music and language go: This encapsulates the artistic tastes pervading the culture. “Sixty Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl, however, was enraptured by the sounds of a bad band called “The Edge,” collaborating with Bono, another three-chord wonder, to produce the “new musical ‘Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.'”

In order to better describe the audial effects he wanted to achieve, Bono told “The Edge”: “ta, ta, ta, tum; give me that John Lennon-kinda sound.” He can’t even read music. Neither could they, presumably. That was “the creative process in real time” to which Stahl treated her viewers.

About the pretentious director, Julie Taymor—without whom Bono said he would not have been willing to warble worthlessly—the media seem to be saying less since her set has started buckling under poor Super Man and his supporting crew. She must be a card-carrying liberal.

The show’s financial scaffolding is rickety too. It so happens that Taymor’s talents for entertaining are not commercially viable: she has been at this production longer than the Iraq war has been entertaining the political deadheads. Before its financial sponsors can break even, “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” will have to run for decades. That is if it holds up.

UPDATED: Glenn, Gays ('Transitioners'), WiKiLeaks, Whatever

Gender, Glenn Beck, Homosexuality, Military, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Sex, The Zeitgeist

* SPOOKY GIFTS. Looking for a present with which to spook out your loved ones? Glenn Beck’s e-newsletter suggests that you “Put Glenn Beck Under Your Tree.” If you are unable to buy tickets to see Beck’s performance art, he’d like you to buy his products. (Actually, I have a better suggestion; buy “Broad Sides.”) I know you aren’t, but I’m still lamenting the loss of a potential force for liberty. Beck is circling the drain, caught in an echo-chamber out of which not even his indecipherable charts can lead him.

* FAIRY TALES. My husband, a fairly old-fashioned (if not old) man who works closely with the similar types, tells me that men seldom discuss their spouses at work. It should not be too difficult for the heterosexual soldiers in the military to agree to keep quiet about their families in exchange for some silence from the homosexual contingent. Aha, but you see, as “‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ For Hets and Homos” argued, the underlying impetus in this battle is to make the military as much like the culture at large: a big whore house. I do not think the activists even think in such terms. It is just that it is second-nature for the North American Personality to demand complete merger of the private and professional.

Tell me that Osama’s ascetic army will not skedaddle at the site of a brigade that looks like this:

* WIKIWONDER. Look at the WikiLeaks Mirrors page: “In order to make it impossible to ever fully remove WikiLeaks from the Internet, you will find below a list of mirrors of WikiLeaks website and CableGate pages.” An amazing operation.

Have at it. This is an Open Forum (with limitations, naturally). Please post whatever is on your mind (including, if you’d like, brief questions to your host on this or the other issue).

UPDATE (Dec. 10): The gentle-wo/man, in the image above (second from the right), is “transitioning,” me thinks. The spouse tells me that he came upon a transitioning person in the hallways at work. This poor person was not only sexually ambivalent but obese too, so it wore a muumuu. Right there they formed a bond. I’m joking. As you can imagine, your ordinary guy, the square type especially, doesn’t know what to do with this stuff. An outward display of your inner-most conflicts will make a co-worker run in the opposite direction.

I have plenty of sympathy for authentic pain, however pampered the sufferer. There is a lot of pain wrapped up in sexual ambivalence. Not so much these days, where what you get is emotionally pampered individuals publicly displaying “pain” they imagine they have; and have been instructed to feel.

Middle-aged folks like myself well remember the agony endured by a sexually ambivalent persons only two decades or so back. Everyone knows someone who is gay or even people who feel they were born the wrong sex. As if life were not hard enough. How horrible is it to be confused about a core characteristic as is gender.

Here’s the point I’ve tried to make not always successfully. A decent society is a private society. I am not opposed to gays serving in the military; I’m against the idea that sexual proclivities and peccadilloes are a public affair.

UPDATED: Lindt Makes Light Of TSA Looting & Lusting

Business, Homeland Security, Private Property, Regulation, The Zeitgeist

There aren’t many things that can put me off Lindt chocolates, such is their exquisite quality and taste. Except this repulsive ad. I went cold turkey after viewing the lighthearted look Lindt took at two TSA agents looting and lusting with impunity.

UPDATE (Dec. Eighth) : I’m surprised that individuals who’re serious about liberty could find humor, irony, and all shades of nuance in this Lindt ad.

Lindt here is not lampooning the TSA, whose representatives are depicted by pretty, lusty, sensuous, and “assertive” ladies. Just like American men love their women. This is a date. Two lovely women (after all, the TSA is a magnet for such types, isn’t it?), with an appreciation for the finer things in life, alight on a handsome man, who is too well-conditioned to oppose them with more than a meek, “You’re kidding, right?”

How droll!