Category Archives: The Zeitgeist

Oprah’s Obama

Democrats, Elections 2008, Politics, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

Before being swept up in it, let’s trace the genesis of Barack Obama mania for a moment. It was started by Oprah Winfrey. I’m not saying he ought to be discounted because his popularity is of the Queen of Kitsch’s making. For one, it’s too late for that. Oprah is a powerful person. However, since the media have taken on her mantle and kept the momentum going, we seemed to have forgotten that Oprah introduced Obama to the public.

Obama is a nice enough man. Whereas most candidates are quite ignoble, he’s merely mediocre. I think he was against the war, which ought to elevate him above The Hildebeest among Democrats. Republicans won’t have worthy candidates, unless Tom Tancredo or Ron Paul decides to run.

In any event, it doesn’t hurt to remember that Obama was launched by the confessional queen and in many ways represents the Oprah-ization of American life, down to his names.

Had he been christened “Barak,” he’d be the namesake of an impressive “military general in the Book of Judges” in the Hebrew Bible. Alas, if his mother intended to so name him, she misspelled “Barak.” If this indeed is the genesis of his name, it would also be emblematic of contemporary America.

Obama’s middle name — “Hussein” — he shares with Saddam and many millions of Muslims. That too provides a snapshot of modern America.

Oprah's Obama

Democrats, Elections 2008, Politics, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

Before being swept up in it, let’s trace the genesis of Barack Obama mania for a moment. It was started by Oprah Winfrey. I’m not saying he ought to be discounted because his popularity is of the Queen of Kitsch’s making. For one, it’s too late for that. Oprah is a powerful person. However, since the media have taken on her mantle and kept the momentum going, we seemed to have forgotten that Oprah introduced Obama to the public.

Obama is a nice enough man. Whereas most candidates are quite ignoble, he’s merely mediocre. I think he was against the war, which ought to elevate him above The Hildebeest among Democrats. Republicans won’t have worthy candidates, unless Tom Tancredo or Ron Paul decides to run.

In any event, it doesn’t hurt to remember that Obama was launched by the confessional queen and in many ways represents the Oprah-ization of American life, down to his names.

Had he been christened “Barak,” he’d be the namesake of an impressive “military general in the Book of Judges” in the Hebrew Bible. Alas, if his mother intended to so name him, she misspelled “Barak.” If this indeed is the genesis of his name, it would also be emblematic of contemporary America.

Obama’s middle name — “Hussein” — he shares with Saddam and many millions of Muslims. That too provides a snapshot of modern America.

Paglia Prattles On Pop Music

Music, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

The pronouncements of the once-interesting Camille Pagilia have grown rather obtuse. How bland has she become? You be the judge. What she says here about “CrotchGate” is as worn and uninteresting as anything Gloria Steinem might muster.

Paglia has always substituted symbolism for substantive assessment in the realm of art. Remember her clapped out claptrap about the significance of drag-queen iconography? This awful error has led her to evaluate Madonna as “an authentic, creative artist.”

Madonna cannot sing or compose a song worth hearing. Like most pop “musicians” today, she is a product of the visual medium: first the video, then the DVD. If you were unable to see these “artists,” you’d not want to hear them. I suspect that their image alone has, over the years, supported CD sales. And of course, the masses habituate to the thump-thump studio-engineered racket that substitutes for a voice, instrumental arrangements, and chord progression in a Madonna or Britney ditty.

Every “recording” artist today is drawn from a highly biased sample, where T & A are the prime criteria for selection, not musical ability. Janis Ian’s “Seventeen” would never have been recorded today; she’d have flopped. In music nowadays, the visual, not the auditory, is the medium.

Paglia blathers about the mismanaged sexuality of well-worn, ugly monsters like Britney Spears. (And the media mock Tom Cruise, a man of 44, for his double chin. Have you seen the chins on the big, flat, expanses that make up Britney’s mug?) The Porn Aesthetic is at work here, not the sensual.

The notion of Paglia as a sharp cultural commentator finally evaporated when she called Condoleezza Rice a brilliant woman. The woman, Condi, has not even been able to fulfill the minimum requirements of her office, much less demonstrate brilliance.(Her last official “remarks” are quite good…for a 12-year-old.)

Donald Trump, who, shall we say, has a good sense of what would fly in the private sector, said of the Secretary of State that she was a lovely woman, but that she “goes around to other countries and other nations, negotiates with their leaders, comes back and nothing ever happens.” He’d have fired her, that’s for sure.

In any event, I’ll no longer be following Paglia too closely (her eventual evaluation of the blogosphere came well after mine and only echoed what I had said in “The Importance of Boundaries“).

Media War-Profiteers

Media, The Zeitgeist, War

The elections have certainly brought a change in the tone of “debate” conducted on the networks. One sees less of those Republican, media “Madame Defarges,” their faces twisted in orgiastic war frenzy, accusing any and all of treason if opposed to the carnage and wanton waste in Iraq. It’s nice to see less of these clones of the French revolutionaries.

I even felt sufficiently buoyed to write, “At Least Saddam Kept Order.” And duly, hate mail—the kind I was knee-deep in from 2002 until late 2004—was almost non-existent.

This makes a nice change.

Groupies of the media “Madame Defarges,” assorted Robespierres, and their knock-offs, should remind themselves that their media heroes are part of the media elite. I know; you’ve been brainwashed to think only in terms of liberal media elites. But all those moneyed populist poseurs—they’ve all benefited financially from firing up poor sods with untruths about the war. Many then enlisted; some came back in body bags or bereft of body parts.

In the financial benefits they derived from whooping it up for war, a great many media types were as good as Halliburton war profiteers.