“You can think clearly only with your clothes on.”
— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
Yankees fans are the right-wing Republicans of baseball.
There are baseball fans and there are Yankees fans, just as there are Americans and there are right-wing Republicans.
Baseball fans pledge their allegiance to the sport before affiliating with a favorite team. Yankees fans are devoted to franchise first. Right-wing Republicans would rather see the nation crumble than see Obama succeed.
Baseball fans can happily watch a game regardless of the matchup. Yankees fans probably don’t watch the Cincinnati Reds take on the Pittsburgh Pirates. Right-wing Republicans aren’t interested in the game if their team isn’t in the big show.
Baseball fans can identify the greatest players in the game, citing a shortstop in St. Louis, a left-fielder in Milwaukee, and yes, even a first baseman in New York. Yankees fans are pretty sure Jorge Posada is the best catcher in the game. Right-wing Republicans think Ayn Rand was the greatest political philosopher of the 20th century.
Q.E.D.
Growing up is realizing the main reason you want to get married and have a family is so you have a good excuse not to go home for the holidays.
“American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. In using the expression “paranoid style” I am not speaking in a clinical sense, but borrowing a clinical term for other purposes. I have neither the competence nor the desire to classify any figures of the past or present as certifiable lunatics. In fact, the idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.”
— Historian Richard Hofstadter, writing for Harper’s on the subject of right-wing politics… in 1964.And what of intelligence? I believe intelligence is no more laudable than athleticism, morally; it makes one good at some things and not at others. It is not a moral virtue; it is not a mark of goodness; someone cannot be faulted for not possessing it; and Fowler is right: we should regard the display of knowledge as comparably vulgar to material ostentation.
It may indeed be the case that intelligence is not a moral virtue, but it has certainly become an ethical one, and it therefore differs rather drastically from mere athleticism.
We do not live in the city of philosopher kings; we have a humble republic. My political representation, therefore, along with my livelihood and well-being, become dependent on the intellectual faculties of the citizen in the voting booth next to me. His or her athleticism or good looks mean nothing to me in this respect.
There is no a priori judgment that can establish the ethical mandate for individual intelligence, seeing as it is a purely structural byproduct of our preexisting sociopolitical conditions. The same can be said for personal health: one cannot possibly reason one’s way from a set of limited axioms towards the conclusion that it is morally right to lead a healthy, active, long life; one arrives at this conclusion a posteriori, via ethical-political reasoning, because healthcare costs at the aggregate level are affected by the lifestyle choices (and access to preventative care) of each of the sum’s parts. The health and intelligence of the individual transcend mere personal betterment once entering into the social compact.
In this context it is absolutely fitting for us to laud intelligence—or at least the aspiration thereto—when political contests can be reduced to a battle between Glenn Beck viewers and Jim Lehrer viewers.
Photographer Michael Wolf recently documented the sights of Paris as seen by way of Google Street View, and the results are stunning: a collection of serendipitously candid, intimate, and honest “photography” illustrating subjects fully unaware of their observer.
Seen recently at Hot Potato HQ. I miss my best friend.
“I’ve seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.”
— Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable FeastFree startup idea (or: the end of western civilization as we know it)
A status update and user messaging service using only emoticons.
MasterChief117: :( KittenLuvr1992: @MasterChief117 <3 MasterChief117: @KittenLuvr1992 :'( KittenLuvr1992: @MasterChief117 :-# MasterChief117: @KittenLuvr1992 :-P~ KittenLuvr1992: @MasterChief117 :-* MasterChief117: @KittenLuvr1992 ))<>(( KittenLuvr1992: @MasterChief117 ~@~
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Pavement, “All My Friends” (from the 1993 Gary Young recording sessions)
She’s got a neck like a Saturday paper
You read it fast before the Sunday mass
From The Velvet Underground: New York Art, via CR Blog.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Me: I didn’t realize until just now that the lyrics to “You Were Right” are all lyrics from other songs.
Jesse: You mean the “dust in the wind” line never tipped you off?
Me: What’s that from anyway?
Jesse: What?
Me: Huh?
Jesse: Really?
Me: What!
Jesse: Dude, It’s Dylan.
Me: What?!?
Jesse: It’s Dylan, dude.
Adam: Yeah, It’s actually one of his more famous lyrics.
Me: What?!?
Google: IT’S KANSAS YOU IDIOTS.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Built to Spill, “Conventional Wisdom”
Never had the chance to see Built to Spill live until a couple weeks back at the Middle East in Cambridge and they’re absolutely one of those bands you’ve never really heard until you’ve seen them live, because you’ll never hear them the same way again after seeing Doug Martsch up there in person, after watching the pure and authentically emotional way he bares his soul from behind that narrow microphone stand offering only the most token separation between he and you—a small but meaningful distance, because you stand there watching this guy who looks so overcome by angst that he might break down in tears during the next bridge of this song, this song that guided you through all those late-teen dramas that seemed so catastrophic at the time but look so inconsequential now compared to the desperation with which Martsch seems to clutch the neck of his Fender, a desperation that could almost lead you to believe he wasn’t having any fun up there until the encore comes and—thank god—he ignores all the predictable audience requests for “Carry the Zero” coming from this pack of obnoxious kids with big black permanent marker Xs on their hands betraying the fact that they were about three years old when “Car” came out and instead the band closes with “Unconventional Wisdom” and for the first time all night he’s smiling.
(via lizistwentythree)
