[lbo-talk] Celebrity and false idols

Dick Lodge abe.initio at gmail.com
Sat Dec 10 14:57:51 PST 2005


you aren't communicating to the masses, you're communicating to fellow lefties and feminists. and if you are that snooty nosed about what the masses will understand, then maybe you should seek a new line of play. or, at least realize that there's all kinds of ways of being funny and down wit' the peeps that you don't have to gasp in horror over someone's tinker toys in order for people to like you.

we objectify everything, so the argument that she's already objectified isn't a defense. it's just a pathetic, lame attempt to rationalize. ann coulter's stuff isn't really worthy of much discussion here, so we ridicule.

it's not different than your failure to deal with my argument about Cary Tennis' advice and instead, you called me a potty mouthed self-pitying drunk.

please spare us declarations of the pure heart. You're human. you fucked up. we teach. you learn. grow the fuck up. i've been called on the carpet for racism, sexism classism, etc. i got over it and learned something. you can to.

also, i'd suggest a read of Joshua Gamson's _Claims to Fame_. The celebrity machine is a lot more complicated than this silly noise.

Did you misspell Carrol? Or is that Carol Doda?

At 05:01 PM 12/10/2005, Tom Walker wrote:
>Some people seem to be blissfully unaware of the ideological role of the
>celebrity. Or pretend to be for the sake of making some point that is, for
>some reason, more important than THE point. The celebrity is promoted
>specifically to fuse certain supposedly desirable qualities with
>unrelated ones and therefore to win acceptance for the opinions being
>advanced by association with those supposedly positive qualities. X is
>"brilliant" and backs the war in Iraq. Y is "beautiful" and says liberals
>a bunch of traitors. Z is "trustworthy" and wants to privitize social
>security. Under the criteria establshed by the celebrity machiine, calling
>into question the supposedly good qualities of the celebrity is fair game,
>even when it might not otherwise be appropriate.
>
>In this context, "Ann Coulter" is NOT a woman. She is not even a person.
>She is "personality" and moreover a very special kind of personality -- a
>celebrity whose "claim to fame" is based entirely on having been made
>famous by the celebrity apparatus for the sole purpose of facilitating
>that ideological fusion between her alleged excellences and the
>ultra-reactionary positions she represents.
>
>Coulter's bony knees, like Carol Doda's breasts, are already an
>objectification and, furthermore, an objectification with an agenda. To
>project responsibility for that objectificaton onto the critic is to
>impose a double bind that exempts the ideological process from the very
>critique (on the level of images) it invites and thus enables ideology to
>speak to the masses while forbidding (through a requirement for
>self-censorship) such discourse to its critics. In other words, to
>criticize Coulter, our discourse must be so elevated that it is
>inaccessible to a popular audience. Coulter can be a political whore but
>we must not use the word "whore". Well, fuck that.
>
>The Sandwichman
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk



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