[lbo-talk] Kanye West

Celi Ben cpthron at hotmail.com
Wed Sep 21 14:48:32 PDT 2005



>I do not think that any reasonable person can disagree with the above.
>However, I have an altogether different fish to fry. I am basically sick
>and tired of America and its many cultural tropes - from neo-liberal
>pseudo-certitudes, to the vulgar in-your-face religiosity, to bombastic and
>self-righteous politicians, to vulgar populism ands celebrity cults, to
>brash shock-jocks and tv "personalities" to patriotic bumper stickers, and
>-yes- to Berkeley-style "leftism" of the
>down-with-the-fascist-corporate-state, and
>every-inmate-is-a-victim-racism-and-a-political-prisoner variety.
>
>I am tired of living in this country, Charles, and facing the copious
>bullshit it oozes day after day every day - and one way of dealing with it
>is ranting about what annoys me. You surely agree that is ranting has any
>sense at all it must be directed at the source of annoyance. Hence my
>ranting against the Berkley-style leftist tropes on this list. It would
>make no sense to rant about that on some right wing outlet, would not you
>agree? Likewise, it does not make much sense to rant about right wing
>tropes on this list - it is kind of stale and predictable like bowel
>movement.
>

Seizing onto the Berkeley thing - look at this political science professor at UC Berkeley. I had heard that the poli sci department was far more centrist than outsiders might imagine, and that only english and geography and rhetoric have more of a leftist slant. But I was glancing at a Berkeley blog frequented by undergraduates with a fraternity center/right perspective (they were recently making fun of affirmative action/small black freshman class and thought the school's reaction to a BB gun hazing incident/drunk driving incident were excessive) and one writer was saying that James Gregor had finally crossed the line in his rant about uptight asians and asian women and sex. It turns out as a comparative fascologist, he has a long record of eugenics support http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gregor . Wow... I pointed out on their blog that James Watson also supports eugenics ideas, and two of them just agreed with both of them. Anyway, what is notable is that I had never heard of Gregor, which makes me doubt that many people outside of the department have either. That is how on top of things the Berkeley antifascists are.

_________________________________________________________________ On the road to retirement? Check out MSN Life Events for advice on how to get there! http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=Retirement



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list