[lbo-talk] class and credit

[shag]

At 05:54 PM 7/21/2008, Shane Taylor wrote:
>shag:
>
> > where is the "tacky" in this video?
> > i couldn't find it.
>
>By Tanta's reading, the visual cues to Times readers
>are "the repeated panning on the tchochkes, the six!
>perfectly unnecessary shots of chubby Diane smoking,
>the capture of the chain-link fence." Among the urban
>professionals I know in DC, all of those are openly
>frowned upon. And as Tanta says elsewhere, with only a
>slight exaggeration, "In America in 2008, nothing
>labels you 'underclass' more than being a smoker."
>
>Shane

i take it tanta is a smoker.

i find the analysis weird. it's as if tanta thinks that the bifurcated, 
contradictory message is a product of conniving or just confused 
journalists. it's presented as a kind of moral problem for individuals to 
overcome. if they'd all just see that they have one standard for their kind 
and another for the other kind, then we'd get at the heart of the problem!

which is why you always get that weird bullshit where someone, in the name 
of the manipulated 'underclass', flips about the horrors of that 
manipulation and demands that the members of the 'underclass' speak for 
themselves. would that they were able, all this crap would be fixed! 
meanwhile, no one notices that the horrified protestor speaking in name of 
underclass, is mobilizing an image of that underclass for her own 
rhetorical purposes. in the case, it looks like a personal grudge against 
rhoda morganstern or whoever the journalist is.

in short, tanta seems a little confused about the source of the dualistic, 
contradictory messages -- that nasty upper middle class they are such 
hypocrites! -- and thus confused about how to 'fix' the problem.

ho hum.

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