> On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 4:56 PM, Jerry Monaco <monacojerry at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > As far as I can remember nobody on this list ever writes about the
> > kinds of elections that we can actually make a difference in . Why?
> > Because presidential elections are part of our star culture and
> > school board elections are not , and thus they are not important
> > enough for important intellectuals to pay attention to. We would
> > rather talk about the stars and celebrities of politics, and the
> > stars and celebrities of other television dramas because they are
> > part of the inculcation of ideological branding of our culture and
> > that is what it matters. Doug and Dennis and the rest who think
> > that this kind of star "politics" is important are simply indulging
> > in the same kind of thinking as personality cultists around Obama.
> > It is the same kind of politics of "branding" and the politics of
> > "star" hierarchy and the politics of celebrity worship.
>
> Interesting view, that the election is the leftist intellectual's
> American Idol. ;) (If I understand you correctly.)
>
> If true, then maybe discussing the election is like watercooler talk:
> everyone knows something about it, so it's a universal shared
> interest. Even those who don't care about it can follow along.
>
>
> Tayssir
Good observation.
And the irony is that to the extent I indulge in criticism of this star-culture, by participating in what you aptly call "water-cooler talk", I am lending legitimacy to the whole process. What Dennis and Doug point-to as my taking myself too-seriously is precisely the working through such ironies of our inescapable consumer and star-culture. I sound a little like the atheist who persists in denouncing a God that does not exist. For example an atheist may make the mistake of hating God and yet not be able to escape this kind of mistake, given a culture where so many evil things are done in God's name.
But the very fact that we flooded with marketing and personality cults of various types makes it all the more annoying that a person as bright as Doug offers up the results of this kind of ideology without critique or even an indication that acceptance of this ideology is implicit in all of the polls, demographic analyses, and regionalist electoral calculations usually propounded by the bourgeois press as "politics."
Jerry
Jerry