William Gibson
As a real live black cat, I've followed the proceedings of Michaels Roast 09 with rapt attention. Or as near to rapt as one can manage in these nervous, cybernetically mediated times.
Because of course, questions of racism and classism and the synergies thereof are of relentless and immediate interest, forming the in-real-life data stream I use to determine daily strategies.
So many things have been said -- swinging back and forth between attacks on Michaels' character and baroque critiques of his statements -- that it's impossible to address every point and counter-point in a crisp, efficient way (and as a glistening, chrome plated technocrat at heart, I loves me some efficiency).
So I'm going to push all of the other words which have been put on the table onto the floor and get to the point.
The Gibson quote at the tippy top of this post sums up my feelings on the race/class thing and my takeaway from what I'll call the Reed/Michaels/Zizek position on neo-liberal friendly multiculturalism (so-called, because I've heard and read all three make quite similar arguments re: this topic). Jim Crow era style proclamations of n-word! n-word! n-word! coexist with forward seeming absorptions of women and non-whites into the global command and control fold.
It's significant that the decidedly counter left leaning Bush II administration was quite comfortable appointing blacks, Latinos, Asians and women of all ethnicities to several key, non-token roles. Bush II exhibited what we can call non-leftist, pragmatic anti-racism (in practice, if not in lofty rhetoric) and gave us a look at the already existing future. The future which runs parallel to the world of abusive cops, segregated neighborhoods and all the rest of the still extant apparatus of racially based harassment.
And, it's significant that the United States' first black president is so perfect a vessel for channeling the goals of the most sophisticated elements of the capitalist class (the supercomputer wielding financial sector...one day, they'll have their Wintermute) that they could scarcely have hoped for better if he was grown in a vat. His blackness, which, by traditional reckoning marks him as inherently 'progressive', is completely irrelevant to his effectiveness as Chief Executive for the World Bourgeoisie (to re-borrow the phrase that Doug borrows for "Behind the News").
Meanwhile, the birthers and other primitives exhibit classic (and, considering the epically insane Nazi comparisons, not so classic) signs of racial paranoia. The future arrived, but hasn't been evenly distributed.
I believe that Reed/Michaels/Zizek are addressing an element of the current scene which, moving with sinister majesty, gains greater and greater strength, even as it competes/coexists with the n-word! n-word! n-word! cohort for mind-share dominance: anti-racist, yet, non leftist ("leftist" defined as consciously anti-capitalist) politics.
But, I've got to get back to World War Z and that endlessly looped mpeg of Bowie performing TVC 15 in Tokyo. I'm sure someone, enraged by this defense of Michaels (who is, apparently, Earth's greatest villain) is about to call me a botch of nature or lord of the jackasses or ass tunnel or something else colorful and full of natural goodness.
So adieu and adieu and adieu.
.d.