| Getting ranty about a trivial essay. |
[Nov. 11th, 2008|09:01 am] |
UPDATE: If my post is too long ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) bucky_sinister cuts right to the chase: why not write this in the first person singular? I wouldn't care about it if it was...the "we" is what pisses me off. Doesn't she remember that "we" don't like other people speaking for "us?"
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You always flirt with playing the fool when you ruminate about Your Generation, but Heather Havrilesky serves up two fistfulls of stupid with: An open apology to boomers everywhere: Your earnest, self-important prattle has gotten on Gen X nerves for decades. But now we finally get it.
Havrilesky's piece is ostensibly about how Obama makes her appreciate previously scorned 60s idealism. In reality, she reduces all Boomers to stereotypical self-flattering hippy mythology, and embraces it by wallowing in her own self-regarding historical myths. The result is an apologia from one condescending cartoon to another which insults both groups.
( Cut for length, though it is amusing. )
Look I can understand how Heather, despite being a TV critic who loves Mad Men, may no longer notice youthful skepticism has a history, but she's lost touch with her own past.
Heather's current version of disaffected singularly low-key Gen X politics omits ACT-UP, riot grrls, anti-globalization activism, the Deaniacs and I could write my own sappy list song over some Rage Against The Machine riff. I understand if she had a cringing disinterest in her activist peers, but it's irritating when it's elevated into generational identity.
What really bugs me, however, is her stream of significant Gen X references includes nothing like "Rodney King". This essay about hope inspired by the first black president makes minimal mention of race. Then there's this:Suddenly it makes sense, what you've been trying to tell us about John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Sure, we knew all about their roles in history, we'd learned about them in a million classes, through countless books and documentaries. Eventually, though, the endless memorials and tributes and TV specials and Oliver Stone films grew a little tedious. We didn't quite understand why you've never let those two go, why you'd speak so relentlessly about a better time. Yeah, that MLK stuff was just about longing for a better time, nostalgia the main reason for repeating his words. Glad to see you were paying attention through those endless hours.
Look, I realize it's hard to get a clue. As Ralph Ellison puts it, "Once you get used to it, reality is as irresistible as a club, and I was clubbed into the cellar before I caught the hint. Perhaps that’s the way it had to be; I don’t know. Nor do I know whether accepting the lesson has placed me in the rear or in the avant-garde."
Yet this myopic version of hope from a canny person whose perception seems to have calcified with privilege before 40 is...well, it can make a man rant about a trifle y'know? |
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| Sigh |
[Nov. 11th, 2008|02:09 pm] |
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It makes me sad to watch someone climb a pile of stupid and says, "This is the hill I will die on." I've disagreed with Dan Savage before, but I thought he had more sense. |
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| Aww, this meme is hilarious! |
[Nov. 11th, 2008|09:58 pm] |
If you saw me strolling out of a building next to some cops with a coat draped over my wrists:
A) What crime would be getting knocked down to some bullshit community service deal?
B) Would I get the plea by selling someone out, or relying on basic privilege?
C) Who would end up doing time while I got a pass? |
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| Also |
[Nov. 11th, 2008|10:07 pm] |
Last week I saw two trailers: One for Tom Cruise's Heroic Nazi Movie, the other for a different overwrought WWII drama from the creators of "The Last Samurai". Is there a pattern forming here?
I was going to make a joke about Paul "author of Risky Business" Brickman succumbing to the trend next, but too late. |
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