The Daily Rumpus
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From Stephen Elliott
The Nation explains how the GOP is resegregating the South with its infuriating redistricting campaign.
“The GOP’s long-term goal is to enshrine a system of racially polarized voting that will make it harder for Democrats to win races on local, state, federal and presidential levels.
...moreWhile a 2003 report announced progress in the reduction of poverty, a new Brookings report has found that “between 2000 and 2005-09, the population in extremely poor neighborhoods climbed by more than one-third, from 6.6 million to 8.7 million.” The Atlantic breaks it down with maps revealing the concentration of poverty and analysis of the main trends that have contributed to the reversal.
...more“…Substantial wealth inequality is so embedded in American political culture that, standing alone, it would not be sufficient to trigger citizen rage of the type we are finally witnessing.”
At Mother Jones, Glenn Greenwald looks back at the history of inequality, examining the founding fathers’ view of inequality as “not merely inevitable, but desirable,” as well as its lasting pervasiveness and acceptance.
...more“The stimulus failed.” “The deficit is our biggest problem right now.” “Lower taxes are the best way to grow the economy.” “Regulatory uncertainty is clogging the economy.” “If you unshackle the rich, they’ll rev up the economy.”
According to Mother Jones, those are the six myths that “that must die for our economy to live.”
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Perhaps the most surprising thing about the British phone hacking scandal is the lack of coverage in the US press.
Among the US newspapers, the NY Times is the only one I can find which has done significant reporting on the story, though the best work on the story comes from (no surprise) the Guardian.
...moreI wish I could find who posted a link to this on Twitter, because I’d like to thank them publicly. All I know of Charles Guiteau is that he’s the man who assassinated President James Garfield. I know even less about Garfield.
...moreAl-Jazeera has started a new project–an online dictionary of words and phrases the mainstream media (which I–though not everyone–would argue they’re a part of) uses when writing/talking about whatever the news story of the day happens to be. It’s either darkly funny or painfully true, or perhaps a combination of both.
...moreThere’s an awesome Mother Jones article on how we intake our science like lawyers and how our reasoning is inextricably linked to our emotional centers. We’re used to scientific evidence and opinion-based beliefs competing or being on opposite sides of our reality spectrum, but they do, indeed, inform each other.
...moreThe founding editor of Bookslut offers an eclectic selection of books that might help us confront our own deeply American sense of political alienation.
One of them I especially want to read: Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life by Nina Eliasoph, a book title that speaks to the person inside of me who would prefer to stay home all day, read books and update my Facebook account instead of having to confront the brutalities that my privileged repose rests upon.
...moreThis last year Ishmael Reed published a book of satirical essays targeting the current American media: Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media: The Return of the Nigger Breakers.
Despite being a MacArthur Fellow, a critically-acclaimed author of nine novels and numerous other volumes of poetry, essays and criticism, Reed, a long-time resident of Oakland, CA had to go to a Canadian publisher to publish this book. This morning I discovered a recent interview with him that was at once insightful and provocative.
...moreIn 1968, the year I was born, Ronald Reagan was considered too extreme to be the Republican nominee for the presidency. Richard Nixon was the nominee and served a term and a half before resigning under threat of impeachment.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan won the presidency and subsequently became a god in conservative circles, even though his policies mostly didn’t match the rhetoric.
...more“My parents, with admirable foresight, had their first child while they were on fellowships in the United States. My mother was in public health, and my father in a library-science program. Having an American baby was, my mother once said, like putting money in the bank.”
So begins Daniel Alarcón (who is reading at the next Monthly Rumpus)’s recently published short story “Second Lives,” whose narrator is a Latin American man with a potent longing for a First World life.
...moreReykjavik just elected a comedian to be its mayor. Jon Gnarr is the head of the Best Party, which took just over a third of the vote in the recent elections, which means they control 6 of the City Council’s 15 seats.
...moreJoe Lieberman is introducing something he calls the Terrorist Expatriation Act–TEA Act for short, though the redundancy seems lost on them–which would make it possible for the State Department to strip the citizenship from anyone they determine is “involved with terrorist activities.”
Lieberman claims that he’s simply trying to update existing law.
...more“All I really have to say about life is that for it to be regarded as valuable, it has to first be regarded as grievable. A life that is in some sense socially dead or already ‘lost’ cannot be grieved when it is actually destroyed.
...more“Over the last decade Hispanic immigrants have become the main focus of American hate groups. According to Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, after September 11, 2001, the conservative media began discussing immigration as a national security issue, often using terms like “illegals,” “invaders,” even “potential terrorists” to describe undocumented immigrants.
...more“It is the official art of authoritarian governments, aimed at extending state control through propaganda. Totalitarian kitsch exists to glorify the state, foster a personality cult surrounding the dictator and celebrate ceaseless and irrevocable social and economic progress through images of churning factories and happy, exultant workers.”
I have long pondered the boundless evil of all things kitsch but now thanks to this article (via Bookforum) I have new reasons to fear it.
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A little political guerrilla satire to start off your Tuesday: the first corporate candidate.
I don’t understand the sudden influx in vintage match boxes online, but I am in favor of it.
The world’s first building with built-in wind turbines has been completed.
...moreDesperate to save their businesses, the private companies who sell loans to college students have been heavily lobbying the government to keep subsidizing their loan programs. A bill that will overhaul the private loan industry recently passed in Congress with clear support from President Obama, who stated in his recent State of the Union Address “no one should go broke because they chose to go to college.”
The new proposal would retract government subsidies to private lending companies and cap the amount students have to pay back every month to 10% of their salary if they make more than $16,245 a year, reports Bryan Gerhart in his article for the California News Service. Loans that hadn’t been paid back after 10 years would even be forgiven if that student worked for a nonprofit or government organization.
...more“Rousseau once said, if I am part of a group of 100 people, do 99 people have the right to sentence me to death, just because they are majority?
No, majorities can be wrong, majorities can overrule rights of minorities. If majorities ruled, we could still have slavery.
...moreSo many things we meant to mean to say.
Wired on why mold is as efficient as Japanese urban planners.
Instead of changing the electoral college or senate systems, let’s just remake the states!
Look, everyone, I’m really sorry but I can’t not link to this cat with cat-shaped spots.
...more“And in disaster after disaster, at least since the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, those in power, those with guns and the force of law behind them, are too often more concerned for property than human life. In an emergency, people can, and do, die from those priorities.
...more“Fear, on one side, of watching Europe turn into “Eurabia“ —even if the demographics don’t justify such worries—and, on the other, of seeing centuries’ worth of social liberalization—including women’s suffrage and gay rights—fall apart in the face of religious conservatism, has led to the illegalization of an architectural form.
...moreTime Magazine has already called it “The Decade From Hell.”
(Couldn’t have been worse than the 1940′s?! Could it? I mean the 40′s had Hitler AND Stalin.)
And if you have survived the “aughts” reasonably intact as we caterwaul our way into 2010 with a health care package being vigorously stripped of all its progressive promises, an escalating war(s) and the seemingly insurmountable problems of mass poverty, financial instability and ecological meltdown, you might find yourself like me going head to head with an even heartier enemy: belief.
...moreI have a terrible admission to make. I used to work for a bunch of politicians.
And not only that. Part of me enjoyed it.
I didn’t enjoy the way my various state, federal and local bosses would fly off the handle at me for typos in letters and memos.
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“We need to be able to digest and give people who are very far away the time and space to tell their story in their own words
...moreIn this article about the political fortunes of writer, country singer and gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman, The Guardian reminds us that if history is any indication, writers should be wary of entering politics.
“Consider the case of George Bernard Shaw, who willingly transformed himself into Stalin’s lapdog at the height of the Ukrainian famine, or the embarrassing spectacle of Jean Paul Sartre endorsing Mao as he calmly engineered the deaths of some 40 million Chinese – and they are but the tip of a disgraceful list of writers who hymned the praises of the master butchers of the 20th century.
...moreIn his piece for the London Review of Books, “Berlusconi in Tehran,” about the danger of authoritarian power within democracies, Slavoj Zizek examines the possible similarities between the victorious Iranian Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
In light of the recent unsettling events in Tehran, Zizek challenges readers to confront the possible flaws in parliamentary representative democracy and cites Walter Lippman’s coined term ‘manufactured consent’ to describe democratic elections based on supposed free will.
...moreFrom Michael Calderone at Politico’s recent profile of The Huffington Post:
“While (The Huffington Post) wants to be taken seriously, much of its traffic is driven by entertainment and sex. While it ridicules mainstream media, it relies on it for much of its content.”
He goes on.
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