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Tuesday is, of course, International Talk Like a Pirate Day. There is by now a considerable body of pirate historiography. But is the field of piracy studies sufficiently well theorized?
Aye, often have I axed myself, only to be distracted by the plundering of booty.
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Pace Belle, I’ve failed to hype The Weblog not through shyness — or even laziness — but from the assumption everybody already knows about it. Even if it isn’t listed in the CT Lumber Room (hint hint), a situation that has long been a puzzle to me.
Likewise, I’ve assumed that everyone has seen the well-produced greatest hits album by Scott Eric “Acephalous” Kaufman (from Ronco!) including such chestnuts as “My Chiasmus of Hatred and My Hatred of Chiasmus.” But no more, with the assumptions. Check it out. The collection seems like the prototype of some new blogal genre, for which no name has yet been coined.
Finally, just to tie things together: Adam Kotsko of The Weblog certainly ought to put together such a compilation. So say we all?
“The Path to 9/11 is produced and promoted by a well-honed propaganda operation consisting of a network of little-known right-wingers working from within Hollywood to counter its supposedly liberal bias. This is the network within the ABC network. Its godfather is far right activist David Horowitz, who has worked for more than a decade to establish a right-wing presence in Hollywood and to discredit mainstream film and TV production. On this project, he is working with a secretive evangelical religious right group founded by The Path to 9/11‘s director David Cunningham that proclaims its goal to ‘transform Hollywood’ in line with its messianic vision.”
Plenty more where that came from, here.
A group of prominent American historians is calling on ABC not to broadcast The Path to 9/11. (For a quick reminder of how propaganda-rific it is, see Mark Grimsley’s recent item at Cliopatria. It quotes an endorsement by Michael Medved and provides some pertinent links.)
The list of signatories starts with Arthur Schlesinger — who, whatever else you may think of him, is pretty much the guy to have out in front on this sort of complaint, for rhetorical appeal to the center (rhetorical construct thought “the center” may be).
Over the weekend, Political Theory Daily Review linked to a recent essay on the Gang of Four. (The band, that is. Not the group in power in China thirty years ago this month, and in jail thirty years ago next month.) The title indicated it would treat the band’s work as Marxist cultural theory. Not in terms of, mind you, but as. Good call: The Gang’s lyrics were always very explicit about reification, class consciousness, and whatnot. No ex post facto Zizekian-epigone hijinks necessary, thank you very much. Makes its own gravy! A critic who understood that from the start might go far.