Friday, December 31, 2004
The Secretary Does Not Do Windows
You can't possibly read every worthwhile year-in-review piece that's out there, and if you have a life (unlike, for example, your blogger), you may not have time to read all of the ones below, either. But here I go:
We have to start somewhere, so how about World O'Crap's Wingnuttiest People of 2004? This blogger, whomever he or she might be, is one of the hardest-working people in the 'sphere, if only because it must take a lot of energy and effort to read Townhall.com and WorldNetDaily so closely and so regularly without whacking out.
Alternet has a couple of good ones, too: First, the Center for Media and Democracy's inaugural Falsies Awards, going to those "people and players responsible for polluting our information environment" in the year just ending. Next, Daniel Kurtzman collects the "25 Dumbest Quotes of 2004." My favorite belongs to pop star Jessica Simpson, who told Interior Secretary Gale Norton, "You've done a nice job decorating the White House."
In case you missed it over Christmas, my list of Quotes of the Year, culled from the Quotes of the Day at this blog, is here. One of those quotes is from James Ridgeway of the Village Voice, who wrote in September that "Bush's entire social policy is organized around sex roles, so that you qualify for things like welfare, tax breaks, unemployment insurance, and health care based on where you do it, how you do it, when you do it, and, of course, with whom you do it. To the Christian fundamentalists, fucking makes the world go 'round." Lara Riscol summarizes 2004 as the year conservatives made sexual perversion an art form.
Some of the people most worried about the decline of American culture are the same people who spend hours keeping track of celebrity gossip on TV channels such as E, VH1, and Court TV. But even that's not your thing, even if you actively try to avoid people like Jessica Simpson, or Britney Spears, or Scott Peterson, or Paris Hilton, they're going to barge into your life anyhow--if only via this link to Salon's recap of the year in gossip.
Not all of the yearend pieces are lists or collections of links. Several worthwhile stories appeared in various places this week that summarize lessons learned this year and point the way into 2005. One of them is from Teresa Whitehead, who's noticed, as I have, the deepening anti-intellectual streak in this country. It's not a new phenomenon--Americans have always preferred down-home, school-of-hard-knocks-acquired wisdom to book learnin', only in the age of Bush, the tendency is getting worse exponentially. Whitehead's title says it all: "Careful Not to Get Too Much Education . . . Or You Could Turn Liberal". Another must-read is from Robert Fisk, whose most recent report on Iraq contains more historical and geopolitical wisdom than you'll find in the whole year's transcripts of White House briefings. Finally, Ed Kilgore of New Donkey looks back on the impact of "culture" and "values" on the presidential election, and has some suggestions for how Democrats should incorporate values into their thinking. Kilgore is a DLC guy, and so it's natural to think of him as one of those Bush-lite Republican appeasers--but his reasoning is pretty good in this post.
Some final thoughts on 2004 are coming later today, along with my favorite Daily Aneurysm posts of the year.
You can't possibly read every worthwhile year-in-review piece that's out there, and if you have a life (unlike, for example, your blogger), you may not have time to read all of the ones below, either. But here I go:
We have to start somewhere, so how about World O'Crap's Wingnuttiest People of 2004? This blogger, whomever he or she might be, is one of the hardest-working people in the 'sphere, if only because it must take a lot of energy and effort to read Townhall.com and WorldNetDaily so closely and so regularly without whacking out.
Alternet has a couple of good ones, too: First, the Center for Media and Democracy's inaugural Falsies Awards, going to those "people and players responsible for polluting our information environment" in the year just ending. Next, Daniel Kurtzman collects the "25 Dumbest Quotes of 2004." My favorite belongs to pop star Jessica Simpson, who told Interior Secretary Gale Norton, "You've done a nice job decorating the White House."
In case you missed it over Christmas, my list of Quotes of the Year, culled from the Quotes of the Day at this blog, is here. One of those quotes is from James Ridgeway of the Village Voice, who wrote in September that "Bush's entire social policy is organized around sex roles, so that you qualify for things like welfare, tax breaks, unemployment insurance, and health care based on where you do it, how you do it, when you do it, and, of course, with whom you do it. To the Christian fundamentalists, fucking makes the world go 'round." Lara Riscol summarizes 2004 as the year conservatives made sexual perversion an art form.
Some of the people most worried about the decline of American culture are the same people who spend hours keeping track of celebrity gossip on TV channels such as E, VH1, and Court TV. But even that's not your thing, even if you actively try to avoid people like Jessica Simpson, or Britney Spears, or Scott Peterson, or Paris Hilton, they're going to barge into your life anyhow--if only via this link to Salon's recap of the year in gossip.
Not all of the yearend pieces are lists or collections of links. Several worthwhile stories appeared in various places this week that summarize lessons learned this year and point the way into 2005. One of them is from Teresa Whitehead, who's noticed, as I have, the deepening anti-intellectual streak in this country. It's not a new phenomenon--Americans have always preferred down-home, school-of-hard-knocks-acquired wisdom to book learnin', only in the age of Bush, the tendency is getting worse exponentially. Whitehead's title says it all: "Careful Not to Get Too Much Education . . . Or You Could Turn Liberal". Another must-read is from Robert Fisk, whose most recent report on Iraq contains more historical and geopolitical wisdom than you'll find in the whole year's transcripts of White House briefings. Finally, Ed Kilgore of New Donkey looks back on the impact of "culture" and "values" on the presidential election, and has some suggestions for how Democrats should incorporate values into their thinking. Kilgore is a DLC guy, and so it's natural to think of him as one of those Bush-lite Republican appeasers--but his reasoning is pretty good in this post.
Some final thoughts on 2004 are coming later today, along with my favorite Daily Aneurysm posts of the year.
