Slate and the BBC have compiled their favorite "Bushisms" over the past eight years, and the results are hilarious...and sad, given that W. was our president for two full terms. The Republicans' strategy of celebrating W.'s willful ignorance as some kind of "folksy," from-the-gut authenticity now lies in tatters.
Here are some of the best Bushisms out of the bunch:
"I want to thank my friend, Senator Bill Frist, for joining us today. He married a Texas girl, I want you to know. Karyn is with us. A West Texas girl, just like me."
Nashville, Tennessee, 27 May 2004
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
Washington, D.C., 5 August 2004
"Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat."
Washington, D.C., 17 September 2004
"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"
Florence, South Carolina, 11 January 2000
"Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream."
LaCrosse, Wisconsin, 18 October 2000
"I understand small business growth. I was one."
New York Daily News, 19 February 2000
"Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country."
Poplar Bluff, Missouri, 6 September 2004
"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office."
Washington, D.C., 12 May 2008
Showing posts with label george w. bush. Show all posts
Showing posts with label george w. bush. Show all posts
Friday, January 16, 2009
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Resign
On July 3, 2007, MSNBC political talk-show host Keith Olbermann demanded that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney resign.
This clip has been making the rounds online. There is a flurry of mixed metaphors here, but it's the most biting and impassioned critique of the administration I've seen in the mainstream media.
This clip has been making the rounds online. There is a flurry of mixed metaphors here, but it's the most biting and impassioned critique of the administration I've seen in the mainstream media.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
The Task of the Reviewer
I began posting book reviews on Amazon.com about a year ago to kick-start the process of writing on a daily basis. My dissertation had suffered long periods of dormancy, and posting book reviews was just one of the ways I thought I could teach myself how to enjoy writing -- any form of writing -- in view of schedules and deadlines.
I was also spurred to enter that virtual universe of Amazon.com reviewing after reading Michael Eric Dyson's contribution to the New York Public Library's series on the seven deadly sins: Pride. I maintain that this is a dreadful piece of writing. I found Dyson's book to be at once self-indulgent and hollow: brash and condescending without any hint of self-reflexive criticism. A good third of the book is devoted to Dyson's own career, and he betrays not an iota of irony when he takes two former students to task (he basically insults them in prose) for supposedly being disruptive in one of his classes. As you can see for yourself, my review reflects my very low opinion of this book.
But having had some familiarity with the defensive nature of people's responses to Amazon.com reviews (especially when it comes to political and social commentary), I added a closing paragraph to my review that revealed my stakes in critiquing Dyson: a progressive myself, I believe public-intellectual showmanship by the likes of Dyson does a disservice to progressive critical thinking. It brings our discourse down to the level of a polemical shouting match, and it touches on only the most superficial layer of social and political understanding (e.g., Dyson hails Halle Berry's and Denzel Washington's winning Oscars as being "good" forms of pride, over and against the KKK's "bad" form of pride).
The very next review I wrote, on Herman Grey's Cultural Moves, was just as critical, but this time I approached my argument from a more "academic" perspective. I again revealed my stakes in this act of criticism: as someone thoroughly invested in black cultural studies and African American cultural production more generally, I think Grey's sociological determinism seeks not to understand black arts on its own terms but to regurgitate the theoretical point that black arts is always "different" from presumably "white" hegemonic cultural production. Cultural Moves, for me, is a book of academic navel-gazing and not a sincere effort to think about what black arts might mean for its actual practitioners and receivers.
So you can see I've been very careful with how I approach reviewing on Amazon.com. I'm keen on making critical points, but I'm also aware of the various audiences I'm addressing -- I try to inaugurate a conversation between me and them that makes clear my position (with which they may or may not agree) and my investment in making that position. To be sure, I apply such a degree of care to books that are explicitly "about" social and cultural affairs: Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope, to take the most recent example.
Having explained all that, you can imagine my surprise when someone took the time to send me a message, via Amazon.com, to let me know she finds my reviews heinous:
"Hi,
You gave Fukuyama's (!) book 5 stars essentially saying, 'hey please, come line this reactionary's pockets with money' - and Rachel Roy etc. - and you gave Herman Gray's book ONE star? Ugh! Must you review? - can't you go join some neocon think tank or something and stop ruining people's ratings with your lame criticisms? Better yet - write your own book for critique. Thank you."
Well, there goes "writing for an audience"!
First, I'm not sure exactly what this person meant by adding "Rachel Roy etc." (i.e., Rachael Ray) to the mix in such an offhand manner. Is Rachael Ray a political "reactionary"? Or does this person take issue with Ray's admittedly populist (heaven forbid "mainstream"!) approach to home cooking? (There are longstanding debates on Amazon.com about Rachael Ray's "dumbed-down" approach to cooking, with elitist "foodies" taking the masses to task for their lack of "taste," in both senses of that term.) Whatever the case may be, I can only imagine this person was attempting to flash her liberal, hipster, and/or anti-mainstream credentials by denouncing my positive reviews of Rachael Ray's cookbooks.
More important, however, is her claim that I'm somehow a political reactionary myself for giving Francis Fukuyama's America at the Crossroads a positive review. Now the full text of my review clearly states that what I appreciate about this book is the candor and intelligence with which Fukuyama critiques the problem of George W. Bush's war-mongering and interventionist attempt to "spread democracy" the world over. It's Fukuyama's contention that the philosophical roots of neoconservative thinking insist strongly against such interventionism. (And so unlike other Amazon.com reviewers who seem to think Fukuyama is defecting from neoconservative principles, I actually point out that he's lambasting Bush for not holding true to them.) My review clearly states that I disagree with philosophical neoconservativism but that I appreciate the critique of Bush Fukuyama is able to mount in its name. Fukuyama's is a well-reasoned argument, in my estimation, and one way, out of many, of trying to work through the implications of Bush's disastrous, pig-headed foreign policy.
If there's anything I'm guilty of, at least based on my review, it's the belief that the project of democratic reform must first take root in the actual communities supposedly in need of democratic reform. This is the belief, over and against interventionism, of the need to buffer civil society with strong institutions and shared power structures. It's a belief shared by conservative realists, liberal socialists, and NGOs alike. Now it may not be the "utopian" post-power structure that many of my colleagues in graduate school advocate for, but it is, in my opinion, a real, viable alternative to the pressing issue of U.S. imperialism acting under the guise of "spreading democracy." Where I differ radically from Fukuyama, then, is in how "institution-building" as such is conceived: I reject neoconservative principles and support Western European-style socialism, where civil society is strengthened by the state not letting market capitalism run roughshod over the interests of the people, especially the poor and working classes.
Of course I doubt my critic actually read my review: it seems she only compared my star ratings among books (especially Herman Grey's, for whatever reason) and made up her mind that I belonged in a "neocon think tank." As for her claim that my review "line[s] [Fukuyama's] pockets with money," I would simply point out to her that if one were to live life divesting from supposedly reactionary causes and businesses, we'd have to give up most, if not all, of the commodities and amenities that infuse modern society. It's not just Fox News and Wendy's I'm talking about here. I also hear the Coors family is rather conservative (that's an understatement, by the way), and who really knows what Whole Foods is up to these days (for the record, I like Whole Foods)? (On Whole Foods and this ideology of "organicism" in our supermarkets, see Michael Pollan's widely celebrated The Omnivore's Dilemma.)
In the end, I'm quite happy to have provoked a response from my critic. I doubt she'll ever want to hear what I have to say here, but then again critical debate in general is somewhat lacking on the Internet, owing to the medium's immediacy and tendency to evoke knee-jerk, defensive responses. Perhaps we'd do better speaking in person.
As for my future as an Amazon.com reviewer, I'll carry on just as I have carried on: making critical points, saying what I liked and disliked, reviewing books both popular and obscure, "academic" and mainstream, and always being wary that I'm writing for an audience.
The one thing I will refuse is heeding to some sort of ideological litmus test, of which my critic and many of my professional colleagues are equally guilty. For my critic, I'm not liberal or progressive enough. For some of my colleagues, I'm not radical or "utopian" enough. My task as a reviewer is not to meet any ideological standard that demands an "enough." It is simply to be this: insistently and self-reflexively critical.
I was also spurred to enter that virtual universe of Amazon.com reviewing after reading Michael Eric Dyson's contribution to the New York Public Library's series on the seven deadly sins: Pride. I maintain that this is a dreadful piece of writing. I found Dyson's book to be at once self-indulgent and hollow: brash and condescending without any hint of self-reflexive criticism. A good third of the book is devoted to Dyson's own career, and he betrays not an iota of irony when he takes two former students to task (he basically insults them in prose) for supposedly being disruptive in one of his classes. As you can see for yourself, my review reflects my very low opinion of this book.
But having had some familiarity with the defensive nature of people's responses to Amazon.com reviews (especially when it comes to political and social commentary), I added a closing paragraph to my review that revealed my stakes in critiquing Dyson: a progressive myself, I believe public-intellectual showmanship by the likes of Dyson does a disservice to progressive critical thinking. It brings our discourse down to the level of a polemical shouting match, and it touches on only the most superficial layer of social and political understanding (e.g., Dyson hails Halle Berry's and Denzel Washington's winning Oscars as being "good" forms of pride, over and against the KKK's "bad" form of pride).
The very next review I wrote, on Herman Grey's Cultural Moves, was just as critical, but this time I approached my argument from a more "academic" perspective. I again revealed my stakes in this act of criticism: as someone thoroughly invested in black cultural studies and African American cultural production more generally, I think Grey's sociological determinism seeks not to understand black arts on its own terms but to regurgitate the theoretical point that black arts is always "different" from presumably "white" hegemonic cultural production. Cultural Moves, for me, is a book of academic navel-gazing and not a sincere effort to think about what black arts might mean for its actual practitioners and receivers.
So you can see I've been very careful with how I approach reviewing on Amazon.com. I'm keen on making critical points, but I'm also aware of the various audiences I'm addressing -- I try to inaugurate a conversation between me and them that makes clear my position (with which they may or may not agree) and my investment in making that position. To be sure, I apply such a degree of care to books that are explicitly "about" social and cultural affairs: Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope, to take the most recent example.
Having explained all that, you can imagine my surprise when someone took the time to send me a message, via Amazon.com, to let me know she finds my reviews heinous:
"Hi,
You gave Fukuyama's (!) book 5 stars essentially saying, 'hey please, come line this reactionary's pockets with money' - and Rachel Roy etc. - and you gave Herman Gray's book ONE star? Ugh! Must you review? - can't you go join some neocon think tank or something and stop ruining people's ratings with your lame criticisms? Better yet - write your own book for critique. Thank you."
Well, there goes "writing for an audience"!
First, I'm not sure exactly what this person meant by adding "Rachel Roy etc." (i.e., Rachael Ray) to the mix in such an offhand manner. Is Rachael Ray a political "reactionary"? Or does this person take issue with Ray's admittedly populist (heaven forbid "mainstream"!) approach to home cooking? (There are longstanding debates on Amazon.com about Rachael Ray's "dumbed-down" approach to cooking, with elitist "foodies" taking the masses to task for their lack of "taste," in both senses of that term.) Whatever the case may be, I can only imagine this person was attempting to flash her liberal, hipster, and/or anti-mainstream credentials by denouncing my positive reviews of Rachael Ray's cookbooks.
More important, however, is her claim that I'm somehow a political reactionary myself for giving Francis Fukuyama's America at the Crossroads a positive review. Now the full text of my review clearly states that what I appreciate about this book is the candor and intelligence with which Fukuyama critiques the problem of George W. Bush's war-mongering and interventionist attempt to "spread democracy" the world over. It's Fukuyama's contention that the philosophical roots of neoconservative thinking insist strongly against such interventionism. (And so unlike other Amazon.com reviewers who seem to think Fukuyama is defecting from neoconservative principles, I actually point out that he's lambasting Bush for not holding true to them.) My review clearly states that I disagree with philosophical neoconservativism but that I appreciate the critique of Bush Fukuyama is able to mount in its name. Fukuyama's is a well-reasoned argument, in my estimation, and one way, out of many, of trying to work through the implications of Bush's disastrous, pig-headed foreign policy.
If there's anything I'm guilty of, at least based on my review, it's the belief that the project of democratic reform must first take root in the actual communities supposedly in need of democratic reform. This is the belief, over and against interventionism, of the need to buffer civil society with strong institutions and shared power structures. It's a belief shared by conservative realists, liberal socialists, and NGOs alike. Now it may not be the "utopian" post-power structure that many of my colleagues in graduate school advocate for, but it is, in my opinion, a real, viable alternative to the pressing issue of U.S. imperialism acting under the guise of "spreading democracy." Where I differ radically from Fukuyama, then, is in how "institution-building" as such is conceived: I reject neoconservative principles and support Western European-style socialism, where civil society is strengthened by the state not letting market capitalism run roughshod over the interests of the people, especially the poor and working classes.
Of course I doubt my critic actually read my review: it seems she only compared my star ratings among books (especially Herman Grey's, for whatever reason) and made up her mind that I belonged in a "neocon think tank." As for her claim that my review "line[s] [Fukuyama's] pockets with money," I would simply point out to her that if one were to live life divesting from supposedly reactionary causes and businesses, we'd have to give up most, if not all, of the commodities and amenities that infuse modern society. It's not just Fox News and Wendy's I'm talking about here. I also hear the Coors family is rather conservative (that's an understatement, by the way), and who really knows what Whole Foods is up to these days (for the record, I like Whole Foods)? (On Whole Foods and this ideology of "organicism" in our supermarkets, see Michael Pollan's widely celebrated The Omnivore's Dilemma.)
In the end, I'm quite happy to have provoked a response from my critic. I doubt she'll ever want to hear what I have to say here, but then again critical debate in general is somewhat lacking on the Internet, owing to the medium's immediacy and tendency to evoke knee-jerk, defensive responses. Perhaps we'd do better speaking in person.
As for my future as an Amazon.com reviewer, I'll carry on just as I have carried on: making critical points, saying what I liked and disliked, reviewing books both popular and obscure, "academic" and mainstream, and always being wary that I'm writing for an audience.
The one thing I will refuse is heeding to some sort of ideological litmus test, of which my critic and many of my professional colleagues are equally guilty. For my critic, I'm not liberal or progressive enough. For some of my colleagues, I'm not radical or "utopian" enough. My task as a reviewer is not to meet any ideological standard that demands an "enough." It is simply to be this: insistently and self-reflexively critical.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Hawaii's SCR 83 & Anti-Faculty Sentiment
A good friend of mine, Matthew Lopresti, a philosophy Ph.D. candidate and instructor at Hawaii Pacific University, recently helped spur discussion in Hawaii's State Legislature about a resolution that would ask the U.S. Congress to consider impeachment hearings against President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney. The text of the Senate Concurrent Resolution 83 (SCR 83) can be found here.
SCR 83 was introduced by Matthew's state senator, Les Ihara, a Democrat serving the Kapahulu, Kaimuki, and Palolo districts in Honolulu. SCR 83 has garnered some national attention through the Internet, but mainstream media outlets--even local outlets in Hawaii--have been mostly silent about the issue. Matthew has been tireless in his efforts to spread the word about this important piece of political expression; this past Friday the 13th was the deadline for the Hawaii Senate's Judiciary Committee to decide whether or not to consider SCR 83. Although I'm not sure about the outcome of that Committee's meeting on Friday, I will post an update as soon as I get the facts.
According to Matthew, online responses to his political work have been almost entirely negative. On one Hawaii-based political blog, Matthew has been attacked not simply for his editorial letter in support of SCR 83 (as far as I know, this letter was the only "coverage" that SCR 83 received from the mainstream media) but also for his status as a teacher and scholar at a university. It's this latter form of attack that continues to concern me as someone who believes scholars should not shy away from making serious intellectual and political contributions to/in the public sphere. One commentator, without so much as addressing the merits or demerits of SCR 83, claims that university professors should not have tenure, and that they "should be held accountable and responsible for everything they say." Another, writing as an "HPU alumni [sic]," claims s/he's "deeply disappointed that a Hawaii Pacific University Professor is behind this ignorant Resolution." And "kapena" goes so far as to say, "I am aware of people like you in academic circles who think and truly believe you have a more learned opinion than the rest of us...just because you're employed at an educational 'place of learning.'"
Wherever they come from (I'm not quick to assume these are "just" reactionary conservatives we're talking about here), I think responses such as these index increasing suspicion of the role and purpose of higher education in U.S. society. In fact, quite often these attacks have very little to say about the topic at hand. Rather, they are more insistent in pointing out two things: that university faculty 1) have an elitist, "liberal" bias against the will of the majority of Americans, and thus 2) should not involve themselves in social and political affairs beyond academia.
The first claim confuses "liberal" political soapboxing with what I conceive as the intellectual practice of critical thinking. Needless to say, the claim doesn't have an adequate answer to intellectuals' demonstrated commitment to critical thinking, even under seemingly "friendlier" regimes of power (i.e., the Clinton era, "blue" states or districts, etc.).
The second claim expresses the somewhat dumbed-down fear of higher education itself: whom it serves, what it's meant to provide, and so on. It seems to me the real threat of professors' social and political expression in the public sphere resides not in their particular "liberal" beliefs but in the very fact that higher education could mean something beyond what the corporate university is supposed to legitimate: the paying customer, or student--his/her professional drives, his/her "sense of self," his/her readiness to enter the "real world." So it seems to me that as more and more professors move between the academic and public spheres (not least aided by the Internet), there are those who will insist that faculty shouldn't express what they believe (and, goodness knows, even go so far as to say that what they believe is related to their vocation of critical inquiry) but should only serve their disciplines and their charges (i.e., students) in the disinterested realm of scholarly professionalism.
Duke faculty, graduate students, and instructors are all too familiar with these sorts of issues, particularly given the fallout from the Duke lacrosse case (which topic--the fallout--merits a very long blog entry of its own). I raise the issue here, in view of Matthew's participation in the SCR 83 push, in order to highlight how common anti-faculty sentiment really is in our country. What's this sentiment about? Is it unique to our polarized political times? (I happen to think aspects of it are unique, while others have been exploited by reactionaries many times in the past.) Why is intellectual public culture so much at odds with certain people's understanding of the mission of higher education? What's the relationship between anti-faculty sentiment and American institutions' taking up various modes of privatization (from profitable online course programs to lucrative endowment deals to scientific copyright contracts...)? At least this scholar wants to keep the conversation going.
SCR 83 was introduced by Matthew's state senator, Les Ihara, a Democrat serving the Kapahulu, Kaimuki, and Palolo districts in Honolulu. SCR 83 has garnered some national attention through the Internet, but mainstream media outlets--even local outlets in Hawaii--have been mostly silent about the issue. Matthew has been tireless in his efforts to spread the word about this important piece of political expression; this past Friday the 13th was the deadline for the Hawaii Senate's Judiciary Committee to decide whether or not to consider SCR 83. Although I'm not sure about the outcome of that Committee's meeting on Friday, I will post an update as soon as I get the facts.
According to Matthew, online responses to his political work have been almost entirely negative. On one Hawaii-based political blog, Matthew has been attacked not simply for his editorial letter in support of SCR 83 (as far as I know, this letter was the only "coverage" that SCR 83 received from the mainstream media) but also for his status as a teacher and scholar at a university. It's this latter form of attack that continues to concern me as someone who believes scholars should not shy away from making serious intellectual and political contributions to/in the public sphere. One commentator, without so much as addressing the merits or demerits of SCR 83, claims that university professors should not have tenure, and that they "should be held accountable and responsible for everything they say." Another, writing as an "HPU alumni [sic]," claims s/he's "deeply disappointed that a Hawaii Pacific University Professor is behind this ignorant Resolution." And "kapena" goes so far as to say, "I am aware of people like you in academic circles who think and truly believe you have a more learned opinion than the rest of us...just because you're employed at an educational 'place of learning.'"
Wherever they come from (I'm not quick to assume these are "just" reactionary conservatives we're talking about here), I think responses such as these index increasing suspicion of the role and purpose of higher education in U.S. society. In fact, quite often these attacks have very little to say about the topic at hand. Rather, they are more insistent in pointing out two things: that university faculty 1) have an elitist, "liberal" bias against the will of the majority of Americans, and thus 2) should not involve themselves in social and political affairs beyond academia.
The first claim confuses "liberal" political soapboxing with what I conceive as the intellectual practice of critical thinking. Needless to say, the claim doesn't have an adequate answer to intellectuals' demonstrated commitment to critical thinking, even under seemingly "friendlier" regimes of power (i.e., the Clinton era, "blue" states or districts, etc.).
The second claim expresses the somewhat dumbed-down fear of higher education itself: whom it serves, what it's meant to provide, and so on. It seems to me the real threat of professors' social and political expression in the public sphere resides not in their particular "liberal" beliefs but in the very fact that higher education could mean something beyond what the corporate university is supposed to legitimate: the paying customer, or student--his/her professional drives, his/her "sense of self," his/her readiness to enter the "real world." So it seems to me that as more and more professors move between the academic and public spheres (not least aided by the Internet), there are those who will insist that faculty shouldn't express what they believe (and, goodness knows, even go so far as to say that what they believe is related to their vocation of critical inquiry) but should only serve their disciplines and their charges (i.e., students) in the disinterested realm of scholarly professionalism.
Duke faculty, graduate students, and instructors are all too familiar with these sorts of issues, particularly given the fallout from the Duke lacrosse case (which topic--the fallout--merits a very long blog entry of its own). I raise the issue here, in view of Matthew's participation in the SCR 83 push, in order to highlight how common anti-faculty sentiment really is in our country. What's this sentiment about? Is it unique to our polarized political times? (I happen to think aspects of it are unique, while others have been exploited by reactionaries many times in the past.) Why is intellectual public culture so much at odds with certain people's understanding of the mission of higher education? What's the relationship between anti-faculty sentiment and American institutions' taking up various modes of privatization (from profitable online course programs to lucrative endowment deals to scientific copyright contracts...)? At least this scholar wants to keep the conversation going.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)