My therapist said to stop reading Bobo (she said he’s like a disease without any cure…don’t think you’re clever for saying the next line is true too btw), but I am now engaged in an epic battle to make my totebagger uncle stop taking him seriously. Beyond the classic Sasha Issenberg take down from the Philadelphia magazine, are they are any other definitive anti-Bobo treatises you are aware of? Any from official-looking places? My uncle isn’t the type to take it seriously if it’s from a place with a name like “Balloon Juice” or “No More Mister Nice Guy”.
Archives for December 2010
Like I Freaking Said
Klein. Just go read it.
***Update***
Oops, the general link was probably a bit cryptic. Here is the specific post.
Artists in Our Midst: Holiday Shopping Edition
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There are any number of gifted artists and crafters among the Balloon Juice readership. If you are one of them, this is the place to add a comment linking to your paintings, needlearts, sculpture, photography, music, cooking, house-building, graphic novel/comix, etc. website or contacts. If your highest art form is shopping, here’s your chance to browse for gifts without having to put your shoes on… and you can buy stuff for other people, too!
Pictures here by commentor Tim, who gets pride of place because he demanded it. From his website:
Legendary pop entertainment icons such as Madonna, Bette Midler, Judy Garland, Jake Gyllenhaal, Cher, James Dean, and Marilyn Monroe, re-imagined in bright acrylic paint, enriched with pastels, charcoal, pencil, and pigmented glazes.
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I often surround my finished paintings with solid, industrial-inspired frames which I design and embellish with steel spikes, nails, chains, ceramic spheres and hand painted metallic highlights in silver, copper, bronze, gold and pewter over rich black-lacquered wood.
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My celebrity art has been evolving ever since I began making it just three years ago after leaving a 20- year career in public relations and advertising. In the beginning the portraits were exaggerated, cartoon-inspired caricatures of a sort. Then they took on a more realistic aspect but maintained an illustration/graphic novel feel, at which point I began to refer to them as “Portraicatures.” I felt they were something between a representational portrait and a caricature…
So, readers… What’s in your studio?
Added: If FYWP is skrwing your link, send it to me at [email protected] (or click on the link near the top of the right-hand column). The farce is strong tonight…
Artists in Our Midst: Holiday Shopping EditionPost + Comments (104)
Open Thread: Snark of the Day
This is to give y’all a place to chat, so that I can put up an “Artists In Our Midst” post that actually gives the artists & crafters free rein to show off.
Also too, because the latest from ‘The Editors’ at Esquire is too good not to share:
Given the current economic situation, and the apparent affection that our only president has for the people who created it, and for those who, in response, would shred what’s left of the social safety net, we’re all going to be in the market for handy tips on new ways to feed ourselves. So, remember, class: When clubbing the halibut, make sure you club the halibut right between the eyes, so as not to bruise the meat.
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This is only one of the many helpful things you can learn from Sarah Palin’s Alaska, a new reality show that is something like The Beverly Hillbillies with glaciers. And, we suspect, the show is helpful in other ways as well. After all, we imagine that, in the darkened hovels in which lonely Palin enthusiasts live sexless lives replete with unacknowledged genius and Stouffer’s pot pies, “clubbing the halibut” has developed rich new meaning.
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It has been quite a month for our magical snowbilly princess, and that’s not even mentioning the fact that her Alaska is now neck-and-neck with Mississippi as the gonorrhea capital of America…
Click thru for more lulz, also illustrations.
An Interesting Take on Assange
Ross Douthat had a pretty interesting take on Julian Assange and the method to his madness:
Assange, being a clever guy, is well aware of this reality; indeed, his own writings suggest that he’s counting on it. Like the Marxists of yore, he’s a heighten-the-contradictions kind of guy. Here’s his theory of what WikiLeaks might accomplish:
The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive “secrecy tax”) and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption. Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance.
The hyperbole of certain Republicans notwithstanding, Assange is not a terrorist. But he has this much in common with al Qaeda: In response to what they perceive as the inherent injustice of the American empire, both the jihadis and the Australian anarchist are willing to take steps that they know will make the United States more imperial in the short term — in Al Qaeda’s case, acts of terrorism that inspire American military interventions in the Muslim world; in Assange’s case, information dumps that inspire ever-greater secrecy and centralization in the federal bureaucracy — in the hopes that the system will eventually collapse under its own weight and “more open forms of governance” (or, I suppose, a global caliphate) can take its place.
The problem, though, is that the American national security state is almost certainly more resilient than either Assange or Osama bin Laden seems to think. Which means that their efforts at sabotage have little chance (by design) of prompting any actual reforms in the system they despise, a vanishingly small chance of actually bringing the whole thing to its knees — and a substantial chance of just making life worse for everybody, inside and outside the United States government alike.
It may be cathartic for critics of state power to cheer when Assange sticks an online thumb into leviathan’s eye. But WikiLeaks is at best a temporary victory for transparency, and it’s likely to spur the further insulation of the permanent state from scrutiny, accountability or even self-knowledge.
Because I am emo and pessimistic today, and because of the fact that the national security state has done nothing but gain power in the last few decades, I think Ross is right. What is unsaid, though, is what else can be done? The alternative is to do nothing.
That’s Just Good Common Sense
Look, I’m starting to feel this way, and I’m not even Canadian:
In a confidential diplomatic cable sent back to the State Department, the American Embassy warned of increasing mistrust of the United States by its northern neighbor, with which it shares some $500 billion in annual trade, the world’s longest unsecured border and a joint military mission in Afghanistan.
“The degree of comfort with which Canadian broadcast entities, including those financed by Canadian tax dollars, twist current events to feed longstanding negative images of the U.S. — and the extent to which the Canadian public seems willing to indulge in the feast — is noteworthy as an indication of the kind of insidious negative popular stereotyping we are increasingly up against in Canada,” the cable said.
A trove of diplomatic cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to a number of publications, disclose a perception by American diplomats that Canadians “always carry a chip on their shoulder” in part because of a feeling that their country “is condemned to always play ‘Robin’ to the U.S. ‘Batman.’ ”
But at the same time, some Canadian officials privately tried to make it clear to their American counterparts that they did not share their society’s persistent undercurrent of anti-Americanism.
Canada would be wise to not trust us. Hell, if I lived next door to a bunch of heavily armed, loud, drunken rednecks and religious nuts who’ve shown no regard for the law or other people’s property and think know-nothing yahoos like Sarah Palin have leadership potential, I’d be a touch nervous too. Canadians don’t have a chip on their shoulder. They’ve just got a degree of common sense that eludes your average American.
Pretty Much This
Sullivan basically sums it all up- the Republicans are just dicks:
What we’ve observed these past two years is a political party that knows nothing but scorched earth tactics, cannot begin to see any merits in the other party’s arguments, refuses to compromise one inch on anything, and has sought from the very beginning to do nothing but destroy the Obama presidency. I see no other coherent message or strategy since 2008. Just opposition to everything, zero support for a president grappling with a recession their own party did much to precipitate, and facing a fiscal crisis the GOP alone made far worse with their spending in the Bush-Cheney years. There is not a scintilla of responsibility for their past; not a sliver of good will for a duly elected president. Worse, figures like Cantor and McCain actively seek to back foreign governments against the duly elected president of their own country, and seek to repeal the signature policy achievement of Obama’s first two years, universal healthcare.
Expect it to continue. They’ve paid not price, the media is wholly uninterested in calling them on it, and the corporate powers that decide these things are thrilled. The Republicans were just rewarded with a massive victory in the midterms, and our President, as much as I love him, seems intent on avoiding conflict to the point of being a one-term punchline.
Not to go all Eeyore on you, but I’ve about abandoned all hope with the news the Democrats are going to cave on taxes. I’m astounded that they are going to fuck this up. Literally, they have to do nothing and the tax cuts expire. It will take actual work to fuck this up, but they are going to pull it off. Why they won’t listen to folks like Kos, let the Bush tax cuts expire, and then craft their own tax policy and dare the GOP to vote against it is beyond me.
I thought maybe after being the GOP’s prison bitch for the last two years, the administration would come out swinging and put up a fight. Instead, it looks like they intend to shiv their supporters.