For years I've stopped reading The Nation. I simply found it, well, kind of predictable and boring, telling me things I already knew but not challenging my basic assumptions. But now The Nation is going to tart things up; it's getting a sex column, That's right SEX. You know, that nasty but fun stuff.
According to JoAnn Wypijewski, the columnist for "Carnal Knowledge,"
"It's sex, man! I think that's why they call it popular culture."
Now to some degree, what this confirms to me is an observation that the late Neil Postman made in "Amusing Ourselves to Death," namely serious discourse in American society is driven by entertainment values, and what this means, as I've noticed with some stories about Obama, that column will be interrogating the intersection of sex and politics, which surely mean it will be hot! Hot! HOT! now that a sexy black man and his bitch-goddess wife may occupy 1600 Penn. Avenue.
But what this may also mean that serious political discourse can't even survive in The Nation without a political analysis of the old in-out, in-out.
The left has made a cottage industry out analyzing pop culture, which I think has ruined the left's mind, especially the academic left with has produced all sorts of studies—black, gender, queer, post-modernism, deconstruction, etc. It has basically produced a theoriocracy that can analyze text but not explain the economy or any relevant sociological facts.
Generally, the left is interested in theory and pop culture while the right is interested in power and has organized over the last 30 years to obtain it.
So, let's see how interesting this going to be. If Wypijewski doesn't delve into the sex crowd wisdom of YouPorn, you know she's faking it.
[Disclosure: I've written one book reviews for The Nation and had a book published by its imprint, Nation Books.]
According to JoAnn Wypijewski, the columnist for "Carnal Knowledge,"
"It's sex, man! I think that's why they call it popular culture."
Now to some degree, what this confirms to me is an observation that the late Neil Postman made in "Amusing Ourselves to Death," namely serious discourse in American society is driven by entertainment values, and what this means, as I've noticed with some stories about Obama, that column will be interrogating the intersection of sex and politics, which surely mean it will be hot! Hot! HOT! now that a sexy black man and his bitch-goddess wife may occupy 1600 Penn. Avenue.
But what this may also mean that serious political discourse can't even survive in The Nation without a political analysis of the old in-out, in-out.
The left has made a cottage industry out analyzing pop culture, which I think has ruined the left's mind, especially the academic left with has produced all sorts of studies—black, gender, queer, post-modernism, deconstruction, etc. It has basically produced a theoriocracy that can analyze text but not explain the economy or any relevant sociological facts.
Generally, the left is interested in theory and pop culture while the right is interested in power and has organized over the last 30 years to obtain it.
So, let's see how interesting this going to be. If Wypijewski doesn't delve into the sex crowd wisdom of YouPorn, you know she's faking it.
[Disclosure: I've written one book reviews for The Nation and had a book published by its imprint, Nation Books.]
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