Posted on 01/12/2011 5:55:47 PM PST by Taliesan
I want to follow up on the concept of cool-shaming. As we are in the process of airing this place out, this word is a key that can unlock a lot of the rooms, especially the mildewed ones.
After my post on cool-shaming, I was contacted by an alert reader (thanks, Eric), who pointed me to this post responding to the Jon Stewart Rally to Restore Sanity. The post is somewhat long, and if you want to read through it, allow me to register a language alert with you. But at the same time, this man's rant-thrust went straight through the breastplate of the too-cool-to-care.
We are dealing with new permutations of this, but the phenomenon has been with us for a while. Think of the essential pose as one of political and cultural engagement as fashion statement. If a moral plugugly like Che Guevara can become an iconic T-shirt presence, then of course somebody is seriously disordered.
But the point for the practioner is to strike a safe pose, one that cannot be laughed at. And that is why those who figure out a way to laugh at this kind of thing are about the only friends our bedraggled republic even has anymore.
Tom Wolfe is of course deadly with the double barrels, and when he published that clay pigeon entitled Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, this was just his way of yelling, "Pull!" Back in the sixties, radical chic was the practice of wearing radical politics like it was a scarf you could buy on 5th Avenue . . .
Excuse me. I have just been informed that we are living in a post-metaphorical era, and that my use of a metaphor involving a gun may
(Excerpt) Read more at dougwils.com ...
Mr.Wilson does good work.
"Rally to Restore Hope And/Or Fear".
Sounds a *LOT* like Tucson tonight.
"Together We Thrive"
Prayers UP for the families.
bump for a piece a lot of people might have missed.
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