Dionne, yesterday, on the web and Democratic politics.
2008 promises to be the year when decisions made at millions of computer screens on kitchen tables and office desks could outshine the glitz and beat out the large checkbooks. The Internet could thus provide Obama his best chance of keeping up with one of the most formidable fundraisers in Democratic politics.
I disagree by gentle degree with what I think Dionne anticipates will be the web's impact on this nomination campaign in particular and national politics in general. I by no means discount the effect of fundraising on the web, but that is a just a facet of the power of keyboard.
There is a sense of empowerment combined with disenchantment (and disenfranchisement) (and disassociation) behind the (false?) autonomy implicit in my keyboarding. There will always be people who buy what the smoothest salesman is selling, but many keyboardists, given (false?) independence, may not only raise the price of their tricks, they may choose to choose their own johns.
To a substantial extent, talk of treason and sedition, beyond the narrow and vast cataclysmic clvsterfvck of abysmal Bushistan, is the HOLYFVCKINGFVCK! realization by the madams and pimps who determine who gets fvcked (and how and at what price) that the whores and the johns are starting to believe they might actually think for themselves. (This is doubly maddening since the whores and the johns are actually using the technology meant to tranquilize as the means to assert independence, meaning the pimps and madams have lost control of both the junk and junkee.)
That the powerful only consider clvsterfvck the antidote to clvsterfvck means our illusions of independence may harden into cemented illusions, and then what will the powerful do? I have no doubt - no doubt - that pimply lawyers and their corporate madams are feverishly daydreaming of means to squelch stomp or (at least) sedate all they perceive they can't control of the keyboarders. The best they will come up with is escalated clvsterfvcking.
Meaning if you want my vote, you want my support, you want my energy, you want my money, you dance for ME, wannabe madam or pimp, and you'd better goddamn fool me good, which here on out means making me feel I haven't been fooled at all.
It will get harder every clvsterfvcking second.
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Greenwald debated Frank Gaffney - he of the discredited Lincoln quote approving of hanging seditious Senators, and repeated on the floor of the House by Repignican Representative Young of Alaska EVEN AFTER IT WAS DISCREDITED - on Alan Colmes radio show. Greenwald punk-slapped Gaffney about with ease. Here's Greenwald's commentary of the debate at Salon, and here's the audio at Crooks and Liars.
See, before the web, this wouldn't have happened.
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Sadly, No! is the best source (I've mentioned this before) of documenting how the web is supposed to be used by madam's tools and fools. As the seditious mob says, heh-indeedy.
I know it's beating a zipless sack of lentils, but Bitch PhD documents Donohue's misogyny. I'm sure Donohue would say, Women and web? Unholy aargh.
The General responds in defense of Donohue (and Donohue's defenders). Thank goodness some know how to use the web.
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SOMETHING DIFFERENT!
Via the web, Cruelest Month had it's Ashbery contest, and the book I won (not by skill but by being the first to respond, mind you) arrived yesterday. Thanks, Mike.
Inside was a phantoum I hadn't seen before. It's a form that Ashbery uses, to wonderful effect, often. Here's one, Hotel Lautreamont, the title poem from an earlier collection.