Against Radiohead, or, Contrary To Popular Belief Music Existed Before 1990

I have made no secret of the hatred I reserve for the writing of James Poulos (a.k.a Postmodern Conservative, a.k.a. "annoying guy from American Scene"). His work is pompous, overwrought, rancid with unnecessary polysyllabic voodoo, and tries desperately to sound intellectual; he's like a smart Paul J. Cella, or a 21st-century Chris Lacaria. Reading his work is like beating yourself in the face with a thesaurus. (Probably Poulos angers me so much because I'm projecting my own fear of academicism and my cripplingly low self-esteem onto him -- but that's not important right now.)

Less often do I take issue with Poulos' actual arguments. Usually they're so far out in conservative neverland that I can see his preconceptions coming and take his (generally sound) logic for what it is. But this week, he's produced a great big article about a subject very close to my heart -- the generational politics of rock music -- that is so completely misinformed and profoundly wrong that's it's driven me to new levels of wild, head-through-monitor frustration. Here's a sample:

For the generations that came of age as Radiohead got huge, patterns of life seem to have emerged that mutually reinforce and confirm a downward revision of expectations. The band’s catalog tracks the increasing acceptance of a newly fundamental degree of contingency, incompleteness, and transience. It extends across careers and love lives, shaping attitudes reaching from domestic politics to cosmic fate. Many now seem happy just to find or help create the passages of experience that permit momentary and communal escapes. Immanent and transcendent, such fugitive moments of therapeutic authenticity ameliorate the painful costs of being comprehensively compromised.

OMFG SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS. Even if you shear away the clearly compensatory Hegelian verbosity, this is nothing more than self-important superfan wanking mixed with pop-sociology bullshit and -- typically of the "classical liberal" set -- a complete and voluntary divorce from historical context. It's just crying out for a response.

So I'll provide some of my trademark fair-minded rebuttals, some music criticism, and an explanation of why Radiohead actually sucks, after the jump.

Read more »

Life in the Fast Lane

The heated discussion over dems-talk regarding tomorrow’s solidarity fast has caught my eye – and judging by my inbox, the eyes of many other Dems. After reading claims that a fast will provide action to augment the Dems’ words and debates over the Dems’ endorsement process, I have made my own decision.

I will not fast tomorrow.

If Friday’s fast were about solidarity with Harvard’s workers, then I firmly believe my decision would be different. I can’t improve on the words of Eva Lam in LegCom’s new report on the status of Harvard’s workers when she writes, “Harvard students' very comfortable lives are made possible by the Harvard employees who clean our buildings, cook our meals, and keep our campus safe, and we owe them the highest possible standard of respect and fair treatment.” Amen.

The fast tomorrow, however, is about solidarity with Harvard’s hunger strikers, not with Harvard’s workers.

The hunger strikers present a difficult story. The purpose of a hunger strike, as one of the many dems-talk emails remarked, is to threaten your opponent with a very slow and very public act of suicide. Gandhi went on a hunger strike to protest his nation’s continuing colonization. Alice Paul went on a hunger strike to protest the disenfranchisement of American women. Inmates at Guantanamo have gone on hunger strikes – and have been force-fed as a result – to protest their nebulous incarceration. Whether or not you agree with these individuals, you must recognize the severity of their situations. The threat of suicide was neither used nor taken lightly.

Increased wages, union membership for more guards, and improved grievance procedures are all important to the lives of people who are themselves important to the lives of all Harvard students. But I flatly reject that these issues merit a student taking his or her own life. Human life – whether Harvardian or not – is worth far more than a raise of $2/hour and the addition of 32 guards to the local union. But the hunger strikers are threatening to kill themselves over such demands, so I will not join in solidarity with them.

And if, on the other hand, the hunger strikers have no intention of taking their hunger to its fatal conclusion if their demands are not met, then their strike is merely symbolic. That would unconscionably weaken the grave threat of a hunger strike, putting it on par with a walk-out or a protest rally. This hunger strike, therefore, is lose-lose: either students die, or students make a mockery of the most serious type of protest.