Category Archives: Popular Culture

Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Technology and Society

Is Big Government A Mac?

2 Comments

Or a PC?

[Update in the afternoon]

Why we should want big government to be a PC:

You know I love the products, but Apple is a fascist company. I should know — I worked there. Even got personally cussed out by Steve Jobs (may his name be praised forever).

Apple products are based on centralized command-and-control. Apple makes the hardware, software, and — increasingly — many key applications (“everything inside the state, nothing outside the state”). The Apple faithful believe that the computing world dominated by Microsoft is bad (if not outright evil) and must be redeemed. If only everyone changed to their way of computing, we would reach computing nirvana. And society would be changed for the better, too. If only.

The analogy may be getting a little strained.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Being All Judgmental

10 Comments

That’s what Rachel Lucas is doing. Well, someone has to do it, since society at large seems to have abdicated its role.

Like her, I was struck by the stupidity of this, reported apparently completely unironically, as though it made, you know, sense:

The Gloucester baby boom is forcing this city of 30,000 to grapple with the question of providing easier access to birth control…

Well, hey folks. It’s hard to see what that would do for this particular little baby boomlet.

There may be some problems that are solved by easier access to birth control, but brainless young women going out of their way to get knocked up isn’t one of them. I think, for that, there will have to be some other solution (unless by “easier access,” they mean tubal ligation).

Political Commentary, Popular Culture

Obama Doesn’t Have Charisma

8 Comments

He’s glamourous. Virginia Postrel, a glamour maven, explains:

Charisma is a personal quality that inspires followers to embrace the charismatic leader’s agenda (an agenda that, in the original sense of the word charisma, is seen as divinely inspired.) Glamour, by contrast, encourages the audience to project its own yearnings onto the glamorous figure. So, in this case, Sebastian Mallaby imagines that Obama will find “a way of crawling back from his embarrassing talk of reopening NAFTA.” Mallaby maintains his own views about what’s good for economic growth; he doesn’t defer to Obama’s own vision.

When voters motivated by charisma disagree with the leader they’ve backed, they support him anyway and possibly even change their minds about the right policy course. When voters motivated by glamour disagree, they become disillusioned and angry.

Let’s hope for a peak of that come around late October.

Political Commentary, Popular Culture

Obama Doesn’t Have Charisma

He’s glamourous. Virginia Postrel, a glamour maven, explains:

Charisma is a personal quality that inspires followers to embrace the charismatic leader’s agenda (an agenda that, in the original sense of the word charisma, is seen as divinely inspired.) Glamour, by contrast, encourages the audience to project its own yearnings onto the glamorous figure. So, in this case, Sebastian Mallaby imagines that Obama will find “a way of crawling back from his embarrassing talk of reopening NAFTA.” Mallaby maintains his own views about what’s good for economic growth; he doesn’t defer to Obama’s own vision.

When voters motivated by charisma disagree with the leader they’ve backed, they support him anyway and possibly even change their minds about the right policy course. When voters motivated by glamour disagree, they become disillusioned and angry.

Let’s hope for a peak of that come around late October.