Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Secession

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Should American writers secede from the Nobel Prize for literature?

There was a brief moment, after World War II, when the Nobel Committee allowed that America might produce more sophisticated writers. No one on either side of the Atlantic would quarrel with the awards to William Faulkner in 1949 or Ernest Hemingway in 1954. But in the 32 years since Bellow won the Nobel, there has been exactly one American laureate, Toni Morrison, whose critical reputation in America is by no means secure. To judge by the Nobel roster, you would think that the last three decades have been a time of American cultural drought rather than the era when American culture and language conquered the globe.

But that, of course, is exactly the problem for the Swedes. As long as America could still be regarded as Europe’s backwater–as long as a poet like T.S. Eliot had to leave America for England in order to become famous enough to win the Nobel–it was easy to give American literature the occasional pat on the head. But now that the situation is reversed, and it is Europe that looks culturally, economically, and politically dependent on the United States, European pride can be assuaged only by pretending that American literature doesn’t exist. When Engdahl declares, “You can’t get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world,” there is a poignant echo of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard insisting that she is still big, it’s the pictures that got smaller.

Nothing gives the lie to Engdahl’s claim of European superiority more effectively than a glance at the Nobel Prize winners of the last decade or so. Even Austrians and Italians didn’t think Elfriede Jelinek and Dario Fo deserved their prizes; Harold Pinter won the prize about 40 years after his significant work was done. To suggest that these writers are more talented or accomplished than the best Americans of the last 30 years is preposterous.

Other than that I think Hemingway is vastly overrated, and ample fodder for parody, I agree. The Peace prizes have been a joke since Arafat and Rigoberto Menchu (not to mention Jimmy Carter), and I think that the literature prizes have gone the same way, decades ago.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Pants On Fire

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CNN (of all places) essentially calls Barack Obama a liar:

Griffin also tells a somewhat nonplussed Cooper that Obama has lied about his “coming out party” at the home of William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in 1995. Obama has said that Alice Palmer arranged the fundraiser and the venue, but Griffin spoke to two people who attended the event, who claim Obama lied. Palmer had nothing to do with that event outside of being invited to it. Obama and Ayers planned the event themselves.

The story never made much sense. Why would Ayers and Dohrn allow their house to be used for an event in which they had no role? I wonder how long he’s been falsely fingering Palmer for it? I’m betting that he never told this fairy tale until recently, when it suddenly (and inexplicably, to him) became a potential campaign issue.

And of course, the next question is, if he’s lying about this, what else is he lying to us about? After all, as Senator McCain pointed out yesterday, for a guy who has written two books about himself, his life hasn’t been anything close to an open book.

Space, Technology and Society

Is Usenet Dead?

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Apparently not yet, but as far as my usage of it is concerned, it’s on life support. As the article points out, it doesn’t help that ISPs don’t support it properly. I gave up on AT&T once I realized that they’d outsourced it, and basically didn’t care whether it worked for their customers or not, and use GigaNews now.

Anyway, my biggest use of Usenet is sci.space.*, but I’ve cut way back on my participation there, because the signal/noise ratio has gotten so low, with many of the best long-time members of the newsgroups having gone to greener pastures (for example, Henry Spencer hasn’t posted there in many moons, which is a little ironic, considering that whenever I used to point out that Usenet was dying, he would reply that people have been predicting the death of Usenet for decades). It’s mostly loonytunes now, like Brad Guth and Ian Parker, and the Elifritz troll, with little substantive space policy discussion. I do think that the center of gravity of serious space discussion has shifted to the web, regardless of whatever else is still happening with NNTP.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

More Ayers Thoughts

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From Mark Steyn:

The point is not that President-designate Obama is a “close friend” of the unrepentant Ayers, or that he was only eight when his patron was building bombs to kill the women of New Jersey. As Joe Biden would no doubt point out on his entertaining “This Day In History” segment, McCain was only six when Czogolsz killed President McKinley. But I doubt he’d let the guy host a fundraiser for him.

But, in the world in which Obama moves, it would seem absurd and provincial to object to partying with an “unrepentant terrorist.” The senator advanced and prospered in a milieu in which men like Ayers are not just accepted but admired for their “passionate participation”, and function as power-brokers and path-smoothers. This is a great country, and most of us (as Peter Kirsanow notes below) make it without having to kiss up to America-haters like Ayers and Wright. But not Obama.

Who is this man on course to be 44th president? Apparently, it’s not just impolite but racist to ask.

Speaking of which, Sarah Palin apparently handled the racism nonsense from CNN pretty well yesterday.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Jonah Goldberg has some more thoughts on the terrorists“passionate anti-war and civil rights movement” and the contradictions of the fascist left.

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