If you didn’t catch Keith Olbermann’s screed last night — inspired partially by President Bush’s commitment (which he didn’t really keep, apparently) to give up golf in honor of those servicemen killed in the Iraq War — it’s worth watching. Oh, and buckle yourself in — it’s a pretty wild ride:

As genuine as Olbermann intends it to be — and as right-on as he is about it all — his tone and self-righteousness bother me.  Olbermann condemns Bush at the end of the piece for thinking that the Iraq War is all about Bush himself.  Well, I’d like to say to Olbermann that criticism of the Bush administration and the war machine it perpetuates is not all about Olbermann.

And that’s the larger problem with a personality-driven pseudo news show.  It’s never really about the news.  Olbermann, even at his most poignant, feels more like an entertainer than a social critic — and I’m not sure that inspires much action or even critical thinking in his audience.

I could be wrong …. What’s your reaction?

More than a year ago, in response to Joe Biden’s racial miscue at the start of the Democratic primary campaign, I discussed how most white Americans have no idea how to talk about race.

Little did I know, though, that ignorance and naivete about race wouldn’t prevent a lot of white people in the media from trying to talk about it every chance they got over the past year.

And hearing the media’s response to the results from West Virginia last night, it’s clear that all that talking hasn’t advanced the conversation very far. Despite periodic attempts at nuance, the dominant race narrative on MSNBC, CNN, Fox and other mainstream political outlets is that Barack Obama has trouble getting white people to vote for him — and that African Americans are hypnotized by the first viable black presidential candidate and simply will not vote for anyone else.

This narrative reduces the complexities of both white and black Americans — and it validates racism by giving it a back-door entrance into the conversation. It reminds me of those well-meaning white folk who argued in favor of segregation because America just wasn’t ready for change just yet.

Continue reading "The Media’s Racial Reduction"

The dominant narratives of this election year have nothing to do with Ralph Nader — and most Democrats are pretty darn happy about that. We’re more concerned about race/gender, Barack/Hillary and Bush/McCain stories.

The only time we’ll hear about radical leftist politicians will be when the Democrats are reminding us that Barack Obama isn’t one of them.

So as I’ve soured a bit on the mainstreaming of presidential politics (and of the media that covers them), I couldn’t help but follow a link to a conversation that Ralph Nader had Monday at Google’s Mountain View, CA headquarters.

I must say, I’m one of the few people planning on voting for Obama who is actually glad Ralph Nader is still around. I personally always need to be reminded of the compromises I’m making (as is Obama) by participating in the two-party, money-driven election machine.

Nader never fails to take a shot at the private corporation that is the “so-called Commission on Presidential Debates” — which prevents him from being on the stage with the Democrat and Republican candidates. But, in the end, he’s not really interested in debating an Obama or McCain. Nader is working on the margins intentionally, because the system itself is the problem.

And he’s right. It’s hard for me not to agree with the claims of Nader’s running mate, Matt Gonzalez, as he picks apart Obama’s record. For all of Obama’s talk of change, it’s a change that doesn’t touch the system itself — that will not fundamentally alter the way that corporate power — in material and symbolic ways — places the great majority of Americans in the dehumanizing positions as mindless “workers” or “consumers.”

If I’m going to vote for Obama, I need to do it honestly, self-consciously. I’m not voting for the revolution. I’m voting for a kindler, gentler, slightly more progressive same old American plutocracy.

Having said all that, once Nader starts talking about how the Internet isn’t revolutionary and how he still writes on a typewriter, I have to tune him out again.

“Iron Man” is a great movie for a lot of reasons, not the least of which are the action sequences and pyrotechnic displays. Ultimately, though, the themes go deeper than this, and the informed viewer can sense their complexity beneath the surface of the film. Behind the character story of a young Playboy taking responsibility for his actions, and beneath the technological tale of a hero being born out of a medical miracle, there’s also the story of a war of technological innovation… a sort of a clash of engineering titans… and there’s a metaphor for military force. It’s this last theme that I’ll address, for the time being.

A lot of ‘Iron Man” is about Tony Stark’s life’s work, and a lot of Stark’s legacy is based on military power and a relationship to hegemony. Stark begins the movie with his finger on the big red button, trusting in absolute power and overwhelming coverage as an ethical way to keep the world safe. This is truly a Cold War mentality, an international survivalism staked on the fact that America will always have the biggest stick. Stark’s work in the world is designing massive military weapons that “you only have to fire ONCE.”

Of course, Stark discovers the downfall of this approach when he’s kidnapped in Afghanistan. When military power gets big enough, it can’t be controlled or contained any longer, and it becomes as much the enemy’s tool as it is our own. He sees that he can’t even trust his own company with this kind of power, and he sees that this isn’t just a flaw in his company… it’s a flaw in this whole approach to power. For this reason, instead of simply taking back control of his company’s weapons distribution, he decides to shut down Stark Industries’ weapons division entirely. Complete military dominance is no longer Tony Stark’s thing.

Continue reading "Iron Man as a Reflection on Military Force"

The following is a new book review by Richard C. Crepeau, posted at PopPolitics magazine.

Those who heard the voice of the late Jim Corder, professor of English at Texas Christian University, will hear it again in these five essays and one poem contained within “The Heroes Have Gone: Personal Essays on Sport, Popular Culture and the American West,” a delightful, thoughtful, and at times profound little collection.

The voice and accent are from West Texas, as was the man. West Texas also provided the bedrock of his view of the world. The pen and ink drawings illustrating these essays are also Corder’s doing.

The poem is a quiet tribute to Mickey Mantle, written three days prior to Mantle’s death. In five stanzas Corder captures the contradictions of the hero’s life, and the melancholy of his death, which is then juxtaposed to the poet’s continuing life. It says as much about Mantle, life, death and heroism as the combined efforts of all the obituary writers of a nation.

The opening essay, “The Glove,” starts with Corder’s recollection of his first baseball glove and the circumstances of its Christmas appearance in the later years of the Great Depression.

Continue reading “The Mystery of Place, Memory and Rock Kicking.”

The following is a new article by Tim Mitchell, published in the “depth” section of PopPolitics magazine. Mitchell analyzes how critically discarded “versus” horror films can tell us a great deal about how we see conflict in the post-9/11 world.

Horror is like any other genre of film: The most popular titles of a given era often gain their notoriety by striking a chord in audiences that is somehow related to the collective fears and hopes of that particular time. Along those lines, when critics associate horror films with modern social and political fears in post-9/11 America, they usually cite films of an apocalyptic nature: films that portray a community (or the entire world itself) as irrevocably unraveling at lightening speed at the hands of a monstrosity that is equal parts unexplainable, unstoppable and unavoidable.

Films released during the last several years such as “The Host“; “Sunshine“; “28 Weeks Later“; “Right at Your Door“; “Cloverfield“; “Land of the Dead“; and “Diary of the Dead” fit this trend. So do recent remakes such as “Dawn of the Dead,” and literary adaptations such as “War of the Worlds“; “30 Days of Night“; “I Am Legend“; and “The Mist.” These are akin to earlier films such as “Them!” (1954) and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956) that reflected the public’s fears of atomic weapons and communism back in the 1950s.

There is another kind of horror film that complements and yet contrasts this end-of-the-world sub-genre of horror, a kind of horror film that most critics dismiss. Unlike many of the apocalyptic films, these films do not so much depict a supreme battle between good and evil, but instead plague their characters with nothing but damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t choices.

Fears of vicious attacks and random massacres are not the product of some aberration of the natural order but an honest reflection of how the universe actually works. Thus, fears of this type of world do not center on vanquishing monsters to save others so much as on just surviving in a pre-determined situation. What kind of horror film is this? The crossover film that has the word “versus” in the title — namely, “Freddy vs. Jason” (2003), “Alien vs. Predator” (2004) and the recent “Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem” (2007).

Continue reading “A Look at Iconic Versus: The Post-9/11 Significance of the Freddy vs. Jason and Alien vs. Predator Movies.”

This is always a difficult time of year for me. I am never sure which leaves me with a greater numbness of the brain — the NFL draft or grading final exams.

This is a question that will have to be resolved by greater minds than mine, particularly in my current mental state.

The NFL draft is clearly the biggest non-event on the sports calendar. ESPN created this monster with its ill-advised decision to televise the draft and oversaw its growth with incessant hype. If I had a dollar for every minute that ESPN has expended on it over the past decade, I would retire in luxury. If I had a dollar for every word uttered by Mel Kiper over the same time frame, I would be a billionaire.

Sports talk radio has picked up on the draft and compounded the cacophony geometrically. Never has so much been said by so many about so little.

The other day a colleague asked what could become the most feared question at ESPN: “If Mel Kiper is so good at draft analysis, and capable of critically grading the performance of the New England Patriots who seem to do fairly well drafting, why is Mel not working in the NFL?”

Once the draft ends and the analysis subsides (although it never ends), then it is time to look ahead. Not to the actual football season, but to next year’s draft. I believe it was Tuesday that ESPN.com was already asking if three top college quarterbacks would be first round picks next year. Only an air strike on Bristol, Conn., can save us.

In an effort to trump this madness, the NCAA last week approved two new bowl games. One is the Congressional Bowl, which reports say will feature Navy against a team to be determined by the most effective lobbyists in D.C., or an ACC team. I am not certain which.

The only thing to top this is that St. Petersburg (Florida, not Russia) is also getting a bowl game. Because the weather is so bad in Florida in December (lovely, warm, beautiful), the game will be played indoors in the facility affectionately known as The Can. I assume they will set the air conditioner to 20 degrees and pump in some snow to maintain the proper bowl atmosphere.

Continue reading "NFL Draft, Bowl Games, West Point Athletes and a Story That Almost Makes Up for it All"

So you think sipping that mint julep today — Southern bourbon, sugar, mint and crushed ice — connects you to tradition?

Jeff Burkhart, a bartender and writer, notes that the recipe for the first mint julep was quite different:

Professor Jerry Thomas, the original celebrity bartender, took on the subject in his 1862 bartending treatise “The Bon Vivant’s Companion” (later titled “How to Mix Drinks,” with the second title perhaps the first attempt to cash in on the Bartending for Idiots concept). Thomas quoted Captain Fredrick Marryat, an English author and naval officer who visited the American South in early part of the 19th century and offered a glimpse of the classic mint julep.

“I must decant a little upon the mint julep, as it is, with the thermometer at 100 degrees, one of the most delightful and insinuating potations that was ever invented,” Marryat wrote, “and may be drunk with equal satisfaction when the thermometer is as low as 70 degrees.” He then gives a recipe that uses mint, peach brandy and “common” brandy, sugar and pineapple. So much for traditional recipes.

Breaking even further with “tradition,” this year’s Run for the Roses has its own official tequila.

Herradura is the first tequila selected by Churchill Downs for this honor, presumably because its name means “horseshoe” in Spanish. The underlying reason? Herradura is owned by the Louisville-based company Brown-Forman, and it wants to recoup some of the $876 million it paid for Herradura last year.

So enjoy today, no matter what your drink (and Burkhart offers a “new” classic mint julep recipe if you’re interested in starting your own tradition). I’ll be sipping whatever variety our hosts mix up.

Plus: On the subject of traditions, Richard Crepeau several years ago wrote this Derby reflection, “Keeping Tradition Alive,” about how the Derby absorbs and reflects our relationship with race and class.

It’s about time.

It’s been two decades since “Pretty Woman” made prostitution seem cool — a path to self-esteem and self-empowerment — and I have rarely seen, outside of academic journals and hard-hitting documentaries, such an effective puncturing of that cultural myth as I read today in an opinion piece by Anne K. Ream and R. Clifton Spargo of the Chicago Tribune, who were inspired by the media’s recent treatment of Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the prostitute who famously serviced the former Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer.

Of course, the glorification of prostitution began long before “Pretty Woman,” but as Ream and Spargo point out, since that film hit the big screen, the myth-making has reached ridiculous extremes — from “Pimp and Ho” nights at clubs to “Turning Tricks” pole-dancing at gyms.

And that’s not even mentioning TV shows like HBO’s “Cathouse” — “where a Nevada pimp and his ‘girls’ are portrayed as one big, happy, sexually uninhibited family.” That show and others “are an ode to the joys of being sexually serviced by women.”

I realize we need to be careful not to condemn sex workers for their choices — which are often made from a very limited list of options. But we need to make sure we don’t end up justifying a system that ultimately devastates women’s lives.

Ream and Spargo rightly note, “Our cultural fascination with and glamorization of pimping and prostitution do not make for a kinder and gentler sex trade.” And they go one to cite statistics — from 90 percent of prostitutes having been victims of childhood sexual assault to jaw-dropping mortatily rates:

A comprehensive 2004 mortality study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and conducted by the American Journal of Epidemiology, shows that workplace homicide rates for women working in prostitution are 51 times that of the next most dangerous occupation for women (which is working in a liquor store). The average age of death of the women studied was 34.

Yet somehow it’s almost conventional wisdom that prostitution, if done right, can be a savvy career move and an avenue to self-fulfillment:

Nowhere was this more clear than on a recent edition of “Larry King Live.” During an interview with Natalie McLennan, the woman who allegedly trained Dupre at the escort agency New York Confidential, King asked, “Do any hookers ever marry their johns?”

“They do!” she exclaimed, telling King the tale of a fellow “girl” who “went on a date with a client and then we never saw her again. It turns out that they met and they fell in love and she never returned. It’s a real sort of Cinderella, ‘Pretty Woman’ story, you know. Which is I think . . . just a fantastic story — ”every girl’s dream.”

For the vast majority of women working in prostitution, however, the reality is less fairy tale, more grim fable. But who wants to let that get in the way of a good story?

This is one of those dominant cultural narratives that we must do a much better job of resisting.

Alessandra Stanley in the New York Times wonders at — rather than analyzes — the sea change that has made “Pop TV” the new favorite venue for politicians. With all the recent appearances by the President, candidates and their spouses on everything from “Deal or No Deal” to the “Colbert Report,” Stanley notes, “It’s hard to recall how unusual it was to see Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas playing the sax on The Arsenio Hall Show in 1992.”

Her pop explanation: “Elitism is to the 2008 campaign as communism was to 1950s politics: a career-breaker. And pop TV is the antidote, a free platform to rub shoulders with viewers who only glancingly pay attention to the news.”