Posts Tagged ‘ elitism ’

The Authoritarian Crime Drama ‘Law and Order: Criminal Intent’

June 27, 2011
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The Authoritarian Crime Drama ‘Law and Order: Criminal Intent’

I suppose that I am somewhat unusual in never having liked the lead characters of Law and Order: Criminal Intent, nor thought the performances of Vincent D’Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe particularly appealing or praiseworthy. D’Onofrio, of course, was known for his excessively exaggerated performing style in his portrayal of the show’s lead character, Detective Bobby Goren, and I thought that Kathryn Erbe did a good but unimpressive job of depicting an essentially unappealing and uninteresting character in lead detective Alex Eames. Both characters annoyed me in essence, I suspect, because they were such perfect specimens of a particularly common and grating type of contemporary American: the Priggish Urban Liberal-Progressive Busybody Knowitall Pseudointellectual Snob. And in doing so, the show conveyed a point of view based on authoritarianism, exemplifying the contemporary worldview that the political writer Jonah Goldberg calls liberal fascism. I imagine that the unappealing character type at the center of Law and Order: Criminal Intent hardly requires any further description for most readers, as it thoroughly infests current-day TV news and talk shows, newspaper columns, Slate and the Huffington Post and other fashionable politico-cultural websites, contemporary art shows, your neighborhood Starbucks, and other such locales made repellant by their

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Clooney Entertains with Classic ‘Humble Brag’

February 24, 2011
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Clooney Entertains with Classic ‘Humble Brag’

Here’s a classic “humble brag” for you. What’s a humble brag, you ask? It’s a clever observation from the most recent episode of NCIS: Los Angeles, designating when a person compliments him- or herself by pretending to complain of a difficulty. The actor-filmmaker-politico-egomaniac George Clooney has just provided us with a classic, hilarious example of a humble brag in his interview with Newsweek magazine (h/t to USA Today), in explaining why he won’t run for political office: “I didn’t live my life in the right way for politics, you know,” he says. “I f–ed too many chicks and did too many drugs, and that’s the truth.” A smart campaigner, he believes, “would start from the beginning by saying, ‘I did it all. I drank the bong water. Now let’s talk about issues.’ That’s gonna be my campaign slogan: ‘I drank the bong water.’?” Perfect. By saying, “Poor me! I’ve lived such a thrilling, hedonistic, perversely enviable  life that I just don’t know whether people will take me seriously as a statesman, which of course is what I really merit,” Clooney gets to brag about his cosmic coolness and superiority while pretending to be plagued with troubles like the rest of

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Movies You Were Too Good to See in 2010 : NPR

December 30, 2010
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NPR, of all places, makes the case for good, old-fashioned entertainment in the movies. Without agreeing with all of the writer’s evaluations, it’s nice to see a populist look at the cinema. Story here.

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‘New York Times’ Editor Lauds Readers’ Stupidity

November 11, 2010
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“I’m sure glad our readers are stupid!” says a New York Times editor, though in different words. Forbes reports:

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Reading the Tea Party Leaves in Yesterday’s Elections

May 19, 2010
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Reading the Tea Party Leaves in Yesterday’s Elections

Yesterday’s primary (and some general) elections across the nation confirmed that we live in interesting times. Although there is often a temptation to see such events as more significant than they really are,actions do spring from motivations, and it’s possible for astute observers to discern those underlying thoughts and extrapolate what they mean about people’s future behavior. So the question to ask about yesterday’s elections is clear, in the context of the aggressive advance of the progressive political (and cultural) agenda since the 2008 elections and the rise of intense public opposition to it. Are the victories yesterday by Rand Paul, Art Robinson, and others, on top of the many other such political results this year, evidence of political effects of a real and possibly lasting cultural change as reflected in the Tea Party movement, public dissatisfaction with Hollywood and other elite culture (expressed strongly in poll numbers and the flight away from network television), and the like? Some of our American Culture contributors consider the $64 trillion question: Ben Boychuk: Rand Paul’s victory in Kentucky’s Republican primary election for U.S. Senate is a partial vindication of his father’s presidential campaign and the movement that emerged from it. It will be a full

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Inglorious Controversy

January 27, 2010
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Inglorious Controversy

A quite revealing exchange has broken out between the acclaimed novelist and screenwriter Andrew Klavan and Los Angeles Times writer Patrick Goldstein about the merits, or lack of same, of Quentin Tarantino’s award-winning and popular film Inglourious Basterds. Klavan, a conservative whose fiction writings are quite admirable, started it with an item called “Inglorious Malarky,” which conveyed the following opinion and argument: I found it an appalling movie—really; appalling. t exhibits an understanding of human suffering so shallow it falls outside the bounds of civil discussion. . . . or Tarantino, no matter how talented, to address the issues inherent in the event as pure fodder for storytelling, to think his squirrelly man-on-man torture fantasies or his video geek understanding of life provide an adequate moral response to that level of history—I don’t know, man—it just felt to me like he was molding toy soldiers out of the ashes of the dead. . . . When you ask yourself how our creative class could have responded so shabbily to 9/11; when you wonder how they could’ve made movies that gave aid and comfort to our enemies while our soldiers were in the field; when you wonder why so few of

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Current Election Could Herald Rejection of Elitists of Both Parties

November 3, 2009
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Current Election Could Herald Rejection of Elitists of Both Parties

      Off-year elections are usually not particularly interesting, but in the current case there are some very important questions to be answered, in particular whether the public’s strong reaction against elitist positions in both major political parties in the past year will translate to changes in voting preferences, S. T. Karnick writes.

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Biased Coverage of Financial Crisis Reveals Arrogance, Solidarity of U.S. Elites

October 7, 2008
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Biased Coverage of Financial Crisis Reveals Arrogance, Solidarity of U.S. Elites

  The mainstream media have utterly failed to report the full story on the mortgage and financial industry crisis and the government bailout of big investors and takeover of much of the nation’s financial sector. The reason for this failure lies in the dirty little secret of America’s elites: although they often seem to differ greatly on political policies, their real loyalty is to their privileged caste above all. Hence, they consistently agree that social and economic conditions should be constituted such as to allow them to pursue whatever power and pleasures they wish, with the great unwashed general public paying the bills.

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"Culture is the expression of the guiding philosophy of the day."—Murray Rothbard
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