A Little Of The Old In And Out



(image via Matt Sayles/Timesonline)

In: Joaquin Phoenix. If indeed what can only be properly construed as "hip-hop career reconnoiter" is not a monumental show business hoax, then Oscar-nominated actor Joaquin Phoenix is navigating into extraordinarily risky career waters. Treacherous waves; choppy vocational seas. And we will be watching with baited breath on the edge of our seats!

If it is a hoax, then Joaquin Phoenix will, at the very least, give Andy Kaufman's quixotic foray into intergender wrestling some competition in the pop-cultural annals as one of the stranger moments in American entertainment history.

No matter how this Oscar-nominated actor turned journeyman rapper thingie turns out, it makes the eccentric Joaquin Phoenix -- raised, we cannot fail to note, in the Children of God cult -- one of the most compelling and uncontrived celebrities to ever play the tightly-scripted Hollywood game.



Out: Brent Bozell. What, we ask earnestly, makes someone so fucked up socially as to claim to know what is "decent" in every sphere of American culture and, using that logic, procede to lecture -- at length -- everyone in the goddam room about it, on cable teevee and on soapboxes around the country, actually make a living begging for contributions to continue in the "ministry." And why haven't Western philosophers ever adressed this "Will To Righteousness"?

Brent Bozell III, who is in the unenviable position of making his daily bread in the service dividing this country, apparently has no shame in this undertaking of righteousness. Poor Brent: He must get paid only by the self-righteousness. Once again he charges "hypocrisy," and "media bias," but his cries-in-the-wilderness are about as believable as his smug-self righteousness and the true reptilian malice in his eyes when he scores off an opponent on a chat show. There is something deeply unsavory about the character of Mr. Brent Bozell, who seeks to undermine an American institution -- journalism -- that is essentially decent, but not without its glitches. As he operates from the margins -- like a spider -- of American politics from what is essentially a rightist think tank, he is incapable of seeing the whole picture. Instead of TS Eliot's "Hollow Men," we get brent Bozell: Narrow Man. From TVNewser:

"Media Research President Brent Bozell has been one of the most vocal critics (Rush Limbaugh's callers also jammed the ABC News phone lines). Bozell, who makes a claim not part of the Politico story that these are 'strategy phone calls,' requested ABC respond to the story on Newsbusters and in an open letter. 'With each passing day, ABC's failure to speak to and about this issue tarnishes further the network's reputation as a legitimate news entity,' he writes.

"Today, ABC responded to Bozell and other critics, although they say there have been several prior on-the-record responses ignored by Media Research Center. 'To be crystal clear, George Stephanopoulos does not advise Rahm Emanuel nor anyone else in the Obama Administration,' says the letter from SVP of editorial quality, Kerry Smith."

People in Washington talk, attend children's school functions, attend cocktail parties and state dinners, intermarry (Carville and Matalin?) and still manage to do their jobs and remain loyal to their ideological beliefs. Washington is a small town, friendships don't necessarily influence decisions made in the workplace. Arianna Huffington is constantly talking about how she has lost friends because some HuffPo blogger writes something scathing about someone she is friends with who then confronts her at Washington cocktail parties.

Bill Buckley was best friends with lefty economist James Kenneth Galbraith and Reagan was great friends with Truman Capote. This idea that journos and writers can't be friends with people in political power or it will somehow influence their reporting is bunk and, worse, adolescent. Provide the evidence, Mr. Bozell, if you have it. And if it is there I will be the second person behind your self-righteous ass leading the charge.



(image via ersnews)

Mixed: Muammar Gaddafi. Africa is at a turning point. never before have they had a United States President -- and Secretary of State -- amenable and acutely attuned to the continent's needs. Perhaps that is why, mirabile dictu, Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda was arrested in neighboring Rwanda days after Obama's inauguration. Coincidence? We think not.

But there is the question of newly elected African Union head Muammar Gaddafi. He is a wild card, an x-element. In the past Col, Gaddafi has waved the revolutionary anti-colonialist banner against the West. Of late, however, he has, at the prompting of his Western-educated and reform-minded son Saif, reached out to Europe and America. How will he maneuver the 53-member AU under the Clinton/Obama doctrines? From BBC:

"Speaking at the AU summit in Ethiopia, Col Gaddafi said Africa was essentially tribal and political parties became tribalised, which led to bloodshed.

"He concluded the best model for Africa was his own country, where opposition parties are not allowed.

"Analysts say the AU is in for an interesting year under Col Gaddafi.

".. At the final press conference of the summit on Wednesday, Col Gaddafi sought to back up his argument by citing other countries like Kenya, where elections in December 2007 were followed by ethnic killings, and war-torn Somalia.

"'We don't have any political structures [in Africa], our structures are social,' Reuters news agency quotes him as saying.

"'Our parties are tribal parties - that is what has led to bloodshed.'"

While he has a point about the organicity of an immediate transfusion of democracy in Africa (Uganda, which is a sort of hybrid democracy because of the possibility of demagogues splitting the electorate via violent Hutu-Tutsi tribalism), it also, cynically, plays into the outmoded African politics of Col Gaddafi's generation. The next generation of young politicians were infants during colonialism's end and have little memory or psychic scars of those humiliating decades. perhaps, like America, the African continent needs a Barack Obama -- a post-racial figure that start the post-colonialist conversation..