The Republic of Dissent

Sparks

I'm in a desperate need of a spark...

The pink season

Nothing to say so...

Conservatism

Sam Tanenhaeus's latest, The Death of Conservatism is on my must-read list for the end of the year even though I find the title of his book io be a pompous cliché designed to create buzz. Anyway, he is fun to listen to, which I hope means that he will be fun to read for those things don't always go together.

Une chanson douce et simple

Well, if there is one reason to love Aznavour when you are not your parents is that he understood that love songs don't have to complicated and that sometime all you need to do is to say it.

Ubuland

I found this video of Idi Amin Dada, the former dictator of Uganda talking his ability to dream the future not only funny, but enlightening. Not very much has changed for the perceptions remains and when one looks at things today in Uganda and elsewhere, it is difficult not to think of Alfred Jarry's famous play Ubu Roi  except that here it is not the French middle class, which is at the center of the theater of the absurd in this case. What is alarming is that there are some who believe that Dada was great partly because he was a thorn to the sides of the Brits and to the Israelis. In other words, the standard for political greatness in many African leaders is standing up to the former colonizers and to foreigners and being a menace to the world as leaders such as Dadis Camara and Omar Al Bachir show just to name two of them.

Zouk is the new Jazz

Some have trouble acknowledging it, but the best French music in our time is made in the West Indies. Now, what does that tell us is about French national identity (I have Eric Besson, the French immigration minister, om my mind) if the the Brel and Gainsbourg of today live in the DOM-TOMS? All you have to do is to listen to this song to get it. Zouk is in my opinion what Jazz was 50 years ago, that is at it. Since I just can't just write a cheerful post on a artificial day, I just hope that Zouk doesn't get Americanized in the bad sense of the word (yes, there is such a thing as good and even great Americanization).

Guys, love, and stuff

I don't know about you but watching two guys men talk about love just make me realize that romance, love, relationships are the new spirituality tools to make people avoid facing the scary reality existence is absurd and that sex can be satisfying, valuable in itself. I find the religionization, the merchandization of love, sex, relationship creepy. Something tells me that very soon there will love classes in colleges.

Guinea and its dangerous manly man

I would find this video outrageously funny if it wasn't about the fate of a poor, small, and martyred African nation, Guinea, in desperate need of leadership taken hostage by a dangerous and manly idiot who believes that God made him king. Even by the worst or the most generous of standards, Captain Dadis Camara is a clown who should have never been allowed to rule Guinea. He is convinced that to be Guinean, African, and finally a statesman means to be just as Harvey Mansfield would say manly that is to scream when he can neither reason nor convince and to crush the people who contest his authority. It's heartbreaking to say, but the fact that an African country can have such an idiot as its head of state shows that its future generations, because they were lied to by a previous group of political leaders, which was more or less polished and "western," will in the hope for change (here those two hypnotizing words again) be tempted to follow manly fools who will try to convince them that to be authentically African (whatever that means) is to defy reason and civilization.

It doesn't have to make sense

The conclusion that I have to come to about the big news of this morning is that it doesn't have to make sense since the right people feel great about it. Symbols are about us and the way they make us feel not about actions and reality.

Bling bling and humanitarianism

Outrageously funny ! (hat tip: Alice Fishburn)

Libenter homines id quod volunt credunt

I don't know what to say or do except shake my head and deplore the fact that some men are still apes. Is virginity still a sign of virtue in our times? If it is, why does it only apply to girls/women especially when they are victimes of rape? By the way, Mickey Kaus shouldn't talk about anything other than basic American politics.

Bad politics and great acting

I can't help thinking while watching this scene from Nixon, probably the last decent movie Oliver Stone made,  that we live in an era where where politicians are great at acting and bad at politics.

It's an incurable disease

I'm speechless after watching this tape. I'm not just asserting it, I'm really describing my state of my mind. I have the feeling that America is stopped in the middle of nowhere and that it is going to waste a lot of time not on becoming a good country, but an impossible "clean" country. If I wanted to be bluntly cute, I would wonder at aloud whether if wouldn't have been a good thing for the US if the South had been able to form its own country.

Taking it easy by just needing love

I don't love the Beatles (one shouldn't love the same singers as one's parents), but I love this song even though it is too corny to be true and that its message is too syrupy to be simply erroneous.

Fighting Canada

To end my long break with a bang, here is a video, which summarizes perfectly the pettiness of the politics of the health care debate in the US. (hat tip: Harry Place)

The earth didn't move

Thought-provoking, I guess change is more a state of mind than anything else.

The level of the political debate in America part II

Hat tip Harry's Place

The level of the political debate in America

No words are necessary, but wow, are we really so far away from Nazi Germany for people to have amnesia or to just be too ideological to care about reality and abusive metaphors? I guess Clive James was right to talk about cultural amnesia.

The manly man

I love Pepé Le Pew. To me, he is the epitome of the manly man who so sure of the superiority of  his manliness that he can't see that he isn't seducing the creature of his desire. In other words, when I watch Pepé Le Pew, I see Harvey Mansfield.

Les femmes sont abominables

I have given up on trying to understand why women have no problem being vicious to other women. I'm not going to comment this video and on the speakers but I will say is that they are the reasons why I have stopped watching flashy, fluffy, empty, and debasing political shows especially on cable. TV can be an addictive drug, but if you have to be addicted to something, it shouldn't be crack.

Meaningless nothingness

There was a time when nothingness could be philosophical and cool (when existentialism was revolutionary and Sartre could still read what he was writing), this conversation about third wave feminism (who knew that existed) just proves that today nothingness is not only meaningless, but annoying and maddening. Just listening to this conversation, made me want to take my pencil and stab myself just to make sure that ennui didn't kill me while I was listening to it (the feeling was so enjoyable that I thought I would spread the joy by posting the video). Is it just me or do American women have a unique way of reminding us that feminism is dead?

Edgy humor

I'm not a parent so it is easier for me to find this funny. What makes me uneasy is my suspicion that it isn't too far from reality (hat tip: 3quarksdaily)

Buddhism is just a religion

Because it is necessary to make fun of all religion... (hat tip: Pavani at SepiaMutiny)

Je suis malade

This song describes perfectly how I'm feeling this morning. I'm sick and the rain isn't helping.

Attitude américaine

Adoucir les moeurs

The winds of change

I didn't watch the Bill Maher's soft take down of Obama and his love of TV last week on his show because I stopped watching it more than a year ago. I thought that he had stopped to be funny because he wanted so much to believe in the audacity of hope. In an op-ed in the LA Times, Maher writes:

I'm still a fan, but there's a fine line between being transparent and being overexposed. Every time you turn on the TV, there's Obama. He's getting a puppy! He's eating a cheeseburger with Joe Biden! He's taking the wife to Broadway and Paris -- this is the best season of "The Bachelor" yet!
I get it: You love being on TV. I love my bong, but I take it out of my mouth every once in a while. The other day, I caught myself saying to a friend, "Don't tell me if he's fixed the economy yet, I'm Tivo-ing it."(...) It's getting to where you can't turn on your TV without seeing Obama. Who does he think he is, Dick Cheney? Come on, sir, you don't have to be on television every minute of every day. You're the president, not a rerun of "Law and Order." Save some charisma for a rainy day. (...)I'm glad that Obama is president, but the "Audacity of Hope" part is over. Right now, I'm hoping for a little more audacity.

I guess the fact that he can criticize Obama by daring to ask him to be more substantive rather than to act as if he were president in a Hollywoodian movie means that it may become easier for comedians even when they are first and foremost fans, to make fun of the president. Who knows may be change is coming...

It's always about rythm

Well, nil novi sub sole, my life is about work, work, work, work, espresso and fatigue. I listen to Keziah Johnes a lot not to fall asleep and let my brain die.

Old mummies

I'm not sure how to feel about the fact that it is becoming possible for old women (women in their sixties) to give birth (hat tip: Chicken Yogurt). I have trouble condemning it because old men who will more than likely not see their kids grow up do it all the time, but at the same time, I have always found that creepy and selfish. I am against old people having kids period especially if they are not going to raise them. What bugs me about the video is that the comic is perpetuating the assumption that old women are so gross, so useless, so repulsive that scientists shouldn't focus their energy on giving them what Nature/God didn't (wisely) want them to have. To make my point concise and clear, I'm against old people giving birth but since selfish old men have been having kids for years, it is only fair or at least less gross that old women be able to have kids. I just hope that they have them with younger men. I have to say that I love the idea of women of my mom's age going out with men who are my age. Why? Because they are the patience to baby them, to help them grow up, to teach them things, which their mothers didn't/didn't teach them and that frankly, I don't have.  Cougars (I hate that term) are the new humanitarians of the twenty-first century because they are performing a great service to society.

The era of shameless politcal opportunism

No comment necessary.

L'amour sot

I won't even pretend that I can watch this video without shaking my hand and resisting the urge to vomit. This reminds of  years ago when I live in a dorm where people believed fanatically that Titanic was the best ever made and no movie would ever be able to measure to it. How shallow!

A zero sum game

What is the moral of this video? I guess you should never believe a stranger who is ready to share thousand of pounds with you.

Pause musicale

The perpetual quest for identity

i

I agree almost totally with Kenan Malik except on his views of Multiculturalism, which suffers, in my opinion, from a lack of nuance and willingness to contest received ideas on that subject.

Listening to Bernard-Henri Lévy

Listening or reading Bernard-Henri Lévy (BHL) is like listening to a hip-hop; both the lyrics and the music have to complement one another for the experience to be pleasant, The problem for BHL is that in his latest book Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism, there is no symphony and that the lyrics are uninspired because he doesn't say anything new and more importantly because he seems to want to engage in an original debate by provoking valuable discussions in America without the proper distance to understand its soul and without invoking his frenchness. Bhl can be great, but in this excerpt where he talks about Sarah asserting that she is on the right on the Neoconservatives, he misses the mark because he loves too much Blue America to get America and to accept the so-called Red America (which is supposedly going to disappear now that Obama is president) and listening to him  is like eating an Americanized version of Coq-au vin made with excellent products while drinking awful Californian pinot noir.

The futility of racial identity

As almost always, I agree with Glenn Loury when he argues pertinently and in my opinion convincingly that a life defined by racial identity is one poorly lived. I think that a society where racial identity is more important than any other factor to define one's politics and one's life choices is an unhealthy one. I'm trying to convince myself that the United States is so much better off than South Africa when it comes to the issue of race and I have to admit that there are times that I have to question my need to believe that that affirmation is true.

Defending the use of the "N" word

I don't agree with Goldberg's reasoning, but it's interesting to hear a different point of view.

The shit and the glitz

When you see Christopher Hitchens become dull and conventional, you know that something is out of whack. Is it just me or are those two, Hitchens and Alterman stuck in 2002? I think that the trouble with liberalism is that it is a lot like love in the sense that few liberals dare to question it because it is both intoxicating and addictive. Baudelaire was lamenting in two centuries ago that he was bored in France because everybody resembled Voltaire, I am bored right now because everybody resemble these two thoughtful people who are stuck, passez moi l'expression, in their own shit, which wouldn't be too be bad if they still had an imagination.

Recognizing fluff

Apparently, it is possible to be smart, cultured and not to be in love with the One and to not believe that he is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Les choses de la vie

A classic, which makes life meaningful and worth living. Madonna is fifty today and my mom just a little bit older, what else do they have in common apart their birthday: they are both exceptional women people. Romy Schneider is, in my opinion, easily in the top 5 of the greatest actresses ever. She's so classically beautiful that her beauty becomes an inconvenient because it is so mesmerizing that people forget that she is acting not just being.

Hidden Identities

Sex symbols as feminist icons

This is an excerpt of a great debate that took at the Cambridge Union Society on whether Jordan (Katie Price), the UK popular sex bomb can be considered a feminist Icon. The debate was not only immensely entertaining, but also thought provoking because it shows that sex plays a quintessential role in the way women look at each other. My opinion on the matter is that the main question of the debate is in fact irrelevant because Jordan doesn't have to be feminist icon to be an icon to women and in fact being a feminist icon doesn't mean anything, it is as hollow a title as being the sexiest man alive (even though less hip) or Sarkozy's prime minister. The woman speaking in this video is Jenni Trent Hughes and she is has a point even though I think that enjoying sex isn't a feminist issue, it is a woman's issue. You can watch the whole debate here, which is worth watching because it is fun.

The pointlessness of manliness

A two-words response to Harvey Mansfield's definition of manliness: pretentious fluff.

Chanson fun

Saying No to Rehab differently

Remix of the popular Amy Winehouse's song Rehab. The singers are Cocoon and Julien Doré.

Cha Cha to avoid crying

In honor (I use the word sarcastically) of France's defeat to Italy (again ) yesterday in Euro 2008, here is a great video of Josephine Baker singing Cha Cha. It is heartbreaking to watch Les Blues take every blow against them with fatalism by viewing them as signs that victory is impossible and that therefore they must do everything not to embarrass themselves further by accepting fate instead of trying everything to win even if means losing spectacularly. Anyway, thank god that it's possible to cha cha with a broken heart.

The end

Just saw the speech of Hillary Clinton. I'm not going to comment it because it is unnecessary. All of it reminds me of one of my favorite eighties french song about how hard it is to be une Femme libérée. The one lesson that I've learned from all this fascinating, but pathetic drama is that women have to stop to apologize for being bitches and for being flawed, imperfect and wanting more. Here is the video from the song, which explains it all.

Sex and the funny woman

I find this excerpt from one of Wanda Sykes's shows about how practical a detachable vagina would be for women hilarious and on point.

Parodying a train wreck

The trouble nowadays is that everything is about entertainment and that train wrecks become watchable instead of being sad and awakening within us the desire to help. In this video, French humorist Florence Foresti, or as I like to call her the French Tina Fey, parodies Amy Winehouse. I'm not sure if it is funny, but it is on point. By the way, can somebody tell me what's the difference between  Winehouse and a young Mick Jagger?   

Musical nostalgia