the ghost robot -

Monday, September 05, 2005
  thank you john dardinelle

From the mountain goats' blog.

Speak truth to power young Kanye. Declaring that "George Bush does not care about black people," on national tv was pretty important. While some folks are writing it off as a publicity stunt, I still believe in sincerty and the possibility of unhinged celebrities (American Music Awards, anyone?). The College Dropout saw incalcuable human suffering and told it like he saw it. Word.
 
Comments:
For Shame, Ghost:
While celebrities and music nerds wax hip about 'important events,' people continue to starve and rot, enslaved by a pschomaterialist culture machine, of which KanYe West and his ilk are some of the prime motivators. Courage is not effective media manipulation, not stylized smartassedness with no meaning. I can think of one beautiful Arkansasan, a white girl, who had gone to work in those Nola slums with which the diamond studded rapper feels such a bond, as a ninth grade science teacher this summer before evacuating herself last week. Her work was 'important,' only as it helped the destitute feel better about themselves in ways other than musical hypnosis. KanYe wishes he could make such a difference. And any other self-gratifying, bad-rapping assclown can suck a lemon.
T. Sincere, Elitist Blog Bomber
 
welcome to the internet, where people blow everything out of all semblence of proportion or context. this is misguided rant, i wrote it at four in the morning, i'm pissed, and i don't mean it. whatever.

the fact that unimaginable sufferingis a part of the historical human condition does not mean that we don't need music, celebrities, or cultural studies to figure both out. obviously, we need heroes and volunteers and everyday saints too. it takes some sort of perverse elitism or populism to deny our need for kanye or for that arkansas saint. we need both and we want them now.

I didn't give kanye the fucking nobel peace prize- he just said something on tv that i liked, so i said so. obviously, if one posisits some sort of bullshit neofreudian construct about the seperation between 'real life' and 'art-media,' real life wins everytime every fucking time. but there's the proverbial rub- there is no seperation between the two. culture and real life are mirror house versions of one another, but they're inexorably linked.

kanye is not as noble or saintly as our friends toiling away in the underprivaleged school districts of the country, but those recent college grads are not nearly as powerful as the louis vuitton don.

whatever. this is so insignificant. i am so insignificant. you you you you make no sense at all esg texas houston got the internet goin nuts aboretum.
 
My literary executor warned me about the blogosphere. He told me, "Toby, don't go get mixed up with those livejournal types. They have no respect for reasonable discourse or complete sentences. You'll just get hurt."
Boy, was he right. The question I raised wasn't a new one: who gets to decide what's 'important'? Because KanYe West is a successful, wealthy rapper/producer, must we in the critical media celebrate his every word? I called him an assclown because I think he is one, and I think it's my job as a reader and a thinker to criticize, nay, attack with all my might, those who propogate a certain untruth which I believe is ruining our country and society, namely the old evil refrain: money can make you happy. Too many Americans slave tirelessly and mindlessly each day in order to gas up their SUVs so they can drive to Wal-Mart where they can buy the new KanYe and raise their fists and join in the ecstatic chorus, "We want pre-nupt! We want pre-nupt!" And so I was well-disgusted when I saw Mr. West excite the anger of the squalid masses in order to further his own career. I predicted that KanYe's statement would do nothing for the people whom he claimed to support, and that he deserved no acclaim, especially from a brilliant revolutionary blogger. Leave the coddling to Time Magazine, Ghost, I said. In return I was accused of positing 'some sort of bullshit neofreudian contruct' and reordering the entirety of human consciousness into two opposite, warring poles of 'reality' and 'art-media,' and then, as if that weren't enough, declaring a victor.

In his reply Ghost did identify something with which I take great issue: that we 'need' celebrities to 'figure out' our 'unimaginable sufferings'. Ghost! What are you doing writing for an obscure internet blog? Get thee to the cover of People Magazine if you think celebrities help us understand what it means to be human.

Now, I didn't realize my comments were so blatently neofreudian (I also didn't realize it was possible to say anything today which is not neofreudian. Sigmund has long infiltrated all aspects of thoughtful speech. Only a redneck would disagree), but I'll agree with an aspect of his Civilization and Its Discontents which says there are three outlets from the misery of human existence: God, Art, and Love.
I'm becoming more and more afraid that our cultural and political leaders have little respect for the concepts mentioned above, that they view public service and public entertainment only as means to create their own wealth, not as means to uplift and educate the mass of humanity which they control.

That's where Sincere is coming from, and what drives his rage at 'the psychomaterialist cultural machine'. But you'll have to read about it elsewhere, because due to insult and injury I'm leaving this message board for good.

So with a heavy heart I bid farewell to with the Internet. From here on out I sling mud at the pink collars of Kanye West and others from the comfort of the printed page.
Best Regards,
Tobias Sincere
 
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