uTopianTurtleTop

THE 2-TRACK ARGUMENT

Jane Dark responded to my criticisms of his thoughts on the notion of “pop disposability” and on the Democrats’ attempt to use Lakoffian “framing” for electoral victory. Response to the first came via email. Jane persuaded me that I misconstrued what he had been trying to say; not that the a listener can hear the disposable ways in which pop music is produced, as I had thought, but that music producers’ consciousness of the constraints of the marketplace and the possibility that the music they produce may be disposed of instantly "presumes a certain duration of ‘use’ by the consumer." Jane’s case is self-refuting, though elegantly put: By Jane’s own logic, music producers *have no idea* of “the duration of ‘use’ by the consumer” to which their music will be put: It may or may not get on the radio at all; it may last there for 2 weeks or 3 months; it may rival “Kind of Blue” for sales longevity.

(Re-reading the above, I realize that I referred to “Jane” as “he.” “Jane” is the blog-o-nym of a male poet who publishes poetry and criticism under his male name, but blogs under this female name.)

Jane responded to my criticisms of his blast against the Democrats for trying to use the work of George Lakoff in the comments to this post. His response is snarky but insubstantial; my response to his response is overstated in one respect -- he never made any actual ad hominem arguments, just a bunch of aggressive innuendo. I have two things to add:

First, isn’t it funny that a male poet who blogs under a female name -- one that alludes to the name of a nationalist hero/martyr and Catholic saint -- is blasting the Democrats for playing the image game?

Second, I need to reiterate that for the emphaticness of his rhetoric about material reality and actual conditions, Jane’s few concrete proposals in her/his original post display a not-uncommon ignorance and shocking ethnocentrism. He suggests: “a non-ideological removal of all military from the Middle East and an end of US support to Israel in the UN would, I suspect, bring a fairly swift end to terrorist recruiting.”

Is Jane suggesting that the US and Western military presence in Afghanistan has no recruitment value for terrorists? Or is he ignorantly lumping Afghanistan into the Middle East?

Is Jane suggesting that the terrorist bombings in the Sinai and Saudi Arabia don’t count and don’t matter?

Whatever, dude.