“Six-seven!” and the Nonsensical Gestures of Pop’s Rapid Onset Obsolescence
How did a complete lack of meaning, paired with simple gestures, become a grand celebratory act for this generation?
How did a complete lack of meaning, paired with simple gestures, become a grand celebratory act for this generation?
Sport, like the university, like any institution, is a human construction. It reflects the fears and desires of those who manage it. To demand that it remain apolitical is to demand that it remain unexamined. What would it mean to refuse that demand consistently?
David L. Roll builds on previous biographies of Harry S. Truman and does not try to reinvent the proverbial wheel. He has found a new angle that should have a wide-ranging appeal.
Harold Compton tries, in the expansive sense of the words time and history, to focus himself on the present. Because that word history, he says, can overwhelm you.But his job is one rooted in the past. Of his people. And not of his people. Of the Jesuits, too.
“Where We Keep The Light” is a cagey book, hardly surprising for a politician as skilled as Shapiro to write. Clearly wishing to capitalize on the national fame he achieved when he was considered for the vice presidency and was so touted as the superior candidate for it, even by Trump supporters, who breathed a sigh of relief that he was not chosen, the book gives his resume, stakes out his positions, makes the case for him as both the hard-working but empathetic professional and the dedicated family man, and takes sonar soundings of the political deep in hopes of hearing something other than an echo.
Today’s influencers, panicked by AI and its ability to mimic or replace us altogether, preach a new vitalism. Often masculine, sometimes misogynist, this energy is wild and brave and noble, a birthright that cannot be replaced.
Cartoons are one of my favorite things on Instagram, especially when they touch on humor, confusion, sadness, practical philosophy, and cultural critique.
No other filmmaker, documentary or otherwise, makes us feel not just that we were there, but that we are there every time we watch these films. That assessment sounds cliché, but when discussing Wiseman, even terms such as verisimilitude fall short.
Many recent documentaries about comic entertainers show the alienation, sadness, and self-perceived failure in the lives of people we think of as “funny” and investigate connections among hardship, talent, and drive. While “Being Eddie” is interesting, and Murphy is good in it, if somewhat restrained, it has little such complexity.
The terms of the struggle are renegotiated every time a law is deemed unjust by civil disobedience, and the tension ratchets up every time we are forced to acknowledge that laws without the threat of possible force are no laws at all. The law may fix the line between coercion and consent, but in a democratic republic we at least have the prospect of that line moving forward or back.