The peano has been drinking, not me
At some point in the past I said I would write a post about this, and I still intend to do so; in fact, I was going to sitting down to begin it (spurred by having to return Shusterman's Pragmatist Aesthetics, whose spine I hadn't cracked in the 6+ months it was in my possession, I read the chapters on popular art before yielding it up to whomever it was who recalled it from me, and was reminded of my earlier promise) when I was distracted by this other squib from the successors of N. In it we read (a) a conspiracy-theory grade claim regarding marketing and (b) this bit of softheadedness:
At one point, [Lynne] Cheney made the argument that Eminem's music eroded First Amendment rights by "ironically" convincing "good citizens" that government regulation of the entertainment industry was appropriate. It's a measure of Eminem's success that Cheney was forced to attack him for his irony.
Isn't n+1 supposed to be the intellectually respectable, grown-up version of The Believer? Either R. Beck has accurately described what Cheney said, in which case, she wasn't attacking Eminem for his irony but noting the ironic effect of his music, or his characterization of what she was attacking (him, not his music, in the first instance) is accurate, in which case he has misdescribed her argument.
Comments
on 2009-07-28 13:00:03.0, arthegall commented:
Nice title, Ben.
and, further, on 2009-07-28 21:33:25.0, Matt F commented:
Isn't n+1 supposed to be the intellectually respectable, grown-up version of The Believer?
They try, but it's the other way around. Most of their more straightforward narrative stuff is good, but the overreaching cultural criticism and rambling musings on the state of the world read like a pretentious 16 year old's idea of a literary journal. The Believer is just twee.
I say this as a loyal reader of both.
and, further, on 2009-07-29 14:31:48.0, Wrongshore commented:
Glad to hear you're going to have at that Fugazi piece. That sparked a powerful recognition for me, and you recoiled from the premise, IIRC, that a listener would feel "ruined" by music.