democracy is coming...

One of the easiest punchlines in pop culture during the past decade or two has been Axl Rose of Guns 'N Roses fame. Why? Because he's been working on a new G 'N R record since I was in high school. Well, "Chinese Democracy" is finally out. Many fans (those with much patience, I guess) have been looking forward to its release. Me, I've been looking forward to Chuck Klosterman's review of the record moreso than the record itself. First, because I think Klosterman is really funny. Second, because he's made his career cracking wise about Axl Rose's pretentions. Like pretty much Klosterman's whole body of work, his review of "Democracy" doesn't disappoint, in large part because the review is so self aware:

Reviewing Chinese Democracy is not like reviewing music. It's more like reviewing a unicorn. Should I primarily be blown away that it exists at all? Am I supposed to compare it to conventional horses? To a rhinoceros? Does its pre-existing mythology impact its actual value, or must it be examined inside a cultural vacuum, as if this creature is no more (or less) special than the remainder of the animal kingdom? I've been thinking about this record for 15 years; during that span, I've thought about this record more than I've thought about China, and maybe as much as I've thought about the principles of democracy. This is a little like when that grizzly bear finally ate Timothy Treadwell: Intellectually, he always knew it was coming. He had to. His very existence was built around that conclusion. But you still can't psychologically prepare for the bear who eats you alive, particularly if the bear wears cornrows.

The AV Club is the perfect venue for Klosterman's review. A venue for snark. Not quite as hipster-snooty as Pitchfork (which AV Club scoops with its review of Chinese Democracy!). A place wear Klosterman can stretch out and say what he wants to say about the record, himself, the whole Axl spectacle. The release of "Democracy" represents a real head-exploding, end-of-an-era, kind of pop culture moment. Nixon and Elvis shaking hands at the White House. A member of Public Enemy getting a reality tv show. But it's also inevitably disappointing. Kind of like if the Beatles would have accepted Lorne Michaels' invitation to reunite on Saturday Night Live in the 70s.

I don't have much interest in listening to "Chinese Democracy." But the review interests me very much. Klosterman's review also has a head-exploding kind of quality to it. It's like if David Sedaris' family released exhaustive, hidden camera footage of Sedaris' youth. Or if O.J. Simpson and the Goldman family all became buddies. All of a sudden, everything changes. I'm using hyperbole here. I mean, Klosterman has other obsessions--KISS comes to mind, not to mention his interest in why Billy Joel doesn't have more critical acclaim, etc. And I genuinely admire the way Klosterman reveres his subject matter and points to its absurdity all at once. He really is one of my favorite writers.

the big three killed my baby

Local news media here in Detroit have begun to rally with much enthusiasm around the auto industry. But is the job of the media to rally around anything?

Proponents and opponents of particular causes seem to think the press should offer its "support" or "opposition" for those causes. The result is that pundits make odd statements like "The media doesn't support the president." Huh?

I don't kid myself into believing that some idealized version of objectivity can be attained. The media always filters, emphasizes and de-emphasizes, foregrounds and backgrounds, includes and excludes. But that doesn't negate the basic responsibilty of the press: report and inform. Even in a time of war, the press needs to report on what's going on, thereby keeping us informed.

Back to the auto industry. In both op-ed pages and front-page news articles, the local press has not created spaces to question the current moment and consider the complexities and implications of whether the federal government should loan the auto industry $25 billion. It's simply taken for granted that Detroit ought to get these loans.

Those who oppose--or even question--the loans are showing "vitriol" for car companies. They "hate the industry" and "rely on half-truths and lies."

Look, for various reasons I hope that congress acts quickly and makes these loans. Otherwise, the state where I live will likely slip into a massive recession. Otherwise, taxpayers will likely have to pay even more to contend with the unemployment and crime which will result. Let me be clear: I'm in favor of the loans.

But I'm also in favor of reasoned debate. I want to hear multiple points-of-view. I don't think the debate benefits from dismissing opponents of the loan as hateful or uninformed. How do you know that opposition to the loans is necessarily an expression of vitriol? How do you know opposition necessarily results from being misinformed?

I actually think it's better for the auto industry and for workers to make room for multiple perspectives. Let's talk about the business practices that led to the current situation. Let's talk about the American auto industry's lack of committment to hybrids and opposition to environmental regulation. Too many in the local media think the current moment is a moment where we should shut up and "support" the industry. I'm pro-union and pro-Michigan. I'm also pro-information. Don't try to silence the various points-of-view that are floating around out there.

opulent to homeless?

So last night Nicole and I slept in a $300 per night hotel room.

A friend of ours had a convention at the MGM Grand, one of Detroit's gigantic new casinos. The organizers blocked too many rooms and they would have remained empty, so our pal put out an e-mail yesterday offering free rooms. Free night at a fancy place? We accepted.

Normally I tend to hate casinos. Not for any moral reason necessarily, they're just depressing. And the glassy-eyed patrons tend to be so focused on the reason they're there--as if it's a business venture--that they don't strike me as very friendly. But Nicole and I did decide to splurge and play $20 on a 'Deal or No Deal' slot machine. We quickly turned our $20 into $35 and quit.

The hotel room. Really something else. Flat-screen tv in the room, and one embedded in the mirror of the bathroom. Fancy sheets. A view of the Ambassador Bridge. The whole deal. Worth $300? I just find it hard to believe anybody in this state (or even visiting this state) has that much money. At any rate, we had a very nice time.

Ironically enough, this a.m. I'm off to the HAND (Homeless Action Network of Detroit) march downtown with a group of my service learning students. They've been hammering away at the research projects they've been doing in consultation with HAND and I'm excited for them to see another view of the organization. Too bad it's looking like freezing rain all day. Bundle up.

Lessenberry

Ever-incorrigible Detroit-area journalist and critic Jack Lessenberry shared his post-election thoughts with UM-Dearborn. Among other points, he emphasized that the 2010 elections here in Michigan look to be huge in terms of their potential impact on the state. New governor and lieutenant governor, massive turnover in both the state house and state senate, the possibility of a new Michigan Constitution (apparently, every sixteen years, we have the option to re-write the thing!). As always, he offered his wry observations about the right wing. On Sarah Palin, he said, and I'm paraphrasing here: 'She was like steroids. She gave a quick boost. But in the end, she killed him.'

a thought

Is it just me, or has Sarah Palin given more interviews in the past four days than she did during the whole campaign?

high standards

For the first few weeks of my comp classes this term, I leaned heavily on political rhetoric. We looked at speeches, representations in the popular press, and pretty much anything and everything associated with the presidential campaign. I used Don Lazere's 'Ground Rules for Polemicists' and some other very useful materials from his Reading and Writing for Civic Literacy text. The 'Ground Rules' challenge students' perceptions of how arguments work and should work. Lazere sets a high bar for the ethics of political rhetoric, for instance, emphasizing the importance of fully and fairly representing opposition perspectives, avoiding ad hominem attacks, and so forth.

Have others out there used Lazere? Any thoughts on this? One challenge is how to reconcile his guidelines with the realities of political discourse. My students have essentially concluded that nobody really follows these ground rules. Not on cable news, certainly, but not on op-ed pages either. I can't say I disagree with their assessments, but one of the things I'm trying to do is to temper their critiques of the current climate with genre realities. For instance, an op-ed piece simply doesn't allow enough space to do all the things Lazere suggests. A couple hundred words, max. It's simply not possible to represent "fully" the mythic "other side."

We've had some good discussions that come down to the notion that something's gotta give. Following any set of ground rules for argumentats limits the possibilities, putting regulations of sorts on Aristotle's definition of rhetoric ("all" the available means of persuasion). If you follow Lazere's rules, you draw on all the ethical means. One downside to using Lazere: students often end up looking for this impossible an untenable "bias free" political rhetoric. Again, I need to do a better job teaching civic genres. I keep writing on student papers things like "but an op-ed is SUPPOSED to advance a particular p-o-v."

Monday Miscelaneous

--Interesting but too brief op-ed in today's Free Press about muslim community's support of Obama. This might be worth discussing in classes this week. Interesting demographic factoid: only two percent of American muslims (in a ten-state, 600-person poll) voted for McCain.

--Just picked up: The Clash, "Live at Shea Stadium." What a great piece of work. The setlist is a veritable greatest hits. The band's legendary energy, in full effect on "Shea Stadium," is remarkable, given that they're in front of tens of thousands of Who fans standing around in the rain. They transcend the "opening act" label and give every fan who thought she was paying to see The Who's "final" tour her money's worth, and then some.

--A lovely snow this a.m. I hit Coffee Beanery bright and early and got some good work done. Most productive morning in some time, in fact. Maybe the brisk air. Maybe the pretty white stuff covering Woodward.

--Facebook? Way addictive. Not sure whether or not I'm glad about succumbing.

whole texts

Students in my service learning sections of comp this term have been writing about Paul Loeb's book The Soul of a Citizen, a book that's critical of the limits of volunteerism but hopeful about the possibility of community. Largely the best work the students have done all term. My sense is that part of the reason why is that we devoted significant amounts of class time to discussing and doing some low-stakes writing about the book. They've been engaging with the text for weeks, and I think the writing reflects that longer-term engagement.

But what interests me as much as the quality of the work the students are producing is the fact that we're using a whole book. The whole text "movement"--if there is such a thing--probably relies too heavily on nostalgic and mythic arguments (e.g., students don't read). And yet I've felt called in recent years in this direction. Part of it is a general dislike for textbooks. Also, I'm just tired, after a decade or so of teaching writing, of "readers." Too many excerpts. Too much canonizing of "essays," a genre so disparate and big umbrella that it's lost meaning.

While I don't buy into the nostalgic elements of the pro-whole text arguments, I do buy into the value of engaging with book-length pieces of non-fiction. Books can create sustained discussions (I know, so can a series of excerpts on a common theme). Books resist the imperative to take small bites of texts and writers.

I'm inclined to keep experimenting with whole texts in just about all of the undergrad classes I teach. So far I've seen benefits in terms of creating a space that's intellectual and discussion-oriented. A piece of non-fiction like Loeb's book models lots of rhetorical devices and presents lots of writing opportunities.

what's the deal?

I'm very new to the facebook world, but I'm already wondering how they target particular advertisements to particular users. Apparently I'm in need of dissertation and weight-loss help.

i can tell that we are gonna be friends

Hey, I'm on facebook now. If you are too, then send me a message.

election night

After teaching on Tuesday, I headed for my local Obama office and did get-out-the-vote canvassing for seven hours. Holy macaroni, my feet were yelling by the time the sun set over Berkley. In 2004, I spent election day coordinating phone banks, so I was indoors. This year, two words: The. Pavement. In addition to trying to convince people to vote their way, campaigns spend months gathering more and better information about voters. Then, on election day, that data gets put to use. We had lists of "likely Obama supporters" and "definite Obama supporters" and did anything we could to get them to the polls. Free rides. Reminders. Incessant knocking on doors. Hey, and I got a free t-shirt out of the deal. Things started to get surreal around 6:00, after the sun went down, and while walking the neighborhoods, you could look in windows and see EVERY television tuned to the news. Sean Hannity. Katie Couric. Those airbrushed faces projected onto the cool Autumn streets.

Polls closed at 8:00. Headed home, took a quick shower, had a quick sandwich, and Nicole and I went to a County Democrat party. Expensive cash bar, kind of boring and stuffy, too loud to hear the televisions. So we headed to a results-watching party in Berkley organized by a judicial candidate who we'd supported actively. His whole crew was there, along with lots of members of our town's democrat club. Clearly the better party. Plus, cheap beer and burgers. Woo-hoo. Several recounts of absebtee ballots resulted in a lot of nail-biting, but in the end, Jamie Wittenberg (a classmate of Nicole's) is our new district judge. Less nail-biting over President-Elect Obama. How good does it feel to type those words? We were all kind of freaking out, in a pensive and cautious way, when they called Pennsylvania so quickly. Then Ohio. Then Florida. As soons as west-coast polls closed, McCain gave his very gracious and thoroughly classy (and already malaligned as wimpy by Limbaugh et al) concession speech.

What's that line that Garrison Keilor always uses about doing good work? That's what kept running through my head, as I thought about the prospects of an optimistic, progressive, ethical leader for our country. Now do good work. And the rest of us: Hold Obama accountable. Hold the democrat-controlled legislature accountable. Insist they keep promises. Insist they maintain the integrity, the optimism, the reform, and the legislative agenda they've preached. Health care. Lower taxes for working and middle classes. Troop withdrawal. Better support for education at all levels. Anybody going to inauguration? At midnight on Tuesday night, I text-messaged by nephew at Georgetown and threatened to crash on his dorm floor if need be!

this is pretty cool...

freaks and geeks

This term I'm teaching one of my favorite classes, English 327, an advanced writing course for education majors. The class presents a cool opportunity to talk about writing in a variety of contexts including the context of K-12 schools. And while I never teach the class as a methods class, I do try to make assignments flexible enough to encompass concerns and issues related to public education, child development, and the like.

For example, we just read a novel (more or less, a piece of "young-adult lit") called "Twisted," an angsty and interesting narrative about a suburban high school kid who finds himself in a culture of violence, first as a victim of bullying and later, as...well, I don't want to give it away. Read the book. Well worth your time. Students have designed some interesting writing projects connected to the text, some opting for more traditional kinds of textual analysis and others looking at the book critical and popular reception among various audiences.

They've been working pretty hard, so tomorrow we're going to spend half of class watching an episode of "Freaks and Geeks," the canceled-before-its-time show which presents some neat connections to the novel. The show follows two cliques in a circa-1980 suburban Detroit high school: stoners and nerds. Much of the action centers on Lindsay, who decides to leave the world of mathletes and try to become a "freak." I've never seen anything on tv as well-written. The premise sounds "after school special" but always transcends those cliches, opting instead for one relentlessly awkward representation of adolescence after another: the stoner serenading his girlfriend with Styx's "Lady," the peanut allergy that results in an ER visit, gym class scenes, and the geeks watching a stag film.

The show was clearly headed for cancellation and the last few episodes really expand the thin-line-between-stoner-and-nerd theme begun with Lindsay's clique switch. One of the freaks gets caught with dope and has to join A/V as punishment, subsequently realizing how awesome Dungeons and Dragons is. In the series finale, Lindsay blows off academic camp in Ann Arbor and runs away with deadheads for the summer. A perfectly surreal-yet-banal ending to the series. The school's hippy guidance counselor turns her onto the Grateful Dead, loaning her a copy of "American Beauty" he thinks will speak to her angst. It does. I don't even like the Dead very much, but when she puts on "Box of Rain" in her bedroom, it's a moment of transcendence:

Look out any window
any morning, any evening, any day.
Maybe the sun is shining
birds are winging
rain is falling from a heavy sky
what do you want me to do?

Anyway, great book and great show. And those 327 students have earned half a casual class.

go make history everybody

Nicole and I completed our election day ritual of getting to our polling place before opening time. Angell Elementary School in Berkley, Michigan, about 6:50 a.m. About fifty people lined up, one of whom had passed out. She was on a stretcher, being loaded onto an ambulance when we arrived. Delicious, warm cup of Abuelita ("little granny," a Mexican hot cocoa) in hand, I took my spot and waited about thirty minutes to vote, feeling for the first time since 1996 like I was voting *for* a person instead of just voting *against* another person. I bid farewell to Nicole, my wife/precinct captain, and headed to campus for an abbreviated teaching day. Soon it's off to campaign headquarters for an afternoon of labor (getting out the vote, kicking out the jams, etc.), then an evening of parties. Hopefully celebratory parties. Please, please, please go live history, everybody. You know what my man Howard Zinn said, 'You can't stand still on a moving train.'

wow part 2

wow

Two items of interest, both from the 'republicans seem to be imploding' file:

First, ABC's Elizabeth Vargas asks Sarah Palin is she has aspirations for 2012. Her response: "I'm not doing this for naught."

Second, and this one deserves to be quoted at length, George Will's column today, the headline of which reads "John the Careless." Will hits hard the missteps of the McCain-Palin campaign, and gets at what he sees as the problematics of both of their attitudes and agendas.

From the invasion of Iraq to the selection of Sarah Palin, carelessness has characterized recent episodes of faux conservatism. Tuesday's probable repudiation of the Republican Party will punish characteristics displayed in the campaign's closing days.

Some polls show that Palin has become an even heavier weight in John McCain's saddle than his association with George W. Bush. Did McCain, who seems to think that Palin's never having attended a "Georgetown cocktail party" is sufficient qualification for the vice presidency, lift an eyebrow when she said that vice presidents "are in charge of the United States Senate"?

She may have been tailoring her narrative to her audience of third-graders, who do not know that vice presidents have no constitutional function in the Senate other than to cast tie-breaking votes. But does she know that when Lyndon Johnson, transformed by the 1960 election from Senate majority leader into vice president, ventured to the Capitol to attend the Democratic senators' weekly policy luncheon, the new majority leader, Montana's Mike Mansfield, supported by his caucus, barred him because his presence would be a derogation of the Senate's autonomy?

Perhaps Palin's confusion about the office for which she is auditioning comes from listening to its current occupant. Dick Cheney, the foremost practitioner of this administration's constitutional carelessness in aggrandizing executive power, regularly attends the Senate Republicans' Tuesday luncheons. He has said jocularly that he is "a product" of the Senate, which pays his salary, and that he has no "official duties" in the executive branch. His situational constitutionalism has, however, led him to assert, when claiming exemption from a particular executive order, that he is a member of the legislative branch and, when seeking to shield certain of his deliberations from legislative inquiry, to say that he is a member of the executive branch.

Palin may be an inveterate simplifier; McCain has a history of reducing controversies to cartoons. A Republican financial expert recalls attending a dinner with McCain for the purpose of discussing with him domestic and international financial complexities that clearly did not fascinate the senator. As the dinner ended, McCain's question for his briefer was: "So, who is the villain?"

cooking continues

Last night, after a long day at work, I made a potato and leek gratin, based loosely on a recipe in the NYTimes last week. Another good fall dish. I used a lot more cumin than the recipe suggested, decreased the salt, and subbed skim milk. Not bad. Creamy, rich, and bitey from the leeks and garlic.

Plans have come together for a Halloween party this Friday. My parents, Anna and company, and miscelaneous friends and neighbors. Menu: walking tacos, Brier Hill pizza made by my folks, some baked fish with fresh lime for anybody not wanting to dig on the tacos, and some version of the salad I usually make when my sister comes over (romaine, hearts of palm, walnuts, and tart apples with a yogurt dressing). Agenda: hand out candy; go check out over-the-top, scare-the-local-kiddies yards in our neighborhood; and who knows what else? Should be fun.

Also cooking (not in the kitchen): Tonight is election town hall down on my campus, to be televised locally on public tv. Many of my students are attending, some are participating, and I told them I'd be there. Almost caught up on paper grading. I can't recall feeling so overwhelmed by the paper load in years. What's going on? And on a serious note...shout out to Bill H. from my Peace and Justice group who's giving a kidney to another parishioner at our church this afternoon. Be well!

fall food

Fall is my favorite time of year: moderate weather (ok, it's freezing in Detroit), the opportunity to meet new students, my birthday. Oh yeah, and the food. Local markets start to carry honeycrisp apples. We make the annual trip to our local cider mill.

I've already made what Nicole and I consider the ultimate fall dish: pumpkin pasta. A delicious combination of diced bacon, fresh pumpkin, sage, chicken stock, parmesan cheese, and a little heavy cream, served over rigatoni.

We also had walking tacos. I'm not sure if this is a fall thing or not, but we made them on Sunday and they tasted great. Never had a walking taco? Take a single-serving bag of frito's and put taco fixins (seasoned ground meat, veggies, cheese, sour cream, whatever you like) right into the bag with the chips. Stir and eat with a fork while walking around. Walking taco.

W

A cold fall weekend in Michigan. Get Out The Vote canvassing for Obama on both Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Paper grading. Pouring through a couple more episodes of The Wire Season 1 (for such a non-sentimental piece of work, the show almost choked me up when Keema got shot). Our niece Jenna spent the night on Saturday night. She didn't like Mongolian BBQ at all. What kid doesn't like to choose his/her own raw meat or fish and veggies and then watch college kids make your stir-fry while flipping huge, metal grill sticks and yelling uninteligible things? Seemed like a sure thing, but was a bust. Jenna did seem to like driving around our town to check out the Halloween decorations and going to see High School Musical 3.

I couldn't bring myself to watch HSM3 (and yet I can bring myself to type the abbreviation?) so while Jenna and Nicole dug on the musical I wandered next door at the multiplex and saw 'W,' the Oliver Stone pic about our current prez. W--the film that is--had no discernible point, no consistent vision, no sustained insights into W or his inner circle. W amounted to two hours of actors doing (mostly very good) impressions of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al. More an exercise in mimicry than a narrative or even a character sketch, the film was, in short, pretty bad.

Thandie Newton's performance as Condi Rice was bizarre. She just kind of sat there and quaked a little bit, neverously and robotically glancing around the room. She looked animatronic, like she belonged in the Hall of Presidents at Disney World. Anytime I've seen her on television, Rice has looked confident and stoic, so the portrayal made no sense to me at all.

And I didn't think the film was a hatchet job on Bush either. At least a hatchet job would have had a clearer vision. The representation of W didn't strike me as skewed or distorted. If anything, it struck closely to a well-documented mythology of W that is very familiar to even casual observers of the political process. W. didn't do particularly well in college or in the business world. He drank way too much when he was in his 20s and 30s. He struggled to please his dad. He became an Evangelical Christian and fell in with a social movement bent on moving the GOP away from fiscal convervativism and toward a family values-driven agenda. He surrounded himself with more experienced folks and gave them more power than vice-presidents, cabinet secretaries, and deputy chiefs of staff usually have been given. If you haven't seen the film yet, I just ruined it for you. I left the theater with an overwhelming sense of "no shit, Sherlock."

I also left the theater wondering about the film's target audience. Lefties and Bush bashers? If so, I should have liked the film more. A heavier-handed or more salacious film--one that showed W doing hard drugs or foregrounded the illegalities of pre-emptive war and U.N. violations, for instance--would have had a more affective, rally-the-left-base relationship with its audience. Undecided voters as audience? Maybe, but I don't think anybody stuck in the middle of this presidential election would be swayed by anything in the film. There's little if any polemic. This isn't a Michael Moore film. The best comparison would be The Queen (about Queen Elizabeth II during the week that Princess Diana died), a much, much better film that managed to reveal something in the psyches of its main characters. In addition to containing more internal landscapes than W, The Queen also concerned itself with public figures who had enigmatic characteristics. By virtue of media exposure and scrutiny from the left as well as the superficial nature of his own personality and intellect, there's not much we don't know about W. There's nothing to peel back.

more miscelaneous

Lute Olson retires from Arizona. I never heard a bad word about Olson during my years in Tucson. An icon. I wonder how the Wildcats are going to do without him.

'Get out the vote' canvassing on both Saturday and Sunday with our town's democrat club. Not since '96 have I felt like I'm voting for a guy, as opposed to voting *against* the other guy.

Great line from The Wire (I'm almost through season one on dvd): "In this town, there's a thin line between campaign poster and photo array."

My students in the two service-learning, pilot sections of comp start their group projects this weekend, researching and writing neighborhood field reports for the Homeless Action Network of Detroit. Gearing up for the first round of research, the students seemed genuinely excited about doing something real. They're designing GIS maps, conducting interviews with neighborhood merchants, and writing reports that will hopefully help HAND in its census efforts.

Must get back to reading student papers...