Tynan's Anger

Republicans love to believe that Obama is some combination of a Manchurian Candidate, the Antichrist, and Nicolai Carpathia. I can see the logic of a fundamentalist in this case (be they libertarian or Christian), and all I can do is laugh.

What does this make me? It doesn't make me an ironist, not someone who takes politics lightly, or someone who doesn't believe that Wilson's politics are reprehensible.

Then why do I still feel like The Beavis to Obama's Henry Rollins?

Labels: barack obama, beavis and butthead, congress, henry rollins, irony, joe wilson, punk rock, republicans, stupid, watching tv

efiImage by Getty Images via DaylifeThe impact of the Barack Obama presidency is already beginning to be felt in traditionally leftist circles. Mike Daisey has already talked about how If You See Something Say Something his unscripted show attacking the military industrial complex, has already taken a different tone since the election. Jon Stewart commented on New Yorkers who are actually making eye contact. Before Obama even does a day's work as president, he has alreay inspired traditional liberals to change their minds about America in a big way. Hipsters, this decades' description of the young, artistic, independent-minded, have been buzzing. But the Obama victory may have sealed the deal on a generational shift that has occured countless times in decades previous.

Adbusters, the publication that brought you one of the most heatedly debated anti-hipster articles, has already published an article declaring apathy dead after the Obama victory. But some are deflecting the victory, saying the term hipster has been overused and misused so much that hipsterism has no meaning anymore. I have debated this topic on the Prefix forums repeatedly. But make no mistake: hipsterism has peaked; anyone who says that the term hipster has lost all its meaning is using a hipster tactic to deflect the discussion they so sorely need to have, with themselves as much as with others.

Let's be clear on one thing: the definition of what we think of when the think of the present-day hipster is easily definable. The modern hipster is a liberal arts college graduate who appreciates so-called "low" cultural works of "art" that are crude, low-quality or heavily commercialized because it is ironic. This is justified with postmodernism: If no one can develop a universal standard of what's good or bad, how can anyone say Troll 2 or Warrant is good or bad? Often, this is used to justify personal incongruities (how can I like avant-gare sculpture artists when I also appreciate the NFL)? This definition of hipster is tied to a political sense of apathy/nihilism inherited from Generation X, where a disdain for the effectiveness of politics leads youths to remove themselves from the conversation entirely.

This definition, we can all admit, has become garbled. Now, anyone can shop at American Apparel or listen to Joann Newsome and call themselves a hipster. Some will say this renders the term meaningless. But notice how saying that the definition of a word loses all its original meaning reeks of postmodern speak? And notice how admitting that lost meaning allows one to continue in the hipster mindset? One of the strongest traits of postmodernism is its infallibility—anything can be explained away in postmodernism. A whole generation has already explained away the Bush presidency. This mindset has been around for awhile.

At their core, however, humans need something to believe in, and can't remove themselves from the conversation forever. That's why I'm arguing that the election of Barack Obama is more of a symptom of a younger generation's dismissal of postmodernism-based apathy than a cause. Obama was not only a mixed racial, progressive liberal candidate for the Presidency: he was actually one who had a chance of being elected. By placing a tangible, achievable goal in front of a generation who for 8 years had felt hopeless under a Bush presidency, Obama's candidacy woke up a younger generation that was desperate for a cause but couldn't be heartbroken another time.

So yes, hipsterism has been taken over by a look and a marketing tactic. But so were the flappers, beats, hippies, punks, and Yuppies. The link that connects all of these phenomenons were that when these generational steretypes first emerged, they were new, radical and exciting. Once they became institutionalized, they ceased to be interesting, and a new tradition was paved. Hipsterism is in decline, and something new is in store. I can't predict what it will be, but I will say that apathy is nothing new to human nature. It's intellectual justification was. Keep in mind that many Obama supporters this time around were too young to fully experience the dissapointment of 2000 or 2004, This is a generation younger than the traditional hipster, one that is finally realizing that it's anger, frustrations, and importance cannot be explained away. no matter how much the increasingly graying hipsters try.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Michael Hais and Morley Winograd: It's Official: Millennials Realigned American Politics in 2008
• A New Birth of Freedom - Now Is the Time
• And I'm Barack Obama: The post-election afterglow ... [Defamer Decides 2008]

Labels: american apparel, barack obama, commodification, generation gaps, Generation X, hipsters, irony, post-modernism

Image via WikipediaYou Got Yr Link Bomb is meant as a cross between the Will Cordero Memorial Linkpunch and the Week in Review post of the Gawker Media blog of your choice. Hence: links featuring commentary with heavily regulated snark. These links did not get the full Tynan's Anger treatment, through no fault of their own.

---

My apologies for not getting this up sooner. Football and theater stopped me. In any event, here are the stories that caught my eye this week.

• As much as we worship the godfathers of punk/hardcore/indie rock/what have you, it is not a good time to be Greg Ginn. All the '80s i-rockers hate him, and he's basically become a crazy cat lady in Texas. And he hasn't even made the SST or New Alliance back catalog digital. The major benefit of the Guardian's story on SST and the former Black Flag guitarist was that we finally got to report on the Minutemen on Prefix. I had been waiting for that for months.
• Not only did Al Gore officially join the Twitterverse, he came up with some bold new strategies for Web 2.0. What gets lost in all the "I invented the Internet talk" was what the original comment actually was meant to imply: Al Gore was one of the prime movers and shakers in Congress who made the internet happen. It's only natural he'd take to social media so swimmingly.
• David Cromer, Chicago theater hotshot, will see his status in the larger American theater world upgraded after a glowing New York Times profile by Charles Isherwood. One of the biggest lapses in my four years at Chicago was missing Cromer's Our Town. It still pains me to this day that I missed it, and it diminishes my authority on Chicago theater. Trying to graduate was no excuse. Anyway, you'd think after his stunningly brilliant work on the Adding Machine that he would have gotten the attention he needed without a NYT profile. This is long overdue.
• Bullies are wired to be bullies, says a recent fMRI study. This is not just shadenfreude, or lack of empathy, it's a fundamental relishing in seeing nerds take punishment. Of course, rather than being an up to date neuropsychology enthusiast after graduation, I find out about this study in the nerdcore blog io9. I'll defend cognitive neuroscience studies probably more than I should, considering I spent my entire senior thesis dismantling one. Still though, compared to what they considered "chemistry" in the 18th century, fMRIs and EEGs ain't bad.
• What the hell will wonks do after the election? NY Mag's Intelligencer offers some suggestions, but they seem wholly insufficient. The Daily Show mocked potential coverage of the future Obama puppy, but it proved wholly portentious. In short, few things will get the interwebs off like a combination of Obama and puppies. On a side note, I'm surprise the media hasn't latched on to Obama's "mutt like me" comment as much as they have Berlusconi's "even tanned" joke. Is this a sign the media won't touch Obama on race?
• Finally, if you don't plan on having sex for the next few months, you may want to watch this series of videos from a rapper/stripper named Ecstasy, rapping about seducing plus sized women on Queens public access television. I can't tell whether these clips are deeply disturbing or hilarious; the fact that they get an endorsement from Porter Mason, the genius behind the webcomic Bassist Wanted, is probably a good sign.
  

Labels: Al Gore, barack obama, charles isherwood, chicago theater, david cromer, greg ginn, new york times, psychology, pundits, puppies, sst, the minutemen, Web 2.0, wtf

• Image by abbyladybug via FlickrHow to run a Web 2.0 campaign [Herald-Tribune]
• Maybe it's good we lost in 2004 [Mother Jones]
• What we need for the Obama presidency: more hope, less Keynes [Forbes]
• What will the media do now? Layoffs, layoffs, layoffs. [Gawker]
• Satire just became a much harder job [Salon]
• The most eloquent statement on the victory, by Ezra Klein [American Prospect]
  

Labels: barack obama, ezra klein, gawker, john mccain, layoffs, Mother Jones, msm, politics, satire, Web 2.0

Unbelievable. Try going in a time machine and telling this to someone 40 years ago. (Or 5 years ago, for that matter).

In the immortal words of Robert Redford: "What do we do now?"

Labels: barack obama, black president, history, presidential election, Robert Redford, yes we can

I’d never been to the HERE Arts Center before I saw Life After Bush; as soon as I walked in, I felt like I had suddenly wandered into a different century. New York City, fostering an artists’ colony? In 2008? Surely you must be joking!

The shock was fitting, as both the politics and the art of Life After Bush were very much throwbacks. The play’s creators, Noah Diamond, Amanda Sisk, and their Nero Fiddled theater company, are not above straight-out Bush-bashing, and their frankness would make more modest political playwrights blush. The two writer/directors have realized that depicting Bush as an idiot, his future Presidential Library as the Death Star, or the Supreme Court as picking away at Roe v. Wade doesn’t automatically discredit the intelligence of a work of art. This is the kind of blunt-object theater that American culture and media has shied away from, but that still thrives overseas. What Life After Bush shows is that there’s still a place for bluntness in American political culture (and not just on The Daily Show either).

But just because Life After Bush is obtuse doesn't mean that it's stupid. If anything, Life After Bush may be too smart. With political reference points, cultural memes, and brilliant linguistic wordplay coming at machine-gun speed, an audience can be forgiven for missing more references than they catch (but blessed be those who got the joke of a broken down John McCain calling Sarah Palin a “snow cunt.”) Life After Bush is the first play I’ve seen in a long time that effectively used absurd political humor as a weapon and not a crutch. The play is not whiny, it’s not tasteless, and it’s not even all that extremist (well, maybe a little).

What particularly impressed me about Life After Bush is how the play took a far-left political attack—a format straight out of the culture wars—and brought it into an era that, like Nero Fiddled’s main superdude Barack Obama, is pushing to move past the political conflicts of the past 40-odd years. Life After Bush mixes intelligent rhetoric with jokes about Bush’s affinity for Cadbury Creme Eggs, songs about triangulation with songs depicting Hillary Clinton as a tragic Evita Perón (“Don’t cry for me, Appalachia!”). The HERE Arts Center is planning an election bash as the play’s last hurrah. Contrary to what I expected when I first heard of the bash, I can see Life After Bush making fine use of whatever events come that night (though it may complicate things if McCain starts winning).

My one major complaint about Life After Bush is that, as sharp as its political slant remained throughout the evening, the play’s sense of theatricality was maddeningly inconsistent. The play featured occasional touches of meta-theatricality, and every time I saw one I kept waiting to see another sign. Life After Bush would turn far more heads if it used its own theatricality to make light of the theatricality of election cycles. The play that we do get always seems like a play and never like a lecture, but at many points it seemed like there was no consistent directorial vision for what exactly was supposed to be going on. Diamond and Sisk may have gotten a little caught up in their political motivations, and as a result, partially overlooked their much more essential theatrical responsibilities.

This kind of politics-first approach to political theater is exactly the kind of thing that politically-minded theater artists try to avoid like the plague. Yet Life After Bush is too intelligently written and cleverly constructed for that problem to seem all that egregious. Realizing that over 95% of the people who would attend an off-off-Broadway show in Soho would be liberal anyway, Diamond and Sisk accepted the fact that they’d be preaching to the choir and went with it. They’ve crafted an inspired, enlightening play out of that honesty. This kind of attitude towards theater will not expire on November 4, 2008. With any luck, it may even ripen.

---

Life After Bush, written, composed, produced and directed by Noah Diamond and Amanda Sisk; musical direction and arrangements by DJ Thacker; lighting design by Christopher Brown; sound design by Matthew Tennie; accompanied by David Hancock Turner. Photos by Tom Hubben and Tor-Evert Johansen

Starring Tarik Davis, Noah Diamond, Brian Louis Hoffman, Sadrina Johnson, Kim Moscaritolo, Avi Phillips, and Amanda Sisk.

Life After Bush is performed on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at 7 PM at the HERE Arts Center (145 Sixth Avenue). Tickets can be purchaed at HERE.org. The show runs through November 2, with a special election night show beginning at 6 PM on November 4.

This review was originally published on Blogcritics.

Labels: barack obama, george bush, john mccain, life after bush, political theater, presidential election

Pint-Size Politicians Channel McCain, Obama in School Elections:'Change' Factors Big in Tykes' Talking Points; A Third-Grader's Economic Platform [Wall Street Journal]

Labels: barack obama, john mccain, the onion, the wall street journal, wtf

So it turns out I won readers with my crackpot analysis of "You Really Got Me" at the DNC". I'm just as surprise as you are. But in the wake of all the liberal rock stars slamming McCain for using their songs (including one that brought significant traffic to my main music writing outlet. But since I have missed the boat on posting on this. I will defer to one of my newfound fans for some damn good analysis. Dan Luft, of Sleep Dirt (hexacorde.blogspot.com) take it away.

Labels: barack obama, foo fighters, john mccain, political songs, you really got me

So in case my minimal blogging of late wasn't enough of an indication, it seems I cannot get to blogging about everything I want to regularly. That's why every Sunday I will be posting new and noteworthy links that slipped through the cracks on Tynan's Anger, as per my tryout post on Wednesday. You Got Yr Link Bomb is meant as a cross between the Will Cordero Memorial Linkpunch and the Week in Review post of the Gawker Media blog of your choice. Hence: links featuring commentary with heavily regulated snark. These links did not get the full Tynan's Anger treatment, through no fault of their own.

---

• Starting off, we get possibly the best Onion Sports article in weeks, maybe months. In my mind, it's the best Onion sports article since the now-legendary CC Sabathia-Prince Fielder Onion article. This one has it all: it satisfies the Cowboys haters, mocks Tony Romo exactly in a way he needs to be mocked, it's a laffer, and it's got its own consistent, ridiculous grammar and style. This one gets pwus one for being a vewy funny.
• Much to my relief, Synechdote, New York not only doesn't suck, but it may be Charlie Kaufman's best movie yet. I've been excited for this movie when it was first announced over two years ago, and the delays have had me biting my nails. Now, with the exception of Doubt, there may be no movie I'm looking forward to more this Oscar season.
• Roger Ebert negatively reviews a movie that he only watched for the first 8 minutes. He immediately follows the review with a brilliant explanation of why he felt justified in doing so. It was a totally ballsy move on his part, one a lesser critic could not get away with. But the fact that he was so responsible about his explanation is probably what made it work. As a side note, in the wake of Frank Rich admitting he ignores his comments, Ebert has gone out of his way to praise his surprisingly reasoned, intelligent commenters, who have earned accolades from Computer World. Come to think of it, this may inspire a separate blog post of its own. In other news, Arlene Croce's head just exploded.
  
• Nobody likes the starfucker Ben Lyons. How we miss Roger Ebert's vocal chords. It's now a father-son competition to have the most unwatchable film review show on television. When those shows are on, I just usually pop in my Critic DVD.
• Footage from the marathon Fucked Up concert is starting to appear online. Fucked Up's blog post makes it seem like they had no part in the current video, but I suspect otherwise. Sooner or later, we're going to be talking about Fucked Up as stealing the best band in the world title in indie circles from Yo La Tengo. And by "sooner or later", I mean "now," and by "we,' I mean "I."
• In the first kinda douchey move by the otherwise genial Tim Westergren, Pandora lays off 20 employees right as the site begins making headway in its royalties battle. Is it just me, or are you already getting sick of employers using the vague term "economic realities" to justify layoffs? If it's a cost-cutting move, say it. If you're preparing for the future, say it. But "economic realities" means about as much as saying "good teams win games;" in fact, it probably means even less.
• The Trib is winning kudos in many new media advocates' eyes. Just after endorsing their first Democratic Presidential candidate ever, the paper is now considering putting a halt on their AP wire service. Needless to say, Jeff Jarvis thinks this is the bee's knees. I could think of at least three things with the word "wire" in them than I'd prefer reading to AP articles: the script of episodes of The Wire, the DVD notes to The Wire, and the lyrics to songs by the band Wire. I would however, prefer reading AP articles to Advanced Placement exams.
• Barack Hopey Obama raised what some analysts are deeming a asston of money in September. Imagine how many Main Sts. could be supported by the $150 million in Obama donations alone. If only a certain University of Chicago professor donated a fraction of that money to the school, we'd have an excuse to avoid these annoying protestors. Maybe. Probably not.
• Finally, TERRY FREAKING TATE IS BACK!!!!

Labels: barack obama, ben lyons, charlie kaufman, chicago tribune, fucked up, jeff jarvis, layoffs, pandora, roger ebert, synechdote new york, terry tate, the onion, tony romo, you got yr. link bomb

The increasing number of Jews for Obama videos is both a welcome sign and a source of interesting marketing research. If you have any Jewish relatives who are considering voting for McCain because of Israel, I'd seriously recommend sending them this blog post (especially if they live in Florida). Please let me know if you do, I will greatly appreciate it.


The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.



So what will it be? Will it be the flashy, humorous, guilt-based video with the closest thing to a Jewish sex goddess since Esther (I'm sure Sarah Silverman would love being called that), or the tough, practical orthodox Jewish mother who loves Israel and has her facts straight? I don't know which order would be better to send them in, but mix it up, and let me know.

Labels: barack obama, florida, jews, john mccain, presidential election

John Heilemann has an article in New York on how race is an unspoken factor in the opposition to Barack Obama. Fair enough, but I'm almost positive he's worried far too much and coming from a skewed perspective. Take the following quote:

In a number of key swing states, the percentage of voters who backed Clinton and who said that “the race of the candidates” was “important” in their decision was alarmingly high: in New Jersey, 9; in Ohio and Pennsylvania, more than 11.

9% is alarmingly high? Tell that to any American in 1962. That number seems quite low, considering how controversial race still is today. And how many that 9-11% would be voting for a Democrat under any circumstances?

I don't understand how pundits worried about Obama not having a 20-percentage point lead see this as proof he can't win. (For the record, Heilemann has never believed Obama could win).

Why Barack Obama Isn't Doing Better In The Polls [New York]

Labels: barack obama, john heilemann, new york magazine, politics

Look who's back at the top of the New York Times Bestseller list. Yep, it's about that time.

Labels: barack obama, new york times bestsellers, nonfiction, swift boat

Zogby has posted an electoral college map using their state-by-state poll predictions, and even with 105 electoral college votes too close to call, Obama has over 270 electoral college votes. The more conservative map at 270towin.com has Obama up 185-174, but this is still a clear indication that Obama is the prohibitive favorite at this point. He'd have to try really hard to fuck this up, or have Michelle say "whitey" sans rickroll.

Labels: barack obama, electoral college, politics

There's only so much time to post links, so here's the storys that have been getting my attention lately:

• My first major 6th grade crush turned Scientology robot Katie Holmes is headed to Broadway to star in All My Sons, in a role that awkwardly praises her legs. Sure enough, the YouTubes have already beat the future Joe Keller (John Lithgow) to it.
• Mel Brooks hams it up for an interview with the Los Angeles Times in honor of Get Smart. Best line? "You're Greek, Andreas. We don't start sentences with 'or' in America."
• While were on the topic of Mel Brooks, unless there was a Bialystock and Bloom-esque accounting scheme, those 23 year old Broadway starlets of Glory Days I blogged about have cost their producers several millions of dollars after a grand total of one performance before closing. They seem to be handling it in the manner I would: lounging about their apartments watching bad sitcom reruns
• Theater people are doing what they do best—being dramatic—over this year's Drama Desk awards. The domination of Broadway in this years awards has led to resignations, accusations, counter-accusations, and counter-counter accusations. I lost track of all the complaints by the second paragraph, but it seems the primary complaint was removing someone from an email list in a fit of anger. Leave it to theater people to see having less email clutter as a source of outrage.
• Michael Feingold at The Village Voice has an excellent article on the resurgence of the musical in recent years. No snarky remark here, just damn good commentary to be found
• Finally, The Guardian has a post up on the theatricality of Barack Obama's speechmaking, echoing W.J.T Mitchell's commentary in my Theories of Media class this winter. Sometimes I wonder if I would be supporting Obama as strongly if I hadn't seem his 2004 Democratic Convention speech live, but based on my demographics, it'd be a miracle if I wasn't an Obama supporter anyway.
  

Labels: all myy sons, barack obama, drama desk awards, drama queenery, get smart, glory days, john lithgow, katie holmes, links, mel brooks, musicals, village voice