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The Man in the Mirror

A harshly brilliant take on the symbolism of Michael Jackson's demise at Clusterfuck Nation:

Like the USA, Michael Jackson was a has-been. He hadn't recorded a song worth listening to in over two decades. He had done almost nothing but spin his wheels, hop around the globe from one place to another at enormous expense, and make himself available for award ceremonies to stoke his ego (and give advertisers a reason to promote some televised award show). He existed strictly on image, an anorectic figure nourished by moonbeams of attention, famous for saying that he loved his worshippers when the truth was he merely sucked the life out of them. In his last years, he even looked a bit like Nosferatu, the personification of the un-dead, and his fascination with ghouls was the basis for his biggest hit way back in the last century. A zombie nation deserves a zombie mascot.
He was a poseur, vamping in weird military outfits as though he were a five-star general in the Honduran army, or a character from a melodrama by the reprobate Jean Genet. He once materialized during halftime at the Superbowl in a shower of sparks, thrilling the multitudes while grabbing and stroking his sex organs, as though that was a heroic activity -- and indeed the nation seemed to emulate him as its culture became dedicated more and more to acting out masturbation fantasies. America was a fat man jerking off on the sofa watching a vampire of no particular sex vogue deliriously on the boob tube.

Like I said, harsh, but brilliant, the way the sunlight at midday can pummel you with clarity. Kunstler's essay finishes with a bang:

When he dropped dead last week, the nation's morbidly maudlin response suggested a cover story for the relief of being rid of him and all the embarrassment he provoked. One CNN reporter called him a genius the equal of Mozart. That's a little like calling Rachel Maddow the reincarnation of Eleanor Roosevelt. A nation addicted to lying to itself tells itself fairy tales instead of facing a pathology report. Yet, like Michael Jackson, the undertone of horror story still pulses darkly in the background. The little boy who grew up to be the simulation of a girl was really a werewolf. The nation that defeated manifest evil in World War Two woke up one day years later to find itself stripped of its manhood, mentally enslaved to cheap entertainments, and hostage to its own grandiosity. Maybe in grieving so exorbitantly over this freak America is grieving for itself. All the loose talk about "love" from the media and the fans gives off the odor of self-love. America is "the man in the mirror," the gigantic, floundering Narcissus, sailing into the stormy seas of history.

The economics of free

Malcolm Gladwell reviews Free by Chris Anderson: Books: The New Yorker

The internet has screwed the old rules for making money on media content.

Understanding Credit Card Debt

Understanding Credit Card Debt & Credit Card Late Fees -- see the cool infographic at Mint.com

Does the Obama Plan for Reforming Wall Street Measure Up?

Robert Reich doesn't think so.... [@ RGE monitor]

Signs of the times: partial mobility

Financial Armageddon: Following the Same Path

Although history never quite repeats itself, that doesn't mean there aren't parallels to the past. One of the iconic images of the Great Depression was of men and families being forced to venture out -- often very far -- from home turf, looking for paying work and cheaper places to live. Amid the worst economic contraction since that time, many Americans are discovering that, as the Wall Street Journal reports in "Unemployed Hit the Road to Find Jobs," they must follow a similar path in order to survive.

Virginia Woolf on throw-away books

Books that Die a Natural Death: The Book Bench: Online Only: The New Yorker:

"Books ought to be so cheap that we can throw them away if we do not like them, or give them away if we do. Moreover, it is absurd to print every book as if it were fated to last a hundred years. The life of the average book is perhaps three months. Why not face this fact? Why not print the first edition on some perishable material which would crumble to a little heap of perfectly clean dust in about six months time? If a second edition were needed, this could be printed on good paper and well bound. Thus by far the greater number of books would die a natural death in three months or so. No space would be wasted and no dirt would be collected."

A Snake Eating Its Own Tail

Clusterfuck Nation:
"the nation is lumbering toward an epochal moment of truth when the non-viability of how we get by day-to-day is exposed for all to see, including those other nations who have been lending us colossal sums of their hard-earned money to keep our operations afloat. This will be the moment when the US renounces its debt -- or just proves unable to continue pretending to service it. This moment is liable to come sometime after the middle of this summer. It will be the moment when all the green shoots babytalk stops and the scope of onrushing hardship becomes self-evident. It will be the moment when all of America finds itself in something like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when the federal government proves comically impotent and the cold reality hits that we're now all on our own."

So you lost your job: now what?

Financial Armageddon: Mother Lode of Online Resources for the Unemployed

PennSound: Allen Ginsberg

PennSound adds a couple recordings to its archive of Allen Ginsberg audio, found among Robert Creeley's reel-to-reel tape collection. They include a Vancouver reading from 1963 and a conversation with Creeley from 1978.

Public Art and Public Eyesores

KunstlerCast #69 eviscerates the public art of Troy NY.

Breaking the Bank

via The Big Picture

In Breaking the Bank, FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk (Inside the Meltdown, Bush’s War) draws on a rare combination of high-profile interviews with key players Ken Lewis and former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain to reveal the story of two banks at the heart of the financial crisis, the rocky merger, and the government’s new role in taking over — some call it “nationalizing” — the American banking system.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Bank of America Chief Resigns After Bonus Boondoggle (abcnews.go.com)
• John Thain ousted at Merrill Lynch (meganmcardle.theatlantic.com)
• Bank of America had role in Merrill bonuses FT reports (telegraph.co.uk)

Marcel Proust: Beyond the Madeleines

Literary Kicks offers a nice and easy introduction to the world of Proust.

About f*ckin time...

It appears that summer concert ticket prices are coming down. cf. AC/DC Recession Special | The Big Picture

Death of the large scale record store.

Last Virgin Megastore in New York Closes - NYTimes.com

Pilgrims

from Ploughshares, the literary journal:

Pilgrims
by Julie Orringer

It was Thanksgiving Day and hot, because this was New Orleans; they were driving uptown to have dinner with strangers. Ella pushed at her loose tooth with the tip of her tongue and fanned her legs with the hem of her velvet dress. On the seat beside her, Benjamin fidgeted with his shirt buttons. He had worn his pilgrim costume, brown shorts and a white shirt and yellow paper buckles taped to his shoes. In the front seat their father drove without a word, while their mother dozed against the window glass. She wore a blue dress and a strand of jade beads and a knit cotton hat beneath which she was bald.

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