Brown’s 40th Spring Weekend: Snoop Dogg, Wale, MGMT, Major Lazer, The Black Keys
[via BlogDailyHerald]

This is George, a blue great dane. He is four years old and weighs 245 pounds. His owner says, “He’s very unique.” George sleeps in a queen-sized bed.

So what if I don’t like Jeff Buckley?

More on my weird Lady Gaga-dislike obsession:
From the New York Times (of course):

“Lady Gaga, whose outfits are light-years more avant-garde than her catchy pop tunes.”

(Thank you, Ryan.)

Moulitsas offers a link to the poll’s crosstabs, but I’m still a little skeptical (hopeful?)—after all, the results come from a lefty blogger for work on a book called American Taliban.. But maybe the poll’s legit (it probably is).

From the poll (via Daily Kos):
Thirty-nine percent of Republicans (remember, self-identified) think Obama should be impeached, 32 percent think he shouldn’t, and 29 percent aren’t sure. A whopping 63 percent of those polled think Obama is a socialist, 21 percent think he’s not, and 16 percent aren’t sure. Forty-two percent think Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. Just 14 percent think Palin isn’t more qualified to be president than Obama, while 53 percent think she is, and 33 percent aren’t sure.
More than three-quarters of respondents think same-sex couples should not be allowed to marry. And 91 percent support the death penalty. Back to the gays—73 percent think openly gay people should not be allowed to teach in public schools, 8 percent think they should, and 19 percent aren’t sure.
The poll’s numbers for sexism issues are slightly more optimistic: Thirteen percent think men are the leaders of their households, 76 percent think marriages are equal partnerships, and 11 percent aren’t sure.
But then abortion takes away some of that female power: Thirty-one percent think contraceptive use should be outlawed. And 76 percent consider abortion murder, with just 8 percent who don’t think so, and 16 percent unsure.

Yikes.

Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs is not about September 11, 2001. It is not about terrorism or the military or George W. Bush. But it might be about globalization and war and Barack Obama. Still, it is not about 9/11.

Last August, the New York Times Book Review named Moore’s novel one of the “Books of the Times.” (Ha—even the most self-proclaimed highfalutin paper can’t avoid that pun.) Michiko Kakutani writes:

Ms. Moore has written her most powerful book yet, a book that gives us an indelible portrait of a young woman coming of age in the Midwest in the year after 9/11 and her initiation into the adult world of loss and grief.

Later:

With affection and a keen sense of the absurd, she gives us bright, digital snapshots of flyover country where nearly ever small town has a local Dairy Queen, where customers wait in lines, even in winter[…].

And in a recent issue of McSweeney’s (the one disguised as a Sunday newspaper), Juliet Litman writes:

Beginning with the falling towers, 9/11 serves as the traumatic backdrop in front of which many personal tragedies unfold. It is not quite the central trauma—the novel is too sprawling for that—but it also never really fades from view. Tassie’s brother considers enlisting in the military; she herself becomes involved with a possible member of a sleeper cell.

A Gate at the Stairs is not about 9/11 not because the story mentions it only in passing, and also not because the story takes place soon after 9/11. It is not about 9/11 not because the character with vaguely terrorist-seeming inklings comes and goes, and also not because the protagonist’s brother, in joining the army, does not realize the already gone-awry painfully lie-based war plans the president has whipped up.

The book is not about 9/11 because it is about the Midwest, not New York or Washington, D.C., not the relatives about people killed in New York or Washington, D.C. on 9/11, not the soldiers fighting because (and “because”) of 9/11, nor their families. It is not about politics, but it is about civil rights. It is not about the East Coast, but it is about the middle of the country.

Though Kakutani avoids saying “waiting on lines,” the sentiment—of New York-centric, fuck-the-rest-of–the–country-where-everyone-is-dull-and-nicely-ignorant (except in California)—is still there. To Kakutani, the middle of the country is no more than “flyover country,” a link between the nervous bustle of New York City and the stoned and tanned calm of Los Angeles. How could this be the conclusion of any thoughtful reader after coming to the end of Moore’s beautiful story of Midwestern pride, angst, unease, and intellect? The book hardly leaves the “flyover country,” and the main airplane flight is from one point in Wisconsin (for those who have never stopped in the middle: a state up north, with Dairy Queens and colleges and lakes and forests and mountains and bears and liberal politics and cheese and racism and literature and photography) to another.

9/11 never fades from view only if the reader, after finishing the book, goes back and insists on its presence. It is a false insistence and results in a false interpretation that misses out on the central social themes of the novel: contemporary racism in a culture that’s supposed to have secured civil rights for its citizens, coming of age surrounded by intellectualism—both false and real, and the universal troubles that strike everyone—even those in the Midwest—with the same worry and thought.

Moore begins the novel, after all, with an intrinsically Midwestern sentence: “The cold came late that fall and the songbirds were caught off guard.”

Her narrator is self-conscious of how often she says “sounds good,” which, to her, is the Midwestern girl’s go-to response.

Indeed, the novel is “post-9/11,” as Jonathem Lethem (fairly) calls it in his New York Times review, but it is in the way that everything that happens after a date is post-that-date. And the way that everything that happens after 9/11 will be colored by the government’s response, but not necessarily the act of terrorism itself.

New York City critics have long insisted upon New York themes where there are none. They have long spoken of the Midwest as if no one in the Midwest were literate enough to receive and resist their insults. But using 9/11 for their cause—that’s new. And it’s disgraceful.

It used to be that most musicians could play instruments—no one was ever surprised that Bob Dylan knew some guitar chords.

And since when is believing in social equality something special? Of course rallying for civil rights is worth praising, but elevating it to some level of celebrity makes it unattainable and unusual—that is, not the norm. When supporting gay people is something unique, it’s no wonder more people don’t do it—they necessarily can’t, according to the definition that supports Gaga. That’s like praising science teachers for teaching evolution. Evolution, like civil rights, isn’t based on beliefs but instead on knowledge and intellect. There’s no harm in supporting teaching evolution and legitimizing social equality, but when those actions make someone special, the actions become elite and exclusive.

The hair, the hair. Ok, it’s fun to look at. But still.

Performativity
Some argue that Gaga’s artistic achievement comes from her performance of celebrity. She performs her role as a famous person, they say; her fame comes from within, not from without. It is imposed on society, they say, not the other way around. By performing celebrity—and gender, others argue—she is intellectualizing fame.

There must be an argument against this. Thoughts?