Lenin’s Tomb
But where is the lid?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W...h?v=WkZ-Cogr-
rM
You know America is the one place where the self-emancipation of the working class doesn't apply. We'll have to liberate them by force (armed expoditions from Mexico probably). Those who resist will be shipped off to Australia (plus la change).
Roobin I like your thinking.
With the news of Castro stepping down, I think today would be a good day to reflect on Cuba, which means everyone should be at their America-hating best!
Sniff. I'm sooo moved. Then again, as we all know, you're the 51st State anyway.
That could have been a literal reality.
What, and give up a vote on the UNSC? Was he mad?
Dig the 80s production values:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d...h?v=d-
OzdiaJZkw
Is it truly crystal clear the corridors of power are in the US rather than the UK? The extant lines of power in the ME were drawn by the British, anyway. Too bad, but I haven't eaten much pie lately.
Well, nice to know that the Yanks still care about the Cubans, what with calling for free elections an` all. Personally, I`m calling for free elections in America.
pie-eating?
I liked the chorus, but I thought the bridge was a bit weak.
His cunning plan worked, he is now putting on an American accent once again and being fabulously rich as House.
Better to like Seinfeld and the racist cartoons than to have a 'committment to freedom and enlightenment values'. Stan Smith is my favourite fictional character since John Prescott
While I would understand if you felt the need to 'free the hell out of' us in the US, our leaders are crazy and they let them have the bomb... Indeed, if funds spent equated directly with military capacity (they don't) we could take on the whole world at once.
Traditionally, you're supposed to accuse us of having weapons of mass destruction and blowing up (Cubana) civilian aircraft first...
Oh, that's nice: much better than Girls Aloud. Only problems are that "the States" is a Canadianism and that I'm not sure this is what was originally meant by "beating the boss".
Hate on the US of A all you want but did you know that we've got an ideal Communist society going on here?
http://www.criminalgovernment.co...ocs/
planks.html
Yes you heard right, the Federal Reserve is the sublime realization of the visions of Marx and Engels!
That was funny, but this woman is real:
http://sfist.com/2008/02/19/
phot...du_jour_6_3.php
So Roobin, your going to ship all the recalcitrants to Aus. Do we get a say in that?
So Roobin, your going to ship all the recalcitrants to Aus. Do we get a say in that? That's the old joke about Australia and the USA. The USA got the Puritans, we got the convicts, and were much better for it. I share your doubts, Robert. I think Australia an odd place to send anyone for political re-education. Doesn't one normally send class enemies off to learn from the peasants? We could make room in the bauxite mines of Western Australia, I suppose. Most cities need maths & science teachers. Wouldn't they be happier on a coca plantation in Bolivia, though?
I don't mind making fun of Americans and their culture. But it is ironic that lenin and his ilk promote the notion that it's always racist to criticise or make fun of anybody else's culture, but somehow it's okay against the yanks.
Mike Clark | 20 Feb, 00:32 | #
No conception of socialism I would adhere to would rule out 'culture' based humour - of course, when it comes down to concrete political argument and action, considerations like that don't, or at least shouldn't come into play. Much of the mockage of America is ironic, and, irritatingly, most of the genuine anti-Americanism comes from American liberals, who are forever describing their fellow Americans as too Dorito-clogged, too sports obsessed and too damn Christian to recognize their infinite wisdom and innate superiority.
Totally gay for America!!!
http://www.towleroad.com/2008/02...ly-gay-
for.html
Using homophobia to fight ultranationalism! :-)
Frankie Luntz is a turn-off - the accent doesn't really matter, he's just a turn-off.
It's hard to discern a particular national culture - considering the native, hispanic, and african americans possibly constitute nations and there's such a split between "red" and "blue" states.
American humour though, that I'm totally gay for. Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Larry David, The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy.
As for the best song about the US of A...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4...h?
v=4w9EksAo5hY
Family Guy has some good bits here and there, like bush hiding in a tree house during Hurricane Katriona, or justifying the destruction of Alderaan with the whole WMD thing in the Family Guy Star Wars special.
By the way, this is probably an international/intellectual enough forum to raise this. Everywhere I went the Saturday before last I kept seeing Kiwis with tins of lager (OK, so I was heading for Action, but they were in central London too). Was there any special reason for this or was it just Dawn of the Drunk?
Ahem... Acton
Smell the coffee you British Imperialist Obama has just won again in Hawaii and Wisconsin.
Anti-Imperialism is coming to the USA. And then you British Imperialist will no longer have the USA to blame for the world's evils or your own foreign policy. For the first time in history, British Imperialism will have to come face to face with it's own crimes, rape and pillage of the other people's countries. This will no doubt cause an existential crises for the British left.
Obama!Obama!Obama!
Fuck you Churchills and Queen Elizabeths
Obama!Obama!Obama
And after anti-imperialism maybe the comma. It looks like this ,
See?
Barack Obama is the consummate imperialist politician, in fact. Have you had a look at his political advisers? Are you prepared to come to terms with what we was ready to do to Iran and Pakistan? Do you see him preparing to pull out of Afghanistan? Are you really coming to terms with reality in a way that we British Imperialist Queen Elizabeth types are not? No, of course not.
Obamaobamaobama!!??
Yeah, and so what? So one corporate-backed fingerpuppet is doing better than another corporate-backed fingerpuppet. Breathtaking anti-imperialism this is not.
"I don't mind making fun of Americans and their culture. But it is ironic that lenin and his ilk promote the notion that it's always racist to criticise or make fun of anybody else's culture, but somehow it's okay against the yanks."
It's not always racist to make fun of someone else's culture. Lenin regularly mocks Northern Irish culture, American culture, and British culture in general. It's racist to make fun of someone's culture when doing so places you within an ideological matrix of domination. Americans lives don't get made any worse by a rise in Yankee jokes. Muslims lives do get made worse, as those jokes tacitly and implicitly (and often explicitly) justify any number of reactionary measures against them. So for instance those asinine jokes about what 72 virgins in Heaven are like serve to obscure the actual causes of suicide bombing. It occludes the fact that nearly a third of suicide bombers are women, and that the vast majority of Muslims don't engage in this supposed tenet of their theology. Finally, it allows Western imperialists to cloak their bloody ventures in some self-righteous rhetoric of anti-sexism, which, as anyone who has seen our media would know, we have no fucking business making. That's why their jokes aren't funny, and ours are.
speaking of funny cultural jokes... I alert you all the the most glorious website in history:
http://
stuffwhitepeoplelike.word...e.wordpress.com
flaying whitey America without mercy...
Roobin, it was probably this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Wai...re_in_the_World
Obama, imperialist: http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4886
Fuck y'all. You godless foreigners will be lining up for U.S. visas after watching this rendition of an original song by statesman-poet-philosopher, John Ashcroft: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w...h?
v=woLQI8X2R6Y
Halfway through the video, the trembling camera focuses on a polyester flag. It's like the Hallelujah Chorus, you can't help but rise from your seat.
For days now, various Obama supporters have attacked McCain... for being soft on Pakistan. All the while, withdrawal from Iraq isn't even part of the conversation any more. Good times! Once Obama is president, liberals can finally support US wars again without feeling bad about it!
Lenin,
Obama is going to withdraw from Iraq at least. Very saddening to read about his comments on Pakistan. But personally, I don't give a hoot about Pakistan. Pakistan was created by the British and spent the entire cold war serving American imperialist interests. Remember Black September,Afghanistan in the 80's. And if you meet the average Pakistani in the UK, he or she doesn't know what the difference between Pakistan and Islam is (and that's the truth)- actually they don't see Pakistan as a nation-state with a particular geo-political purpose, they see Pakistan as a shrine. The Pakistani's attitude to Pakistan is very similar to a Zionist attitude to Israel. But such rationale is beyond the average White Britain - because he or she never really mixes with Asian "types" outside of work.
I met a Pakistani on an anti-war demo once who more than implied that Saddam's predicament was divine punishment cause of Saddam's backing of India against Pakistan.
I'm for a united Pakistan and India by the way - personally I think Pakistan should rejoin India and stop implementing British policy by being seperate.
Hugh Laurie - Now of course living in America, starring in lots of American things and devoting most of his professional career to pretending to be American.
Having a pop at Seinfeld doesn't really do your anti-American polemic many favours (assuming that you are having a pop, given that you've lumped it with racist cartoons). Most humour fans over here rate Seinfeld as a brilliant exception to Yankland's generally poor comerically successful comedy. You could've said Friends or Saved by the Bell or summit.
Most humour fans over here rate Seinfeld as a brilliant exception to Yankland's generally poor comerically successful comedy. You could've said Friends or Saved by the Bell or summit. Part of the appeal of Seinfeld and those other bourgeois "comedy of manners" seems to me to be the fact they mirror the reality of parliamentary politics. The only concern is with a mis-spoken phrase or an overheard joke or someone being shunned at a party or an awkward affair. For example, the big debates in the Democrat primaries the last few days are whether Obama plagiarised a few words from a mate of his and whether Clinton stole Obama's catchphrases like "all fired up!" I always thought there was great political potential in Saved by the Bell though; if only those kids stoped lurching from adventurist prank to adventurist prank and organised a mass movement from below.
Seinfeld is time porn. And it's a crock of shit.
Dear Sir:
I wish to take strong exception to the characterization of Americans as "fat lazy greedy pie-eating bastards." I am an American, and have been one all of my life, and I only occasionally have pie.
Sincerely yours,
timmy ramone, etc., etc., etc.
P.S., etc.
Dear Points of View,
I am writing to object to the letters you have been broadcasting. The people and opinions represented are obviously just made up for cheap laughs.
Yours sincerely
William Knickers
Cod's Wallop
Surrey.
I quite like Seinfeld. Presumably the increasingly Zhdanovite lenin will now bar me as a troll.
But the real proof that not all Americans are evil idiots is Doonesbury. Has anyone noticed the way the Guardian puts it on a different page each day so it is increasingly difficult to find - then they'll say nobody reads it and drop it.
the increasingly Zhdanovite lenin
Shows like Seinfeld (how I hate them) awaken the Zhdanov in me. Essentially, there are two camps in world culture. There is everything I like, which is democratic, and there is everything I hate, which is imperialistic.
Incidentally, if you want an example of extremely erudite and elegant Zhdanovism (which is possible), you should see Terry Eagleton's book on Shakespeare.
They tried dropping Doonesbury when they launched the new size Guardian - but were forced to reinstate it a week later after a storm of protests.
See here:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/
edit...ning_to_g2.html
Sorry len, but if I can't have Seinfeld without imperialism, I'll sadly have to choose imperialism.
Seinfeld is not funny. Only Curb Your Enthusiasm delivers the full Larry David experience.
Seinfeld is not funny. Only Curb Your Enthusiasm delivers the full Larry David experience.
Adrian | 21 Feb, 15:45 | #
Mostly agreed. Was watching Seinfeld last night, realised that only George/Larry's lines are actually funny. Even though he's writing, producing and starring in the thing, Jerry Seinfeld can't manage to make himself look anything less than smug and unfunny. I will, however, defend Friends, although it's a weirder example of time porn, where everyone except Joey apparently has an actual job, yet still sits about picking fluff from their belly-buttons all day.
I still like, nearly without exception, the cartoons with racist humour. Particularly South Park, which is like confessing you have a soft-spot for Roy Chubby Brown.
yes may I join in on the overrated Seinfeld slant, especially the whole Susan storyline, not gay just in time for George to get hooked up, then later dies licking wedding invitation envelopes, to little response from George or anyone else. I suppose someone may trise to raise the fact that a bizarre death can be funny, can be, can be yes, not necessarily in every case.
Not sure I find smug public schoolboys (who have made a lot of Hollywood 'dollars' since) the best commentators on imperialism, anyway.
As for knee-jerk contempt for a country's cultural output due to its foriegn policy - duhh!
I'm sure you regard all British literature as garbage between Elizabeth I and Edward VII? Or renaissance Italy? Imperial France? Soviet Union? Look outside the cramped confines of SWP certainties and you may find that the cruellest cultures have the most engaging art. Like it or not, capitalism can often be its own best critic...
If if we leave aside that 'culture' thrives outside the pop charts and Neilsen Tv ratings, I'd take 'Seinfeld' or the 'Sopranos' over the latest pious sermonising sludge from Jimmy McGovern and Ken Loach any fuckin' day!
But then I suppose 'vulgar' Marxism has no place for real dialectic or contradition in its 'approved' canon - if I hear yet another placard-waving unemployable recommend 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' one more time, I'm gonna reach for my revolver.
Go right ahead, Anonymous. We might be spared your sanctimonious bullshit in the future.
Public schoolboys making Hollywood dollars? Are you quite well, 'anonymous'?
Anon should bring out a new exercise video, called Troll Yourself Thin.
okay, stop that this comments box is getting very silly!
Anon, don't you think it's a little fucked to compare Seinfeld to Shakespeare, Petrarch, and Eisenstein?
"I suppose someone may trise to raise the fact that a bizarre death can be funny, can be, can be yes, not necessarily in every case."
It would be if it was Hitchens.
I'm very well, 'Lenin' - you may have noticed Hugh Laurie collecting Emmy awards for doing a pretty awful American accent on 'House', or Steven Fry and his smug advertorial column for ipods, laptops, ad nausaem. Am I mistaken in thinking they went to public school? As part of a comedy 'restoration' that demonised non-Oxbridge 'working men' comedians?
Also, I'm very familiar with Eisenstein - and he's dull as dishwater (he's not even 'top 10' as far as silent filmakers go). That he was a blatant propagandist doesn't push me into liking him because he was on 'our' (?) side. Same goes for Loach and his working class = salt of the earth, middle class = evil bullshit.
Anyway, it's rather childish to lump 350 million people into one 'type' (except when you want to highlight a victimised minority for rhetorical purposes). The most vile Americans (like it's current cabinet) are probably in tip-top physical shape anyway.
Bizarre deaths can be funny, as long as there's not a humorless tabloid vendor standing over you telling you what you shouldn't laugh at - as if jokes are an 'action point' for the next Social Forum meeting. Yes, I know many people like this - and there's nothing worse than watching a sitcom with one of 'em...
To paraphrase Emma Goldman, if I can't laugh you can shove your 'revolution' up your arse...
public schools, oh dear, much like the term troll must be another thing no true proletarian would associate with! coherance anon try it some time. Your basic approach here is 'You know what really sucks, you lot!' well guess what I don't want to watch a sit com with you either, bitching about how the public school types on the show are using middle class phrases!
Grim and Dim agreed on Hitchens!
"Hugh Laurie collecting Emmy awards for doing a pretty awful American accent on 'House..."
The show is awful, I dunno about the accent. Some British actors do excellent American accents. Have you guys seen Dominic West or Idris Elba on HBO's The Wire? The Wire does an excellent job at getting those mid-Atlantic dialects.
'Coherance'(sic), SGuy? Being able to string a sentence together might be start.
Not being entirely attached to the distant 'culture wars' of the 80s, I have a problem with Ben Elton/Alfresco/Friday Night Live/Comic Strip smugfest. They may have had their moments, but they reek of Thatcherite opportunism as much as Tarby. When I first saw 'House' I actually thought it was a sketch.
I don't hate public school types per se, I merely resent their stranglehold on British popular culture. I also think our media is far more centralised and 'closed' than America's. Elsewhere on this site is a rant on The Observer - notice how they (and The Guardian) constantly cite the same half-dozen 'celebs' every week?
I don't know if you 'suck' or not. I don't know you, like the Americans I'm supposed to hate for being subject to an entirely unrepresentative political process...
I'm still a fan of the blog, though.
God your come backs suck! reduced to a grammar critique way to show your out of any real ideas, after people like myself have ripped you to shreds. Thats right you don't know anything about me, yet that hasn't stopped you from making all kinds of assumptions about me and everyone else here, when you assume you make an ass out of yourself anon! obviously. By the way, would it be better if private schools had more power? one again coherance try it!
if I hear yet another placard-waving unemployable recommend 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' one more time, I'm gonna reach for my revolver.
I strongly suspect that this hasn't actually happened all that often (like, ever.)
The biggest problem with Ken Loach (who otherwise is very, very good indeed) is not so much the working class salt-of-the-earth bits, as the absence of hope bits: it's almost invariably the case that his heroes are essentially victims, of one sort or another: if they do decide to act, they are doomed to failure (eg Land and Freedom, The Wind that Shakes the Barley), and - generally - they won't. This may reflect something very important about life - as in, this is overwhelmingly the experience of life for most ordinary people - but it becomes a little jarring when Loach tries to portay great historical events in which people did try thinking and acting for themselves - like Spain. It gives his films an overwhelmingly maudlin tone.
Aside from all that, I assumed Lenin didn't intend this post to be taken entirely seriously, in a self-deprecating way, well-disguised though it is (sort of like Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is close to the only thing worth watching on TV at present.)
Well, hold on a second, Meaders. I may have been taking the piss, but I don't do self-defecating. I don't even know how that's done, but it sounds very messy.
Curb Your Enthusiasm is good, but highly repetitious. Basically, it's Larry getting on the wrong side of some obnoxiously uptight and self-righteous Californians. Every episode.
You don't do self defecating? You get someone to do it for you I presume. Now, the Queen has her butlers, but I didn't know you were that rich as well.
On Loach, it's the ten-minute parentheses where someone explains and/or debates the politics of what's going on that get me. He doesn't always resort to such devices, but it's like having a flat-capped chorus.
Basically, it's Larry getting on the wrong side of some obnoxiously uptight and self-righteous Californians. Every episode.
Yep. Therein lies its brilliance.
"On Loach, it's the ten-minute parentheses where someone explains and/or debates the politics of what's going on that get me."
Have trouble with ideas, do you? Prefer straight uninterrupted action like Rambo, do you? You must find books a real problem.
Oh god, don't. The latest Rambo is a vile, vile, vile genocide chic flick, a version of 'humanitarian intervention' for self-righteous and hyper-aggressive young men. (Watch out for my review in SR).
Hello again, 'Sguy' - no I'm not making assumptions about everyone on this page, but the basic rule of grammar is making yourself understood. So what the fuck are you on about?
Private schools have enough power as it is fuckwit (and I find the most self-righteous 'Loach is God' apostles are usually private school 'downshifters' whose daddies failed to make them content enough - all that opportunity and all they have to show for it is blog pith). But hey - how dare Marxism actually 'point the finger' at members of a dominant class? Easier to slag off foreigners? Loach and Larry David are equally repetitive, but only one is actually entertaining.
As for Loach bores, I doubt Blair or Cameron are losing sleep over his neo-kitchen sink sermons (especially since he's a staple of failled militant film nights). It doesn't follow that I have to love boneheaded action movies because I find Loach a patronising bore. Shite is shite.
Loach doesn't reflect 'real life' to me - but maybe that's because I've actually lived through industrial reality and it didn't make me a Loach-esque saint (or a 'victim' - another dead-end of the left: "the point is to change it", Mr. Human). That kind of class-based Manichianism is the road to psychosis. Maybe a post on the high proportion of mentally ill 'activists' could offer food for thought, instead of telling me who I should hate, eh Lenin? If you can judge films you haven't seen yet, I'm sure you can offer insights on your comrades...
Sincerely,
Someone who actually read Marx and felt stronger for it x
I love the Loach debate scenes. The debate scene in "Land and Freedom" is brilliant -- from the point of view of the participants, it isn't boring at all, and it shows how the administration of regular life can become an unalienated and even exciting project for people who have never had any control over the conditions of their lives.
Anonymous is just trolling. It was obvious 20 posts ago that this wasn't a serious person. The class-baiting is just cartoonish.
btw, there's one language issue that might confuse some of the American readers like SGuy -- in Britain, "public school" actually means "really elite private school." What we call public schools -- i.e., schools run by the state -- are called "state schools" over there. So when Anonytroll baited these guys as "public schoolboys," he was trying to say that they went to schools like Eton, where Prince Henry went, not that they went to working-class schools. Just a clarification.
What does 'trollish' mean?
I'm not 'class-baiting' - I was just taking the post to task for slagging off an entire nationality.
If you make the mistake of blaming citizens for the actions of whoever rules them, you're talking the language of hawks.
May I also make it clear that I know dozens of privately-educated activists - suburban exiles who now live in inner-city areas - who arrogantly feel it their job to 'educate' the surrounding community. Not once do they pause to think that we (yes, WE) have actually 'lived' the class struggle that they found out about by reading the 'right' books.
My problem with Loach is precisely that attitude. He's made some wonderful films, but he's by no means an oracle. I also take issue with those who condemn the basic desire for entertainment. After working 60 hours a week, maybe we'd rather avoid lectures on why our lives suck? It don't take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Smell the coffee you British Imperialist Obama has just won again in Hawaii and Wisconsin.
Anti-Imperialism is coming to the USA. And then you British Imperialist will no longer have the USA to blame for the world's evils or your own foreign policy.
Are you one of those people who thinks that Queen Elizabeth controls the U.S. government and is hiding legions of space aliens under the Denver International Airport? Britain's still an imperialist country, of course, but you really think it's controlling the U.S.? (Psst -- I'm not British.)
I'm not 'class-baiting'
I don't know, that time you called "troll" a middle-class word belongs in the class-baiting hall of fame. (Psst -- I'm not middle-class either, nor have I ever lived in a suburb.)
May I also make it clear that I know dozens of privately-educated activists - suburban exiles who now live in inner-city areas - who arrogantly feel it their job to 'educate' the surrounding community.
Yes, so have I. That doesn't give you the right to make accusations about every fucking person posting at a blog you've never been to before.
Have you ever seen "Bread and Roses"? Not every Ken Loach movie is about the unending misery of working-class life. And even the ones that are ("Sweet Sixteen") absolutely do NOT portray working-class people as noble salt-of-the-earth types. I'm not really sure Loach movies you're talking about actually. Have you ever bothered to watch one?
No one's saying that every movie should be a Ken Loach movie, but if you're going to slag him off, at least know what you're talking about.
Oh, and for the peanut gallery, I think Seinfeld wasn't half bad. Certainly not as bad as the aggressively white self-absorbed oxygen thieves on "Friends". That was like a Rudy Giuliani wet dream of what New York would look like one day (and it came true!).
"But it is ironic that lenin and his ilk promote the notion that it's always racist to criticise or make fun of anybody else's culture, but somehow it's okay against the yanks"
Why is it ironic? Its just true. It is ok to make fun of Yanks. I mean isn't it?
confused.
As a Yank, I officially grant Lenin permission to make fun of us as much as he likes. There -- that's settled. :)
Re: Brits playing Yanks. I thought Bob Hoskins did a very credible Brooklyn accent in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (he was also a very convincing Russian goose in Balto).
"Have trouble with ideas, do you?"
Yeah, it's why I have, uh, trouble forming an, um, coherent...
"Prefer straight uninterrupted action like Rambo, do you?"
At least he doesn't have to debate with himself about whether to collectivize the land.
Strange isn't it how the AmericanaUK music site http://www.americana-uk.com , has the following activism links:-
CND
Colombia Solidarity Campaign
PSC
Venezuela Information Centre
I thought the task of socialists was to support what was progressive in any country.....
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