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so let's see if we might go back to the op for a minute.
what it seems to me to be about, really, is more the shift in political discourse away from a posture of anything remotely like critique of the dominant capitalist order to one of repetition of its ideological underpinnings. host connects this to a new form of concentration of wealth, but doesn't make the next move and link that to, say, transformations in the ownership of the major media in the united states or the shift from print to radio to television as primary infotainment source--though in general the connections are easy enough to make.
seems to me that obama's campaign is already operating de facto at two levels: at the level of what obama actually says, which is interesting if dis-spiritingly tepid given the magnitude of the fiasco that he would be facing once he got into office---and at a sound-byte register, in the context of which politics is basically a matter of dueling memes.
it's hard to say if this large-scale shift in the posture of the press, which is linked to the nature of political discourse, is a function of the shift in dominant media first and then of a trend toward concentration of ownership, or if it's more complicated than that.
what seems pretty clear, though, is that you have the rise of neoliberal ideology...within that, the rise of the conservative media apparatus, unfolding since the middle 1970s. the rationale for deregulation and concentration of ownership begins to emerge in earnest under reagan. the conservative media apparatus is a product of its period of opposition under clinton. the bush period has in part been characterized by a convergence of the two. while the past 3 years have seen a moderate separation between the explicitly reactionary press (fox, for example) and the more "moderate" fellow-travellers of the post-2001 period, fact is that political debate remains dominated by neo-liberal characterizations of the economic sphere with a slight shift to the center in terms of "security" and its correlates and social questions (obviously this is too broad, but hey, what to do?)
obama's campaign at the meme-level operates within this space.
i think what he actually says is more interesting than the meme-space version would have you believe.
maybe this is why folk like ace prefer to see if, by throwing shit his way, whether something will stick.
i gave linking this back to the op a shot.
your turn.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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