season of the bitch

Is up at Global Comment.

I really enjoyed this conversation–there was much more we could’ve talked about, but we discussed the problems with environmentalism for its own sake, local economies, politics, how to save journalism, Karl Marx, corporate libertarianism, and centralized currency. His book Life, Inc. covers a lot more ground, and I’m not exaggerating when I say I think it should be required reading. It comes out June 2, and in honor of Rushkoff’s premise, you should get it from your local bookstore.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview, and the video preview for the book. Check it out.

S: A lot of the things that you mention as solutions, like buying local, are being tossed around now because they’re environmentally friendly, but you talk about them as good in themselves, because they connect you to the place where you live and the people that you know.

DR: Right. Which would I rather do? Hang out with these pretty girls on an organic farm, get some really bright gorgeous chard, or go into the fluorescent-lit A&P and push a cart around with a bunch of bored people? It becomes an easy choice when you think about it from a sensual level, rather than just an intellectual level. I’m trying to show people that I’m not asking them to live an ascetic life of renunciation and denial, but actually a much more abundant life of fun and pleasure.

When people are doing stuff out of guilt, which is what people get from the sort of Al Gore/”Inconvenient Truth” method of environmentalism or the Noam Chomsky approach to politics and economics, you get the feeling that you have to hole up somewhere and not consume anything. There’s this false dichotomy set up between doing it for the world OR having fun.

S: You talk about the connection to work, whether it’s on a farm or whatever you do—when I say it that way it almost sounds like the classic Marxist argument, that people are alienated from their work.

DR: Marx really did get a lot of it. It got used in some really silly ways and was a terrible basis for a movement. That’s why in the book I speak out against movements in general—you join this whole big thing and then the movement itself becomes a distraction from whatever’s really going on.

I put my car up for sale on Craigslist today. I’m moving to New York City and it’s just not practical. Yet it’s probably the hardest part of this whole move for me.

I love driving. I mean LOVE. When gas was cheap I used to just drive (stop looking at me like that, environmentalists!) for hours. When I wrote music reviews every week, my favorite place to absorb an album that I needed to review was in the car.

The last time I lived without a car was my freshman year in college. I had a car when I was in high school–mostly because my parents were working full time and if I had a car it was less work for them. When I was 17, it turned up–a 1992 Acura Integra, flame-red. We called it the Bitchmobile.

I moved out of the dorms sophomore year and brought my car to New Orleans with me. At that point, I was driving a maroon 1990 Ford Probe, nicknamed “Betty” (I am so witty, Betty Ford, eh?). When a guy ran a stop light and totaled that car, I replaced it with a Toyota Corolla named Norma Jeane. I drove that car from 2001 until last year, when it too was wrecked, this time when parked.

The car I have now is called Lulu. She’s a Volkswagen Golf, and I love her. She’s a 2000, not the prettiest thing on the road, but she’s a great little car with good gas mileage and she’s tiny and easy to park. Writing the Craigslist ad was hard.

In addition to my tendency to get emotionally attached to inanimate objects (the shoes I will not throw out, the dresses that I will never wear again), I’ve seen my car for so long as freedom. I could get in at any time and escape whatever was bothering me. I’ve driven pretty much all the way across the country–moving from New Orleans to Denver, driving to California from Denver (to LA then San Jose and then back down) and used road trips as a way to clear my head, to get over breakups or to decide to break up with someone.

I’ll save a bunch of money without a car, and yes, I’ll be greener or something. I don’t need a car in NYC, and I actually look forward to spending more time on foot and coming into contact with people. Cars isolate us to some degree, and living alone I’m already pretty isolated. Still, sometimes I need that space and time to myself.

I’ve already gotten one email about the car–haven’t even given her a bath and cleaned out the inside yet. I’m sad about leaving my apartment and my sister and my friends and professors and students and even my low-paying but often excellent job. But the car? That really hurts.

I read this article this morning in the Mail & Guardian about Vladimir Putin and it made me giggle. At first, I thought that it was just worth a drive-by snarking on Twitter, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I should go back and write about it.

At first, of course, you get the usual masculinity-fetish. The title of the article is “That Shrinking Feeling,” which is just too obvious. Further down, a sentence reads, “Not that Putin is a spent force.”

Sexual metaphors and obsession with Putin’s bare chest are hardly rare–comic artist Becky Cloonan has a whole range of Putin-fantasy webcomics that are totally hilarious. I admit to a bit of a Putin obsession myself–he’s such a caricature.

As was Bush, of course. A caricature of a certain type of American masculinity (just like Reagan before him) the same way Putin is a caricature of a certain type of Russian masculinity. He has judo videos! He shoots tigers! He’s so BUFF!

Only a few months ago, we were scared of Putin “rearing his head,” (oh, Palin, will you ever get old?) but now we hear little to nothing about him. And this article, masculinity fetish aside, makes a decent point about why, even if it buries it beneath layers of alternately fawning and poking at him.

Analysts add that United States President Barack Obama’s emollient approach on Nato enlargement and missile defence is not helping.

As Russian president, Putin was a natural when it came to attacking former president George Bush, for example over Iraq.

But fast-forward one year and he looked far less comfortable, barely speaking above a whisper, as he made a conciliatory speech praising the new Iraqi order in front of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki at a recent Moscow meeting.

As the public questions whether everything is really the United States’ fault, a change of tone is needed that Putin may struggle with, says political commentator Arkady Dubnov of the newspaper Vremya Novostei.

(OK, they did say “enlargement.”)

Does Obama’s conciliatory approach to foreign policy make the former bluff and bluster between Bush and Putin look…well…juvenile? Does Obama’s refusal to give leaders like Putin (and Chavez, and and and) a target effectively work where threats and yes, swagger didn’t?

Of course it’s far too early to tell. But during the campaign, especially the primaries, I wrote about Obama’s demeanor and tone about foreign policy contrasted with his rivals, and how Hillary Clinton and Obama seemed to have switched gender stereotypes.

I’m disappointed with many of Obama’s moves so far, but I wonder if just the tonal shift in public diplomacy is having an effect worldwide. It’s definitely not calming the Right inside the U.S., but they sure do look silly. So there’s that.

Greenwald has an excellent piece on Sonia Sotomayor (and as usual, rips Establishment media a new one for using anonymous sources in the process).

I know far, far less than he does about Sonia Sotomayor or about the relative fitness of judicial nominees for the job. I was far more qualified to talk about Sarah Palin and the attacks leveled at her for being an affirmative action hire, a pretty dumb chick whose appeal was solely prurient.

Rebecca Traister pointed out the obvious gender bias to the TNR piece in question, a bias that is only multiplied by her being of Puerto Rican descent, as Adam Serwer notes. She’s bossy! She doesn’t shut up! She’s not that smart–Obama is prioritizing diversity! (The Clarence Thomas arguments, of course, are too obvious.)

When Bush nominated Harriet Miers for the Court, we heard similar arguments about her intellectual ability–and we didn’t argue. When Sarah Palin got the Republican VP nomination, we giggled and made our own jokes. Now Obama’s nominees will face the same kind of criticisms, ones that would never be leveled at a white guy up for the same job, and what do we say?

It’s a double bind. We don’t want to be unable to criticize female nominees or people of color (*cough cough* Gonzalez–or closer to home, Roland Burris) but we need to be consistent in noting the difference between substantive attacks and gender or racially motivated ones. It’s entirely possible that Sonia Sotomayor is not the best choice for the Supreme Court, but I very much doubt that she’s any less “smart” than Thomas, Alito, or any number of federal judges that the Right (or the nominal left as represented by TNR) would have no problem with–because they’re white and male.

The fact is, when it comes to the Supreme Court, there are probably many lawyers and judges and law professors who would do as good or better jobs than the people already on there. There’s no one best person for the job, and it’s also fairly difficult to predict how justices will rule once confirmed (note that the retiring Souter was nominated by George H.W. Bush and became one of the reliable liberal members of the Court). So there’s absolutely nothing wrong with picking a qualified justice who comes from a different ethnic and class background than the rest of the Court for the sake of diversity.