By the way, and surprisingly, there’s plenty of Žižek on the BBC; for instance, here he is featured on Thinking Allowed (January 2008). (note: www.itself.wordpress.com)

For anyone interested in what they damage they inflicted with €72.80, here’s the order they placed at Pri Vitezu, Breg 18-20, Ljubljana:

Mushroom soup x 2 €12
Medallions of veal €18
Lamb with thyme €18
Green salad x 2 €8
Fruit salad x 2 €14
Sparkling water €2.80

€6 for mushroom soup and €7 for fruit salad seems a tad unreasonable, especially in Ljubljana (Žižek had the veal, by the way).

For those who are less interested in culinary fare, click directly on the link (although it may available only to subscribers). There’s not much that is new; personal highlights include reading Titanic as both reinforcing the social order and restoring Rose’s identity. The Jack Dawson character (played by DiCaprio) “literally draws her picture”.

And then, after his [Jack's] job is done, he can f*** off and disappear. He is – what I would call in theory – a pure vanishing mediator. It is not a love story. It is vampiric, egotistic exploitation

And here is Žižek’s Hegel moment, although quite what kind of gun Thornhill is holding is not disclosed.

If you asked me at gunpoint what I really like, I would say to read German idealism, Hegel. What I like most, what I love the best, is this objectivity of belief

Oh, yeah, and he calls Adam Kirsch “stupid” (see here).

Karl Rove, writing in the The Wall Street Journal, reminisces about his friendly “contest” with the then-incumbent President of the United States of America. For the final three years of the Dubyah administration, from 2006 to 2008, Messrs. Rove and Bush, Jr. participated in a duel to see who could read more books.

The use of the terms “read” and Dubyah in the same sentence is surprising; what is shocking is that Dubyah managed to read – again, I use that term loosely – 95 books during their first 12 month window. Broken down, the books fall into the following categories:

• Fiction: 37 titles, including Michael Crichton’s Next and Vince Flynn’s Executive Power.
• Non-fiction: 58 titles, of which 
  • • History & Biography: 44 titles
    • Sports: 6 titles
    • Current Events (“mostly on the Middle East”): 8 titles

Or, in percentage terms: 38.9% (fiction), 46% (history and biography), less than 8% on issues related to the Middle East. Included in the list of 37 fiction titles are eight “Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald” (more than works on the Middle East, count ‘em!). Apparently, the “Travis McGee Series” is famous for it “having a colour in the title” (no kidding).

First, let’s look at the numbers, the criterion the gentlemen utilised. Ninety-five books over 52 weeks entails reading close to 2 books a week, or a book every 3 and a bit days. That is prolific page turning, especially by someone moonlighting as “Leader of the Free World”. Perhaps speed-reading was something the former President developed while at Yale; perhaps the material was no challenge to cerebral capacities. But let’s leave aside the speculation and ask: What does it mean to participate in a reading contest? Is it meaningful to race through books? Is that what a book is for, to be numbered and consumed – “read”? – as part of an annual book target? I am sure Rove has never heard of  Paolo Freire, who wrote in The Act of Study the following:

The act of study should not be measured by the number of pages read in one night or the quantity of books read in a semester.

Numbers and words – let alone raw data and comprehension – are no clear equals, and the premise is founded upon incomparables which betray a basic incomprehension. Some things are just unimaginable. It is simply indecent to race in reading.

[...] In a critical vision, things happen differently. [...] To study is not to consume ideas, but to create and re-create them. (source)

Predictably, “the competition soon spun out of control” and Mission: Quantify reached its nadir with the following confession.

We kept track not just of books read, but also the number of pages and later the combined size of each book’s pages — its “Total Lateral Area”

I’m sure no-one has yet described this practice as infantile, though it merits such judgement. Think of it: the President of a once proud nation and the President’s Senior Advisor measuring … total … lateral … area. It reminds me of when Thomas the Tank Engine raced against James to the wharf. The chorus is marvellous:

Thomas and James are racing, racing to the Wharf. Everyone likes to be the first not second, third or fourth! Pistons pumping wildly, boilers fit to burst. There’s something really special for the engine who comes first.

Rove does not mention why their respective tallies tailed off from 2006 (Dubyah’s 95 and 110 for Rove) to 51 and 76 (2007), before ending on a complacent 40 and 64 (2008) respectively; nor does he volunteer the composition of succeeding reading years, whether there was a development of themes or return to first principles, or even whether the fictional works were primarily comics or graphic novels. It bears considering that there is no mention of Finance or Economics related titles, nor titles that cover jurisprudence or religion.

Indeed, it appears that Dubya’s history background remains as his guiding Light. As Richard Cohen observed,

The list Rove provides is long, but it is narrow. [...] But [Bush's] books reflect a man who is seeking to learn what he already knows (source: The Washington Post)

Cohen is brutal in his damming indictment.

But the books themselves reveal – actually, confirm – something about Bush that maybe Rove did not intend.  They are not the reading of a widely read man, but instead the books of a man who seeks – and sees – vindication in every page

While correct, it is neither brutal nor damming enough. Let’s be clear on one thing: the tomes of history that Bush Jr. revisits and seeks justification from is best described as popular history, hence the appearance of Rick Atkinson on the list, and David King. Hardly the most rigourous. Indeed, viewed from this perspective, the most apposite ridiculing of Dubyah stems from within the very mirror that he has chosen.

Rove concludes that

Mr. Bush loves books, learns from them, and is intellectually engaged by them.

These words ring hollow. This is Alan Brinkley reflecting on Jacob Weisberg’s The Bush Tragedy:

The Bush whom Weisberg skillfully and largely convincingly portrays is a man who has rarely reflected, who has almost never looked back, and who has constructed a self-image of strength, courage and boldness that has little basis in the reality of his life. He is driven less by bold vision than by a desire to get elected (and settle scores), less by real strength than by unfocused ambition, and less by courage than by an almost passive acquiescence in disastrous plans that the people he empowered pursued in his name. (source: The New York Times)

If, as if often observed, the American Presidency is prone to rapid historical revision, Rove’s hasty Yuletide interjection is but the first salvo in the re-casting of the Dubyah years as – hold on – the Renaissance Years, the Golden Age of American Empire where there is only Right and Wrong, where Right is always backed by Absolute Might, where Might only favours Right.

God save America; it needs saving.

Members of Congress need to stop making political statements, and start providing vital funds for our troops. White House Press release

Should Congress cease from “making political statements”, and forgo its role as legislative arm of government, what in the world are they there for? For the United States to be governed by the rule of Whim?

Perhaps Bush should read the Constitution, specifically Article I, Section 8. I wonder if His Whimsyness is aware of Ben’s Guide to US Government for kids? Click here for their topic of Congress, meant for kids 9 til 12.

* Note: ’cause Bush is a girl.

London Consortium is holding a special conference on the 9th of December 2005 to discuss the legacy and impact of her life’s thought.

As a tribute to the philosopher Gillian Rose on the 10th anniversary of her death, the London Consortium and the ICA present an evening exploring the idea of philosophy as radical thought. At a time when the project for radical political transformation has been shaken to its core, what should be the role of the radical philosopher? Should it be the ethical work of mourning, or keeping the radical political project alive through critique?

Speakers include: The Rt Revd Rowan Williams, Jacqueline Rose, and Howard Caygill. David Held will chair the conference.

If you are attending this, come and introduce yourself. I’ll be the one who will be looking jet-lagged from his over-night flight from LA.

Perhaps one necessary step is to recognise the fundamental devaluation of the rule of law within the very tradition which revolutionized the thinking of beginnings, from Rousseau to the 1789 decade; where the nation-state now comes to question the very notion of citizenship and instead resorts to a cultural – read racial – definition of what it means to be French. Yes, it is simple, though not incorrect, to highlight these tensions built within the liberal democratic model; yes, it is simple, though not incorrect, to speak against the sickening, barely concealed gleeful disdain that unwelcomes an outsider to Charles de Gaulle airport. That odour is unmistakable.

In the context of such a confessional – that France no longer rules; that it no longer even holds prime position in the Old Europe; that French ranks below Mandarin, English, Spanish, Arabic in the hierarchy of tongues; that the march of crass consumerist culture spreads and tramples the finest trappings of bourgeois taste; that foreign policy runs its own course unfettered and unabated by strategic French stagnancy – such a reactionary stance merely exacerbates, not quells, division and unrest.

How do you spell HALLIBURTON?

A-v-i-a-n-b-i-r-d-f-l-u.

But reality is so much more unfunny than we gave it credit for. Dick’s done, don’t you see? It’s Donald’s turn. Rumsfeld’s growing stake in Tamiflu

further reading:

Bush! Crony jobs

Halliburton Watch

CDC

Well, at least laughter takes away gravitas, and gravitas is the province of dictatorship – that much we glimpse in Kundera’s novels. And dictatorships lack taste, as demonstrated by Idi Amin, Marcos, Ceausescu et al (see October’s edition of Wallpaper*). Now I see the correlation. As if:

In exchange for the repression of your freedoms, I renounce my true aesthetic sensibility!

Gravitas sans taste. That is the tag-line of dictatorship in the 2oth century.

By the way, Google searches for “Hannah Arendt” fail to filter pass God’s sieve, however, which tends to undermine my hypothesis, such as it was.

“flight plan”
+
movie
+
“Association of Professional Flight Attendants”
+
strike

Google ‘em.

Bless Dan Brown.