TheAgitator.com
Culture11
Friday, August 29th, 2008Culture11 is a new website that looks to be aiming for a more right-oriented version of Slate.
The first bunch of articles (the site is still in Beta) look promising.
There’s certainly a void in the area the general area Culture11 is trying to position itself. Conservatism once brimmed with ideas. Not all of them were good, but at least there was a culture of sophistication in the movement. Elitism wasn’t something to be mocked, it was something to strive for.
These days, the ideas wing of the right is lousy with neocons and national greatness. The rest is just shouting. Somewhere along the line, Bill Buckley’s country club, Manhattanite conservatism was subsumed by an ugly, reactionary populism that, weirdly, shuns sophistication.
Barack Obama, then, is derided as an arugula-eating, Whole Foods snob. John Kerry is a latte-sipping, Saab-driving sushi muncher. Conservatives once looked at elitism as the reward for hard work (even if a number of conservatives were born into status). Today, it’s about the worst insult in the right’s arsenal.
I guess a decade as the ruling party will do that to you. There’s no time for thinking when you’re busy consolidating power. By today’s right, real Americans drink Maxwell House and Bud Light, read Ann Coulter, and have supper at the Ponderosa. And I’m not saying there’s anything inherently wrong with any of those things (well, save for reading Ann Coulter). I’m just saying it’s too bad the right seems to have devolved to the position that aspiring to anything more is for Blue State pussies.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying Culture11 looks interesting, and welcome. The right badly needs an infusion of culture, including insight, commentary, and journalism covering topics that aren’t directly related to politics, or aren’t explicitly ideological or geared toward winning wars and elections.
Conservatives used to believe that human’s were neither predisposed to goodness, nor were capable of moral evolution. Today, most conservatives sound a lot like the left when you talk to them about such issues. When they lost those views on human behavior, a shift to authoritarianism was inevitable because if you trust people to do the right thing, it’s not such a big deal to trust them with a lot of power over their fellow man. Conservatives like Huckabee love to throw out verses on charity and such to defend their big government views; as a conservative-leaning libertarian, here’s mine, Jeremiah 17:9:
“The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?”
The day that conservatives once again believe in original sin and that human nature is predisposed to evil, is the day that it will rediscover itself.
Shunning elitism is just what they say, not what they do.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NzgxN2VmZTQ2NmQ1NjRlNjE4ZmY4NjM3MzJiMWVmZTY=
This adventure started in Paris, where we were ensconced in the Hôtel du Louvre. This was luxury living, my friends. After a few days, we bused to Chalon-sur-Saône, for the beginning of the cruise. The countryside from Paris to Chalon was — storybook, actually. Like the entire adventure.
or
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/magazine/06Limbaugh-t.html?pagewanted=2&bl&ei=5087&en=bfa61dce8f16e341&ex=1215748800
He also loves space. There are five homes — all of them his — on the property. The big house is 24,000 square feet. Limbaugh lives there with a cat. He’s been married three times but has no children.
Limbaugh informed me that I was the first journalist ever to enter his home. Mary Matalin, the Republican consultant, calls the place “aspirational,” which is one adjective that fits. The place, largely designed by Limbaugh himself, reflects the things and places he has seen and admired. The massive chandelier in the dining room, for example, is a replica of the one that hung in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel in New York. The gleaming cherry-wood floors are dotted with hand-woven oriental carpets. A life-size oil portrait of El Rushbo, as he often calls himself on the air, hangs on the wall of the main staircase.
Unlike many right-wing talk-show hosts, Limbaugh does not view France with hostility. On the contrary, he is a Francophile. His salon, he told me, is meant to suggest Versailles. His main guest suite, which I did not personally inspect, was designed as an exact replica of the presidential suite of the George V Hotel in Paris.
Limbaugh is especially proud of his two-story library, which is a scaled-down version of the library at the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina. Cherubs dance on the ceiling, leatherbound collections line the bookshelves and the wood-paneled walls were once “an acre of mahogany.”
seriously, if you have a room in your house with cherubs painted on the ceiling you kinda lose the right to throw the term “elitist” at anyone.
No, there’s a lot inherently wrong with drinking Bud Light. I know Dan Savage says piss fetishes are cool and all, but I’ve got to disagree.
Urophagia in a can, Timothy. That’s all it is.
I agree with Mojotron that it’s only an act for the masses. The Republican “Guy you want to have a beer with” is every inch the smug pampered bastard that his “effete, elitist” Democrat opponent is, possibly more so.
The Republicans do it because it works. they’ve had success courting voters who think that the wealthier classes are looking down on how they live. they’ve succeeded in making a lot of issues (gays, immagration, abortion, church v. state, etc) as attacks on the lifestyle of these voters. They can’t give that up now.
I wonder what it means for society that a large segment of population want their leaders pretending to be just like them.
Just from a competence standpoint, I’d prefer that my president(congressman, senator, etc.) be smarter, more sophisticated and better educated than I am.
I checked it out. The first article was some kid bitching about “gansta’ rap” being played at a wedding. Mad ideas over there.
Here’s a preview of an upcoming video series by Bill Bennett on four of the greatest books ever written.
“These books,” according to Dr. Bennett, “are sources of wisdom, guidance, inspiration and counsel. If you take them seriously, they can literally change your life.”
The great Bill Bennett, the scold of the nation at one time, The great Bill ‘what is right for me is not right for thee’ Bennett. Holy Christ, I would rather drink bleach than listen to Bill Bennett expound upon anything. Conservatives lost it with Buckley, and he was never as erudite as he pretended to be. No, the only thing the conservatives have left is bud or miller light, or perhaps a PBR, and scorn for gays, or those the conservative hit men try to make look gay. Is McCain light in his $500.00 loafers? Is Limbaugh floating up on angels’ wings to his second story library?
Eat the rich.
Conservatives have spent such a long time denigrating films, and novels, who the hell would trust them to be a trustworthy voice on culture? That is the stab in the back. The conservatives would be happy if we were all back wood hicks, and the fellows like Bennett and Limbaugh the elite.
ahhh, the freedom-loving, live-and-let-live “libertarians” gather around the fire to sneer at the unauthorized new media outlet.
amazing that, since we’re already informed that reading heavily-sourced, exhaustively footnoted ann coulter is “wrong” … amazing we haven’t seen any rocks thrown at ‘faux’ news. but it’s early yet.
[...] have an article up today at Culture 11, which has been called “a more right-oriented version of Slate,” on the quest to get to know the real Sarah [...]