The end of the human race: Last night, Lawrence made us think of Norman O. Brown again.
Brown, a well-regarded classicist, suddenly got very hot in the 1960s. He got very hot because of his books, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (1959) and Love’s Body (1966).
We don’t recall what those books were about, or why Brown suddenly got so hot as a visionary of the revolution. If you’re interested, this remembrance of Brown from 2005 helps explain how it was.
That said, we have always remembered that one brief passage from Love’s Body, the one in which Brown described the way societies die:
BROWN (1966): I sometimes think I see that societies originate in the discovery of some secret, some mystery; and end in exhaustion when there is no longer any secret, when the mystery has been divulged, that is to say profaned...And so there comes a time—I believe we are in such a time—when civilization has to be renewed by the discovery of some new mysteries, by the undemocratic but sovereign power of the imagination, by the undemocratic power which makes poets the unacknowledged legislators of all mankind, the power which makes all things new.We don’t really know what that means; we don’t know why that has stuck in our head for maybe 45 years now. But the highlighted passage always pops into our head when we watch performances like the one Lawrence staged last night.
Lawrence interviewed Anthony Weiner—rather, pretended to do so. Instead of interviewing Weiner, he staged one of his trademark stupid-ass rants.
Granted, Lawrence gets crazier than he was last night. Still.
Lawrence said he doesn’t care about what Weiner did on-line. Instead, he kept haranguing Weiner about—well, his harangue didn’t really make sense. That’s why we thought of Brown again, of his thoughts about the way societies come to an end.
O’Donnell is one of the genuine nut-balls. He is a monster of self-regard and a genuine nut. Despite that, he holds an honored place in the corporate liberal firmament.
He stages crazy sessions like last night’s and nobody in our failing tribe seems able to notice or care.
This man has been crazy—dumb crazy— for years. He’s part of the guild within the guild which did the most to put Bush in office. And yet, we liberals just sit there and take it. We simply don’t have what it takes to see what Lawrence is.
As Norman O. Brown once said, “I sometimes think I see that societies...end in exhaustion.”
To watch Lawrence rant at Weiner, click this. (It will make you think better of Weiner.) For the record, Lawrence was crazily dumb this way back when he was hunting down Candidate Gore and the two Clintons, both of whom he still incoherently abhors.
For all these years, our liberal tribe has been unable to see the problem with this. This makes us think of Norman Brown, who said that societies die.
By the way: That low-polling candidate whose name Lawrence bungled is actually Randy Credico (CREDD-i-co), a progressive political comedian. Way back when, we brought Credico to Baltimore, where he staged his deathless act. (He had already been on the Tonight Show.)
Lawrence O’Donnell is visibly nuts. Credico probably isn’t.
Larry O is batty but in this case he did ask the question everyone wonders about.
ReplyDeleteAre you sure that everyone wonders about it, Anonymous? MSNBC has yet to release all the questions tweeted in for Weiner at O'Donnell's request of his viewers. I did not hear a single one of them asked. At least Big Ed always published the results of his on line polls every night.
DeleteSay, did any of the other MSNBC show besides Sharpton cover the Zimmerman domestic violence story?
CNN did report that Zimmerman's convicted perjurer wife told two different stories to police about a gun and that she probably lied about everything else of relevance in her call. But that wouldn't be a "domestic violence story" as much as a "false allegation of domestic violence" story.
Delete"...told two different stories to police about a gun and that she probably lied about everything else of relevance in her call."
DeleteSeems it's not just opposites who attract.
Since TDH will never follow up on poor thrown-under-the-bus (and now National Security Advisor) and misunderstood Susan Rice, here's Susan's latest from whitehouse.gov :
ReplyDelete"Assad’s escalating use of chemical weapons threatens the national security of the United States."
What a shocker! I wonder what this liberal interventionist will want to do next?
Still, no reason for TDH to monitor press coverage of Syria when there's still time to showcase the poor treatment of Weiner.
TDH today was not about poor treatment of Weiner. It was about the waste of space pundits on our supposedly liberal channel, that is supposed to be examining issues relevant to voters.
DeleteThat is shallow, Trollmes. This is not a post showcasing poor treatment.
DeleteIt is pyschoanalysis of the psychonanalyis performed by Dr. O'Donnell live without a license on cable TV.
But it begs a question. What IS wrong with Weiner that he felt a need to expose himself
on Lawrence's show?
Hey, first 1 p.m.? How about TDH wasting space on O'Donnell and Weiner while ignoring "the mainstream press corps and the american discourse" about the continuing crisis in Syria?
DeleteThere once was a time when the old Bob Somerby, the one who was abducted by aliens, would have been all over that.
Anonymous at 1 pm -- Weiner is running for office.
DeleteAnonymous at 1:09 -- the mainstream press is covering the crisis in Syria. Are you suggesting that there are myths or problems in the way the press is covering it? That is TDH's focus, not current events.
Anons @1 (first) and 1:09.
DeleteWe should be complaining that Lawrence was wasting his time covering a fourth place candidate he incorrectly claimed was in third place, thus misleading voters.
Now, Lawrence did devote most of his top half hour space to Syria (in the form of Obama praise) but TDH led off the day with the uncovered (by MSNBC's children) story of
our not failing schools. That has stuck in my head for forty five minutes.
Yes, 1:19, that is exactly what I am suggesting. Plus there are huge issues over the question of when and how the U.S. can and should exercise its military might that the mainstream media has been glossing over at best.
DeleteIn other words, the kinds of issues that the ol' Bob Somerby, not content with picking merely the low-hanging fruit of Lawrence O'Donnell and Anthony Weiner, would have been most insightful about, back in the day when this blog used to be widely read, quoted and linked to.
Wait a minute, 1:42. Aren't you mixing your metaphors improperly? You keeping talking about fruit picking when Somerby is posting about expositing or exposed nuts.
DeleteBullshit Detection:
DeleteWhen did "the ol' Bob Somerby" address "the question of when and how the U.S. can and should exercise its military might?"
Anon@1:52:
DeleteWhenever the media misrepresented or glossed over the issues involved with political or governmental actions.
Now you know where you can stash your Bullshit Detector.
"Whenever the media misrepresented or glossed over the issues involved with political or governmental actions."
DeleteWhatever that word salad means (nothing, quite probably), it certainly doesn't do anything to show there was an old, now gone, Bob Somerby who once dispensed wisdom on "the question of when and how the U.S. can and should exercise its military might."
Your bullshit spreads like a warm puddle of puppy diarrhea -- and you track it everywhere once you get your foot in it. Go wash yourself up.
Go to the Incomparable Archives and read from about July 2002 on as the Team Bush geared up for the invasion of Iraq.
Delete"[P]oets the unacknowledged legislators of all mankind..."
ReplyDeleteThere's something awfully familiar about that passage. Wasn't it lifted, unacknowledged, from Shelley?
OR is it the kind of lifting that suggests, "We all should know it, so there's no need to credit it"? Like when John Lennon lifted "Here come ol' flattop" from Chuck Berry, or "Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you" from Kahil Gibran?
I used to think Lawrence was one of the adults until the time years ago he had a meltdown on "The McLaughlin Group" over someone's suggestion that some Irish-Catholic-Americans were shipping cash to the IRA. Truthfully, it seemed at the time he was protesting a bit too loudly.
Oops! I guess that was a lift from Hamlet's mother.
Did Lawrence think Americans were not sending to cash to the IRA? I never watch him, so I am curious.
DeleteMrs. Hamlet didn't think of that. It was her writer, Will Shakespeare.
DeleteDog bites man is not news.
ReplyDeleteMan bites dog is news.
Nut berates nut is mixed nuts.
You pick your nit or scratch the nuts.