Posts Tagged ‘Goofus and Gallant’
Big Monday Links
* Lost Back to the Future audition tapes. You win this round, SNL.
* Then and Now with Goofus and Gallant.
* zunguzungu has some final thoughts on the Rally to Restore Sanity taking Andrew Sullivan’s glowing endorsement as his departure point.
Americans who want to emphasize that “politics isn’t all there is to life” are people who don’t feel very keenly the sting of injustice or the anxiety of uncertainty or the horror of what this country does in our name. When you lose your job because of politics, or can’t afford to go to school because of politics, or are denied full citizenship because of politics, or die because of politics, the idea that “politics isn’t all there is to life” will be cold comfort to you.
…
But what if, for example, you look out into the world and see not a basic normality of everyday justice and brotherhood and comity and happy cookies but, rather, a massively inequitable system getting both steadily worse and more deeply enmeshed into our everyday reality? An America which has, for example, rendered it normal to be conducting military operations in multiple theatres for no publicly acknowledged or agreed upon purpose? Where 10% unemployment is normal? Where immigrants are presumed guilty until documented innocent? What if you think things actually are completely fucked up?
* On not being obliged to vote Democrat. We voted last Thursday, straight ticket as always, but I confess I didn’t take much pleasure in it.
* What happens after Republicans win tomorrow? For one thing, Virginia’s climate witch-hunts will go national. Via Boing Boing.
* What happens after Republicans win tomorrow, Nevada edition: Angle victory means return of Yucca nuclear waste dump.
* Should the left try to use our democracy’s systemic biases towards military spending to drive a progressive spending agenda? Ezra and Matt take aff and neg. I give the decision to Ezra—let’s take our victories where we can get them.
* Corporate synergy, the Fox News way.
* UN Convention on Biodiversity: Climate-related geo-engineering activities [should not] take place until there is an adequate scientific basis on which to justify such activities and appropriate consideration of the associated risks for the environment and biodiversity and associated social, economic and cultural impacts.
* Cornell President David Skorton wants to save the humanities.
* How can this many colleges charge over $50,000 a year for tuition? That’s completely insane.
* From the campus newspaper: What’s Duke’s policy towards undocumented immigrants?
* Another great Strange Map: an alternate New York City with a filled-in East River where Manhattan and Brooklyn merge. Via Kottke.
* And rest in peace, Ginny Sack.
Labor Day Links
Labor Day links.
* An oral history of Art Spiegelman’s seminal alternative comic RAW, in two parts. Have I really never used the Art Spiegelman tag before? (via)
* Amusing Amazon review of Dollhouse.
* If you feel like you missed the boat on speculative realism and want to know what everybody is talking about, Larval Subjects says the Wikipedia entry is, as of today, a good place to start.
* Best of Wikipedia directs our attention to the mystery of the Bloop.
* Daily Kos goes deep inside White House plans to indoctrinate your children into European-style communofascism.
* Another post on status update activism.
* Then and Now with Goofus and Gallant.
Only Goofus Has Revolutionary Consciousness
Dial B for Blog, once again drawing closer to its final issue, celebrates Goofus and Gallant.
Fair enough, though Gallant’s hand appears to be slightly radioactive.
It seems unreasonable to hold Goofus responsible for this.
Gallant is a quisling. Only Goofus has revolutionary consciousness.
See also one of the best McSweeney’s pieces ever, “Goofus, Gallant, Rashomon.”
Alex, high-school teacher of Goofus:
Goofus had a top-notch bullshit detector. Most teenagers think they have one, but his was the real thing, and I’m one of the few teachers who can relate to it. I introduced him to Kerouac, Bukowski, Burroughs. He acted enthusiastic about writing a paper in which they interacted. But it turned out to be seven pages of … well, I was one of the characters in the scene, which was extremely graphic and not what we agreed on.
Gerry Canavan 
