Fink Tank 3000: Maybe Bush is in Charge Now!

(Courtesy of Mason)

MAYBE BUSH IS IN CHARGE NOW!
by Fink
Fink Tank 3000

It’s a scary thought but doesn’t it seem like Bush is actually in charge now? It’s like Cheney is done taking the US Government for a test drive and handed the keys back to Bush, who can’t drive. Everything has spun out of control. A Republican White House can’t reign in a Republican Capitol Hill.

I picture Bush in a room all alone getting “things to do” lists from his secretary. He makes some calls but no one answers: not Karl Rove, not Dick Cheney, not Alberto Gonzales. (After all, in this tight-message administration, we shouldn’t know that Dick and Alberto were opposed to the Hiers nomination unless they wanted us to know.)

He may have to make decisions on his own now. Did Bush, in a moment of childish panic, shout from the Oval Office, “Harriet, can you come into my office? I need a Supreme Court nominee!”?

He tries to stem the growing unrest about his war in Iraq so he thinks like a typical CEO: “We’ll have a live video conference.” Yeah, those are always productive.

We really can’t know for sure because Cheney didn’t leave any evidence of his rule except for maybe a trail of slime. Maybe when Bush chooses his personal accountant to replace Alan Greenspan, we’ll understand if Bush is in charge or not.

CFP: The Anticapitalist Struggles of Native Peoples in America (November 5th)

AMERICAN@ is a peer reviewed e-journal dedicated to American Cultural and Literary Studies. It hopes to provide an intellectual canvas where the cultural spaces and experiences of American Studies are theorized and rigorously explored within both global and local contingencies of the present and the past. AMERICAN@ is accepting paper submissions for its Fall issue 2005. This issue will have a special focus on The Anticapitalist Struggle of Native Peoples in America.

In an era of hybridization and “mestizaje”, the indigenous component appears today with an unusual strength in the American continent, an alternative, a resistance to imperialistic policies. The effort to recuperate traditions, languages, together with the postcolonial desire of rewriting the history of the colonized peoples has found a good soil in the intellectuals of both the North and the South of the American continent. Translation and multilingualism have become common practices among the indigenous groups of America. Arnold Krupat, among others, discusses this phenomenon in his extensive critical production. A history of displacement and dispossession of the land has given way to revolts such as “the Zapatista insurrection” in Mexico portrayed by Leslie Silko’s Almanac of the Dead, where the indigenous struggle appears represented as a global class struggle in the light of Marxism. Russell Means, however, contests this Marxist approach in Ward Churchill’s Marxism and Native Americans. At the same time, grassroots and environmental activists have started to denounce the health challenging conditions of inferiority under which most indigenous communities, especially women, are forced to work and
live as well as the invisibility of their labor. We welcome papers that address these issues and/or related questions such as:

Bilingualism and translation Authenticity and cooptation
Neocolonization/postcolonial studies
Marxism/capitalism
History revisited Religión/Shamanism
Gender Studies
Individual/Tribal/National Identity and/or Politics
Environmental Issues
Representation of the indigenous anticapitalist struggle in the arts:
literature, film, painting, architecture, etc.

Please submit your original essays of 15 to 25 pages (4.000-7.000 words) and abstract (300-400 words) via e-mail as an attached document (Word format, MLA
style) with the subject “AMERICAN@ Fall 2005” to:

AMERICAN@inv.uhu.es

Deadline for submissions: November 5, 2005

For more information, check our website at AMERICAN@


AMERICAN@ es una revista electrónica dedicada a los estudios literarios y culturales de América. Su propósito es proporcionar un marco intelectual donde los espacios y experiencias culturales los Estudios Americanos sean explorados teórica y rigurosamente dentro de las contingencias tanto globales como locales del presente y del pasado. AMERICAN@ abre el plazo de propuestas para su número de Otoño de 2005, con una propuesta temática en torno a: La lucha anticapitalista de los pueblos indígenas de América

A pesar de encontrarnos en el momento álgido del mestizaje cultural, el componente indígena ha irrumpido con fuerza en el continente americano como alternativa, como resistencia y oposición al poder imperialista establecido. Entre la intelectualidad del momento ha surgido, tanto en Norteamérica como en Sudamérica, un esfuerzo por recuperar tradiciones y lenguas precolombinas a la vez que se ha desarrollado un deseo postcolonial por reescribir la historia de los vencidos, de los sujetos colonizados. Así, tradición y multilingüismo se han convertido en prácticas habituales entre los pueblos indígenas de América.

Arnold Krupat, entre otros, ha tratado este fenómeno en su extensa producción crítica. El sufrimiento causado a los pueblos indígenas por una política que les ha desplazado y desposeído del bien común que es la tierra ha llevado a revueltas como la Zapatista de Chiapas que Leslie Silko adelanta en Almanac of the Dead, novela que presenta la lucha indígena como una lucha global de clases al más puro estilo marxista. Russell Means se opone al uso de un enfoque marxista para analizar las condiciones de los pueblos nativos de América en Marxism and Native Americans de Ward Churchill. Al mismo tiempo, movimientos de base y activistas medioambientales han comenzado a denunciar la discriminación laboral que padecen la mayoría de las comunidades indígenas, especialmente las mujeres, en cuanto a condiciones sanitarias y a la invisibilidad de su trabajo.

Pueden enviar sus ensayos sobre estos temas y/o cuestiones relacionados como:

Bilingüismo y traducción
Neocolonialismo/poscolonialismo Marxismo/ capitalismo Reescrituras de la historia
Religión/Chamanismo
Estudios de género
Identidad y/o política individual/tribal/nacional.
Medio Ambiente Natural
Representaciones artísticas de la lucha anticapitalista indígena: literatura,
cine, pintura, arquitectura, etc.

Remitan sus ensayos originales de entre 15 a 25 páginas (4.000-7.000 palabras) y
resumen (300-400 palabras) via e-mail como documento adjunto (Formato Word format, estilo MLA) con el asunto “AMERICAN@ Otoño 2005” a: AMERICAN@inv.uhu.es

Plazo de propuestas: 5 de Noviembre de 2005

Para más información, consulte nuestra web: AMERICAN@

Blogs of the Day: October 14th

Recommended blogs of the day:

Corporate-Alien Blog

View From Iran

Blogs by Iranians

Global Voices (Courtesy El Oso)

Introduction to Peruvian Blogs

Democracy Now: Independent Media in a Time of War

(This is for my students studying media, but I thought I would include it here just in case there are people who haven't heard of Democracy Now)

An independent news agency that is broadcast on our local national public radio stations and whose video broadcasts are all available on the Internet:

Democracy Now

An example of their programming is their documentary:

Independent Media in a Time of War

The New Issue of Project Censored's Yearly Report on the Top 25 Censored News Stories Has Been Published

An amazing resource--check it out and see what the mainstream media fails to report:

The Top 25 Censored News Stories of the Last Year--see if you can guess what was the number one censored story of the last year.

Project Censored's Archive of the Yearly Top 25 Censored News Stories--relive the failings of mainstream media.

Also check out their extensive resource guides

Take the Holiday Pledge: Buy Nothing From Wal-Mart

(Courtesy of Fitz)

This is very easy for me because I quit shopping at Wal-Mart a long time ago, but I encourage everyone else to take the holiday pledge:

To Buy Nothing From Wal-Mart
-----------------------------------------------------

How about another pledge to do something for the poor/hungry in your community, perhaps involve the whole family and make it a new tradition?

Michael Pokocky of Sophistica Threatens Thivai Abhor

This is a copy of an email I just received. It is a response to a comment I made after he invited me to visit his new weblog (removed from his site--it said, "this is new age mysticism, try to write something original"). Michael Pokocky has been spamming blogger emails with ridiculous claims. You can get a sense of his personality from these comments to a post here. This is the original email that invited me to visit Michael Pokocky's Sophistica:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

please take off your critic hat and visit the http://sophisticaworld.silkblogs.com

*it has just released version 1.05 of the manifesto.

* i believe your posted comment on annymoses was unjustified because you did not see the evolution of the manifest; all versions are there for you to puruse.

* fyi www.linkedin.com just launched Sophistica Linkedin Group and this is hard to do on such a site but its done. you'll see the linkedin logo on the site to join the club but attached is the logo that would appear on your profile if you join.

* fyi how can you critisize a painters painting when it's a work in progress? and still call yourself a critic. is that akin to not seeing a broadway play and writing a crtic on it for the nytimes?

* really i think there was a miscommunication here, because everybody else seems to get it including billionaire visionaries who have joined the sophistica group on linkedin.

have a nice day,best,_michael
--------------------------------------------------------------------

This is the email after he gets enraged at my comment:

From Michael Pokocky of Sophistica:
----------------------------------------------------------------------

"you know nothing my friend and you disgrace what it means to be human; i'm not a politician; i'm a fucking artist and this is my work you are criticing like it were an academic paper; i don't capitalize; i write disjointed sentences; however i am farther up the food chain by intellectual spirit of creativity than you'll ever be.

so with that said you call the truce and why not show that you have good intentions by taking the time to understand the work in progress instead of offing a comment; we don't like people who are extremists and if you are one get the hell out of our way;

i'm telling you now that you have a choice; choose wrong and i will report you and i'll have my lawyers go over everything you've ever written and we'll file charges against you. This is not a threat but a warning to cease and desist harassment; there's such a thing as free speach my friend but harassment so that your google rantings at he expense other people's sites will rise because they happen to be the
site of the day you choose to harass, and all we have to prove is a history of intent and that's it strike one for you.

i am a reasonable man so i go on record to tell you to retract what you said; if not and i see it again i will report you my friend. hope you have a good lawyer.

best,_michael

i warmly await your apology sir Thivia Abhor and let's talk and get to know each other; perhaps we'll find we'd turn out to be good friends.

Bush Administration Propaganda is Now So Obvious That Even Yahoo.com Is Deconstructing the Process

Bush Teleconference With Soldiers Staged

Also, for now, at Yahoo's Bush Administration page

Check out NPR's report:

Take One: President Bush via Satellite

and... drumroll please:

Bush Poll Numbers Sink to Ten Year Low

Makes you wonder who are the 28 percent that "think the country is on the right track" and what would it take for them to become discouraged with the president?

Harold Pinter Wins the Nobel Prize for Literature

(First read about this at Leiter Reports)

"Does reality essentially remain outside language, separate, obdurate, alien, not susceptible to description? Is an accurate and vital correspondence between what is and our perception of it impossible? Or is is that we are obliged to use language only in order to obscure and distort reality - to distort what happens-because we fear it? We are encouraged to be cowards. We can't face the dead. But we must face the dead because they die in our name. We must pay attention to what is being done in our name."

Oh Superman 1990

Harold Pinter

PBS: Frontline Documentaries

Many more available at the main page for the show.

“The Alternative Fix: Americans are Spending Billions on Alternative Medical Treatments. And Major Hospitals and Medical Schools are Embracing Them. But Do They Work?” Frontline (PBS: 2003)

“Ambush in Mogadishu: The Bloody 1993 Battle That Left 18 Dead, 84 Wounded and Still Haunts the US Military.” Frontline (PBS: 1998)

“Beyond Baghdad: A Journey Across Iraq—From the Kurdish North, Through the Sunni Triangle, Into the Shite South—and a Hard Look at the Prospects for Democracy.” Frontline (PBS: 2004)

“Chasing the Sleeper Cell: They Met Bin Laden and Trained in His Camps. And Their Capture Was Hailed As A Victory in the War on Terror. But Were These Americans Really an Al Qaeda Sleeper Cell Ready to Strike?” Frontline (PBS: October 2003)

“Dangerous Prescription: More Than a Dozen Dangerous Drugs Have Been Pulled Off the Market Since 1997. Why were they approved in the first place? An investigation of America’s drug safety program.” Frontline (PBS: November 2003)

“Diet Wars.” Frontline (PBS: April 2004)

“From China With Love: Did an FBI “Asset”, and Her Affairs with Two Counterintelligence Agents, Compromise U.S. National Security? A Story of Sex, Spyning and National Security.” Frontline (PBS: January, 2004)

“The Jesus Factor: How George W. Bush’s Religious Faith Has Effected His Personal Life and Political Leadership.” Frontline (PBS: 2004)

“The Plea: Nearly 95% of All Cases Resulting in Felony Convictions Never Reach a Jury. They are Settled Through Plea Bargains In Which a Defendant Agrees To Plead Guilty In Exchange For a Reduced Sentence. But What Are the Implications of a System That Relies on Pleas to Expedite Justice?” Frontline (PBS: June, 2004)

“Son of Al-Qaeda: The Inside Story of a Young Canadian Who Grew Up With Bin Laden’s Children and Was Groomed to Be a Terrorist—But Became Instead a CIA Informant.” Frontline (PBS: 2004)

“Tax Me If You Can: Inside the Bogus Tax Shelter Business—The Companies Involved, The Schemes Concocted, and How the Ultimate Victim is the American Taxpayer.” Frontline (PBS: February 20, 2004)

“Truth, War, and Consequences: It’s the Closest Thing to a Quagmire That Americans Have Seen in Thirty Years. Why Did the U.S. Go to War in Iraq? What Went Wrong? And at What Cost?” Frontline (PBS: October 9, 2003)

“The Way the Music Died: A Look at the Troubled Music Industry and Tough New Realities Facing Aspiring Artists.” Frontline (PBS: 2004)

“Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?: An Investigative Biography of the Man at the Center of the Political Crime of the Century.” Frontline (PBS: December, 2003)

We Will Not Be Intimidated: Acts of Police Repression/Violence Against Student Protesters on Three Campuses

(Courtesy of Virginia Blum)

We Will Not Be Intimidated
by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field
Z-Mag

The antiwar movement is back. The quarter-million marching past the White House on September 24 heralded its reemergence, and none too soon. For those of us on campuses, it was particularly gratifying to see evidence of the national student movement that is beginning to cohere -- with "College Not Combat, Relief Not War" contingents organized by the Campus Antiwar Network bringing together 2,000 students at the DC march and hundreds in San Francisco.

This student movement is significant, because it is students who are targeted daily by military recruiters asking us to leave school and become the next round of cannon fodder in a war most of us oppose. And it is the rising opposition to war among young people, and the grassroots counter-recruitment movement that began to take shape on campuses last spring, that has put the Army in its worst recruiting slump since 1979.

And yet events of the last week make it clear that students' right to dissent from the war, and from the recruitment taking place on our campuses, remains in question. At three different colleges in the last week -- Holyoke Community College, George Mason University, and UW-Madison -- students engaging in peaceful counter-recruitment were met with police repression. At Holyoke and George Mason, students
face ongoing charges from the school or the state. The ability of the student movement to grow, and to continue to challenge our schools' role in recruiting for the war, will depend on our defending our own right to dissent.

Holyoke Community College

On Thursday, September 29, 30 Holyoke Community College (HCC) students engaged in a peaceful picket of the Army National Guard recruiting table in the school's cafeteria, organized by the HCC Anti-War Coalition, a chapter of the Campus Antiwar Network.

The police assault began after Peter Mascaro, the head of campus security, snatched a homemade sign reading "Cops are hypocrites" from a student's hands, calling it "inappropriate." Officer Scott Landry then grabbed the student and, joined by three other officers, lifted him off the ground and assaulted him. When other students came to his defense, Landry then grabbed another student, Charles Peterson --who witnesses describe as playing a moderating role throughout the protest -- put him in a headlock, and sprayed mace in his face.

Around 20 state police armed in riot gear and gas masks then arrived in the cafeteria. When one student tried to leave, he found 10 to 15 police officers pointing their guns at him. Only with difficulty were the protesters able to peaceably disperse. (Pictures of this protest are available at Campus Anti-War )

The next day, Charles Peterson was visited at home by two members of the state police, who informed him that he is indefinitely banned from campus, and will be arrested for trespassing if he sets foot on HCC. In violation of the school's own rules, Charles has been denied any due process, and has not even been given the ability to speak to administrators about the charges against him. Since Charles -- in
addition to being a model student at HCC, holding the James Taylor Award for Excellence in Philosophy and serving as the Vice President for Academic Affairs on the Student Senate -- is also employed at the school, this creates a financial hardship for him as well.

The assault on student protesters and the administration's banning of Charles Peterson occurs in the context of an organized and confident right wing on the extremely polarized HCC campus. Officer Scott Landry, who led the assault on the students, is also the advisor to the College Republicans. While the assault was taking place, those College Republicans lined up behind the police to cheer on the
attack. Last year, the same group led a campaign of harassment and sexist intimidation against then-president of the HCC Student Senate, Angela Greany, after she passed a resolution opposing military recruitment on campus. In the climate created by this group, many students who had participated in Thursday's protest decided not to attend their classes on Friday for fear of harassment from right-wing
students.

George Mason University

On the same day as the assault on HCC's protesters -- Thursday, September 29 -- Tariq Khan was assaulted and arrested by police at his school, George Mason University (GMU) in Virginia. Tariq, a Pakistani-American who himself served in the U.S. Air Force, stood near a Marine recruiting table at his school wearing signs that said "Recruiters tell lies. Don't be fooled" and "U.S. out of Iraq, Israel
out of Palestine, U.S. out of North America."

Three right-wing students quickly surrounded Tariq, yelling at him and ripping one of the signs from his shirt. One of them, who claimed to be a veteran of the Iraq war, said he could not wait to return and kill more Iraqis. School administrators then arrived to question Tariq, followed by officer T.L. Reynolds, who threw Tariq on
the ground and put him in a choke-hold.

According to GMU student David Curtis, who witnessed the entire sequence of events, as Tariq's eyes were watering and his face turning red, he struggled to keep saying that he was not being violent and was being attacked for no reason. Officer Reynolds
picked him up from behind, slammed him into a stage (cutting his face), and threw him back on the ground, choking him once again. Two students (including one who had been harassing Tariq) and a non-security campus employee then assisted Reynolds in violently handcuffing Tariq. Police dragged him to a police car and threatened him with pepper spray. Throughout this experience, Tariq Khan repeatedly stated his own non-violence and innocence. (David Curtis's detailed account is available at
Campus Anti-War )

Despite requests for medical treatment and a lawyer, Tariq received neither, and was taken to the Fairfax Adult Detention Center, where he was charged with trespassing (on his own campus), resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct. His treatment throughout echoes the racism of the U.S. treatment of Arab prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq. As Tariq relayed to me, Officer Reynolds justified handcuffing Tariq by telling him, "I didn't know who you were, and what with 9/11 and everything, there's no telling what you would do." Another officer chimed in, "You people are the most violent people in the world. You're passive aggressive!" Officer Reynolds then warned Tariq to keep his mouth shut and avoid looking at anyone, because if
he so much as looked at an officer wrong, they would "hang you from the ceiling by your feet."

We will not be intimidated

The day before the assaults at HCC and GMU, 25 students at the University of
Wisconsin at Madison were threatened with arrest if they continued to peacefully protest military and CIA recruiters at their school's career fair -- even though no police officer or administrator was able to show them a campus rule they were
violating. It is clear that HCC and GMU are not anomalies. Campus administrators and right-wing forces on campus watched the counter-recruitment movement take off last spring, and they are determined not to allow their schools to become the sites of the new movement against military recruiters.

But no amount of repression can disguise a fundamental shift that has taken place in U.S. politics over the past few months. Cindy Sheehan's stand in Crawford ignited a sense among the antiwar majority that something can be done -- and the callousness of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina helped show why it must be. As hundreds of thousands marched in DC, a Rasmussen Reports survey found that 23% of Americans consider themselves part of the antiwar movement. For the first time in years, it is supporters of the war, not its opponents, who are on the defensive.

Our movement needs to defend students whose academic status, financial security, and physical safety are threatened by campus administrators and police. The HCC and GMU administrations were banking that no one would care what they did to their students. The over 700 phone calls of complaint HCC has already received -- and the statements of support that have poured in, from people ranging from Cindy Sheehan to other students who have faced similar repression -- show how wrong they were. This is the time to stand up for our freedom of dissent -- because we're right to oppose the war, right to oppose recruitment in our schools, and now, most people know it.

Call the HCC, GMU and UW-Madison administrations and let them know what you think:

HCC President William Messner: (413) 552-2222

HCC Campus Police Officer/College Republicans Advisor Scott Landry:(413) 552-2048

GMU President Alan Merton: (703) 993-8700

UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley: (608) 262-9946

For more information or updates on the defense campaigns at all three schools, see Campus Anti-War

Elizabeth Wrigley-Field is a student at NYU and a member of the
Campus Antiwar Network who writes frequently on counter-recruitment.

H-NET: A New Adjunct List-Serv

ANNOUNCING H-Adjunct: H-Net Network for Adjunct, part-time and temporary faculty at universities, colleges and community colleges

Member of: H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online

Sponsored by: AHA/OAH Joint Committee on Part-Time and Adjunct Employment

ABOUT H-Adjunct

H-Adjunct is an open, inter-disciplinary forum for issues involving adjunct, part-time and temporary faculty at universities, colleges and community colleges.

Like all H-Net lists, H-Adjunct is moderated to edit out material that, in the editors' opinion, is not germane to the list, involves technical matters (such as subscription management requests), is inflammatory, or violates evolving, yet common, standards of Internet etiquette. H-Net's procedure for resolving disputes over list editorial practices is Article II, Section 2.20 of our bylaws, located at:

Bylaws

H-Adjunct is currently edited by Howard Smead and Amy Kinsell.

Logs and more information can also be located at:

Adjunct

To join H-Adjunct, please send a message from the account where you wish to receive mail, to:

listserv@h-net.msu.edu

(with no signatures or styled text, word wrap off for long lines) and only this text:

sub H-Adjunct firstname lastname, institution

Example: sub H-Adjunct Leslie Jones, Pacific State U

Alternatively, you may go to Subscribe to perform the same function as noted above.

Follow the instructions you receive by return mail. If you have questions or experience difficulties in attempting to subscribe, please send a message to:

help@mail.h-net.msu.edu

H-Net is an international network of scholars in the humanities and social sciences that creates and coordinates electronic networks, using a variety of media, and with a common objective of advancing humanities and social science teaching and research. H-Net was created to provide a positive, supportive, equalitarian environment for the friendly exchange of ideas and scholarly resources, and is hosted by Michigan State University. For more information about H-Net, write to
webstaff@mail.h-net.msu.edu, or point your web browser to:

H-NET

5 Police Officers Beating Up a Senior Citizen in New Orleans and Threatening Journalists That Film the Incident; Lewis Lapham "On Message"

I don't need to link this, you know what I am talking about.

This is not the isolated acts of rogue cops. This is the attitude of our "security" state to any citizen that is viewed as out of line.

Wake up America!

If you are still confused pick up the latest issue of Harper's Magazine and read Lewis Lapham's editorial "On Message"

Just as I was getting ready to curl up to dream with Kenneth Patchen's Journal of Albion Moonlight, I got a comment from Bill, of Thoughts on the Eve of the Apocalypse, telling me that On Message is now available online.

Thanks Bill and Marxmail

Funk 'em If They Can't Take a Joke!

Wow, sitting at home and unwinding... a load of shit flowing from the brain-numbing boob-tube and what should bless my life? a documentary of one of the all-time best bands:



Parliament-Funkadelic: One Nation Under a Groove

Thomas H. Benton: Productive Procrastination

(Melissa sent this to me as I wasted time before heading up to my office to spend my fall break vacation working on my dissertation.)

Productive Procrastination
By THOMAS H. BENTON
Chronicle of Higher Education

For the last 10 years, everything I've done that was worth doing has been done when I should have been doing something else.

Academics are often asked to admire the kind of writer who, after finishing the last sentence of a 500-page manuscript, takes a sip of coffee, inhales deeply, and begins writing the first sentence of the next book.

"Work! For the night cometh."

The academic life sometimes suggests 17th-century Puritanism. We learn early that we must publish immediately and continually. There is no release from guilt. Sinners all, we are disgracefully underproductive. We meet each other at conferences and are ashamed of the work we have not done. When someone else is blessed by success, it reminds us that we are not among the elect, and may never be.

"My new book came out last month. Seen the poster? How's your book coming along (loser)?"

I used to have a picture of Benjamin Franklin in my office. Franklin was born in poverty and obscurity, but he became the most famous American of his time. He reminded me to rise early, waste no time, work late, and take no pleasure in idle entertainments. Franklin's father -- who warned him that "poets were generally beggars" -- used to recite this proverb:


"Seest thou a man diligent in his calling? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men."
The Protestant work ethic that shapes the academic soul believes in meritocracy. The cream will rise to the top. If you are not a success, as the profession measures it, you have no one to blame but yourself.

But most professors also know the story of James Gatz, better known as the "Great Gatsby" of Fitzgerald's novel. As a boy, he too followed the path blazed by Old Daddy Franklin. Denied the affections of Daisy, his "Golden Girl," Gatsby attained all the accoutrements of wealth, but he remained unable to crack the social boundaries of East Egg. Gatsby was a bounder and bootlegger, but his tragedy is more moving, by far, than the self-satisfied winners of our cultural history:


"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter -- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. ... And one fine morning --"
It is better, in my view, to leave some goals unattained, and some debts never paid. I've never quite trusted writers who set out to become the motivators of other writers. Slogans come too easily to them. They believe too strongly in autonomy. The drive to not procrastinate, to eliminate all of one's obligations ("neither a borrower nor a lender be"), is to embrace an idea of perfection and freedom that is unreachable.

"You too can touch the face of God, if only you buy my book and listen to my tapes."

Procrastinators, on the other hand, are humble. They live as mendicants instead of hucksters. They recognize life's limitations; instead of presenting themselves as exemplars, they begin every exchange with a plea for forgiveness.

"I'm sorry I'm late. Here is the work I promised. I hope you like it."

If anything, the literary world needs more people whose habitual expression is "mea culpa" rather than "tua culpa."

The romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a procrastinator of the first order. His publishers were always nagging him for overdue manuscripts. Most famously, he was interrupted while writing "Kubla Khan," by someone knocking at his door. He never regained his concentration, and the poem remains an evocative fragment. But it is hard to deny that the unfinished "Kubla Khan" is a more stirring instance of romanticism than, say, the whole of Wordsworth's Prelude, a finished poem that goes on for hundreds of tedious pages.

Melville shows us what can happen to people who always pursue the most daunting task instead of casting about for something easier. The White Whale is a metaphor for the blank page, which writers hunt obsessively with our harpoon-pens. Moby-Dick would have ended differently if Ahab had lost himself in the pursuit of whale oil or the search for The Rachel's missing children. A monomaniacal, Calvinist "isolato" is not necessarily a better model for the writerly life than the louche, remorseful "inspirato" that Coleridge was.

Shakespeare's Hamlet was a great procrastinator. There was always something to be done before getting about the business of killing his father's murderer. But can anyone deny that Hamlet performed an honorable service in dispatching that pedantic spouter of aphorisms, Polonius? Perhaps things would have worked out better for Hamlet and Denmark if he had never got around to killing Claudius, if he had procrastinated until the old poisoner succumbed to cirrhosis.

As Hamlet shows us, procrastination can be highly productive, provided one has plenty of things to do while working toward the most dreaded task.

I, for example, always like to have one writing assignment that I am not doing but actively working toward like a man shoveling his driveway. That method makes me respectably productive, just not on the one project that, for one reason or another, I regard as too daunting to begin.

Aside from procrastinatory writing, I have plenty of ways to avoid undesirable projects. First, I live in on an old farmstead with buildings in need of constant repair. Then there is the landscaping work: lawnmowing, tree pruning, and rototilling.

If the weather is bad, I can always organize my desk or rearrange my books. Or maybe I can just see what's in the fridge, or make a list of what should be in the fridge and go grocery shopping. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, one of my three little daughters will be lurking on the other side of my office door, and will say, "Play with me, Daddy!" Then I can come out, as if I am making a sacrifice, and play with the girls on the living room floor until they are tired and it is too late for me to resume writing.

If none of those options presents itself, I can always log on to the Internet, read some newspaper columns, see if L.L. Bean or Land's End has anything on sale, visit a number of online booksellers, and then search for some of my favorite collectibles on eBay.

If that doesn't satisfy, I'll probably make the rounds of about 30 academic blogs. If I am avoiding something particularly frightening, I might leave an extended comment somewhere and spend the next couple days dealing with the consequences. Sometimes I'll Google my name just to see if anyone is writing about me -- and then I'll appear like a demon whose name it is dangerous to mention.

When I am teaching, I can always spend more time preparing my classes. Sometimes I'll even find ways to schedule more meetings with my students, just to see how they are doing and to talk with them about the course material. Sometimes I'll troll the corridors, looking for colleagues to chat with. If I have exhausted all of those options, I can always make a list of all the things I am going to do tomorrow, this week, and possibly next summer.

For all the useful anxiety that procrastination inevitably provokes, I have never been happy after completing a long-postponed obligation. Relieved, yes. Or, perhaps, empty, deflated, and devoid of purpose. One should never complete a difficult project without having another one available to replace it. Without something onerous to avoid, I become unable to complete the minor obligations that once seemed like an escape from anxiety.

Fortunately, I'm procrastinating right now. It's much easier to write a column than a long-promised scholarly book chapter. I suspect you, dear reader, are procrastinating too.

But, fret not. The best advice I ever heard is that life is what we do when we are avoiding something else. There are already too many books chasing too few readers, and, perhaps, the best thing for most us to do is take some time to play with our kids, talk to our students and colleagues, cultivate our gardens, and live well.

Inevitably, our best books will be the ones we never finish.

Essay Link

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Thomas H. Benton is the pseudonym of an assistant professor of English at a Midwestern liberal-arts college. He writes about academic culture and the tenure track and welcomes reader mail directed to his attention at careers@chronicle.com

Alix Spiegel: Freud's Nephew and the Origins of Public Relations

Freud's Nephew and the Origins of Public Relations
by Alix Spiegel
NPR

Years ago, Americans grabbed toast and coffee for breakfast. Public-relations pioneer Edward Bernays changed that.

Bernays used his Uncle Sigmund Freud's ideas to help convince the public, among other things, that bacon and eggs was the true all-American breakfast.

He took Freud's complex ideas on people's unconscious, psychological motivations and applied them to the new field of public relations.

Read/Listen to the History

Umberto Eco: On Fascism

The Italian writer, linguist, philosopher and medievalist Umberto Eco

In spite of some fuzziness regarding the difference between various historical forms of fascism, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.

To read about these features of fascism:

Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt

Also:

Understanding Propaganda and the Need for a Strong Public Media

Don Hazen: Wal-Mart Can Hide, But It Can't Run

AN ALTERNET EDITORIAL: WAL-MART CAN HIDE, BUT IT CAN'T RUN
by Don Hazen
AlterNet

Robert Greenwald's upcoming documentary about Wal-Mart's predatory practices is part of an unprecedented progressive media campaign.


Wal-Mart has taken advantage of the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina to try to distract the public from the myriad controversies that have plagued it recently. The extent of Wal-Mart's sins includes lawsuits about discrimination, union busting, worker anger over backlogs of unpaid overtime, and health care and compensation policies that send many of its employees to welfare and food stamps.

It's true that Wal-Mart stepped up to the plate to help the hundreds of thousands of victims of Katrina; the Walton family has reportedly contributed $25 million to the cause. But with everyone in the immediate family right at the top of Forbes' 500, it's not the biggest stretch to their wallets. In fact, a recent report from the National Center for Responsive Philanthropy faults the family with the largest personal fortune in the world for a "rather low level of philanthropic giving," and judges the purpose of their giving to be "primarily self-interested."

Wal-Mart reportedly spends $4 million a day on public relations to obscure its corporate irresponsibility and position it as an American company that truly cares. But even $4 million a day can't hide the vicious business model of the largest corporation on the planet. With 1.4 million employees (larger than GM, Ford, GE and IBM combined), Wal-Mart's $258 billion in annual revenues make up 2 percent of the U.S. G.D.P.

In spite of its financial largesse, or maybe because of it, Wal-Mart constantly plays the miser. A congressional report in 2004 found that a typical 200-employee Wal-Mart store cost federal taxpayers $420,000 for children's health care, tax credits and deductions for low-income families. That equals about $2,103 per Wal-Mart employee, or an annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million employees in America. What that boils down to is that Americans subsidize Wal-Mart so that its stockholders can continue to reap huge profits.

To Read the Entire Article

Dale Allen Pfeiffer/Elizabeth Anne Pfeiffer: The Power of Delusion

The Power of Delusion
By Dale Allen Pfeiffer and Elizabeth Anne Pfeiffer
From the Wilderness

What is going on with the US population? How could anyone vote for George W. Bush? This guy shouldn't be in the White House, he should be in prison. And now, with the fascists vindicated in the White House and in control of the House and the Senate (and soon the Supreme Court), the future is wide open. We will likely see more war, more death, and the complete pillaging of the US economy and our social system (social security, medicare, school budgets). We could see not only the outlawing of abortion, but the criminal prosecution of any woman who obtains an abortion. We could see the reinforcement of the Patriot Act, the scrapping of the Bill of Rights, and the full establishment of a police state. We could see a nuclear attack, ecological devastation, and the impoverishment of the working class.

...

How can such a large percentage of the US population remain blinded by denial in the face of so much evidence which flatly contradicts their view of reality (and isn't such delusion a feature of psychosis)? When the rest of the world clearly sees and deplores what is happening, how is it that a majority of the US population-which prides itself on freedom of information and informed democracy-has not clue what is really happening? How is this delusion being maintained? Through a few simple techniques.

To Read the Entire Article

Mary McDonald: Weltatem

Some good posts over at Weltatem on the current struggle over the next supreme court justice and the Indiana legislature's recent attempts to keep single women from having children through artifical insemination:

The Tyrannous Strategy of Low Expectations

Senator Deauthorizes My Womb

My Womb as a Trial Balloon