Comments on: Sarah Palin, Female Complainer

By: Bianca Isaki

Bianca Isaki — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 17:06:04 +0000

I’m a bit of a latecomer to this brilliant post. Thanks!
The point that hope works as a vitalizing and a stalling mechanism seems especially right on. At the same time, this vitality clustered around that hoped-for (unracist, brilliantly new, and interdependent) community seems a dangerous mixture. I’m thinking of renewed sexism in attacks on Palin (and Hilary, just a moment ago)in the name of support for Obama’s promise, and energized by that name’s seeming synonymy with righteous anti-racism.
Support for Obama that arrives in the form of media attention on Palin’s shopping bill seems to work to justify Palin’s turn towards second-wave feminist rhetoric (if not it’s commitment to actual wage restructuring).
I’m voting for Obama, but in this moment of hope-speak it’s not too much to ask that movements towards something better not include references to Sarah Palin’s “bush”.

By: Cathy Davidson

Cathy Davidson — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 01:20:48 +0000

Does hope have to have an object, or only an affect? I’m not sure the politics of hope EVER is stable, which would imply obtainable, which means the hope (predicated on unfulfilled futurity), wouldn’t be necessary any more. The opposite of hope, I guess.

I love these posts, Lauren. Can’t wait to watch Mandy’s Les Miz

By: implicit art » I feel your Hope

implicit art » I feel your Hope — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:10:27 +0000

[...] Via. [...]

By: Ignacio

Ignacio — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:06:53 +0000

nostalgia for an imaginary past indeed.

Welcome to the hive mind.

By: Mandy

Mandy — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:53:02 +0000

One thing Obama *is* missing is the language of pedagogy–to some degree anyway–and he’s rightfully not tapping into a Bill Clinton style version of it. (Clinton’s teaching voice has become his shaming voice; and Obama is vulnerable to sounding too smart.) But he needs to develop some kind of version of it–a way to explain some things, esp. the economy at the moment. I have been disappointed the last few days, after Lehman crash and &tc, that Obama has missed an opportunity to remind people (and himself) that election campaigns are when we learn about what citizenship means–and much better times for that than National Disasters. Right now, for example, citizenship might mean learning what the term “economic fundamentals” means in the world of people who discuss and make economic policy. Etc etc etc ad finitum….Obama needs to slow down and explain–to people who don’t already understand it–what happened and is happening on wall street with at least some effort at precision. This is killing me.

As for Palin, she shot her wad. She’s done, by which I mean we have seen and heard every single thing she has to bring to the table. She can repeat herself forever, but there will be no more. And the Retardlicans are too cynical, brain-dead, and sexist to develop a strategy that might represent a “more” to her, or a development story. She’s only a woman, and she gave a great lipstick party there for a week, but he own party will not be able to imagine any further kind of product she might have or be.

I am glad last week is over though. The demo–panic was making me nauseous.

I agree with what you say about people feeling frozen limbs again. I also think that the frozen limbs are, in many cases, limbs that were never there in the first place, i.e. nostalgia for an imaginary past.