De File

Screen

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Tue, 13 May 2008 06:55:53 GMT

Big Deal

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Sun, 11 May 2008 06:32:22 GMT

I threw a bunch of things away while organizing the garage today, including outdated -- and largely toxin-free -- electronic paraphernalia of the sort that I never discard. Also, I considered becoming a Republican for a brief moment. And giving up meat. Needless to say, I'm highly unlikely to go that far in the course of my renaissance self-refashioning. But I'm encouraged by the daring in my musings.

The Last Week

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Sat, 10 May 2008 05:11:13 GMT

Monday, the doctoral student I advise passed his qualifying exam with the proverbial flying colors, using the techniques I imparted to him to excellent effect. Tuesday, another advisee passed her M.A. exam. She also made good use of my advice on how to handle the pressure of the event. Wednesday, I spent the five hours before teaching meeting with a series of students I mentor, all of whom had produced better thinking than I would have expected when I first encountered them. Thursday, I held office hours all day after getting up at 5am, managing not to lose the thread of my ritual advice-giving. And today, Friday, the two students whose Honors theses I directed this semester presented their work at the Department's end-of-year reception to much acclaim while a third student, who had delayed turning in her thesis from last spring, came to see me, pleased that I'd continued to work with her during a difficult time and relieved to have finally completed the requirements for her degree. I'm exhausted, but also proud of the work my students have done and, a rarity for me, of the work I did helping them to realize their potential.

Greatness Comes in Groups

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Fri, 09 May 2008 05:39:11 GMT

After a week of notable birthdays, including Marx, Freud, Orson Welles, Willie Mays, myself and also my great friend Annalee Newitz, who celebrated the twentieth cumpleaños of our acquaintance yesterday, it is now Thomas Pynchon's fête. The author of my all-time favorite book The Crying of Lot 49, as well as close runner-up Vineland and the awesome Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon also wrote a trenchant piece on Los Angeles in the wake of the 1965 Watts riots that serves as the perfect counterpoint to the Southern California presented in his fiction:

Feelings range from a reflexive, angry, driving need to hit back somehow, to an anxious worry that the slaying is just one more bad grievance, one more bill that will fall due some warm evening this summer. Yet in the daytime's brilliance and heat, it is hard to believe there is any mystery to Watts. Everything seems so out in the open, all of it real, no plastic faces, no transistors, no hidden Muzak, or Disneyfied landscaping or smiling little chicks to show you around. Not in Raceriotland. Only a few historic landmarks, like the police substation, one command post for the white forces last August, pigeons now thick and cooing up on its red-tiled roof. Or, on down the street, vacant lots, still looking charred around the edges, winking with emptied Tokay, port and sherry pints, some of the bottles peeking out of paper bags, others busted.

A kid could come along in his bare feet and step on this glass--not that you'd ever know. These kids are so tough you can pull slivers of it out of them and never get a whimper. It's part of their landscape, both the real and the emotional one: busted glass, busted crockery, nails, tin cans, all kinds of scrap and waste. Traditionally Watts. An Italian immigrant named Simon Rodia spent 30 years gathering some of it up and converting a little piece of the neighborhood along 107th Street into the famous Watts Towers, perhaps his own dream of how things should have been: a fantasy of fountains, boats, tall openwork spires, encrusted with a dazzling mosaic of Watts debris. Next to the Towers, along the old Pacific Electric tracks, kids are busy every day busting more bottles on the street rails. But Simon Rodia is dead, and now the junk just accumulates.

A few blocks away, other kids are out playing on the hot blacktop of the school playground. Brothers and sisters too young yet for school have it better--wherever they are they have yards, trees, hoses, hiding places. Not the crowded, shadeless tenement living of any Harlem; just the same one- or two-story urban sprawl as all over the rest of L.A., giving you some piece of grass at least to expand into when you don't especially feel like being inside.

In the business part of town there is a different idea of refuge. Pool halls and bars, warm and dark inside, are crowded; many domino, dice and whist games in progress. Outside, men stand around a beer cooler listening to a ball game on the radio; others lean or hunker against the sides of buildings--low, faded stucco boxes that remind you, oddly, of certain streets in Mexico. Women go by, to and from what shopping there is. it is easy to see how crowds, after all, can form quickly in these streets, around the least seed of a disturbance or accident. For the moment, it all only waits in the sun.

Overhead, big jets now and then come vacuum-cleanering in to land; the wind is westerly, and Watts lies under the approaches to L.A. International. The jets hang what seems only a couple of hundred feet up in the air; through the smog they show up more white than silver, highlighted by the sun, hardly solid; only the ghosts, or possibilities, of airplanes.

From here, much of the white culture that surrounds Watts--and, in a curious way, besieges it-- looks like those jets: a little unreal, a little less than substantial. For Los Angeles, more than any other city, belongs to the mass media. What is known around the nation as the L.A. Scene exists chiefly as images on a screen or TV tube, as four-color magazine photos, as old radio jokes, as new songs that survive only a matter of weeks. It is basically a white Scene, and illusion is everywhere in it, from the giant aerospace firms that flourish or retrench at the whims of Robert McNamara, to the "action" everybody mills long the Strip on weekends looking for, unaware that they, and their search which will end, usually, unfulfilled, are the only action in town.

That bit about the "ghosts, or possibilities, of airplanes" gets me every time. Someday soon, I need to make a pilgrimage to the Watts Towers and tilt my head skyward as the cone of sound engulfs me.

Midnight at Eight

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Fri, 09 May 2008 05:21:47 GMT

Here's my version of a traditional central Italian "midnight snack" pasta:

• Cook spaghetti until toothily al dente, then tossing with a little olive oil after it has been rinsed off and transferred to a bowl
• While the pasta is cooking, begin simmering anchovies -- I used two standard-sized cans -- in olive oil
• Add crushed red pepper and garlic to taste
• As the mixture starts to thicken to the point of not sliding easily across the bottom of the man, add a little white wine to deglaze it, turning down the heat until the sauce is barely bubbling
• Toss in a few handfuls of raisins and about half as many capers
• Add the juice of two lemons
• As the sauce thickens to the consistency you desire, grate pecorino romano cheese
• Once everything is done, sprinkle the cheese over the pasta liberally, then toss with the anchovy-raisin-caper sauce
• Try not to eat as much as I did tonight

Although the combination of salty, sweet and sour flavors might not seem like a good match for the cheese to some, I was overwhelmed by the heady savor of the combination.

The Proper Perspective

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Thu, 08 May 2008 03:40:46 GMT

In office hours today, a student -- one of my best students, I should add -- extended belated good wishes for my birthday and the offered a word of consolation: "At least you're not fifty!" I laughed. But I was greatly moved by the greetings many of you sent me yesterday, so thank you.

Cobbled Together From the Ruins of the Future

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Tue, 06 May 2008 16:12:21 GMT

The whole of May 6th was marked by demonstrations which turned into riots in the afternoon. The first barricades were thrown up at the Place Maubert and defended for three hours. At the same time fights with the police were breaking out at the bottom of the Boulevard Saint-Michel, at the Place du Châtelet, and in Les Halles. By the early evening the demonstrators numbered more than ten thousand and were mainly holding the area around the Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where they had been reinforced only after 6p.m. by the bulk of the march organized by the UNEF at Denfert-Rochereau. On May 8th Le Monde wrote:

What followed surpassed in scope and violence everything that had happened throughout an already astonishing day. It was a kind of street fighting that sometimes reached a frenzy, where every blow delivered was immediately returned, and where ground that had scarcely been conquered was just as quickly retaken. . . There were dramatic and senseless moments which, for the observer, seemed rife with madness.

And on May 7th L'Aurore noted: "Alongside the demonstrators could be seen bands of young hoods (blousons noirs) armed with steel bars, who had come in from the outlying areas of Paris to help out the students." The fighting lasted until after midnight, especially at Montparnasse.

For the first time cars were overturned and set afire, paving stones were dug up for the barricades, and stores were looted. The use of subversive slogans, which had begun at Nanterre, had now spread to several parts of Paris. Insofar as the rioters were able to strengthen the barricades, and thus their own capacity for counterattack, the police were forced to abandon direct charges for a position strategy which relied mainly on offensive grenades and tear gas.

May 6th also marked the first intervention of workers, blousons noirs, the unemployed and high school students who that morning had organized important demonstrations. The spontaneity and violence of the riots stood in vivid contrast to the platitudes put forth by their academic initiators as goals and slogans. The very fact that the blousons noirs had fought in the streets shouting "The Sorbonne to the students!" marked an end to an entire era.

The Way To Start My Day

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:11:20 GMT

I could listen to this song every day for the next forty years. I should listen to it every day for the next forty years. Short of that, though, I'm going to listen to it today.

Point of Contention

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Tue, 06 May 2008 03:43:30 GMT

Could Chris Paul be the best point guard-sized point guard since Isaiah Thomas? Tony Parker looked so good last year and against the Suns. But Paul is making him look like a poser. I don't ask this question to slight Steve Nash, who has been a tremendous player for the past half decade, or John Stockton, whose consistency was a wonder to behold. But neither of them could take over a game the way Paul can, the way he has done in the third quarter tonight. And neither of them had the speed to disrupt opposing offenses the way Paul can. He actually reminds me a lot of Jason Kidd when he was younger and quicker, though he's getting by with a lot less size than Kidd did.

Late Bloomer

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Tue, 06 May 2008 03:35:42 GMT

Not My Space

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:49:25 GMT

From Karl Marx, Grundrisse--

The more deeply we go back into history, the more does the individual, and hence also the producing individual, appear as dependent, as belonging to the greater whole: in a still quite natural way in the family and in the family expanded into the clan; then later in the various forms of communal society arising out of the antitheses and fusions of the clans. Only in the eighteenth century, in 'civil society', do the various forms of social connectedness confront the individual as a mere means towards his private purposes, as external necessity. But the epoch which produces this standpoint, that of the isolated individual, is also precisely that of the hitherto most developed social (from this standpoint, general) relations. The human being is in the most literal sense a "political animal," not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of a society. Production by an isolated individual outside society -- a rare exception which may well occur when a civilized person in whom the social forces are already dynamically present is cast by accident into the wilderness -- is as much of an absurdity as the development of language without individuals living together and talking to each other.

In The Lusty Month of May

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Mon, 05 May 2008 05:58:30 GMT

No longer in a relationship
with the meaning of is,
baby. Tragedy is always
a bait and switch. Updated,

anticipated. My profile
hides my lazy I while
yours mixes metaphors
under London Bridge.

Which? Boys are dying
for the tingle of salt
on their tongues. You
heard me right. The

word wasn't what it was
when I circled the windy
lake, sand hilling up
like a documentary
about the Dust Bowl.

Face the music, darling,
you're an open book
when the flame turns
your thin milk to bone.

The Speed of Sound

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Sat, 03 May 2008 16:34:48 GMT

The new Portishead album is great, though I don't agree with Pitchfork reviewer Nate Patrin's assertion that the formula for it equals the band's first two records minus trip-hop. I still hear plenty of the Bristol Sound seething underneath the more diverse sonic foliage. But there's also a nod to the dubstep aesthetic that Joel and I discussed at last month's Experience Music Project conference. Some of the tracks foreground speeded-up beats which, in combination with Beth Gibbons' drawn-out vocal phrasings, give Third a tense feel different from their previous albums. "We Carry On" is the most striking example -- listen for yourself -- as well as being a candidate for the best song I've ever heard that makes me feel like my head is about to explode. To borrow from my own take on Burial, it's like Portishead are forcing us to listen for their past in the spaces vacated by the slow throb for which they were justly celebrated. Release is under erasure.

The $48 Man

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Fri, 02 May 2008 06:25:35 GMT

I've only been riding the bike again for a week or so, but I could already tell the difference when I played two-and-a-half hours of one-on-one basketball today. My knee was still balky, but I had improved lateral stability on spin moves and seemed to be getting off the ground more quickly as well. I'm sure the last few months of jogging and bouncing on the mini-trampoline also played a role. But it seemed to take the bike riding to realize the improvements they promised.

I Could Use a Little Verfremdung Right Now

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 05:19:17 GMT

This hasn't been a good year for me. The sports teams I identify with have had little good fortune. And the player I spent years defending is not even playing right now. Tonight the Suns, whom I've grown fond of, bit the dust. I'm starting to wonder whether my devotion is bound up with a curse, like appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated. At least I can appreciate good play in spite of my allegiances. Although I don't haven any emotional investment in Chris Paul, for example, I can't help but notice that he really is as good as advertised.

Let's Get Lost

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:58:44 GMT

No, I do not know
what I am talking
about. Nor want
to. Get it? Tips
from a satellite
are great if you
fear getting lost.
But I'd rather
find my way
where there isn't
one, my words
keen to cut through
thickets of ignorance.
There's always more
to do. The trail
only lasts as long
as you walk it.

Really?

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:33:43 GMT

I wasn't shocked that the Warriors gave the Mavs rough time last year, though their eventual triumph was more than I'd expected. But the Hawks? Either the East is better than advertised or a lot worse. Time will tell.

Rolling Again

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 04:37:20 GMT

I rode fourteen miles on a bicycle today, half of them uphill and half of them at top speed. It was the hottest day of they year so far. And the winds were so fierce that they gave my cheeks the appearance of sunburn. But I'm so happy to be riding again that I don't mind.

Today's Playlist

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 03:42:39 GMT

As I prepared to clean the kitchen floor and both bathroom floors by doing the dishes, I listened to The Smiths' "This Charming Man" and then about half of The World Won't Listen. Reading the Mojo magazine feature on them from a few months back has me thinking again, as I have with increasing frequency this decade, about just how unique they were. And yet, they were also products of the same Manchester post-punk scene as New Order, a fact which got me inspired to hear some of the latter.

Before I could do that, though, I had the urge to revisit Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks' latest, Real Emotional Trash. I liked the record on first hearing. Somehow, though, the fact that I'd been listening to most of the songs in live versions recorded at their January 9th, 2007 concert here in Tucson made me less excited than I wanted to be. Interestingly, though, after hearing them performed again live on Thursday, also at Plush, I felt my desire to memorize the album, something I've done with all of Malkmus's work in Pavement and as a solo artist, suddenly activated. Maybe it was the Jicks' new drummer Janet Weiss -- she of Sleater Kinney and Quasi fame -- saying "Hi!" to me at the merch table that sealed the deal. Whatever the reason, though, I found myself completely captivated on today's hearing. It lessened the burden of all that floor scrubbing. Real Emotional Trash is a great rock album that is not ashamed to summon the ghostly spirits of album rock's heyday. I guess "Fillmore Jive" closed Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain for a reason.

After so much guitar, I felt the need to hear something without it, so I put on Carl Craig's More Songs About Revolutionary Food & Art. Generally speaking, the world of dance-electronica-techno has been oriented more towards the 12" aesthetic, with its emphasis on remixing a few strong songs, than albums, but Craig's masterwork, which I've been rediscovering after finally obtaining it for myself on CD, is emphatically meant to be listened to as an album, as its title suggests. Once I'd had my fill of Craig, I returned to the idea of listening to New Order. Only now I wanted to listen to some of their "dancier" synth-and-beats tracks, the sort I generally had the urge to skip through in my guitar-centric past. When I went to pick out an album, though, I was reminded of how much I'd liked their last record Waiting For the Sirens Call and opted to listen to that first. I made it through four-and-a-half songs before it started to skip. Luckily, my favorite songs on the album are the ones that open it. And track four, the single "Krafty," may just be the best distillation ever of their melancholy pop sensibility, with its "Love Will Tear Us Apart"-style fusion of rock and dance music cultures. For that one I felt obligated to dance, watching my legs reflected dimly in the television screen.

Then it was on to Republic, the album with the highest percentage of the "dancier" songs I used to find uninspiring. I still think that one is their weakest pre-hiatus album, but it did sound better after listening to Carl Craig. Part of the problem is that the first song "Regret," which rivals "Krafty" and "Age of Consent" for the crown as catchiest New Order song, is so good that it makes everything after it seem sort of tepid. The effect is especially pronounced in my case, since "Regret" has great personal meaning for me, since I purchased the pre-album release CD single on one of the most complicated days of my life and one, fittingly, that flooded me a great deal of regret.

Spurs Are Really Knives

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 05:04:33 GMT

I'm rooting for the Suns right now. But it looks like I won't be doing so much longer. Say what you will about the Spurs, they play superb team basketball. Personally, I like them better than most teams. And I learn things every time I watch them. Their spacing on the court is particularly fine, enabling dribble drives and kick outs even better that the Phoenix system, though their offense is less flashy to watch. I'd love to see them take on the Lakers. It give me glee to root against Kobe, even though he's sublime to watch.

Yuppie White Trash

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:48:34 GMT

I had occasion yesterday, for the first time in ages, to revisit the second piece I wrote for Bad Subjects, way back in October, 1992. I had distanced myself from it because of the buttons it pushes and my memories of having written it very quickly. But, as I shared it with a student writing about shifting notions of masculinity during the Clinton Era, we realized that it was strangely prescient, particularly in light of the direction his wife Hillary's 2008 Presidential campaign has taken:

A polished, well-spoken Baby-Boomer with a strong, independent wife, Clinton initially appears the consummate Yuppie. When addressing bureaucrats, leaders in high- tech industry, educators, and other professionals, it is this appearance that Clinton cultivates. At the same time, however, Clinton is also the son of a lower middle-class Arkansas woman who married four times. Emotionally scarred by an abusive stepfather, born far from the 'loop' of power and success, this Clinton rises from obscurity to fame without forgetting his humble roots. He remains regionally-fixed, an outsider. Thus we have a Yuppie Clinton on the one hand, a 'White Trash' Clinton on the other. How can these two identities be linked together?

In his address to the convention, Clinton suggests that they can be linked discursively. In other words, he intermingles the fashionable high-tech language of Yuppies with the religiously inflected, humble yet hopeful language of what the Cultural Elite derides as 'White Trash America'. America's 'oppressed' middle- class consists of those who "play by the rules and keep the faith": Yuppie game-theory language is made synonymous with the language of Ol' Time Religion. Similarly, Clinton gestures toward an America full of high-tech jobs, but labels its promise a 'New Covenant'. At this point in the campaign this sort of intermingling of discourses is working, Every day it seems a new bunch of high-tech executives flock to Clinton's camp while the Bush campaign's 'family values' strategy fails to win a majority of the White Trash Reagan-Democrats appealed to in the New Covenant. Regardless of whether it is coherent of theoretically unified, Clinton's campaign strategy seems to be working because it links radically different elements of white America on a discursive level.

In closing, I would like to emphasize that we bad subjects must find ways of linking all oppressed Americans together, not just white ones. Clinton's apparent success suggests a model for this undertaking, despite the exclusions it practices rather than because of them. Looking at the Clinton campaign's appropriation of popular music, we can see both its strategic intelligence and politico-moral limitations. Clinton had Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop Thinkin' About Tomorrow" played at the end of the convention. This quintessential Baby-Boomer song was juxtaposed to Clinton's obsession with that quintessentially white trash icon, Elvis, whom Clinton identified himself with in his speech, saying Al Gore felt he was doing the "warm-up for Elvis." Like matter and anti-matter, these are two kinds of music that normally shouldn't be brought into contact with one another; it is, however, precisely this fact that makes their juxtaposition so compelling. Still, both artists remain very mainstream and very white, even if their 'whiteness' differs radically.

Given the success which Hillary has had among people over fifty, including those who were Yuppie thirty-somethings still back in 1992, I wonder if it makes sense to regard her come-from-behind strategy as an attempt to activate nostalgia for her husband's approach to whiteness. Maybe all the talk about Bill's popularity among African-Americans deafened us to the real strength of his politics, namely its realization that there are enough white people who might vote Democratic under the right circumstances to counterbalance those who refuse to do so.

Amateur vs. Professional

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:48:27 GMT

In my seminar on New Media this semester, I've realized that the distinction between amateur and professional pornography -- as well as the latter's incentive to craft products that seem amateur -- provides a useful point of entry for discussing a whole range of issues, from user-generated content to reality television to the nature of selfhood in the era of social networking. I'm even tempted to say that, had there been no amateur pornography, New Media scholars would have been forced to invent it.

Needless to say, the fact that the distinction between amateur and professional pornography is so helpful proves problematic in a classroom setting, where -- with the exception of a very limited number of cases, such as the courses Linda Williams has taught on the subject -- the topic can be discussed but not tackled directly. That's why I find today's interview between San Francisco Chronicle sex columnist Violet Blue and Bay Area porn actress Lorelei Lee so intriguing. In this case, the words that can be spoken do an able job of standing in for the film that can't be shown:

B: How does a performer distinguish between sex work and sex-not-for-work?

LL: I think every sex worker has a different idea about the answer to this question — people seem to have very individualized physical and emotional boundaries and processes of compartmentalization. Some people choose to only perform certain acts on camera, in order to save something for their personal lives or for their significant others. Some women I know who primarily date men decide to only have sex with women on camera. Some women I know who primarily date women, decide to only have sex with men on camera.

Personally, I don't choose to draw that line in terms of physical acts, but rather, I have an emotional boundary between work sex and personal sex. That is, work sex, for me, is not an intimate experience. I don't choose to become vulnerable or emotionally open while I'm having sex at work. I enjoy having sex at work, and I often have affectionate feelings for the people I work with — many of them are my good friends — but I don't expect them to react to me in a vulnerable or emotionally intimate way and I don't react to them in a vulnerable or emotionally intimate way.

I'm not sure that I have good advice about how to do this, because I do think that strategies for this are entirely individual, but I also think it comes back to the importance of remembering what you will and won't get from a day at work. You will get a certain kind of attention for a limited amount of time and you are likely to get an intense physical experience. You are far less likely to get that attention for any extended period of time or to develop a romantic and/or emotionally intimate relationship with your co-workers. Even though you are having sex with some of the people you work with, you are still likely (perhaps advisedly, considering the prospects of your continued employment) to have a somewhat formal working relationship with them.

I'm wondering, in reflecting on comments like the ones Lee makes here, whether the appeal of amateur pornography is not simply a result of our craving for reality, but also -- the word "dialectical" seems hard to resist here -- a testament to our desire to forget the work of sex, whether it's performed for money or not. After all, it takes effort to make even truly amateur pornography, just as it does to produce any cultural artifact. But the pleasure we derive from it, as well as other content imbued with the aura of the amateur, seems to be grounded on the fantasy that it's possible to produce without working, at least in the sense that a market-driven economy defines work. We don't just crave reality per se, but a reality in which production and consumption bypass the circuits of capital. And we're willing to buy into the illusion that such a detour is possible to such an extent that commodities like professionally produced amateur pornography are the hottest thing going.

Cod Piece

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 04:24:13 GMT

I've recently discovered the virtues of cod, which retains a fine texture even after it has been frozen and thawed and tastes -- and smells -- divine when coupled with olive oil. My daughter loves it, which means I can cook one meal instead of two. Plus, I can conjure the illusion that I'm eating salt cod in a sea-sprayed Mediterranean locale.

In the Echo Chamber

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:25:16 GMT

Our Baffling Allergy To Discussions of Class

cbertsch@livejournal.com — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:00:19 GMT

Tom Frank, author of What's the Matter With Kansas, founder of the much-lamented journal The Baffler, and someone I had the pleasure of interviewing back in my hairy youth has an opinion piece in today's Wall Street Journal focusing on the continuing controversy over Barack Obama's supposed dis of blue-collar folk in the Rust Belt:

Consider, for example, the one fateful charge that the punditry and the other candidates have fastened upon Mr. Obama – "elitism." No one means by this term that Mr. Obama is a wealthy person (he wasn't until last year), or even that he is an ally of the wealthy (although he might be that). What they mean is that he has committed a crime of attitude, and revealed his disdain for the common folk.

It is a stereotype you have heard many times before: Besotted with latte-fueled arrogance, the liberal looks down on average people, confident that he is a superior being. He scoffs at religion because he finds it to be a form of false consciousness. He believes in regulation because he thinks he knows better than the market.

"Elitism" is thus a crime not of society's actual elite, but of its intellectuals. Mr. Obama has "a dash of Harvard disease," proclaims the Weekly Standard. Mr. Obama reminds columnist George Will of Adlai Stevenson, rolled together with the sinister historian Richard Hofstadter and the diabolical economist J.K. Galbraith, contemptuous eggheads all. Mr. Obama strikes Bill Kristol as some kind of "supercilious" Marxist. Mr. Obama reminds Maureen Dowd of an . . . anthropologist.

Ah, but Hillary Clinton: Here's a woman who drinks shots of Crown Royal, a luxury brand that at least one confused pundit believes to be another name for Old Prole Rotgut Rye. And when the former first lady talks about her marksmanship as a youth, who cares about the cool hundred million she and her husband have mysteriously piled up since he left office? Or her years of loyal service to Sam Walton, that crusher of small towns and enemy of workers' organizations? And who really cares about Sam Walton's own sins, when these are our standards? Didn't he have a funky Southern accent of some kind? Surely such a mellifluous drawl cancels any possibility of elitism.

It is by this familiar maneuver that the people who have designed and supported the policies that have brought the class divide back to America – the people who have actually, really transformed our society from an egalitarian into an elitist one – perfume themselves with the essence of honest toil, like a cologne distilled from the sweat of laid-off workers. Likewise do their retainers in the wider world – the conservative politicians and the pundits who lovingly curate all this phony authenticity – become jes' folks, the most populist fellows of them all.

Although I've had my differences with Tom over the years, not least over his own tendency to mobilize a sort of alternative populism -- evident in this evocative passage -- against academics who study mass culture, I agree with him 100% here. The way in which the Clinton campaign has borrowed the "elitist" charge from the Right and used it to defame Obama makes me retch. While I would probably vote for any Democratic nominee against John McCain, I sure would think twice before picking Clinton. Not because I doubt her ability to be an effective President. Given the constraints that anyone in that position will face after eight disastrous years of George W. Bush, she could probably get more done than most. But the way she, her husband and their handlers have comported themselves in the primaries has me less eager to support her than I was to support the Gore-Lieberman ticket in 2000. And that's saying something.