Baudelaire in the American Midwest

Response to Jay and Sustar & Bean Nonsite.org Adolph Reed, Jr.

Chicago politics concern this article and it is a polemic against a mayoral candidate Karen Lewis. She became known for her leadership that resisted the  current mayor's neo-liberal education policies.

The two criticisms the author finds distasteful involves infighting in progressive circles that fear her progressive politics are diluted by her choice to run as a democrat rather than an independent. They believe the Democratic Party is neo-liberal and using her to appear progressive while carrying the same agenda.

The criticism is that they are naive and basically philosophizing about purity myopically. There is also a criticism that they falsely believe there is an already mobilized movement that only needs an elected official to enact it. The momentum builds toward the election but sense the priority is the election the energy loses momentum regardless of how pure the candidates politics are.

The author lampoons this by relating their argument to a 1979 movie called Hardcore where a wholesome Midwest girl rebels becoming a pornstar whose path quickly falls from grace and appears in snuff films. Her father is obsessed with purity but also has a quick temper and he  compromises his religious beliefs to produce pornographic films in hopes the will lead him to his daughter. Obviously the snuff film and religious porn director are campy and so, the author thinks, that progressives should divorce themselves from the Democratic Party. 

On Some Motifs in Baudelaire Illuminations Walter Benjamin

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What Benjamin is at first ruminating about is Baudelaire's intended readers. Not only is the poet being isolated from society, the poetry that is now resounding appeals to a population that cherish revelry to an afternoon with a book.

Benjamin is convinced Baudelaire foresaw his poems would be devoured slowly--he is isolated from poetry as a tradition and the audience that will celebrated his poems. Benjamin also claims the end goal of the poetry is to show man who he really is behind the veneer of civilization and he does this by alienating oneself from virtue and focusing on the carnal.