.
So the day has finally arrived. It’s either hello to a new liberal America, the likes of which we’ve never seen before, since the Democrat president will be backed by a Democratic majority in both the Senate and the House, in an America where the ideology of conservatism has now been fully tested to destruction and is totally discredited. Or we’ll have the appalling prospect of a McCain/Palin leadership for the next four years, which doesn’t even bear thinking about.
I’ve been catching up with last Friday’s Guardian G2, whose cover article was, ‘What’s Bush done for our cultural life?’ ‘Twelve prominent Americans’ were asked to give their verdict.
Naomi Wolf wrote,
“It's not just that [Bush] didn't fund the arts or invite artists to the White House; it's not just that he doesn't read poetry, doesn't read books: there's something about the brute force of this administration, and the fetishisation of brute force by this administration, which literally stands in opposition to civilisation and the arts.
I've done a lot of work on Germany from the Weimar period to the late 30s. There was a similar hostility then to the cosmopolitan, the urbanite, the avant garde, to any originality in art.
[Why are people so reluctant to call the USA of the past (x) years a neo-fascist regime?]
I think artists in America are scared. Respected journalists are being arrested. Film documenting the Republican national congress has been destroyed. And artists are next on the list after journalists. So if, God forbid, there's a McCain/Palin presidency we'll see a crackdown of the police state, there's no doubt.
I'm really quite ashamed of the American people - and of course I include myself in this. We have seen what was happening, and we kept right on internet shopping. All these writers and artists, good people, have just looked around and quietly aligned themselves.
Novelists have been really silent. Usually writers are at the forefront of denouncing a regime: look at Václav Havel. Here, people have complained a lot, but in terms of organising a vanguard of resistance, of people getting out there and saying this is not the American way ... Where is the Arthur Miller of this generation? Who is out front, somewhere visible and tricky and scary?”
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Well, Neil Young and his mates, for a start. The Dixie Chicks? Also Naomi Klein. And Gore Vidal. It’s an interesting challenge for us Brits - to think of any prominent Americans who have put themselves out front, protesting and denouncing in a place that’s very scary, given the appalling ignorance and potential savagery of the American Right.
I had an interesting conversation with a close friend yesterday, a long-time Neil Young fan, about Neil Young getting the band back on the road to protest about what was happening in the country, to protest against the Iraq war. Having seen the first part of Friday evening’s BBC4 documentary of the 2006 'Freedom of Speech' tour, my friend was of the opinion that it was rather sad and embarrassing to see those old geezers still trying to crank out rock music, ‘protest’ music if you will, in large stadiums.
I had to disagree. On the grounds that in the first place the music and the performance were OK, but also because it’s entirely admirable for any musician or artist to speak out visibly and publicly against the Bush regime, or indeed any injustice. To hell with what they look like. At least my friend admits he’s an ageist and a sizeist.
You still have a few days to see all 60 minutes of the documentary about Neil, 'Don’t Be Denied', (or download it) at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00f815m
Or you might need to go first to:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/musictv/neilyoung/
where you can also see some clips featuring Steve Stills, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, etc, talking about Neil and his music. Stills says some interesting things about how scarily polemical, provocative and combative Neil is. Emmylou talks about him putting something back into the world, and being a good father.
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Other contributors to the Guardian feature on the 'Bush legacy' said,
Daniel Libeskind
How can you even begin to speak of a cultural legacy? It's been wholly negative. Culture's a dirty word to these people, like "liberal" or "literate". We've experienced a complete bankruptcy of the culture of ideas over the past eight years. The intellect has been denigrated. Deep cuts have been made in education and in investment in cultural institutions.
It's hard to believe Bush, a man who's proud not to read books and who makes fun of words longer than one syllable, has been the inheritor of the mantle of the Founding Fathers, or of Woodrow Wilson, FDR or even Bill Clinton. These people believed in the value of American culture being seen as an inspiring and civilising force around the world. Jefferson was a fine architect. All Bush has offered the world is military force. This is still a great country, but Bush and Cheney have ensured that only the negative side of US culture has spread around the world.
David Simon
Enron, Afghanistan, Iraq, New Orleans, Wall Street. An untenable drug war. A non-existent energy policy. An obliviousness to climate change. An unwillingness to recognise our problems, much less begin the hard work of solving them. Incompetence - rank incompetence - has become the American standard. We are no longer a competent, responsible nation-state. America. The can't-do superpower. Quite a legacy. Mr Bush is a remarkable man.
Alex Gibney
I think the Bush administration did its best to create a vast wasteland. At the same time, because of the perfidy and corruption and utter lawlessness it created a very interesting backlash of politically oriented materials that were inspiring. Unintentionally, the administration provoked a lot of political art that I think was very valuable.
Edward Albee
What cultural legacy? There is no cultural legacy. We have an administration of criminality, complicity and incompetence but no cultural legacy whatever from those eight years. It doesn't seem to have produced the kind of rage that I would have expected it to. It shows me that we have a far more passive and ignorant society than I thought we had.
I'm something of an optimist. I hope that we're capable of getting back on the right track and continuing our peaceful social revolution.
Elizabeth LeCompte
He has fostered the rise of political satire as an art form again. It hasn't been very strong for the last 30 years or so and I think television programmes such as The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and South Park are all political works of art. Without the Bush administration I don't think satire would have been as strong. It revived irony.
With satire there's an incredibly powerful challenging of the powers that are, which I think is very healthy. There's also a trivialising effect at the same time. But it is a change, because young people are going to be involved in politics in a way that they haven't been before.
When Obama had trouble, before he beat Hillary, they began to make fun of him as a pompous teacher, so let's see. I think it'll be interesting. I just know that for me, under the Bush administration, things like The Daily Show and South Park will be remembered as real satire, not just parody and caricature."
This is an interesting point - the difference between satire, parody and caricature. The Daily Show has produced some brilliant satire, absolutely slaughtering McCain and Palin. Jon Stewart in particular is a genius.
Wouldn’t it be good if the general populace could read all the above comments before they go out to vote today. McCain says, “I’m not George Bush!” - but how different is his mindset and his ideology in reality? Palin, in many ways, is even worse than Bush.
Read the transcript of her being pranked by a Sarkozy impersonator:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/04/sarahpalin-usa
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Education News
The RSA Academy, Tipton, was featured on BBC TV news today. It’s an interesting place.
“Radical, controversial - should this school become a blueprint for others?”
“We actually want students to be motivated in their learning. Traditional homework has been scrapped,” says the headteacher, Michael Gernan.
The changes are fundamental. The focus is now on life skills or competences, managing information and relating to people.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7707662.stm
The RSA’s “Opening Minds Framework” is excellent:
“The Opening Minds curriculum features five categories of competences: learning, citizenship, relating to people, managing situations and managing information. Focusing on competences means that Opening Minds teaching is emphasising the ability to understand and to do, rather than just the transmission of knowledge.”
Read the rest of it here:
http://www.thersa.org/projects/education/opening-minds/opening-minds-framework
It is radical, and it should be a blueprint for other schools.
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