Paper Bits

Mar 1

“Some activists lament how few anti-authoritarians there appear to be in the United States. One reason could be that many natural anti-authoritarians are now psychopathologized and medicated before they achieve political consciousness of society’s most oppressive authorities.”

Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill | Mad In America

Worth reading the whole thing.

(Via jwz.)

Sep 8

The Notepad is a project created by SWAMP (Studies of Work Atmosphere and Mass Production), it just was installed in the Talk to Me exhibition at the MoMa.

“Notepad” is an act of protest and commemoration disguised as a stack of ordinary yellow legal pads. Each ruled line, when magnified, is revealed to be microprinted text enumerating the full names, dates, and locations of each Iraqi civilian death on record over the first three years of the Iraq War. A printed edition of 100 notepads, was covertly distributed to US representatives and senators, as a sort of Trojan horse, injecting transgressive data straight into the halls of power and memorializing it in official archives.

The Notepad is a project created by SWAMP (Studies of Work Atmosphere and Mass Production), it just was installed in the Talk to Me exhibition at the MoMa.

“Notepad” is an act of protest and commemoration disguised as a stack of ordinary yellow legal pads. Each ruled line, when magnified, is revealed to be microprinted text enumerating the full names, dates, and locations of each Iraqi civilian death on record over the first three years of the Iraq War. A printed edition of 100 notepads, was covertly distributed to US representatives and senators, as a sort of Trojan horse, injecting transgressive data straight into the halls of power and memorializing it in official archives.

Oct 18

newyorker:

“Paladino is a Tea Party man, and, like a number of Tea Party insurgents, he’s been getting good mileage out of the famous Peter Finch line from the 1976 movie Network: ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ If you’ve been out leaf-peeping upstate, you’ve probably passed a few yard signs that read, ‘I’m mad as hell, too, Carl.’ Paladino even played the clip at a campaign event, as a rallying cry. What he’s mad about is what Republicans are usually mad about: government spending. But anyone who’s familiar with the film might well ask whether Paladino, whom the News has taken to calling Crazy Carl, has thought this one through. Howard Beale, the character played by Finch, is in the midst of a nervous breakdown at the time of his quotable outburst. Network is not a story of redemption through anger. Beale is portrayed as a delusional tool of corporate interests who ends up getting shot on live television when he has outlived his usefulness to them. For a hotheaded political aspirant like Paladino, inviting comparison with Howard Beale, as a radio host said last month, is a little like citing ‘Lennie from ‘Of Mice and Men’ on the issue of rabbit husbandry.’ - Ben McGrath on Carl Paladino’s misappropriation of a Hollywood catch-phrase

It’s strange to consider, but the “outrageous” premise of the movie Network was a newsroom run for profit. Which is the situation that CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News present now.

Howard Beale is a clown who is co-opted into a spectacular (in the original sense, as in “spectacle”) profit machine. When the movie first came out, it must have seemed like dystopian science fiction. Now, it seems like a sad origin story for cable news and talk radio.