Blog – Page 17

The Gotcha Effect of Civil Unions

November 11, 2008 By Robert Lanham

I’m sounding off on Proposition 8 over at Huffington Post. Here’s a taste:

Now that we’ve all recovered from the jubilation of last week’s victory, is it too soon to launch a couple of sober criticisms at our president elect? I did my part to ensure victory, after all. I sent my campaign check. I wept tears of joy into my beer, a Sixpoint “Hop Obama” Ale no less, while watching the acceptance speech. I cheered like a star-stricken tween at the sight of Axelrod….
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Californians voted to overturn same-sex marriage. But it is disheartening that they’re getting all the blame. After all, by collectively rubber-stamping the Obama campaign’s “politically safe” pro-civil unions stance, democrats were inadvertent enablers.
Consider, for example how unfriendly the Obama camp was to same-sex couples during the Biden/Palin debate:
GWEN IFILL: Let’s try to avoid nuance, Senator. Do you support gay marriage?
BIDEN: No. Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage…..
PALIN: Your question to him was whether he supported gay marriage and my answer is the same as his and it is that I do not.
IFILL: Wonderful. You agree. On that note, let’s move to foreign policy.
I don’t remember if Palin winked for effect, but I’m assuming she didn’t. She’d already knocked it out of the park. This could have been the “gotcha moment” the drooling, caddish pundits had so eagerly awaited. But since America long ago concluded that no candidate in his/her right mind could ever confess to supporting gay marriage, it failed to deliver. Instead, the “gotcha” intended for Biden came at the expense of same-sex couples striving for what the Constitution promises: equal rights.

Now, go read the whole damn thing.

Really Camille?!

October 2, 2008 By Robert Lanham

I have a new essay on Sarah Palin over at Radar. Here’s a sample:

“Sarah Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna,” Camille Paglia wrote in a recent Salon column….. “Palin represent[s] an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism.”
In Palin’s case “muscular feminism” is really quite literal. Our potential president-in-waiting is a chaste dominatrix who wants to bully her way into your private life and declare control of your uterus. She may not be able to talk the “first dude” into trimming his nasty pubic-hair goatee, but she knows how to skin a caribou. She played basketball in high school. And who cares if she’s opposed to a woman’s right to choose? She can tear the still-beating heart of a moose from its chest, all without breaking a nail.
As Palin demonstrates, muscular feminism isn’t about progressiveness, equality, or integrity. It’s about proving you can talk tough, just like the boys, even if what you’re saying is totally retarded. If she were a man, we’d call her a meathead. A bully. She wouldn’t be a hockey mom, she’d be a dumb jock. But who cares about the issues? Let’s just watch her flex.

You can read it all here.

Yuppies in Eden

September 30, 2008 By Robert Lanham

Jay McInerney has a great article in the current New York. It gives a quick shout-out to The Hipster Handbook

Hipsters believed they were the ultimate anti-yuppies. Unlike their forebears, they wanted to be known not by their job or ambition but by their self-conscious disregard for either. If anything, the cult of connoisseurship was even more exaggerated in this subgroup. Their code, enshrined in Robert Lanham’s hyperironic 2003 Hipster Handbook, was inherently elitist, defining itself in opposition to the mainstream. Hipster consumerism championed the notions of alternative and independent, rejecting the yuppie embrace of certain consumer brands in favor of their own. So it was vintage T-shirts rather than Turnbull & Asser dress shirts with spread collars, Pabst Blue Ribbon over Chardonnay. But ultimately, whether you love Starbucks or loathe it, a world in which we are defined by our choice of blue jeans and coffee beans owes more to Alex Keaton than to Abbie Hoffman.

You can read it all here.

Tune in tonight…. I’ll be discussing the Jesusyness of Sarah Palin and the Mavrickiness of McCain on BlogTalkRadio. Using Google maps, I’ve seen Capitol Hill from my home, so I’m an expert on all things political. From Rumproast:

Check out the premiere of our BlogTalkRadio show Radio Rumproast Monday September 15th from 11PM-12:30AM ET. Our guest will be Robert Lanham, author of the The Hipster Handbook, Food Court Druids…, and The Sinner’s Guide to the Evangelical Right. We’ll talk about his books, evangelicalism in politics, the general election and ferrets. We’ll also feature a roundtable of bloggers, including Rumproast’s poputonian, discussing the past week’s events and, of course, we’ll be taking your calls. Radio Rumproast: We like it well-done.

Technology overwhelming real life

July 30, 2008 By Robert Lanham

Misty Harris quoted me a couple of times in her latest article for Canwest News Service (Canada’s AP):

Guitar solos have vanished from the concert scene at the same time millions of gamers are pretending to be a Guitar Hero.
Gym memberships are down while stores can’t keep the home exercise game Wii Fit in stock.
Precious hours of real life are being sacrificed to the online universe Second Life, and high-powered marketing campaigns this fall are planned to sell still more virtual fantasy trussed up as reality.
Forget concern over counterfeit goods such as watches and handbags. Increasingly, it’s organic human experience that’s being knocked off.
“People are just too overwhelmed by all the technologies that exist to be active participants in real life,” says Robert Lanham, who has written three books on the idiosyncrasies of contemporary human behaviour.
“When you’re microblogging on Tumblr and juggling Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace accounts, who’s got time for yoga classes or guitar lessons? Perfecting your Stratocaster licks playing Rock Band is simply less time-consuming than trying to become the next Jimi Hendrix or Eddie Van Halen.” [….]
But however convenient or ego-stoking these hi-tech encounters, cultural commentator Lanham says they’ll never be as fulfilling or as sexy as the real thing. “Saying, ‘Dude, my virtual band totally rocks … we’re playing a gig in my living room tonight’ is never going to have the same allure as securing a real gig in an actual rock band,” says Lanham. “And it’s unlikely the words ‘he’s such a romantic text-messager, his SMS skills made my knees buckle’ have ever been uttered, or sent via SMS for that matter.”

You can read the whole article here.

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