Further to the rant on disconnection yesterday, Cal and I have been getting the Private Eye this year. It’s a great little satire-paper that comes out ever 2 weeks to rip into all the latest nonsense of the media and government and law etc. I’ve known about it forever, you can pick it up in several mag shops around Wellington, but it really makes a lot more sense when you’re in the UK. It’s even more dense in references to a specific social context than the brilliant sarcastic tech-geek journal Need To Know.
\nPrivate Eye is the closest thing I’ve found to the kind of disconnect-encouragement I was talking about. It isn’t exactly right – it’s more about pointing out hypocrisy and manipulation of all flavours rather than illuminating readers as to the ways in which the pop media is limited – but it’s better than nothing. Of course, it’s all very upper-middle-class and wry and arch, so much
\nso that I suspect it’s pretty much integrated into the whole system here, like a court jester.
\nAnyway. I like it. Is fun.
\n—-
\nCal and I went to see ‘Osama’ last night, about a girl posing as a boy in order to get work in Taliban-run Afghanistan. Harrowing. Most reminded me of ‘Bandit Queen’, a similar catalogue of a society’s systematic abuse of women. I have a strand of political indignation running at the moment, though, so one strong reaction was ‘all those who supported the invasion\/bombing of Afghanistan will use this film to justify their position, and they have no right to do so’. Grrr.
\nI’m also grumpy because of the increasing tendency of US liberals to denounce Michael Moore in order to gain legitimacy in the eyes of US conservatives. Moore’s sins are tiny and his positive impact huge – denouncing him only serves the interests of the those you claim to oppose! Grrr again.
\nAnd grr to the row of people who talked through the first half of Osama, and harrumphed with indignation when I told them to shut the fuck up. Grrr.
\n—-
\nEnough grr. Love instead. Love to you all.
\nEspecially love to Leon. Verily, he is like unto a god. But more on that later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Further to the rant on disconnection yesterday, Cal and I have been getting the Private Eye this year. It’s a great little satire-paper that comes out ever 2 weeks to rip into all the latest nonsense of the media and government and law etc. I’ve known about it forever, you can pick it up in … Continue reading Private Eye and Osama<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-z","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}