Home | Away

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Post-primary special

40 degrees at 8 am.  It’s outrageous, I tell you.  And I’ve thought about it for a long time, and I blame Bush.

In other local news, Specter holds off Toomey, 526,120 to 509,507 with 99 percent of the vote in.  Kos sees this as a victory for Hoeffel, “who,” he writes, “now gets to face a bloodied and poorer sitting senator representing a bitterly divided party (the latest Q-poll indicated that 48 percent of Toomey voters would not vote for Specter in the general).” Well, let’s hope.  Right now I’m just meditating on the fact that the sanity of my Commonwealth hangs by the slimmest of threads.  For those of you who didn’t follow the primary race closely, Toomey had run on the promise that he would repeal the laws of evolution and amend the Constitution so that it named Jesus Christ as the “personal savior” of the United States.  Or something like that.  Oh yes, and there would be tax cuts too!

And for those of you who scan this blog looking for news about my brilliant colleague Susan Squier:  she went to the March for Women’s Lives this weekend.  She had a great time.

Later today:  the final class meeting of my “What Was Cultural Studies?” seminar, devoted to what we’ll call the ”Baffler backlash.” Assigned reading, Tom Frank’s One Market Under God, my review of which can be read right here ("surprisingly conciliatory and positive”—Joe Knowles, In These Times).  Tom, if you’re reading this, I’m responsible for that sudden spike in sales in central Pennsylvania, and kickbacks are always welcome.  As for the book’s curious elusiveness with regard to the crucial question of whether “the people” themselves subscribe to “market populism” or whether market populism consists almost exclusively of the self-representations of the ideologues of the New Economy, well . . . we’ll talk.  I’m still working on it.

Posted by Michael on 04/28 at 02:55 AM
(0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Page 1 of 1 pages