Long Dong Silver Streaming

The Resistance is the future exchange of roles: Berlusconi and Bagnasco

il manifesto 23.4.2010

Avevamo un Presidente Operaio, poi abbiamo avuto un Presidente Odontotecnico, e adesso abbiamo anche un Presidente facente funzioni di Papa. Dall’alto della sua ben nota autorità etica, Silvio Berlusconi giudica positivamente la lettera di Benedetto XVI sulla pedofilia; e immediatamente il presidente dei vescovi italiani ringrazia invitando a votare a destra alle regionali.
Un’autorità politica che esprime un giudizio morale, religious authority to political messages: in any other country in the world would be upside down. But our ruling classes have never fully accepted the democratic principle of separation of Church and State. So Berlusconi, in his infinite modesty, not being able to do for the moment the pope, it is considered a higher authority of the Pope and comforted him with her high moral approval. And the Cardinal Bagnasco, unable for the moment to make the prime minister, gave the line to the voters by reducing the Roman Catholic Church to the electoral committee of Mrs. Polverini.
But the fact that we're used to not make this double invasion of the field less ridiculous on the one hand, and other less dangerous and offensive. Ridiculous stuff is from 1984, when people and institutions that have shaken the moral authority to set itself up as guardians of morality and love. That 'even attack the very substance of the Christian religion''spoken of in straps Berlusconi is materialized in more abuse and silence, in that those who report them. If you had any decency, the Catholic Church these days should use tones at least a bit 'more moderate in trumpeting the theme of "human dignity", which is certainly offended by unpunished child abuse committed by priests much more than from the "immeasurable crime of abortion." And if you had any decency, Silvio Berlusconi, end-user of escort fee, should speak of love and sexuality with a little 'more humility and care.
But with the ridiculous there is a danger. Contradicting Marx, here the farce and tragedy can become intertwined. Because what is at stake in this game are not the love, the dignity of human life. We are faced with two charismatic institutions who do not accept limits, feel out of control and erode least part of their charisma and their power, and cling to each other exchanging favors (also much more concrete and less public a statement of support) to revitalize and give comfort. It could be a good sign, an omen of change, but it is also a signal of risk, neither the Church nor Berlusconi have the slightest idea what democracy is, and there is no limit to what they are capable even of being in the saddle. The very fact that so dramatically raise the tone is both a sign of weakness, is a warning: the power is compact, empires are always ready to strike again.
That seems to me absolutely necessary that we go all to vote in these regional elections. If Berlusconi and Cardinal Bagnasco rely on a hard core of obedience and consent, the vote we have a tool, perhaps limited but real, to express disobedience and dissent. Nichi Vendola or candidates as Emma Bonino, so different, however, are carriers of an idea of \u200b\u200blife, love, sexuality, human dignity, which is infinitely higher than bargained for and vilified by the ballet of these powerful political and moralistic fear. We can have differences and even confusion, but the entry of a straight leg Bagnasco clear that the choices we are called to do are not indifferent, that are not "all equal". If we really care about life (and dignity, and even love), let's hear it.

Short Poem Requesting Money Instead Of Gifts

The "young" Holden

the poster 1/30/2010

Thomas Pincio quite right: neither the young Holden Caulfield né tanto meno il suo autore sono dei ribelli, dei rivoluzionari: non denunciano l’ingiustizia, non si schierano nelle lotte, non enunciano alternative e certamente non hanno letto Marx. Il loro rifiuto estetico e morale della falsità della società di massa li induce a se mai a quella che Albert Hirschmann ha chiamato “uscita”: andarsene, nascondersi. Che poi è coerente con le analisi sociologiche funzionaliste che prevalevano negli anni ’50, secondo cui l’uscita era l’unico modo di sottrarsi a un sistema creduto compatto e privo di contraddizioni. La differenza fra i progetti rivoluzionari europei e i movimenti americani si è fondata in gran parte proprio su questo: fra una cultura antagonista, che faceva leva sulla contraddizioni del sistema, e una cultura alternativa che cercava altre strade e altri mondi al di fuori di esso. Anche per questo un altro libro tutt’altro che rivoluzionario di un autore tutt’altro che rivoluzionario, come On the Road ha generato lo stesso “equivoco” di cui parla Pincio a proposito di Salinger. Che però mi interessa di più e cerco di spiegare perché.
La cosa più curiosa e rivelatrice è proprio il titolo della traduzione italiana – il giovane Holden. A me par di ricordare che Holden Caulfield non tenda a dirsi mai “giovane” – e non sarà un caso se Salinger ce lo descrive come precocemente incanutito, dall’aspetto più anziano della sua età anagrafica. Oscilla se mai fra un’infanzia perduta (quella della sorellina, che guarda caso chiama sempre la vecchia Phoebe: un termine non anagrafico ma di tenerezza sentimentale, che pure non è senza risonanze in questo contesto) e un’età adulta che lo spaventa: basta guardare i suoi gusti musicali. Da una parte, sta il jazz degradato a “fasullo” che va a sentire nei locali e negli hotel dove lo fanno entrare perché lo prendono per più vecchio di com’è. Dall’altro stanno le canzoni per bambini: da quella reinventata da un bambino sentito per strada che dà il titolo al libro, al disco (che non a caso gli si rompe) comprato per la sorellina Phoebe, alla canzone sempre ripetuta che accompagna il girotondo finale. E d’altronde la figura del disco e della giostra, cerchi che ruotano sempre uguali su se stessi accompagnano l’immagine principale, quella del catcher che cerca di fermare i bambini nel campo di avena prima che caschino nell’abisso dell’età adulta; e accompagnano la forma di cerchio del romanzo che comincia e finisce tornando sul suo inizio, nello stesso luogo. Si tratta di fermare il tempo, che va inesorabilmente in una direzione sola: quella della perdita dell’innocenza entrando nel mondo degli adulti, quella dell’entropia (che infatti diventa la figura centrale della letteratura americana negli anni successivi, trionfando naturalmente proprio con Pynchon) o – e in questo yes, as well as in non-standard language and age, Holden looks like Huckleberry Finn - the direction of the inexorable current of the Mississippi that instead leads to freedom in the depths of slavery, and that puts a strain on Mark Twain when he has to find a end to its history.
The most distressing scene of the book is one in which Holden is on the edge of a sidewalk, to cross the road to the other side, and fear of falling in the middle. What is missing in Holden is just what is that intermediate space between the innocence of childhood and adulthood falsehood. It 'a space that does not exist at the time when Salinger writes, but that just helps to invent Salinger: the space of adolescence where you will place even a couple of years after the revolution of rock and roll (Holden would find him hopelessly vulgar, but if my calculations are correct Elvis Presley had the same age) and whose identity will be born soon after the generation of alternative movements and peace activists carrying a slogan that Holden would have liked, "Never trust anyone over thirty."
Then, revealing the difference between The Catcher in the Rye and The Catcher in the Rye is that Salinger's novel helps to create a category that does not exist yet, but when he writes that it is fully tax when we translate a few years later: the category, in fact, the young man. It 'an ambiguous category, both moral, political and consumption (among other things that make it possible, for example, is that young people now have money in their pockets to buy the discs of their peers, blue jeans, and maybe the blue suede shoes claimed with fury of revolutionary consumerism by Elvis and Carl Perkins (I would add that in this process plays a central role in a protagonist who is completely ignorant of Salinger and Holden: African Americans. Not surprisingly, the wanderings of Holden firm the edge of Central Park overlooking Harlem).
If Holden had known Howard Zinn, we have lost in the same day that its author is dead, he would know that you can stop being young without becoming false (and without ceasing to be rebels). If he heard Elvis - or, salvognuno Willie Dixon - would no doubt find them vulgar and savage. But if he had read them DeMartino Ernesto might have seen as an aspect of the process of "barbarism" that accompanies the burst onto the world stage of the rural masses, colonial, subaltern. From them, Holden would have run away, as indeed it has escaped its creator, but has contributed, intentionally or not, to open the hole in the armor of the system by which they entered.