Comments on: Our Intractable Ideological Moment: Surnow, The History Channel, and the Kennedys

By: The Chutry Experiment » “A Narrative of Impending Tyranny”

The Chutry Experiment » “A Narrative of Impending Tyranny” — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:49:21 +0000

[…] In other cases, it can lead to the cynical manipulation of historical memory that Jeffrey Jones has recently discussed in a must-read column for Antenna. Or, as Jim Emerson observes, “Without reality-based […]

By: Jeffrey Jones

Jeffrey Jones — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 15:11:57 +0000

I never read Howard Kurtz’s 2001 book “The Fortune Tellers,” but I remember it being about CNBC, the financial news channels and their role in the bubble of the late-1990s. Interesting picture in the NYTimes two days ago–the Royal Bank of Scotland’s new gigantic American trading floor: notice the TV screens on the columns. Ahhhh–grand delusion.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/business/18rbs.html?scp=1&sq=royal%20bank%20of%20scotland&st=cse

By: The Chutry Experiment » Friday Links: Redbox, JFK, and Tricky Dick

The Chutry Experiment » Friday Links: Redbox, JFK, and Tricky Dick — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:11:39 +0000

[…] to be made by conservative activist Joel Surnow (best known for his work on the TV show 24), but Jeffrey Jones has an interesting read of the debate over the documentary and how it comments on the contemporary […]

By: Chuck Tryon

Chuck Tryon — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:51:50 +0000

Jason, that’s probably a better reading of the quotation (and I’ve heard that Rove was the source, as well).

By: Jason Mittell

Jason Mittell — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:45:44 +0000

I use the Suskind article as one of two contemporary examples to explore Baudrilliard and postmodernism in my cultural theory class. The other is Wall Street and the way that market value is constituted by discourse rather than the reverse.

The longer quote from the Suskind source (rumored to be Turd Blossum Rove himself) is instructive: ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

While it might seem that the quote draws inspiration from postmodernism (an empire of signs, perhaps?), I think it’s more straight-up imperialism & propaganda – keep repeating the same lines over again and eventual you (and everyone else) will believe them.

By: Chuck Tryon

Chuck Tryon — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:30:38 +0000

I think the moment that this lightbulb went off for me was when Ron Suskind quoted the White House source as saying “we create our own reality,” while mocking the “reality-based community” associated with liberalism. Even then, Kerry and Democrats were painted as intellectual elites rather than people who could act upon the world. I think Jeffrey is right to distinguish between the idea that “truth is relative” and the idea that “truth is contingent.” But I’m not sure how to make the move to resolve the polarization of the “truth” about history.

By: Jeffrey Jones

Jeffrey Jones — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:05:06 +0000

Good point. The “there is no such thing as truth” reading always seemed far-fetched to me, while “truth is contingent” made more sense. The irony comes, though, in that we all emphasized power as the key ingredient in that contingency. Certainly Cheney/Bush and their lapdog branches of government had that sort of power. Where does that power reside now (the hegemony that is old systems of capital, patriarchy, elites intellectually exploiting stupid people, structured inequality, racist thinking, etc.)? Probably so, but shows how powerful such things can be outside of the “who holds power through electoral processes.”

By: Jonathan Gray

Jonathan Gray — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:45:05 +0000

It's convenient for me that you should publish this just before my Media and Cultural Theory class gets to postmodernism next week, Jeff, since it's a trenchant reminder of the costs of erasing ideas of truth or of the solidity of fact. In the wake of post-structuralism and postmodernism, both of which came largely from the left, many of us convinced ourselves that a key difference between right and left was that the right insisted on a singular truth, one right answer, etc. Yet the rise of the Bush/Cheney "truth is what I say it is" complex has perhaps reminded us of how deeply invested the left is (and needs to be) at least in now insisting that truth is not completely malleable. While Jason kicked off a discussion of the ills of "post-" and other prefixes a week ago here at Antenna, perhaps Bush and Cheney, Rush and Sarah have dragged us into an era of "neo-postmodernism," in which those of us who once argued "there is no such thing as truth" are now realizing the Pandora's Box that was opened when conservative politicians picked up the idea and ran with it? As my use of the word "us" above should suggest, there seems a pedagogic issue here too, and it's one I wrestle with: can we continue to deconstruct truth in our classrooms if this is the endpoint?