Journal: News & Comment

Well well well, well well...

Permalinks to this entry: individual page or in monthly context. For more material from my journal, visit my home page or the archive.

Elvis may have been incoherent onstage in his later years, but Tech Central Station's Glenn Reynolds (via Doc Searls, as usual) argues that his impact helps keep totalitarianism at bay:

If what you want is to dress up funny and bond with a lot of other people in front of a great light show, well, you don't need the Nazis to do it anymore -- even in Berlin. Since Elvis, the bonding-and-catharsis element of mass media has expanded to outdo anything that any politician can deliver. We describe an especially popular politician today as looking "like a rock star," rather than the other way around, after all. (Could there be a worse insult than describing a rock musician as looking "like a Congressman?" I can't think of one.)

And, in keeping with a strange theme I've unintentionally developed this week, the piece even mentions Iran at the end.

 |