The Audacity of a Wimp

And so McClatchy reports:

President Barack Obama's approval ratings have sunk to the lowest level of his presidency [42 percent], so low that he'd lose the White House to Republican Mitt Romney if the election were held today, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll.

...

Obama's standing among Democrats dropped from a month ago, with his approval rating falling to 74 percent from 83 percent, and his disapproval rating almost doubling, from 11 percent to 21 percent.

Among liberals, his approval rating dropped from 78 percent to 69 percent and his disapproval rating jumped from 14 percent to 22 percent.

Wikileaks Provokes a Storm

What's On My Loop Today

Just got to Radiohead's In Rainbows. It's growing on me, especially this song.

Social Media As Narcissistic Utopia

[Marshall McLuhan] argued that Narcissus was in love not with himself but "with a technological extension of himself" and that electronic media may permit one to have the contact with one's own image - to manipulate it and change it - that was denied to Narcissus. Is this narcissism really a utopia?

– Kevin E. Korsyn, Decentering Music: A Critique of Contemporary Musical Research

The Intellectual's Voice

Nothing in my view is more reprehensible than those habits of mind in the intellectual that induce avoidance, that characteristic turning away from a difficult and principled position which you know to be the right one, but which you decide not to take. You do not want to appear too political; you are afraid of seeming controversial; you need the approval of a boss or an authority figure; you want to keep a reputation for being balanced, objective, moderate; your hope is to be asked back, to consult, to be on a board or prestigious committee, and so, to remain within the responsible mainstream; someday you hope to get an honorary degree, a big prize, perhaps even an ambassadorship. For an intellectual these habits of mind are corrupting par excellence. If anything can denature, neutralise and finally kill a passionate intellectual life, it is these considerations, internalised and so to speak in the driver's seat.

And finally a word about the mode of intellectual intervention. One doesn't climb a mountain or pulpit and declaim from the heights. Obviously, you want to speak your piece where it can be heard best; and also you want it represented in such a way as to affiliate with an ongoing and actual process, for instance, the cause of peace and justice.

Yes, the intellectual's voice is lonely, but it has resonance only because it associates itself freely with the reality of a movement, the aspirations of a people, the common pursuit of a shared ideal.

Edward Said - The Reith Lectures: Speaking Truth To Power