Comments on: Since I’ve been away…

By: rawshark

rawshark — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:51:37 +0000

‘Liberals should admit the DHS’ report on so-called ”right-wing extremism” from veterans and Ron Paul supporters was pretty dumb and, as they say, move on, instead of defending an institution who painted antiwar groups with the same broad brush of smear.’

What is this? You make up a version of what happened and tell liberals to get over it? Maybe you should take some time to understand the issue better and you’ll see it’s the right that needs to chill out. They tried to say Obama commissioned it and that there was no left wing report. Both of those are lies and liberals shouldn’t just let that go. They’re not defending a report as you say, they’re fighting smears and outright lies. Read some recent Greenwald posts to learn what happens when small lies are left unchallenged and then fester.

By: Richard Spencer

Richard Spencer — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 02:08:50 +0000

I, too, miss C11 terribly. I don’t where else to turn for commentary on Susan Boyle by college Republicans. It’s a hole that not even Townhall.com can fill. What a tragic loss!

By: Thomas O. Meehan

Thomas O. Meehan — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:58:57 +0000

I just turned 61 (God help me) and have seen that each generation creates its own peer culture, filled with common references and understood norms. This is natural and inevitable. The challenge for me is to understand that for the young, the impulse to play with concepts and change the world is also inevitable and not to be attacked reflexively. I came late to Culture11 and instantly recognized that I was a visiting alien from the the land of the Boomers.’

My problem is with the understandable impulse to engage contemporary culture (Pop Culture?) from a conservative point of view. From this conservative’s perspective, pop culture is irredeemably infected with all the anti-intellectual, vulgarian, hedonistic baggage as the rest of the culture. So how do you engage with it without either adopting it or taking on the mantle of the eternal scold?

I clearly remember contemporaries becoming “Rock Critics.” in The Sixties , which seemed a tad ridiculous at the time and remains so to my mind. Pity the poor devils who wrote art criticism only to have art turn to murde on their watch and have to keep writing, if only for a paycheck. In like manner, I have to laugh at NPR’s calcification as the voice of my era. For them, it’s always 1967. Listening to Terry Gross reverentially and cluelessly interview some contemporary barbarian is the funniest thing on radio.

What I dream about, is the emergence of new art forms or movements that are driven by a vision of the eternal and are not part of the modernist illusion. Perhaps we are on the brink of a new era of neoclassicism since the drive to novelty for it’s own sake has been played out. One can only hope. And then, there is always The New Criterion.

By: scriblerus

scriblerus — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:19:17 +0000

RJ, I’m in my twenties and, as far as I could tell, Culture11 was just an echo chamber for pretentious twenty-something Washington right-of-center journalists, nothing more.

By: R J Stove

R J Stove — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 05:27:47 +0000

MattSwartz's comment helps reassure me. I must confess to having been unaware of Culture11's existence until shortly before it ended, so perhaps I was not witnessing it at its, uh, best. Still, once I did witness it, I said to myself, "Thank but no thanks, I'll stick to TAC, Modern Age, The University Bookman, Intercollegiate Review, and Chronicles if you don't mind."

By: MattSwartz

MattSwartz — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:10:57 +0000

I’m 25 and in college, and I felt mostly deterred by the lack of anything interesting on that site, ever.

I wouldn’t mind if somebody did try to start a conservative version of popmatters.com, but I don’t see any reason to believe that it should be run by someone who doesn’t know the difference between a LOTR character and a sex toy.

By: R J Stove

R J Stove — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:02:39 +0000

I must admit that Culture11's strenuous hipness and scattiness made me feel very ... well ... old. As if I were, to quote Bertie Wooster, "in the grandfather class and merely waiting for the end." A feeling confirmed when I read Charlie Homan's account, cited by Sean Scallon. Did other fortysomethings, I wonder, find themselves deterred by Culture11 for the same reason?