Dan Gilbert is trying to moralize a business decision, that is, capitalize on the desperation of the Cleveland community via their emotional commitment to a sports figure. That's bad for Cleveland and it's bad for sports, though I didn't see him complaining when that love for James increased the value of the franchise that Saint Dan Gilbert bought (after James was on board mind you) by hundreds of millions of dollars. He can cry me a river. You stay classy, Dan Gilbert.
What this comes down to is a billionaire financial whiz posing as the vox populi. A break, please give me. What do the people of Cleveland deserve? Relief from decades of de-industrialization in the form of good schools, good health care, good housing, good libraries, good parks, good jobs, etc. They also deserve people to see through Dan Gilbert's trying to speak for "the community" and to examine closely the role that the financialization of the US economy played in the destruction of Cleveland. Owner of Quicken Loans cares about the Cleveland community? He's made billions on refinancing of mortgages which was a major means by which the vast majority of people whose wages stagnated over the last thirty years (see "de-industrializaton" above) have cashed out the equity in their houses. I say Dan Gilbert and his financializing vampire industry can KMRIA, and he can do it twice for trying to speak for "the community" from whose wage stagnation he's benefited to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
I'm enjoying reading Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself, a collection of interviews with Rorty, edited by Eduardo Mendieta of the Philosophy Department at SUNY Stony Brook.
One thing is puzzling me, and I suppose its resolution, if it ever comes, will only be after I read Achieving Our Country. (I'm working my way backward through Rorty, just as an experiment.) It's a simple point, really. When Rorty talks about the "sad, sentimental stories" which have the potential to expand our sympathetic imaginations, aren't they a principal tactic, and aim, of the New Left as well? Our even more so than the Old Left? Maybe I'm operating too much with an Old Left = economism and New Left = culturalism opposition. I've never denied I identify with the New Left, as you might expect someone who turned 13 in 1968, a hell of a year to become politically aware!
I'm of course going to have to wait to read his book, but another issue will be the notion of "America." I'm really not sure there is any such thing, or at least, I think a certain nominalism with regard to class is important (and here this is classic Old Left, I think). In other words, we have many factors making up our history, and if I want to say I'm loyal to America it's only to those parts of American institutions and American history that incarnate the ideals of justice, freedom, and equality to which I have committed myself.
Here's a slightly edited version of something I wrote in private correspondence last year on the topic of patriotism:
Continue reading "Old Left, New Left, Patriotism" »
My friend Adrian Parr, who is on a visiting Assoc Prof appointment at University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) and who is on the board at the art and culture journal Drain (www.drainmag.com) writes to tell me of her new book from Edinburgh University Press entitled Memorial Culture and
Deleuze: desire, singular memory and the politics of trauma.
Read the description after the break.
Continue reading "New Book from Adrian Parr" »