November 21, 2004

But Liza, the focus of your blog has changed!
by Liza Sabater

That's what my bloggerstalker friend Matt (and I say that with all my love man), told me the other night at Nichelle's birthday bash. He said the blog has gotten really political and has lost it's arts and culture edge.

I could not disagree more.

I had many reasons for starting this blog, one of them being the daily practice of writing and publishing without getting hung up on having a perfect product. This blog is not so much about product as it is about thought process. It's a place where I wanted to be able to share and develop ideas. Which is interesting because, even though a lot of my readers (yeah, you honey, I'm talking about y'all right now), do not leave comments, I know people are reading this site not just by looking at my referrers. It's cool because now when I bump into friends they will start talking about the post I've infected them with that day.

The thing is, I've always thought of my writing as political. Almost everything I write about here is political, meaning, that I am most of the time putting my ideas or experiences in a social context. It's for that reason, I have actually contended for a while as to what should be most appropriate for this blog and what would need to be spun off into "subsidiaries". Case in point? I have a lot of draft posts on blog design and development. As some of you already know, I used to "metablog" about blog design at Typepadistas, and even though I have not posted in a while, I am still at the masthead of Radio Free Blogistan. With the new culturekitchen network project, I will be posting more about design and development because that's where my attention will be for the most part until the end of the year. There is also a lot about sex that I want to write about --actually edit becuase I have people that I want to publish-- but this here blog, I feel, is not the place. And then I have all the posts about how to learn Spanish grammar through cursing, a whole bookmark list of all things baroque and neobaroque and articles that are more about independent learning resources as opposed to the politics of education and homeschooling.

With that aside, I've always thought this blog was not just about arts and culture, but the culture wars. Not the recently discovered "red" vs. "blue" culture war that everybody is so hysterical about these days. No, that war is a fad. I'm talking about a more incidious culture war --the one against the libertarian foundation of what we once used to call 'our democracy'. And this is a war that has been waged particularly well by the Left.

With the likes of the free-speech smashing political correctness movement you have the perfect 'culture' for the anti-fair use mess we call copyright laws --the puritanical protection of trademarks and copyright properties echoes in a lot of ways the "you can't say that" slogan of the PCers. And how can you tell me that has not had an impact on artistic and cultural production in this country?

Or take the pathologically puritanical anti-pornography feminists of the likes of a Katherine McKinnon. Thanks to feminists like her and the alliances they made to pass laws all across the country based on their perception of pornography; we have the FCC asking for the head of Janet Jackson's nipple. And this is not just about sex or lack thereof but about privacy. So I am going to go as far to say that thanks to the laws they helped pass, many of these so called progresive feminists aided and abbeted the passage of laws of the likes of The Patriot Act. And after the banning from broadcast airwaves of Saving Private Ryan in the of decency, how can you say that has nothing to do with artistic and cultural production?

Don't even get me started with freedom in education. Because if there is one thing that stands in the way of educational freedom in this country it's the self-interest of the teachers' unions; the same that have historically supported Democrats with millions in campaign dollars. Thanks to 'the experts' we have a culture that looks suspiciously at parents who want to have a say in their children's future and in a sick and twisted reversal of the gains all citizens had with the Civil Rights Movement, you have now a culture that says, "without schools, you cannot be parents". So you have the hysteria over pre-natal education, the tightening of compulsory education laws and the laberynthine batery of education assessment tests that have nothing to do with child development or learning and all about federal and state funding of schools. All coalescing in a culture hell bent against learning as creativity --artistic, cultural, technological and otherwise. And all taking a toll on our every day practices as citizens of a democracy.

So no, I don't think this here blog has lost it's focus. On the contrary, it's become even clearer to me where the discussions have to go.

Posted by Liza Sabater in Art, Blogs, Creative Class, Culture, Culture War, Education, Fair Use, Feminism, Law, Liberalism, Politics
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Say it loud, say it proud!