Far be it for a postmodern critic to challenge the assumptions of our political life or our position as citizens enmeshed in discources about an amorphous history.\u00a0 In challenging the latter, Linda Hutcheon also attempts to attach the integrity of the former as irascibly as Democrats in chanting ‘four more years’.\u00a0 Perhaps both assumptions are far reaching and somewhat indiscriminately applied.\u00a0 Granted, the politics of representing history are far from innocent and deserve the breadth of her scrutiny, especially where self-concious motives are involved.\u00a0 And granted, there remains four pages of her theorizing left unread as of this late hour and present moment.\u00a0 To finally conclude: granted there remain parts of each where she is perhaps beyond my reach.\u00a0 With these limitations borne in mind, I have to argue that the politics of our day (in the form of blackberry prompts, twenty-four hour blogging by pundits and the misinformed, and viral youtube propaganda) have yet to fully concede themselves to this idea of our self-concious and admitted embellishment or deprivation, our interjection or removal from debate. An example inteferes: FOX News, and following ‘Fair and Balanced’ flows the tagline.\u00a0 Obviously Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs are far from postmodern novelists, of the kind Mrs. Hutcheon lends her analytical prowess.\u00a0 But she readily cites a postmodernist’s ambition to represent society to the truest extent of his or her powerl; all while reality and history remain so inherenttly troubled and problematized by intrusive perceptions or limitations or interference.<\/p>\n
If only people saw the news and media coverage as such.\u00a0 In the case of I the Supreme<\/em>, had that ‘document’ of a king’s troubled days been presented to the people through a Yahoo! headline, or even in the form of an unearthed document surfaced from a Congressional member long past suddenly released to the public (imagine a tortured confessional from Joe McCarthy, solace to commy hearts).\u00a0 More importantly, imagine the vast majority of readings avialable and probable.\u00a0 Imagine the editorializing.\u00a0 The only reason this seems unimaginable to me is that something of this magnitude would likely have the weight to remain sunk, while the revelations we pride ourselves in are Sarah Palin’s clothes budget, Obama’s radical associations, McCain’s rickety, bellicose behavior caught by cell phone, then just as quickly shuffled back into rotating and back page recounting of reasons Why Not.\u00a0 Our anchors, our news journalists, our talking heads do not pride themselves on detailing their judgement of the material, and though we all perceive these documents differently, there is far too little irony in the political machine or in sections of the citizenry to make sense of this in postmodern terms.<\/p>\n I cannot refrain from an idea on the elitism of Mrs. Hutcheon.\u00a0 Is it degrading to the below average reader or mere receptacle who does not anticipate bias or allow for the many levels of narrative intrusion when she is told Barack Obama is a Muslim, Arab, terrorist sleeper cell, or, as we suddenly learn, a socialist?\u00a0 I think we’ve attached enough significane to Hawaii and Hyde Park and Georgetown, and on the other side Wasilla and ‘real Virginia’ (ATTACK OF THE SIMULACRUM!) to suffice, yet what article in the New York Times or The National Review allows for the admittance of unbalanced reporting.\u00a0 Hannity seems to be preaching the gospel from a pulpit he pin beneath his lapels.\u00a0 The elitism enters when Mrs. Hutcheon believes these people’s ‘simulated reality’ can only be understood through an author’s ironic and overpowering influence, can only be understood.\u00a0 Have we all come so far as that?\u00a0 Unfortunately or fortunately for me, so many articles on postmodern thought have made that case not as easy to defend, and perhaps I am allowing for the existence of a below average reader–elitism alive.\u00a0 But I don’t belive these novelists making light of the way so many people in our supposedly postmodern society view these things, especially politics–as ulitmately emotional and irrational an enterprise as any we parade as a triumph of thought–rightfully accounts for the sadly prosaic and one-dimensional perceptions of so many of the world’s characters.\u00a0 i don’t know–how can we talk about representing history even minutely faithfully, especially by adding metafictional conceits throughout, when there are so many Sarah Palin supporters in the world?\u00a0 Thoughts interlocked like cinderblocks, making as much sense as monoliths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Far be it for a postmodern critic to challenge the assumptions of our political life or our position as citizens enmeshed in discources about an amorphous history.\u00a0 In challenging the latter, Linda Hutcheon also attempts to attach the integrity of the former as irascibly as Democrats in chanting ‘four more years’.\u00a0 Perhaps both assumptions are … Continue reading A day late, a buck short, an hour off.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions\/313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}