"Going" Green or Merely "Performing" Green? And When, O When, Will We Stop with the Compulsive Use of Ironic Quotation Marks

Last week, Megs raised an excellent question about Americans, ranging "from esteemed blogger Andrew Sullivan to our own Harrogate," who have "changed their identifying display to the color in support of Iranian protesters."

Megs wondered whether it makes a difference at all, do the Iranian proestors even care? "Normally," she observed, "I'm all for the grassroots movement, but this one seems just too easy. Click a button, it says to me. That's all you have to do to help these people." Reading this post from the snug, secure confines of a hallowed Ivy League Library, Harrogate found himself feeling extra vapid. Worse, he was not much heartened by the latter half of Megs' post, which made an interesting move towards embracing the possibility that this "click of a button" movement might actually be doing something beyond making us feel proud of ourselves.

Sigh. Harrogate has no effective answer to this issue. But since Solon is right that intention always matters no matter how embedded in Theory we get, Harrogate in his own rambling way, would like to take a shot at stating why he went with the Green identifier.

First off, an important distinction needs to be made between Andrew Sullivan and us facebookers and lightly-trafficked bloggers (as friends know, Harrogate has deep ambivalence towards Sullivan, because Sullivan is a committed neoliberal, which Harrogate finds only marginally less repulsive than the mainstream American brand of social conservatism. But that is beside the point here). Sullivan's blogger coverage of the Iranian election and its aftermath has been beyond stellar, and one would be hard pressed to suggest that Sullivan has made no difference in shaping the public imagination, both in the United States and abroad, on these important events. To the extent that the Iranians have had uncensored access to the Internet during this time, Sullivan has in all likelihood reached protestors there as well.

Sullivan inspired Harrogate to identify Green on Facebook. Cannot remember the post (there are sooo many), but there was one where Sullivan argued that these identifiers matter. That whereas Obama and the Congress have a responsibility to be cautious with their Rhetoric, bloggers and "plugged in" citizens in the United States and throughout the Western world are not at all beholden to caution, and that while it may only be the click of a button, it sends a "human family" message.

Sullivan's was an assertion of the importance of Rhetoric in the most layman sense of the term. "That's just Rhetoric," some might say. But "Rhetoric matters," Sullivan responds, for it adds momentum to a sense of global sympathy for those who fight for their political freedom.

As Megs said, we all here in the US (except for those who want to bomb Iran and are thus sad that its people are suddenly humanized in the mainstream American imaginary) support the protestors there. Harrogate, persuaded by Sullivan, decided to inscrbe that support on Facebook, and he admits to having entertained the idea that some protestors would notice, and be gladdened by, the fact that so many are doing this.

In the end, Harrogate comes down believing that that we are, in some way and in Megs' hopeful words, "speaking to the Iranian populous" with these identifiers. But we also ought not to flatter ourselves that we are hardcore political activists in changing a Facebook Profile Picture from Picture of Ric Flair to a Placard asking "Where are Their Votes?"

Hippos for a Friday Night

Harrogate's Favorite of All the Videos He, To Date, Has Posted This Year

While getting the ball rolling on the current Retrospective Festival taking place on TRS, oxymoron indicated here that at times, it seemed as though Harrogate preferred Ron Paul to all other Presidential candidates. Reading Oxy's comment, Harrogate was moved to take introspective pause. How much substance, in the end, was there to the claim? It was certainly the case that Harrogate's Award-Winning sequence, "Why Some People Like Ron Paul," included some of the clearest, most passionate prose Harrogate ever placed on these Boards.

But at the same time, while this writing intentionally implied much admiration for the good Dr. Paul, much of it was after all quite hostile, with Harrogate wearing anti-Libertarian bias on his sleeve for all to behold. In the end, the truth is that the thing about Paul that moved Harrogate the most was the incredible response his Call for Liberty evoked in citizens across the country. Paul, unlike every other candidate this season, did not at all come across as having tailored his Rhetoric to Focus Groups. Indeed, he neither hemmed nor hawed. There was never any doubt as to the sincerity of his position, no confusing for anything else his intellectually-grounded Love for the United States of America.

Do many of Paul's convictions nauseate Harrogate? Indeed they do. But one both can and should live with that in the arena of ideas. And the rejection of many of Paul's ideas, by Harrogate, did not thereby insinuate a questioning of his patriotic motives, his Constitutional breadth of knowledge, or his Political Bravery.

Some, by the way, have said that Situationers post too many videos. But Harrogate disagrees. The videos, musical, or political or otherwise, accomplish many important Rhetorical goals, not the least of which is the kind of community-building work that Oxymoron has recently identified with Feminine Sociolinguistics. But the Videos are also expressions of what move each indiviual blogger, and chance to put out into the Blogosphere "stuff {insert name} likes."

The Above Video Homage to Ron Paul, Harrogate posted on two separate occasions in this Year 2008. Now he has posted it for the third and final time. It takes one of our Nation's greatest Musical Pop Anthems, and uses it persuasively on Paul's behalf. This video is all about America, about ideological substance, and it is beautiful.

And so here is another chance for Readers to check it out.

Saturday Night "Smooth"--and "Smooth 2"!

From a movie that permanently entered Harrogate's Top Ten movies the first time he saw it. Every time the movie is on Harrogate watches it. If he owned it he'd watch it all the time. That's why he doesn't own it.

The movie has among other selling points: top notch acting and special effects, a pulp fiction quality, an ecocritical thrust, a bottomless racial element, a romantic nostalgia for old school Hollywood, and a markedly anti-corporate sensibility. And it's fun as hell!!!

The character we feature here of course was brilliantly executed by Kathleen Turner, and immortalized one of the naughtiest lines in American film history: "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way." It was Amy Irving, however, who provided the singing voice the Transcendent Scene you are experiencing here.

Harrogate especially dedicates this song to Mr. and Mrs. Oxymoron, in honor of their "Smooth" and "Smooth 2" musical collections.