My my but it’s been sour in here the past couple of days. Perhaps I should recommend some other places to go. Mark Riebling, after a lengthy hibernation, has posted the first couple of chapters of his forthcoming book, The Eagle and the Cross: The Pope, the Jesuits, and the Plot to Kill Hitler, in which he rehabilitates the unjustly maligned Pius XII, and they were worth waiting for. I’ve just put up a site for the artist Tom Sellers, whose paintings I can’t afford, but maybe you can. I lazily let pass Cinderella’s translation of and commentary on an interview with Pascal Bruckner, author of the brilliant Tears of the White Man, who provides the best explanation of French politics I’ve heard to date. Evan Kirchhoff, via Colby Cosh, theorizes on the strange fascination with Michael Moore. Seablogger dissects “queer” vs. “gay.” And I promise to be cheerier next time out.
Apr 022003
Thanks for the plug. Since Alan Seablogger doesnt have a comments section, I hope you dont mind me clearing up something for him here. He writes: He wanted to know why I disliked the show [Queer as Folk]’s name. Well, I explained, it’s ungrammatical in a way that reeks of postmodern academia. Parallax seems to regarded as an option rather than a rule by folks who think that rules of any sort are a patriarchal imposition. "Queers as Folks" or "Queers as a Folk" would be correct, but any use "folk" in such a construction smacks of the Nazi phrase Ein Volk, a slogan of Aryan supremacy. Perhaps this was not known by whoever named the show. Perhaps it was known and ignored, for reasons I don’t even want to contemplate. Actually, the title of the series (which originated in the UK) is simply a play on the Northern English dialect saying: Theres nowt so queer as folk (in other words, There is nothing so strange as people). No pomo overtones are implied (I doubt if a postmodernist would survive very long in Yorkshire).
Heh. My thanks to CBF. (I thought he was going to change his name!) Yes, I knew the series originated in the U.K. And I’m not surprised by the dialectical correctness of the term there. I’ll add an update to that essay. And yet…I still think there was more to the choice of that phrase for the title.
Why Tom Sellers? Too commercial for my taste. Try Paul Ching Bor, who I did collect before he started exhibiting here
http://www.spanierman.com/new_acq_01_03/chingbor030001c_b.htm
thus driving me out of the market for his art.
Well, the guy is paying me.
Great!