It seems hard to argue with
what’s on the video. Still, I would like to know more about the technical aspects used by the conservative pranksters or activists or whatever they are to get the goods on these
ACORN people.
Is it possible that,
without great cost and technical acumen, we can all be outfitted with a see-all and record-all video rig? Why even ask the question? Of course this is true and inevitable. Likely, there’s already a stick-pin iPhone attachment.
What does this mean, other than that all culture and discourse is reduced to America’s funniest home videos?
Potentially, it destroys the very notion of bureaucracy. A properly edited real life video of the illogic and absurdity and patent stupidly of most systems—this is certainly what we’re seeing in the ACORN office—together with their excruciating inefficiency and slowness, could spark a revolution.
If the president believes he has problems with the health care system now, wait till videos begin to surface of the new health care processes and procedures.
Such homemade documentaries will surely become effective, if slightly anti-social, personal weapons, directed against angry bosses, surly waiters, and faithless lovers.
What about classrooms? Dull, lifeless, moronic teachers surely deserve the treatment.
And marriages? Let’s get the video into court—or, worse, out onto the Internet.
That’s of course the added point, not just to have the evidence of stupidity and vulgarity and silliness and carelessness, but to be able to distribute it widely.
How do you fight that?
Liberals are now in a tortuous position over the ACORN sting. There can hardly be a cogent response. Some liberals are taking the “it’s out of context” line. But that’s pretty much saying it’s reality taken out of reality. Or there is the deconstruction approach: The message has to do more with pictures of very fat black women than with mindless or even pernicious bureaucracy. On the other hand it is, clearly, mindless and pernicious bureaucracy.
Still, there is something, even if it’s hard to say what, that is not right.
It
is reality, and yet it is not.
It’s banality made into high drama. It’s the filler of life made it the substance. Pointlessness made into the point.
Still, maybe it’s good to finally and irrefutably capture the evidence of life’s thoughtlessness, tedium, meaninglessness, and incredibly poor sense of style.
Fox News should get some French philosophers to help explain what’s really going on in the ACORN video.
More of Newser founder Michael Wolff's articles and commentary can be found at VanityFair.com, where he writes a regular column. He can be emailed at michael@newser.com. You can also follow him on Twitter: www.twitter.com/NewserColumns.
