Posted in Capitalism, Media, News, War, tagged Afghanistan, commercial, snow, Wal Mart on November 10, 2009 | 1 Comment »
After a long day of thinking about how I’m going to unfold my dissertation project, I feel like I need to do a little free-wheeling, easy cultural studies writing. I saw a repulsive and reprehensible commercial for Wal-Mart the other day.
U.S. forces approach a camp that appears to be in a [...]
Posted in Capitalism, Economics, Lexington, Media, News, Politics, Sports, tagged basketball, college athletics, Dave Zirin, Joe B. Hall, Joe Craft, University of Kentucky on October 27, 2009 | 13 Comments »
My institution, The University of Kentucky, continues to receive national media coverage for the embarrassments that take place on campus and in its administrative meetings. Our latest shameful news is that the University Board of Trustees met today to discuss whether or not they would accept Joe Craft’s proposed gift of $7 million and the [...]
Posted in Capitalism, Lexington, Sports, tagged basketball, CBS, downtown, ESPN, Rupp Arena, UK on September 16, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Several weeks go North of Center published my article on the prospect of a new Rupp Arena. To my knowledge, IMG/ISG and the UK Athletics Department have yet to release any official news on the project, although those well-connected people have stumbled upon some rumblings. See Kentucky Sports Radio’s blog post, “Is There a New [...]
Posted in Capitalism, Economics, Politics, tagged activism, Check 'n Go, Check Into Cash, Daniel Brook, exploitation, Harper's, Payday Advance on March 22, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Some time last year I wrote a post about the roots of our consumer credit crisis and the subprime mortgage crisis. In that post, I likened the predatory lending and ultimate greed that caused our financial demise to the national behavior of Judah in the Eighth Century B.C.E. The biblical poet Amos, writing during that [...]
Posted in Capitalism, Environmentalism, Evangelicalism, Pastoral, The Bible, tagged Church offensiveness, culture, Green Bible, Literature, NRSV, stewardship, theology on October 2, 2008 | 3 Comments »
*Special thanks to Stephen Greenblatt, whose clever palimpsest of Walter Benjamin may be the best title formula ever.
It’s time to discard your old Bible and purchase the new HarperCollins Green Bible. That’s right, the Bible, much like just about everything else in our culture these days, is going green. It has gone green. No wait, that’s [...]
Posted in Capitalism, Pedagogy, Sports, tagged academic careerism, Boston Red Sox, contract negotiations, Favre, Manny Ramirez, Peter Gammons, tenure, The Ivory Tower and its Discontents, trades, university as corporation on August 1, 2008 | 3 Comments »
The recent Manny Ramirez saga, which culminated yesterday afternoon when the Red Sox traded him for fifty cents on the dollar to the Los Angeles Dodgers, has made me wonder: what would the world be like if academia operated like the professional sports universe? As Peter Gammons has explained, the Sox realized [...]
Posted in Capitalism, Economics, Film, Lexington, Pastoral, Politics, tagged Back to the Future, Kentucky Theatre, Reaganomics, Robert Zemeckis, Steven Spielberg, suburban sprawl, the 1980s, wish fantasy on July 11, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Ah, the power of love. I’m still a little bit in a funk from last week’s installment of the Summer Classics series at the Kentucky Theatre, the mid-1980s wish fantasy fulfillment, Back to the Future (1985). It’s hard to believe that the summer film series has canonized Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis alongside Hitchcock and [...]
Posted in Capitalism, tagged Biltmore Estate, Corporate philanthrophy, tourism, vacationing, Victorian edifices on December 27, 2007 | 2 Comments »
We’ve been on the road recently, and last week we stopped at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC. The Biltmore prides itself in being “America’s largest home,” and for hundreds of tourists each year the mansion is an edifice that represents the limitless possibilities of the American Dream. The house was commissioned by the railroad tycoon George [...]
Dissertation Reading
