Tag: politics

Jim Henson Called It, I Swear He Did…

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The Muppets have been on my mind, ever since Mrs. Jiwaku started working on a painting which is, essentially, a mash-up of the Coen Brothers’ film Barton Fink with Jim Henson’s Muppet characters. And you’ll probably be wondering what The Muppets have to do with bigotry, though I swear, if you stick with it, it’ll make sense. (And no, I’m not talking about the recent Muppet movie and racial coding of characters. I’m talking about Jim Henson as a political subversive, something I talked about in my classes, but am pretty sure I haven’t posted about here before.)

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About that MBC Parody Video

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A good long time ago, James at The Grand Narrative urged me to write about the things I discuss below. I thought it was a good idea, but relented at first, thinking that maybe I might get fired the way Gerry Bevers was for posting about Dokdo. Then I got busy, and stayed busy. Then I left Korea. And here we are. But this video came up again, where I live now, as part of a discussion about sexism and racism in Korea, and I realized that I’d never gotten around to it, and that I should. Because I learned …

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Celebrity Suicides, Netizen Trolling, and the “Success” of the Real Name System

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In 2006, when I moved from where I used to live to the place I live now, I changed jobs, and suddenly I was able to understand what my students were trying to say about current events in classes. I taught a lot of conversational English and composition-type courses at the time, which meant I began to pick up on news and online memes in Korean society, because students would be repeating claims, arguments, and points almost verbatim. One of the earliest of these memes that I encountered was related to the “Real-Name System,” a then-proposed (and since-implemented) method for …

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What is Food To Us?

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Regarding whether New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg is in the right or the wrong in his bid to legislate about what size of soft drinks can be sold in the city, the discussion seems kind  of misguided in my opinion. It seems, in fact, misguided on both sides of the argument. Those who are up in arms for this “infringement of freedom” have some nerve: after all, why complain when sugar is added to an already long list of controlled substances? In America, people cannot ingest marijuana, cocaine, heroin, or a host of other chemicals legally. If a society has …

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In Times of Upheaval

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Interesting details gleaned from Tania: Memories of a Lost World by Tania Alexander (daughter of the infamous Moura Budberg, about whom I have posted before, many times, all the way back to 2006, as part of a story I am once again about to begin revising, after finishing a draft in 2010): during World War I, what was Russian high society doing? There were no official parties or embassy balls for the duration of the war, but right up to the  October 1917 Revolution it was possible to maintain the outward appearances of social life, and restaurants and gypsy taverns …

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