Probe: Naomi Wolf as CIA Cultural Cold War Asset

[Luther Blissett]

Camile Paglia is too reductionist and deterministic for my taste. I say this as someone trained in molecular biology. Hard to take her seriously when she intimates that Rhianna is some sort of representative of graceful femininity but bashes Taylor Swift and that other pop star...whats her name. Just did a search. It's Katy Perry.They are all vapid and boring and not at all revolutionary after my brief exposure to their "art." Not that everyone has to be exciting or anything but having recently been introduced to their art I can only say it takes all kinds. But I digress.

As for Ms. P, using her gift with words to shock and garner attention is not revolutionary though like Naomi Wolf I think their work serves a particular purpose. Doubt it's to help free our minds though it might make you stop to consider another point of view. Her gifts are however, hers to use as she wishes. While I sometimes get upset with Bell Hooks l think she had a point when she said of Paglia "Girlfriend just wanted to be right there in the middle of that white supremacist capitalist patriarchal stage doing her thing. Go, girl! You got it! It's all yours!" I don't find it appealing when self-promoting babble is used as a support for the likes of Rush Limbaugh, especially when that babble is given much media exposure as some sort of revolutionary thinking. But what do I know about cultural critics belonging to the new or old wave of feminists. I find Naomi Wolf similar in that she serves the PTB quite well, though she might be more subtle and yet more wacko. Give me the other Naomi any day.

Great post, though what upsets you about bell hooks? Anything she's ever said that had made me think I should feel upset has led me to reevaluate and come around to her point of view.

I'm no hooks expert but I think I largely agree on her main theses.

[worldsastage]

Great post, though what upsets you about bell hooks? Anything she's ever said that had made me think I should feel upset has led me to reevaluate and come around to her point of view.

I'm no hooks expert but I think I largely agree on her main theses.

I do often agree with her main theses even when the manner of delivery upsets me. Most often as I read more of her work I get a better understanding and the anger takes on a different context. It becomes less about what or how she said what she said and more what does it mean? What are the implications? For example, her fantasy about murder that got much play initially made wonder if she really sees some of this same fantasy element in the gangsta rap that she rightly criticizes in a constructive manner. Does the fact that the subject of the gangsta's fantasy is not usually a white male play into how she talks about it? I guess I can say that her copious use of the word patriarchy gets to me and her anger, justified as it is, triggers my own anger about the system. Because action is important to me and it feels so...limiting. It also makes me think that her invoking anger as she educates is a part of her goal. As I've been reading more of her stuff, I am better able see some nuances. My usual initial response to some of it is akin to irrationality that she speaks of, only to later see the truth even if I don't like how was stated in the raw. Truth isn't always pretty. My issue not hers. Take an interview where she states:

My irrational impulse to want to kill people who bore me or whose ideas are not very complex, clearly has to do with an exaggerated response to situations where I feel powerless.

My alarm bells would start ringing with the "want to kill people" part even if she qualifies it by identifying it as an irrational impulse and exaggerated response to powerlessness. I ask myself, isn't it so that the power structure wants us to keep having these irrational impulses? Isn't the system set up such that such impulses become a sort of norm to the point that we go nuts trying to suppress them or actually acting on them? Isn't black-on-black crime a case of this that provides just what the system wants? She recognizes this but on first reading I don't always get that she does.

Then she would continue with and I can see that she gets it

I think black people, across class, have many moments in our lives when we feel utterly powerless to change the direction of situations. And we don’t deal with this collectively, because we’re so in denial about it. It is significant that the urge to exterminate was aroused by a moral standpoint wherein vulgarity must be dissed.

...and I get it. It's just amazing to observe the emotions induced getting there.

[IanEye]

See, back when Naomi Klein was getting mixed up with Naomi Wolf, I was lamenting the fact that Klein's book on "Disaster Capitalism," while flawed, strident and one-sided, was still an extremely important argument ... and one that looked even better compared with the tome that Naomi Wolf was touring in support of, The End of America. In fact, having been subjected to Wolf's documentary effort of the same name, I was struck by the fact she was doing a very partisan paint-by-numbers pastiche of pretty much everyone else who was already on the scene, saying the same shit, only better. (And for a long time prior to 2007. Naomi Klein among them.)

Anyways, I casually brought this up to an academic friend, and to my surprise, she jumped onboard and provided me with another datapoint: her own conspiracy theory that Naomi Wolf was a CIA "cultural asset" who was put into play to counteract Camille Paglia. She discussed this at some length, brought up a lot of fishy stuff I've long since forgotten, and impressed me with how fleshed out and considered her presentation was.

So, being reminded of both this week, I perused her biography and found my first data point: Naomi Wolf published "acclaimed" and heavily promoted books in two fields: 1) Feminism, where her 1991 book "The Beauty Myth" presented a toned-down and photogenic counterpoint to Camille Paglia's ambitious and political 1991 book, "Sexual Personnae" and 2) Left Politics, where he 2007 book "The End of America" provided a talking-points manifesto complete with astro-turf marketing "movement" the same year as Naomi Klein's ambitious and original 2007 book, "The Shock Doctrine."

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September 11th, 2023

Naomi Klein was faced with a rather common problem. She was consistently mistaken for someone else.

But because Naomi is one of our most perceptive and astute social critics, she was able to to turn that case of mistaken identity into an examination of the many public threats pervading society and how they’re connected by the deliberate blurring of reality and identity.

Naomi and Marc talk about all the research and conclusions of her new book, Doppelgänger: A Trip Into The Mirror World.

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The topic around the office this morning has been "Doppelgänger Week" on Facebook, wherein people are putting up profile pictures of celebrities that they think they look like

"Repetition is a form of change." - Oblique Strategies

i fucking love LoveTone effects pedals, so that is what i put up on facebook for my profile pic.

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[Joe Hillshoist]