Boing Boing, Bunk

Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things is properly following todays trends. Off-beat, kitsch that costs a pretty penny, like $5,500 "superhero costumes as a form of fabric art" (oh, that's what they call costume design? fabric art? Then painting must be a new form of canvas art?) Lithographs of an "Indian Princess" demonstrate how the author buys into a phony multicultralism, while praising the work of "Disney", notice any contradiction? There is also the obligatory Iraq link, for those who have a newfound interest in the country. Unfortunately, it takes the bombing of a country to get Americans interested in its people and history. The site prides itself on an 'eclectic' taste (ie fancy euphemism for a collection of shallow distractions, which bears on the wonderfully comatose title for this blog: boing boing), ranging from porn art to computer museums to occult books. Most posts are short and do not much more than point in this direction or that. One post by Xeni Jardin reveals his suprise that the U.S. Army censors the information their soldiers can obtain via internet, etc.. Obviously, Xeni doesn't know that they have their own television stations as well as newspapers. The army doesn't want soldiers who think critically. They are supposed to take orders. Consider the recent Abu Ghraib "scandal". However, this blog takes its orders too from what current trends deem 'cool': a bogus multicultralism, focusing on product, especially in the arena of kitsch and anything but 'fine art'. Its a new religion for areas popping up in major cities like the Williamsburg of New York, the Prenzlauer Berg of Berlin, the Silver Lake of Los Angeles, the barrios of Barcelona...where caring hipsters gentrify a neighborhood and evacuate the old residents for the sake of a new breed of people in denial about their priveledged class; as demonstrated by the blog, Boing Boing.