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May 07, 2005
The Persuaders
What you don't want to find out on the weekend when you need to be penning a few thousand words, is that an individual whom you consider one of the brightest minds in America put out a new documentary last fall - that you missed - but can watch in its entirety online...
Douglas Rushkoff is an author, professor, filmmaker, journalist, etc. He's a one-man machine. He's probably most adept with media studies, but I'm pretty sure he wrote a book on orthodox Judaism a year or two back. Anyway, he did this documentary for PBS Frontline called The Merchants of Cool, which if you haven't seen, you pretty much need to watch, in its entirety, this moment. It will take you 50 minutes.
Douglas Rushkoff
I heard Rushkoff lecture last summer when I was at NYU, after he had just released a graphic novel of his own, of all things. Anyway, he came to the lecture at the Barnes & Noble in the West Village without having prepared a single thing. Talked for two hours straight, not in some long-winded, rambling banter, but was precise and engaging. It was one of those moments where you realize that you are in the presence of someone so much smarter than you, it is a bit awe-inspiring.
I can only compare the experience to when I heard Cornel West speak. Now, Rushkoff is no Cornel. There's a special place in heaven for someone like Cornel West - who after graduating magna cum laude from Princeton in three years - gets pulled back and forth between his alma mater and Harvard to chair some department, seemingly yearly - but can speak, and really speak, (Cornel West makes Martin Luther King seem shy) about anything from The Roots to Jesus. He's put out a series of rap CDs, too. The man is amazing.
Cornel West
Anyway, I forgot what this last paragraph was going to be about. Probably about how I'm a lazy ass and won't just write this damn paper. Oh yes, Rushkoff is also in a band called Psychic TV (who's founding member is named Genesis P-Orridge, which itself is enough goading for me to lend my support).
Posted by houch at May 7, 2005 10:02 PM
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Comments
very nice recommendations of people i hadn't heard of before.
Posted by: Matt Kilgore at May 8, 2005 12:17 AM
Kilgore, I can't believe Bech has never mentioned West to you. He's the one who introduced me. See, he gets a girlfriend and down goes all of the intellectual edge.
Posted by: Houch at May 8, 2005 12:20 AM
indeed
Posted by: Matt Kilgore at May 9, 2005 04:13 AM