Staged 8

In which patronizing tolerance as unmistakably Christian charity takes on epically banal and grotesque proportions, unashamed and as if for the first time in the history of hypocrisy.

And yes, I read every one of those links, and so should you. Better than flipping back and forth between Extreme Makeover and CNN's Iraq coverage anyway (why oh why do the victims of this show never seem to look happy at having their homes invaded and redecorated?)

At the same time, one has to look frankly at the eagerness of all this anti-Live 8 commentary, and ask once again who are the ones "making history" and who are the ones choosing to dignify the process with their response, however clever, almost as if on demand...much of it cynical and gleeful at once.

What "Live 8" really needs is a Beavis and Butthead commentary, no? Anybody else notice how the lovable dork duo (Wayne's World, etc.) seems to have become so mean? South Park locking hippies in the basement is funny, and "hipsters" today deserve all the shit they get, God knows, but nobody seems to be providing that bullshit protector/safety valve function on a popular scale anymore—that is, in a way that doesn't merely emulate the cruelty of late capitalism (those last words carefully chosen just to send Daniel Green running for the hills, or wherever it is that "literature as literature" dwells—his castle, perhaps?).