in Rome. This statue is a Roman-era copy of an earlier Greek statue from the 3rd century BCE. The scroll in his right hand is an 18th century restoration.]]

Cynicism (), in its original form, refers to the beliefs of an ancient school of Greek philosophers known as the Cynics (, ). Their philosophy was that the purpose of life was to live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature. This meant rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health, and fame, and by living a simple life free from all possessions. As reasoning creatures, people could gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which was natural for humans. They believed that the world belonged equally to everyone, and that suffering was caused by false judgments of what was valuable and by the worthless customs and conventions which surrounded society. Many of these thoughts were later absorbed into Stoicism.

The first philosopher to outline these themes was Antisthenes, who had been a pupil of Socrates in the late 5th century BCE. He was followed by Diogenes of Sinope, who lived in a tub on the streets of Athens. Diogenes took Cynicism to its logical extremes, and came to be seen as the archetypal Cynic philosopher. He was followed by Crates of Thebes who gave away a large fortune so he could live a life of Cynic poverty in Athens. Cynicism spread with the rise of Imperial Rome in the 1st century, and Cynics could be found begging and preaching throughout the cities of the Empire. It finally disappeared in the late 5th century, although many of its ascetic and rhetorical ideas were adopted by early Christians.

Origin of the Cynic name

The name Cynic derives from the Greek word κυνικός, kynikos, "dog-like" and that from κύων, kyôn, "dog" (genitive: kynos). One explanation offered in ancient times for why the Cynics were called dogs was because the first Cynic, Antisthenes, taught in the Cynosarges gymnasium at Athens. The word Cynosarges means the place of the white dog. It seems certain, however, that the word dog was also thrown at the first Cynics as an insult for their shameless rejection of conventional manners, and their decision to live on the streets. Diogenes, in particular, was referred to as the Dog, a distinction he seems to have revelled in, stating that "other dogs bite their enemies, I bite my friends to save them." Later Cynics also sought to turn the word to their advantage, as a later commentator explained:

There are four reasons why the Cynics are so named. First because of the indifference of their way of life, for they make a cult of indifference and, like dogs, eat and make love in public, go barefoot, and sleep in tubs and at crossroads. The second reason is that the dog is a shameless animal, and they make a cult of shamelessness, not as being beneath modesty, but as superior to it. The third reason is that the dog is a good guard, and they guard the tenets of their philosophy. The fourth reason is that the dog is a discriminating animal which can distinguish between its friends and enemies. So do they recognize as friends those who are suited to philosophy, and receive them kindly, while those unfitted they drive away, like dogs, by barking at them.

Philosophy

Cynicism is one of the most striking of all the Hellenistic philosophies. It offered people the possibility of happiness and freedom from suffering in an age of uncertainty. Although there was never an official Cynic doctrine, the fundamental principles of Cynicism can be summarised as follows:

# The goal of life is happiness which is to live in agreement with Nature. # Happiness depends on being self-sufficient, and a master of mental attitude. # Self-sufficiency is achieved by living a life of Virtue. # The road to virtue is to free oneself from any influence such as wealth, fame, or power, which have no value in Nature. # Suffering is caused by false judgments of value, which cause negative emotions and a vicious character.

Thus a Cynic has no property and rejects all conventional values of money, fame, power or reputation. The Cynics adopted Hercules as their hero, as epitomizing the ideal Cynic. Hercules "was he who brought Cerberus, the hound of Hades, from the underworld, a point of special appeal to the dog-man, Diogenes." According to Lucian, "Cerberus and Cynic are surely related through the dog."

The Cynic way of life required continuous training, not just in exercising one's judgments and mental impressions, but a physical training as well:

[Diogenes] used to say, that there were two kinds of exercise: that, namely, of the mind and that of the body; and that the latter of these created in the mind such quick and agile impressions at the time of its performance, as very much facilitated the practice of virtue; but that one was imperfect without the other, since the health and vigour necessary for the practice of what is good, depend equally on both mind and body.

None of this meant that the Cynic would retreat from society, far from it, Cynics would live in the full glare of the public's gaze and would be quite indifferent in the face of any insults which might result from their unconventional behaviour.

The ideal Cynic would evangelise; as the of humanity, it was their job to hound people about the error of their ways.

History of Cynicism

The classical Greek and Roman Cynics regarded virtue as the only necessity for happiness, and saw virtue as entirely sufficient for attaining happiness. Classical Cynics followed this philosophy to the extent of neglecting everything not furthering their perfection of virtue and attainment of happiness, thus, the title Cynics, derived from the Greek word κύων (meaning "dog") because they allegedly neglected society, hygiene, family, money, etc., in a manner reminiscent of dogs. They sought to free themselves from conventions; become self-sufficient; and live only in accordance with nature. They rejected any conventional notions of happiness involving money, power, or fame, to lead entirely virtuous, and thus happy, lives.

The ancient Cynics rejected conventional social values, and would criticise the types of behaviours, such as greed, which they viewed as causing suffering. Emphasis on this aspect of their teachings led, in the late 18th and early 19th century, to the modern understanding of cynicism as "an attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others." This modern definition of cynicism is in marked contrast to the ancient philosophy, which emphasized "virtue and moral freedom in liberation from desire."

Influences

Various philosophers, such as the Pythagoreans, had advocated simple living in the centuries preceding the Cynics. In the early 6th century BCE, Anacharsis, a Scythian sage had combined plain living together with criticisms of Greek customs in a manner which would become standard among the Cynics. Perhaps of importance were tales of Indian philosophers, known to later Greeks as the Gymnosophists, who had adopted a strict asceticism together with a disrespect for established laws and customs. By the 5th century BCE, the Sophists had begun a process of questioning many aspects of Greek society such as religion, law and ethics. However, the most immediate influence for the Cynic school was Socrates. Although he was not an ascetic, he did profess a love of Virtue and an indifference to wealth, together with a disdain for general opinion. These aspects of Socrates' thought, which formed only a minor part of Plato's philosophy, became the central inspiration for another of Socrates' pupils, Antisthenes.

Antisthenes

The story of Cynicism traditionally begins with Antisthenes (c. 445–365 BCE), who was an older contemporary of Plato and a pupil of Socrates. At about 25 years his junior, Antisthenes was one of the most important of Socrates' disciples. Although later classical authors had little doubt about labelling him as the founder of Cynicism, his philosophical views seem to be more complex than the later simplicities of pure Cynicism. In the list of works ascribed to Antisthenes by Diogenes Laërtius, writings on Language, Dialogue and Literature far outnumber those on Ethics or Politics, although they may reflect how his philosophical interests changed with time. It is certainly true that Antisthenes preached a life of poverty:

I have enough to eat till my hunger is stayed, to drink till my thirst is sated; to clothe myself as well; and out of doors not [even] Callias there, with all his riches, is more safe than I from shivering; and when I find myself indoors, what warmer shirting do I need than my bare walls?

Diogenes of Sinope

Diogenes of Sinope (c. 412–323 BCE) dominates the story of Cynicism like no other figure. He originally came to Athens, fleeing his home city, after he and his father, who was in charge of the mint at Sinope, got into trouble for falsifying the coinage. (The phrase "defacing the currency" later became proverbial in describing Diogenes' rejection of conventional values.) Later tradition claimed that Diogenes became the disciple of Antisthenes, but it is by no means certain that they ever met. What is true is that Diogenes adopted Antisthenes' teachings and embraced the ascetic way of life, pursuing a lifestyle of self-sufficiency (autarkeia), austerity (askēsis), and shamelessness (anaideia). There are countless anecdotes about his extravagant asceticism (sleeping in a tub), shameless behaviour (eating raw meat), and his biting satire ("bad people obey their lusts as servants obey their masters"), and although it is impossible to tell which of these stories are genuine, they do illustrate the broad character of the man, including an ethical seriousness.

Crates of Thebes

Crates of Thebes (c. 365–c. 285 BCE) is the third figure who dominates Cynic history. He is notable because he renounced a large fortune to live a life of Cynic poverty in Athens. He is said to have been a pupil of Diogenes, but again this is uncertain. Crates married Hipparchia of Maroneia after she had fallen in love with him and together they lived like beggars on the streets of Athens, where Crates was treated with respect. Crates' later fame (apart from his unconventional lifestyle) lies in the fact that he became the teacher of Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism. The Cynic strain to be found in early Stoicism (such as Zeno's own radical views on sexual equality spelled out in his Republic) can be ascribed to Crates' influence.

Other Cynics

There were many other Cynics in the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE, including Onesicritus (who sailed with Alexander the Great to India), and the moral satirists Bion of Borysthenes and Menippus of Gadara. However, with the rise of Stoicism in the 3rd century BCE, Cynicism as a serious philosophical activity underwent a decline, and it is not until the Roman era that Cynicism underwent a revival.

Cynicism in the Roman World

There is little record of Cynicism in the 2nd or 1st centuries BCE; Cicero (c. 50 BCE), who was much interested in Greek philosophy, had little to say about Cynicism, except that "it is to be shunned; for it is opposed to modesty, without which there can be neither right nor honor." However, by the 1st century CE, Cynicism reappeared with full force. The rise of Imperial Rome, like the Greek loss of independence under Philip and Alexander three centuries earlier, may have led to a sense of powerlessness and frustration among many people, which allowed a philosophy which emphasized self-sufficiency and inner-happiness to flourish once again. Cynics could be found throughout the empire, standing on street corners, preaching about Virtue. Lucian complained that "every city is filled with such upstarts, particularly with those who enter the names of Diogenes, Antisthenes, and Crates as their patrons and enlist in the Army of the Dog," and Aelius Aristides observed that "they frequent the doorways, talking more to the doorkeepers than to the masters, making up for their lowly condition by using impudence." The most notable representative of Cynicism in the 1st century CE was Demetrius, whom Seneca praised as "a man of consummate wisdom, though he himself denied it, constant to the principles which he professed, of an eloquence worthy to deal with the mightiest subjects." Cynicism in Rome was both the butt of the satirist and the ideal of the thinker. In the 2nd century CE, Lucian, whilst pouring scorn on the Cynic philosopher Peregrinus Proteus, nevertheless praised his own Cynic teacher, Demonax, in a dialogue.

Cynicism came to be seen as an idealised form of Stoicism, a view which led Epictetus to eulogise the ideal Cynic in a lengthy discourse. According to Epictetus, the ideal Cynic "must know that he is sent as a messenger from Zeus to people concerning good and bad things, to show them that they have wandered." Unfortunately for Epictetus, many Cynics of the era did not live up to the ideal: "consider the present Cynics who are dogs that wait at tables, and in no respect imitate the Cynics of old except perchance in breaking wind."

Unlike Stoicism, which declined as an independent philosophy after the 2nd century CE, Cynicism seems to have thrived into the 4th century. The Emperor Julian (ruled 361–363), like Epictetus, praised the ideal Cynic and complained about the actual practitioners of Cynicism.

The final Cynic noted in classical history is Sallustius of Emesa in the late 5th century. A student of the Neoplatonic philosopher Isidore of Alexandria, he devoted himself to living a life of Cynic asceticism.

Cynicism and Christianity

Historical Jesus as a Jewish Cynic

Some historians have noted the similarities between the life and teachings of Jesus and those of the Cynics. Some scholars have argued that the Q document, the hypothetical common source for the gospels of Matthew and Luke, has strong similarities with the teachings of the Cynics. Scholars on the quest for the historical Jesus, such as Burton L. Mack and John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar, have argued that 1st century CE Galilee was a world in which Hellenistic ideas collided with Jewish thought and traditions. The city of Gadara, only a day's walk from Nazareth, was particularly notable as a center of Cynic philosophy, and Mack has described Jesus as a "rather normal Cynic-type figure." For Crossan, Jesus was more like a Cynic sage from an Hellenistic Jewish tradition than either a Christ who would die as a substitute for sinners or a Messiah who wanted to establish an independent Jewish state of Israel. Other scholars doubt that Jesus was deeply influenced by the Cynics, and see the Jewish prophetic tradition as of much greater importance.

Cynic influences on early Christianity

Many of the ascetic practices of Cynicism were undoubtedly adopted by early Christians, and Christians often employed the same rhetorical methods as the Cynics. Some Cynics were actually martyred for speaking out against the authorities. One Cynic, Peregrinus Proteus, lived for a time as a Christian before converting to Cynicism, whereas in the 4th century, Maximus of Alexandria, although a Christian, was also called a Cynic because of his ascetic lifestyle. Christian writers would often praise Cynic poverty, although they scorned Cynic shamelessness: Augustine stating that they had, "in violation of the modest instincts of men, boastfully proclaimed their unclean and shameless opinion, worthy indeed of dogs." The ascetic orders of Christianity also had direct connection with the Cynics, as can be seen in the wandering mendicant monks of the early church who in outward appearance, and in many of their practices were little different from the Cynics of an earlier age.

See also

Asceticism

Cynic epistles

Encratites

List of ancient Greek philosophers

List of Cynic philosophers

Natural law

Simple living

Stoicism

Notes

References

Further reading

Primary sources

Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Book VI: The Cynics

Dio Chrysostom, Cynic Discourses: Oration 6, Oration 8, Oration 9, Oration 10.

Epictetus, Discourse 3.22, On Cynicism

Pseudo-Lucian, The Cynic

Secondary sources

R. Bracht Branham, Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé, (editors), (1996), The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-21645-8

Ian Cutler, (2005), Cynicism from Diogenes to Dilbert. McFarland & Co. ISBN 0-7864-2093-6

William D. Desmond, (2006), The Greek Praise of Poverty: Origins of Ancient Cynicism. University of Notre Dame Press. ISBN 0-268-02582-7

William D. Desmond, (2008), Cynics. Ancient Philosophies Series. Acumen Publishing. ISBN 1-84465-129-0

F. Gerald Downing, (1992), Cynics and Christian Origins. T. & T. Clark. ISBN 0-567-09613-0

Donald R. Dudley, (1937), A History of Cynicism from Diogenes to the 6th Century A.D. Bristol Classical Paperbacks. ISBN 1-85399-548-7 (Available at the Internet Archive)

Luis E. Navia, (1996), Classical Cynicism: A Critical Study. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-30015-1

External links

Cynics, from The Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Cynicism, BBC Radio 4 programme: In Our Time

Was Jesus a philosophical Cynic?, article by Bruce W. Griffin.

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Cynics, article by Giannis Stamatellos

Category:Asceticism Category:Ethical schools and movements Category:Greek loanwords Category:Philosophical movements Category:Roman era philosophy Category:Epistemological theories

Region	Western Philosophy Psychoanalysis
Era	20th- / 21st-century philosophy
Color	#B0C4DE
Image name	Slavoj Zizek in Liverpool cropped.jpg
Name	Slavoj Žižek
Birth date	March 21, 1949
Birth place	Ljubljana, SR Slovenia, SFR Yugoslavia
School tradition	HegelianismPsychoanalysisMarxism
Main interests	OntologyFilm theoryPsychoanalysisIdeologyTheologyMarxism
Influences	Hegel Kant Schelling Lacan Marx Adorno Althusser Freud Lenin Mao Jacques Derrida
Influenced	Michael Hardt Alenka Zupančič Tahir Musa Ceylan

Slavoj Žižek (pronounced ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian continental philosopher and critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis.

Žižek is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and a professor at the European Graduate School. He has been a visiting professor at, among others, the University of Chicago, Columbia, London Consortium, Princeton, New York University, The New School, the University of Minnesota, the University of California, Irvine and the University of Michigan. He is currently the International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London and president of the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis, Ljubljana.

Žižek uses examples from popular culture to explain the theory of Jacques Lacan and uses Lacanian psychoanalysis, Hegelian philosophy and Marxist economic criticism to interpret and speak extensively on immediately-current social phenomena, including the current ongoing financial crisis of global capitalism. In a 2008 interview with Amy Goodman on the New York City radio show Democracy Now! he described himself as a "communist in a qualified sense," giving arguments tinged with left communism and similar ideas, and in another appearance on the show in October 2009 he described himself as a "radical leftist". Žižek is widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of the radical left.

It was not until the 1989 publication of his first book written in English, The Sublime Object of Ideology, that Žižek achieved international recognition as a social theorist. Since then, he has continued to develop his status as a confrontational intellectual.

He writes on many topics including subjectivity, ideology, capitalism, fundamentalism, racism, tolerance, multiculturalism, human rights, ecology, globalization, the Iraq War, revolution, utopianism, totalitarianism, postmodernism, pop culture, opera, cinema, political theology, and religion.

Life

Žižek was born in Ljubljana, Socialist Republic of Slovenia, SFR Yugoslavia to a middle-class family. His father Jože Žižek was an economist and civil servant from the region of Prekmurje in eastern Slovenia, his mother Vesna, native of the Brda region in the Slovenian Littoral, was an accountant in a state enterprise . He spent most of his childhood in the coastal town of Portorož. The family moved back to Ljubljana when Slavoj was a teenager. His parents were both atheists. Debenjak taught the philosophy of German idealism at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana, and his reading of Marx's Das Kapital from the perspective of Hegel's Phenomenology of the Mind influenced many future Slovenian philosophers, including Žižek.

Žižek frequented the circles of dissident intellectuals, including the Heideggerian philosophers Tine Hribar and Ivo Urbančič, He spent the next few years undertaking national service in the Yugoslav army in Karlovac.

After four years of unemployment, Žižek gained a job as a recording clerk at the Slovenian Marxist Center. At the same time, he became involved with a group of Slovene scholars, among whom were Mladen Dolar and Rastko Močnik, whose theoretical focus was on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. In 1979, he was hired as a researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the University of Ljubljana with the help of philosopher Ivan Urbančič. Between 1988 and 1990, he was actively involved in several political and civil society movements which fought for the democratization of Slovenia, most notably the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights. In the first free elections in 1990, he ran as candidate for Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia (an auxiliary institution abolished in the constitution of 1991) for the Liberal Democratic Party. In a 2008 interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! he described himself as a "communist in a qualified sense," and in another appearance in October 2009 he described himself as a "radical leftist".

However, this claim about the role of the philosopher/theorist is complicated by how Žižek frequently derides the consumerist fashionability of postmodern cultural criticism while affirming his universal emancipatory stance and love for "grand explanations" (Žižek, 2008). In contrast to Parker, Adrian Johnston's book Zizek's Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity argues against the position that Žižek's thought has no consistency or underlying project. Specifically, Johnston claims in his Preface that beneath "what could be called 'the cultural studies Žižek'" is a singular "philosophical trajectory that runs like a continuous, bisecting diagonal line through the entire span of his writing (i.e. the retroactive Lacanian reconstruction of the chain Kant-Schelling-Hegel)." Žižek's affirmation of this claim suggests that like his predecessor Hegel, Žižek's work is better described as rigorous in the sense of systematic rather than as comprising a single, all-encompassing "system."

Žižek wrote text to accompany Bruce Weber photos in a catalog for Abercrombie & Fitch. Questioned as to the seemliness of a major intellectual writing ad copy, Žižek told the Boston Globe: "If I were asked to choose between doing things like this to earn money and becoming fully employed as an American academic, kissing ass to get a tenured post, I would with pleasure choose writing for such journals!" He is widely regarded as a fiery and colorful lecturer who does not shy away from controversial remarks. His three-part documentary The Pervert's Guide to Cinema was broadcast on British television by the More4 channel in July 2006 and is available on DVD. Žižek has been publishing on a regular basis in journals such as Lacanian Ink and In These Times in the United States, the New Left Review and The London Review of Books in the United Kingdom, and with the Slovenian left liberal magazine Mladina and newspapers Dnevnik and Delo. He co-operates also with the influential Polish leftist magazine Krytyka Polityczna, regional South-East European left-wing journal Novi Plamen, and serves on the editorial board of the psychoanalytical journal Problemi.

He is a fluent speaker of Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, English, French and German. He also has basic knowledge of Italian He was formerly married to Slovenian philosopher Renata Salecl and to Argentine model Analia Hounie.

Astra Taylor's 2005 documentary Žižek! documented its title subject, and Žižek also appeared in her 2008 Examined Life. The International Journal of Žižek Studies was launched in 2007, and since 2005, Žižek has been an associate member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

He is a returning professor at New York University where he has taught alongside the deconstructionist Avital Ronell in the place of the late Jacques Derrida during the fall semester.

Thought

Ontology

Žižek's ontology posits a return to the category of the Cartesian subject, a return to the category of ideology, and a return to the notion of the Lacanian Real.

# The defense of the category of the subject involves first a vindication of the notion of subjectivity for an adequate descriptive political theory. Žižek argues that hegemonic regimes function by interpellating individuals into social roles and mandates within a given polity: we cannot understand how power functions without some account of the psychology of political subjects. Secondly, there is the vindication of the "category of the subject". Following Lacan, Žižek contends that subjectivity corresponds to a lack (manque) that always resists full inscription into the mandates prescribed to individuals by hegemonic regimes. # In his deployment of the category of "ideology", Žižek finds the notions of ideology in Karl Marx "The German Ideology"—which center on the notion of "false consciousness"—to be irrelevant in a period of unprecedented subjective reflexivity and cynicism as to the motives and workings of those in authority (see The Sublime Object of Ideology). It can be argued however that Žižek's most original aspect comes from its insistence that a Lacanian model of the barred or split subject, because of its stipulation that individuals' deepest motives are unconscious, can be used to demonstrate that ideology has less become irrelevant today than revealed its deeper truth (see Matthew Sharpe, Slavoj Žižek.) # In a contentious extension of the referential scope of ideology, Žižek maintains that dominant ideologies wholly structure the subject's senses of reality. Yet, The Real is not equivalent to the reality experienced by the subjects as a meaningfully ordered totality. To him, the Real names points within the ontological fabric knitted by the hegemonic systems of representation and reproduction that nevertheless resist full inscription into its terms, and which may as such attempt to generate sites of active political resistance.

In The Parallax View (2006), Žižek stages confrontations between idealist and materialist understandings of various aspects of ontology. One such confrontation between idealism and materialism is expressed in Lacanian terms between an idealism's purported ability to theorize the All versus a Materialism's understanding that an apparent All is really a non-All. His penchant for staging a confrontation between idealism and materialism leads him to describe his work in such paradoxical terms as a "materialist theology." Žižek offers that reality is fundamentally open and a materialist "minimal difference"—the gap that appears in reality between a reductionist description of physical process and one's experience of existence—is the real of human life and the crucial domain that an ontology must attempt to theorize. Žižek equates the gap with the Freudian death drive, as the negative and mortifying "thing that thinks." Although biological psychology might one day be able to completely model a person's brain, there would still be something left over that could not be explained. This "remainder" formally corresponds precisely to the Freudian death drive and Schellingian/Hegelian self-reflecting negativity or "Night of the World," all of which Žižek formulates as the zero-level of subjectivity. It is death drive which takes this role, not the limit-function to pleasure called the pleasure principle, thus it is the negative aspect of consciousness that breaks and offers judgment on the unrepresentable totality. Žižek points to the fact that consciousness is opaque. Taking his cue from Descartes' problem of the possible automaton in hat & coat and the Husserlian failure to fully account for the selfhood of the other (through resort to the metaphor of "empathy"), Žižek claims a primary characteristic of consciousness is that one cannot ever know if an apparently conscious being is truly conscious or merely an effective mime.

Žižek's metaphysics are, to a certain extent an anti-metaphysics, because he believes it is absurd to theorize the All, because something will always remain untheorized. This can be explained in Lacanian terms, in terms of the relationship between the Symbolic and the Real. For Žižek, we can view a person in several ways, but these ways are mutually exclusive. For example, we can see a person as either an ethical being with free will or a determined biological creature but not both. These are the Symbolic interpretations of the Real, ways of using language to understand that which is non-All, that which cannot be totally understood by description. For Žižek, however, the Real is not a thing which is understood in different ways depending on how you decide to look at it (person as ethical being versus person as biological being); the Real is instead the movement from one vantage point to another—the "parallax view". Žižek sidesteps relativism by claiming that there is a diagonal ontological cut across apparently incommensurable discourses, which points to their intersubjectivity. This means that although there are multiple Symbolic interpretations of the Real, they are not all relatively "true." Žižek identifies two instances of the Real; the abject Real, which cannot be symbolized, and the symbolic Real (see On Belief), a set of signifiers that can never be properly integrated into the horizon of sense of a subject. The truth is revealed in the process of transiting the contradictions; or the real is a "minimal difference", the gap between the infinite judgement of a reductionist materialism and experience as lived.

The formation of the subject

Žižek argues that Descartes' cogito is the basis of the subject. However, whereas most thinkers read the cogito as a substantial, transparent and fully self-conscious "I" which is in complete command of its destiny, Žižek proposes that the cogito is an empty space, what is left when the rest of the world is expelled from itself. The Symbolic Order is what substitutes for the loss of the immediacy of the world and it is where the void of the subject is filled in by the process of subjectivization. The latter is where the subject is given an identity and where that identity is altered by the Self.

Once the Lacanian concepts of the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real are grasped, Žižek, in philosophical writings such as his discussion of Schelling, always interprets the work of other philosophers in terms of those concepts. This is so because "the core of my entire work is the endeavour to use Lacan as a privileged intellectual tool to reactualize German idealism". (See The Žižek Reader) The reason Žižek thinks German idealism (the work of Hegel, Kant, Fichte and Schelling) needs reactualizing is that we are thought to understand it in one way, whereas the truth of it is something else. The term "reactualizing" refers to the fact that there are different possible ways to interpret German idealism, and Žižek wishes to make "actual" one of those possibilities in distinction to the way it is currently realized. At its most basic, German idealism believes that the truth of something could be found in itself. For Žižek, the fundamental insight of German idealism is that the truth of something is always outside it. So the truth of our experience lies outside ourselves, in the Symbolic and the Real, rather than being buried deep within us. We cannot look into our selves and find out who we truly are, because who we truly are is always elsewhere.

Our selves are somewhere else in the Symbolic formations which always precede us and in the Real which we have to disavow if we are to enter the Symbolic order.

To Žižek, Lacan's proposition that self-identity is impossible becomes central in structuration of the subject. The identity of something, its singularity or "oneness", is always split. There is always too much of something, an indivisible remainder, or a bit left-over which means that it cannot be self-identical (e.g., the meaning of a word can never be found in the word itself, but rather in other words; its meaning therefore is not self-identical). This principle of the impossibility of self-identity is what informs Žižek's reading of the German idealists. In reading Schelling, for example, the Beginning is not actually the beginning at all—the truth of the Beginning lies elsewhere, it is split or not identical to itself.

How, precisely, does the Word discharge the tension of the rotary motion, how does it mediate the antagonism between the contractive and the expansive force? The Word is a contraction in the guise of its very opposite of an expansion—that is, in pronouncing a word, the subject contracts his being outside himself; he "coagulates" the core of his being in an external sign. In the (verbal) sign, I—as it were—find myself outside myself, I posit my unity outside myself, in a signifier which represents me ("The Indivisible Remainder: An Essay on Schelling and Related Matters").

The subject of enunciation is the "I" who speaks, the individual doing the speaking; the subject of the enunciated is the "I" of the sentence. "I" is not identical to itself—it is split between the individual "I" (the subject of enunciation) and the grammatical "I" (the subject of the enunciated). Although we may experience them as unified, this is merely an Imaginary illusion, for the pronoun "I" is actually a substitute for the "I" of the subject. It does not account for me in my full specificity; it is, rather, a general term I share with everyone else. In order to do so, my empirical reality must be annihilated or, as Lacan avers, "the symbol manifests itself first of all as the murder of the thing". The subject can only enter language by negating the Real, murdering or substituting the blood-and-sinew reality of self for the concept of self expressed in words. For Lacan and Žižek, every word is a gravestone, marking the absence or corpse of the thing it represents and standing in for it. It is partly in the light of this that Lacan is able to refashion Descartes' maxim "I think, therefore I am" as "I think where I am not, therefore I am where I think not".

The "I think" here is the subject of the enunciated (the Symbolic subject) whereas the "I am" is the subject of the enunciation (the Real subject). What Lacan aims to disclose by rewriting the Cartesian cogito in this way is that the subject is irrevocably split, torn asunder by language

The concept of vanishing mediator is one that Žižek has consistently employed since For They Know Not What They Do. A vanishing mediator is a concept which somehow negotiates and settles—hence mediating—the transition between two opposed concepts and thereafter disappears. Žižek draws attention to the fact that a vanishing mediator is produced by an asymmetry of content and form. As with Marx's analysis of revolution, form lags behind content, in the sense that content changes within the parameters of an existing form, until the logic of that content works its way out of the latter and throws off its husk, revealing a new form in its stead. "The passage from feudalism to Protestantism is not of the same nature as the passage from Protestantism to bourgeois everyday life with its privatized religion. The first passage concerns "content" (under the guise of preserving the religious form or even its strengthening, the crucial shift—the assertion of the ascetic acquisitive stance in economic activity as the domain of manifestation of Grace—takes place), whereas the second passage is a purely formal act, a change of form (as soon as Protestantism is realized as the ascetic acquisitive stance, it can fall off as form)" (For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor).

Žižek sees in this process evidence of Hegel's "negation of the negation", the third moment of the dialectic. The first negation is the mutation of the content within and in the name of the old form. The second negation is the obsolescence of the form itself. In this way, something becomes the opposite of itself, paradoxically, by seeming to strengthen itself. In the case of Protestantism, the universalization of religious attitudes ultimately led to its being sidelined as a matter of private contemplation. Which is to say that Protestantism, as a negation of feudalism, was itself negated by capitalism.

The Real

The Real is not only opposed to the imaginary but is also located beyond the symbolic.

Unlike the latter, which is constituted in terms of oppositions such as "presence" and "absence," there is no absence in the real. The symbolic opposition between "presence" and "absence" implies the possibility that something may be missing from the symbolic, the real is "always in its place: it carries it glued to its heel, ignorant of what might exile it from there." If the symbolic is a set of differentiated signifiers, the real is in itself undifferentiated: "it is without fissure." The symbolic introduces "a cut in the real," in the process of signification: "it is the world of words that creates the world of things." Thus the real emerges as that which is outside language: "it is that which resists symbolization absolutely." The real is impossible because it is impossible to imagine, impossible to integrate into the symbolic order. This character of impossibility and resistance to symbolization lends the real its traumatic quality.

There are also three modalities of the real:

The "symbolic real": the signifier reduced to a meaningless formula

The "real real": a horrific thing, that which conveys the sense of horror in horror films

The "imaginary real": an unfathomable something that permeates things as a trace of the sublime. This form of the real becomes perceptible in the film The Full Monty, for instance, in the fact that in disrobing the unemployed protagonists completely; in other words, through this extra gesture of "voluntary" degradation, something else, of the order of the sublime, becomes visible.

The Symbolic

Although the Symbolic is an essentially linguistic dimension, Lacan does not simply equate the symbolic with language, since the latter is involved also in the imaginary and the real. The symbolic dimension of language is that of the signifier, in which elements have no positive existence but are constituted by virtue of their mutual differences. It is the realm of radical alterity: the Other. The unconscious is the discourse of the Other and thus belongs to the symbolic order. It is also the realm of the Law that regulates desire in the Oedipus complex. The symbolic is both the "pleasure principle" that regulates the distance from das Ding, and the "death drive" which goes beyond the pleasure principle by means of repetition: "the death drive is only the mask of the symbolic order." This register is determinant of subjectivity; for Lacan the symbolic is characterized by the absence of any fixed relations between signifier and signified.

The Imaginary

The basis of the Imaginary order is the formation of the ego in the "mirror stage". Since the ego is formed by identifying with the counterpart or specular image, "identification" is an important aspect of the imaginary. The relationship whereby the ego is constituted by identification is a locus of "alienation", which is another feature of the imaginary, and is fundamentally narcissistic. The imaginary, a realm of surface appearances which are deceptive, is structured by the symbolic order. It also involves a linguistic dimension: whereas the signifier is the foundation of the symbolic, the "signified" and "signification" belong to the imaginary. Thus language has both symbolic and imaginary aspects. Based on the specular image, the imaginary is rooted in the subject's relationship to the body (the image of the body).

Postmodernism

Žižek's understanding of the postmodern can be characterized as an over-proximity of the Real. Žižek identifies various manifestations of this in postmodern culture, such as the technique of "filling in the gaps." (See Žižek's analysis). By way of "filling in the gaps" and "telling it all", what we retreat from is the void as such, which is ultimately none other than the void of subjectivity (the Lacanian "barred subject"). (See The Fright of Real Tears: Krzysztof Kieslowski between Theory and Post-Theory.)

For Žižek, present society, or postmodernity, is based upon the demise in the authority of the big Other (see Jacques Lacan). Continuing the theorists of the contemporary risk society, who advocate the personal freedoms of choice or reflexivity, which have replaced this authority, Žižek argues that these theorists ignore the reflexivity at the heart of the subject. For Žižek, lacking the prohibitions of the big Other, in these conditions, the subject's inherent reflexivity manifests itself in attachments to forms of subjection, paranoia and narcissism. In order to ameliorate these pathologies, Žižek proposes the need for a political act or revolution—one that will alter the conditions of possibility of postmodernity (which he identifies as capitalism) and so give birth to a new type of Symbolic Order in which a new breed of subject can exist.

# The Law. Žižek refers to the law throughout his work. The term "the law" signifies the principles upon which society is based, designating a mode of collective conduct based upon a set of prohibitions. However, for Žižek, the rule of the law conceals an inherent unruliness which is precisely the violence by which it established itself as law in the first place. (See For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor.) # The Demise of the big Other. One key aspect of the universalization of reflexivity is the resulting disintegration of the big Other, the communal network of social institutions, customs and laws. For Žižek, the big Other was always dead, in the sense that it never existed in the first place as a material thing. All it ever was (and is) is a purely symbolic order. It means that we all engage in a minimum of idealization, disavowing the brute fact of the Real in favor of another Symbolic world behind it. Žižek expresses this disavowal in terms of an "as if". In order to coexist with our neighbors we act "as if" they do not smell bad or look ridiculous. The big Other is then a kind of collective lie to which we all individually subscribe. (See Jacques Lacan on other/Other and Žižek's For They Know Not What They Do.) # The Return of the big Other. Paradoxically, then, Žižek argues that the typical postmodern subject is one who displays an outright cynicism towards official institutions, yet at the same time believes in the existence of conspiracies and an unseen Other pulling the strings. This apparently contradictory coupling of cynicism and belief is strictly correlative to the demise of the big Other. Its disappearance causes us to construct an Other of the Other in order to escape the unbearable freedom its loss encumbers us with. (See Looking Awry: an Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture.)

Žižek follows Louis Althusser in jettisoning the Marxist equation: "ideology equals false consciousness." Ideology, to all intents and purposes, is consciousness. Ideology does not "mask" the real—one cannot achieve true consciousness. This being the case, post-ideological postmodern "knowingness"—the cynicism and irony of postmodern cultural production—does not reveal the truth, the real, the hard kernel. Knowing that we are being "lied" to is hardly the stuff of revolution when ideology is not, and never has been, simply a matter of consciousness, of subject positions, but is the very stuff of everyday praxis itself. The cynics and ironists, not to mention the deconstructionists et al., may know that reality is an "ideological construction"—some have even read their Lacan and Derrida—but in their daily practice, caught up in an apparently unalterable world of exchange-values (capital), they do their part to sustain that construction in any case. As Marx would say, it is their very life process that is ideological, what they know, or what they think they know, being neither here nor there. The postmodern cultural artifact—the "critique," the "incredulity"—is itself merely a symptom/commodity fetish. Thus has capital commodified even the cynicism that purports to unmask its "reality," to "emancipate."

Politicization

Today, in the aftermath of the "end of ideology", Žižek is critical of the way political decisions are justified; the way, for example, reductions in social programs are sometimes presented as an apparently 'objective' necessity, though this is no longer a valid basis for political discourse. He sees the current "talk about greater citizen involvement" or "political goals circumscribed within the rubric of the cultural" as having little effectiveness as long as no substantial measures are devised for the long run. But measures such as the "limitation of the freedom of capital" and the "subordination of the manufacturing processes to a mechanism of social control"—these Žižek calls a "radical de-politicization of the economy" (A Plea for Intolerance).

So at present Slavoj Žižek is arguing for a politicization of the economy. For indeed the "tolerant" multicultural impulse, as the dogma of today's liberal society, suppresses the crucial question: How can we reintroduce into the current conditions of globalization the genuine space of the political? He also argues in favor of a "politicization of politics" as a counter balance to post-politics. In the area of political decision making in a democratic context he criticizes the two-party system that is dominant in some countries as a political form of a "post-political era", as a manifestation of a possibility of choice that in reality does not exist.

Politicization is thus for him present whenever "a particular demand begins to function as a representative of the impossible universal". Žižek sees class struggle not as localized objective determinations, as a social position vis-à-vis capital but rather as lying in a "radically subjective" position: the proletariat is the living, "embodied contradiction". Only through particularism in the political struggle can any universalism emerge. Fighting for workers interests often appears discredited today ("indeed in this domain the workers themselves only wish to implement their own interests, they fight only for themselves and not for the whole"). The problem is how to foster a politicizing politics in the age of post-politics. Particular demands, acting as a "metaphorical condensation", would thus aim at something that transcends those particular demands, a genuine reconstruction of the social framework. Žižek, following Jacques Ranciere, sees the real political conflict as being that between an ordered structure of society and those without a place in it, the "part that has no part" in anything but nonetheless causes the structure to falter, because it refers to—i.e. embodies—an "empty principle" of the "universal".

The very fact that a society is not easily divided into classes, that there is no "simple structural trait" for it, that for instance the "middle class" is also intensely fought over by a populism of the right, is a sign of this struggle. Otherwise "class antagonism would be completely symbolized" and no longer both impossible and real at the same time ("impossible/real"). His solution to capitalism is a rapid repoliticization of the economy.

Atheism

Žižek is an atheist. However, he has said he does not consider religion an enemy but rather one of the fields of struggle. He has also referred to himself as a "Christian materialist". Žižek believes the universalist aspect of Christianity should be secularized into militant egalitarianism, against the "pagan notion of destiny". This universalism he derives from the Christian death of God: God truly died on the cross and lives on as the "Holy Spirit", that is, in human community.

In 2006, Žižek wrote an opinion piece published in the New York Times calling atheism a great legacy of Europe, and voiced his support for the propagation of atheism in the continent. He has written many pieces on the reinterpretation of the religious and the theological such as The Puppet and the Dwarf, On Belief and The Fragile Absolute.

Critiques

Slavoj Žižek's fame in academic circles has increased rapidly, especially since he began publishing widely in English. Many hundreds of academics have addressed aspects of Žižek's work in professional papers. Inevitably, in the course of such scholarly discussion, many other thinkers differ with aspects of Žižek conceptual approach or specific arguments. While there is no indication that Žižek has received more criticism than have other continental philosophers of similar repute, a great number of writers have taken stances critical of Slavoj Žižek's work.

Award

He was listed on Top 100 Public Intellectuals Poll.

Bibliography

Other works cited

Canning, P. "The Sublime Theorist of Slovenia: Peter Canning Interviews Slavoj Žižek" in Artforum, Issue 31, March 1993, pp. 84–9.

Critical introductions to Žižek

Christopher Hanlon, "Psychoanalysis and the Post-Political: An Interview with Slavoj Žižek." New Literary History 32 (Winter, 2001).

Tony Myers, Slavoj Žižek (London: Routledge, 2003).

Sarah Kay, Žižek: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: Polity, 2003).

Ian Parker, Slavoj Žižek: A Critical Introduction (London: Pluto Press, 2004).

Matthew Sharpe, Slavoj Žižek, a little piece of the Real (London: Ashgate, 2004).

Rex Butler, "Slavoj Žižek: Live Theory" (London: Continuum, 2005).

Jodi Dean, Žižek's Politics (London: Routledge, 2006).

Adam Kotsko, Žižek and Theology (New York: T & T Clark, 2008).

Marcus Pound, Žižek: A (Very) Critical Introduction (Interventions) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).

Adrian Johnston, Žižek's Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2008).

Adrian Johnston, Badiou, Žižek, and Political Transformations: The Cadence of Change (Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 2009).

Dominik Finkelde, Slavoj Žižek zwischen Lacan und Hegel. Politische Philosophie, Metapsychologie, Ethik (Wien: Turia + Kant, 2009).

Paul A. Taylor, Žižek And The Media (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010).

References

External links

Slavoj Zizek Author Page at Verso Books (Biography, blog, events, and discussion )

Slavoj Zizek Faculty Page at European Graduate School (Biography, bibliography and video lectures)

International Journal of Žižek Studies

Žižek's entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Slavoj Žižek's articles in Lacanian Ink

Collection of Žižek Lectures in Portuguese/English

Žižek Archive at Mideastdilemma.com

PODCAST: Slavoj Žižek – Notes towards a Definition of Communist Culture (10 hours)

PODCAST: Slavoj Žižek 'Apocalyptic Times' Public lecture given at Birkbeck College London in November 2009

Zizek: Far Right and Anti-Immigrant Politicians on the Rise in Europe - video interview by Democracy Now!

Category:Slavoj Žižek Category:1949 births Category:20th-century philosophers Category:21st-century philosophers Category:European Graduate School faculty Category:Academics of Birkbeck, University of London Category:Continental philosophers Category:Cultural critics Category:Film theorists Category:Freudo-Marxism Category:Jacques Lacan Category:Liberal Democracy of Slovenia politicians Category:Living people Category:Marxist theorists Category:Marxist writers Category:Members of Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts Category:People from Ljubljana Category:Psychoanalytic theory Category:Slovenian atheists Category:Slovenian philosophers Category:Slovenian psychoanalysts Category:Slovenian sociologists Category:University of Ljubljana alumni Category:University of Paris alumni Category:Slovenian socialists Category:Yugoslav communists Category:Slovenian Marxists

Name	John McCain
Jr/sr	Senior Senator
State	Arizona
Term start	January 3, 1987
Term end
Alongside	Jon Kyl
Predecessor	Barry Goldwater
State2	Arizona
District2	1st
Term start2	January 3, 1983
Term end2	January 3, 1987
Predecessor2	John Jacob Rhodes Jr.
Successor2	John Jacob Rhodes III
Order5	Chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs
Term start5	January 3, 1995
Term end5	January 3, 1997January 3, 2005 January 3, 2007
Predecessor5	Daniel Inouye (1995)Ben Nighthorse Campbell (2005)
Successor5	Ben Nighthorse Campbell (1997)Byron Dorgan (2007)
Order6	Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
Term start6	January 3, 1997
Term end6	June 6, 2001January 3, 2005 January 3, 2007
Predecessor6	Larry Pressler (1997)Ernest Hollings (2003)
Successor6	Ernest Hollings (1997)Ted Stevens (2005)
Birth date	August 29, 1936
Birth place	Coco Solo Naval Air Station, Panama Canal Zone
Birthname	John Sidney McCain III
Nationality	American
Party	Republican
Spouse	Carol Shepp (m. 1965, div. 1980)Cindy Lou Hensley (m. 1980)
Children	Douglas (b. 1959, adopted 1966),Andrew (b. 1962, adopted 1966),Sidney (b. 1966),Meghan (b. 1984),John Sidney IV "Jack" (b. 1986),James "Jimmy" (b. 1988),Bridget (b. 1991, adopted 1993)
Residence	Phoenix, Arizona
Alma mater	U.S. Naval Academy (B.S.)
Profession	Naval AviatorPolitician
Religion	Baptist congregant(Brought up Episcopalian)
Net worth	$40.4 million (USD)
Signature	John mccain signature2.svg
Website	U.S. Senator John McCain: Arizona
Footnotes	This article is part of the series At that time, the Panama Canal was under U.S. control.
Before	John Jacob Rhodes
State	Arizona
District	1
Years	1983–1987
After	John Jacob Rhodes III}}

* Category:2008 Republican National Convention Category:American memoirists Category:American military personnel of the Vietnam War Category:American military writers Category:American motivational writers Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of Scotch-Irish descent Category:American political writers Category:American prisoners of war Category:American torture victims Category:Arizona Republicans Category:Baptists from the United States Category:English-language writers Category:International Republican Institute Category:Jeopardy! contestants Category:Living people Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from Arizona Category:Military brats Category:Politicians with physical disabilities Category:Recipients of the Air Medal Category:Recipients of the Bronze Star Medal Category:Recipients of the Distinguished Flying Cross (United States) Category:Recipients of the Legion of Merit Category:Recipients of the Order of the Three Stars, 2nd Class Category:Recipients of the Prisoner of War Medal Category:Recipients of the Purple Heart medal Category:Recipients of the Silver Star Category:Republican Party (United States) presidential nominees Category:Shot-down aviators Category:Skin cancer survivors Category:Sons of the American Revolution Category:United States Naval Academy graduates Category:United States naval aviators Category:United States Navy officers Category:United States presidential candidates, 2000 Category:United States presidential candidates, 2008 Category:United States Senators from Arizona Category:Vietnam War prisoners of war Category:Writers from Arizona Category:Zonians Category:1936 births Category:Republican Party United States Senators

Name	Glenn Beck
Caption	Beck at the Time 100 Gala, 2010
Birth name	Glenn Edward Lee Beck
Birth date	February 10, 1964
Birth place	Everett, Washington, U.S.
Hometown	Mount Vernon, Washington
Education	Sehome High School
Nationality	American
Occupation	Political commentator, author, media proprietor, entertainer
Salary	US$ 32 million (2009–10)
Spouse	Claire (1983–1994)Tania (m. 1999)
Children	4
Website	http://www.glennbeck.com/
Religion	The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon)
Residence	New Canaan, Connecticut
Home town	Mount Vernon, Washington

Glenn Edward Lee Beck (born February 10, 1964) is an American conservative radio and television host, author, entrepreneur and political commentator. He hosts The Glenn Beck Program, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show that airs throughout the United States on Premiere Radio Networks; and also a cable news show on Fox News Channel. As an author, Beck has had six New York Times-bestselling books, with five debuting at #1. Beck is the founder and CEO of Mercury Radio Arts, a multimedia production company through which he produces content for radio, television, publishing, the stage, and the Internet.

Beck has received wealth and fame, as well as controversy and criticism. His supporters praise him as a constitutional stalwart defending traditional American values from secular progressivism, while his critics contend he promotes conspiracy theories and employs incendiary rhetoric for ratings.

Personal life

Early years

Glenn Lee Beck was born in Everett, Washington, to William and Mary Beck, who lived in Mountlake Terrace, Washington. The family later moved to Mount Vernon, Washington, where they owned and operated City Bakery in the downtown area. He is descended from German immigrants who came to the United States in the 1800s. Beck was raised as a Roman Catholic and attended Immaculate Conception Catholic School in Mount Vernon.

Glenn and his older sister moved with their mother to Sumner, Washington, attending a Jesuit school in Puyallup. On May 15, 1979, his mother drowned in Puget Sound, just west of Tacoma, Washington. A man who had taken her out in a small boat also drowned. A Tacoma police report stated that Mary Beck "appeared to be a classic drowning victim", but a Coast Guard investigator speculated that she could have intentionally jumped overboard.

After their mother's death, Beck and his older sister moved to their father's home in Bellingham, Washington, where Beck graduated from Sehome High School in June 1982. In the aftermath of his mother's death and subsequent suicide of his stepbrother, Beck has said he used "Dr. Jack Daniel's" to cope. At 18, following his high school graduation, Beck relocated to Provo, Utah, and worked at radio station KAYK. Feeling he "didn't fit in," Beck left Utah after six months, taking a job at Washington D.C.'s WPGC in February 1983. The couple divorced in 1994 amid Beck's struggles with substance abuse. A recovering alcoholic and drug addict, Beck has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

By 1994, Beck was suicidal, and imagined shooting himself to the music of his fellow Washingtonian, Kurt Cobain. Beck would later claim that he had gotten high every day for the previous 15 years, since the age of 16.

This was followed by Beck going on a "spiritual quest" where he "sought out answers in churches and bookstores." Beck would be baptized by his old friend, and current-day co-worker Pat Gray.

Beck announced in July 2010 that he had been diagnosed with macular dystrophy, saying "A couple of weeks ago I went to the doctor because of my eyes, I can't focus my eyes. He did all kinds of tests and he said, 'you have macular dystrophy ...you could go blind in the next year. Or, you might not." The disorder can make it difficult to read, drive or recognize faces.

Career

]] As an author, Beck has reached #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List in four separate categories : Hardcover Non-Fiction, Paperback Non-Fiction, and Children's Picture Books.

The Real America: Messages from the Heart and Heartland, Simon & Schuster 2003. ISBN 978-0-7434-9696-4

An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems, Simon & Schuster 2007. ISBN 978-1-4391-6857-8

The Christmas Sweater, Simon & Schuster 2008. ISBN 978-1-4165-9485-7

America's March to Socialism: Why We're One Step Closer to Giant Missile Parades, 2008 (Audiobook) An Unlikely Mormon: The Conversion Story of Glenn Beck, Deseret Book 2008 (Audiobook). ISBN 978-1-59038-944-7

The Christmas Sweater: A Picture Book Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing 2009. ISBN 978-1-4169-9543-2

America's March to Socialism: Why We're One Step Closer to Giant Missile Parades Simon & Schuster Audio 2009 (Audio CD). ISBN 978-0-7435-9854-5

Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Simon & Schuster 2009. ISBN 978-1-4391-6857-8

Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government, Simon & Schuster 2009. ISBN 978-1-4165-9501-4

Idiots Unplugged, Simon & Schuster 2010 (Audio CD). ISBN 1-4423-3396-0

The Overton Window, Threshold Editions 2010. ISBN 1-4391-8430-5 Idiots Unplugged, 2010 (Audiobook) , Simon & Schuster 2010. ISBN 1-4423-3457-6.

Stage shows and speeches

In 2009, the Glenn Beck show was one of the highest rated news commentary programs on cable TV. For a Barbara Walters ABC special, Beck was selected as one of America’s "Top 10 Most Fascinating People" of 2009. In 2010, Beck was selected for the Times top 100 most influential people under the "Leaders" category.

Beck has referred to himself as an entertainer, and a "rodeo clown".

Time Magazine described Beck as "[t]he new populist superstar of Fox News" saying it is easier to see a set of attitudes rather than a specific ideology, noting his criticism of Wall Street, yet defending bonuses to AIG, as well as denouncing conspiracy theories about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) but warning against indoctrination of children by the AmeriCorps program. (Paul Krugman and Mark Potok, on the other hand, have been among those asserting that Beck helps spread "hate" by covering issues that stir up extremists.) What seems to unite Beck's disparate themes, Time argued, is a sense of siege. One of Beck's Fox News Channel colleagues Shepard Smith, has jokingly called Beck's studio the "fear chamber", with Beck countering that he preferred the term "doom room." The progressive watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's (FAIR) Activism Director Peter Hart argues that Beck red-baits political adversaries as well as promotes a paranoid view of progressive politics. Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post has remarked that "Love him or hate him, Beck is a talented, often funny broadcaster, a recovering alcoholic with an unabashedly emotional style."

Critical biographies

In June 2010, investigative reporter Alexander Zaitchik released a critical biography titled , with a title mocking Beck's work, Common Sense. In an interview about the book, Zaitchik theorized that "Beck’s politics and his insatiable hunger for money and fame are not mutually exclusive", while stating: "Beck’s true religion is not Patriotism, Mormonism, or Conservatism. His true religion is cross-platform self-marketing ... According to Beck’s worldview, there’s no inherent contradiction between his sophisticated instinct for self-promotion, his propagandist rodeo clown act, his self-image as a media mogul, and his professed belief system. I think he actually believes that God wants him to make a ton of money and become this huge celebrity by fear mongering and generally doing whatever it takes in the media to promote right-wing causes."

In September 2010, Philadelphia Daily News reporter Will Bunch released The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama. One of Bunch's primary theses is that Beck is nothing more than a morning zoo deejay playing a fictional character as a money-making stunt.

Satire, spoof and parody of Beck

Beck has been the subject of mockery and ridicule by a number of humorists. In response to Beck's animated delivery and views, he was parodied in an impersonation by Jason Sudeikis on Saturday Night Live. The Daily Shows Jon Stewart has spoofed Beck's 9-12 project with his own "11-3 project", impersonated Beck's chalk board-related presentation style for an entire show, and quipped about Beck "finally, a guy who says what people who aren't thinking are thinking." Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report satirized Beck's "war room" by creating his own "doom bunker." Through the character Eric Cartman, South Park parodied Beck's television program and his commentary style in the episode "Dances with Smurfs". The Onion, a satirical periodical and faux news site, ran an Onion News Network video "special report" where it lamented that the "victim in a fatal car accident was tragically not Glenn Beck." Meanwhile, the Current TV cartoon SuperNews! ran an animated cartoon feature titled "The Glenn Beck Apocalypse", where Beck is confronted by Jesus Christ who rebukes him as the equivalent of "Sarah Palin farting into a balloon." Political comedian and satirist Bill Maher has mocked Beck's followers as an "army of diabetic mallwalkers", while The Buffalo Beast, named Beck the most loathsome person in America in 2010, declaring "It’s like someone found a manic, doom-prophesying hobo in a sandwich board, shaved him, shot him full of Zoloft and gave him a show."

Public disputes

Several incidents involving Beck and President Barack Obama have resulted in notable public controversy. In response to Obama's remarks on the Henry Louis Gates controversy, Beck argued that Obama has repeatedly shown "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture," saying "I'm not saying he doesn't like white people. I'm saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist." These remarks drew criticism, and resulted in a boycott promulgated by Color of Change. In 2009, the boycott resulted in at least 57 advertisers requesting their ads be removed from his programming, to avoid associating their brands with content that could be considered offensive by potential customers. He later apologized for the remarks, telling Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace that he has a "big fat mouth" and miscast as racism what is actually, as he theorizes, Obama's belief in black liberation theology.

In July 2009, Glenn Beck began to focus what would become many episodes on his TV and radio shows on Van Jones, Special Advisor for Green Jobs at Obama's White House Council on Environmental Quality. Beck was critical of Jones' involvement in STORM, a left wing non-governmental group, and his support for death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, who had been convicted of killing a police officer. Beck spotlighted video of Jones referring to Republicans as "assholes", and a petition Jones signed suggesting that George W. Bush knowingly let the 9/11 attacks happen. In September 2009, Jones resigned his position in the Obama administration, after a number of his past statements became fodder for conservative critics and Republican officials. Time magazine credited Beck with leading conservatives' attack on Jones.

In 2009, Beck and other conservative commentators were critical of Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) for various reasons, including claims of voter registration fraud in the 2008 presidential election. In September 2009, he broadcast a series of heavily edited undercover videos by conservative activists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, which seemed to portray ACORN community organizers offering inappropriate tax advice to people who said they were engaged in illegal activities. Following the videos' release, the U.S. Census Bureau severed ties with the group while the U.S. House and Senate voted to cut all of its federal funding. Beck's lawyers argued that the site infringed on his trademarked name and that the domain name should be turned over to Beck. The WIPO ruled against Beck, but Eiland-Hall voluntarily transferred the domain to Beck anyway, saying that the First Amendment had been upheld and that he no longer had a use for the domain name.

Websites

As of 2009, GlennBeck.com was estimated to receive 5-million unique visitors per month. and Pat Gray, begun in 2010

Beck University, interactive classes offered beginning in July 2010

In August 2010, Mercury Radio Arts also launched the independent political blog, The Blaze.

See also

Beck University

Conservative talk

List of most-listened-to radio programs

References

External links

Glenn Beck's Official Website

Glenn Beck's Radio Program

Glenn Beck – The 912 Project

Glenn Beck's Common Sense Tour

Official Site at Fox News

Multimedia

A Day in the Life of Glenn Beck - photo slideshow by Time magazine

Katie Couric Interview of Glenn Beck - video by CBS News

"Brand it like Beck" - video interview by Forbes magazine

John Stossel: "Glenn Beck, Conservative Narcissist?" - video by ABC News

Glenn Beck Discusses his Mormonism - video testimonial at The Week

Category:American activists Category:American anti-communists Category:American Latter Day Saints Category:American magazine editors Category:American magazine founders Category:American political pundits Category:American political writers Category:Conspiracy theorists Category:Former Roman Catholics Category:American talk radio hosts Category:American television talk show hosts Category:American people of German descent Category:Conservatism in the United States Category:Converts to Mormonism from Roman Catholicism Category:Environmental skepticism Category:People from Bellingham, Washington Category:People from Fairfield County, Connecticut Category:People from Mount Vernon, Washington Category:People from Seattle, Washington Category:People self-identifying as alcoholics Category:Tea Party movement Category:Writers from Washington (U.S. state) Category:1964 births Category:Living people Category:Fox News Channel people

Name	Rod Blagojevich
Order	40th
Office	Governor of Illinois
Term start	January 13, 2003
Term end	January 29, 2009
Lieutenant	Pat Quinn
Predecessor	George Ryan
Successor	Pat Quinn
State2	Illinois
District2	5th
Term start2	January 3, 1997
Term end2	January 3, 2003
Successor2	Rahm Emanuel
Predecessor2	Michael Patrick Flanagan
Birth date	December 10, 1956
Birth place	Chicago, Illinois
Residence	Chicago, Illinois
Alma mater	Northwestern University (B.A.)Pepperdine University (J.D.)
Spouse	Patricia Mell Blagojevich
Children	Amy BlagojevichAnne Blagojevich
Profession	LawyerProsecutor
Party	Democratic
Religion	Orthodox Christian The Justice Department complaint alleged that the governor conspired to commit several "pay to play" schemes, including attempting "to obtain personal gain ... through the corrupt use" of his authority to fill Barack Obama's vacated United States Senate seat.

Winfrey noted that although she was uninterested, she did feel she could be a senator.

Political analyst Chris Matthews praised Blagojevich's idea of making Winfrey a senator suggesting that in one move it would diversify the senate and raise its collective IQ. Elaborating further he said: Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun Times agreed with Matthews, claiming Winfrey would be “terrific” and an “enormously popular pick.”

Controversies

During the course of his political career, Blagojevich was involved in a number of controversies including at least a dozen separate federal investigations; the Tony Rezko indictment and trial; feuds with his father-in-law; contested state appointments; his residency, commute, and work hours; and allegedly withholding state funds from the Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago. In 2008, Blagojevich was investigated for and charged with crimes resulting from his role in the sale of the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field, as well as allegations he attempted to sell the Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama.

According to the federal complaint, Blagojevich was trying to use the Illinois Finance Authority (IFA), a state agency that can provide financing for real estate deals, and grants of other state funds to persuade Tribune Company, the owner of the Cubs, to end its editorial campaign for the governor's impeachment. In a series of telephone conversations tapped by the FBI, Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, repeatedly discussed their efforts to obtain the dismissal of John McCormick, the deputy director of the Tribune editorial page, and other editorial writers.

In a complaint issued shortly after FBI agents arrested Blagojevich in a pre-dawn raid on his home on Chicago's North Side, federal prosecutors asserted in a nationally televised press conference that Blagojevich tried to use the Cubs sale as leverage in obtaining favorable treatment in the editorial pages of the Chicago Tribune. Blagojevich is accused of saying, on a recorded wiretap, that if the Cubs wanted IFA financing for the sale of Wrigley Field or grants for remodeling of the ballpark, the Tribune had to "fire all those [expletive] people, get 'em the [expletive] out of there, and get us some editorial support." Prosecutors also said that they had information suggesting Blagojevich was about to appoint someone to fill Obama's Senate seat after he put it up for sale, and cited this as the main reason for why they arrested him. Amid widespread bipartisan calls for his resignation, the General Assembly began proceedings to impeach Blagojevich and remove him from office. On December 9, the state house voted 114-1 (with one member voting present) to impeach Blagojevich. On January 29, 2009, all 59 state senators voted to find Blagojevich guilty and remove him from office. In a separate vote, the Illinois Senate voted unanimously to bar Blagojevich from ever holding office again in Illinois. One day after his removal from office, professional wrestling company TNA Wrestling offered Blagojevich a job as the on camera lead of the Main Event Mafia.

Patti Blagojevich

Blagojevich is married to the former Patricia Mell, daughter of Chicago Alderman Richard Mell. The couple has two daughters, Amy and Anne. Anne was born just months after her father was sworn in as governor. Patricia, who goes by Patti, was a contestant on the NBC reality show I'm a Celebrity…Get Me out of Here in June 2009, where she formed a close friendship with other contestants, most notably former NBA star John Salley. She placed 4th in the competition.

Patricia Mell earned her bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As First Lady of Illinois, Patti Blagojevich supported the illiteracy eradication initiatives and the Illinois Pediatric Vision Initiative. In 2009 Patti was fired from a $100,000 a year fund raising job after controversy regarding alleged taped statements. Her sister is Deb Mell, an LGBT rights activist who was elected unopposed to the Illinois House of Representatives in 2008.

Post-removal activities

After being convicted and removed from office by the Illinois Senate, Blagojevich went on Late Show with David Letterman, where he re-affirmed his innocence and stated that the Illinois legislature's decision to remove him from office was politically motivated due to his unwillingness to raise taxes. He has accused his successor, Pat Quinn, of using state funds excessively for personal leisure. A report later released by the Governor's office showed that most of Quinn's transportation fees were paid for by himself and that Quinn never accepted the $32 meal allowance from the State.

Blagojevich attempted to make a deal to star in NBC's 2009 summer reality show I'm a Celebrity... Get Me out of Here!. He made a request with the judge to ease his travel restrictions so that he could travel to Costa Rica to star in the show, saying that his family needed to make money. However, his request was formally rejected by U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel, who was sympathetic to Blagojevich's financial situation, but nevertheless stated, "I don't think this defendant fully understands and I don't think he could understand...the position he finds himself in." Judge Zagel went on further to note that Blagojevich must prepare for his defense. Despite the ruling, NBC expressed an interest in negotiating with the judge to have him as a part of the show. His wife took his place on the show, which began airing June 1, 2009. He told an interviewer he found it difficult to watch his wife eat a dead tarantula on the broadcast but remarked that her willingness to participate in the show was "an act of love" because she was earning funds to alleviate their adverse financial position.

On June 13, 2009, Rod starred in improv group The Second City's musical Rod Blagojevich Superstar. He performed in order to support the charity Gilda's Club Chicago, which offers support for people living with cancer.

On June 30, 2009, Blagojevich's autobiography The Governor: The Truth Behind the Political Scandal That Continues to Rock the Nation was announced for print release on September 8, 2009. The book was also released by Amazon.com for sale as an eBook on the Kindle on the same day as the announcement.

Blagojevich appeared on Season 9 of The Celebrity Apprentice in Spring 2010, asserting that he has the "skill and know-how to get things accomplished" on the series. Series star and producer Donald Trump praised Blagojevich's "tremendous courage and guts", and predicted that he would become one of the show's breakout stars. Trump subsequently fired Blagojevich in the fourth episode of the season, which aired April 4, 2010.

In an interview with Esquire in January 2010, Blagojevich said about President Obama, "Everything he's saying's on the teleprompter. I'm blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where he lived. I saw it all growing up." He soon backpedaled from the term "blacker than", saying that he chose his words poorly, but he stood by his message that "the frustration is real, and the frustration is still, today, average, ordinary people aren't getting a fair shake."

Blagojevich made an appearance at the 'Wizard World Chicago' comic convention in August 2010, conversing with and taking pictures with attendants. He charged $50 for an autograph and $80 for a photo. He also had a humorous televised meeting with Adam West; Blagojevich remarked that he considered The Joker to be the best Batman foil. Comic fandom website bleedingcool.com reported that Blagojevich met with a mostly positive reception, while Time Out Chicago described it as mixed. 12/2010 - has Rod appearing in a television commercial for pistachio nuts, appears to have first aired during the World Series, November 1, 2010.

Personal style

Blagojevich was famed for his flamboyant dress style, such as his taste for Charvet ties. Ever since the Justice Department complaint was made public, Blagojevich's hairstyle has become the subject of discussion and jokes for national and local media personalities. Blagojevich insisted his aides carry a hairbrush for him at all times, which he referred to as "the football", a reference to the term nuclear football, which represents the bomb launch codes never to be out of reach of the president.

Electoral history

House of Representatives

1996

Rod Blagojevich, Democrat: 64%

Michael Flanagan (inc.), Republican: 36%

1998

Rod Blagojevich (inc.), Democrat: 74%

Alan Spitz, Republican: 24%

2000

Rod Blagojevich (inc.), Democrat: 87%

Matt Beauchamp, Libertarian: 13%

Gubernatorial elections

2002 gubernatorial election, Illinois

Rod Blagojevich, Democrat: 1,818,823, 52.0%

Jim Ryan, Republican: 1,582,604, 45.2%

Cal Skinner, Libertarian: 73,404, 2.1%

Marisellis Brown, Independent: 22,803, 0.7%

2006 gubernatorial election, Illinois

Rod Blagojevich (inc.), Democrat: 1,736,219, 49.8%

Judy Baar Topinka: Republican: 1,368,682, 39.3%

Rich Whitney, Green: 361,163, 10.4%

Randy Stufflebeam (Write-in), Constitution: 19,020, 0.5%

Other Write-ins: 1,587, 0.0%

References

External links

Indictment U.S. v. Blagojevich, et al. FindLaw

Follow the Money - Rod Blagojevich

*2008 2006 2004 2002 campaign contributions (Governor)

*1996 campaign contributions (U.S. House)

Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich and his Chief of Staff John Harris Arrested on Federal Corruption Charges Department of Justice, December 9, 2008, press release

United States District Court: United States of America v. Rod R. Blagojevich and John Harris, December 9, 2008, copy of 76-page complaint (text version)

People of the State of Illinois v. Rod Blagojevich, Governor of Illinois brief, Motion for TRO, Supporting Record TRO

Gov. Blagojevich Chicago Sun-Times, ongoing coverage

Complete Blagojevich Coverage Chicago Tribune, ongoing coverage

United States of America v. Rod Blagojevich, Alonzo Monk, John Harris and Robert Blagojevich Second Superseding Indictment, United States of America v. Rod Blagojevich, Alonzo Monk, John Harris and Robert Blagojevich

Category:1956 births Category:Living people

Category:Eastern Orthodox Christians from the United States Category:Governors of Illinois Category:Illinois Democrats Category:Impeached officials removed from office Category:Impeached United States officials Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from Illinois Category:Northwestern University alumni Category:Participants in American reality television series Category:Pepperdine University alumni Category:Politicians from Chicago, Illinois * Category:American people of Serbian descent Category:American politicians of Serbian descent Category:American people of Bosnia and Herzegovina descent Category:Serbian Orthodox Christians Category:The Apprentice (U.S. TV series) contestants Category:Video game censorship

Birthname	Alexander Claud Cockburn
Birth date	June 06, 1941
Birth place	Scotland
Family	Claud Cockburn
Relatives	Andrew Cockburn, Patrick Cockburn
Credits	CounterPunch, The Nation, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times

Alexander Claud Cockburn ( ; born 6 June 1941) is an American political journalist. Cockburn was brought up in Ireland but has lived and worked in the United States since 1972. Together with Jeffrey St. Clair, he edits the political newsletter CounterPunch. Cockburn also writes the "Beat the Devil" column for The Nation and a weekly syndicated column for the Los Angeles Times as well as for The First Post, which is syndicated by Creators Syndicate.

Life and career

Born in Scotland, Cockburn grew up in Youghal, County Cork, Ireland. He is the eldest son of the well-known sometime communist author and journalist, Claud Cockburn, by his third wife, Patricia Byron, née Arbuthnot (who also wrote an autobiography, Figure of Eight). He has one daughter, Daisy Cockburn, whose mother is the writer Emma Tennant, and two younger brothers, Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn, who are also journalists. His half-sister, the barrister and mystery writer Sarah Caudwell, died in 2000. In addition, journalists Laura Flanders and Stephanie Flanders are his half-nieces, daughters of his half-sister Claudia Davis/Cockburn and her husband Michael Flanders. Actress Olivia Wilde is his niece, daughter of his brother Andrew Cockburn. After studying at Glenalmond College, an independent boys' boarding school in Perthshire, Scotland, and at Keble College, Oxford, Cockburn worked in London as a reporter and commentator.

Since moving to the United States, Cockburn has written for many publications, including The New York Review of Books, Esquire, and Harper's. From 1973 to 1983 he was a writer with The Village Voice, originating its longstanding "Press Clips" column, but he was suspended, the Voice stated, "for accepting a $10,000 grant from an Arab studies organization in 1982." His defenders charge that his criticism of Israeli policies was behind the firing. Cockburn has said that he left the Voice upon being offered a regular column in The Nation called "Beat the Devil" (after the title of a novel by his father). Since leaving the Voice he has also written columns for the Wall Street Journal, New York Press and the New Statesman. Cockburn has also been a regular contributor to the Anderson Valley Advertiser.

Cockburn originally chose Irish citizenship (over UK citizenship), but in 2009 he became a citizen of the United States. On March 16, 2009 Cockburn officially became a new columnist for the paleoconservative Chronicles magazine.

Themes and opinions

There have been a number of consistent themes in Cockburn's political writing, among them:

Outspoken criticism of US foreign policy, from its policies in Central America in the 1980s, including the Iran-Contra scandal, to the First Gulf War in 1991, the Kosovo War in 1999, and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Criticism of the government of Israel based on its treatment of the Palestinians.

Calls for political reform in the United States, mostly focused on criticizing the Democratic Party for failing to provide a progressive alternative to the Republican Party, as well as strong support for Ralph Nader's presidential candidacies in the 2000 and 2004 elections.

Contempt for the mainstream establishment, in particular for public figures who, in his view, gain mainstream respectability by criticizing those to their left; targets have included the New York Times, Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. Bernie Sanders, the late academic Irving Howe and some of his colleagues at The Nation, including Marc Cooper, David Corn and Eric Alterman. Cockburn has also been highly critical (see below) of his former friend and colleague, Christopher Hitchens. Criticism of 9/11 conspiracy theories Regarding prior knowledge of Pearl Harbor, Cockburn thinks "there is strong evidence that FDR did have knowledge that a Japanese naval force in the north Pacific was going to launch an attack on Pearl Harbor. It's quite possible Roosevelt thought it would be a relatively mild assault and thought it would be the final green light to get the US into the war."

Cockburn's viewpoint on Iraq, in particular during the rule of Saddam Hussein, was one not often seen in mainstream U.S. publications. He denounced the economic and political sanctions imposed on the Iraqi government by the United Nations, but Cockburn was more aggressive than most in his criticisms of American and British actions during the 12 years between the formal resolution of the Persian Gulf War and the 2003 invasion. In a column published in 2000, Cockburn averred that the economic embargo imposed upon Iraq was "demonically designed to prompt gnawing, endless suffering throughout Iraq's social economy." In the same column, Cockburn concluded that every major Republican or Democratic nominee running in the 2000 presidential election was supportive of Iraq sanctions, and was therefore complicit in mass murder.

Cockburn also joined the widespread criticism of the subsequent occupation of Iraq by American, British and other national military forces (the self-described "Coalition of the Willing"). In the wake of the capture of Saddam Hussein, Cockburn penned a column entitled "How to kill Saddam," in which he argued that the ensuing trial of Hussein would be a mock tribunal, conducted by a "kangaroo court," and that Hussein's conviction and ultimate execution were foregone conclusions.

In contrast, Cockburn's position on global warming is consistent with views usually held by the right. He believes the phenomenon has not been proven to be caused by humans, citing the statements of Martin Hertzberg that rising CO₂ levels are a symptom, not a cause, of global warming, which Hertzberg asserts is the result of natural, predictable changes in the Earth's elliptic orbit. In fact, Hertzberg is a semi-retired explosives expert who does not claim to be a climatologist. Cockburn is also critical of the "greenhouse" explanation for warming by positing that it is incongruous with the laws of physics, specifically the second law of thermodynamics. He cites the research of Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf Tscheuschner's Falsification of the Atmospheric CO₂ Greenhouse Effects Within the Frame of Physics.

Cockburn also has been critical of the originator of the Green Revolution concept. In an article in the Nation on Al Gore's 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, Cockburn made the following statement on Norman Borlaug's 1971 Nobel Prize: "Line up some of the more notorious Nobel Peace Prize recipients, such as Kissinger, and if you had to identify the biggest killer of all it was probably Norman Borlaug, one of the architects of the Green Revolution, which unleashed displacement, malnutrition and death across the Third World." Cockburn has criticized Borlaug previously on this issue.

At times acerbic, Cockburn can also be gently and humorously ironic, once declaring Gerald Ford America's greatest president for doing the least damage (his administration was the shortest in the 20th century) and praising the Lewinsky scandal's entertainment value. In the same vein, he has also expressed his admiration for the beauty of both Tipper Gore and Laura Bush. His nudge-nudge, wink-wink brand of humor is demonstrated in his response to a question asking for a comparison between George W. Bush and Napoleon Bonaparte. He replied that he wasn't sure about Bush as Napoleon, "though surely Josephine's heart beats beneath Laura's delicious bosom."

Criticism

Cockburn and anti-Semitism

Cockburn has written a great deal on the use of anti-Semitism accusations in modern politics, particularly by the state of Israel and its supporters, and has co-edited a book on the subject, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. Cockburn himself has also been accused of anti-Semitism, which he denies and considers an example of the use of that accusation to intimidate criticism of Israel and avert attention from Israel's policies.

One of those making anti-Semitism charges against Cockburn is Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. In November 2005, Dershowitz wrote to the National Catholic Reporter that Cockburn's Counterpunch web site was anti-Semitic. This was in response to a review of Norman Finkelstein's book Beyond Chutzpah by Counterpunch contributor Neve Gordon. Cockburn had previously accused Dershowitz, in 2003, of plagiarism, and, in October 2005, of supporting torture. Cockburn and Dershowitz have each denied the other's charges. Dershowitz has also claimed that Cockburn has been one of three writers (along with Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky) who are engaged in an attempt to discredit him, which Cockburn has also denied.

A 2002 Cockburn article on anti-Semitic remarks by Reverend Billy Graham reprinted elsewhere, discussed the furor over recently released tape recorded conversations between Graham and President Richard Nixon. Cockburn contrasted that response to the response to revelations in 1989 that Graham had advocated destroying Vietnam's irrigation infrastructure, which by Nixon's estimate would kill a million civilians, if the Paris peace talks failed. The latter revelations, in Cockburn's view, received little press coverage, while the anti-Semitic remarks caused a media firestorm. Cockburn wrote that Graham's anti-Semitic comments were

consonant with the standard conversational bill of fare at 75 percent of the country clubs in America, not to mention many a Baptist soiree? But they (Nixon, Graham, and White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman) didn't say they wanted to kill a million Jews. That's what Graham said about the Vietnamese and no one raised a bleat.

His critics quoted the final passage, reproduced below, to accuse Cockburn of spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories:

Certainly, there are a number of stories sloshing around the news now that have raised discussions of Israel and of the posture of American Jews to an acrid level. The purveyor of anthrax may have been a former government scientist, Jewish, with a record of baiting a colleague of Arab origins, and with the intent to blame the anthrax on Muslim terrorists. Rocketing around the web and spilling into the press are many stories about Israeli spies in America at the time of 9/11. On various accounts, they were trailing Mohamed Atta and his associates, knew what was going to happen but did nothing about it, or were simply spying on US facilities.

One of the Cockburn critics was Franklin Foer of The New Republic, who first noted Cockburn's response:

To be fair, Cockburn doesn't exactly endorse these theories. Rather, by noting that all of these Jewish conspiracy stories are "sloshing around the news," Cockburn seems merely to be pointing out that, hey, anti-Semitic ideas are still out there today — so why the shock that Graham endorsed them 30 years ago? Indeed, when I reached Cockburn to ask him about these conspiracies, he insisted he was just reporting what was already in circulation.

Part of Cockburn's response to the Graham article controversy is his ironically entitled essay My Life as an "Anti-Semite", from the The Politics of Anti-Semitism. Cockburn writes:

Cockburn and Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens is often mentioned in connection with Cockburn because of their similar origins (Cockburn from Ireland, Hitchens from England), similar educational background, both being columnists at The Nation, and their strained friendship.

Hitchens' ideological differences on various issues have caused bitter moments between the two men. Beyond issues such as the wars in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, they strongly differ over ethical disputes involving writers such as Sidney Blumenthal and Edward Said. In a Counterpunch article in August 2005, Cockburn attacked Hitchens as: "A guy who called Sid Blumenthal one of his best friends and then tried to have him thrown into prison for perjury; a guy who waited til his friend Edward Said was on his death bed before attacking him in the Atlantic Monthly; a guy who knows perfectly well the role Israel plays in US policy but who does not scruple to flail Cindy Sheehan as a LaRouchie and anti-Semite because, maybe, she dared mention the word Israel." Hitchens responded by standing by his criticism of Sheehan and then defending his deposition to House prosecutors regarding Blumenthal during the Clinton impeachment and his critical review of Said’s book, Orientalism (Hitchens stating that the review was determined by the 25th anniversary of the book’s original publication and not the state of Said’s health).

In a 2009 interview with C-SPAN's Brian Lamb, Hitchens intimated that his friendship with Cockburn is still intact, despite the critical gulf between them, discussed above, which were primarily exposed in the press in 2005 and before. Lamb directly asked what Hitchens relationship with Cockburn was today [April, 2009], to which Hitchens mentioned that he recently had attended a Cockburn family wedding in which Alexander officiated, and that he and Cockburn used to see each other frequently, but, due to each of them now living on opposite coasts, they see each other much less. In this same interview Lamb and Hitchens further discussed Cockburn's scathing remarks about Hitchens criticisms of Said and Sheehan, mentioned above. From his 2009 perspective, Hitchens clearly felt the intervening years have justified his criticisms of Sheehan, and expressed that "it's beneath Alexander to be defending someone as cheap and demagogic as her." In the case of Hitchens' criticisms of Edward Said on his death bed, Hitchens replied, "It's actually rather silly of Alexander to say that, I think, because if you look at his [Cockburn's] journalism, he would rightly be proud of saying that he's often written counter-obituaries of people who have been overpraised and has chosen precisely the moment when there's a lot of sentimental garbage being published to say, 'come on, this guy wasn't so great!' So, it's silly of him – he gives a hostage to fortune in saying that."

Bibliography

Incompatibles (1967) (co-edited with Robin Blackburn)

Student Power (1969) (co-edited with Robin Blackburn)

Idle Passion: Chess and the Dance of Death (1975)

Smoke: Another Jimmy Carter Adventure (1978) (with James Ridgeway)

Political Ecology (1979) (co-edited with James Ridgeway)

Corruptions of Empire (1988) ISBN 0-86091-940-4

The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers and Defenders of the Amazon (1989) (with Susanna Hecht) ISBN 0-06-097322-6

The Golden Age Is in Us: Journeys and Encounters (1995) ISBN 0-86091-664-2

Washington Babylon (1995) (with Ken Silverstein) ISBN 1-85984-092-2

Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press (1998) (with Jeffrey St. Clair) ISBN 1-85984-258-5

5 Days That Shook The World: The Battle for Seattle and Beyond (2000) (co-edited with Jeffrey St. Clair) ISBN 1-85984-779-X

Al Gore: A User's Manual (2000) (with Jeffrey St. Clair) ISBN 1-85984-803-6

CounterPunch: The Journalism That Rediscovers America (2002) (co-edited with Jeffrey St. Clair) ISBN 1-85984-455-3

The Politics of Anti-Semitism (2003) (co-edited with Jeffrey St. Clair) ISBN 1-902593-77-4

Serpents in the Garden (2004) (co-edited with Jeffrey St. Clair) ISBN 1-902593-94-4

Imperial Crusades (2004) (co-edited with Jeffrey St. Clair) ISBN 1-84467-506-8

Dime's Worth of Difference (2004) (co-edited with Jeffrey St. Clair) ISBN 1-904859-03-8

End Times: Death of the Fourth Estate (2006) (with Jeffrey St. Clair)

Compact Disc

Beating the Devil: The Incendiary Rants of Alexander Cockburn

References

External links

CounterPunch website

Alexander Cockburn Features at Creators Syndicate

Alexander Cockburn bio at The Nation.

Podcasts of Cockburn's recent articles

C-SPAN Interview Archived three hour C-SPAN, InDepth interview, 1 April 2007.

Category:1941 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of Keble College, Oxford Category:American alternative journalists Category:American anti-war activists Category:American columnists Category:American political writers Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American people of Scottish descent Category:New York Press people Category:The Nation (U.S. periodical) people Category:Wall Street Journal people