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        <title><![CDATA[Raven Reviews - The Raven Foundation]]></title>
        <description><![CDATA[Making Religion Reasonable Violence Unthinkable and Peace a Possibility]]></description>
        <link>http://www.ravenfoundation.org/</link>
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                <guid isPermaLink="false">438-22</guid>
                <title><![CDATA[H8R: H8R Surprises - 5 Claws!]]></title>
                                <link>http://www.ravenfoundation.org/rf-reviews/h8r</link>
                <description><![CDATA[
                                When I first saw previews for the CW's new Fall show H8R, I was skeptical.  I was prepared to be a hater of H8R.  It looked from the ads that this could be just another rowdy, drama-ridden reality TV show.  But, it turns out this show is the antidote to the hate that fans generate for celebrities. The unique twist of H8R is that celebrities get a chance to defend themselves against their self-proclaimed haters in hopes of changing their minds.

The part of this show that earns it a 5 Claw Rave! Rating is that H8R diagnoses the celebrity scapegoating taking place in America and offers a way out.  In the introduction to the show, host Mario Lopez observes, “America loves their celebrities but we also love to hate them.”  He then continues to state that, “Everywhere you look – you see it in tabloids, in online chat rooms, blogs.  And most people do it anonymously, so somehow they think that makes it okay.”  This show intends to disrupt the celebrity scapegoating and hate that is so prevalent in America today.  As Mario Lopez explains, in the show H8R, “…for the first time ever, we are going to hold haters accountable for what they say.  We’ve got hidden cameras that are going to capture a hater’s rant about a celebrity. And then, that celebrity is going to confront their hater without interference…”  After the initial confrontation, the producers allow for the hater to get to know the object of their hate, the celebrity, in a more personal way.  They even go as far as setting up situations to encourage connections because they know that if the hater identifies with the object of their hate then it will be much harder for them to continue to hate.  At Raven we call this “humanizing the victim”.  This humanizing of the celebrity will lead to the golden TV moment: the conversion.  The moment when the H8R realizes that they have much more in common with the celebrity than they thought and, so, can no longer hate them.

The first half of the H8R season premiere on Wednesday, September 14, 2011 culminated in a very touching conversion moment for a hater of Snooki, a star of the MTV reality series Jersey Shore.  After Snooki meets her hater, Nick, she offers to cook Sunday dinner for him and his family.  He accepts and they go food shopping together.  Then Snooki goes over to Nick’s house.  After hanging out for a bit with Nick’s parents’, the family decides to call Snooki by her real name, Nicole, for the rest of the night.  It was like they all agreed to let her be a different person from the one they had imagined and give her a second chance.  During dinner the family is sitting around the table.  Snooki’s hater, Nick, says this:

	I would like to point out, that you have lot of guts coming into a bar where me and my buddy 	were playing pool and ya know, you walked right up to me and laid it out there on the table.  	And I found out a lot more about you, and we actually have a lot more in common.  Nicole’s 	pretty cool.  Very cool.  And I definitely got to say, my hat’s off to ya.

Then, later in the confessional, Nick continues with the sentiment:

	Everyone deserves a shot to not be hated.  Everyone deserves a chance to explain themselves.  	And try to be a little bit more mindful, before you just start hating people.

They cut-back to the dinner table and Nicole asks, “So, do you still hate me?”  And Nick responds with a smile saying, “I am no longer a hater.”

This moment was possible because Nick was open to changing his mind, which is not always easy to do.  In the second half of the episode, the celebrity, Jake Pavelka, from The Bachelor, is not quite as successful with changing the mind of his hater.  He still, however, ends up revealing a truth about the dynamic of hating.  When feeling frustrated after his hater insists upon continuing to hate, he calls her out and slings back the accusation that “it feels good for you to hate me.”  He also says that she is not open to persuasion because “she enjoys hating [him].”  The producers have set up a situation that exposes a hidden purpose of hating.  As humans, we like to hate because when we hate something that is bad, we believe that we are the opposite of that and so, therefore, we are good.  The way out of this trap is the willingness to know the object of your hate so you can no longer justify your actions.  You are forced to convert your opinion and dissolve your hate.  Unfortunately,  Jake’s hater was not ready to change her mind.  Even at the end of the episode, in spite of all of his efforts, she was still clinging to being a “Jake hater”.

The new CW show H8R exposes several dynamics about scapegoating and hate that often go unnoticed on primetime television.  It is refreshing to see a show that is trying to stop hating instead of perpetuate it.  My first impressions of the show were wrong.  I am not a hater of H8R.  I’m a fan!
                ]]></description>
                <category><![CDATA[TV Shows]]></category>
                <pubDate>Wed, 28 Sep 2011 19:24:00 -0400</pubDate>
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                <guid isPermaLink="false">437-21</guid>
                <title><![CDATA[Back to the Future: Jensen, von Wiegand, Gouverneur, and the Cosmic Conversation: Art and Incarnation]]></title>
                                <link>http://www.ravenfoundation.org/rf-reviews/back-to-the-future-alfred-jensen-charmion-von-wiegand-simon-gouverneur-and-the-cosmic-conversati</link>
                <description><![CDATA[
                                While the Cold War ushered in a period of cynicism, these artists pursued positive, life-affirming themes of unity and harmony. They delighted in the colorful patterns of sacred geometry and mathematical patterns found in the natural world. Dr. Andrew J. McKenna, Loyola Professor of French Literature, examined how the extent of the spiritual claims of artists is in inverse proportion to the recognizable figural content of their works.

Dr. Andrew J. McKenna, professor of French language and literature at Loyola University in Chicago, earned a Ph.D. in Romance Languages [French & Spanish] from Johns Hopkins University after receiving his B.A. in French from Holy Cross College. In addition to acting as the host of the French club, he teaches courses in French Literature of 17th, 19th, 20th centuries, Stylistics, French culture and civilization, and Masterpieces of European Literature and Comparative Literature (in translation). For the decade between 1996 and 2006, he was the Editor-in-Chief of Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, 1996-2006. He presently serves on the Board of the Raven Foundation. 
                ]]></description>
                <category><![CDATA[Art]]></category>
                <pubDate>Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:54:32 -0400</pubDate>
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                        <item>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">436-20</guid>
                <title><![CDATA[Dexter: Good and Bad Violence in Dexter]]></title>
                                <link>http://www.ravenfoundation.org/rf-reviews/education-director</link>
                <description><![CDATA[
                                To explore the concept of good and bad violence, we invited Raven members and friends to come to the our office in Glenview, Illinois, and view the first episode of Dexter, a crime drama that follows the life of the very affable Dexter Morgan, a detective on the pursuit of serial killers.  When the police can’t capture the bad guys, and the bad guys continue to kill innocent victims, Dexter comes to the rescue.  But he is no ordinary detective – Dexter is a serial killer of serial killers. 

Which makes him a good serial killer, right?

This is the ethical conundrum Dexter asks its viewers to struggle with, and it’s what we struggled with in our discussion. 

Dexter has an innate urge to kill.  Dexter was orphaned as a child, and he was adopted by Harry Morgan, a Miami police officer.  His adoptive father saw the young Dexter’s passion for killing, and directed him to channel his violent propensities in a constructive way by killing only those people who deserve it.

Dexter’s father models for him a “code” for killing, and Dexter uses this code as a way to contain his violent tendencies, but can violence be contained?  In a flashback to his childhood, Dexter kills an animal and his father says to him, “I thought we had this under control.”  The adult Dexter states that, like other serial killers, he is a monster, but he claims to be a “clean monster.”  For Dexter, the rituals that lead up to killing have an “intoxicating” effect on him.  This leads me to the question: Is it possible to control violence once the intoxicating rituals of violence have been unleashed?  Or does violence turn us into a monstrous double of our enemies?    

Dexter provides a rich opportunity to examine our own views on violence.                 ]]></description>
                <category><![CDATA[TV Shows]]></category>
                <pubDate>Tue, 14 Jun 2011 21:07:35 -0400</pubDate>
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                <guid isPermaLink="false">435-19</guid>
                <title><![CDATA[Mad Men Season 3 Love Among the Ruins: Does Mad Men Understand Mimetic Desire?]]></title>
                                <link>http://www.ravenfoundation.org/rf-reviews/mad-men-season-3-love-among-the-ruins</link>
                <description><![CDATA[
                                Fans of AMC’s Mad Men are eagerly awaiting the award winning series’ final season, which is scheduled to air this summer. The success of the program may stem from Matthew Weiner’s ability to imbue the series’ characters with a partial, but developing, understanding of mimetic desire. As high powered Madison Avenue advertisers the characters of Mad Men display an understanding of the mimetic nature of desire. This knowledge of how human beings are wired to desire according to the desire of another is particularly acute in the characters of Don Draper and his apprentice Peggy Olson. One way to frame this tendency in Don and Peggy is to consider how René Girard theorizes an individual’s desire as inevitably patterned on the desire of some other, who acts as a model. 

	At the core of Girard’s thought is the notion that human beings always desire according to the desire of another. In order to make his theory clear, Girard reworks many of Freud’s (now dated and unfashionable) notions of where desire comes from. In one instance, Girard makes sense of Freud’s conception of the eternal feminine. Within our current understanding of gender, Freud’s theory must be read as sexist. Nonetheless, it offers a starting point to begin thinking about desire. Freud imagines the eternal feminine as the typical woman, who acts disinterested—not seeming to have any use for anyone else. Obviously, such behaviour is not unique to women. Girard’s reading of Freud’s idea allows us to get beyond the assumptions Freud makes. In Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, Girard explains how this posture—the self-sufficient performance of the coquette—is really non-gender specific. Rather the coquette is a role playable by any subject sufficiently aware of mimetic desire’s dynamics. The strategy of a model of desire like this is to appear to be in love with him or herself. Girard explains: 
	The coquette knows a lot more about desire than Freud does. She knows very well that 		desire attracts desire. [...] The coquette seeks to be desired because she needs masculine 	desires, directed at her, to feed her coquetry and enable her to play her role as coquette. 	She has no more self-sufficiency than the man who desires her, but the success of her 	strategy allows her to keep up the appearance of it, since it offers her a form of desire she can copy. 

She is not unaffected by mimesis. Indeed, she desires herself according to the desire of the other who desires her. She only pretends not to care. It is easy to see how the gender of the players in these dynamics of desire is only incidental. A male may play the role of coquette as easily as a female. Anyone who strategically makes himself appear inaccessible to exacerbate the curiosity of another is imitating the desire of the other for his by pretending to be interested only in himself. Desire is always imitative. It is always patterned on another’s desire. 

	In the Season 3 episode entitled, “Love Among the Ruins” the creative team at the Sterling Cooper advertizing agency decide to mimic Anne-Margret Olson’s performance of “Bye Bye Birdie” in an ad for the diet cola, Patio. This scene illustrates the conscious engineering of mimetic desire into advertizing. The ambitious copy-writer Peggy Olson has misgiving about how effective the commercial will be, since to her mind the infantilization of the commercial’s actress will likely attract men rather than the young women the ad is intended to target. The following exchange between Peggy and Don illustrates an assumed and nuanced understanding of coquetry outlined by Girard: 
	Peggy: Maybe we should be talking about how this [Patio] is better than coffee, or Dexedrine.
	Don: It's not about making women feel fat. This is: “Look how happy I am that I drink patio. I'm young and excited and desperate for a man.” 
	Peggy: I don't mind fantasies but shouldn’t it be a female one. 
	Don: Peggy, I know you know how this works: Men want her, women want to be her. 
	Peggy: You think that's true? 
	Don: It is. I'm sorry if that makes you uncomfortable. 
	Peggy: Well, you know if we were making a movie or a play we'd be embarrassed to do 	this. It's phony. 
	Don: You're not an artist Peggy. You solve problems.

Despite Don’s dismissal, Peggy is suggesting a solution to the problem of inciting desire through a fantasy of self-sufficiency that both men and women share. Peggy is really saying: “In order to direct attention to our product, let’s appeal to everyone’s desire to appear to be, and feel, original and utterly content with their supposedly original choice?” Her questioning and suggestion of a more appropriate female fantasy highlights how desire is a craving for a wholeness of being that seems to appear in the other. Alternately, Don’s understanding of desire is limited to the mimetic dynamics at play in an increasingly dated masculinist vision of the world, where women supposedly base their choices on what men think of them. If Peggy had her way, she may opt to depict a self-sufficient, powerful young woman enjoying the product as part of a full, independent life that doesn’t necessarily require the presence of anyone else. In this version, the logic of Don’s axiom—“Men want her, women want to be her”—would still hold.  However, instead of the female viewer imagining a man desiring the actress enlivened by the product, the woman desires herself and bases her choice of product upon her inviolate sense of self-determination. In short, the commercial would present the coquette as an inspirational figure, who pleases herself alone by purchasing the product. Anyone (male or female) who observed such self-contented confidence may feel inclined to model their own “unique” desire upon the actresses. Peggy has an excellent advertizing solution. Don just doesn’t understand it. Why not?    

	The answer may lie in Don’s past, which exemplifies a simpler structure of mimetic desire. Don Draper was born Dick Whitman. He grew up on the margins of society—the bastard orphan of a rural prostitute. This origin is a far cry from Dick’s current position high above Manhattan, where he makes big deals, rendezvous with mistresses, and takes the train home to an initially happy, suburban family. Dick is living the American Dream. However, the shadow of how he rose from such low origins haunts him. Two flashbacks, in episode twelve of Season 1, explain how. 

	As a young man with few prospects Dick volunteers for service during the Korean War. When his cynical and inquisitive commanding officer asks if poverty, or the movies, were the motivating factors in his choice to enlist, Dick replies, “I just wanted to leave.” His reluctance to explain himself is indicative of his shame at his origins. His admission that he wanted to get away betrays his desire for another way of being that would save him from his ignominious heritage. Dick’s commanding officer is named Don Draper. He explains that he is an engineer, boasting of his immanent discharge from the Army and good future prospects saying, “I'm supposed to be building swimming pools not latrines.” Draper has everything Dick aspires to. Soon, he will be free to capitalize on an education, career, and social position that Dick can only dream of. In the brief moments of their initial meeting, Draper models a desire for the American Dream to the searching Dick Whitman. Draper has everything and Dick has nothing. It is no surprise that, when an accidental explosion kills Draper, Dick quickly switches dog-tags with his corpse, appropriating his identity. Whitman lets his old-self die and becomes in name and rank, Donald Draper. After recovering from the wounds he sustains in the explosion, he is released from service with a Purple Heart. As a decorated, veteran and former officer, Dick-turned-Don experiences the consummation of his mediated desire. It is because of his history that, the new Don—the advertiser—understands what it is to model desire on the other enough to appropriate their being. Dick desired according to the desire of the original Don enough to not have scruples about stealing his identity, which is perhaps as close to the essence of selfhood as it is possible to get.   

	In contrast to advertiser-Don’s wealth of (what Girard terms) metaphysical being, his appropriated aura of self-sufficiency, Peggy initially appears impoverished. She begins her career as a female secretary. In nineteen sixties America, she is superior only to the African Americans who clean the office and operate the elevator. Because of this, Peggy understands what it is to have models mediating her desire for success and acknowledgement. She recognizes Don’s fullness of being. In Season 3, Episode 5 when the male power structure of the agency again discourages her attempts at professional progress, Peggy in a fit of frustration tells Don how she sees things: “I look at you and I think; ‘I want what he has’. You have everything and so much of it.” Don is shocked at her candour, since Peggy is simultaneously revealing that her ambitions are modeled on his and that she resents his complicity in the chauvinism that limits her. Thus, Peggy’s desiring-self relates to Don in the way that Dick Whitman once related to the real Don Draper.   

	In light of his history, Don’s rejection of Peggy’s suggestion of female fantasy follows from the structure of desire reflects his own experience of triangular desire. In Don’s scenario there is a subject who desires according to a model, who in turn sets his desire on an object, which the subject subsequently pursues. In this configuration desire is still essentially triangular with a subject, model, and object. For Don it is the only way desire works—recall his formula “Men want her, women want to be her.” According to Girard, Don’s sketch of desire’s basic pathway is accurate. Don even understands how ultimately desire wishes to appropriate the being of its model. Nonetheless, Peggy takes the logic of desire further than Don by identifying the power of the coquette, who makes him or herself both the mediator and the object that the mimetically desiring subject patterns her behaviour upon. In their own ways Don and Peggy are struggling toward a clearer understanding of how the consumers they attempt to fascinate, and even they themselves, desire according to the desire of another. In the coming season it will be interesting to see how far they get.       

Author Ben Barber is a student of literary and pedagogical theory at the University of Victoria, Canada. He joined COV&R in 2008 at the UCLA Riverside conference and attended COV&R again in 2009, where he earned The Raymond Schwager Memorial Award for his paper entitled, “Missionary Colonialism’s Double Bind and the Resulting Postcolonial Crisis in Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night.” He has recently prepared a paper entitled “The Rum Diary: An Introduction to Hunter S. Thompson’s Esthetic Evolution,” which will appear in the 2010 fall issue of Anthropoetics: The Journal of Generative Anthropology. His current interests include comparative research into the theory of Slavoj Žižek and René Girard; the life and work of Hunter S. Thompson; and the novels of Cormac McCarthy. Ben is looking ahead to graduate work, which will consider modernist and contemporary literature alongside Mimetic Theory and Generative Anthropology.
                ]]></description>
                <category><![CDATA[TV Shows]]></category>
                <pubDate>Thu, 09 Jun 2011 20:40:33 -0400</pubDate>
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                <guid isPermaLink="false">433-18</guid>
                <title><![CDATA[The Fighter: Brother against brother, girlfriend against mother]]></title>
                                <link>http://www.ravenfoundation.org/rf-reviews/the-fighter</link>
                <description><![CDATA[
                                The Fighter, a movie that is more about family than sports, is rich with mimetic rivalry. Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) is a young boxer who keeps losing matches. His older brother and coach, Dicky (Christian Bale), used to be a boxing contender, and is locally famous (in Lowell, MA) for having once knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard. Their mother Alice (Melissa Leo) dotes on the older son, manages Micky's career, and houses her seven daughters. The obvious conflict at the beginning of the film is Dicky's crack addiction, which is interfering with his younger brother's boxing career.

When Micky's new girlfriend Charlene (Amy Adams) challenges him that his family is in the way of his career, the dysfunction crescendos, and doubles emerge: older vs. younger brother, girfriend vs. mother. 

Will they be able to overcome the bondage of mimetic rivalry in order to achieve what they really desire?

All of the principal actors deliver standout performances, in a gritty tale that will leave many viewers both identifying and being amazed at the behavior of people who use each other for self-validation.

I won't spoil the ending, but it is a true story, so don't look up the characters if you want to be surprised.                ]]></description>
                <category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
                <pubDate>Thu, 06 Jan 2011 22:47:49 -0500</pubDate>
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                        <item>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">431-17</guid>
                <title><![CDATA[The Bishop's Wife : Modelling Love]]></title>
                                <link>http://www.ravenfoundation.org/rf-reviews/the-bishop-s-wife-1947</link>
                <description><![CDATA[
                                The Bishop’s Wife is a magical, romantic comedy that on the surface is a harmless holiday diversion. Viewers are transported into an imaginary world where prayers are answered and angels visit the earth to intervene for good in human affairs. In truth, it is an insightful presentation of the dynamics of mimetic relationships and an excellent analysis of the power of unconditional love. 


In the 1947 version of this story, debonair Cary Grant stars as an angel named Dudley who comes to earth in answer to the Bishop’s prayer for guidance. The Bishop is determined to build a glorious cathedral to honor God, and his obsessive fundraising has strained his marriage. Not only does his wife Julia feel neglected but his primary fundraiser, Mrs. Hamilton, is refusing to donate her millions of dollars unless a chapel dedicated to her husband’s memory is erected near the cathedral’s front door. Insisting that the cathedral give glory to God and not to a human being, the Bishop refuses to give in to idolatry but his principled stances alienates Mrs. Hamilton’s and she withdraws her pledge. The Bishop is also at risk of losing his wife’s love, for she feels that her husband’s pursuit of the cathedral has changed him from the caring pastor he was into a driven, cold man. In despair, he has prayed to God and God sends Dudley.


Dudley’s angelic presence is felt by everyone he meets. Not only the principle characters, but each minor character, even extras, are affected by encounters with Dudley. What Cary Grant does to perfection is portray the love freely offered by the angel. He greets each and every person in the movie with the same honest look of love and the miracle is not only in his giving of that love but in the receiving of it. We see how the Bishop’s housekeeper, cook and secretary are each transformed by that look. Not that they were bad or sinful people, but in the presence of Dudley’s love for them, they feel lighter, more joyful. Being loved, they become more loving of themselves and others. This is an illustration of the mimetic dynamic, that before we can love ourselves we must have self-love modeled for us. Dudley is that model and because he is the embodiment of the ultimate source of unconditional love in God, his power to transform is miraculous.


Dudley heals the rift in the Bishop’s marriage through the same process of modeling. He allows the Bishop to choose to attend his fundraising meetings while Dudley tends to Julia, taking her to visit an old friend, to the restaurant where the Bishop proposed to her, to the park for ice skating, and a choir rehearsal at their old parish. Dudley models a loving, attentive relationship with Julia and slowly the Bishop begins to envy what Dudley and Julia have together. There is never a hint that Julia’s love for her husband is wavering and the movie goes out of its way to assure us that she is never tempted to betray the Bishop. But Dudley has fallen prey to his own ruse. By acting the part of the loving husband, he has reignited the Bishop’s desire but has fallen in love with Julia himself. Possessing the wisdom of an angel, he realizes that he cannot act on his human feelings and he departs having healed the marriage.


The movie ends with the Bishop regaining his lost sense of purpose, turning from pursuit of the cathedral to a mission of caring for the poor. It involves the transformation of Mrs. Hamilton as both she and the Bishop reject the worship of their idols. As Dudley has warned from the beginning, when his work is complete he will leave and no one will remember that they have been visited by an angel. While this seems to be the most fantastical plot element, it is actually the most truthful from the point of view of mimetic theory. All of us are influenced by another, in much the same way that the characters in the movie are influenced by Dudley. Dudley says that angels appear all the time to mankind giving them wonderful ideas which human beings then take credit for ourselves, refusing to acknowledge the existence of angels. In the same way we refuse to acknowledge the existence of models of any kind, insisting that if we love ourselves that love arose from within, if we have an idea to pursue this or that goal it arose from within is, if we love or hate someone that too arose from inside. As The Bishop’s Wife demonstrates, we may forget the angel was among us or deny the presence of models, but forgetting and denying do not change the reality of their existence and influence upon us. This incredible movie reveals both the presence of models and our denial of them using one marvelous image, an angel named Dudley. Far from a harmless diversion, this movie reveals the startlingly ways we all influence one another and offers a model for how that influence can be used for good. Dudley’s example challenges us all to gaze upon one another with open, unconditional love and in the process become angels ourselves.

View Suzanne's use of The Bishop's Wife to illustrate mimetic desire in the Mimetic Theory 101 blog.                ]]></description>
                <category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
                <pubDate>Wed, 29 Sep 2010 20:31:51 -0400</pubDate>
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                <guid isPermaLink="false">422-16</guid>
                <title><![CDATA[To The Teeth: thanks]]></title>
                                <link>http://www.ravenfoundation.org/rf-reviews/to-the-teeth</link>
                <description><![CDATA[
                                Thanks for the Ani lyrics and reviews.                ]]></description>
                <category><![CDATA[Music]]></category>
                <pubDate>Sat, 28 Aug 2010 03:36:57 -0400</pubDate>
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                <guid isPermaLink="false">427-15</guid>
                <title><![CDATA[Too Big To Fail: Mimetic theory at work, but not fully recongnized]]></title>
                                <link>http://www.ravenfoundation.org/rf-reviews/too-big-to-fail</link>
                <description><![CDATA[
                                The book is indeed full of mimetic behaviors and keywords (e.g. resentment, reputation, contagion, panic keep
recurring throughout the text) and vivid examples of scapegoating, I would just recall the sacrifice of Joe Gregory
(former Lehman COO) to buy Lehman some breathing space and the voluntary humiliation that Hank Paulson self-inflicted himself  in front of Nancy Pelosi to save the TARP deal and probably the world economy in the middle of Congressional panic.

However, the author fails to give explicit recognition of the mechanism at work shaping the players behaviors and actions, even though the whole book is built around finding a rational explanation for the "Lehman scapegoating" event.
                ]]></description>
                <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category>
                <pubDate>Wed, 19 May 2010 09:55:16 -0400</pubDate>
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                        <item>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">426-14</guid>
                <title><![CDATA[Paradigm: Ani can see it]]></title>
                                <link>http://www.ravenfoundation.org/rf-reviews/paradigm</link>
                <description><![CDATA[
                                By diagnosing politics today compared with her parents generation, Ani gets at a truth that transcends generations.
She warns of the slippery slope of believing without question by noting, "There's a paradox in every paradigm."

The following are the lyrics to the song.

I was born to two immigrants
Who knew why they were here
They were happy to pay taxes
For the schools and roads
Happy to be here
They took it seriously
The second job of citizenry
My mother went campaigning door to door
And holding to her hand was me

I was just a girl in a room full of women
Licking stamps and laughing
I remember the feeling of community brewing
Of democracy happening

But I suppose like anybody
I had to teach myself to see
All that stuff that got lost
On its way to church
All that stuff that got lost
On its way to school
All that stuff that got lost
On its way to the house of my family
All that stuff that was not lost on me

Teach myself to see each of us
Through the lens of forgiveness
Like we're stuck with each other (god forbid!)
Teach myself to smile and stop and talk
To a whole other color kid
Teach myself to be new in an instant
Like the truth is accessible at any time
Teach myself it's never really one or the other
There's a paradox in every paradigm

I was just a girl in a room full of women
Licking stamps and laughing
I remember the feeling of community brewing
Of democracy happening                ]]></description>
                <category><![CDATA[Music]]></category>
                <pubDate>Mon, 22 Mar 2010 20:30:59 -0400</pubDate>
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                        <item>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">422-13</guid>
                <title><![CDATA[To The Teeth: Ani's got it going on]]></title>
                                <link>http://www.ravenfoundation.org/rf-reviews/to-the-teeth</link>
                <description><![CDATA[
                                Ani so accurately assess what's going on in America at the turn of the century.  She sees through it all, and offers the alternative at the end to "go to Canada, and die of old age."  :)
Below are the lyrics to the song To The Teeth:

the sun is settin on the century
and we are armed to the teeth
we are all working together now
to make our lives mercifully brief
schoolkids keep trying to teach us
what guns are all about
confuse liberty with weaponry
and watch your kids act it out
every year now like Christmas
some boy gets the milk-fed sub-urban blues
reaches for the available arsenal
and saunters off to make the news
and women in the middle
are learning what poor women have always known
that the edge is closer than you think
when your men bring the guns home

look at where the profits are
that's how you'll find the source
of the big lie that you and i
both know so well
it the time it takes this cultural
death wish to run its course
they're gonna make a pretty penny
and then they're all going to hell
he said the chickens all come home to roost
yeah, malcom forecasted this flood
are we really gonna sleep through another century
while the rich profir off our blood?
true, it may take some doing
to see this undoing done
but in my humble opinion
here's what i suggest we do:

open fire on hollywood
open fire on MTV
open fire on NBC
and CBS and ABC
open fire on the NRA
and all the lies they told us
along the way
open fire on each weapons manufacturer
while he's giving head
to some republician senator

and if i hear one more time
about fool's rights
to his tools of rage
I'm gonna take all my friends
and I'm gonna move to Canada
and we're gonna die of old age                ]]></description>
                <category><![CDATA[Music]]></category>
                <pubDate>Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:30:17 -0500</pubDate>
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