Embedding–great for videoclips, not so much for journalists or critical thinkers.
Unembed yourself.
Don’t completely identify with the representations that you most prefer.
Keep one foot out.
One of the difficulties with this critical distancing, or ironic stance, necessary, imho, for critical thinking, is that it is in tension with the activist need to present unalloyed support for whatever candidate or cause.
While I do believe that any Democratic president would be exponentially better than John McCain, and I am a Barack Obama supporter, I harbor only slim hope that a Dem president and a Dem congress will really accomplish our progressive goals. What will you do in 2012 if/when the Dems have once again disappointed us?
It is still important, imho, to try and progressivize electoral politics, but it is also necessary to keep a critical distance from the entire enterprise itself, indeed from the dominant values of “our” culture itself.
Since I came out, I have been especially active in trying to promote National Coming Out Day in the fall, World AIDS Day on December 1, and Out and Proud festivities at colleges and universities wherever I could reach them. The latter are usually in the Spring, since Gay Pride events usually are scheduled in the summer when activity on campus is light.
