Thursday, August 07, 2008

There I go again, talking about the context

Wherein no subtext intended though you are free and encouraged to read as much as you want into it Basically I happened to read these two within minutes of each other


In one context, reader_iam said:
reader_iam said...
And he hasn’t paid his dues in the Senate, since he basically just stopped by for directions to the Oval Office.

I do rather like that line of Dowd's.

In another context, Paul Westerberg said (The Replacements: All over but the Shouting):
Where is it written? Where is it written that you have to pay your dues before [you make a record]?

2 Comments:

Blogger Chance said...

I have always hated the concept of "paying your dues," and the companion solecism "selling out." Neither one of them means anything.

And, reading challenge accepted.

8/07/2008 11:36:00 PM  
Blogger XWL said...

Sure, context and all, but the subtext regarding the intersection of Maureen Dowd and Paul Westerberg would be that both were trying to create an unconscious connection in their readers/listeners minds between their works and those of the proto-feminist 17th century playwright Aphra Behn and both Dowd and Westerberg slyly implant allusions to her works (which are so obvious, I'm not going to bother pointing them out here, but every one knows that The Replacements Hootenanny is really a reworked version of Behn's The Rover, while Dowd's pieces about Obama have embedded within them frequent references to Behn's novel Oroonoko).

8/08/2008 08:45:00 PM  

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