Still in mourning for Buffy. Over the past few months, I've watched the first five seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD. The sixth came out recently, and it sits on my shelf. But the 7th and final season isn't even listed on Amazon yet. I can't bring myself to start the 6th season. Those 23-or-so episodes that make up a season always seem, somehow, to get consumed over so short a period that I can't possible have had the hours in the day to watch them. And after I finish the 6th season, I've have no DVD-supported denial about Buffy's inexplicable absence.

In preparation for seeing Fahrenheit 9/11 this weekend I finally took a look at Stupid White Men. Moore seems to have rediscoved an old argument made famous by Bertolt Brecht: that the average guy's astounding facility with sports trivia points to an underlying intelligence that has been misdirected by mass culture. Reading Moore, I get the impression that this is an idea that, a few years ago, was being batted around quite a bit. But... ah... no mention of Brecht? 

Ok, this is an easy game to play: you can trace back so many ideas to sources not cited. But the Brecht things just gets to me.

Funny to see a quasi-reversal of Brecht's argument from Matthew Yglesias. He's wondering why women don't seem to like poliblogs or other types of political publications:

I'm a bit surprised that there hasn't been more discussion of the overwhelmingly male (on the order of 80%) cast of political blog readership. At first glance, one might think of this as an internet issue, related to hardy perennials regarding women and technology in general, but I think it's a manifestation of the broader fact that women don't seem very interested in politics...

So I have no idea why that is, and it probably has some deep and mysterious roots out there somewhere. On the other hand, one thing I've long thought is that following politics is less the manifestation of high-minded concern for public affairs that we junkies would like to think of it as, and more like sports fandom -- a semi-arbitrary decision to follow something and develop an emotional attachment to a team just because it's fun.

So while Brecht sees sports enthusiasm as evidence of capabilities that could be directed to something "higher" -- the political realm -- Yglesias seems to argue that even if these abilities are redirected, they are not "elevated." Politics retains its idle sportfullness.

This is probably exaggerating Yglesias's position, and I'm not even sure how serious he is. It was just the Brecht reversal that caught my attention.