The latest stupid thing Kathleen Hannah has said about something she doesn't seem to care about

I grew up loving Kathleen Hannah and everything she did. Total fanboy for the riotgrrrls and zine stars of my generation. Then she retired from doing the things she did to being interviewed about the things she used to do and what she thinks about stuff happening now like politics and blogging and how diff everything thing is.

and boy she sucks at it. Please go back to doing what you did: you know, leading by example and kicking ass.

Here's the latest stupid thing Kathleen Hannah has said about something she doesn't seem to care about:

The thing that's different between blogging and zines is that zines were supposed to be historical ... [zines] existed in this one specific time period. And the thing I sometimes don't like about blogs is that they are can seem really ahistorical ... I like the objectness.

In other words, Kathleen Hannah likes things she can hold, like a book or a zine, because she can hold them. YAWN. All that shit about "ahistorical" this and "objectness" that, well that's nonsense, really.

But then she addresses something she cares about and goes right back to awesome again. On Post-Feminism, Hannah says:

I'm so sick of the post-feminism thing. It's ridiculous. I want more interesting leaders. I think it is really hard for feminist women who are also interested in challenging all kinds of oppression is that we're freaked out about leadership, so there's not more interesting leaders. A lot of times we kill off our leaders, I mean not just because we're women, but we're in a culture where we create products and we destroy those products

She's absolutely spot on. We kill our (potential) leaders. We grind them into nothing and waste them. Especially our leaders who happen to be women. We take them and with all our society's zeal for sexism, we drag them through the dirt. We create and destroy products.

Yet there is something not-awesome in this claim. A lingering implicature. I don't know if I think that there aren't interesting feminist leaders around. Hannah implies that there aren't. Let's hope she doesn't think the 90s were some boom for feminists that we all let bust. I suppose she could be fully embracing her ego ideal here. I dunno.

This goes to the point of my post. When icons get old, they lose touch. Hannah's 90s rhetoric doesn't apply right now. I mean, telling young women (and men) that there aren't any interesting feminist leaders is ridiculous. There are leaders out there: young leaders. And they keep blogs, not zines. And they are fierce activists. Well, actually, many of them do publish zines. Anyway, I read them and I admire them. The more I think about it (while revising this post several times,) the more I feel she's hopelessly out of touch and doesn't know IT (what she's talking about) anymore. Either that, or she is a shitty pundit. I want to believe the latter not the former. I wish she'd stop doing these appearances. The nostalgia tour sucks and smells like death.

Anyway, when she talks about the zine culture and its history and music in the 90s, she is in her element and very engrossing. A Total Icon. When she talks like a pundit, she becomes a pundit: a boring spectacle of worn out celebrity who, apparently, would rather be dancing in some underground scene somewhere in her hipper than you old lady fashion.

Watch and fear her glasses: