dougist.com

Leaders lead from the podium. Those who say otherwise do not understand how leadership works. Regardless of your political stripes, few dispute that somewhere along the path of the last eight years George W. Bush stopped leading the country, primarily because he failed at the podium of public opinion.

President Obama has been something of national Rorschach inkblot test. People see in him what they want. His (fabulous) inauguration speech today was no different. Many will see in it what they want.

Here are my picks of favorite quotes. What do they say about me, and what does all this say about us?

Bill Peshel’s site reminds us of a the 1968 mud wrestling match between Bill Buckley and Gore Vidal. Since along with Jean Shepherd, WFB is one of my earliest media influences, I throw my two cents in the ring:

“Regardless of how one feels about his politics – and the terms arrogant, elitist, monarchial, papist all fit – Buckley was a force that influenced politics for decades.”

Why don’t prefabricated houses seem to work?

Architects from Wright to Gropius, and inventors such as Edison and Fuller couldn’t make them work. Even with all this visionary genius, prefabricated dwellings have been an oddity in the modern world and often historical artifacts.

This is the struggle that this Fall’s big show at the MoMA, “Home Delivery – Fabricating the Modern Dwelling” tries to overcome. While artists of all types continue to be drawn to pre-fab as a design platform, so far nothing seems to have worked.

More on the show and pre fabs as a model for urban experimentation…

Buckminster Fuller had Journals, so do I…

I wrote about the recent revival of interest in Buckminster Fuller stemming in large part from a major show at the Whitney, and about my own small personal discovery about Fuller’s impact on the iconography of our day.

A second, and perhaps more important reflection came as I walked the halls of the Whitney’s fourth floor exhibition space as I spent some time looking at bound volumes of Fuller’s notes.

Have you ever noticed that all representations of the future have no ninety degree angles? From EPCOT to Worlds Fairs oval and acute angles dominate. Why is that? It’s because of Buckminster Fuller.