"The effect of 40 years of deep fried industrial chicken pulp"

Lamenting the ubiquity of the seasonal "best of" lists, Our Man in Boston (aka Robert Birnbaum)—happy as he is to "skirt the perimeter of hypocrisy"—has done his very own list. We should hasten to add however, that unlike other lists ("one cannot avoid a suspicion of cynicism amongst the editors and editorial chosen who spew out this stuff") this list will "at least incite some brain activity."

And indeed it will, for featured on the list are all three titles from Verso's "Pocket Communism" series: Alain Badiou's Pocket Pantheon and The Communist Hypothesis and Boris Groys' The Communist Postscript.

Birnbaum closes his list quoting Joe Bageant, "How can the Americans remain so consistently brain-fucked?" Perhaps it's down to the "effect of 40 years of deep fried industrial chicken pulp." Whatever it is, a bit of Badiou and a bit of Groys will certainly help ...