A 27-year marriage ends and the coverage is about what the public felt
The Sydney Morning Herald asked readers to be honest about grieving a celebrity's divorce. Most of them were.
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Politics
AOC and the parasocial nature of politics
The Spectator asks whether a term coined in 1956 for soap opera characters works on a member of Congress. Yes, and that is the interesting part.
This is the one nobody in this field covers, because it is unfashionable to admit that a politician occupies the same place in a person's head as a character they love. Margery Kempe is my evidence for why this is not a modern degeneration. Binding is binding. If a stadium does it and a parliament does it, then the stadium and the parliament are the same room, and the only question left is who is holding it.
Notice, name, choose. That's the whole method.
The clerk's shelf - how this got here first
ESSAY
The Binding of Margery Kempe ↗Medieval binding as performance of self. EGSA 2011. Free to read.Sources
AOC and the parasocial nature of politics ↗
The Spectator Australia · 26 SEP 2026
Where this sits in the encyclopedia
BindingPerforming a self until the self holds, where it can be witnessed. Margery Kempe in white clothes in a world where widows wore black, weeping loudly…Consent in one-sided attachmentWhether a bond to somebody who does not know you exists can be a rights question at all.The political parasocialSupport for a politician structured as a personal bond rather than a policy preference, in a way that transfers poorly across candidates.
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