The hilarity coming from Bratislava last week must have had the Slovaks rolling in the aisles. Imagine their excitement over the chance to host the statesmen who, as leaders of the Free World, are working (and praying) daily to advance the noble cause of democracy worldwide. The high-mindedness of it all was so moving, and then the Bush European Road Show hit its dramatic peak when the earnest clown in the ten-gallon hat met with his soul-brother Vlad Putin for a little heart-to-heart, as reported in Slate:
"The public comments, at least, were mostly make-nice talk, but Bush also shared what he called 'concerns about Russia's commitment' to democracy. Putin in turn described democracy as 'our final choice.' He added, 'Some of the ideas that I heard from my partner I respect a lot. Some other ideas, I will not comment on. Thank you.' At that, says the NYT, 'Mr. Bush started to chuckle, and Mr. Putin winked back.'"
Thank you, Chuckles and Winkie, bring on the dancing girls, folks, don't worry about a thing and have a good time. Everything's in good hands, they've got big deals to make, big companies to merge, and empires to build, so the little issues can wait till after business is done. It really brings out the patriot in me, witnessing these historic occasions - think Congress of Vienna, think Versailles, think Yalta - when Great Men make Great Decisions on behalf of all us appreciative little people, and lap-dog columnists compare them to the revered figures of our proud past.
It made me want to barf when journalists of some integrity, like David Broder, cranked out the party line in his column just before inauguration day. The buzz word du jour from Karl Rove and Co. was 'Wilsonian', and I distinctly heard Woodrow Wilson turning over in his grave in Princeton. I can understand the ideological cheerleaders Krauthammer and Kristol repeating the mantra. But if Broder at the Post and Thomas Friedman at the Times want any access in the future, they'd better play along on this one. And of course they do, as responsible professionals, swallow their principles just this once in order to go along and get along.
Just like chanting any affirmation - okay, think Stewart Smalley, the Al Franken character: I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it people like me! - if you repeat it over and over, people will believe it, which is as good as if it were true. [http://www.interluderetreat.com/meditate/affirm.htm] So repeat after me: the U.S. military and its corporate partners are taking over Iraq in order to spread the Good News of democracy. Again...
Monday, February 28, 2005
Monday, February 21, 2005
To blog or not to blog, that is the blogation
This thought has been rattling around long enough, and recent events make it timely. Which earth-shaking ideas - generated while in the shower, or stacking firewood, or sweeping the kitchen floor, or meditating - are suitable for blogging? [Answer: the ones generated while stacking wood, sweeping the floor, and meditating in the shower, of course.] I heard that someone, somewhere, got fired for writing something in their blog, the kind of rumor that could self-censor a million people instantly. So the reasoning goes: BE CAREFUL! Don't let it all hang out; edit yourself scrupulously - or as the far more subtle saying goes: Don't shit where you eat. Limits are not bad. As John Hartford said (in a song), "Style is based on limita-a-ation." No limits, no style.
In the middle of another, pre-election, conversation last year some time, Jack Spatula asked me which John Barth novel I was reading, and for some reason I wasn't ready to get into it just then (even though it was I who brought it up). The thing that was rattling around then was how Barth is always telling a story in which a character is telling a story, and sometimes the semi-autobiographical fictional characters are reflecting on the space between their present experience and their creative output - or lack thereof - and the tension it adds to both. Tension as in energy to put to use, but also tension as in angst, pain, doubt.
Barth makes it clear that he believes there is a difference between the life of the writer and the story, so let's not conflate the two by saying, postmodernly or post-structurally, that a life IS a narrative text, the present experience IS a creative act, and vice versa. While I'm not ready to go down that slippery slope, it does present some fun phenomenological and fictional possibilities - say THAT three times real fast! For now, I'm with Barth, pushing the literary envelope enough to poke some life into the fictional characters AND their doppelganger sitting at the keyboard, but keeping a permeable membrane between them.
Which brings me to what I really want to talk about, Hunter Thompson. How he lasted as long as he did is a wonder, but this week the world lost a singular character and a voice that won't be replaced any time soon. Hunter - can I call you Hunter? - knew no limits, or at least made it his business to transgress as many as possible, in public if possible, calling attention to the transgression as much as possible. Drug laws, normative ethics, common sense, journalistic conventions, race and class and party and genre lines. In short, he took pushing the writing envelope to new heights precisely by blurring or obliterating the distinction between the writer's life and the story.
It has become commonplace to say that he and others (somehow Tom Wolfe doesn't even belong in the same paragraph) stepped into the arena while reporting on it, rode on the Magic Bus, etc. etc. It took a really weird guy at a very weird time in Amerika to see that the bigger, richer, more vibrantly true story could only be told outside the lines, not by writing to please the editor, the publisher, the reader, the power broker, the patron, or to keep a job. Without being coy about it, Thompson played that angle for all it was worth, and he did it convincingly, sometimes despairingly, in the only way that could tap into the not-very-pretty stash in the trunk of Amerikan culture. Kids, do not try this at home.
In the middle of another, pre-election, conversation last year some time, Jack Spatula asked me which John Barth novel I was reading, and for some reason I wasn't ready to get into it just then (even though it was I who brought it up). The thing that was rattling around then was how Barth is always telling a story in which a character is telling a story, and sometimes the semi-autobiographical fictional characters are reflecting on the space between their present experience and their creative output - or lack thereof - and the tension it adds to both. Tension as in energy to put to use, but also tension as in angst, pain, doubt.
Barth makes it clear that he believes there is a difference between the life of the writer and the story, so let's not conflate the two by saying, postmodernly or post-structurally, that a life IS a narrative text, the present experience IS a creative act, and vice versa. While I'm not ready to go down that slippery slope, it does present some fun phenomenological and fictional possibilities - say THAT three times real fast! For now, I'm with Barth, pushing the literary envelope enough to poke some life into the fictional characters AND their doppelganger sitting at the keyboard, but keeping a permeable membrane between them.
Which brings me to what I really want to talk about, Hunter Thompson. How he lasted as long as he did is a wonder, but this week the world lost a singular character and a voice that won't be replaced any time soon. Hunter - can I call you Hunter? - knew no limits, or at least made it his business to transgress as many as possible, in public if possible, calling attention to the transgression as much as possible. Drug laws, normative ethics, common sense, journalistic conventions, race and class and party and genre lines. In short, he took pushing the writing envelope to new heights precisely by blurring or obliterating the distinction between the writer's life and the story.
It has become commonplace to say that he and others (somehow Tom Wolfe doesn't even belong in the same paragraph) stepped into the arena while reporting on it, rode on the Magic Bus, etc. etc. It took a really weird guy at a very weird time in Amerika to see that the bigger, richer, more vibrantly true story could only be told outside the lines, not by writing to please the editor, the publisher, the reader, the power broker, the patron, or to keep a job. Without being coy about it, Thompson played that angle for all it was worth, and he did it convincingly, sometimes despairingly, in the only way that could tap into the not-very-pretty stash in the trunk of Amerikan culture. Kids, do not try this at home.
Saturday, February 12, 2005
Water, part 2
Another nice, thick snowfall over the weekend gave me another chance to get out and shovel the walk. I didn't ski, and I didn't build a snowman in spite of perfect conditions, but I did take another look at that beautiful, wet, white stuff.
Rev. Susan told the kids in church a story about the hydrogen atoms in a glass of water. Apparently hydrogen atoms change very little in the course of time, so the hydrogen in the glass of water has been around for something like 13 billion years; we take part in the cycle of water by drinking it; containing it, and peeing it out; so a major portion of the little girl in the front row is 13,000,000,004 years old and a major portion of me just turned 13,000,000,054.
Hah! I feel just like a lad of 13,000,000,027!
Susan's purpose, I think, in talking about water in those terms is to get kids (including us big kids) to see themselves as physically and temporally connected to everybody and everything else in this fantastic hydrospheric cycle of life on Earth. And I do, when reminded.
Often this leads to metaphysical speculations and theories that I will not bore you with - unless prodded. And the putting to words of those speculations almost always bends them out of shape so much that they lose all sense, more reason to not go there. The thing I'm repeatedly reminded of - tangential to the watery, somatic existence on this watery, cosmic planet - is the futility of trying to name it, explain it, and pin it down with language.
Rev. Susan told the kids in church a story about the hydrogen atoms in a glass of water. Apparently hydrogen atoms change very little in the course of time, so the hydrogen in the glass of water has been around for something like 13 billion years; we take part in the cycle of water by drinking it; containing it, and peeing it out; so a major portion of the little girl in the front row is 13,000,000,004 years old and a major portion of me just turned 13,000,000,054.
Hah! I feel just like a lad of 13,000,000,027!
Susan's purpose, I think, in talking about water in those terms is to get kids (including us big kids) to see themselves as physically and temporally connected to everybody and everything else in this fantastic hydrospheric cycle of life on Earth. And I do, when reminded.
Often this leads to metaphysical speculations and theories that I will not bore you with - unless prodded. And the putting to words of those speculations almost always bends them out of shape so much that they lose all sense, more reason to not go there. The thing I'm repeatedly reminded of - tangential to the watery, somatic existence on this watery, cosmic planet - is the futility of trying to name it, explain it, and pin it down with language.
Friday, February 11, 2005
More Weight!
Keeping accounts: another way of talking about writing. Arthur Miller died today at age 89. He wrote arguably the greatest American play when he was in his thirties. He was a working-class Jew from New York who went to the University of Michigan, a place I have some attachment to. He worked hard, did well, took things seriously, wrote brilliantly, and succeeded in just about every way a man could. He was a big guy who didn't shirk the role of a man of letters during a national mudslide into fascist paranoia.
I heard on NPR that Miller built a shack in his yard so he would have a place to work, then wrote Death of a Salesman. I'd love to see the Lee J. Cobb version and then the Dustin Hoffman version, just to see how Willy Loman changed in a generation.
I'll never forget seeing The Crucible in Chicago in 1978 - I think it was Steppenwolf Theater - with my friend Edward Mellish. I told Edward that it struck me as just a bit Buddhist, the line near the end, "More weight! More weight!" when an old man, implicated only by his refusal to be a party to the witch-hunt, chooses to have stones piled on his chest and endure suffering rather than cause others to suffer. Edward thought it was more Christ-like, I guess, but Edward was very Episcopalian.
I came home by way of the credit union and closed my account, which still had $50 in it. A week ago I opened a new account at a different bank - open one, close one. I also sold a car this week but haven't found the replacement yet, so there's a missing piece in my account-keeping. I sat down at my desk to compute the balance, sort through some mail in preparation to do taxes, and separate the kids' documents from mine. I ate rice and beans, drank a Dead Guy Ale, put on a Benny Carter CD, started a fire in the stove, read a little, listened to Cowboy Junkies, worked out, walked the dog, and began to get back on an even keel in body and mind after a hectic and scattered day. Isn't this fascinating? I'm keeping accounts.
Just a disclaimer: I'm not Willy Loman, and my dad is not Willy Loman, although he was quite a salesman; I'm not Biff, and my son is not Biff, although he was quite an athlete. So it isn't personal in that sense. But sometimes when an artist passes, one who has made a difference, it's personal in a different way, especially when that artist stood up for something the way Arthur Miller stood up to McCarthyism.
I heard on NPR that Miller built a shack in his yard so he would have a place to work, then wrote Death of a Salesman. I'd love to see the Lee J. Cobb version and then the Dustin Hoffman version, just to see how Willy Loman changed in a generation.
I'll never forget seeing The Crucible in Chicago in 1978 - I think it was Steppenwolf Theater - with my friend Edward Mellish. I told Edward that it struck me as just a bit Buddhist, the line near the end, "More weight! More weight!" when an old man, implicated only by his refusal to be a party to the witch-hunt, chooses to have stones piled on his chest and endure suffering rather than cause others to suffer. Edward thought it was more Christ-like, I guess, but Edward was very Episcopalian.
I came home by way of the credit union and closed my account, which still had $50 in it. A week ago I opened a new account at a different bank - open one, close one. I also sold a car this week but haven't found the replacement yet, so there's a missing piece in my account-keeping. I sat down at my desk to compute the balance, sort through some mail in preparation to do taxes, and separate the kids' documents from mine. I ate rice and beans, drank a Dead Guy Ale, put on a Benny Carter CD, started a fire in the stove, read a little, listened to Cowboy Junkies, worked out, walked the dog, and began to get back on an even keel in body and mind after a hectic and scattered day. Isn't this fascinating? I'm keeping accounts.
Just a disclaimer: I'm not Willy Loman, and my dad is not Willy Loman, although he was quite a salesman; I'm not Biff, and my son is not Biff, although he was quite an athlete. So it isn't personal in that sense. But sometimes when an artist passes, one who has made a difference, it's personal in a different way, especially when that artist stood up for something the way Arthur Miller stood up to McCarthyism.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Personalize This!
All the lovely worker-friendly rhetoric being tossed around Washington (and several red states with blue senators) to sell the hijacking of Social Security makes you wonder how far they'll go - the private interests who have invested heavily in the current quasi-public regime - in privatizing the public sector. Why have a public sector at all in an "ownership society" if corporations can pull a friendly takeover of government functions and make a tidy profit? Move over, Jonathan Swift, I have a Modest Proposal.
Because we're so darn compassionate, let's "personalize" the Departments of Education, Labor, Interior, Energy, and Agriculture. Everybody knows the holy trinity of Capital, Competition, and Market Forces automatically create better schools for those who can afford them, a grovelling and obedient workforce, more efficient exploitation of wilderness wasteland, and corporate dominion over the flora and fauna. No more excessive regulation, no more bureaucratic red tape. Let the industry experts turn those backward institutions into lean, mean profit machines. That way, the people who have earned the right to enjoy schools, employment benefits, parks, natural resource extraction, and farm production can buy them free of government interference. Oh. They already did? Sorry.
Moving right along, a bold strategy for the twenty-first century would include "personalizing" the EPA, FDA, Health and Human Services, Medicare, Medicaid, Treasury, and best of all, the Justice Department. Rather than just using the old revolving door trick where corporate executives trade places with regulatory officials, just eliminate the guvmint middleman and let manufacturers of food, drugs, cars, apparel, electronics, and widgets self-regulate, thus freeing up resources for making, selling, and consuming more stuff. The costly products and services - like legal and medical expertise - would be readily available to those who deserve and can afford it, without the inherent inefficiency of providing it free to those who can't pay. What? You want a hand-out? Buy your own hospital.
But the crown jewel of this new, improved, profitable government would be the personalized State and Defense Departments. Foreign policy and the military have been in the hands of the Washington elite for too long! Citizens will have the option of investing part of their earnings in the next War to Spread Democracy (WSD), or peace talks for you low-stakes investors, or arms deals with paying customers in cash-rich countries - now there's a sure-fire investment. Personalized foreign policy means your dollars buy shares in the New American Century, and as a stakeholder in freedom, you can help send some other poor schmuck out there in whatever equipment is handy to do the dirty work for you.
Because we're so darn compassionate, let's "personalize" the Departments of Education, Labor, Interior, Energy, and Agriculture. Everybody knows the holy trinity of Capital, Competition, and Market Forces automatically create better schools for those who can afford them, a grovelling and obedient workforce, more efficient exploitation of wilderness wasteland, and corporate dominion over the flora and fauna. No more excessive regulation, no more bureaucratic red tape. Let the industry experts turn those backward institutions into lean, mean profit machines. That way, the people who have earned the right to enjoy schools, employment benefits, parks, natural resource extraction, and farm production can buy them free of government interference. Oh. They already did? Sorry.
Moving right along, a bold strategy for the twenty-first century would include "personalizing" the EPA, FDA, Health and Human Services, Medicare, Medicaid, Treasury, and best of all, the Justice Department. Rather than just using the old revolving door trick where corporate executives trade places with regulatory officials, just eliminate the guvmint middleman and let manufacturers of food, drugs, cars, apparel, electronics, and widgets self-regulate, thus freeing up resources for making, selling, and consuming more stuff. The costly products and services - like legal and medical expertise - would be readily available to those who deserve and can afford it, without the inherent inefficiency of providing it free to those who can't pay. What? You want a hand-out? Buy your own hospital.
But the crown jewel of this new, improved, profitable government would be the personalized State and Defense Departments. Foreign policy and the military have been in the hands of the Washington elite for too long! Citizens will have the option of investing part of their earnings in the next War to Spread Democracy (WSD), or peace talks for you low-stakes investors, or arms deals with paying customers in cash-rich countries - now there's a sure-fire investment. Personalized foreign policy means your dollars buy shares in the New American Century, and as a stakeholder in freedom, you can help send some other poor schmuck out there in whatever equipment is handy to do the dirty work for you.
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