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Reader'sGuideto"TheTwoTowers"
Thetitle"TwoTowers"makesitsoundlike
thispartoftheadventureisespeciallydaunting,
ominous.Theadventurershavetocontendwith
twocircumferencesofevilinfluence,both
linked.Butthereadersoondiscoversthatthe
2
twotowersarehardlyinunion:Sarumanseeks
claimoftheRinghimself,andisnottheleast
bitactuallyservingdeferentiallytoSauron;and
Sauronknowsthisabouthimbutfindshima
usefulenoughagentnevertheless,atleastfor
thetimebeing.Saruman,thoughofcourseas
oldasthehillsasSauronis,isreasonablynew
tothebeingEvilgame(thoughTreebeard
suspectsalongertenureship,invisibleto
everyoneforbeingcontrivedinhiding),while
Sauronis"oldhat."The"TwoTowers"endsup
beingasmuchaboutthistherivalrybetween
thenewlyrisingandlongestablishedorder
asitisaboutthetwodifferentthreatsimposed
inthepathwayoftheFellowship,atheme,a
concern,whichappliesfarbeyondSarumon's
relationshipvisavisSaurontoinclude
assemblingalliesofthegoodandmembers
withinthenowdisparateventuringpartsofthe
formerFellowship.Itthatis,aconcernthat
theoldordernotbybreached;thatpeoplenot
startthinkingthingswithperhapsdestabilizing
implicationsforthesocialorderseems
3
concernedinthissensetoprotectbotheviland
goodinthisbook:it'sanoverridingconcern,
makinganyactofbravery,initiative,orspirited
intuition,justasoftensomethingtobedealt
withandhandledi.e.subtlyorstarkly
diminishedimmediately,thansomething
worthpraiseandsupport.Anoutpouringofan
eagerwillingnesstopraiseortolendstrong
support,infact,ismoreoftentocomeoutof
expressionsofdoubtandadmittanceoforclear
evidenceoffailure,thanfromsuccessfully
accomplishedfeat,whichislookedtowarilyif
itcantbeimmediatelypackagedassomething
asasdemonstrativeofoneslimitationsas
onespotential.
ThebookbeginswithAragorn,Gimliand
Legolasfullofdoubt,veeringnearastateof
despondency."Nowthecompanyisallinruin,"
Aragornsays."ItisIthathasfailed.Vainwas
Gandalf'strustinme.[...]WhatshallIdo
now?"Hegetshisanswertosomeextentbythe
particulardirectionhisheartpointshim
towards,butalsoseeminglyindecidingfor
4
modesty,forthemoremodestofthetwopaths
heneedstochoosebetweengrantthemain
coursetoFrodoandSam,andtakethepaththat
isa"smalldeedinthegreatdeedsofthistime"
(416):somehowgoodnessliestherein.ThisI
thinkisthelasttimeoneeverhearsofAragorn
admonishinghimselfasalimitedfigureinthe
text,andofseekingtoventureawayfrom
glory;inretrospect,itseemsalmosta
ceremonialgestureinthattheonewhoisabout
toserveaskingoverallofMiddleearth,first
begshimselfassomeonewhoneverforgetsthat
hisgreatestdeedshavebeenbestedbyeven
greaterkingsbeforehim,andthathehas
knowndoubt,failure,andevenmomentsof
despondency,asmuchasanyman.Hereafter
heneveropenlyreduceshimselfthoughupon
GandalfsreturntotheFellowship,Gandalf
doesschoolhimtodoubthimselfnofurther
evenifothersmistakenlybelievetheyseehim
inreducedformi.e.,hiswearingameregrey
cloakintothehallsofMedusheldandthekey
dramaticactionconcerninghimisinfinitely
5
morehisrising,andintosomeformof
greatnessthatdauntseveryoneintermsof
staturepowerandmajestyofkingsof
stone(423)andaccessibility:nonenowof
thelandofthelivingcantellhispurpose
(780).Henceforth,outsideofbeing
momentarilyspellcaughtbySaruman,any
changeonhispartistomakehimthatmuch
moreevidentasakinglymanofhighdestiny
(780).
Aragornisventuringonapaththatwillnot
actuallyhavehimrescueMerryandPippen
TreebeardandtheRidersdothatbutrather
onlyestablishinghimselfamongstother
denizensofMiddleearthasthegreatking
returned.Ultimatelyit'snotbyanymeansa
paththatsimplylendsdistinctiontoFrodoand
Sam's,buthisjourneyannounced,atthevery
least,asamodestonedoesworktohighlight
theoutwardlyboldpresumptionofthosenext
discussedinthetextSarumons,andhis
servantsofwhomoneofthemisparticularly
vile.Notethatbold,brazenthoughtandaction
6
isbynomeansdueforcriticisminthetext.Not
atall,infactforevenSaruman'siscarefully
done.Muchof"TwoTowers"isrepletewithit,
boldactionthatgoesuncriticizedoratleast
byanyonegiventextualauthority...byanyone
whomatters.Aragorn,afterdecidingfinallyon
whichcoursetotake,switchesentirelyoutof
beingmomentarilyfretfultosimply
announcinghimselffromoutofhidingupona
wholehordeofridingRohan'horsemen,andin
suchastarkandunexpectedmanner"What
newsfromtheNorth,RidersofRohan?"that
it'snosurprisetheRohaniansconsiderthem
possiblynetweaversand(evil)sorcerers,after
havingfirstthoughtthempossiblyOrcs.The
pathFrodoandSamchoseforthemselvesisnot
tobeassessedasonlyastrangedeed,as
Gimliinitiallyjudgesit,butonlyasabrave
deed:sostatesAragorn.Pippendaresdrophis
elfgiven(andsodoublydaring)broochsohis
trailcouldbefollowedandheandMerrybe
knownasbothaliveandalerttothefriends
hopefullyonpathtorescuethem.Gandalfis
7
referencedashavingstolenahorsefromunder
TheodenstheRohan'Kingsnose,
cheatinghimofhisholdsgreatestprizewhen
hemeantonlytoofferatypicalsampling.Sam,
atthefinishofthe"TwoTowers,"succeedsin
stabbingthegreatmonsterspiderShelob,
somethingnoone,notevengreatGondor
warriorsofwhom,they'remaynotevenhave
beenbutafewhadpreviouslysucceededin
doing.Alloftheseboldundertakingsare
conveyedasactionstoberespectedand
celebrated,unreservedly.Innotasinglecaseis
anyonewhoundertakessuchboldactionmeant
tobeseenasdeservingthepunishmentthat
mighthaveneverthelessbeendealtthemfor
undertakingthemnoneofthemqualifiesas
thesortofunwarrantedclaim,thesortof
laviciousaction,thatshouldbesoslammed
downsoharditamountstoamorallesson
othersmustheed.
Theharshmorallesson,"theburnedhand
teachesbest,"ishoweverappliedtoanybold
advancemadeevenbysomeoneinverygood
8
standing,ifitmightlendonetoreconsiderthe
righteousnessofthesocialorderthatthe
returnedkingissettorestore.Whileheld
captivebytheOrcs,Pippindecidesthathe
shouldn'thavelethimselfbedauntedbythe
factthatthecompanyhedbeinwouldbe
composedofsuchhighcompany,andrather
himselfundertakentolearnsomeofthe
availableknowledgeconcerninggeographythat
wasavailableinRivendalesohewouldnthave
beenasshortchangedwhencaughtoutalone.If
thiswassimplyhisbeinginvolvedinself
reprimandinvolvedinaturningagainst
himself:whatafoolyouare,Pippin!thetext
wouldhavefoundnotrespasshere.Butitisnt.
Heisarguingtohimselfthatnocompany
shouldeverdauntone.Thatyoushouldmake
anassessmentofyourlikelyneedsandkeep
faithwithit,evenifothersaroundyouareof
suchstaturethatwithoutexplicitlystatingit
theirpresenceseemstoinsistonyoursuddenly
forsakingyourselfanhonestassessmentofhow
besttoequipyourself.Pippen,informedbythis
9
actofselfcorrection,notselfreprimand,seems
tobetheonewemeetsubsequentlywhileatthe
footSarumon'stowerwhenhedecidestomake
claimtoafallenobjectthepalantirieven
afterbeingimmobilizedbyspellchanting
Sarumanasbutakidthatdoesn'tdeservetobe
atthesceneatall,andwhichpersistsevenafter
haughtywhiteGandalfreprimandshimfor
independentlymakingagrabatanobjecthe
hadntyetbeeninstructedtoretrieve."Half"of
thiswassupposedtobethewilloftheRing,
butreally,thetextaccordsthatthehalfthatwas
Pippin'sownwasjustassuspect,forit'sa
recognitionofselfruleeveryone'sintrinsic
rightnottobeintimidatedawayfromaclaim
theymadeanindependentjudgmentofas
earnedandjustified:aphilosophyantithetical
toanysocialorderheadedbyaking.
"Fortunately,"thepalantiritakesPippenfora
horridride,and"fortunately"thepalantirilater
isusedsuccessfullybyoneoftheFellowship
Aragorn,ofcoursewhocandemonstratethat
thisisaworld,notofthosewhoerroneously
10
leachthemselvesofpersonalresponsibilityand
theresponsiblewhodont,butoneoflegitimate
claimsandofillegitimateclaims,andyoudont
actsomuchtoabsolveoneselfofpassivitybut
tolearnastowhichofthesetwogroupingsyou
properlybelongtheonethatshouldtake
action,thatshouldlead,ortheonethatreally
oughtjustsitonitshandswhenbettersare
around,actingonlyifandwheninstructed.Ifit
burnsyou,andifsomeoneofas
unquestionabletextualauthorityasGandalfand
Arathorndeemsthatyouhaditcoming,then
itllserviceasevidencethatnexttimeyou
thinkyourselfguiltyoftoomuchpassivityand
toolittleinitiative,youreprobablydoingonly
whatpeopleofyourlimitedcapabilityaredue
for.Dontstrivetodobetternexttime;justdeal
withyouraccordedlotforitwasjustlydealt.
Sam,whileupheldinthetextasatleastina
certaincircumstanceassuperiortoeveryother
entitythateverchallengedthemightofa
demigod,isnotsosustainedwhilebeginningto
havedoubtsconcerningFrodo.Thetexttakes
11
humorinSam'scomicalinversionofthe
naturalsocialorderwhenheaddressesFaramir
asifhewasadmonishingayounghobbitforhis
"sauce,"forit'saninstanceofinversionwhich
instantlydemonstratestherightnessofthe
regularorderoftheappropriatenessof
Faramir'sretortafterwards,"Sitbyyourmaster,
andbesilent!"Thetextisnot,however,so
casualwithSambeginningtothinkFrodoabit
toosoftonGollum,forherethereisatrespass
onwhatmightbemistookbymanyasa
righteousreasonfortakingcharge,fortaking
commandawayfromthosegivenit,which
wouldhavedeepreverberationsforthesocial
order.There'sasenseinthetextthatnotjust
Sambutmanyreadershavebeenluredfar
alongenoughinasuspicionsothatwhenitis
quit,shownupforgood,anarisingdoubtbuilt
onsomethingimplicitlyweakseemingabout
therightofacurrenthierarchytoitsplaceof
rulershiphasbeendealtwith,andtherefore,a
guaranteedlonginterimfreeofchallenge.This
something,alludedtoatthebeginningofthe
12
textbyoneofSauronsagentsastheonetrait
noteventheirworstiscursedwith,is
"kindness":FrodoisSam's"rightfulmaster,not
justbecauseheismorewiseandgenteel,which
aretraitspossessedbythelikeofSauron,for
instance,butbecauseheismoreintrinsically
kind;AragornisEowyn'srightfulmaster,not
justbecauseheiswiserandmoremightythan
he,notjustbecausehehasbettermanners"I
spokeonlyasdoallinmeninmyland,andI
wouldgladlylearnbetter"thanhe,but
becauseheiskinder,lessharsh,thanhe.
Kindnessisnot,however,somethingasimple
personmightmistakeitfor:it'snotintrinsically
connectedwithweakness,withblindness,
howevermuchthetwocanbeconnected(read
whathappenstoTheodonsRhodanwhen
Theodenistooopenandpermissivei.e.,it
makesitselffullyopentothemachinationsof
Wormtongue).It'sactuallytwinnedwitha
largerdegreeofforesightthanthesimpleare
usuallycapableofconceivingof,asperfor
exampleGandalfinstructingFrodoonwhat
13
respectandpitycanlendinyouinsurprise
whendealingwiththoseostensiblyworthonly
beingslain,giventheirbeingaccustomedto
associatereceptivitytootherspainsonlywith
apeculiarwillingnesstoselfdesignateyourself
openforothers'usageandplunder.Andit
requiresaremindernowandthenofhowitis
actuallynotatallnecessarilythatastupidly
offeredgenerosityinformedofdivine
aspirationbutfoundedonignorancethatits
actuallyinformedoutoffullknowledgeofthe
guilesoftheweak,andisbynomeansa
capitulationtoanyofthem,sothatthosedue
respectnotfindthemselvesinadvertentlyheld
inpoorregardbytheirservants.
Evenanentityasgreatandimportantas
Treebeardgetsahemmingin,acorrection,
whenheadvancesonadangerousconclusion
builtoutofwhatthetextneededtosupply,but
foranotherpurpose.ThegreatwizardSaruman
mustbesoundlydeflatedinthetextsothathe
doesn'tserveasanargumentthatthe"uppity,"
thosewhodgoforchangethatisntgradual
14
andtotheapprovalofeldersbutwidespread,
allofasudden,andshockingtoall,sometimes
havegoodgroundforthinkingthemselves
superiortoallwhoveexistedbeforethem.So
weareinstructedthatSarumanwasapotent
captainbuthewasonlyeverbutSauron's
servant,evenashethoughthimselffullyhis
ownmasterandinprocessofadvancing
himselfsuccessfullyasSauronsaswell;that
hewasonlycreatingonlyacopyofSauron's
constructions,evenashesawhimselfasabold
originator;andthathisawesometower,
indestructibleeventoEntsOrthancwas
outsidethebuildingacumenofeitheroftheir
might.AndTreebeardisaccordedbyAragorn
ascorrectinfurtherassessingSarumonas
lackingingritandrawcourageaswell.But
afterthatTreebeardsdenunciationofSarumon
isstoppedshortbyAragorn,because,itreally
doesbegintoseem,whatisflawedconcerning
Sarumancannotbeallowedtogosoprofoundly
deepthatithasimplicationsforallotherswith
ostensiblyironcladclaimsongreatness,and
15
that'stheterritoryTreebeardbeginstostepinto.
Heventures,"Iwonderifhisfamewasnotall
alongmainlyduetohisclevernessinsettlingat
Isengard,"whichisasuggestionthatwhathe
wasactuallyforemostskilledatwaspullingthe
wooloverotherpeople'seyes.Hesgoingin
thesamedirectionherethatBoromirwaswhen
hewonderedofGaladrielspurposes,gauging
herperhapsonlyeverfullofdeceptionand
guile.AndsoAragornexpoundsonthis
trespassintoEvil,that"No.[...]Oncehewasas
greatashisfamemadehim.Histhoughtswere
deep,hisknowledgewassubtle,andhishands
marvelouslyskilled[...]."Yes,ofcoursehe
was,otherwiseGandalf,Elrond,Galadrieland
Aragornhimselfareeitherthoroughfoolsor
agentsofdeliberatemischief,forsolong
arguinghimotherwise.Andofcoursehewas,
forotherwisetheseotherthree"great"
individualsmightperhapsbethemselves
revealedasofthesameactualmakeupone
large,longpermittedblowupofwhatactually
amountstonothing.Allthiswouldbeseditious
16
thoughtofthehighestorder,soeventhegreat
Treebeardsuffersaburnofakind,evenifnot
ofcoursealiteralone,andevenifits
singingisminor.
IfSamhadn'trealizedthatFrodowassowise
andsofarbeyondhimthatitwasreallyalways
wisetojusttrusthim,ifPippinhadn'tsaidthat
subsequentlyafterhis"burning"awholeplatter
oftemptingpalantiriscouldbeputbeforehim
andhewouldn'ttouchanyofthem,and
followedthroughwiththissomuch
subsequentlythatallhe'sdoinginregardsto
Gandalfafterwardsisapologizingforhis
initiativesandcastingdoubtonthem,if
Treebeardhadn'timmediatelystoppedthe
denunciationofSarumanandlefttheextentof
characterwinnowingwhereAragornand
Gandalfwouldcomfortablyhaveit,thentheir
fateswouldnotsubsequentlyhavegoneas
describediswhatonecomestogatherfrom
thewillatworkinthetext.IfSamhaddecided
thatFrodowasstillguiltyofnotsufficiently
countenancingtheextentofGollum'sthreatand
17
thereforehadbecomehimselfathreattothe
successoftheirallimportantmission,a
conclusionwhichleadtohimjudgingthathe
shouldproperlybetheonecarryingtheRing
beforecircumstancesinthetexti.e.,Frodo's
incapacitationnecessitatedthisofhim,he
wouldn'thavebeentherecipientofsojoyous
anaccountingofhiminhisdefeatofSherob
thatforamomenthewasalegitimatetriumph
overmosteverywarrioronMiddleearth,but
rathersomeoneunderminedasbeingmerely
lucky,andactuallyinfactprobably
wholeheartedlybattleincompetentnotworth
ataleatallinanyone'sbook,noteventhe
smallest...orrather,hemightjustbeenvictim
toplotchangedoneinapiqueofangerand
foundhimselfquicklystabbedatbySheroband
mercilesslyeaten.IfMerryhadn'tacceptedin
hisownmindthattherewasanylegitimate
differencebetweenhisboldgestureofdropping
hisbroachtoinformhisthreeostensible
friendlypursuersofhisongoinghealthandhis
quicklyjudgedandquickfingeredretrievalof
18
thedroppedartifactthatwasonitswayto
beinglosttoall,ifhehadn'tperhaps
understoodthathis"rightful"claimtoitwasas
halfbakedaformulationaswasGollum'sclaim
totheRingashis"present,"hewouldn'thave
foundhimselfsokindlyreceivedbyGandalf
andmerelydroppedanotchinafamiliarway
inbeinglikenedtoapawninthecompanyof
greaterpiecesandsubsequentlydirectedabout
afterhavinghadinadvertentlystolenGandalf's
duelimelightbybeingtheonehonoredby
Denethor'scourtandpersonalinterrogation,but
rathertoldthatthat'swhathegetsfor
proclaiminghimselfequaltoallwhenactually
soundeserving,andratherthanbeingspared
beingforcedtosingatcourthedoffound
himselftransformedintofullyspentsongbird.
IfTreebeardhadn'tacceptedAragorn's
assessmentofSarumanandinsteadpursuedhis
considerationsonwardtowardsconcludinghim
ashavingalwaysbeenafraud,hewouldn't
havebeenaswarmlyexcusedbyGandalffor
hiseventuallylettinghisprisonerSarumango,
19
butinformedmoreoftheinevitable
consequencesofhisclumsymismanagement,
includingSarumon'sravagingofthetreeloving
hobbitpopulation...and,ofcourse,ofallthe
deadtreesincurredinhispursuitofmakingthe
Shireahaveninsteadforbrickfactories,and
therebydrivenTreebeardinsaneingrief,
longingfortheelvestoreturntonumbhim
backintostupiditybeforetheyleftMiddle
earth,anactofpitywhichtheyofcoursewould
spurnhimforhavingrecklesslypursuedaline
ofthoughtthatcouldhaveallthecommons
doubtinghowwellearnedeveryoneofthe
greatsreputationactuallywas,andsohadtheir
wholegreatraceaswellhoistedontheirown
petardsbeforetheyhadtheirchancetomakea
gracefuldeparture,atatimeoftheirown
choosing.
Allofthem,inshort,wouldhavebeenmade
subjecttothedarkfateviciouslybutabsolutely
selfrighteously,inflictedin/bytextupon
Wormtongue.Ifyou'relookingforthegreatest
losersinthetexttheones,notwhodiebut
20
whosufferhumiliationsnoonecouldbear
livingwithforlongyoucanskipboth
SarumonandSauron,forSaruman'spreference
thathealwaysremainamaster,thathenever
becomeanyone'sservant,evenasifabandons
himofGandalf'shelpandleaveshimhavingto
counterthemightofnineNazgulwhichhe
mightactually,accordingtothetext,have
managedtodoisexactly,what?butof
coursethetypicalstubbornnessandprideof
wizards,andSauroniscaughtoffguardatthe
endbutwhoseweaknessesareheavilyqualified
sothattheyareonlyweaknessesthatabidea
certainkindofgreatgeniusanevilone,an
egotisticalone.TheonestolooktoareGollum
(thoughheforawhilegetsanotablereprieve),
theOrcGrishnakh(whoplaysaWormtongue
toUgluk'sGandalf:purepowerandsure
directionagainstanendlesslycastigating
spittingsnake),theMessengerofMordor,and,
well,MerryandespeciallyPippin,butno
onemorethanWormtongue.Asageneralrule,
ifthetextstartslikeningonetoacornered
21
animaloraninsolentchild,youforgetallthe
text'sostensiblyfidelityto"pity"andbe
assuredthetextwantsyoualiveonlysothatthe
humiliationsyousufferhavemuchmoretime
todiginandfester.Soifitdescribedyoulike
this:"Hisfacewastwistedwithamazementand
angertothelikenessofsomewildbeastthat,as
itcrouchesonitsprey,issmittennotthe
muzzlewithastingingrod,"asitdoesthe
MessengerofMordor,thenifGandalfhasto
stopsomeonefromsmitingyouinthenameof
secondchancesandpity,it'sgoingtoamount
toaforcedefforttosaytheleast.Ifitbeginsto
describeyouasa"greedychildstoopingovera
bowloffood"...asitappliestoPippin,you'd
betterinsomewaydesistinwhatyou'redoing,
learnamorallessonfromdoingitthatyou
never,ever,forget,andquick,oryou'llgetthe
verysame.Andifitdescribesyouas,"Inhis
eyeswasthehuntedlookofabeastseeking
somegapintheringofhisenemies,"andas
"comingoutofahut[...]almostlikeadog,"
thenyou'reabsolutelyf*cked,becausethen
22
you'reWormtongue,andthenyou'reasnake,a
kickeddog,andperhapsevenabuggeredchild
whatalldoesSarumandotohimbehind
closeddoors,afterhisstupiditycostshimthe
palantiri,tomakehimabsolutely,completely
snap?andtheworldhastoliterallystopso
thatallyourpoisonousfluidscanclearedfrom
thepathsandthepossibilitythatyoucould
havematedwithatreasuredprincess,
fumigatedoutofeveryone'sbrain.
WhathappenstoWormtongueiswhatyouget
inthetextifyoubreechonsomeoneelse's
powerandthetexthasn'talreadyanointedyou
assomeoneoffirmlyestablishedworthif
antiSemiticlexicon,ifyou'retheJewinthe
Europeancourt.Toavoidhisfate,yougothe
routeofHanawhenGandalfrunsoffagain,
doinghisfavouritebitof"ever[...]goingand
comingunlookedfor,"andtakeadvantageof
someoneelse'sseditiousdoubt
"Wormtongue,werehehere,wouldnotfindit
hardtoexplain"tomakeclearyoucouldn't
hencefortheverbedriventodoubthim:"Iwill
23
waituntilIseeGandalfagain."OrofEowyn,
afterhavingaccostedAragorn,admittinghis
comparativesmallnessandpledgingto"gladly
learnbetter"fromhisbetters.Youhavetoin
effectactprettymuchlikeGollum's"whipped
cur[...]whoispiteouslyanxioustoplease,"in
ordertobeallowedinthetextastatusthat
preventsitbeingpointedout.It'squitethegrim
waytoownpeople,butsuchis"TwoTower's"
Middleearth:caughtinadoublebind,sothat
anelderorderneedn'tworry.
FINISHOFAREADER'SGUIDETO"THE
TWOTOWERS"
CODA(fromLloydDeMause's"Emotional
LifeofNations")
WhenAdolfHitlermovedtoViennain1907at
theageofeighteen,hereportedinMein
Kampf,hehauntedtheprostitutesdistrict,
fumingattheJewsandforeignerswho
directedtherevoltingvicetrafficwhich
defiledourinexperiencedyoungblondgirls
24
andinjectedpoisonintothebloodstreamof
Germany.
Monthsbeforethisbloodpoisondelusionwas
formed,Hitlerhadtheonlyromantic
infatuationofhisyouth,withayounggirl,
Stefanie.HitlerimaginedthatStefaniewasin
lovewithhim(althoughinrealityshehad
nevermethim)andthoughthecould
communicatewithherviamentaltelepathy.He
wassoafraidofapproachingherthathemade
planstokidnapherandthenmurderherand
commitsuicideinordertojoinwithherin
death.
Hitlerschildhoodhadbeensoabusivehis
fatherregularlybeathimwithahippopotamus
whip,onceenduring230blowsofhisfathers
caneandanothertimenearlykilledbyhis
fatherswhippingthathewasfullofrage
towardtheworld.Whenhegrewup,hissexual
feelingsweresomixedupwithhisrevenge
fantasiesthathebelievedhisspermwas
poisonousandmightenterthewomans
25
bloodstreamduringsexualintercourseand
poisonher.
HitlersrageagainstJewishbloodpoisoners
was,therefore,aprojectionofhisownfears
thathemightbecomeabloodpoisoner.Faced
withthetemptationofthemorepermissive
sexualityofVienna,hewantedtohavesexwith
women,butwasafraidhisspermwouldpoison
theirblood.Hethenprojectedhisownsexual
desiresintoJewsTheblackhairedJewboy
liesinwaitforhours,satanicjoyinhisface,for
theunsuspectinggirlandendedupaccusing
Jewsofbeingworldbloodpoisonerswho
introducedforeignbloodintoourpeoples
body.
26
27
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-
Wysdd5gbuEU/WKI5B6Jb88I/AAAAAAAABA8/HbvdxgoHNjopnjRALEG8PbZ7
X7mhSDmmwCK4B/s1600/the-fellowship-of-the-ring-lord-of-the-rings-
2301456-960-404.jpg
READERNOTESTOTOLKIENS
FELLOWSHIPOFTHERING
IfIhadtosupply"readernotes"to
FellowshipoftheRing,itwouldbeas
follows.
Tobegin,Iwoulddrawthereadertothink
alittlemoreonthecharacterofLobelia,
thewouldbeShirematriarchwhois
astoundedthatBilbohasmanagedtokeep
hispropertyfromheralltheseyears.She's
playedforfuninthispartofthebook,but
28
thereadershouldnoteshe'snonethelessa
bittoovisibletoconvinceoneentirelythat
she'sjusttheretoprovidesomelevity
beforetheplungeintodarknessbegins.
There'salotoftalkaboutkeepingdoors
barstoher,aboutherreturninglikea
firebreathingdragonthat'sonceagainre
generatedheattolaunchasubsequent
belchofdeadlyharanguing,andabout
puttingonthemagicinvisibleringto
escapeher.Toanyonewhoconsidersthat
itisourearliestscaresandfears,brought
tousnotjustthroughmothers,nursesand
otherearlyattendants,intheirwhisperings
ofdark"oldwivestales"(thatwenotethat
evenElrondsaysweshouldneverjust
passoverbecausetheyalwaystraceon
realtruths)orscaresofcreaturesstealing
cribsandbabies,butviatheterrifying
presenceofthislotthemselves,thatarethe
sourceofalllaterfears,thissectionof
29
Lobeliaas"invadingmonster"shouldnot
beallowedtopassasinconsequential.It
mightnotbe.Notethatattheendofthe
"ReturnoftheRing"Lobeliais"rescued"
asactuallysomeoneonthehobbits'side,
assomeonetobeproudof,butonlyaftera
barbarianganghasvisitedthetownand
donewhatbarbariangangsdotowomen
whocomeoutoftheirhousestooreadily
toopposethemrevengethemselveson
themhorribly.Tolkienhassaidthathehad
theendofthebookinmindwhenhe
startedtheadventure:hemaynotonly
havehadinmindhisconcernto
demonstratethatthegreatestevil,thatthe
greatestoccurrenceof"Mordor"outthere,
iswhensuchinfiltratesyourtownof
origins,buttodisplaceadesireforrevenge
ontoothersandseethemvisitituponthe
book'sveryfirstpredatortheadvancing
matriarchwhomeventheRingbearer
30
wouldhopeforgreaterspellstoforestall.
Gollumisquotedasthinking,"People
wouldseeifhecouldstandbeingkicked,
anddrivenintoaholeandthenrobbed.
Gollumhadgoodfriendsnow,good
friendsandverystrong.Theywouldhelp
him.Bagginswouldpayforit.Thatwas
hischiefthought.HehatedBilboand
cursedhisname."Drivenoutthedoorby
thedemandsofapressingLobelia,notjust
byBlackRiders,werethesehalforc
barbariansinawayFrodo'snewly
acquired"friends,"hisagents,servingout
arevengeheneedsdenialanddistance
from?Flagit.
Thereisasortofremindertodothisvery
thinginthetexttoflagtherelevanceof
Lobelia,andthinkonherfurther.Forwe
soonlearnfromGandalfofhowSmeagal,
thehobbitlikecreature,becameGollum,
31
thegangly,deadly,sometimesspiderlike
creaturethatGandalfsurmisesitmaywell
havebeenjusttohaveoutrightkilledwhen
chanceallowed,evenifthegreater
wisdomwouldeventuallycomeoutof
Bilbohavingtamedthisinstinctforpity,
anditwasn'tjusttheRingthatdidit.The
Ringmadehimextraordinarilybothersome
asortoftownnuisancewritlargebut
itdidnotchangehimintosomethingTHIS
disparatefromhisnormal,afterall,"ultra
curiousandinquisitiveself."Rather,itwas
hisexpulsionfromhishomebythe
leadingmatriarch...byhisgrandmother,
whichdiditthatswhatdrovehimaway
fromalllightandintothecaves;that's
whatmadehimabsolutelyforlorn.Hehad
finallyoverwhelmedherpatienceand
exasperatedherbeyondalltolerance,and
paidonehellofapriceforit.WhenFrodo
providesLobeliawiththehomeshe
32
covets,itisdoneostensiblyonlyfor
expediencythehouseneededtobesold
quickly,andshewasthemostinterested
buyer.Butgiventheforebodingtaleof
whathappenedtoGollumwhenhehad
exhaustedamatriarch'spatience,in
addition,ofcourse,toourownneverlost
knowledgethatnothingscaredusmore
thanwhathappenedtousinthenursery,in
retrospectitcanfeellikeitwassoldtoher
almostinrelief:theadventuregarnered
prowessofBilbohadkeptthehomesafe
tohimselfforoverninetyyearshis
adventureandmightbacked"queerness"
intimidated,notjustirkedorintrigued
butwithhimgone,anditleftonlyto
young,inexperiencedFrodotoforestallthe
accumulatingangerofLobelia'sbeing
denied,decadeafteraccumulatingdecade,
herinheritance,hetookthelastavenuehe
hadtostopherfromforsureblowinghis
33
housedown.Hethrewher,this"dragon,"
accumulatingfuryandstrengthastheages
passed,ahousesizedsteakeverything
shewantedandsnuckquicklyout
throughthedoorpossible?
Bilboisabouttobeleftoutasacharacter
withanyparttoplayinthestory.But
while'she'sstillhereinthetext,wecanbe
drawntothinkaswereadhowFrodo's
journeytobeinghisown"master,"to
maturity,differsfromBilbo'sown.Both
setoutontheirjourneysatthesameage.
Bilbo'sisestimatedasonly"quitealittle
fellow"byGandalf,butit'sabitofapoor
readingofhim,actually,consideringthatit
wasBilbo'sperhapssingularabilityto
charmanddeceiveSmaug,theterrible
firebreathingdragon,thatwould,ifhehad
lived,provedthegreatestthreatin
Sauron'sarsenal,thatbroughtabout
34
Smaug'send:specifically,aftercatching
siteofapossibleflawinSmaug's
ostensiblyabsolutelysecure
impregnability,heluresSmauginto
exposingthefullgirthofhischest,bating
himintodoingsobymakingitseemjust
anextensionofthesortofcharitableplay
they'vebeenuptointhepretensionof
theirsituationassimplyofguestvisiting
host"please,showmeyouracquired
paintingsandmagnificentheirlooms,ifit
pleasesyou,"iswhatitessentially
amountsto.Hisarmoredchestisforlorn
onepieceofarmoring,andwithoutit
havingbeenexposedhere,Bardthearcher
wouldneverhaveknownitexistedand
beennooppositiontoSmaugbutonlya
smallpieceofhiscarnage.Bilbocaught
offguardthegreatestevilpowerinhis
time,foundouthisonlyweakspotsothat
againstimpossibleodds,thevillaincould
35
neverthelessbetakendown.
Frodo,ontheotherhand,doesnothingof
thesort.Andwhileweseeonhisjourney
thathehasconsiderable"grit,"the
traditionalhobbit'abilitytothrive
surprisinglywelltobe"hardtodauntor
kill"(7)whentheybecomeaccustomed
tobeingabsentallthedelicaciesand
comfortstheynormallyensurecoattheir
lives,andthathedoespossessanunusual
delicacywithlanguageacharacteristic
whichfavorshimwithlordlyFaramirit
iscertainlyneverHEwhofiguresouthow
Sauronmightactuallybebroughtdown.
Thatperson,inthisnarrative,isGandalf.
WhathediscernsaboutSauron'sone
weakness,abouthisoneflaw,thatcould
bemadefataltohim?:thoughheisbeyond
brilliant,hecan'timagineanyone
possessingtheRingnotwantingtouseits
36
powerit'sbeyondconsiderationthatthe
Ringbearerwouldseektodestroyan
artifactthatgrantssuchgreatpower.And
soGandalfloadsitontoamemberofthe
oneracethatseemscapableofresistingits
drawmorethananyother,and,aswell,
justasremarkablycapableofbearingits
cripplingloadofaccumulating
despondency,andshipshimoff,andthat's
whatFrodo'susefulnessbasicallyamounts
to.Question,then:whichofthetwois
reallyselfactualizedandgreat,andwhich
doeswellonlyforbeingareasonablygood
representativeofhiskind?Further
question:whichonegoesonadventures
wherehewouldseemtohaveearnedthe
kindofbearingthatwouldhavehimfairly
confidentlyopposeGandalf,ifhewishes,
evenasAragornisreadilycapableof,and
ofhavingmaybeevenGandalfbackdown;
andwhichoneseemsonlycapableof
37
doingsooutofaninadvertentabilityto
serveasahauntlikeayoungsoldier
sentjustatthearrivalofhisbudding
adulthoodtodieonsomestraightarrow
pathontoaforeignbattlefield,hisvoice
getsheededonlyinrespectoftheworthhe
isbeingunjustlyshortchanged?
There'sabitin"ReturnoftheKing"where
Merryscanstheeffectalltheplaceshehas
seenhavehadonhim,anddecidesithasn't
beenwhathehadhopeditwouldbe...that
itwasperhapsmostlyjustoverwhelming,
anonslaughtsomethingthathedidn't
exploreandtosomeextent"master,"
demonstratepersonalefficacyamongst
andupon,butrathersomethingthatjust
overstimulatedandoverwhelmedhim.He
isdescribedassomeonewho,"thoughhe
lovedmountains[...]wasbornedownby
theinsupportableweightofMiddleearth.
38
Helongedtoshutouttheimmensity."
Merry,ineffect,becomesthekindof
personwhoactuallyiseasytodaunt
somethingnotostensiblyoneoftheir,that
is,hobbits',characteristics...orsotoldus
byanarratorperhapsmoreinmoodto
inflate,tobecharitable,atthetime.One
seeshimassomeonewhoineffectwas
taughtalessonabouthisactualabilityto
handlethingsintheoutsideworld,onehe
couldbecountedontohaveotherslearn,
otheryounghobbitswhoyearnedforgreat
adventure,sothattheytoowouldknow
thatthey'reactuallynotupforanynew
thingotherthanwhatthey'dbeen
accustomedtoasfarmersandgardeners
tendingtheShire'speacefulgrounds.This
isalesson"Middleearth"inflicts,notjust
uponMerrybutratheronallofthe
hobbits,prettymuchassoonasthey
escapetheirdoor.Anditleads,itwould
39
seem,toakindofmindsetthatthetext
demonstratessevere"beatings"serveupon
thebeatenthereafter,ifit'sfollowedby
kindness,yougetanabsolutereadinessto
comply,absoluteservitude.Badcop
followedbygoodcop...abitof"patting"
afterseveremistreatment,leadsGollum
frombeingatroublesomemiscreanttoone
"piteouslyeasytoplease"(604);andwhen
ithappenstohobbitsitmakesthem
completelybegottentoanythingthat
representstheoldwaysofMiddleearth
andintothoseforeverpitagainst
everythingnewthatsarisingwithout
permission,withoutsufficientnotice,and
alltooaggressively.
Justoutthedoorandbeginningontheir
owntomakedecisionslikewhatpathto
takeofthemultivariousavailable,
ostensiblystillatastateofselfcommand
whereGandalf'srecommendationsasto
40
whattheyshoulddoserveasonlythat
asrecommendations,notdefacto
commandmentsandwhereatthevery
leastFrodoseesescapefromtheShireas
anescapefromallthingssickeningly
stupid,theyencounterparalyzinghorrors
whichdauntthemwiththelessonyoure
notonyourownanywherenearuptothis.
Everypredatorwillstiratthe
announcementofpreyontotheirturfthat
eachwilldiscernasfullywithintheir
mastery.Frodoisallowedtodemonstrate
fortitudewhilewithinthebarrowmound,
asheawakenshimselfbeforebeingeaten
andsmitinganadvancingcrawling
skeletalhand,butoutoftheirnevertheless
stillmostlybeingabsolutelyhandledby
Blackriders,byanangryforest,andbya
barrowWight,whataretheyestablishedas
butthosewho'llbeforeverfixedto
perceiverescuersabsentanyserious
41
scrutiny?Whataretheybutthoseso
desperatelypleasedtoberescuedthey
wouldonlyrejoiceandcelebrateold
world,oldwayrepresentativesliketheir
rescuers,thehighelvesandTom
Bombadil?Whataretheyotherthanthose
whoafterbeingwhippedturnedpiteously,
patheticallycompliant?
AtonepointofthetextFrododelaysa
voteonwhichroutetheFellowshipshould
take,whichcoursethroughthemountains
under,over,oraroundbysayingit
shouldbedelayeduntildaytimesothat
Gandalf'svotewouldbegivenfairer
consideration(390)..."howthe[night]
windhowls[doubt],"hesays.Thereis
terrificwisdomhere,butit'snotdeeply
felt,andactuallyismoreademonstration
ofhisbeingmasteredbyGandalfthanitis
ofmasterlyconsiderationoftheeffect
42
circumstancehasonperceptionandon
ostensiblycarefullydeliberatedchoice.
Foronenotesthatafterbeingsoeasily
preyeduponbythesethreehorrendous
bugaboos,thesethreegreathorrorsofthe
imagination,they'rereadytobeownedby
thesaviorswhorescuethem,apathwhich
hasthemfollowthehighelves'ownership
ofthemoneofthe"chiefeventsof
[Sam's]life,"notjustforevidentcharm
butforbeinghisfirstsuffered"perfect
rescuingvision"followingthecrawling
advancementofsomethingashorribleasa
BlackRiderontoTomBombadil's
"givemetheRingyou'vebeentoldtogive
nobody,Frodo!""Surething,here,takeit"
andfinally,therestoftheway,onto
Gandalf,andGandalfisnolonger
someonewho"mightsuggestsomething"
butsomeonewhomtheotherswill
absolutelyheed,someonethey'llensure
43
theyprejudiceeveryoneelsetowards,
whatevercourseorcounselhemightbe
advancing.IftherealrisktoGandalf's
planswaseverthehobbits'independent
judgmentwouldFrodoperhapsactually
giveresisting,frustratinglyindominable
Boromiralisten?...Afairerlisten,where
ifthetwocouldactuallyfindcourtalone
the"twotogether[mightactuallyfind]
wisdom"(522)thiswouldhavebeenthe
kindofcoursehewouldhaveplottedto
scareawayallsenseofthemselvesas
capableofstandingontheirownforaself
identityasthosewhocouldonlyconclude
thatthey'llshrivelwhencaughtontheir
ownoutsideofguardiansupport.Andso
also,thosewhosethoughtsonlygoto
clingingdesperatelyback,whenthey
couldhavebeguntosettleon...:"well,this
isneatandunaccustomed...Iwonderif
newwisdomlieshere?"
44
Afewthingstonoteaboutthestayat
Rivendale:One,whywouldBilbohave
wantedtocomehere,otherthanfor
purposesofreflectednarcissism?Heis
livingamongstpeoplewhoarebetterthan
himateverything.Themosttheycangrant
himwhenheproduceshishighest,most
selfactualizedartisthatitcouldpassas
theworsttheirownkindmightproduce.It
isnottosaythatonecouldn'ttakepleasure
nevertheless,mostlyinthefactthatyou
reachedagreatpinnacleforoneself,but
you'vesurroundedyourselfbyotherswho
perpetuallytemptyoutomoretake
adversepleasureinyouraccomplishment
throughunderstandingitasallowingyou
topartaketoaverysmallextentintheir
ownunquestioned,objectivelygreatglory.
Itisaverybeautifulvisionthis
Rivendaleofampleabundanceand
45
scintillatingeverything;butnevertheless
onethatacunningHellwouldcontriveto
keepyouenslavedandsecretlysuffering.
Second,Elrond'shearttellshimthathe
shouldrefuseMerryandPippen's
request/demandthattheybetakenalong
ontheadventurehisheartdoes.This
shouldnotbeallowedtopassnotice,and
indeedbothMerryandPippenrefertoit
laterinthetextasitplaysontheirmind,
becauseitshouldmakeavailabletoallof
themevidencethatsubsequentlyiftheir
ownheartspeaksloudly,itneedn'tmeanit
shouldbeheededwithoutquestion:it
doesn'tjustalwaystelltheloudestand
mostprofoundtruth,forasgreatasElrond
isinthetext,hisjudgmentisstillsecond
toGandalf's,whospeaksasaneven
greaterStewartofMiddleearth,more
consciousofandloyaltoallitsparts,and
46
itisGandalfwhoessentiallyinforms
Elrondthathisheart,inthis,albeit,rare
instance,knowsabsolutelynottrustto
alreadyinstalledfriendshipinthisinstance
anddon'tsendMerryorPippenaway,or
wealldie.It'seitherhereabattleofthe
heartstomatchthebattleofthemindswe
seeelsewhereinthetext,oritsanexample
ofmindpitagainstheart,butineithercase
whatisshownisthateventheheart
belongingtooneofthegreatscouldleada
wholeworldthewrongwaytoits
destruction.YetFrododoesnotremember
thislessonashedealswithBoromir,
wagingbetweenthemthefateoftheRing.
HishearttellshimtoignoreBoromir's
argument,toignoreitsfavorableaccents
andcompellingforce,andheletsitlead
him.Andmyguessisthatmanyreaders
didn'tthinkanythingawryabouthisdoing
soatall.Thetexthaspromptedsuch
47
wizardfollowersofusall,thateven
Elrondhimselfcan'tmakeadigatour
loyalty.Pitythefateofany"Boromir"
who'dhopedtochangeourmind,aswell
asthefateofanygoodnessthatmighthave
arisenifwewereleftopentobeing
deterred,tobeingwaylaid...There'sa
sensethatwe'realldoneinbybythetime
we'vereachedRivendale,andweshould
notethat.
Andfinally,whenthewizardSaruman
triestomanipulateagoodhearingfor
himselfwhenprecariouslysituatedinhis
isolatedtowerbeforeGandalf,thehorse
lords,andtheremainingmembersofthe
Fellowship,hesucceedsindauntingallof
thembutGandalfbymakingthemfeellike
those"shutout,listeningatadoorto
wordsnotmeantforthem:illmannered
childrenorstupidservantsoverhearingthe
48
elusivediscourseoftheirelders,and
wonderinghowitwouldaffecttheirlot.Of
loftiermouldthesetwoweremade;
reverendandwise.Itwasinevitablethat
theyshouldmakealliance.Gandalfwould
ascendintothetower,todiscussdeep
thingsbeyondtheircomprehensioninthe
highchambersofOrthanc.Thedoor
wouldbeclosed,andtheywouldbeleft
outside,dismissedtoawaitallottedwork
orpunishment."Earlymemoriesofbeing
dismissedtothe"kid'stable"while
"adults"discussseriousmatters,asa
deliberatetacticmostlyintendedto
depreciateyourselfworth,apparently
remainineveryone,andthusleaveyou
susceptibletoevilmanipulation,iswhat
thetextinformsushere.YettheCouncil
ofElrond,thecouncilofthegood,is"high
matters"enoughyethasn'tintegratedthat
lessonwellenoughthatitseemstoall
49
"cheek"cheekthatisrewardedrather
thanpunishedbythetolerant"parent"
whenSampertlyburstsamongstthem
anddemandsasay.InvitedguestBilbo
speaksup,andthoughhegetstribute
Boromirlaughsathishavingdoneso,
consideringthenatureandhighqualityof
otherswhohadpreviouslyspoken,butis
shamedtofindthatnooneelsethinksof
himsimilarlyhisclaimasfutureRing
bearerringsmostlyoftheoncenotable,
nowdotard,whostillinsistshecanswing
asword(onlygreatonesliketheaged
DenethorandTheodengettobe
unquestionablystilllikethat).Hespeaks
uponlysothathecanwithfinalitybeshut
out,howeverkindlyonelingeringbitof
oldbusinessnowoutoftheway.
AndwhenFrodospeaksup,itseems
almostasifvolunteeringsothatothers
50
needn'tdemand...aresponsethatisn'tso
much"outofyourowninitiative,"but
ratheronethatbetraysslavishhigh
receptivitytoothers'needs,conveyed
throughinnuendo,implication,hints
fromatmosphericallyevidentdeliberate
avoidanceoftheobvious.AndsoElrond
repliestohisdeclaration,"yes,youwere
reallytheonlychoice...theoneweall
knewhadtoeventually"volunteer"forthe
task."Volunteer?Whydidhewaitforhim
tovolunteerwhentheanswertohimself
andGandalf,atleast,wasobvious?Isit
becausetheystillneverthelesshadtokeep
theirhandsclean,becauseFrodo'sgoing
onwhatBoromirrightlyestimatesasa
long,lonelydeathmarchintoavolcanic
mawaclearsuicidemission,aclear
missionofsacrifice,andofthemost
promisingofyounghobbits,sothattheold
establishment,theoldfoggies,canliveon?
51
There'ssomethingintheirdecisionwhich
ringsofsacrificingyouth,potential,and
accumulatedlargessetheRingitself,of
coursethatpointsafingeratanurgent
needmoretoplacatethewrathoflong
ignoredoldgodsthantheproclaimed
intenttodealbestwiththerealitiesofthe
worldastheyare.Theyoungarebeing
misled,liedto.It'sguiltinspiringifthey
admittedthisfacttothemselves:thatthey
weresoeagertodispensewiththeirgood
fortuneandwealthandofarepresentative
oftheyoung,sobloodthirstyand
ultimatelynotleaderlybutslavishlyintent
onheedingoldgodslookinguponthem
withdoubtandscorn,thatthiswasgoing
tobetheirsolutiontoanyoccurringworld
problem.Andsoholdout"gratitude"
towardstheyoungwho'veshaped
themselvessotheypickupoutoftheair
theunacknowledgedsordidwishesof
52
others',andsoostensiblymakeuptheir
ownmind,maketheirown"choice,"
independentofinfluence."Itwasn'tus:
theychosetogothemselves,"isnotinthis
instanceademonstrationofrespectand
latitudeandfreedomaboutwhat
separateswhatdistinguisheswhatisgood
inthisworldfromwhatisevilbutabout
slipperyevasionandmanipulativeness:
aboutamoreevolvedandfoulkindof
predatoryevil.
"Bewillingtomakeyourselfvulnerableto
fallingintoavolcanicpit,andyou'reelf
friendforever...that'sthepartwedidn't
tellyouaboutwascomingwhenwefirst
drewyoutofindsuchpleasureinbeing
acclaimedourfriendafteryouramusing
attemptsatfluentelfspeechwhenwemet
youjustoutsideyourdoor.Allpeddlersof
thedastardlydrawtheiryoungpreyinat
53
firstwithreadilyproofferedcandy.Didn't
anyofthewiseeverteachyouso?Dont
trustthosewhoarrivetooffersalveand
morejustafterdisasterstrikes,formightn't
theythemselveshaveoriginatedthe
disaster,justtogarneranimportantvote
otherwisehardtomakeclaimto?"Itsan
accusationlaunchedatGandalfmany
timesinthetext"whyisityoualways
showupwhendisasterisuponus?Are
yousurethatyouandthedisasterare
twinnedinsomeway?...ofthesame
agency,orofthesamelevelofmalicious
intentoneovert,theothercovert,
perhaps?"Isitbecausetherestruthbehind
itsufficientenoughtoarouseguilt,an
arousedguiltthatcanbe,ifnotquit,at
leastmomentarilyquelled,inseeingthe
accusationvoiced("illnewsisanill
guest";"youcomewithtidingsofgrief
anddanger,asisyourwont,theysay")to
54
someoneyoullsoonbeabletolater
righteouslydispensewithsomeonelike
"theTwoTower's"Wormtonguethat
thisaccusationkeepsonrepeatedlybeing
aired?
JustattheentrancetotheMinesofMoria
thetexttellsusthatGandalfunderstood
thattheenormousmonsterinthewater
wasgropingforFrodospecifically,ithad
focusedonhim,butthathedecidedto
keepthissecrettohimself.Wemight
assumethisisGandalfbeingrespectfulnot
toscareFrodotoomuch,but,really,isit
anynewstoFrodoatthispointthatthe
greatestofmonstersaremostlyinterested
inthesmellofhim?ThinkingonGandalf's
"discretion"isawaytonotthinkofwhat
elsemightotherwisebearisinginthe
reader'smindconcerningGandalfatthis
point.Namely,perhaps,howalreadyat
55
thispointonthejourneyGandalffavored
theCompanytakingtheFellowshiphas
alreadysufferedasgreatadangerasany
oftheotheroptionscouldhaveoffered
himadangerthathadthesmellonfor
Frodo,andsoonethatcouldhavebeen
reliedupontobringmessagetoSauron
thattheRinghadbeencapturedshould
suchhavehappened.Keepingthissecret
keepsGandalffrombeingembarrassed,
shownup.Andsecretkeepingoverall
seemsaboutgivingoneleverageover
otherpeople,aboutmaintainingthefalsity
thatsomepeoplecanhandletruthwhile
otherscan't,andmaskingthetruththatthis
"philosophy"ismaintainedinthisworld
primarilytokeepanoldhierarchyinplace,
whatevertheactualabilityofMiddle
earthianstohandlediscordanttruths.
Aragornkeepsasecrettohimselflaterin
56
thenarrative:thatBoromirdecidedto
snatchtheRingforhimself.Hownobleof
himtobedodiscreetandkeepBoromir
fromshame...iswhatwe'resupposedtobe
thinking.Howkingly.Yetwhatshame
doesBoromirreallybearotherthanhis
beingtheonlyoneontheFellowshipwho
didn'tagreewiththeCouncil'sdecision,as
itwasnotthecoursehewouldtake,andso
hisbeingtheonlyonethattheRinghad
somethingsubstantialtocontinuouslyplay
on?Notthathewasevilbutthathe
dissented,thathewasnotsomeonewho
wouldfollowAragorn"whereverhewent
(512),"washisonlysin,hisonly
"problem."Andwhatgoodtotheworldis
doneinnotofferinganhonestaccountof
everything,innotchallengingbutplaying
tochildishrequirementsthatheroesbe
keptsqueakycleanflawless,forinstance?
ContraGandalf,sometimesyouneedto
57
breakthingsaparttofindoutwhatmakes
themtick,ifyoureallywanttomake
improvementsandnotratherkeepa
flawedproductintactbecauseit'sbuiltthe
rightwaynowforyouruse.AMiddle
earththatmustbekeptfromknowing
things,aMiddleearthkeptemotionally
fragile,isinthedarkandpreytobeowned
bythemostmalevolentlymotivatedof
things.
Boromir'sattemptingtostealtheRingis
thelastscareFrodosuffersfromin
"FellowshipoftheRing,"buttheonejust
previousshouldn'tpassournotice.What
scaredhimrightbefore?thevisageof
greatkings,of"silentwardensofalong
vanishedkingdom,"whichdrewhimto
feel"aweandfear"andmadehim"cower
down[andto]shuthiseyesanddar[e]not
tolook"(516).Shame,aweandfearseem
58
togetalotofrespectinthisbook,ifit's
inspiredbylingeringghostsfromlongago
orthosewhocountthemselvestheir
servants,andthetextseemstomake
nothingofthefactthatBoromirhastotry
anddiscoursewithFrodoonlyafter
Frodosbeeneffectivelybulliedinto
submissionbythesegreatloominggiants
ofthepastthatmadehimfeelpathetic,
vulnerable,smalli.e.,completelyattheir
mercy.Acrimeofthesortmentionedin
"ReturnoftheKing"isbeingcommitted
here,wheretheoldareveneratedtokeep
theyoungfromtheirdue.Itfeelsinthe
textalmostasifBoromirsnatchesthe
Ringnotoutevilmanifestinginhimbut
outoffullyunderstandablearising
exasperationattheongoingmadness
everyoneelseisdeterminedtokeep
themselvescaughtwithin...theirbeing
caughtwithinafugueofsillyelder'
59
deference,totimidityspawnedfromtoo
muchheedingofoldwives'tales,andnot
thereforeableseethepossibilitiesasthey
arenomatterhowwelltheywouldshine
forth.Must"we"stayofftheroadthat
seemseasiest,onlybecauseintrigue
doesn'ttakeaswellthereasitdoesin
backroadsandalleyways?Whatorderis
ourpresentcoursefightingtokeepintact?
Thepossibilitythatmembersofthe
Fellowshiparemad,areinastateofheady
madness,comesupmanytimesthrough
therestofthetext,ostensiblytoshow
themmastersofsecretknowledge,secret
ways,andabletomightilywaylayall
others'considerationsofthemand,quite
frankly,alsotodemonstratethemthose
whocauseupsetanddisquietinothersat
theirhavingbeenabandonedthehelpthey
hadbeenseducedintothinkingavailable
60
tothem(Aragornsmoreorless
unexplainedsprintingofffromthewar
marchtoPelennorFields,anyone?).I
wouldsuggestinsteador,rather,in
additionthatit'saconsiderationthatgets
constantairingasiftheoneinscribingthe
journeyishealthyenoughtohavesome
innervoiceofsanitypromptingthe
thoughtintohismind,tomaybefinally
wakehimup...thisisaplotofFrancewith
twiceGermany'sarmedforces,orof
Chamberlain'sBritain,prettymuchfinding
everywaytheycantolosetoGermany's
mightattheonsetofWorldWar2"here,
wevegotmoretanksthanyou;want
em?"Thisisadeathwish,ora
masochisticdesiretorestageanoppressive
onslaughtfromchildhood.Thissacrificing
youradvantageofanearlychessboard
captureoftheQueen,ismadness.Wake
up.Wakeup.Wakeup...youostensible
61
moversoftheboardwhoareyourselves
probablybutpawnsofuglycompulsions.
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We all know how Frodo would have trusted
Boromir "but for the warning of his heart." But did
you know that the elf-king Elrond was against
sending Merry and Pippen along as members of
the Fellowship, owing to the warnings of HIS
72
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74
But how now this mature man wishes for the 13-
year-old me, wishes for the young adolescent me...
the stirring young adult in me, reading "Lord of the
Rings" when he was newly factoring how much
venturing he should do away from home, while
first registering the huge power his mother would
present in opposition to it, that he had. I would
have loved to have some voice sink into my head
early, sink into me then, telling me, with an alien
and exciting power, a power outside one I'd known
that draws me outwards into the world rather than
offering mere camouflaged further containment
within, that the true way to growth means bearing
the shame of being ugly to those you've thus far
depended on. Not just "the Shire," but an "old
world" representative as grand as Gandalf may
well think you're slime and you'll be documented
as akin in disappointment to Wormtongue or
Gollum. But nevertheless you'll be happier in
being able to bear it. For it won't be shameful to
you but rather, only disappointing: you'd like to
have been able to have kept them along with you
too, but were wise nevertheless in bearing the
86
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/magazine/who-didnt-go-to-the-womens-
march-matters-more-than-who-did.html?smid=fb-share
Who Didnt Go to the Womens March Matters More Than
Who Did
Millions of women turned out to march last Saturday. But were
they marching for everyone?
NYTIMES.COM|BY JENNA WORTHAM
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91
This said, I agree that childrearing has been improving, and the
result of this is that there are more people self-actualizing... if
this is what "personal growth" is to you. "Personal growth"
sometimes means people self-renunciating, followed by their
being superior to others' ongoing self-interestedness, which is a
kind of closet narcissism... and that's why I'm not always sure if
it's the real article.
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
January 31 at 8:01am
I've suggested that what we need is for people to
really engage with DeMause's theories, and note
when he says things that seem inconsistent.
Perhaps he isn't. Perhaps there is a way in which
apparent inconsistencies appear to exist, but which
can be revealed as simply part of the complicated
way things play out. But nevertheless, I wanted to
provide an example of the sort of thing I wish
people were taking on... testing, to see if they're
sufficiently testing his work while reading him,
rather than in a sense falling under his spell.
Here's an explanation for the popularity of Hitler in
Emotional Life of Nations, which explains Germania
as a merging with the Terrifying Mother, but which
emphasizes the merger with Hitler as merging with
the protective Phallic Father:
"The ecstatic enthusiasm of the jubilant masses of
people who celebrated their Phallic Leader came
directly from his promises of a violent Purity
Crusade that would end what Hitler called the
"poisoning hothouse of sexual conceptions and
stimulants
[and the] suffocating perfume of our modern
eroticism [which is] the personification of incest"
--all three images suggesting flashbacks to the
sexually engulfing mommy of the family bed. Even
during the Depression, Germans said, "We are
somebody again!" only because of their delusional
merger with their Phallic Leader."
Here Hitler is phallic, mostly a Strong Man, and
94
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More on Tolkien
WhenFrodoisnegotiatingwithBoromirthe
fateoftheRing,hesayshewillnottakethe
easyway,whichiswhatBoromir,heclaims,is
offering.Butifhedidanythingotherthan
trudgethedrearylongwaytoMordor,incura
longtravailofsuffering,thenGandalfwould
thinklessofhim,Galadrielwouldthinklessof
him,Glimiwouldthinklessofhim,Legolas
wouldthinklessofhim,andAragornwould
thinklessofhim.Itwouldmeanfeeling
immediatelyashamedandcastout,byallthe
peoplehemostadmired.Thiswouldhavebeen
109
thetrulyharderway,thewaythatincurred
whathemostfearedmostshameashe
admitsearlier:
"Westillhaveourjourneyandourbrand
beforeus,"answeredGandalf."Wehaveno
choicebuttogoon,ortoreturntoRivendell."
Pippin'sfacebrightenedvisiblyatthemere
mentionofreturntoRivendell;MerryandSam
lookeduphopefully.ButAragornandBoromir
madenosign.Frodolookedtroubled.
"IwishIwasbackthere,"hesaid."Buthow
canIreturnwithoutshameunlessthereis
indeednootherway,andwearealready
defeated?"
"Youareright,Frodo,"saidGandalf:"togo
backistoadmitdefeat..."
Iwouldhavechallengedhimharderthan
Boromirdid.
DescriptionofGaladriel,pg.480:"Shelifted
110
upherhandandfromtheringthatshewore
thereissuedagreatlightthatilluminatedher
aloneandleftallelsedark.Shestoodbefore
Frodoseemingnowtallbeyondmeasurement,
andbeautifulbeyondenduring,terribleand
worshipful.Thensheletherhandfall,andthe
lightfaded,andsuddenlyshelaughedagain,
andlo!shewasshrunken:aslenderelf
woman,cladinsimplewhite,whosegentle
voicewassoftandsad."
DescriptionofGandalf,pg.392:"Inthe
waveringfirelightGandalfseemedsuddenlyto
grow:heroseup,agreatmenacingshapelike
themonumentofsomeancientkingofstone
setuponahill.Theygavebackbeforehim.
Highintheairhetossedtheblazingbrand.It
flaredwithasuddenwhiteradiancelike
lightning;andhisvoicerolledlikethunder"
Note,oneoftheseisaboutagreatperson's
beingtempted;theotherisaboutagreatperson
justproperlystruttinghisstuff.Theone
involvingthepersonagebeingrestoredtotrue
greatnessonceshrunken,slenderandgentle,is
111
awoman;theoneinvolvingthepersonage
beingrevealedinbestformwhenblazingand
enlarged,isaman.
Tresinteresant,n'estpas?
Chieftain'smustbeplentifulinMiddleEarth:it
istheonlythingthe"Fellows"tendtohit.
PeterJackson:"CanyoupromisethatIwill
comeback.""No...andifyoudoyouwillnot
bethesame."
Tolkien(atthefinishofLordoftheRings):
andifthey[referringtoMerryandPippen]
werelargeandmagnificent,theywere
unchangedotherwise,unlesstheywereindeed
morefairspokenadmorejovial"
JacksonisclearlyFORpersonaldevelopment,
whereasTolkien'sthekindofguywhoin
responsetoyourrequestformore
responsibilities,putsagoldstaronyourchest,
getsthecrowdtocheeryou,andletsyouthink
112
you'veaccomplishedsomethingwhilstkeeping
thingsexactlyasorderedbefore.
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Questioning Gandalf
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AndSarumanspoke:"SoGandalfwasjust
abouttoenterthefrayofthemostimportant
anddangerousbattleofThirdAgeofMiddle
Earth,theBattleofthePelennorFields,and
suddenlywaschallengedwithachoice
shouldIstayorshouldIgo?Hehadbeensent
backafterdeath,ostensiblybyheaven,and
endowedwithpowersthatmadehimnow
secondonlytoSauron.Herebeforehimwas
thebattlethatwoulddeterminewhether
Gondorfell,andwithit,ashehadsaid
repeatedly,absolutelytherestofMiddle
116
Earth."
"Butbeforeallthis,oneofthelittlehobbits
you,PippentoldhimthatFaramirwasabout
tobeburnedaliveinsomeoldbarbaricpagan
ritualandnoonewasaroundotherthanthe
warriorBerragond,who,asitturnsout,wasin
processofkillingalltheguards...andthereby
mayberescuingFaramirhimselfifmaybehe
hadalittleextrahelp,like,perhaps,yours,
Pippen?topreventthisfromhappening.
Faramir'simportancewasprettymuchzeroat
thispoint,otherthanhisbeingcloseinnature
andsympathytoGandalf.WiththeKing
returned,hewasn'tgoingtoruleGondor.
Thereisnomentionofhisbeingapossible
secondcarrieroftheRing,owingtohisability
torefusetheRingandreadilyifofferedit,
andthustobekept"available"ifsomehow
Frodo'swillfailedbutnotFaramir'sfrequently
referredtowizardlyforesighttoperhapsin
desperationlocateit.AndsoGandalfdecides
togohelpFaramirandendsupmissingthe
entiretyofthebattle.Thewholegoddamned
117
thing.Thegreatestpieceontheboard,greater
thantheNazgulking,skippedtown."
"Whydidhedothis,whatdrewhimtomake
THISchoice,ratherthantheevidentlywiser
oneofcommittinghimselftobattle?Inbattle,
ashehimselfhadadmitted,hewasequaltoa
thousandtroops,andasmuchaslegendheldit
thattheNazgulkingcouldn'tbekilledbya
man,hecertainlycouldhaveservedasaforce
mostlylikelytodistracthimsothatMerryand
Eowyncouldsurprisehimfrombehindand
finishhimoff.Andofcourse,therewere
OTHERNazgularound,killinghundredsof
troops...againstthesehewouldhavehelped,
thisarmyontohimself,bigtime."
"GandalfWASneededonthebattlefield.With
himthere,maybethousandsoftroopswouldn't
havedied,andmaybenotevenKingTheoden,
whoservedasthelureheotherwisewould
haveservedasthegreatrival,ashewas,to
hispower.Allhehadtodowassay,"sorry
Pippen,IloveFaramirtodeath,butyou'rea
118
weakfooltotrytotemptmewiththis,when
youknowitwouldleaveourtroopswithout
theirleaderandtheirmostpowerfulweaponof
artillery,"andthereafterwadedintothefray,a
greatandresponsibleleader."
"Sowhydidn'thedoexactlythis?Here'sone
possibility:thepracticeofbarbaricrituals
disgustshimjustthatmuch!"What,havewe
allgonebacktothestoneageandwillsoonbe
bongodrummingandpracticingprimitive
communismaswell?!?!That'splentyworse
thangoddamnedSauron,whofeastshistroops
filthbutisatleastanappreciatorofhiskindof
civilizationandfinery!"Here'sanother:he's
chicken,andfurther,notanywherenearas
powerfulashehadinflatedhimselfuptobe,
andwasalreadylookingforsomewaytoavoid
findinghimselfcalledoutonthisandthereby
suffercompletehumiliationwhenyousupplied
suchagoodoneforhim.Yes,hisgreyself
theolderversionofhimfoughttheBalrog
(orsohisnewerversionclaimed,fordidyou
seeit?...didanyofyouFellowship?Maybethe
119
Balrogslippedbackintothedepthsentirely;
hadescaped;wasgoneGandalfnevercaught
upwithhimandallthathappenedwasthat
hefoundhimselfeventuallyatstairswhich,in
dodderyfashion,tookalongwhiletoclimbup,
andheaventookpityonhimanddustedhim
off?),butatthepreviouslastbigbattle,theone
atHelm'sDeep,whatdidGandalfdobuttake
tothehillsjustasthebattlewasabouttoget
started?"
"Everyoneelsehadtodothebleedingand
boy,therewasalotofitthereuntilmorning,
whencehereturnedwherenoonecouldsee
exactlywhathewasdoingoutthere,withan
armyoftreesaroundtostompoutthe
remainingorcs,andalsowiththearmyhehad
ostensiblybroughtwithhim,chargingaboutin
thickruckus.Isuspecthekindofjuststood
theredoingwhatDenethorsaidall"greats"
actuallydowhenbattleisengaged:nothing;
justsitinplacewhilethebattlegoesabout,
biddingeveryonedothedirtywork.No
wonderGandalfremainedwhiteallthrough;
120
nogrimeordirtfrombattleeverdidsettle...."
ButSaruman,thehobbitsfinallyasked,"didn't
Gandalffightthebattleatthegatesof
Morannan?"AndSarumanreplied,"Ofthat,
you'llhavetotellme.Iknowcertainlythathe
wasthere,butinyouraccountofthebattlethat
youdescribedtoBilbo,thereisnomentionof
Gandalfatbattle,ofhimactuallyfighting
anythingcertainlysomethingwortha
descriptionortwo,ifhewasthearmyonto
himselfhehadtoldeveryonehewas.What
thereisofhimintheaccountisalotofhim
talking...refusingterms,talkingbig,and,oh,
grabbingabunchofreally,reallyvaluable
relicsforhimself."
"OhIknowhefinallygavethesebackto
Frodo,butofcourseeveryonewitnessedhis
takingthem,didn'tthey?andwouldhave
wonderedwhathadbecomeofthemthese
immenselyvaluableitemsifGandalfhadn't
laidthembackatthisfeetsubsequently.How
sureareyouthathehadn'ttakenthem,notto
121
spitetheMouthofSauronbutbecausehehad
justlearnedthatFrodohadfailedonhisquest,
andknewthatinthenewbarbaricageaboutto
unfoldheneededtosettlehimselfupaswellas
hecouldasfasthecould,sonotperish?How
sureareyouthatultimatelyhissurvival
instinctsaren'tsothatheimmediatelyswitched
tacticsandloyaltiesrightthenandthere
underpretenceofadifferentkind?Howsure
areyouthathewasn'tabouttoalsousecover,
thecoverofbattle,tosneakaway,finding
somesmallhiddenseriesofhillshecouldlord
over,withwealthfromthesaleofonevery
valuablecoatofmithrailcoat:worthawhole
setofvillages,awholeShire,didn'tyouknow?
That'sthekindofthingthatwhitewizards,
actually,arewonttodo,asyouallknowso
well.Sotoocloakingtheiractualintentions
whileseemingtobekeepingfaith.Theyput
spellsonyouall,dotheynot,mydear
hobbits?"
EndFragment
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I think there needs to be less attention to Trump and more to what's going on in
the psyches of those who voted for him. He's their vessel; if he does anything
astray they'll push him in the direction they want to go.
123
How tough will Trump voters be? Since they think that their's is a country which
was hijacked 40 yrs ago by corporations and liberals who were anti-pathic to its
gleaming Greatness, and who've infested all offices of power so there isn't a one
whose ultimate goal isn't keeping Americans pacified whilst the invaders gain
total dominion: petty tough. (In their view, immigrants brought in since American
elites became more interested in their cosmopolitan centres than the Great
American Heartland, weren't brought in to strengthen the country, but to
confound and confuse it.) We have to be prepared for it. Trump voters will die for
their country as they feel part of its renewed strength, and so far away from their
previous experience of total dismay and weakness as the world progressed
beyond their ability to accept it.
IfoneisattendingtoMichaelMooreorChris
HedgesorRobertReichor...prettymuchevery
liberalrightnow,oneishearingthatliberalshave
toacknowledgethatthereasontheywerecaught
offguardbyTrumpisthattheyhadn'tpreviously
wantedtolookattheextentoftheeconomichurt
thatwasoutthere:theywereinabubble.They
detachedthemselvesfromotherpeople'ssuffering,
andengagedwiththemonlytohatethemfortheir
bigotry...forbeingthebasketofdeplorablesthey
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ostensiblyonlyare.IfoneislisteningtoThomas
FrankandChrisHedgesandAndrewSullivan,
specifically,wearebeingmadetounderstandthat
thiswasquitedeliberate:thatliberalshavecometo
hatethepeoplewho'vebeenbatteredmostbythe
globaleconomythatemergedsinceClinton.
Ithinkthatliberalshavewantedto
detachthemselvesfromanAmericatheysaw
correctlyasnotbeingabletokeepupwithamore
challenging,novel,andprogressiveworldthey
wantedtoformulate.Butitwasn'tjustliberals'(or
ifyouprefer,theliberalprofessionalclass's)
ownstrangleholdconnectiontopowerthatmade
everythingthatkeptanempoweredworkingclass
countryinplace,evaporate,butmoretheworking
class'sdesiretofindthemselvesstrippedof
previouslyachievedsecurityandstatus.
HereisLloyd'sfascinatingcountertotheargument
thatrecessionsanddepressionstheproductionof
economicwastelandsowesmostlyto
cruelnegligencebythosespoilingthemselvesat
thetop:
(3)InternalSacrificeSolutionIftheleader
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cannotfindanexternalenemywithwhomto
engageinasacrificialwar,heoftenturnstoan
internalsacrifice,eitheraviolentrevolutionoran
economicdownturn.Attheendofthe1920s,for
instance,aseconomicandsocialprogressseemed
tohavegotten"outofcontrol,"worldbankers
chiefsacrificialpriestsofmodernnations
pursueddeflationaryeconomicpolicies,trade
barrierswereerectedandmanyother"mistakes"
weremadethatweremotivatedtoproducethe
GreatDepressionthatsacrificedsomuchofthe
wealthof
theworld.AsTreasurySecretaryAndrewMellon
saidin1929astheFederalReservepushedthe
worldintotheGreatDepression,"Itwillpurgethe
rottennessoutofthesystem."Businesscycles,as
WilliamK.Josephhasshown,aredrivenbythe
manicanddepressivecyclesofgroupfantasy,as
manicdefensesagainstgrowthpanicarefollowed
bydepressivecollapsesintoemotionaldespairand
inaction.Indeed,mostdeathratescarcrashes,
homicides,cancer,pneumonia,heartandliver
diseasesriseduringprosperous,manictimesand
arelowerduringdepressionsandrecessions.Only
suicideinternalsacrificerisesduringeconomic
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declines,reactingtotheprevailinggroupfantasy
needforinternalsacrifice.
Depressionsandrecessionsarethusnotdueto
"theInvisibleHand"ofeconomicsbutare
motivatedsacrificesthatoftenkillmorepeople
thanwarsdo,haltingdangerousprosperityand
socialprogressthatseemtobegetting"outof
control."Thatgrowingwealthoftenproduces
anxietiesratherthanhappinesscanbeshown
empirically.From1957to1995,Americans
doubledtheirincomeinrealdollars,butthe
proportionofthosetellingpollstersthattheyare
"veryhappy"declinedfrom35to29
percent.Periodiceconomicdownturnsarethe
antidotesadministeredbysacrificialpriestsforthe
diseaseof"greed."Cartoonspriortoeconomic
downturnsoftenportraygreedypeoplebeing
sacrificedonaltarsorchildrenbeingpushedoff
cliffs,scapegoatsfor"greedy"childhoodselves
felttoberesponsibleforthetraumaonce
experienced.LikeAztechumansacrifices,
recessionsanddepressionsareaccompaniedby
nationalsermons,"cautionarytales,"abouthow
sacrificesarenecessarytopurgetheworldof
127
humansinfulness.
Thechoicebetweenthesedifferentsolutionsto
growthpanicfollowscyclicalpatterns,warsand
depressionsalternatingingroupfantasycyclesof
varyinglengths.Theempiricalhistorical
investigationofthese"longcycles"ofgroup
fantasywillbeexaminedindetailinthenext
chapter,"WarandCyclesofViolence."
Ithinkinasensewhathashappenedisthatthe
timeforsuffering,forrepentingpreviously
accruedgrowth,hasended,andnowtheworking
classisusingtheeconomicdestitutionthatthey
actuallywantedstagedandwanted,asitdecreased
thesenseofpsychicdisintegrationthatwas
ensuingfrombeinglinkedtoanAmericathatwas
progressingbothmaterialisticallyandculturally,as
reasontostartawarontheeducatedon
cosmopolitans,specifically.Theytoldtheirelites
toabandonthem.Theydidso.Andnowthey're
tellingelitesthattheyaretobepunishedfor
havingdoneso.
Recommend this on Google
128
HacksawRidge
HollywoodhadshelvedMelGibsonasoneofthe
worstillreputeasantisemiticandit'sbeen
awhilesincewe'veheardfromhim.Anditlooked
likeforamomentinthefilmthatitmightcontain
littleinferenceshereandtherethatdidn'tdistract
fromtheplot,butbasicallyletHollywoodknow
howhe'dfeltaboutthat.There'sacharacterinthe
film,yousee,who'snicknamedHollywood,and
wemeethimearlyon,wellbeforetheygettothe
warzone.He'sverybeautaciousandfullof
himself,andhewiltswhenunderpressure.Classic
attackuponliberals;closetoclassicantisemitic
attackagainstJews.Buthe'snotrevealedas
130
emptyandworthless.Really,heendsupbasically
justaverage,asanaveragesoldier,whoperforms
butalsogetsdismayedinfeartoo.Andinthisfilm
thatactuallycountsforalot,becauseGibsonis
withthemall,thegreatandmerelyadequate
soldiers,andsoldiersofallrankstoo(officerscan
beinerrorandreally,reallyharsh,butneverill
purposedandsadistic).He'snotevenreallymadat
theJapanese,either.There'sagoodhunkof
nobilityineachofthemaswell:theyweresized
upforusearlyinthefilm,justbeforethebigfight,
asanendlessonrushinghoardwithnorespectfor
theirownlives,butultimatelyonlytostagethe
degreeofsubsequentAmericanbravery.Soiflike
Ididyoufeltluredintoexploringthefilmabitfor
Mel'sowndissesatHollywood,forhisreturnfire
andattemptsatrevenge,thatcametoanend,
quick.Andlikeme,withitssurprisingcomplete
absence,youmighttheninrecoilhave
reconsideredthemaincharacter,andbegantosee
himasperhapsactuallyasortofMelGibsongift
tothosewho'dcalledhimabigotandbannedhim
fromhistrade.
AndrewGarfield'sDesmondDossisnotjust
131
stringbeanthin,he'saboutasovertlyageekas
youcanget:duringhisfirstdatewiththewoman
he'lleventuallymarry,hewantstotalkmedical
terminology.Hisviewofthewarisaboutwhat
mostliberalswouldassumetheirswouldbeifthey
hadbeenlivingatthattime:they'dfeelvery
threatenedbyontheencroachingJapanese,they'd
wantAmericanstofight,butthey'dhopeifthey
hadtobetheonesservingthattheywouldn'thave
tokilltohelpendthethreat.Doss'srolewould
suitperfectly,iftheywererequitedto
intensebattlefieldduty.Ratherthanhavingto
focusonandkillotherhumanbeings,likehim
theycouldperhapsfindmeanswherethey'dfocus
onlyonrepairingtheinjured.Theiractwouldnot
justneverthelessstillverymuchhelpthewar
effort,itmightamounttopoetry,anunsuspecting
flowerbloomingoutofafieldofwilt,an
effronterytodarktimes.They'dbedoingasDoss
imagineswhathe'llbeupto:"Whileeverybodyis
takinglife,I'mgoingtobesavingit."Thisisthe
"glory"they'dseek,inwhatforthemreallywould
bejustasadandunfortunatedevelopmentthat
wouldhavetobeseenthrough,becausethethreat
isreal.
132
Soifinthisfilmtheclosestpersontosomeonea
liberalwouldnaturallyidentifywithisnotonly
notanobjectofsportbutahero,shouldliberals
reacttothefilmactuallywarmly?Isthefilm
akintoGlenBeck'srecentrecantation,his
revelationthatheactuallylovesthemanhehad
beensocommittedtohate(inBeck'scase,
BarrackObama)?Theimmediaterejoindertothis
possibilitywouldbeofcoursethatthisisn'tjust
warbeingshown,butmassivecarnage,andisn't
theresomethingalotluridinbeingdrawnto
battleswhicharejustmeatgrindersofhuman
lives?("Hihoney,Iloveyouandweshouldbe
married,butfirstletmegoontothisstagewhere
I'llplayRussianRoulettewithgunsandgrenades
andwithhalfachanceofdyingorlosingmultiple
appendagesorfindingacraterwheremystomach
usedtobe,toseeifit'sworthourmakinganyin
depthpreparations.")Wasit,forinstance,perhaps
mostlythefactthattherealDesmondDossdidhis
heroicsonabattlefieldwhichsufferedcasualties
akintotheworstinWorldWarOne,whichdrew
MelGibsontohim?ThatifDosshaddonehis
manyrescuesinalessharrowingenvironment,a
133
lesscatastrophicone,Gibsonwouldofpassedit
byasofnointerestandevenchosenoverit
subjectmatterthathadnothingtodowithwarand
hadlesstodowithcourage,butgotthecarnage
partright?Andifit'slurid,ifit'spornographic,
thenisn'tittothedistraughtRepublicanworking
class'taste,andrathertotheeducatedliberal's
naturalaversion?
I'mnotsurethisnecessarilyisthecase.Thething
Ifeltafterexperiencingsomuchchaosandgoreis
thatthereissomeresemblancebetweensituations
I'veexperiencedmyselfandwhatthesoldiers'
experiencedthatis,ofbeingdistraughtby
unexpectedchaosandassault,buteventually
becomingaccommodatedandbeginningtorealize
goalswhichI'vegrownfromandamactually
proudof.There'stheequivalent,Ithink,inmany
ofourlives,ofbeingdelightedwhenduringa
situationthatfirstcausesusconsiderablestress,
thatishopelesslyoverwhelming,westartseeing
ourenvironmentlessassomethingtoonlydefend
ourselvesagainstbutassomethingtostart
manipulatingforourownpurposes.Atonepoint
inanintensebattle,asoldierrealizesthatthe
134
bodiesthatareflyingapartandwhichareonly
affectinghim,canactuallyservetoempowerhim,
andheusesoneasashieldtobeginhistroops'
firstlegitimateadvancementonabattlefieldthey'd
foundthemselvessimplystuckon.Mightn'ta
reporterwhowasbeingaccostedbyastreet
protestbutwhofoundmeanstogettheirstoryby
pretendingtobeoneofthem,bejustasgrateful
fortheironthespotinnovations?Ofhaving
performedwellinwhatwasatfirstonlya
stressful,overwhelming,andevenhellish
environment?Andmightn'tthisfilmjustremind
themoftheirownadventure,notpointtotheir
ongoinggluttonyforrestagingtheunhealthy
rush?Amountmoretoapaeantothehuman
abilitytosuccessfullydenatureastressful
environment,thanaPTSDdrivendesireto
repeatoverwhelmingtraumathat'llneveractually
besilenced?Bemoreforthemwhatthewar
experiencewillproveforDossinthatit'llnotbe
thatoffellowsoldiers'fallenbodiesandfelled
gutswhatitwaseverafterforhisWorldWar
Oneservingfatherbutofapplyingsmilesto
savedsoulswhenthepossibilityofanysucha
rescueseemedatfirstcompletelyforlorn?
135
WhatformemakesthisafilmthatHollywood...
thatliberalsoughttobeaverseto,isn'twhoit
mocksandwhoitpraises,itisn'tthatit'ssetinone
ofthemostpornographicallygorybattlefieldsyou
canimagine,it'sthatthereisnosensethroughany
ofitthatwarisaninsaneendeavour,thatnoone
involved,isactuallycompletelysane.Liberals
havebecomeunusedtoseeingWorldWarTwoas
somethinginsane,however.We'veregressedfrom
thebraveCatch22senseofit.Butthewar
neverthelesswasthat.Astotheideathatitwas
somethingthathadtobefought,notethatHawaii
wasleftopenforattack.Rooseveltwaswarnedof
whatwascomingandcouldhaveavoidedPearl
Harbour,thewholePacificTheatre,butheknew
thathisnationhadbecome,likeallothernations
atthattime,almostpsychoticintheirsenseof
theirnationassomethingpurewhichneededa
righteouscausetojustifytheirobliterationof"the
infidels"surelyencroachinguponthem.
Americanswereparanoid.Theywanteda
righteousfight.Theywereofthemindset
Americans,inelectingTrump,haveevidently
foundthemselvesinnow.Andifwegetourselves
136
backtothiskeenawarenessofwarasthat,and
losethiscurrentsenseofitasregretfulendeavours
thatneverthelesssometimesremainnecessaryand
whicharesometimesevenworthbeingproudof,
we'dinstinctivelyflinchtheverymomenta
directorportraysitassomethingpeoplecameto
outofrationaldeliberation.
Evengoodol'deliberating,manofconscience
DesmondDosswasprobablyinsane.He
acknowledgesfamilytraumaforhisaversionto
guns;thatthewarzonewashischancetoundohis
oncehavingpointedagunatsomeonehestill
deeplylovedhisfatherandnearlythereby
causedacatastrophe.Weneedtobebraveenough
toconsiderevenhisdesiretoseejustonemore
sweetsmilefromarescuedsoldier,inthesame
light.Mightheofhad,perhaps,adepressed
mother,whohelivedtofindsomewaysto
enchantandentertain...drawanattentivesmile
fromoutofherremoved,remotesoul?Washis
inclinationtorepeat,repeat,repeat,inwhat
provedageneroussense,notmuchremovedfrom
hisneedtobeseenandnoticedinwhatprovedfor
muchofthefilm,adisruptivesense:hisattention
137
drawingdeclarationthathenotonlywon'tshoota
gun,buthewon'tevertouchoneeither.Thereis
nothingadultaboutwar.It'sastagewherewe
regressandbecomechildrenfightingforour
motherlandsagainstcountriesfullofpeoplewe've
splitallour"badboyandgirl"selvesonto.It'sin
notshowinganyofthis,thatthisfilmshowsupits
workagainsttheliberalcausewhichultimately
isaboutmentalsanityshowsupitsmadness,
showsupthatMelGibsonhasn'tchangedonebit,
evenaswemighthavemovedadismayingsome,
inhisdirection.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-
5M33A0mKthU/WCMt884PuLI/AAAAAAAAA7s/qMmwKKDk56EowMhPOAK
rhCGq7tZIy6H1QCK4B/s1600/127.jpg
age of Trump. Indeed, his numbers might be fewer: the psychic distress caused by
profiting economically during a time when prosperity owed to liberal economic
innovations, not conservative populism, would have rendered many of them total
psychic discombobulates. Hitler gave his folk Volkswagens and employment, and
they were enjoyed rapaciously. But they felt they were entitled to it, it caused no
guilt, because nothing about their economy bespoke children distancing
themselves from old folk ways.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sp5RE--
N_0c/WCcfBVh4h6I/AAAAAAAAA78/zpcwZltfus4MuRFOw-
FmGCOzg5HIm65wwCK4B/s1600/1466204102_loving_gallery17_richardloving
_mildredloving_joeledgerton_ruthnegga_jeffnichols-1194x832.jpg
Loving
What could be wrong with telling a story about an absolutely beautiful, loving
couple, gaining the right to stand proudly married in a heartland of bigotry? How
about if the setting is actually convenient for you to stage how you're finding
yourself driven to imagine your own psychic reality: on the side you're on, all
good and purity; and on the other, all foreboding, encroaching villainy. For if this
were the case, the interest in those actually afflicted -- Mildred and Richard
Loving -- isn't as profound as they deserve, and as you're pretending it to be.
You're feeling anxious, and so you make use of the past and your art to stage a
psychological resistance which quiets your own terrors, but remits actual people
that deserved your full attention, to your convenience.
For the person viewing this film, Mildred and Richard's home offers a sort of inlet
into a vast Southern "sea" of bigotry. It's recognizably attached, part of and not
completely alien to the rest of Southern society. These are not New Yorkers trying
to tough out living there, but a couple who've only known living in this area and
whose descendants have been there for generations: it's their milk and honey. So
it seems a point of entry where you can see up close Southern culture, but there is
no chance that you'll be ambushed within the household with the same dense
bigotry you're creeping up on. What we have here then is the same staging that
people who've known being hemmed in early in life by their needy parents -- who
were threatened by their children's emerging desire for autonomy and self-
actualization -- erect when they're regressing. That is, they project onto the
outside world a face of scary people encircling them, who represent their parents,
ready to once again dominate them for their embracing unallowed trespasses into
the world of self-autonomy, and within their own "home" they fill it with the pure
139
and the good, defended by great "monsters" of their own, of such great majesty
they can take beat up the villains outside.
In this film, the "monsters" we've got on "our" side are the ACLU, which in the
1960s -- the setting for the story -- was beginning to pretty much wear society's
superman cape of unquestioned legitimacy as well as know the unconquerable
power of his muscles. So the story is of Southern bigots targeting a sweet couple,
and finding their unsuspecting, overconfident sorry asses before the Supreme
Court! They dumb 1950s-ruled imagination poked what proved to be an
awakening 1960s' bear! Does this sound like the sort of narrative, not someone of
the left, but that a paranoid nationalist would evoke to explain their situation vis-
a-vis the rest of the world? It does to me, and akin to the one that's dominant now:
a threatened America which had ISIS and immigrants pouring in on all sides,
finally finds a Trump visiting them who intends to, and who will, balk back
incursions onto a nation of proud and simple folk so to finally restore decency.
What actually would have been best evidence that this was an incontrovertibly
liberal film is if it allowed some evidence that the mind taking in this film was
prepared to accept a portrayal of the Loving family that would surely threaten
anyone who needed a simple good vs. evil story, with cognitive dissonance: it
would have been to their point of view, confounding and distressful, but to our
point of view, appropriately complex and multi-variant, even while in some
aspects appropriately straightforward: anti-miscegenation laws are anti-freedom
and must, after all, only be defeated and die. I mean, if what we liberals think is
that anti-miscegenation laws are grotesque affronts to people's civil liberties --
which they most certainly are -- we don't really need to show a couple that is
being denied full happiness owing to these laws as an absolutely perfectly loving
couple, do we? These laws are evil for their own sakes, period; their evilness is
not dependent on the fact that they happen to squash the happiness of especially
endearing couples, but simply because they serve to kill happiness. There's a
reporter in the film, very sympathetic to the Lovings, who uses photos to sculpt a
careful picture of them so their cause will be popular in what was still a broadly
racist nation, wary of a new emerging age of massive cultural change; but we're
2010, and this is a film not for the majority of Americans to learn from -- an
advocacy film -- but probably only for the educated to mull over, so why are we
getting this simpleton version, appropriate for propaganda purposes in the1960s,
now?
doing the right thing by defending people from prejudice and ensuring they live
as freely as anybody else in society, but the mistaken thing in making it so that we
can only see righteously afflicted peoples as great giants of goodness and
soul, then when we're more and more forced by the emerging alt-right to see
people stripped of our projections, we risk blanching at immediately defending
people who'll never more need instantly summonable support.
Why is it that we've made that connection in the first place? That we defend
people who had previously been victims of prejudice, but also cast an ostensibly
wholly unnecessary glowing makeover over them? I think it is because though the
left is massively more psychologically evolved than the right, are creatures of
significantly more love, they have not as much as they think freed themselves
from needing to impose psychodrama over the ingredients everyday reality
supplies. I've mentioned how we've imposed parental persecutors onto the like of
white racists, but I think at other times what we've done is projected aspects of
ourselves onto them -- unwanted aspects -- and then gone and disconnected all
feeling, all empathy, towards this now forlorn group. Most of the left after all
emerged out of families that were more racist, more bigoted, than they themselves
are, and unless they came from a generational chain of stalwart leftist leaders who
were always on societies' progressive end, the possibility that this has completely
left their psyches is unlikely. They however feel that as much has happened,
owing to the fact that they've projected all these still-possessed inklings to hate
the different into the white working class -- especially those of the American
South. What's more, as children of parents who were emotionally well-supplied
enough to not be so fearful of our emerging freedom that it intimidated us off of
fully self-actualizing and growing up, but not so healthy that we were able to self-
actuate without it making us suspect we'll be abandoned for doing so, we've also
projected "vulnerability" and "isolation" into the white working class, as we
willy-nilly staked our own life gains. The fact that white working class has
withered economically to the point of real and terrible despair but that it has gone
unnoticed by the professional class, by the left, owes its origins to the fact that
they've served a convenient grouping -- what the psychohistorian Lloyd DeMause
calls, a poison container -- that contained our own vulnerability. And in detaching
ourselves from these "containers," we feel much less tormented, and can go at life
in a sane fashion. But if we were to begin a more realistic assessment of who
bigots are, something possible to us as we've got a much greater capacity to
appreciate the monstrosities that childhood trauma produces in people -- e.g. it is
certainly within our reach to grapple with the truth that, universally, sexual
predators were sexually abused in their own childhoods -- we'd effectively be
unloosening these containers, and aspects of ourselves which had been
quarantined off would set upon us again. And maybe we're now ready for it... and
maybe, we unconsciously fear, we're not.
141
We need to know we've got a left out there that can't get untethered, lose its shit,
when it is forced to see that what it has taken as simply reality has actually only
been what they have cast as "reality" in order to isolate childhood demons and
provide them with the becalmed space to work and live in that psychic peace
allows. Such a left would look at this film and not "feel good," but rather start
peppering it with questions. Why is that this couple is so good when everyone
else around them is defined by hate, is absolutely, in the worst way, mongrel? Is
this absolute exceptionalism to be believed? Do we need them to be this good,
and would we have felt uncomfortable if they were actually shown as the kind of
complicated, even at times, unloving couple, that the soon-to-be divorce-ridden,
white middle class often actually was during this period? Do we need them to be
the angels to their own children that they were in the film? Would we have hated
the feeling of wanting to actually withdraw away from them if we saw them
yelling and screaming at their children, a development which would thereby have
made the UCLA visitors from New York not just intellectually superior but in
every way superior to this inter-race couple we want much more to love? They are
expelled from the state for their illegally marrying and they leave for much less
bigoted terrain -- Washington D.C., I believe. Why was the portrayal of this not
simply as absolutely fortuitous, a blessing, even if it developed out of regretful
hateful impulse? They were so set on clinging to a home barely any distance from
that of their parents', and thereby situate their children in ongoing, regressive
Hillbilly culture. Why was this not portrayed in the film as their fear of freedom,
of what a more actualizing environment would allow for them? Why was this
passed over? Why when they were about to have a child did they need to return to
their parents, to go back "home"? Was it really owing to the fact of their
admirable respect for Richard's midwife mother and their many memories of her
assisting community members -- of admirable homage to a living person and to
142
tradition worth not fleeing from? Or was it really a regretful retreat when another
incident that realized their self-actualization -- their now not only being married
but commencing a family -- took place? Why when they permanently moved
back to their bigot-surrounded previous home, was it given such legitimacy in the
film? That is, when Mildred says the roads are too dangerous in the city, that next
time it could kill their children, not simply harm them, why wasn't some attention
put to the fact that, yes, this may be, but the schools are actually more likely to
teach them something evolved in this place, and if they actually survive rather
than the statistically dubious possibility of getting rundown, that's a road toward
something useful that no country pathway is apt to provide. Why couldn't it be
suggested that their parents were taking their kids away from a more liberal
environment because thereby their children would be less able to leave them
behind. So not the possibility of cars running the kids over, but in truth because
kids might be empowered to distance themselves from them, that the country
once again was chosen. A cruel retreat that the parents could enable because the
kids didn't have the help of a state that in their case, insisted they live in the more
evolved location. When the parents abjure their chance to be present in the
courtroom as their case moved to the Supreme Court, why did the film absolutely
excuse it as owing to Richard's understandable thorough disinterest in hearing the
opposition say mean things about their children in public, and not offer some
other consideration, like they feared the limelight because it would draw them to
acknowledge themselves as stars and risk their feeling spoiled? Acknowledging
the honour, which is how presence in the court is pitched to them, would make
them special, when their case absolutely justified their feeling that way, and their
courage and latitude, warranted such a coronation. Maybe in reality they weren't
defending their children so much as they were defending themselves against a
spotlight that every liberal in the 60s was embracing, for it meant balking back all
that restrained the good from living the good life. Shouldn't we suspect a film that
shows drawing back from being "special" as showing something admirable of
one's character, which is the effect here? Isn't this a betrayal of the sort of
acceptance of pleasure that the 60s gave to society and which ultimately best
represent what makes it such a historically significant and progressive time? It
enabled freedom, it enabled happiness. It allowed people not to be cowed by
accusations their own parents' had once thrown upon them -- like being secretly
spoiled and self-self-centered, neglectful of homage to time-tested, goldie-oldie
ways, like Southern miscegenation laws.
The Lovings, as they are depicted in the film, deserved our instinct to want to
shout them out of their passivity and plant -- hard -- their own two feet, in their
home in the South, in their home in Washington D.C., and on the stand in the
Supreme Court. The instinct to want to coddle them at the finish as cute is also
something we the left should explore about ourselves. What happens if those in
our own times whom we might want to see as loyal to our cause, reveal
143
themselves as becoming more those who want to bite us, as actually hating us
more than those we're attacking for directing so much hate upon them. If Trump
ends up gaining huge recruits from non-whites in the next few years, we'll know
what that feels like. And it's important once again that we can take this
development in stride, and not have to superimpose a no longer existing "reality"
upon the real one that's regretfully developing before our eyes, because otherwise
as we let loose old mental structures and attempt to reorient our schemas, the let-
loose, once-contained past will crash through and drown us. It'll mean in some
sense that us, not Trump, is fixed to the past. You're not doing what you're doing;
you're not doing what you're doing; you're not doing what you're doing.
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mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-
theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif] StartFragment
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
4 hrs
Lots of talk now about how more than half of voting Americans voted for
someone other than Trump. There's anticipation that they might yet sideline this
guy, trip him up. But we liberals are only getting a small taste now of the number
of Americans that will be abandoning us. It's going to grow and grow, as Trump
successfully creates his version of America as a land of newly purified folk,
who've recommitted themselves to a country they'd forsaken, that'll include a vast
number of people who aren't white. If we're committed now to being wiser so we
aren't surprised by future developments, we might remember how surprised we
were just recently that so many of our friends whom we thought were feminists
revealed themselves, in their obscene hatred of Hillary, as greatly misogynistic
Bernie Bros, and shouldn't assume that this phenomena of corruption within what
we thought was a heart of god has been staunched. We might remember that SNL
skit which showed that many more Americans than just Trump supporters are
committed to the idea that Americans ought to be God-fearing and humble, and
remain ever-conscious of incongruent these traits are with the progressive goal of
individualism and full self-empowerment/self-actualization. For many people,
this is way too much self-attending to not be Satan's cause. We are "bad" and
were meant to suffer.
I think he'll present a 1950s' version, but that repairs a lot of the damage against
black americans (his vision of "bad immigrants" means those brought in 1960s
on, through Ted Kennedy's -- that is, through "liberals'", through our -- efforts).
The border gate will come up quick, and you'll find some members of the press
will even say it actually isn't so bad an idea. He'll start some national work
programs, and you'll find some members of the press start saying that "that
Trump... he's actually not so bad a guy after all; we just needed to give a chance!"
145
He'll junk Obamacare but surprisingly replace it with something even more
substantial for the working class Americans out there that have begun to worship
him. And some time after that, when his number of friends has expanded into
communities you thought we're guaranteed committed against him (God, national
pride, Americans as creatures of sin who've finally begun to redeem themselves
through accepting of life as a burden... I wonder how many people who aren't
white that'll draw in?) -- he'll start talking about how what we need to now is to
eliminate from the country all the vermin that had corrupted it. "Spoiled"
university students will be attacked, as will professors who ostensibly have
focused mostly on teaching future leaders to hate what is best about the American
way of life. Many liberal professors who've viewed what's happening in the
universities with irritated anger will say, "well, I still have problems with Trump
but these spoiled shits surely had it coming, with all their ridiculous insistences
and complaining that only got in the way of their actually learning something...
who the fuck did they think they were, anyway -- our bosses?!!" and we'll have
lost another wall of people we thought were surely with us. They subscribed to
the New Yorker for heaven's sakes. How could we possibly lose them?
The way Fascism goes, is first national "fusion," which draws in gargantuan
numbers, including many who you thought were committed to a progressive
vision, then the fracture. Civilization has simply tilted too far from what people's
corrupt childhoods allowed them.
-----
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Yesterday at 12:41pm
If you think Trump's America is only going to appeal to white Americans you'll
probably have to do a re-think. That potential unity between white and black
Americans that the Black Jeopardy SNL skit suggested, will prove real, as Trump
begins his initial objective: not just policies, but creating a spiritually fused nation
(Hitler's first goal was national fusion, not an all out war on Jews). You're on the
out, not based on your colour -- I think his vision will be inclusive to black and
white, though no other colour included -- but by the fact that no part of you wants
to drift back into imagining the country you were born in as some kind of
spiritual homeland: if you're internationalist, globalist, progressive, atheist, to the
core.
I think we need to get used to being just small mammals in the age of dinosaurs
returned, knowing that no matter how daunting and impressive their unexpected
resurgence, no matter how alarmed we are to see so many of our previously
evolving kin start to grow back reptilian fins and whatnot, historically their time
of reign is still limited. I think we're going to need to prove adept at waiting
things out. Show our foresight and impulse-control, not rush to see what the
146
courts will make of Trump's plans, because they won't be able to do shit. Hillary
and Trump got similar numbers, but Trumpism will grow and grow.
-----
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Yesterday at 10:18am
Americans were beginning to feel too independent, and parentally abandoned for
it, so they regressed (I'm a Freudian) back to the freedom-curtailed 1950s. The
people who have most to fear: the people "mommy" hates because they
abandoned her for their own spoiled, self-serving self-actualization -- i.e.
progressives.
If America had been giving guaranteed annual incomes and a life of prosperity to
everyone dispossessed by trade deals, this still would have happened. It's not the
money troubles, the Depression, it's what James F. Masterson calls "growth
panic" -- a flight from freedom. Psychoanalytic exploration of this phenomena
can be found at Lloyd DeMause's website, psychohistory.com.
EndFragment
EndFragment
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149
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Labels: emily blunt, film, film review, movie, movie review, the girl on the
trainShare to Facebook
MagnificentSeven
Therearetwokindsofpeopleintheworld
universeofMagnificentSeven.Thereare
breeders(thetownspeople)andtherearelivers
(thoseliketheseven).Thebreedersdon'tquite
existforthemselvesbutarevaluableaspartof
acontinuum.Thereasontheyaretobe
protectedisn'tbecausethereisvaluetoeachof
theirindividuallivesnothingaboutthem
isintrinsicallyworthexploring:thereis
nothingbutthemundaneinalltheir"art"of
makingandsellingbutmorebecause
somehowthere'sasensethatiftheirflowis
squelched,ifonegenerationofthembecomes
barren,thehumanlinedies,andit'dbeafailed
cowboywhosawtheherdabouthimgoto
waste.Soifyou'renotabreederbutrathera
liver,someonewhoyoudon'tlookatandsee
theirparentsnoranypotentialchildren,but
rathersomeonewholiveslargeontheirown
withinhis/herowntime,it'simportanttokeep
theherdintact.Youhavethepleasureasyou
goaboutlifeinalooseanduninhibitedwayof
152
knowingalsothatyou'reguardiansof
somethinginsumquiteepic:thelongswathof
timeandthemiracleofconstantcellular
rebirthofLife.It'sabitlikeknowingyou're
notjustoneequaltotherollinghills,sunsets,
andgreatstakesoftrees,butthegenesisinthe
torrentingriversaswell.Howdoyoulikethem
apples.
Cognitively,then,wesensethatthedifference
betweenthevillainandtheheroesinthisfilm
isthatthevillainhaserredinmisconstruing
lesserpeoplewhoneverthelessconstitutethe
humanbackgroundforheroestoleanonwhen
theywillanddefinitelytoeffortlesslyshine
amongst!forworthlessmiscreantstobe
wipedofftheearth.Admitit,hedeclares,
we'rebetteroffwithjustplaindirt.Weshould
seethroughyouasyouclutchdesperatelyto
yourkids(eachandeveryoneofyou,always
clutchingyourquaking,quiveringkids!),
cleverlytryingtointimatethatyourslaughter
wouldbreachsomekindof
cosmicallymandateddecorumand/oralossof
153
ametaphysicallynecessarycategory,andthus
bebothdaringthegodsandriskingacomplete
lossofpsychicequilibrium.Nonsense!You're
parasitesskilledonlyatpoisoningthemindsof
hostsintothinkingthey'renecessary!Theyare
notsomuchoppositetooneanother,asrather
thatonehassimplyportionedevenlessworth
toacategoryofpeopletheotherstillholdslow
aswell.
Onesidewouldkillthemallwillynillyifthey
don'ttakeupthemeaslyfewdollarsoffered
themfortheirproperty.Theotherwouldpoke
funatthem,withtheirinclinationtohideand
theirmeaslyabilitytodefendthemselves,but
holdbackathintingthattheymightbeinfact
beworthless.Inthisfilm,thevillainstakesout
turftheheroes'attitudesdobeckonat:maybe
weshouldtakeatryatnotcaringforthese
peopleatallandsimplydefendtheirlivesfor
thedelightofconstanteffectiveresponsiveness
inavolatileanddangerousapocalyptic
shootout.Theemergenceofthegatlinggunat
theend,notcausefordismay,evenasitwould
154
mowdownmostoftheremainingtownspeople
andleavethebarestspeckofhumancrop
andostensiblyamutepointtotheirwhole
effort:withonlyafewofthemleft,they'd
surelyhavebeenbetteroffallmoving
elsewherebutforjubilation,asit'llgiftan
avenueforagreatpoeticfinishforoneofthe
seven.
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155
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[endif] StartFragment EndFragment
ForperhapsifoneoftheValkyrieangelssees
yourbravefinishandliftsyouuptobeahero
inanafterliferealm...ifanotherproudvista
beforeyouopensup,whatmattersiftheone
behindgonedirt?
EndFragment
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Birth of a Nation
There is a moment in the movie when another black man tries to caution Nat Turner away from
killing. He argues that their killing whites will mean that the many of the slaves who did not
participate will be killed in retaliation. His act, will mean all of their deaths. The
movie communicates however that this particular man -- the one doing the cautioning, a notably
feminine, fretful figure -- has become askew to the real desires of the black community. That all
of them are quite ready to die to have one of them, even if only for a small moment in time,
enjoy revenge on a cruel, exploitative culture. Nat Turner is told that his wife and his daughter
will be killed. But he hears from his wife and his mother and his grandmother, only that they
could not be more proud of him. They may hang us afterwards, but son, bury that hatchet deep
into them today. We're afar but we'll know when the blade has bit, and we'll be joyous.
Standing up to bullies feels great. And if I accept that what I am witnessing actually happened as
told, I get in this instance why the black community stood behind him and ignored those
advocating keeping being Jesus-loving rather than initiating being God-wrathful, even if it meant
that whole hordes of human beings who knew nothing of Nat would be hanged for his actions.
He told them there was fighting power in all of them. All the obsequious behaviour will continue
if it must, but it can be discarded as actually intrinsically alien to them once the white slaver's
empire shows greater cracks than it proved to in this instance. Staged one hundred years later, it
could have done the trick... and even now, an impossibly powerful oppressive culture
quaked, and those who will matter in subsequent generations were inspired.
My problem though is that this way of narrativizing is shared by every group that feels (and has
been) victimized, and the extent of these groups is much larger than obvious groups like an
exploited black population or, say, the contemporary American populace exploited by Wall
Street. It very much includes the Klu Klux Klan and fascists everywhere. Dig into the childhood
of any fascist and you will find one filled with abuse, as the current book Hillbilly Elegy is trying
to remind people. Look at any horrid action visited upon a powerless person -- like the one in the
film, where a slaver knocks out the teeth of a slave so he can force food down his mouth -- and
you'll be witnessing a version of what actually happened to the person inflicting the torture upon
him/herself in childhood (in Hillbilly Elegy, the author describes family members being set on
fire as part of the everyday ho-hum). So while watching the film and witnessing it argue that we
become men only when we've heaved our oppressors' cut-off heads before us, I am hesitant to
only applaud. What if the film had followed its ending with a quick clip from Griffith's Birth of
a Nation, where the whites knew glory when they'd strung up "oppressing" black men, thereby
asking us how much of our cheering actually owes to fidelity to the black people, and how much
to just craving a story of men becoming men through bloody revenge, achieved in a politically
correct, non-guilt-arousing form?
Maybe the inverse of demonstrating empathic reach, we demonstrate in our enthusiasm of the
film an endorphin-fueled mindset, exactly opposite one that invites in the lived realities of
others? Putin is starting to make films like this one, where an oppressed Russian people finally
resists an oppressive power (in the case I've heard about recently, the Hitler regime), and you
don't feel so much that what's going on is applauding the efforts of brave victimized people who
finally put a bullet to the oppressor's head, as gearing up a current Russian Putin-admiring
populace for revenge on slights projected onto our current landscape. His historical narratives
are going to get transplanted onto today's reality, and it's best not to meet them just
as revved up.
158
Be kind to the one who braves standing up and saying, hey, maybe there's another way, like
Thorin's Balin (You don't have to do this. You have a choice. You've done honourably by our
people...) and Kirk's Spock (There is no Starfleet regulation that condemns a man to die without
a trial). There may come a day, soon, where we'll need these type of people intact as, not
unmanly cowards or self-interested traitors, but those really worth listening to.
EndFragment
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-
3XJJPyXC3Cc/UzELBA_n7RI/AAAAAAAAAVg/nLzV1PinH4I/s1600/rs_1024x
759-130719130320-1024.divergent2.mh.071913.jpg
Or jump ship as fast as possible ...
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Rae3rH-
p30E/UzEFmJCUOOI/AAAAAAAAAVI/ywfrS89SJ90/s1600/Unknown.jpeg
And be this?
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-
vm3xnq0g_D0/UzEFoP9ybdI/AAAAAAAAAVQ/ql74djoGiBQ/s1600/divergent
-movie-image-high-res-10.jpg
Or this?
Hmmm ...
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Impossible to defend
Andrew OHehir wrote:
[]
Instead, Id rather go beneath the surface to look at the
structural function of these stories the role they play in the
cultural economy where I think we can identify even more
intriguing similarities. Both Divergent and The Hunger
Games are fundamentally works of propaganda disguised as
fantasy or science fiction. Theyre not propaganda on behalf
of the left or the right, exactly, or at least not the way we
generally use those words in America. They are propaganda
160
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
---
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
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165
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Iron Man 3
Nebraska
The Wolverine
The Counselor
The Counselor Blu-Ray Clip - Thats What Greed Is (HD) Penelope Cruz,
Cameron Diaz
167
Filth
Filth Movie CLIP - Hit Me Bruce (2013) - James McAvoy, Imogen Poots
Movie HD
Pacific Rim
12 Years a Slave
168
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit Movie CLIP - I'm Not Crazy (2014) - Keira
Knightley Movie HD
*****
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"Her"
The power of this fusion fantasy can be seen in a
simple experiment that has been repeated over and over
again by Silverman and his group. They showed subliminal
messages to hundreds of people, and found that only one
"MOMMY AND I ARE ONEhad an enormous
emotional effect, reducing their anxieties and pathologies
and their smoking and drinking addictions
measurably. Daddy and I are one had no effect.
That wars and sacrifices also act out the childs revenge
against the mother can be seen in the details of the sacrifice
of women (about a third of all the sacrifices), where female
victims first make a prodigious show of their female
power, then are laid down on their backs and their breasts
cut open and their bodies torn apart. The two aspects of the
Killer Goddess are demonstrated when the Aztec warrior
takes the sword that he had used to behead the Goddess
victim and terrifies and annihilates our enemies with it.
"Gravity"
Furthermore, the weight of the fetus pressing down into the
pelvis can compress blood vessels supplying the placenta,
producing additional placental failure. Practice contractions
near birth give the fetus periodic "squeezes," decreasing
oxygen level even further, while birth itself is so hypoxic
that "hypoxia of a certain degree and duration is a normal
phenomenon in every delivery," not just in more severe
cases. The effects on the fetus of this extreme hypoxia are
dramatic: normal fetal breathing stops, fetal heart
rate accelerates, then decelerates, and the fetus thrashes
about frantically in a life-and death struggle to liberate
itself from its terrifying asphyxiation.
172
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[endif] StartFragment EndFragment
The "imprinted" fetal drama, then, is the matrix into which
is poured all later childhood experiences, as the child works
over the basic questions posed by his experiences in the
womb: Is the world hopelessly divided between nurturant
and poisonous objects? Am I to be eternally helpless and
dependent on the life-giving blood of others? Must all good
feelings be interrupted by painful ones? Do I always have
to battle for every pleasure? Will I have the support and
room I need to grow? Can one ever really rely on another?
Is entropy the law of my world, with everything doomed to
get more crowded and polluted? Must I spend my life
174
switched into their social alters and merged with their own
sadistic internalized persecutor, which was quite willing to
take responsibility for ordering pain inflicted upon others.
Their "struggle with themselves" over whether to obey was
really a struggle between their social alters and their main
selves. Although many subsequent experiments varied the
conditions forobedience, what Milgram did not do is try the
experiment without the social trance. If he had not framed
it as a group experience, if he had simply on his
own authority walked up to each individual, alone, and,
without alluding to a university or any other group, asked
him or her to come to his home and give massive
amounts of electric shock to punish someone, he would not
have been obeyed, because they would not have switched
into their social alters. The crucial element of
the experiments was the existence of the group-as-
terrifying-parent, the all-powerful university. Not
surprisingly, when the experiment was repeated using
children-who go into trance and switch into traumatized
content more easily than adults-they were even more
obedient in inflicting the maximum shock. Subjects were
even obedient when they themselves were the victims: 54
percent turned a dial upon command to the maximum limit
when they had been told it was inflicting damage upon their
ears that could lead to their own deafness, and 74 percent
ate food they thought could harm them, thus confirming
that they were truly in a dissociated state, not
just "obeying" authority or trying to hurt others, and that it
was actually an alternate self doing the hurting of the main
self. The only time they refused to obey was
when experimenters pretended to act out a group rebellion,
176
"Filth"
The only neurobiological condition inherited by boys that
affects later violence is they have a smaller corpus
callosum, the part of the brain that connects the right and
the left hemisphere. The larger corpus callosum of infant
girls allows them to work through trauma and neglect more
easily than boys. Furthermore, boys who are abused had a
25 percent reduction in sections of the corpus callosum,
while girls did not. This means boys actually need more
love and caretaking than girls as they grow up. If they do
not receive enough interpersonal attention from their
caretakers they suffer from damaged prefrontal cortices
(self control, empathy) and from hyperactive amygdalae
(fear centers), their corpus callosum is reduced further,
and they have reduced serotonin levels (calming ability)
and increased corticosterone production (stress hormone).
All these factors make them have weak selves,
reduced empathy, less control over impulsive violence and
far more fears than girls.
177
Texts
"Foundations of Psychohistory"
"Emotional Life of Nations"
"The Origins of War in Child Abuse"
Posted by Patrick McEvoy-Halston at 9:18 AM No comments: Links to this post
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Labels: 12 Years a Slave, DeMause, filth, gravity, her, inside llewyn davis, iron man 3, lloyd
demause
I admire how Kirk in the new Star Trek films, while wholly
convincing as a captain, someone appropriately at the helm,
can seem respectful when his own authority is being
breached by something arisen that possibly deserves
attention at that point more than he does; something that
might actually be tethering out an alternative action with
enough momentum and enough to it that he will end up
seeing sense in just obliging it. He can stop himself, when
something maybe more relevant and interesting is asserting
itself, which will cue more overall and perhaps more
182
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Labels: into darkness, jack ryan: shadow recruit, star trek: into darkness, the hobbit
vs.
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"The film, with its dewy tone and gentle manners, plays
like a feature-length kitten video, leaving viewers to coo at
the cute humans who live like pets in a world-scale safe
192
But she loves him even as she leaves him, and he and the
city will re-coop. Their mother revisited them only to leave
them once and for all, but rather than for nothing it left
them with the knowledge they'll never be absent her love.
Like Theodore and Amy do with one another, they'll spend
more of their time with people like themselves, and less
with the ogres out there like the former wives and husbands
198
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Labels: beowulf, black swan, charlotte's web, her, lloyd demause, Richard Brody, sady doyle,
spike jonze, stephanie zacharek
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The Hobbit (Tolkien)
I think the thing that must seem most curious about this
adventure to slay a dragon and reclaim a homeland and its
treasure, is how the hell could adding a burglar to this
motley crew be adding the decisive factor? What's the
trick? For there must be one, since the dragon has only
gotten larger and more deadly as the years have gone by.
Peter Jackson changes things so that a burglar is needed
because someone small and stealthy needs to enter Smaugs
lair to perhaps snatch one especially bright, brilliant
ostensibly readily noticeable even given its being shrouded
by a hoard of lesser delightsjewel, the Arkenstone. With
that stone, Thorin will earn control over seven kingdoms of
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Any good interview, even one thats entirely friendly on
the surface, should have a slight adversarial quality,
since the reporter and the subject have inherently
different goals. The Coens dont always suffer fools
gladly, but they give good copy, even in one-word
answers to questions that dont interest them. (Do you
get excited about the Cannes competition? one
reporter asked them. Does that get your heart
pumping? Ethan Coen: No.) Over the years the
Coens have developed a routine that lies somewhere
between practiced shtick and a psychological coping
mechanism. Ethan, the younger, shorter, lighter-haired
brother, delivers brief responses, often glib or acrid in
tone, and then the taller, older and more loquacious
Joel bails him out, expounding generously on the
original question or diverting it into friendlier terrain.
215
[. . .]
Well, I feel like one aspect of that is that your movies
almost always reward a second viewing. Theres
always stuff I didnt see or didnt understand at first.
Which definitely isnt true of most movies!
J.C.: Thats a marketing trick!
E.C.: We endorse it! [Laughter.] But, my God, we dont
watch our own movies. No. You work on it for a year, a
year and a half, and especially by the final stage when
youre fussing over every little thing and we cut them
ourselves and everything is problem-solving, fixing
stuff up. Theres a job involved, and beyond that when
theres nothing to be done, why would you look at it
again? I mean, you know how it comes out. ("Joen and
Ethan Coen: 'My God, we don't watch our own
movies!'" interview with Andrew O'hehir, Salon.com)
-----
Emporium
"Don't watch our own movies"
Graham Clark
I hate that answer; it's designed to make them seem
remote from us
Or it's just the honest truth.
Emporium
@Graham Clark They don't watch their own movies,
but they know that by saying that that they're going to
seem as if they dump everything they've done without a
need to look back ... this draws us to envy and be in awe
of them (they're very psychologically sophisticated
people). I think part of them likes to pretend they've
garnered some kind of enlightenment, but won't from
within their cloaks, show it to us. Someone ought to
chastise them for their limiting tendency to withhold,
and me, Emporium, just did my limited bit.
Graham Clark
218
Emporium
@Graham Clark My art is different from theirs, but they
are amazing. Still, they withhold, and it's meant to
draw ... but frustrate. And just as your everyday average
Magna Carta human being with a nifty, remote,
admittedly "you-denying" pseudonym who'd prefer
none of us had too much a taste for heights and angels
(that was the real 60s, after all), I'm for sure going to
point that out.
***
rdnaso
@Emporium Nothing ruins the fun of watching a
movie more than working on it. At the end, just like they
say, everyone's just trying to get it out the door on time
and all too aware of everything that could have been
done differently and better. I doubt that novelists spend
much time reading their own novels either: too busy
working on the next one. Mailer claimed to not read at
all: "I'm more a writer than a reader." Poets though -
they read their own stuff compulsively...
Emporium
@rdnaso @Emporium If that were generally true, by
now it wouldn't be a surprise to learn they don't watch
their own in fact we'd be surprised if they did. I think
many creators know that it sounds sort of masculine to
always be onto the next work, and feminine, to admit
watching the whole film with an audience is a rewarding
good time. They toss things off as soon as possible and
don't look back, while we, their dependents, indulge.
Masculine to our feminine.
Emporium / Patrick McEvoy-Halston
EndFragment
220
RecommendthisonGoogle
anRratingwaslike,giventhatthereareseveralscenesof
JordanslatenightescapadesthatIhesitatetodescribein
print.(Well,theresoneinwhichDiCaprioappearsto
havealitcandleuphisbutt.)Somecriticshavealready
accusedthemovieofbeingundisciplinedandoverlylong,
andtheresoneentireepisodeinvolvingayachting
disasterthatIdprobablyhaveleftonthecuttingroom
floor.ButIratherthinkScorseseandThelma
Schoonmaker,hislongtimeeditor,havethecredentialsto
doastheyplease,andtheoutrageousexcessofWolfof
WallStreetismorecarefullycalibratedthanitatfirst
appears.WefindJordansragstorichesstoryand
magneticpersonalityirresistible,butwealsoknowwere
notsupposedtolikehim,becausehestolethemoneyfrom
vulnerablepeopleandseemstobeasociopathwithno
ethicalcenter.Howdoweresolvethatcontradiction?We
cant,andthatsthepoint.
TherealJordanBelfortworkedbrieflyasajuniorbroker
onWallStreetbeforelosinghisjobaftertheBlackFriday
crashin1987.HestartedoverinaclassicLongIsland
boilerroom,wherehustlersintracksuitshawkedpenny
stocks,mostofthemworthless,fora50percent
commission.StrattonOakmont,asweseeinScorseses
retelling,tookthisstrategytothenextlevel,targeting
middleincomeinvestorswhohadreadycashbutlacked
thesophisticationtounderstandtheywerebeingscammed.
Atonepointinthe90s,Strattonemployedmorethan
1,000brokersandhandlednumerousIPOsriddledwith
insidertrading,includingafamousoneforshoedesigner
222
SteveMadden.ScorseseandWintermakeabsolutelyclear
thatthisisntastoryaboutoneunprincipledbrokerand
hisrenegadefirm;thelessonsofJordanBelfortscareer
areallspelledoutinDiCapriostremendousearlyscene
withMcConaughey:WedontmakeanythinginAmerica
anymore,anditdoesntmatterwhethertheclientsgetrich
orgobroke.Werecapitalizingonthelazinessandgreed
ofothers;theirdesiretogetrichquickwillmakeusrich
instead.
DiCapriosperformanceisfeverishbutcontrolled,
capturingthemaniaofaguywhoshopelesslyaddictedto
sex,drugsandmoneyandwhobelieves,intrueGatsby
fashion,thathehascrackedthecodeoftheuniverse.This
isanovercrowdedyearformaleactors,butifDiCaprio
doesntwinanOscarforthispart,heprobablyneverwill.
(HistwobestactornominationssofarareforBlood
DiamondandTheAviator,andtobothofthoseIsay:
Whatthelivingheck?)Hesonscreenfornearlytheentire
threehourfilm,sweating,snorting,screwing,stealingand
deliveringshowstoppingsalesfloorspeeches,including
theonewherehetellshistroopsthatitsgoodiftheyre
deeplyindebt,behindontherentandhavetheir
girlfriendsconvincedthattheyrebums:Iwantyoutouse
yourpaintogetrich!
Youcanfeel,inDiCapriosimpassioneddelivery,that
Belfortbelievesheshelpingpeoplebypreachingthis
gospelofshamelessnessanddisillusionment.Itsalmosta
capitalistSermonontheMount:Shedyourshameandyour
illusions,andyoutoocanbelikeme,aparasitewhogrows
richfromtheweaknessofothers.Ofcoursehesnotdumb
223
enoughtobelievethatthislessonisavailabletoall;its
likeJohnCalvinsideaofsalvation,aprivilegebestowed
onachosenelectwhoriseabovetheseaofdamnedsouls.I
guessthisisaspoiler,butJordanBelfortsstorylacksthe
romanticorpoeticconclusionthatbefallsbothAlienin
SpringBreakersandtheoriginalJayGatsby.Hesout
therestill,reinventedasamotivationalspeakerandsales
coach,preachingtheonetrueAmericanreligion,for
whichearlierGatsbymodelslaiddowntheirlives.
Successfulpeopleare100percentconvincedthattheyare
mastersoftheirowndestiny,hetellspeople.Richnessis
withinyourgrasp,hypotheticallyspeaking,andifyoure
pooranyway,itsclearlyyourowndamnfault.(The
WolfofWallStreet:inequalityandtheGatsbymyth,
AndrewOhehir,Salon.com)
susansunflower
TowardstheendofLuhrman'sGatsby,therewasabrief
referencethatmademerealizethatLuhrmansawGatsbyas
theheroofthestory,whichIconfesscameasashock.I
hadalwaysviewedGatsbymuchliketheWizardofOz,a
deeppocketedmagicianwhosefeetofclayandunmagical
realitywouldinevitablybediscovered.
Still,asidefromwonderingexactlyWHATtheywere
teaching"youngpeopletoday,"IrealizedthatIhadseena
224
verydifferentmoviebasedonaverydifferentstoryfrom
theoneLuhrmanhadmade.Iwasn'twillingtorewatchto
reappraise,butIdidwonderiftheratherwidelydivergent
reviewsreflectedacertaingenerationaland/orworldview
gap.
Havingacoupleof12steppersinthefamily12steppers
whotendedtoregailanyfamilygatheringwiththenear
deathexperiencesinthebadolddayswhentheywere
usingIanticipaterathersimilar"gap"inappreciationfor
thisfilm.Thosewholivedthroughtheexcessestheir
ownorothersandcameoutunscathedorhavehealed
mayrevelinseeing"thosedays"(orsomething
approximatingthem)depictedonthebigscreen.I'mless
certainthatthevictimsandcasualities,thecollaterally
damagedwillbesoamusedand/or(onceagain)exactly
howamusedthefemaleaudienceislikelytobe.
Itsoundslikethismoviehasalreadybeenmadeseveral
timesinthelast30yearsEvenfromthisfairly
enthusiasticandpositivereview,itdoesn'tsoundlikethis
incarnationactuallyhasanythingtosay...leavingwhat?
Myownfeelingisthatthe"howthemightyhavefallen"
"closersarealwaysclosing"endingdoesnotactuallymake
thismoviesomehowmorallyneutral.
Amity
225
@susansunflower
"doesnotactuallymakethismoviesomehowmorally
neutral."
Wait,Idon'tunderstand.Youwantmoralneutrality?
susansunflower
@Amity@susansunflower
No,butIthinkScorcesedoes.
Iwrotemycommentbeforereadingthedaughter'sstory
below.Bottomline,theWolfofWallStreetsurvived.This
seemstobeaboyswillbeboysstoryofwretchedexcess.
HailofBulletsTonyMontanabecameaheroinsome
quarters.Ithought"Blow"packedapunchwithoutbeing
preachy.IfGatsbycanbeconsideredherothesedays....
SeealsoGordonGekko.
226
Emporium
@susansunflowerThetimesyou'relivinginempowers
certainkindsofpeople.Ifthetimesaregenuinely
actuallymorallygood,peopleliketheflappersor
hippiesaretheonestowatch.Ifyou'rehectoringtheir
debauch,you'renotseeingitstraight.Whentimesarebad,
it'sgoingtobethelikeoftheseassholes,whoweregoing
toneedalot,Imeanalot,ofkindnesstobecomepeople
whodon'tneedforyoutolosesotheycanfeelgreat,and
whoweremeanttoexperiencezeroofit(strangely,
MatthewMcConaugheykindofdoesofferabitatthe
beginning,whichmayexplainwhysomecriticswhohated
thefilmlurchbacktothisscene,asiflongadriftinspank
andsewageanddesperateforrecognizedfirmament).
Theproblemaboutacknowledgingthatitisfuntowatch
theseguysnonethelessthetimesareenablingtheir
stories,whilecowinganddeflatingothers,anditshows
isthatyoushouldinmyopinionbeabletorecognizeit
withsadistNazis(ormaybeGermansingeneralinthelate
30s,asweunderstandbetterthattheyreallywereoneand
thesame)andtheirprey.ThatisthetestI'dputtoRichard
Brodyforinstance,averygoodman,whoindiscussionof
thisfilmgenuinelybravelytalksout"monstrous
potentates
whosevastanddarkrangeofexperienceispreciselythe
sourceoftheirallure."
227
susansunflower
@Emporium@susansunflower
ThecontrastbetweenBrodyandDenbycouldnotbe
greater
Brody:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2013/12
/thewildbrilliantwolfofwallstreet.html
Denby:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/12
/wolfofwallstreetreview.html
susansunflower
@Emporium@susansunflower
Actuallyitremindsmeof"ApocalypseNow"whichI
absolutelyloathedonaviscerallevel(whileacknowledging
thecinematicachievement)becauseIfeltitglorifiedwar
(evenasit"pretended"otherwiseorcamouflagedits
enthusiasmindirt,mud,andworldwearycynicism
anotherclassicbook).
Mymemoryisthatprerelease,ApocalypseNowwas
228
"supposed"tobeanantiwarfilmsupposedtoexposethe
"horrororwar"butactuallyit'smostvocalaudience(as
farasIcouldtell,thiswaspreinternet)wereVietnamVets
whoendorsedthatitdepicted"whatitwasreallylike",
strugglingwithPTSD,antiwarbutwatchingitoverand
over.Ithoughtitmakewarlookliketheepitomeofbeing
"reallyalive"....intoxicating,sensual,sexy.I'mdoubtful
thatApocalypseNowwoulddiscourageanyadventure
seeingyoungmanfromenlisting.
(InterestingreviewbyaVietnamesefilmreviewer:
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2001/nov/02/artsfeature
s.londonfilmfestival2001)
I'minclinedtothinkthatScorsesemadethismoviebecause
itstopicandextravaganzasuitedhistastesandhis
cinematicstrengthsgangofguysnotbecausehecared
somuchaboutitsragstorichestoragsstoryline.Quite
likelybecausehewantedtorevisitHISOWNpast
revelries,hisown"warstories",hisglorydays.
tasherbean
@susansunflowerexcellentcomment.Idon'tknowifyou
sawthemovie"Jarhead"withJakeGyllenhaal,(whichI
thoughtwasactuallyaprettygooddepictionofthehurryup
andwaitaspectoflifeinthemilitary)butthesceneright
229
beforealltheyoungMarinerecruitsweregettingreadyto
shipouttoIraq,hasthemsittingintheCampPendleton
movietheaterwatchingandcheeringcrazilythefamous
helicopterattacksceneinApocalypseNow.......tomake
yourpoint.
Emporium
@susansunflower
It'stoughnottoglorifypeoplewhenit'stheirtime.I'vehad
managersatjobswhotreattheiremployeesabhorrently,but
afairrecountingofwhowaslivingthemoreinterestinglife
them,ortheirunsettledemployeeswouldmeanfor
surethem.Iliveinaneighborhoodthatisgentrifying
massively,andthoughIavoidtheirhangoutsfortheirscent
ofyou'remeanttofeelitassertion,thebetter,more
confidentartisticexpression,isthere.
Watch"WalterMinty."Hereyougetoneofthoseguys
who'sdevotionhaskeptacompanyrelevantfortwenty
years+,butseemssimplyembarrassingwhenacompany
feelstotallythatitcantransplantatemplatewherenoone
meansmorethantheirrole.Waltergetsthesegreat
"prompts"spirited"girlfriend";groundedfamily;rugged
herowhoeventhe"wolves"salivateoverinadmiration
thatendupmeaningthatthoughheloseshisjob,hecan
230
evolveintoequalinpresencetothe"wolfonwallstreet"
bosswhohaseveryoneelseinhiscompanycowedinfear,
andwhomtheage,eventhemovieagrees,ismostlytheirs
now.
Thisisn'tnecessarilymorefuntowatchthan"Wolf".It
doesn'tadmittothemasochismthatitbaitsmostinthe
audiencewith:feelingsmalllendstoyoursurelybeing
virtuous.Andit'salie:it'sdoubtfulthefewtrueWalter
Mintysouttherearelivingasenjoyably,ascompellingly,
astheseassholesare.Sparksofinspirationmeetjet
engine!
SomeoneattheNewYorkerhasjustsuggestedthese
"wolves"are(theGreatGatsby's)Buchanan'spointof
view,butthisisn'ttrue.Gatsby,wasnewwealth,whenthe
oldwasfeelinglesssureofitselfandthewolvesare
feelingit.
They'rereallyGatsbythosetheagewantstoinflate
strippedofcourseofallthatotherwisecommends,forour
agebeingthepunishmentforapreviousone'segoistic
proclamationthathumanbeingsaregood,anddeserve
allofthem;eventheweakandgullibletoknow
happinessandpleasure.
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232
Labels: apocalypse now, david denby, Richard Brody, scorcese, the great gatsby, wolf on wall
street
Noblesse oblige
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Everybody who writes about movies dreads making these
233
One thing for sure: I'm never going to watch the hugely-
praised "12 Years a Slave", which while I'm sure is an
excellent film, I know will depress the living crap out of
me. Life is depressing enough; I don't need to pay money
to see a film and be artificially depressed. I know this
makes me a plebe, but jeez. (It reminds me very much of
when the Glenn Close/John Malkovich "Dangerous
Liaisons" was released--I saw it based on the reviews, was
depressed as crap by it, and have never, ever wanted to see
it again.)
Andrew O'Hehir
@Douglas Moran All of the above, Doug. I mean, the
235
Douglas Moran
@Andrew O'Hehir @Douglas Moran In all honesty, I
have no idea how you can watch that many movies in a
single year. I have to imagine that it changes your
perception, and have often thought that "uniqueness"
becomes far more of a sought-after quality for a critic than
"entertainment". So something that the great mass of
people will find entertaining, a huge percentage of critics
will either roll their eyes at or actively detest--"Sleepless in
Seattle" or "Love, Actually" being a couple of perfect
examples of that. Isn't there some quote about the familiar
becoming detestable, or something like that? When you
see 40 romantic comedies in one year (most bad), you've
236
With critics, the best one can do is find a critic who either
provides enough information, entertainment value, or
shares your opinions closely enough so as to be useful to
you. So although we seen it demonstrated many times that
your tastes are wildly different from mine, you write
informative and entertaining reviews that provide enough
data that allow me to make an informed decision. (I felt the
same with Charles Taylor, FWIW.) And given my
knowledge of your tastes, I know that I wouldn't enjoy "12
Years a Slave", no matter how goddamn awesome it is in
some absolute, Platonic Ideal of a Film way. It would just
depress me, anger me, make me cry or outraged or
whatever, and my blood pressure doesn't need that. So I
237
skipped it.
But I won't stop reading your reviews. Even when you call
me a typical shallow, middle-class American with middle-
brow tastes. So there! :)
Emporium
@Douglas Moran @Andrew O'Hehir This was like
something out of a Jane Austen novel.
Douglas Moran
@Emporium @Douglas Moran @Andrew O'Hehir So if
I parse this correctly (which is hard, honestly, given the
length of your analogy), I only read O'Hehir's reviews
239
Emporium
@Douglas Moran @Emporium @Andrew
O'Hehir @Douglas Moran @Emporium @Andrew
O'Hehir In true gentry style, his courteous, good-humored
reply had a lot of teaching in it which some might find
plainly arrogant: critics pursue and are entertained by
novelty, something new and smart; ordinary people, by a
repeat of the same 'ol sack of shit. Under cover of the
ostensible key difference number of movies watched
is being pushed a class difference, a difference in quality of
person.
To which you replied you're still not going to see "12
years," even if God had placed all the wisdom of the
universe in it, if there's any risk of it spoiling your dinner.
But you're obliged to have had him visit, and ensure him
you'll keep reading his reviews to make sure you make an
informed decision as to which film out there won't depress,
anger, outrage, or unsettle your blood pressure in any way.
With such self-mockery here, I gathered you conceded that
the films he likes are probably those anyone who has a
larger stake in the world probably ought to watch. The
bumpkin was visited by a lord, and afterwards felt
240
Douglas Moran
@Emporium @Douglas Moran @Andrew O'Hehir Ah, I
see; thanks for clarifying. I've got it now: You're a
pompous, pretentious bore who believes that, by reading
a couple of posts by people you don't know in any way
whatsoever and of whose past interactions you have zero
knowledge, you nonetheless feel informed and wise enough
to pass judgement thereon. Got it.
And by the way, Pro Tip: If you're going to use such over-
boiled phrasing and grammar, you might want to re-read
your comments before pressing the "Post" button. For
example, I "assured" Andrew; I didn't "ensure" him. Also,
a single return after a paragraph suffices. I'm sure on re-
reading other edits will occur to you, given your vast and
superior knowledge of the written form.
Andrew O'Hehir
241
Emporium
@Andrew O'Hehir @Douglas Moran
When you see 200+ movies a year, you become a specialist,
and you're looking for something you've never seen before.
Whereas ordinary moviegoers, by and large, want to see
essentially what they've seen before, done well or with a
new twist, and with a familiar outcome.
That is, it's more honest to say that even if the critic can
only for some reason make it to ten rather than the two
hundred films they prefer or at least usually have to watch,
they just naturally are people who take most pleasure, not
in the repetition of thrills, but in the piquant, the fresh, the
new. They're beyond repetition-compulsion; are more
evolved than middlebrow and it's not owing to practice.
There certainly are critics that are that. True leaders; better
than the average dope, I mean. Still, there's a good number
I reckon unconsciously pick choices they can imagine
leaving the mob in a fit of frustration. Became the critic, to
indulge the delight in stymying. Critic film geeks.
Emporium/Patrick McEvoy-Halston
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12 Years a Slave (Review Part One)
I've only seen one film this year that kinda gets at how
someone could become a person as sadistic as Fassbender's
slaveowner is in this film. Insidious 2 got how a little,
vulnerable boy, completely owned by an absolutely
terrifying mother, was going to have no chance building an
independent self apart from her. His life was on the line,
and you can imagine how a six or eight or however old a
boy he was, would have a brain formed largely on ensuring
he does nothing outside of what she wants. The point of life
... is to not be devoured. And the great homo sapiens brain
of his would be using all its evolutionary excellence to
contrive means to ensure he manages this--even if this
means making him into someone who would be to any sane
outsider, deviant, insane ... strangely ill-purposed to what
life would confront him with. The rest of the world does
not realize that this one brain alone negotiated avoiding
oblivion! What of if it if it's ill-purposed to manage
244
much filth she wretches at her own smell ... yep, this is
what Fassbender himself endured by his mother during his
own childhood. Collectively, all the slaveholders making
their slaves into stinking, shit-stained, confined wretches,
recalls for me what the Germans did to Jews, Gypsies, and
"unsocials," when they re-inflicted their own horrible
childhood experiences onto them in the 30s and 40s. To
wit: upon a German's "birth, 'the wretched new-born little
thing was wound up in ells of bandages, from the feet right,
and tight, up to the neck; as if it were intended to be
embalmed as a mummy babies are loathsome, foetid
things, offensive to the last degree with their excreta
' Babies simply could not move for their first year of life.
A visitor from England described the German baby as 'a
piteous object; it is pinioned and bound up like a mummy
in yards of bandages it is never bathed Its head is
never touched with soap and water until it is eight or ten
months old.' Their feces and urine was so regularly left on
their bodies that they were covered with lice and other
vermin attracted to their excreta, and since the swaddling
bandages were very tight and covered their arms as well as
their bodies, they could not prevent the vermin from
drinking their blood. Their parents considered them so
disgusting they called them 'filthy lice-covered babies,' and
often put them, swaddled, in a bag, which they hung on the
wall or on a tree while the mothers did other tasks"
(DeMause, "Childhood Origins of World War 2 and the
Holocaust").
The whipping and lashes too, Fassbender and the rest of his
slaveholder ilk would have suffered? Once again--yup.
247
box on the ears has earned his fate.' The beatings continued
at school, where 'we were beaten until our skin
smoked.' Children could be heard screaming on the streets
each morning as they were being dragged to school by their
mothers. The schoolmaster who boasted he had given
'911,527 strokes with the stick and 124,000 lashes with the
whip' to students was not that unusual for the
time. Comparisons of German and French childhoods in the
late nineteenth century found 'no bright moment, no
sunbeam, no hint of a comfortable home [with] mother love
and care' in the German ones, with 'sexual molestation and
beatings at home and at school consistently worse in the
German accounts.' Endes massive study of German
autobiographies of the time found 'infant mortality, corporal
punishment, and cruelties against children' were so brutal
he had to apologize 'for not dealing with the 'brighter side'
of German childhood because it turns out that there is no
'bright side.' Other studies found most Germans
remembered 'no tender word, no caresses, only fear' with
childhood 'so joyless, so immeasurably sad that you could
not fathom it.' When Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that 'the
German people today lies broken and defenseless, exposed
to the kicks of all the world' both he and his reading
audience read this not as political metaphor but as the real
kicks of their parents and teachers and real memories of
lying broken and defenseless. The tortures of childhood
were far more traumatic and constant than the later studies
of 'authoritarianism' ever imagined. There was a good
reason that Germans and Austrians spoke so often about
their Kinderfeindlichkeit (rage toward children), and it is
this rage that is embedded in the early violent amygdalan
249
young people who can't get their lives started. And many
people have pleaded all along for policies that put job
creation front and center. Their pleas have, however, been
drowned out by the voices of conventional prudence. We
can't spend more money on jobs, say these voices, because
that would mean more debt. We can't even hire unemployed
workers and put idle savings to work building roads,
tunnels, schools. Never mind the short run, we have to
think about the future! The bitter irony, then, is that it turns
out that by failing to address unemployment, we have, in
fact, been sacrificing the future" (NYT, Nov. 7 2013). We're
inflicting a lot of damages to ourselves, a lot of anxiety.
This is important, because when you take into
consideration how even when jobs were leaving us and our
incomes were wilting away, banks were still enabling us all
the stuff we wanted for a further twenty years, it undoes all
the accruing we had been doing pretty much without pause
since World War 2. Further, it's adding "revenue" of despair
into a pot that will eventually fill so that we sense that
enough joy has now finally been sacrificed to our mothers--
she's mollified, and satiated--that we kinda now feel safe to
begin to tip toe away from her and embark outside on real,
undetermined adventure, while she goes on a several-
decade-long snooze. But it's a mistake to say these figures
delineate only misery. When we know we've succeeded in
making deep sacrifices happen, Mother is with us, not
going to leave us, and we know a kind of contentment--one
that even liberates, and enables some fun ... if we go about
things properly. The recent Thor movie tries a wee bit to
explain why the Norse aristocracy--an empowered King
and Queen--is just, but it barely bothers. We feel watching
255
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Labels: 12 Years a Slave, james wolcott, lloyd demause, morris dickstein, paul krugman, thor the
dark world
The Circle
will surely set you all deliciously off! and so more of our
unwanted selves can be drooped into you. Thanks in part to
you, dear Dave.
RecommendthisonGoogle
Ender's Game
Ender's Game
He's upset over his genocide, but how about making his
own species shrug its shoulders and leaving Earth's purpose
mostly all to him? We could try, but he'd do it ten times
better anyway, so what's the point. I'll let an actual drone do
my part, and be in the bar remembering the days when
human volition had a demonstrable point. You all can go
about still worshipping him if you like.
RecommendthisonGoogle
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The Circle
Gravity
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268
[endif] StartFragment
Gravity
RecommendthisonGoogle
Labels: gravity
Reuben Thomas:
The Africans that were stolen out of Africa, what were their
societies like? Did they possess institutions as abhorrent as
slavery? If so, that was something they were going to have
to work out of themselves, through the same means--
increased empathy from mother to daughter, gradually over
generations--as well.
273
RecommendthisonGoogle
Carrie
Carrie
probably slit her own wrists before her, to show her the
wreckage her "selfish" pursuits were inflicting physically,
emotionally, psychically on her. She's basically Rose in
Titanic, who ultimately told her own mother to shove the
hell off, even though this was going to bottom her mother--
high in lineage, but nada in riches--out, but somehow with
a much, much, much more daunting mother, and without
someone--apologies to the good gym teacher--near Angel-
sent to temper her the strength to do it. Intent on going to
the prom, she telekinesises her mother into a closet, fuses
any possible exit, and embraces a new world. The world is
set-up to turn on her, as it turns out, and when she turns on
it, it's less out of shock and rattled umbrage and more as if
out of now familiar, superb, quite controlled and even-
pleasurable rebuttal (great! I get to use these powers again--
and in an even larger venue!). The confidence in which she
directs and motions her carnage, the presumption, without
hesitation configuring how aptly to direct the environment
to butcher the particular wretched kid she's caught sight on,
is more or less the same we saw in her disabling her maniac
mom when she'd become immune to her. We take stock of
her at the end, and with her poise, apt calculation, and
tremendous power, with her not seeming to have done in
anyone who didn't deserve it--it's mostly the real nasties,
like the corrosive black-haired twinish girls, who are
squashed down into trampled-down floor rugs like the
deflated evil witches in Wizard of Oz, who are done in, but
everyone in the crowd was laughing at her covered in pig's
blood while video played of her terrible shower
humiliation... so what loss, really, any of them?--I basically
ignored the finish and imagined her carted off by Professor
275
Xavier. She'd beat down her mom and home, beat down her
school and small-minded, hipster-absent town (hipsters
would have admired her aesthetic and askew beauty), and
now was really just ready for bigger game. Not, that is, to
be herself quit by death, and folded into a lesson for smaller
people.
I'll admit, though, that I actually did identify with her some.
When I was about to leave my mother and embrace the
wider world, I would find her lying as if dead, in midst of
some house pathway I would have to cross. Since she knew
I knew she was performing, and that this would be amongst
a number of innumerouses I would have to ignore just to go
about my own day, she knew I would have to step over
her--as if she, a bum on the street, and I, the callous--and
that by doing so, no matter my awareness of what she was
doing, there was still a gamble-worthy chance I would still
feel doomed by some rightful, me-overlording judge as
having done the unpardonable: "Your mother was lying on
the ground, possibly sprawled in death, and you
just walked over her ... you did this, to your mother!!! I
don't care what kind of hinderances she presented you with,
you crossed the line, and are the saddest, most selfish, most
demonic cad ever born to earth! Your fate is to be cursed
with guilt after every fun thing you do, never-ending--and
this only to start!"
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Labels: carrie
Don Jon
Don Jon
If this film was true life, Jon would forgo her the first
moment possible--making his switching off at some
moment where she had curled into herself once again in
pain. He'd bookend her experience with her with it lending
him the authority to talk back to Barbara and acknowledge
the rightness of his feeling neglected by her (guys are going
to like this moment in the film), and perhaps with his
gaming how he schedules and goes about his life a bit--a bit
of social mixing it up with basketball might be better than
just the familiar routine of weights--but otherwise return to
what he had, with maybe also a bit more sass at the church,
and so not just with his dad. He'd forgo the commanding
10s this time, spot out the less-fielty-owed 8s and 9s, and
every week, catch one. He'd take them to bed, which
though it punished him with missionary sex which hardly
flatters the form of his mate, reducing them to compressed,
blockened slabs of somnambulist flesh, though it means
felatio which terminates just when its getting good, or
which from the start--when he's eating her out--is pretty
rank and foul, is still something which might lend life into
his follow-up routine of amended sex through porn. He's a
282
Prisoners
Abused children are urinals you can piss in yet again, just
let it gush and gush all over them, while the abductor is a
just-come-upon statue you're surely baiting the gods by
taking down in any drawn out way.
The Family
288
The Family
pain, and not instantly see the helpless "Parker Crane" that
was going to have no choice but to let this demon into
him/herself, and own them whole in response to triggers of
self-fulfillment and helplessness.
The Butler
The Butler
fabulously unaware are you, that the lesson you think you
know by heart, is one you impertinently cast aside to put
a stake though the snake: "guess who's coming to
dinner," isn't supposed to favor the traditional-minded
family who's shocked by the strange black thing planted
down at the dinner table before them, but shown up by
him or her.
Kick-Ass 2
Kick-Ass 2
Also bad, is the fact that I like the fact that films which I
know to be, maybe not precisely misanthropic, but
endorsing orientations towards the world which are
reroutes away from approaches which'd have one face
one's personal scourges and actually, like, grow, appeal to
me for the fact that they favor reroutes I know I also need
to have championed to appear ideal. They convince me
that I don't stand out too much as a self-realized, self-
satisfied douche, a bitchy demon presiding over our age
would feel the need to sweep down upon and teach a
swift scolding lesson to. She could read deep into my
thoughts, recognize that I know everything that is going
on in an age which inverts what is goodself-realization
for the badself-sacrifice/diminutionknow that I
ultimately want Her gone for inhibiting something as
precious as a human life, and at such an awesome scale,
but still pat me on the head as no threateven give me a
lift, if I needed one, and smile genuinely to mebecause
She knows I'm still broken sufficiently that I'll need her
304
"fix" like all the rest of them. This means that when
someone like Brody chastises a film like Skyfall for
something that may well be regrettable, and that I should
want to be the kind person who like him had instantly
noticed, I'm actually glad that at the moment it hadn't
occurred to me.
ThecolossalchasescenethroughIstanbulatthebeginningof
SkyfallrecallstheescapethroughShanghai,earlyinIndiana
JonesandtheTempleofDoom,withpushcartsoverturned,
merchandisescattered,terrifiedbystandersdivingforsafety.
Spielbergoffensivelyturnedordinarypeoplegoingabouttheir
businessintojustsomuchconfettiforhisspectacleexactly
thesortofcavaliercolonialerabravadothatmighthave
repelledafilmmakerwhostartedhiscareerinthelatesixties.
Plusachange:Skyfall,too,scattersIstanbulsresidentsand
theirgoodslikebowlingpins.Fromthestart,SamMendes,the
directorofthelatestinstallmentof007,provesfaithfulto
tradition,yetnotalwaysthebestofthattradition.
And now to the good. To the good reason that is, for
liking or loving films that enormously astute and
psychologically healthy critics like Ebert and Brody are
bound to find offensive and largely unenjoyable. There
are some periods of human existence, where, as I
mentioned concerning the 1930s, all the great artists
308
The key scene in the film, the only one maybe worth re-
watching on Youtube, is when the gang of villain elites
marches into the suburbs, each one an arrogant sure
shell of ego for essentially standing behind the power of
their way highest paid, Mother Russia. She's going to get
to do anything she wants, is what you feel, and it may be
the movie's encouraging you to feel this way, to be
reminded that moods can take over people where
trespasses can be effected, and the world thereafter just
can't placidly reset, is what it deserves credit for, and not
really with what it shows done within this protective
cloud of latitude. She launches a lawn-mower into the
face of a police-officer, and gives you the same sense that
the first Kick-Ass at times did with Hit Girl and Big
Daddy, that this just happened: in real life, someone like
her, a real human being, could have come out of the blue,
and done this. They're ridiculously costumed, and theyre
striding into the suburbs as if conquerors of Rome, but
it's not, it's not, simply funny. You cant quite comic book
them, which makes the scene feel kind of awesome.
313
Labels: 42nd st., Dancing in the Dark, Game of Thrones, Gene Wolfe,
Kick-Ass, Kick-Ass 2, Monty Python, morris dickstein, Oblivion,
Prometheus, Richard Brody, roger ebert, Shadow of the Torturer,
Skyfall, the Avengers
Blue Jasmine
Blue Jasmine
She has terrible luck. The one thing that could still get
her once she has recuperated sufficiently from her pasts
great heave of traumas and developed the ability to work
as a receptionist--and so survive regardless if her sister
stopped hosting her--was if something arrived that
looked to instantly take her away from this lifemake it
all seem like some extra-long but still now forever gone
nightmare, into which she was insanely transported but
now from which she has neatly danced her way out. And
with her meeting Peter Saarsgard's Dwight, she goes all-
in with this perfect way out. When she accidently meets
her sister's former husband on the street, we see what
this way out would have cost her. Caught out, she can in
instant defense show how alive she can be to other
people's motivations, and seem instantly adult. But since
this means having to reckon with things she did
horrible things, like losing a deserving hard-working
mans very realistic opportunity for a more enfranchised
life; like in a moment of venom alerting authorities about
something she was always at some level aware of but
hadnt blown the whistle on until it seemed perfect spite,
which killed her husband, spiraled her son into thinking
318
herself off to a world she after all was more natural to:
more Mary Poppinsor better, Cold Comfort Farm. The
problem with purges of the kind were experiencing now,
is that its going to leave us with fewer Jasmines when
were actually in mind to appreciate them. Seriously, a
good number of our babblers are actually going to be
amongst our best, but just tragically untethered from
madnesses we use with proficiency to assure ourselves
sane--like what happened to Fitzgerald in the '30s, when
a world thought things like fascism sane.
Elysium
Elysium
Once shes out in this film, Kruger soon goes too. And so
we have a bunch of androids bringing medicine down to
323
Labels: elysium
The Conjuring
329
The Conjuring
Few women talk about it, but it's something nearly all
women near at conscious level come to know. And which
their guys will no doubt remain oblivious to, as women
decide sharing would show themselves devils to faces
that will never, ever, understand, and remove them from
life anchors needed to compact the great acquisition of
their own family down. So couples go about their child-
blessed, married lives, never shorn of near-justified
mockery, represented by what lies beneath. She's out
there, though. Your spurned mother is out there. And
from unaddressed quarters in places you have the good
sense to be wary of, she's hoping still to hatch her
332
The Wolverine
The Wolverine
Pacific Rim
Pacific Rim
I saw This is the End again, and the thing I noticed more
this time is how scary the film ends up becoming. The
lady beside me twitched as if herself hit, when a car
crashes through a guy on the street, flipping him rapidly
upwards and away to pavement as but a smashed-up
345
this has nothing really to do with their belief that God can
be trusted, but owing to the intolerable fear of being left
to rot, while so many others are drawn off to God and a
halo of eternal happiness. I know they ostensibly are
those who finally learned to be true friends to one
another, but, really, who they are at the end of the film is
the guy who poked his head into Franco's house earlier,
willing to titty-fuck or be titty-fucked, if only they'd let
him in. If they were self-possessed, they would have
remained in many ways who they were earlier. Both of
them, we note, are at heart natural skeptics, questioners,
doubters, who serve as constant reality-checks for friends
who might be becoming lost to themselves. Even with the
Devil clearly possessing Hill, Rogen is still calling out his
friends on their arrogant presumption of the Trinity; and
his inability not to show when he thinks someone is
sounding crazy even when it compromises a moment
when it would feel good to be completely agreeable to a
bro, comes clearly through when Franco delineates his
absurd plotting for the finish of a proposed Pineapple
Express 2.
.
Posted by Patrick Hallstein / McEvoy-Halston at 10:46 AM No
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360
Man of Steel
ManofSteel
Mud
Mud
One thing I never confused the movie for the book for,
was its portrayal of Gatsby. In the book I could believe
that the huge estate he had prepared was but to lure him
Daisy, while in the movie it is surely his
aggrandizement--I honestly thought most of the time of
Orson Wells's Kane while watching puffed up Leo. He
strolls his party not so much invisible, as he is in the
book, but hidden master of it all. And he shows off how
that special person and that special person and that
special person are all there, rendered as they are into part
of his ample house collections, with them trapped to not
want to be anything else, owing to his hosting the biggest
draw in town--Beethoven in his second act, and this just
one feature. Every night he houses his parties, and every
night the whole town is corralled into it -- he's master of
the house and master of all. And so at the end of the
evening when he strolls outside and looks across the
water at the beaming green light across the bay, it's
absinthe to well the evening down amidst cool air -- the
logical follow up to the evening's clamor, a cleanse, not
what what has been sitting with him throughout and that
he has longed to return to.
have been content with his sweet date with Daisy over
tea," he alases. He's like old money prejudices, with a
lighter side, a real fondness for youth and their eager
tries and newish ways, who'd court peers he still belongs
to to try and see them the same way; and his having so
much standing in the film, gives solidity to Buchanan.
When Buchanan reality-tests Gatsby in a way which fully
renders him down--the only real murder in the film--and
gains back his Daisy, Nick had already been rendered to
the point that the best he could do for the person he still
wishes the best of luck to but who realizes he has no hope
of further influencing, is communicate true love and
support for him through his otherwise lying nods to
Gatsby's determination to gain sake himself Daisy--the
only thing he wants at this point from Nick is a show of
deferent affirmation, so it has to be the conduit for
something truer and larger he'd prefer to communicate:
great realization and maturity and love, from Nick. Nick
knows it's likely "the wolves" for Gatsby; Buchanan only
supplies them. Hard judgment to the softer man's
realization--"Amadeus's" Count Orsini-Rosenberg to
Baron Van Swieten, upon Mozart's decline and death.
Nick of course is shown writing a book that we know will
puff up the Gatsby legend that is being debilitated as his
estate is being looted. But I think this is just pause for us
to think on the words that are being literally inscribed for
us on screen. There was a great show of a kind for us in
this film, but it may pass as just a film amongst others --
not even possibly being one of our Depression's notable
showy numbers, that we should get to high acclaim if this
one wears like the last one ("Forty Second Street," Busby
Berkeley, all show, no depth, anything to beat back the
pressing accretions of the Depression, and all that), while
378
Iron Man 3
Iron Man 3
No film which can at all remind you from where Ronald Regan-era
began to about the termination of the first incarnation of Tiger Woods
-- all muscle, arrogance, and domination -- is going to really seem a
Depression-era film, where stupid willfulness is going to be
showcased simply as a sort of madness the hopeless adopt to believe
they've got a chance in the world. In this film you've got Michael Bay
as director, a bunch of body-builders as the main protagonists, and as
well a very A-team-reminiscent van as home-base, so you basically get
what you'd expect out of an 80's/90's film -- if you can amass a
signfiicant amount of stupid wilfulness, you'll be treated as a meteor
that's got to be allowed to destroy it's loaded-up fuel content of
others' carefully procured affairs. If you show enough of yourself
while daring to equivocate with them, it's "dispatch" for you -- as
appropriately happens to the Miami porn-king, who tends to the
gang's leader -- Mark Wahlberg -- the fact that a lot of what he says
makes no sense at all. Neither did anything about Reagan or Tiger or
Mr. T or Thatcher really make sense, but when society's obliging them
big-time, your reality-checks will go unappreciated, thank you very
much! Quite frankly, this film was delightful nostalgia -- the lady a
few seats behind me laughed numerous huge-heartly laughs, and I
chuckled along with her. The 80s, after all, as stupid as they were,
were paradise to our current time when the only ones who can
prosper are those who aren't will and muscle but just cany -- doing
nothing but what the times allow, without even a fiber of muscle
daring the alacrity of showcasing itself.
lasts, captures.
Oblivion (2013)
Oblivion
388
Hisproblemisthathewantsyoutobelieveheintentedthe
alphabet;whenitgetstothepointthatotherpeoplesworks
becomelikethealphabetsomethingeveryoneknowswasntour
owncreation;onlysomethingwereusingtohopefullycreate
somethingworthypeopledoingthesamewillbeequallyworthy
assaluteasoriginalauthors.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Aplagiarist'slameexcuse:
Addictionmademedoit
THURSDAY,DEC1,201109:20AMPST
Re:Yettherushtolabelhisselfishbehavioradiseasetendsto
undercutthesincerityoftheatonement.
Anyonewhossettledinwellwithadisease,shouldunderstand
otherseffortstogetinwithoneaswell:therein,liesnotjustsure
excuse,butsureexcusetodelightinanyandeveryselfish
endeavorimaginable.ReallyMary,onedayafterdelineatingforus
howyourenotwaitinguntiltomorrow!andinsteadareenjoying
youreverypleasuretoday!,yourefindingsomepoorsure
damnationattracting/drawingsodwhosputtogetherhisown
pasticheofpleasures,togrindtoground.Ifyourestillfinding
yourselfanxiousaboutlivinglifeuninhibitedbydenial,dont
391
projectanddisownyourownsinfulselfintosomeother
defencelesspatsy,toshowhowmuchyounormallydespise
uninhibitedselfindulgencethatsjustcruel;instead,get
sympathetictreatment,fromsomeonewholovesandadmiresyou
someonewhoknowsinotherthings,s/hehasagreatdealto
learnfromyou.
Whenwerenotallinthemoodtoseekoutanddestroysinful
people,wemightadmitthattherewassomethingcapableand
compellingaboutsomeonesuccessfullymakingapasticheofother
peoplesworks,intoaprovedwinsomewhole.Hemadeother
authorscontributionsinto,lettersofthealphabet,fromwhichhe
assembledalargerparagraph,chapter,andon.Idlovetosee
moviesbemadeavailableforartfulotherstoreassembleinto
uniquecreationsItrulyhopewegothere.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Theargumentagainstthrift
THURSDAY,DEC1,201108:48AMPST
Haventyouknownquiteafewpeoplewhoareevidentlydoing
well,butifyouaskthem,willtellyouhowsomuchofwhatthey
earngoestowardspayingoffafflictions.(Tomindinstantly,ishow
everycollegeprofessorweseemtohearfromatSalon,for
example,isinsomehurrytotellyouabouttheir60hourwork
weeks,andhowtheycouldearndoubleiftheyworkedin
business.)Myguessis,isthatyoupersonallycouldbegiftedinthe
futurewithsomehugelotteryticket,andsoonenoughwedstill
enduphearingfromyouaboutpossiblyevenyourdentalwork,
certainlytheclaimingcharities,relatives,andavastpantryfullof
otherafflictions.Youdneveradmitthatthebulkofyourlifewas
aboutselfadventureandlivingitup.(Inourweirdculture,getting
392
cancerisonlyguiltfreewaytogiftyourselfwithabucketlistof
goodies.)
Growth,untaintedgoodthings,makesomanyofusfeelanxious,
exposed,punishmentworthy.Whenwestartingfeelingespecially
anxious,weactuallywanttobeinvolvedinsomethingofthelike
ofadepression,sotheresnowayanyonecouldpointusoutand
suggestwerenotactuallymostlycruelly,unfairlyburdened.
Ifdentalworkandthelikewasntsoeasilyapprehendedbyyouas
anaffliction,thunderedintoittoinstantlyprovehowdeprivedyou
are,youmighthaveaddedthatwiththesethings,too,thereis
adventurepossibilitiesforselfknowingness,expansion,
consolidation.Whatdentistdowechoosethistimetovisit?What
sortofdentalwork,service,attendance,mightactuallybeoutthere
forus?Therearesomanywaystocareforthebody,somany
interesting,differentpeople,toencounter,sortthrough,and
experienceaswecometothewaythatworksnowbestforus,why
notthesamewithsuchostensiblesimplydreariesascarrepairs?
Maybe,ifwehaveamindtolook,thatworldhasbecome
interestingtoo?
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Theargumentagainstthrift
WEDNESDAY,NOV30,201108:46PMPST
Continuingtoupdateourselves,investinproductsthatrepresent
selvesweareevolvinginto,isaveryhealthythingandifmost
peoplereallywantedsuch,ratherthanaseverecoldspellthat
cancelsoutbadconsumeristichabitsweprobablyneed
rescuingfrom,wewouldntelectinpeopleallagreedthatwhat
weneedisausterity.Thereissomesimilaritybetweenwhatthis
393
authorbelievesandwhatPaulKrugmanbelieves;he,Paul
Krugman,remember,wantsthegovernment,atleast,tospend,
spend,spend,andletausterityfullysuckit.Itsprobablyoneofthe
reasonssomepeoplethinkhesababyboomerdouche.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Theargumentagainstthrift
WEDNESDAY,NOV30,201106:02PMPST
Alladultsnotjustparentshaveapowerfulpsychological
urgetoputtheirdesiresonhold,andthaturgemakesusreceptive
tothenotionthatwedbetterbesavingmoreandspendingless,
justlikeallthemainstreameconomistsandreputablejournalists
keeptellingusto.Weknowwhatwillhappentoourbank
accounts,ourwaistlinesandourmarriagevowsifwestoplistening
totheirinsistentvoiceofreason.
Evenso,wevereachedthepointwherewehavetoconfrontour
fearsaboutconsumerculture,becausetherenunciationofdesire,
thedeferralofgratification,savingforarainydaycallitwhat
youwanthasbecomedangeroustoourhealth.
Thispowerfulpsychologicalurgewasnotmuchinevidencethese
lastfiftyyears;however,yourerightthatmany,manypeople(but
notall)areruledbyit.Itsoriginslieinourrelationshipwithour
parents,who,owingtothefactthatmuchourpurposewasto
somehowsatisfyandattendtotheirownunmetneeds,feltdrawn
toanddidthreatenuswithabandonmentandthelikewhenwefirst
soughtoutaworldofacquisitions,allourown.Thisscareisfor
thechildsoprofoundthatitaloneisresponsibleforthe
developmentofthesuperego,orifyouwill,theparentalalter,most
everyoneofpossess,andwhichusefullywardsawayfromtoo
394
muchspoilingourselvesinlife,forfearofreexperiencingthat
worstofallpossiblehumanexperiences(tothechild,parental
abandonmentmeansannihilation,oblivion:thatwhichcannot,
aboveallotherthings,bereexperienced).
After(DepressionandWW2sacrificepermitted)30yearsof
unambiguousgrowth(1950stoendof70s),andtwentyyearsof
manicgrowth,theparentalaltersinmostofusarespeakinghugely
loudly,warningusthatOblivioniscomingunlessweterminateall
growth,rightfrigginnow.TheDepression,weguess,oughttodo
it;anditwilldoit,endangeringourhealthofcoursepartof
whatitissupposedtodo,toshowourcommitmentnowto
selflessness,totheverypointofnoendinsightsufferingbut
alleviatingusofthefeltsensethatagreaterOblivionispast
zeroinginonusandbeguntoheadourway.
Yourerightabouteconomics.Enjoyedyourpiece.Hopethereare
plentymorepeoplelikeyououtthere.Ifnot,andifyoullexcuse
me,ratherthanabountyofgifts,IllmakeTHATmyselfish,
selfishChristmaswish!
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Thisisournewnormal
WEDNESDAY,NOV30,201103:13PMPST
Alsofun!Thankyou.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Thisisournewnormal
395
WEDNESDAY,NOV30,201103:12PMPST
Fun!Thankyou.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:WhyisHollywoodstill
terrifiedofabortion?
WEDNESDAY,NOV30,201103:05PMPST
WhatIappreciatesomuchaboutpostwarfeministsisthatthey
madepersonalrealizationsuchanimportantthing.Thisisntacut
therealized,thehappywoman,islivingthelifeLIFE,inmy
judgment,isaboutbeautifullystretchingoutforothersthe
realmofthepossible;plus,whentheyraiseachild,forhavingnot
deniedthemselves,forclaimingsomeofthelovethathadcruelly
beenabsent,theyllgenuinelydobetterfortheirveryimportant
kidsaswell.
Abortionisatrickything.Rightwingerswhonowaresoagainstit,
foritbespeakingfemalerealizationandtheirlifeoutsidethe
containinghome,couldbeallofasuddenforit,ifitendsup
meaningsavingtheworldfromuselesseaters.Watchforit;they
(rightwingers)areidentifiedmostfortheirhatredoflife;their
particularstance,isadaptable,actuallyentirelyreversible.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Thisisournewnormal
WEDNESDAY,NOV30,201102:55PMPST
Thecapitalistsystemfailed,then,andwillgodowntodefeat
396
amidstgoodstylesocialistreform.Despite30yearsoffailing
schools,parentsmoreandmoreawayfromhome,everypersonal
problemtreatedimpersonallywithdrugs,coldconsumerculture,
everywhere,agenerationwasneverthelessformedsofullof
goodnessandenergy,onlytheunattunedwouldmistakethemas,
really,essentiallydenied;zombielike.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:WhyisHollywoodstill
terrifiedofabortion?
WEDNESDAY,NOV30,201101:34PMPST
Itstrue,womenwhokeeptheirbabiesarebeingmadetoseem
pure,THEMSELVESkeepable;thosewhoabortthem,creatures,
harlots,diseasedaliens.Anditsclearlynotjustwinningover
therightwingers.
OriginalArticle:Thisisournewnormal
WEDNESDAY,NOV30,201101:18PMPST
Drained.Asifasmuchattheendofalong,wearyjourney,as
beginninganewone.Unlikethe60s,vitalitydidntgivebirthto
them.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Who'smakingakillingoff
studentloans?
397
WEDNESDAY,NOV30,201101:15PMPST
Theyvebeenliedtobyeveryonetheytrust,andwhentheyrage
anddespair,theyregleefullyhateduponasspoiledandpampered
asONLYNOWabouttoknowwhatrealpainis.
Sometimesawholegenerationissetupforsacrifice,sotoabate
theanxietypreviousoneshadabouttheirownlifegains.Thefirst
worldwar,forinstance,wasoncesuchhorriblemoment.Stickit
out,kids.Youdonthavethatmanyfriends,butifyoufindway
nottoreadilysacrificeyourselvesinordertofeelgoodforfully
submittingtoeldersneedsofyou,werenotasbloodthirstyaswe
werebackthen.Recognizeoursickneeds;onlypretendtogivein
tothem;andknowyouverymuchCANoutlastus.Theyllbefun
toysalongtheway,toothe30shadjazz,swing,andCitizen
(friggin)Kane!
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Thisisournewnormal
WEDNESDAY,NOV30,201101:02PMPST
Capitalismhasntlookedgoodfor30years,anditscertainlyno
ideal.Butasasocialist,Illmaintainthatthecommunismthatwe
arelikelytoseeemergingoverthenexttentofifteenyears,will
be,unfortunately,Sovietstyleonceagain.Thatis,fortrueserfs,
thosewithoutdistinctionorpersonality,witnessthekindofdead
populacewellsoonstartapplaudingfortheirnobleselflessness.
Werealreadyseeingit;todaysliberalyouth,enjoyingbecoming
partofthenameless,leaderless,washedoutOWSlot.
Understandable,butsad.
Permalink
398
OriginalArticle:WhyisHollywoodstill
terrifiedofabortion?
WEDNESDAY,NOV30,201112:42PMPST
Gotcha;andIagree.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Thisisournewnormal
WEDNESDAY,NOV30,201112:38PMPST
The50sto70sfollowedalongdepressionandaworldwar
peoplefeltpermittedahugeperiodofgrowthafterthatheroic
sacrifice,andthatswhytheygotit.TheONLYreasonwereall
abouttogothroughanotherstupidperiodof,notjustoligarchy,but
ofhatredtowardsanythingthatdoesntsmackofpersonality
abatementandselfsacrifice,isbecausewefeelsuchisnecessary
toforgosomekindofevenworsepunishment,whichwouldsurely
visitusifwekeptonarrogantlygrowing,definingourselves
specialsnowflakestyleandotherwisemisbehaving.
SomyguessisthatitllbelikethelastDepression;wellhaveto
waitoutabout7or8yearsofcompletestiflement,thentherewill
beamomentwherewebegintopullourselvesout,followedby
anotherimmediatesquashing;thenwellprobablycollectively
arrangeanotherworldwartohappeninwhichtosacrificeagood
numberofouryouthrepresentativesofourguiltyambitious,
strivingselfvesin,and,penancefullypaid,wellgetanother
stretchof30yearsofunambiguouslygreatgrowthagain.
Hopefullymostofusprovetohavestayingpower,andwhen
wonderful,presumptuous,youthfulprogressivesareonceagain
permittedtoreign,theyllfindawaytomostlyabatethis
399
horrifyingcycle.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:WhyisHollywoodstill
terrifiedofabortion?
WEDNESDAY,NOV30,201112:20PMPST
Re:Sheclearlyseemslikeaprettysickpuppy,andhasalways
hadastreakofselfloathingamilewide.Assuchmeansshesnot
likelytoREALLYclaimmuchforherselfinlife,Ithinkmany
youngpeoplewillfindheradmirable,inthissacrificeyourself
andyourethegoodgirltimes.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:WhyisHollywoodstill
terrifiedofabortion?
WEDNESDAY,NOV30,201111:23AMPST
Abortionisassociatedwithindependence,freedomwith
presumptionandsoitisnosurprisethatwearebeinggreeted
withwomenpreparedtousetheirbabiestoshowhowprepared
theyaretosacrificeambitionanddistinction,andbecomethelikes
ofaresponsiblebutblandandthereafterinconsequentbreeder,
duringanerawherethissortofselfsacrificemeansescaping
damnationasgrotesquelyselfish,spoiled,andundefeated.Itsnot
theflapper20s,wonderfullygivingVictorianteatottlersthebird;
itsthedepressed30s,whereMotheronceagainrulesthefamily,
andhasusallunderwraps.
Permalink
400
OriginalArticle:Ischildhoodobesityabusive?
WEDNESDAY,NOV30,201109:52AMPST
Beans,LaurelWASrighttoencourageyouunderstandthatyour
dietwhichisrathersimilartomyownisaveryblandthing
toinflictoneveryoneelse.Igrewuponsugarlesscerealandskim
milkbeans,wholegrains,andgreensIcouldstillwith
considerableregretdomostlywholesalewhennecessitycalled.
Othersareatsomelevelvery,veryrighttogofortheircheesesand
fatloadedsundaes,secondandthirdhelpings,andtellmommas
boyJamieOlivertobuggeroff.
ItstheproblemwiththenofatpeopleIinmanywaysrespect.
TheyrethetypetolamentthattheDutch,whowhenisolated
duringWW2hadtoforgotheirfattydietofcheesesetc.and
indulgedmoreingreensinstead,mostlylefttheirgreensandbeans
dietbehindthemafterthewar.Thatis,whentheDutchwentback
tobeingopulentandlifeenjoying,ratherthanstarvedandisolated,
theyweresuchthatleadnofatdieters,overall,actuallylamented
theirostensibleregression.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Who'smakingakillingoff
studentloans?
WEDNESDAY,NOV30,201108:48AMPST
Thequestionisrather,whatchancehavethesekidsgot,whentheir
ownPARENTSmorbidlyactuallywantasystemwhichgivesthem
nochance.Deepinourmostregressedpast,wewereofcultures
401
thatpracticedinfanticide.Itsnot,unfortunately,fullyyetoutof
oursystems.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Who'smakingakillingoff
studentloans?
WEDNESDAY,NOV30,201108:31AMPST
Therearetimeswhenpeopleintuittheethosisswitching
fromsortofdemostocompletelypatrician/plebian.Were
enteringintoonesuchtime1%constitutionallydifferent
patricians,99%personalitylessnoblesufferers(thepublic
aggressivelywantsitthiswaynowisthetimeforthemto
showhowvirtuoustheyareforlargelysufferingawaya
decadeortwooftheirlives).Ihopesomeinthisdebate
pointedoutthatprobablythenumberonereasontogetinto
(thelikesof)Brown,owesnowmoretoyourwantingtolook
likeyoucouldscoretheleisurelygentlemansB,thanyour
abilitytomatchtheworkethicandcompetencyofanyasian.
OriginalArticle:Whynoone'stalkingabout
Newt'sweight
WEDNESDAY,NOV30,201108:13AMPST
Idontthinkso.Hemanifestlyrepresentstheinstitution;assuch,
assomeonemoreimportantspuppet,itgiveshimlatitude:he
couldbeasbigasatruck,andsomehowtheinstitutionspin
stripeswouldworktothinhim.Christiesonhisown,andso
weremorelikelytotakeintoaccountallthathespresumingto
bringuptothetable.
Permalink
402
OriginalArticle:Whynoone'stalkingabout
Newt'sweight
WEDNESDAY,NOV30,201107:58AMPST
NewtCOULDbeasfatasChristie,andyoureright,itstill
wouldntbeascommentedon.Newtismorepartofaninstitution,
soitseemsnotsomuchabouthim,butratherthelargeedificehes
foldesthimselfamongst.Christiesonhisown,sowelookonlyat
him,andhisbustingoutgut.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Whoneedsabucketlist?
WEDNESDAY,NOV30,201107:45AMPST
Youhearthewordpegged,andthinkdildos(wink,wink)and
porncommonusage.Youthinkofthosewithproblemswiththeir
babyboomerparents,andthinktheirresponsibleofyour
generation!Whenyouseepoeticlanguageinuse,youbragabout
yourplainness,andsuggesttheotherislikelyautistic.Whenyou
encountersomeoneevidentlydifferentthanyourself,youthink,
firstoff,andthensupplyhelpfulcorrection.
Howsureareyouthatyouarentageek/pervert,aparentpleasing
goodboy,orabore?
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Whymysmallbookstore
matters
TUESDAY,NOV29,201112:34PMPST
403
Credibilitydoesntlieindirectingmoreandmorepeopletolittle
bookstores,becauseTHATisthedirectiontheyreactuallyheaded,
andIndybookstoresareasthisastutepostersuggestsnow
goingtoenclavesofboutiqueness,tight,smartintelligencesthat
givetheirfrequenterssomesensetheyresurelyempowered
againsttheunscrutable,insane,everywheremasses.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:WallStreet,takeourchildren!
TUESDAY,NOV29,201111:39AMPST
WallStreetwouldnthavebeenpermittedtoeatourchildren,
unlessthelargerpublicactuallywanteditto.Childrenaptly
representourownstrivingselves,ourowndesiretolivelivesthat
areuninhibitedinwhatmightbeaccomplished.Unfortunately,few
havebeenraisedtoescapeatsomeverydeep,profoundlevel
thinkingthisdesireultimatelyhorriblyselfish,andsowhenwe
NONETHELESSacquiregoodthingsforourselvesinlife,we
JUSTHAVETOMAKESUREsocietyoffersupaptreplacements
tosufferthefateweourselvesbelieveWEdeserveforourown
guiltarousinglifegains.Ourliterate,liberalculture(even)is
findingeverywaynowto(pleaseGod!)GUILTFREEpublically
visualizethehurting,thehumbling,thehumiliationofchildren.
ITSALLostensiblybeingdonetoshowhowmuchtheyactually
DOcare,toshowevilothersupbutthatsnotreallywhyits
beingdone:notaliberalnowwhotalksofeating,hurting,
maimingchildrenisntpleasedwevegotaculturevery
successfullydoingjustthat,andwill,howsodelightfully!,
continueonandondoingthesame.Afterall,theyretheones
whovebenefitedthemostitjustcantbemadenotobvious,
despitetheevilsofWallStreet,andtheirownsupportforhumane,
404
green,utopicurbandevelopmentandbornagainlittlecommunity
bookstoresandeverywhereaboutthemtheangryDepression
voiceofdisapprovalsounds.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Whoneedsabucketlist?
TUESDAY,NOV29,201111:02AMPST
Inthisage,ifyougetpegged,youredead.Besttoleavesome
suppleness,formaneuverabilitysakes.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Will2012beareplayof1968?
TUESDAY,NOV29,201110:10AMPST
TheOWSersarenotjusttheyoung,either,butitisimportantto
notethatthatisnowhowthemovementhasbeenessentialized
asaburdenloaded,bitterlyangryanddesperate,youthmovement.
Iarguethatnotonlywillittherebyrightnownotgatherhuge
sympathy,butactuallydrawantipathyforvisuallymanifestingall
thedistress,fear,andaloneness,thatothersfeelinthemselvesbut
needexpressedinotherpeople,soitcanbepunished,butasan
outsider,andtherebyfullydenied.Hurtingyoungpeopleisthebest
waytoshowhowapologeticyouarenowforyourownspoiledlife
acquisitions.Inhurtingthem,yourelettingthepartofyouthat
urgedyouontogrowthknowyoujusthowmuchyoudespiseit,to
thegreatpleasureofouridhatingsuperegos,who,inthis
depression,haveseizedholdofthereignsassurelyasallstick
QuaritchdidattheendofAvatar.
405
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Whoneedsabucketlist?
TUESDAY,NOV29,201109:53AMPST
Ifyouwerentonthefiveyearlist,itslikelyyoubedoing
muchofthesame,though.Culturehascrestedthebaby
boomershavewilleditso.Itstimetorevisit,indulgeinknown
pleasures,knowingthattheonlythingnew,butstillcomfortably
awayaway,inthehorizon,isthedoomofdiscord,crazed
agitationsandenthusiasms,andwartrumpets.Itfeelslikeendof
timesthenewonthescenedontseemsomuchofthesortto
wanttocommunicateandthefreedomgrantedinthiswilldraw,
isdrawing,manytoindulgeinfamiliarjoys,andsuppressthe
agitatingarrivalofthealsogenuinelyworthybutUNFAMILIAR,
notyourown,whoddareentertodisquietthislovelycollective
swansongmood.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Will2012beareplayof1968?
TUESDAY,NOV29,201108:52AMPST
ObamasbesthopeisifpeopleseeOccupyWallStreetersasa
bunchofstudentsloadeddownwithstudentloanscausepeople
hatethem.The50s/60s/70sweregoingtobeaboutyouth,about
youthfulness,becausetheDepressionandWW2wereaboutthe
denialandsacrificeofallthat.Nowthatwevehateourlong
periodof,first,unamibuouslygoodgrowth,and,second,equally
longperiodofmanicgrowth,wereintoDepressionmodeonce
again,whichisaboutthehatredofallthingsyoungandpromising.
406
Itdoestheseveryvulnerableyouthagreatmisservicetohavethem
thinkingitmightbethe60scomeagain;itisntforthemost
part,OWSersarehelpingESSENTIALIZEthemselvesasspoiled
andyetstilldisgruntled,fortherestofthepublictoBEGINtheir
pickingon.Iftheyenduplookingmostlyouted,cold,andwithout
hope,thepublicwillkeepvotinginthoseproperlygivingthem
theirdue,graftinguponthemallthemiseriesandinsecuritiesthe
restofthepublicwantsdeniedinthemselves.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Supportyourindiebookstore!
TUESDAY,NOV29,201107:40AMPST
PatrickMacabreHalstonhere,AuntMessy,andImnotwhining,
Imhelping.Independentbookstoresarecomingbackagain,andit
willowetothepurchasingdecisionsoftheliberalelite.Theyll
thinktheirsupportofthemmeanstheyreforthesmallguy,that
they,wierdly,AREthesmallguy,butitreallyowestothem
havinganopportunitytothistimeclaimsmallbookstoresasall
theirown,asakindofboutique,thatactuallymostlydistinguishes
themfromthemongrolizedpluralityofthe99%.Whatbetterway
fortheenfranchisedtosupportthe99%thaninawaywhich
continuestheirloathingandfrettingthem?
OriginalArticle:Supportyourindiebookstore!
MONDAY,NOV28,201108:52AMPST
Independentbookstoresarecomingback,butnotasbeloved
neighborhoodstaples,folkystuff.Theyllbebrutalclass
demarcators,thrivingboutiques,wherethoseofrefined,patrician
tastegotoassurethemselvestheyhavelittletodowiththe
407
mongrel99%(andtokeeptastealive!),andwhichthealienated
99%wishtokeepalive,too,tokeepsomeremoteglamoramidst
theirwasteddebasedworld.Smallhavensofotherwisedisallowed
personality,justlikethe30s.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Howshouldwedesignthe
citiesofourdreams?
SUNDAY,NOV27,201110:25AMPST
Re:Andtheresreasontobeoptimisticthattheywill,becausethe
generationthatwillretrofitouroldcitieswithnewideasisthe
sameonethatscurrentlydevelopinganinstinctualaversionto
economicunfairness.
Itwontbeagenerationthatsgoingtodoititllbeforemost
fromthechildrenoftheendowedrightnoweachoneofthem
verymuchgreen,poorconcerned,butalsosoverydifferentin
mannersfromthe99%thattheirclassconcernedparentsdontfind
themselvesnotentirelyenthusedaboutthem.Theyareprincesand
princesseswhovebeendeniedthecorestufftobreakthrough
instinctualaversionstobeallforthepeople;whatwecanexpect
fromthemiseverythingsothatthewellentrenchedwillnevernot
reallyknowthemselvesasaristocracylovingaristocrats.Inevery
greenguildedurbanlandscape,theyllseethepatricianeasynessof
theirpower,anditllactuallybemostlythatthatpleasesthanwhat
theytelleverybody,includingthemselves,itcommunicates
theirostensibledemocraticcore.
Thisarticleisabouthowthe1%willneverrecognizethemselves.
Itistime,onceagain,forpatricians.
408
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Howgossiptookoverthenews
SUNDAY,NOV27,201109:56AMPST
WhyisitwhenonereadsthisarticlethatonesensesOxfords
wallsfirmingupandgettingstronger?Itfeelsalmostasifwhatwe
needmost,now,isforinstitutionstodotheirduty,thepressto
soberupandleavethemalone,andforthepublictoletthemselves
belead.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:IsDonDeLilloreally
prescient?
SUNDAY,NOV27,201109:45AMPST
IfthisauthorreallymeanttobringupDeLillostrulyprescient
point(aboutthetwotowers),onewonderswhyhedidntinfact
mentionit.Whatthisauthordoesdo,however,isarguethatDelillo
hasamorbidandparanoidpointofview,thatheshouldbeseenas
retrofitinghisvisiontowhatevergrandtragedyormomentof
socialdysfunctioncomesalong,andwhosetendencyistousehis
charactersassimpleconduitsforhisownwrongheaded
mouthings.Itishardtoseehoweventhegreatestgeniuscould
fromthisbleeckmaketheclimbuptodeservingtobeamajor
writer;itcertainlyseemsthestuffforwhatanostensiblymoresane
generationwouldrecognizeasacon,ahack.
Tome,though,ifIwanttofindmyselfmoredispirited,Idturnto
moreofJohnWilliamsworkswaybeforeIdDelillos.
409
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Thedilemmaoftakingcareof
elderlyparents
SUNDAY,NOV27,201108:57AMPST
TheauthorhasexplainedhowinAmerica,childrenandparents
loveoneanotherthegenerationofbabyboomerswhogave
theirparentsthebirdwhentheyleftthenest,clearlyneverexisted;
theplentitudeofpopularmoviesandbooksthatshowedussuch,
clearlywereallliessoyouclearlydontexist.ButifyouDID
exist,shehasalsoexplainedhowthesituationwouldbefully
upsidedowny,soguaranteedYOUwouldgettobethepersonwho
beatsthehelloutofyourparent;though,Imustadmit,whatIthink
babyboomersareconcernedaboutisthatthisupsidedowny
situationismoreillusorythanreal,moretheirownparents
temporarilymakingthemselvesseemsoharmlesssothetruer
situationthatalltheoldfeelingsofwhenyouwerefullyunder
theirthumbdontfloodsostronglyintoviewyousomehow
DONTacquieseandfindawaytohomethemwithyou.
Twentyyearsago,thesituationwouldhavebeendifferent,because
itwasstillayouthculture.Now,withcrammedlivingquarters
ratherthannuclearsuburbcastlestheexpectednorm,withself
sacrifice/sublimationratherthanselfsatisfaction/realizationthe
commandingethos,withtheDepressionfeelingaspenancefor
babyboomergreeditsgoingtoputgrandmaandgrandpaback
inthelimelight.Giveupthemasterbedroomnow,folkstheold
kingsandqueenshavereturned.
Permalink
410
OriginalArticle:Thedilemmaoftakingcareof
elderlyparents
SATURDAY,NOV26,201105:35PMPST
Ifextendedfamiliesonceagainprovesthetrick,wellhaveto
comeupwithsomethingelsebeforelong:causeatsomepointthe
diaperchangersaregoingtofindsomegiganticwarthattheyjust
HAVETOpartakein,togivethemsomeperiodofguaranteed
relieffromdomesticcrap.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Thedilemmaoftakingcareof
elderlyparents
SATURDAY,NOV26,201101:50PMPST
Howcanyoubesurethatnoonewantstoignoreparentalneeds,
whenyourealsososuretheyreallprecariouslyperchedIlove
myparents,buters?Itjustseemsmorereasonabletometoleave
plentyofroomforseeingsomeofthoseleaningheavilyonthe
but,asactuallyatsomelevelmorehopingtoridthemselvesof
theirparentsthanfurtherattendtothem.Doesmatricideand
patricideexistonlyatthesamelevelaswhiterunicornsand
fairies?Onewouldhavematricidicalfantasies,notsomuch
matricidalones;ormaybebetter,dark,unicornal,magimatridical
fantasies,justsonoonegetsconfused.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:NeilGaiman'saudiobook
recordlabel
411
WEDNESDAY,NOV23,201103:16PMPST
Gaimanisthemostnonaggrievingguyontheplanet.Atatime
whenwearepreparedtocommunicatehardthatthatistheonly
voicewelltolerate,itsnowonderhesbeenannointed.What
weneedfromtheBritishnowisanotherJohnCleese:thatguy
couldteachAmericanssomeaboutwhatitistobetakeninto
account.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Shouldliberalsbemore
thankfulforObama?
WEDNESDAY,NOV23,201112:47PMPST
WhatChrisMatthewsdidntcatch,butJoanseemedtoabit,isa
certainedgeinChaithesnotsomuchmakingapoint,as
beginningapointedindictment.Chrisbearhuggedhimwithlove
andadmiration,andthoughitobscuredmosteverythingelsefrom
view,Istilldidseethecircumspectlittleguy,notquiteplussed,
withhispointyknifestillstickingout.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:ThegeekytriumphofPepper
SprayCop
WEDNESDAY,NOV23,201110:07AMPST
Ithashelpedcementtheideathatovertdisobedienceisayouthful
stance,atatimewhenthenationisinmindtoprojectitsown
selfishness,desireformore,intothismostappropriateof
containers,todenyandpunish,isinmindtoseealineupof
412
youthbeingvictimizedandfinditaphallanx,animageactually
abitcompellingforitshomoeroticismfrontlinesoldiers,the
youngestandthebravest,givingthemselvesupforexpedient
slaughter,thewhateverwishesoftheirdesirouselders.
OriginalArticle:ThegeekytriumphofPepper
SprayCop
WEDNESDAY,NOV23,201108:57AMPST
Thatsfunny.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:ThegeekytriumphofPepper
SprayCop
WEDNESDAY,NOV23,201108:38AMPST
Therewasatimewhennaziconcentrationcampguardswerentso
fugitive.Maybeweremoreenteringtherethanthepartyoure
skippingaheadto?
Thisofficerisgoingtobepubliclycondemned,butmaybebecause
hesacouplestepstoofarfromwherepeoplearepreparedtogo
rightnow.Soinsteadmanywaystokeephiminview,ostensibly
ofcourseforourvillification,butmaybeactuallymorefor
purposesofconsideration.
Permalink
413
OriginalArticle:ThegeekytriumphofPepper
SprayCop
WEDNESDAY,NOV23,201108:30AMPST
TheSouthhadhillbilliesandredneckswithguns,theNorthhad
shopkeepersandrespectability.Whoultimatelyprovedmalleable
andcarpetedupon?Historically,whatismostnotableabout
warriorculturesisthattheytendtobeofthekindthatprettymuch
throwthemselvesupontheiropponentsbayonets.Theyaimso
hardtobesadistic,butsubmitattheendsoenthusiasticallyto
masochisticsubmissiontheirGodlikesnothingbetterthana
largefieldoftheirownboyslyingdead,indutiful,noblesacrifice.
Ourslamentstheinsanity,andmoveson.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:ThegeekytriumphofPepper
SprayCop
WEDNESDAY,NOV23,201107:38AMPST
Hesamemeinpartbecause,Isuspect,manypeopleareimpressed
withhisimperturbality,infaceofstrugglingchildren.Near
everyRepublicanwouldwanttobelikehim,andmany,many
liberalstoolikeagoodportionofthosewhoapplaudedObama
soloudlyforremainingsereneandadultwhileRepublican/Tea
Partierswentaboutlikespoiledchildren,oreventhosewho
applaudedthatGothe@#!#toSleepbook,where,facedwith
screamingchildren,adultsimaginelaughinginresponseatthem,at
givingthemthebird.
Thisisntthe60s,whereyouth,afterawitheringGreat
Depressionandthemasssacrificeofaworldwar,weregoingtobe
allowedtodefineandruletheworldforalongishwhile.Thisis
414
endofcycle,wheremoreandmorepeoplearegoingtogetakick
outofadultsactinglikestern,disapprovinggrandfathers,who
areunsparinglybrutaltowardactingupchildren.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Thefaceofpolicecruelty
SUNDAY,NOV20,201110:26AMPST
Oritmightnudgethemintocomplicitselfsacrifice.Wehavedone
everythingpossibletomakeyouthfeeltheyarenottobevaluedin
thissociety,andIsuspectmanyhaveinternalizedtheattitude.
PuttingyourselfinthewayofpolicewhoWILLhurtyouwould
surelyprovideevengreatersatisfactionthanselfcuttersgetby
theirmeansofpunishingtheirownwretchedyouthfulness.
Whenawholenationofyouthlaunchesthemselvesintowar,ithas
agreatdealtodowiththejoyfulfeelingtheygetfromknowing
theyrecommitingthesacrificetheirnationeagerlydesiresofthem
finally,now,theyreincontrovertablyvirtuousgoodboysand
girls.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:ThecomingoutstoryInever
thoughtI'dwrite
WEDNESDAY,NOV16,201111:31PMPST
Imdelineatingthewayahead.ThenewleftImdescribing,the
onethatwillincreasinglyidentifywiththeworkingclass,isa
vastlyregressedleft.Itwillturnongroupsthepreviouslothad
spentsomuchtimelovingandsupporting.
415
Permalink
OriginalArticle:ThecomingoutstoryInever
thoughtI'dwrite
WEDNESDAY,NOV16,201111:43AMPST
Iwonderhowmuchtheurgetocomeoutrightnowowestoa
sensethatwereattheclimaxofaculturalage,onethatisinthe
processofchangingwholesale.Thepreviousliberalperiodwas
aboutenfranchisingthekindsofgroupsmiddleAmericatendedto
discriminateagainst;thecurrentoneisonethatwillmostly
identifywiththemiddle,withtheAmericanvolk.Forthe
previouslot(ofliberals),withnogrowthahead,nomoretruthto
bediscovered,itsaboutdailyfindingawaytotriumphyourfully
realizedselfNewt=bad,Salon=good,kindofstuff.Inthe
meantimethenewleftcomposesitself,andtheneventually
launchesawholesaleattackontheboutiqueliberals(Chris
Hedgesterm)who(verymuchostensibly!)representthekindof
mecenteredselfdecadencethatbroughtdowntosuchasadlow,a
oncehardy,oncemanly,robustworkingclassnation.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:ThecomingoutstoryInever
thoughtI'dwrite
WEDNESDAY,NOV16,201111:27AMPST
Well,IdisagreebutIdbewithyouifyouweretoarguethat
fewwhosharemyopinionmeanhomosexualsanygood.They
pretendtohelp,buttheymeantoeviscerate.
416
IfinditdifficulttobelieveyoureactuallyFOReducated
psychobabble.Andsomesympathy,pleasethesamekindsof
peoplewhohateongaymentendtohateontheJewishscience,
psychoanalysis,aswell.Tothem,itsallsignsofasocietygone
fullydecadentandretrograde.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:ThecomingoutstoryInever
thoughtI'dwrite
WEDNESDAY,NOV16,201111:20AMPST
Hewasbuilttopleaseassuchhewastheperfectcandidatefor
homosexuality.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:ThecomingoutstoryInever
thoughtI'dwrite
WEDNESDAY,NOV16,201107:39AMPST
Boysturngaytosafeguardthemfromfeelingfullyabsorbed
withintheirmothersneeds.Becausetheywerecuedearlyonthat
theynearexistedtopleasetheirinsufficientlylovedmothers,
theyrehighlysensitive,anditispartlythiswhichdrawsthemto
Salon.ItisALSOthatpeoplelikeWalshandMEWremindthem
inpartoftheirmothers,andthisisstillnaturalenoughand
drawingcompany.ItisALSOthatSalonregistersasasitethatis
sensitivetonottoomuchoffend,makeanxious,theirreadersif
itstirsthingsup,weallsenseitllhurryalongtofullycalmdown
thestirredwatersandnestlesimplyagreementforagood
417
subsequentbit:suchanenvironmentiscomfortableforgaymen,
wholearnedfromthestartoftheirlivesthattheonethingaboveall
othersthatyoudonotdo,ismakemominanywayanxious.
OriginalArticle:ThecomingoutstoryInever
thoughtI'dwrite
WEDNESDAY,NOV16,201107:14AMPST
Youreright,theallAmericankidenjoyssportsbutdoesnthavea
lesbianforamother.Ifhesimplyhadtoomuchmotheras
youreinsinuatingthenhisconclusiveturningtowardmenis
largelyaturninghisbackonher:itdoesntcementtheirbond,but
theopposite,makingthemsafelyaskew,securelydelineated,from
oneanother.Theoriginal,theprimaryfaghagwillonlygetso
muchoutofhiminthefuture:Iwonderhowmuchitisthis
wonderfulsafetythatiscelebratedwithcomingout?
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Ontheeveofdestruction
MONDAY,NOV14,201103:41PMPST
Theylostpublicsupportowingtoacollectivedesiretoimagethem
spoiledbrats.Youletthemairoutyourowndistress,andthen
disownthem,indulginginanotherlongtermofsufferingbeforea
movementarisesthatisuncomplicatedbytheexpectationswe,
REALLY,deservebetterthanthisoftheverybest(notsaying,
ofcourse,thattheseareitsonlyconstituents,butthattheyare
surelyamongstthemitssorancidnowthatnomatteryour
[commendable]appreciationofongoingdiscourseandsocietys
abilitytorightitselfyoushouldfindyourselfassessingitallasa
choiceawayfrompossiblesalvation).
418
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Ontheeveofdestruction
MONDAY,NOV14,201103:15PMPST
Alotofliberalshavedonesomeinnercalculationsanddecided
theyrenotgoingtolosemuchiftheystaymostlystatusquoand
letthenexttwentyyearsbeatotalhorrorformostotherpeople
theyllfeelguilty;butthisafflictionwillactuallysatisfyin
showingtheyrenotcompletelylivingit.Theyrenotevil,butjust
nothealthyenoughtofindlittlesatisfactionwhenaspectreof
doomhasdecideditllpassthemby.IfJoanmakestherestofher
lifeaboutpreventingthenexttwentyfrombeingabouthuge
widespreadmiseryandeventualgrandsacrificethroughworldwar
(theusualwayitgoeswhenourcollectiveconcernissuddenlyto
purgeoutallbadness),itllowetosupportfromgrandfriendslike
ChrisMatthews.IfpeoplelikeJoanandChrisbalkcompletelyout
oftheirfamiliardiscourse,tome,atleast,imaginingmany
peoplelikethemdoingthesame,imaginingallofthemasakinin
innerresourcesasthey,thefuturewillsuddentlyseemopen.
Note:theylllosealltheirfriends,thoughtheresonlyacouple
peopleIcanthinkofatSalonthatwillstandcompletelywithJoan,
andbelieveitornot,neitherisGlenn.Ifsubliminallysensingall
this,ifyouwereher,wouldntyoufindyourselfdoingrecheck
afterrecheck?
Permalink
OriginalArticle:IfTolkienwereblack
WEDNESDAY,NOV9,201102:35PMPST
419
Updikehasbeenaccusedofsomethingofthesame(byBloom,for
instance),i.e.,possessedofgreatgifts,butlackingsomethingmost
meaningful.Personally,IthinkitsthatbothheandAnthonyfocus
mostlyonthedomestic,seetheworthyplayandadventurethere,
thatscaresawaypeopletakenabackbytoomuchhearth.Ireally
dofindAnthonyscreativityofanearwhollydifferentkindfrom
somanyfantasyauthors,whosinventionalwaysendsupreeking
tomeofcompensense.Thisislesstrueforalmostallwritersinthe
genreduringthe70s,ofcourse,whenyoudidnthavetohaveall
thatmuchinnerfiretohavetheagepropelyouontoquitenew
things(LeGuinsinthere,forsure).Hisstyleispronounced,
mostlywithouthedge.Uncircumcized.Hereallyisthecloses
writerIcanthinktoUpdike,muchmorethantheDelillos,Oates,
andallthem.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:IfTolkienwereblack
WEDNESDAY,NOV9,201101:11PMPST
Itstoughtotellrightnowhowgenuinepeoplearebeingwhen
theyciteUrsulaLeGuinastheirprimaryinfluence.Shesthepre
eminantfantasywritertociteifyoudontwanttocollectaround
youany(oratleast,theleastamountpossible)considerationasa
geek.Noneoftheotherslitpeoplementionquitegiftthesame.
Personally,Iwishmorewouldciteandactuallybeinfluencedby
PiersAnthony.HesfantasysJohnUpdike,itsboldest,least
cowed,ACTUALLYleastgeeky,adventurer.Ifyouseeallthatbut
stillthinkhimadork,somethingaboutthewholegenremustsadly
playtothatpartofusthatactuallyneverreallywantstogooutside
ourdoor.
Permalink
420
OriginalArticle:WasShakespearereally
Shakespeare?
THURSDAY,OCT27,201103:42PMPDT
Rightnow,youreeitherpartofthe99%,orpartoftheruling
class.TheDepressionlostsightofthemiddleclasses(they
certainlyexisted,buttheydidntfitthetimesdynamicsowere
ignoredinpopularimagination),andsotoowe.Thisiswhythe
considerationofShakespeareasanaristocratishavingitsday.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Democratscan'toccupyWall
Street
TUESDAY,OCT11,201109:11AMPDT
Oneofthegreatestthingsaboutgrossinequality,isthatyoudont
needtolistentothosewhowellmaybeabletellyouhowtolivea
littlebetter,withtheirmorethanlikelycomingfromaclass
absurdlyelevatedbeyondyourown.Youcanremainstuckina
classthatissuffering,butthathasalsodecided,unlikethe60sand
70s,thatitmightbefemmemannersofthemiftheylearnedto
lovecookingfrench.Manymainstreamdemocratsaregoingtotry
veryhardtobecomepopulists(thenewSalon,anyone?).Ifthey
cantgetin,itscauseofourownwallingthemout.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Democratscan'toccupyWall
421
Street
TUESDAY,OCT11,201108:29AMPDT
Bythis,bydemonizingtheelementsofmodernAmerican
workingclasslife,fromSUVsandlowpriceexurbanboxstoresto
thekindsofcuisinethatupscalefoodiesfrownupon,areyousure
dontjustmeantalkingaccuratelyaboutthem?SUVsare
deplorable.Theboxstores,justasbad.Whattheyeatastrong
signthathumanscanletthemselveslivewiththeirmoreimportant
partoftheirbrainsinactive.Liberalelitesaregoingtogetit
becausetheyareareminderthatwecanaskformoreoutoflife
thanthis;expectit,even.Theyllbereplacedbypopuliststhe
masseswillwanttolistento,wholltellthemJamieOliverstyle
howtheyhavetostopdrivingSUVsandstuffingtheirfaceswith
fattyfoods,butnottogoforsomethingmorerefined,but
somethingmoredeprived.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Unions,Democratsand
OccupyWallStreet
WEDNESDAY,OCT5,201109:13PMPDT
Itwasinevitable,andthustheydidntsomuchmakeitasfailedto
preventit.Everygenerationthatbeginsbyleadingasociety
beyondwhereeverithadpreviouslypermitteditself,thatisallowed
toleadit,becauseasocietyhasdecidedforatimethatinnovation,
overallimprovement,ispermitted,hasbeenearned,endsupat
somepointpullingback:notonlydoestherestofsocietybeginto
feeluntetheredoverallthishubristicinnovation(asocietythat
risesallboatsmyword!),butmanyoftheleftthatleadthegood
thingsbegintoaswell.Thepivotaloverallpsychicchange
occurredattheendofthe1970s,whenthemassesmovedthingsso
422
thatgrowthwouldlargelybesomethingdeniedthem.Insum,the
spoiledbabyboomersthatcametofocusonconsumerismand
themselves,wereverylikelythebestgenerationhumanityhasever
seen.Wegettobethelotthatseeswhatisintruthfleshedout
personalities,andratherthanaccomplishmentseeselfindulgence,
blameworthyselfattendanceandotherneglect.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:Unions,Democratsand
OccupyWallStreet
WEDNESDAY,OCT5,201109:42AMPDT
TheNewDealdidntariseoutofafearofunrest.Social
improvementscameoutofthemassesfeelingtheywereowed
something,forveryclearlyhavingalreadysufferedsomuch.
Socialjusticeisntjusthandedtous,notbecauseitHAStocome
fromafight(withmanysadlossessustained),butbecausewe
dontthinkwedeserveitifitcomestooreadily.(Twiceacentury
itseemspeoplebecomemorecomfortablewithallowanceand
permission;otherwisewereverysuspiciousofthemassofus
livingbeyondwhatwethoughtpossible.)ThatstheONLYreason.
Also,thespoileddangerouskidsofthe60swon.Americalargely
cametounderstandtheAmericanswhosawthemasdeserving
punishment,asolder,regressive,primitiveArchieBunkertypes,
whonotonlyhatedthekids,butblacksandhomosexualsand
immigrantsanduppitywomenaswell,andeffectivelyrepresented
everythingthe60sgenerationhadtoopposetofinallygivesome
sanitytoAmerica.Thehatershadtheirmomenttofreelyexpress
theirabsolutehate,butitmightaswellbeenalure,foritservedto
movetheyouthintopositionsofconsiderableinfluenceandpower,
423
anddoomedthemintoconstantlybeingonthedefense.
The60syouthwereemblematicofwhatwasrightwiththe
countryitwasgoingtobeatimeforyouth,forromanticism.
Unfortunately,ourcurrentlotisformanyofusasignofwhatis
rightaboutitnowtoo:weveenteredatimewhereyouhavetobe
delusionaltoseetheyoungasatalloverindulgedorspoiled.If
theystartgettingthethingstheyaskfor,itllowetousgauging
theyresosufficientlybrokenwhattheywantwontbesooutof
lineofthereducedwayofexperiencingtheworldweexpectoutof
them.Havingyourdebtspaidoffandhavingsomesortofjob,
needntmeanyoureonyourwaytobecomingfullyhuman.You
couldjustbeaNewDeal/Sovietworkingant,nodifferentfromthe
restofthethrivingbutpointlesscollective.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:WhyAmericannovelistsdon't
deservetheNobelPrize
TUESDAY,OCT4,201109:03AMPDT
Withhowmuchtheirdamnpresumptionandspoilednessclearly
bothersus,Ithinkitfairforusalltotakeapauseandconsiderthat
eveniftheyreallywere/aregreat,wemightnotbetheonestoever
accordthemthis.
Perhapstobegreat,youhavetofocusoneheckofalotononeself
thatis,perhapsyouhavetobecomeonewhomalater,more
shrunkengeneration,whohasschooledthemselvesintobelieving
theirownegoisticdesiresmakethembad,andisdeterminedtosee
anytheyseerisinginothersgetsretractedandpunishedaswell,
willseeassimplytooselfattendantandspoiled?
Whatwewant,apparently,whatclearlymakesussick,isforartists
424
topartakeinthecollective,tobesomewhatblandandnon
descript,andtodowithoutblinkingwhatwewouldhavethem.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:WhyAmericannovelistsdon't
deservetheNobelPrize
MONDAY,OCT3,201106:53PMPDT
Theymaynotknowasmuchaboutsufferingoritmaybethat
theyactuallyknowquiteabitbutarentasDETERMINEDbyit
buttheysurelyknowmoreaboutallowanceandplay,andnot
playingouttheirlivesasotherswouldhaveofthem.Guesswe
differonwherewethinkinventionandcreativitycomefrom,
perhapsowingtoourdifferenttakeonhowmuchfunpeople
shouldallowthemselves.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:WhyAmericannovelistsdon't
deservetheNobelPrize
MONDAY,OCT3,201106:24PMPDT
IfIcouldgiveanobeltooneAmericanhorrorwriter,itwouldbe
toStephenKing.Iftoonefantasywriter,toPiersAnthony;and
oneSciFiWolfe.All,Ithink,couldbecalledindulgent,but
theyaretheoneswhollchangemankindforthebetter,while
lettingeveryoneknowitsmorethanokaytocomplementyourfull
bellywithsomeafterdinnericecream,somesherryorrum.Idont
thinkwellseetheirequalsforacouplegenerations,butwellget
lotsofonmessagerevelsingrit,byauthorswhoareteaching
425
themselvestheyveneverknownanythingother.
Permalink
OriginalArticle:WhyAmericannovelistsdon't
deservetheNobelPrize
MONDAY,OCT3,201105:41PMPDT
Rated!
Permalink
OriginalArticle:WhyAmericannovelistsdon't
deservetheNobelPrize
MONDAY,OCT3,201105:38PMPDT
The1930sturnedhardagainstselfcenterednessandspoiledness
too.Fortunately,aftertheywereallowedtheirunfortunately
longishturnatharanguingeveryoneintogoodbehaviorand
championingpostofficeart,thenationeventuallyreturnedtogood
sense,andspoiledbratshadtheirindulgentturnagain(Yay
UpdikesCouples!).Imencounteringgoodnumberstryingto
turnusallagainstUpdikethebestofAmericanwriters;most
fun.PleaseallowyourselftocounterWallaceseviscerationof
UpdikesTowardtheEndofTimewithMargaretAtwoodstake
onthebook.Shesthegrownup;Wallacehasprovedjustaself
laceratorwevemadenowmostlyintoawhip.
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OriginalArticle:Thecreativeclassisalie
SATURDAY,OCT1,201112:35PMPDT
Thelastbigdepressionalsosuppressedtheindividualpowerofthe
actorwegotthefactorysystem,andreplacable,nervoustalent.
25yearsafterthisbeganwasaboutthetimethefactorysystemfell
apart,soImguessingyoureprobablyherespeakingaccurately
onlyaboutourimmediatefuture.Inmyjudgment,theproblem
nowwiththedigitalrevolution,whichwasNOTtruewhenit
began,isthatitisnolongersupportedbyacollectivewilltomake
itgenerallyempowering.Ifwereinthemoodtoseethepreviously
spoiledthoroughlydemoralized,leftonlywithflowersand
bonbonswedfindtheiruseasinstrumentsofhumiliation.Suchis
ourmoodnow.
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OriginalArticle:Thecreativeclassisalie
SATURDAY,OCT1,201111:45AMPDT
Thewholepointofadepressionistosuppresscreativityand
individualityadepressionisthepenanceforpreviousgood
times.Pointingoutitseffectivenessindoingsomaynotevenbea
lamentwhatgoodthingsweallowourselvesnowneedtobe
bettercamouflagedascompromisedpleasures/opportunities.The
richgettostruttheirstuff,unblanchedweenjoypointingto
themtoshowhowgoodandsufferingweourselvesnoware.This
goesonforabouttenyears,thenwegetabigwarwhereawhole
bunchofpromisingyouthsacrificetherestoftheirlivestothe
nation,andthenweallslowlybegintofeelthatthatsabout
enoughforcompromisedofferings:bloodpricepaidinfull.
Wethenstartdetachingourselvesfromourextendedfamilies,
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claimourownpiecesofearth,andhaveoneofthosetrueyouth
leadperiodsofcreativity,selffulfillmentandfun,thatonlyare
permittedtocomeabouttwiceeachcentury.Hanginthereguys.
Andmaybesomeofyouevenbuckthetrend:itwouldmakeme
nearbelieveinmiracles.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
"Brave" IS brave, but leaves the significant tear unattended
losing her own persona and going whole bear, the daughter is face to
face with someone who just a moment ago was her familiar mother
but has suddenly become someone fully absent from her, and also
very, very frightening and savage. I would argue that, outside of a few
very lucky ones, theres isnt any girl out there who hasnt known
wicked fear at experiencing from their own mothers, this sort of
upsetting transformation. The look the bear directs at the daughter in
the film, a quick but very impressionable one, as of someone suddenly
alien who means her terrific harm, is of the obliterating kind that
foremost keeps young women from fully being comfortable with their
intuitions to explore the adult, with their developing mental checks,
inner-scolds, that keep them from letting life be too much about
ostensible mother-betrayal and self-realization. We only get this look
twice in this film, and perhaps you are agreeing thank god for it!
Putting something this true into the film cant quite be called brave,
as its too subliminal, too deniable, to seem more than what a good-
intentioned but also very careful place-holder might put forth. Same
thing can be said with the films other brave element its actually
countenancing that what a family needs is a strong wife, able kids,
and a strong father. As mentioned, the real father in this film is an
idiot, and overtly this film belongs with a depressing, long slew of
films were likely to see forthcoming, where its near beyond
countenancing that female members dont just simply take over. All
the men in this film are like cartoon characters put in odd pathetic
abundant company to a sex possessed of something vibrant and real
exempting one notable exception. The adult male monster bear
possessed somewhere inside by the spirit of a ranging, founding-
father clansman has no truck for idiots or fools, either, nor is he
about to be toyed about by wee fey boys who idolize sweets, and he is
a fantastic creature which inspires equally fantastic engagement on
part of mother and daughter to be brought down. His is a powerful
voice the mother bear is something in defense of her cub, but
he never in the battle, owing to someone elses ferocity, loses his own
magnificence and the three of them together undeniably in their
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soul and intrinsic warmth. Boys still mostly lose sight of their
mothers, and as the psychohistorian Lloyd DeMause argues in his
great essay, Why Men are More Violent, though mothers may
dominate their little girls and expect them to share their troubles,
[. . .] domination has been found to be far less damaging to the childs
psyche than abandonment and routine distancing. Without involved
contact with their mothers, in comparison to girls, boys become
personality-thin, evidently deprived and sadly dull. That is, the film
actually shows a truth in showcasing teenage boys as unappealing to
the eye, without any needing to look to their fathers to know theres
no use trying to excuse them for just going through an awkward stage,
and in still showing more-or-less infant boys still within the realm
of maternal attention as far more captivating and spirited. May a
brave film appear that actually overtly argues that something should
be done about this deplorable true-life actuality (and please not by
Adam Sandler, who I've long appreciated but no longer trust).
----------
yet very plausibly has a legitimate shot at the presidency? And how do
you account for the fact that since dealing with the cleanup of 9-11
the very last thing weve had to worry about is mass public denial of
the afflictions to public service men and women, debilitated through
their experience in whatever service theyve undertaken the
physical injuries theyve suffered, the psychological ones driving them
to suicide, the financial ones telling them theyve got destitution
awaiting them in their home life as well with I think the near
conscious collective realization that no one for a good while is going
to do much about it, even with all the facts laid bare, week after week,
by our news media?
Politics and economics produce the carnage. What the media does is
ensure we all know its being done, transforming all the incoming
variant data of external suffering into quotients of sacrifice we can
please ourselves by counting and stacking up. Fairly assessed to be at
the helm of this madness is what is most commonly assumed to be a
tag-along popular arts, which, rather than offering escapes, keeps
us at some level keen that none of this carnage owes to happenstance
but rather entirely to our dictates. Films, that is, are directed if its
on the screen, its cause somebody wanted it there. And more and
more were assuming theyre done, not by auteurs lead by their own
idiosyncrasies, but by those skilled at taking percipient guesses as to
what were going to want next.
What we wanted not that long ago were still films that told us we
really dont deserve to be kept stunted, and that what we really need
are more sparks of encouragement and love in our lives to start us on
the path to realizing ourselves Wall-E is perhaps the strongest last
evidence of this. The grossly askew in this film are the robots put in
power when society had become all corporate, determined to slacken
human beings into their most passive forms to expedite vulgar profit-
making specifically Auto, who can only recognize real life as
something aberrant and destructive. To the perceptive, the ostensibly
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But around the time Wall-E was released came also very popular
Ratatouille and Dark Knight, and subsequently it has become evident
that whereas Wall-E was at the crest of something good, these films
were at the core of something foul which has become the bulk of our
view. Ratatouille is the dark to Wall-Es light. Wall-E holds to the
generous view that what is greatest in humans is to be possessed by
each one of them, regardless of cultivation or IQ; Ratatouille to the
opinion that the masses are dispossessed of anything worthy, and
only worth a nod if they at some level recognize their bumpkinness
and put themselves at your disposal. That is, while Wall-E gives you
irrepressible Wall-E, as well as the indefatigable captain, Ratatouille
gives you limp-noodle Linguini as your representative of the average.
While Wall-E portrays manipulation and control of the masses as
evil, Ratatouille shows it as necessary not just to ensure the
cultivated and smart collect within the society they truly belong to,
but because without being ordered and directed about nothing
notable will ever be realized. (Ditto everything said here with Brad
Birds subsequent film, Mission Impossible 3, which conspicuously
delineates regular cops as not rocket scientists, as idiots, that is, and
allows abusive handling of Ethans limp-noodle ally Bogdan for his
being dispossessed of any ability to help himself.)
The issue in Dark Knight is why the exceptional should care about
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We get films more akin to Iron Man, released around the same time
as Dark Knight, which might even be noted for their positive
estimations of people, but which rather seem to have in supplicant
modesty queued up so the new Big Man on the scene can see who
theyre truly in sympathy with. Tony Stark is moved to change his
business wholesale after he really gets what his weapons are all about,
how much damage they do to regular people, how much they inflate
petty tyrants. He removes his tie, and sits amongst the people eating
a cheeseburger and corporate-heads panic! But man-of-the-people
Tony Stark prompts the civilians he now champions to in fact behave
in a manner which historically has served as pretext to launch armies
to wipe them out. When he as Iron Man arrives to save the men from
being shot before their distraught sons, daughters and wives, he
leaves the boss terrorist to the fate of the peasants, whom one is
presumed to assume will converge on him and deliver a fate crueler
than anything he could possibly deliver. One is presumed to assume
that theyd immediately mob him and rip him up into a debris cloud
of sinew and viscera before he could even quite squeal out a
NOOOOOOOO!!!, leaving us with a still haughty Tony Stark,
deliverer of clean blows, as well as the apropos, and the ravaged
peasants, dispensers in their revenge of a mess of blood and gore. Its
just a quick scene, and the rest of the movie prattles about as far as I
can remember under the assumption of the dignity of the people, but
what a denigrating truth it drove in: the common people can be
counted upon to degenerate into savages; you might loosen your
tie amongst them, but how much closer would you really want to get
yuck!
This spring, week after week I saw the cuts, gauges, wounds, films are
plainly eager to make to regular people. Friends with Kids has been
praised for its generous treatment of the long considered but
ultimately discarded love interests. But how kind is it to decide
against the gorgeous, talented brunette Megan Foxs character for
showing her possessed of an aversion to kids as if they were spiders,
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If you can only trudge through life, leaving the dreaming and their
carrying out to the higher orders, you shouldnt and youre not going
to feel safe enough to feel the world has gifted you a safe-zone
wherein to figure out what you want in life, to feel convinced that for
you the world can still about testing, trying, learning, developing,
ably riding and otherwise enjoying. Youll go on like a soldier in the
trenches, knowing at any minute you or your best mate may be shot
down, and youll be upset for a half hour before out of necessity
putting your mind as to how their demise might enfranchise you.
Friends with Kids knows that the friends belong to the protected
circle, that they enjoy knowing that they are the ones who can
frighten the servile with instant doom. Done much like as in Iron
Man, where it looks to be about something else, this film showcases
the vulnerability of the working class, of everyday folk, by making it
seem mostly about a means for Adams Scotts character to show
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much he cares about his lifelong best friend. Perhaps the whole life of
an insufficiently fawning servant the nanny is up in the air, to
make one nice milestone moment happen for a privileged couple. Its
Atonement, but without the mother surprising all by appearing out of
nowhere and raging head on at the car, making ample demonstration
at the injustice done to one of the working orders to her dear,
beloved son just to demonstrate the resiliency of an idiotic, rigid
social order.
If the nurse who accepted the bribe got caught, he might end up a
hood this at least is the working assumption in 21 Jump Street. In
this movie, which showcases the Abu Ghraib-akin humiliations you
can feel free to subject gang members to (the two main-character
police men mock hump one of them from behind while he lay pinned
439
on the ground), the head of a new drug ring centered at a high school
is a teacher, who was driven to it, we are told, owing to the paltry
wages paid him. His situation isnt even hinted at as something worth
concern, though. Instead, he is the medium whereby the film feels
comfortable trying out humiliations you may not ever have seen
before as a source of humor specifically, his penis gets shot off, and
we see him fumbling about on the ground trying to find it. Teachers,
we are told, are, like the nurses of What to Expect, part of a now
suspect occupation. They are like lower class occupations of old
where people involved in them were presumed to be always just this
close to going illicit. It is true that the high school teacher involved is
a boorish male, and it is worth considering that he is subject of
remorseless abuse mostly because of his belonging to this category of
disrepute, but another contemporary film, Me and My Boy, does have
you wondering if, no, while not apt to be portrayed as drug dealers,
weve still presumed female teachers might have been forced to go so
off-kilter that boys dreams of teacher sex is something some of them
might be voraciously making happen.
One might assume those of one working class occupation the police
come out of 21 Jump Street okay but this actually needs to be
considered. The one character with smarts is shown to be someone
who, if hed actually been treated with some respect in high school,
would have been off to Berkeley rather than exploring the trades.
This would have meant, like Tony Stark in Iron Man, not just being in
possession of a posh pad, but never needing to dirty himself, not ever
needing to find some kind of compensation within the realm of the
macho which seals the deal as to what kind of social rung he belongs
to. He humiliates his opponent, but as the film shows, his world is
easily one where he and his partner could end up being, and
essentially at random, shot to pieces. Just after their preparing
themselves for just such a fate, the original (that is, the TV show) 21
Jump Street cops surprise us with their appearance and prevent this
from happening; but any pleasure incurring from their visit is quickly
440
sacrificed to it so it can know satiation and justice the time for self
and societal-growth is over; its now about whos to pay the price for
accumulating for decades, and how much each guilty one. If you
already had some sense as to what this age was about, you could
pretty much have predicted that Snow White and the Huntsman
would have a scene where the expectant queen would have before her
a multiple of strewn-about youths, drained into carcasses for her
replenishment. So, too, that the experience of watching Prometheus
could fairly be described as one commenter at the movie-review site
Movieline did as being riddled with a million wounds; and that the
pursuit of origins, rewarding, renewing discovery enlightenment
would be easily outmatched by some wretched-awful beasts insistent
demand that its going to be about biology, about your body as host
and its about presumptive spawning. You could also have predicted
that the girl would come out okay so long as she was shown
thoroughly decimated beforehand. And especially if it could be made
to seem a choice between wholly-taken-down-a-notch her and some
still proud figure, which is of course what we get, with her being lead
to believe for a moment that her just-deceased husband had managed
to impregnate her, only to find out that this miracle had occurred
owing only to his already being in part a DNA-manipulating beast-
thing (making her someone who essentially was fucked by a fiend,
and near-forced to give birth to its kid), and with his being of a
species of humanity which has presumed to temper themselves into
gods.
The humiliations were seeing applied in all these movies towards the
kinds of people we know are most precariously placed, isnt about
Hollywood not giving a damn, but about our being able to show well
actually pay for films which show people like us treated abominably.
Were cutting ourselves to pieces, and the abasement happening to us
in society, through loss of jobs, through service in war, through
competition in schools and being owned by student loans, through
pleasure-critical, self-lacerating diet and fitness regimes, takes on the
442
Well come out of this at some point, and itll actually come with our
sense of pride being replenished. But this story, friends also
essentially dark will come at another time. As a preview, it'll be
about re-polluting categories of people fifty years of collective effort
has been put into humanizing.
----------
Adam Sandler deserves credit for being angry that a culture he grew
up knowing pleasures from, has essentially been demarcated
subsequently as something you can only bring up with shame. The
really quite wonderful Grosse Pointe Blank is, however, an indication
of this unfair pattern the 80s were Reagan and aids, a time to get
trapped in. Well, in truth, so it was it was a period where society
seemed mostly interested in abandoning its dependents and building
remove so to not hear their complaint (bang on, Risky Business and
Breakfast Club). The kinds of things we were offered to take pleasure
from showed what growing up in that decade did to our preferences
Im sorry, but though Vanilla Ice, Mustang 5.0s, gloomy uterine strip
clubs did please for seeming to grant us access to black culture,
powerhouse prowess, the illicit, something is off with you in
retrospect if you cant see that the main reason to now stand up for
443
them is because they once meant something to kids. The kids who
grew up with them may rightfully still feel better provisioned than
todays, and I think they are, but this is only because things have just
become more scrutinized, tightened up.
But I did still enjoy Vanilla Ice, I did still know awe at the power of
the 5.0s, I was excited by the sense of realm-transgression offered in
the strip club; and I thought when we turned away from those we
began to feel guilty about taking enjoyment from, kicked them while
they were down so that we could feel for awhile like we were in
charge, it was an indication of the extent of the damage wed
incurred. We abandoned our stars hard, near encouraging them to
suicide themselves so to not trail us through our lives. Sandler
bravely stands up for them, and is trying to use his Hollywood power
to encourage a safe-zone whereby we can do something about this
period so many of us grew up in other than flee it, and feel cool for
doing so. With the considerable help of his work, the pieces come
back into view, and youre not going to be allowed to say, simply,
God, did we really grow up with that?, a response that has for
subsequent decades shortchanged us the ability to really reflect and
engage with the past that determined much of our adult selves. Its
become time for Sandlers long, aggressively appreciative engagement
with it. You need not only to hear of Vanilla Ice again, know that he
survived his suicide-attempts and is occupied fruitfully making
homes, but spend part of an evening with him, even if just to allow
you the slow goodbye someone who was once (he was, assholes, dont
deny it) a meaningful part of yours deserves.
But its never time to believe that this period did not ultimately
shortchange us. It did. It became cool to pick on anybody who could
remind us of our father-shortchanged (80s were the time for divorce,
and I don't remember seeing my dad all that much -- did you?),
mother-overwhelmed selves gays in particular. I do appreciate that
this film was made out of truly righteous anger at what is always
denied when we talk about teachers sexually preying on their students
specifically, that this was a dream near every male student had,
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Thoughts on "Prometheus"
----------
Maria Aspan has written an article praising Friends with Kids, and I
would feel inclined to do the same if I felt the film began to open up
for new explorations what had felt foreclosed in pattern. But I tend to
find that in many films that tip the hat to your preferences, youll
relax enough in them to want to praise them for the new theyve
shown you, the possibilities, considerations, theyve lived out for you.
What to Expect When Youre Expecting, if, like the central
characters, youre comfortably mainstream, uninterested in having
the intellectual edge on anyone and more just participating in the --
to you -- exciting trends/new truths manifesting now, does have the
material to have you thanking it for what it did right too, for it
fleshing out in a compelling fashion a whole variety of ways expecting
a child affects you and your partner. But if the mainstream is
loathsome to you, the film becomes simply garbage; no true
explorations, just extensions into drudgery. Myself, I can certainly
put myself in the frame of mind to consider New York smart-set
elitism garbage, and dismiss the film as readily as most critics did
What to Expect.
Ill do so now. Noam Chomsky has argued that most of what should
be discussed regarding politics and the economy, isnt actually
engaged by the media. He would have us see them, the members of
the media, as obsessing over a permitted sliver as if it were all the
world. I felt a bit like Chomsky regarding the media while thinking
upon Aspans review. She found the film refreshing, as opening up
new ground. I agreed that, sure, it might do that, but limited to the
latitude permissible to a class that is otherwise comfortable when
most of the innovative is off the table. I find this an era of foreclosed
opportunities, an era so staving off it drives people into thoughts of
448
will so manifest, believing yourself more special than God. The price
youll pay is to be judged asocial, out of bounds but in precarious
plain view everywhere you go, even in New York.
----------
with children and got with humanitys overall central pattern; now
youre the gorgeous gladiator we admire, but which never shames us
for registering more and more as being delimited to the arena of
boyhood while we partake in the communal flow opened up by adult
life. And that you finally did end up with kid, saved you. Getting in
with the times has saved you the stress of having to keep your
musculature proving it might never lapse to the point of
acknowledging defeat which, even if somehow successful, is
counter-intuitive enough to draw our consideration, but never having
us thinking that something central had now just been disproved:
eternity is across generations, not in the distinction arisen in one: it's
better to be average, but with a kid.
And this is probably best case. The next is that youre in service to
someone who is fecund, as the fat sales assistant is, bearing the worst
of her masters store owner Wendys -- lapses, aping out the worst
of her ridiculousness to pacify her effect, sitting on her hands when
her personal possessions get smashed in error but at least she isnt
abandoned.
But if youre with kid, youre part of the group which seems bent on
mending any difficulties they have, surmounting any limitations that
have been conceived -- the obtuse will become attendant when it
matters. Youll cross paths many times, and though you may never
know one another, the possibility is ever possible and if you do itll
be to fortify one another, attaching into one greater complex
macromolecule, interlocking and expanding, exhilaratingly, by divine
right. This ex potencia, which still exists for the young couple for not
talking abortion, for at least being oriented the same as the other far
better economically situated couples, would have been denied them if
theyd considered abortion. Their (even if playfully) at-war ocean-
side food carts would never port into the safe and secure denizens of
the affluent, in loyal vassalage, but also recognizably within the same
family, as the full-sized margarita stand by the pool of the super rich
race driver baits their income-makers with. Theyd be the egregious
wedding photo the adopting parents try to hide, but without any
452
----------
we doubt how few would throw any disconcert Willmore's way for
presiding "Hotel" as "for the aged only"?
What, though, is a 12 year old to make of adults, not in their last years
acting like infants, but maturely trying to square their desire for
renewal, for new life, new adventures, with their understanding that
they are besot with already established life courses, by ruts of routine
responses and resurfacing old tricks, worsening in their ability to
catch some good game? It sure doesn't look much like a ride to entice
fresh crowds into Disneyland. Yet in this age where we've gotten used
to books and films being targeted to the emotional and intellectual
capabilities of differing children's age groups, to their set-determined
particular interests, there's still the reminder of lasting books written
just a generation or two ago by the likes of Roald Dahl, Richard
Adams, Ursula LeGuin, Madeleine l'Engle, E.B. White, and Salinger,
that don't sit so well with the idea that there isn't somehow something
adult, already fathomed in the childish mind. Personally, I've never
thought enough thought has gone into how it is an older writer is able
to write for children at all; instead thinking the proofs on how anyone
cannot but offer, regardless of whom they're intending to write for,
mostly unabashed contact with their 30 -, 40-, 50, 60-ish or on writer
selves. And if children go for it, it has to be that they're very fond
of the adult in these writers, even as they still very much do
appreciate the various considerations allotted them, the faeries, farm
animals, and guardian wizards that assure them this is a world they
can handle.
Even with "Harry Potter" we're already a bit keen to this possibility.
As the series progressed there are encounters simply between adults
that could challenge you to wonder, if all collected and left by
themselves, how bogus it'd be to label them anything short of
literature. I'm thinking in particular of Snape and Dumbledore, of
Snape and Voldemort; with the challenge, subsequent Snape's reveal,
being to determine if the Snape we've long known without fully
knowing his past is fair measure of the key early experiences we are
told have determined him. Yes -- we have to conclude to be satisfied
454
rather sometime afterwards, after life has gone by some and the new
and one-time perturbing has manifested more clearly as a facilitating
component of you.
There, I moved quickly from being tempted to make the case in favor
of the difficult, the non-pleasing, to actually more-or-less making it;
and I realize I did so because, despite believing that what kids can't
help but love about the literature they read is their contact with adult
minds, and that kids are more perspicacious than we often judge,
capable of encounters with the adult before "this is for kids aged --"
categories look to communicate, it's never the less true that if you
take your kids to "Hotel" they may well hate you for it. Unlike how
the critic Stephanie Zacharek assessed another movie sure to be
thought, as she puts it, "just a little nice movie for grannies and no
one else" -- "Letters to Juliet" -- I cannot, that is, sincerely argue that
kids will like it foremost for the youth they will find in these aging
people. In "Letters," Zacharek found the 73-year-old Vanessa
Redgrave "living assurance that the young people we once were
can stay alive is us, no matter how much we grow and change,"
proclaiming, when Claire finally meets her long-ago love, that "it
takes zero imagination to see the face of the young Guenevere in this
older one." But though with Tom Wilkinson's plot-line in "Hotel" one
can find the near equivalent of this particular moment, I declare
"Hotel" worth a visit primarily because it makes you realize just how
much better than you there is out there; it's appeal lies in its not
being reassuring. It teaches you that all that youthful energy you
possess is not something you should so much be concerned not to
lose, but be concerned to use, to acquire the depth fully available to
you only in growing older.
To be more fair to Zacharek's review, I'll note that though she singled
out the moment of youthful presence in Claire as what in particular
would reverberate with youth, it's clear she thinks they'll actually take
to all they'll see of her. She actually follows proclaiming the film not
just for grandmas by drawing attention to Redgrave's
adult substance, of how she "puts all she's got into something other
456
actors might cast off," how "[s]he's present every moment," as much
as her youthful vitality. And she takes care to establish the moment
immediately before Claire meets her long-ago love as a complex one,
as something which to fully understand requires testing your acuity,
some extension of yourself into behavior you may not quite be able to
delineate for it possibly not yet being wholy part of your own
resources. This moment's all about adult considerations, about being
aware that however much the 15 year old he fell in love with is gone (a
cowing realization that has her shelter herself, not so much out of
self-pity but "as if [. . .] trying to hide from herself"), "she's not."
And -- now to be more fair to her as well -- Willmore's assessment of
"Hotel" isn't just that it's pigeoned for old hearts not young ones, that
it's simply "about growing old in a terribly British fashion," but about
not-to-be-missed moments as well, presumably, with her herself
being delighted by them, available to both young and old. She
highlights some of the ones I'd be inclined to; but rather than list
them in the exact fashion she does -- "Billy Nighy joking with Judi
Dench about his inability to fix a telephone, Maggie Smith forcing
down local food in order to be polite, Tom Wilkinson joining in a
game of pickup cricket and Penelope Wilton looking terrified during a
tuk-tuk ride" -- I'd have been tempted to italicize the great actors'
names as well: for what we agree is so special is getting to see great
living people interact smartly with one another, not our chance to see
characters from a book so capably enfleshed. Or do what Stephanie
did with Vanessa Redgrave in "Letters," and involve myself more fully
with why Penelope Wilton making clear with Nighy that it's over
between them, or her thanking Wilkinson for sparing her further
humiliation -- both moments of self-account that reminded you how
much one must have to be able to convey so much self-possession
after catastrophic revelations have deflated you to wondering if you're
a fraud -- is so special.
You get enough of great people here I'd be tempted to compare it to
the Louvre, a storehouse one's never to early to start familiarizing
oneself with; but to flatter it now surely a bit too unjustly, here you
457
curtailing of depth. It was the '30s, with artists who thrived then
sometimes being the ones unable to thrive in '20s Paris, for all the
great but also incredibly daunting personalities they mixed with
there; but were able to once self-sacrifice and common purpose, not
self-indulgence and individual enrichment, became king. Personally,
I'd prefer not to think youth have had it so bad they'll take the barren
ramshackle over the opulent for it at least being theirs, but the film
does argue a case for this as well. So, yes, at the finish, I'll admit there
is still some valid last minute weighing to do ... but please do decide
to take your kids to "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel."
----------
decades-old pop franchises. (It is, of course, possible to go too far into
the pop-culture past. Lets observe a moment of silence, once again,
forJohn Carter.) We can certainly argue about which of these
movies create an interesting twist on existing formula and which are
cynical crap, but I dont think we can argue that it makes much
difference to the bottom line. The Avengers will make a kazillion
dollars, and so did Transformers: Dark of the Moon. The differences
between the two are mostly a matter of fine-grained detail; theyve
both got cartoonish male bonding, a lot of stuff blowing up, and hot-
chick eye candy.
If youre female and youre interested in any or all of the above
pictures, by the way, I apologize for making it sound as if you dont
exist. But in marketing terms, you dont.
[. . .]
All of this reflects deeply ingrained social and cultural ideas about
gender, which are present in people of both sexes. Maybe mens
preference for violent action yarns and womens preference for sappy
love stories and our tendency to understand one as more serious
than the other are hard-wired in some biological way, although that
falls a long way short of scientific truth. But despite the torrent of
male-centric franchise flicks well see this summer, and next summer,
and for all the summers into the foreseeable future, the tide in the
Hollywood gender wars has begun to shift, slightly but perceptibly.
I personally wonder if what we will see this year, next year, and
further beyond are periodic interruptions by liberals of their basic
enjoying of life to float out mouthy j'accuses at still-male-centric
society, allowing some smaller bite, to come off themselves. And I
wonder if it was time for one such interruption to come from Andrew,
and this is what actually explains why it is only in the comment
section of this article that we learn why Joss Whedon's
Avengers apparently wasn't permeated by Whedon's ostensibly
natural female orientation, rather than for the film being in the end,
mostly all Marvel.
What I am drawing upon here is not right-wing concerns, but rather
460
Stephanie Zacharek's review of the film, we note, was very harsh. It's
always great to have her take, but it'd be nice if she'd accord some of
her assertions, particularly this one -- "But if you're out to change the
face of filmmaking, you have to work much harder at a lot of the thigs
Cameron just shrugs off" -- and perhaps also this one -- "In Avatar,
the technology is everything" -- and also this one -- "'Avatar isn't
about actors or characters or even about story; it's about special
effects, which is fine as far as it goes" -- with what actually ended up
happening. Cameron didn't leapfrog off this project; the world, the
people in it, mattered to him -- and do we doubt that audiences
haven't either? And this, his sticking to the Avatar universe, isn't
because he's old, or because Avatar is ideal ground for his special
effects fetish, or because the aquatic's hold on its lifeforms doubles
nicely its recent long hold on him; but rather because despite his early
errancy -- i.e., Titanic's "Goodbye, mother!" - he means to spend the
rest of his life in the lap of his mother deity, Eywa; it really does come
down to that.
Stephanie was astray from the life in this film as she was from the life
462
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rival male very angry, it's because he's jealous; not, rather, because
the girl was eager to please and a suck-up and so of course was the
one who got the A +.
Reply to this post from Tryfan:
Seriously -- have you read the books? Because that's certainly not
what they're about. I may not be as optimistic as Sutherland, but to
call the "Hunger Games" series "pro-capitalistic", and about "cream
rising to the top" is just plain wrong.
My reply to Tryfan:
Overtly, totalitarianism is criticized in Hunger games; but if you mean
to show how brutal a society is primarily by having it pit young people
to fight to the death in battle royales, you don't (1) show these battles
as serving nicely to out people's true worth; which (2) suggest you
could go through it all and still come out looking the prince or
princess; where (3) people, where kids, who die often overtly deserve
to, have had it coming for a long time, in fact, or find their status
enhanced owing to it; and (4) that you'll come out of them several
steps further along the way of knowing who you really are and what
you want most in life.
The contest begins with Katniss appraised highest by authorities, and
though this must feel good (the novel never has her admit to being
flattered by it -- but boy do we well how important it's been in the
past to the author, and how many readers, using Katniss of course as
their avatar, rejoiced and savored it), the unforgiving contest
demonstrates how much better it feels to prove you're really worth it.
(It also does zero to suggest we actually want authorities outed --
their worth is proved in their rightful assessment of Katniss's, and in
their readiness to oblige their honest assessment, despite it being
culled from affrontery.) The contest could have been efficiently
criticized by showing how it degrades its participants, but Katniss,
though involved in a contest which in order to win must have her
killing kid after kid after kid, isn't involved in even a single one which
sullies her. She kills the brutal boy who dispatched holy Rue; she
with innocence ends the life of the evasive Fox; and with mercy, even,
467
closes things out on the worst sort of bully in the world. She ends
things for one or two others -- but they're of the favored, mean and
unsparing sort too
... and this is another problem: if you want to criticize a society by
showing it as one which enables contests which kill kids, you don't
depict the contests as producing teams of people so mean they
obviously deserve their deaths, and of others so innocent you just
have to root for them. What is just and unjust looses its fix on the
contest itself and focuses on who, exactly, are the ones to die, and
who, exactly, ends up spared. Further, you don't have the most
innocent -- Rue -- dispatched, but in a way which makes it seem as if
this was the only way for her to become as she was clearly meant to:
that is, of mythic and lasting importance, cemented in the
imagination as heavenly grace once briefly visited upon Earth before
departure owed to what is most crude and coarse in man. Lastly, you
don't make the contest one which loosens people to develop as human
beings: Peeta, through the contest, gets to know a relationship with
the person he's always coveted; and Katniss too begins along a path of
becoming a sexual human being, of in fact initiating all the various
sorting outs that'll lead her to become an adult. Without the contest,
they would have remained stunted the whole of their lives. They
never would have known the beauty of loving cooperation, even,
spared participation in this sort of brutal but ultimately saged, just
competition. Capitalism, of the Spenserian sort, even, has found its
new love-child with this book. Maybe everthing gets righted in the
second and third without requiring a lobotomy before undertaking
them, but I'm not holding my breath.
Reply to this post from Bread & Circus:
Of course, a lot of the brutality is set up to allow Gale to argue that
anything goes in the war against the capital. Unlike most stories
about a hero fighting against a totalitarian regime, Katniss never
takes charge, and never takes over the movement except as a
symbol. I thought the critique of capitalism was in the relationship
between the Capital and the Districts; resources flow into the
468
Capital and prices are kept artifically low by starving the workers
in the districts. When the districts protest, they are brutally
repressed. This is a bit like when a company (like Shell, for
example) supports a government (like Nigeria) while producing oil
for expot. The government benefits from the profits and represses
the people who say that it isn't a good deal for the country's citizens.
Meanwhile, the company is able to keep cots low becuase it isn't
asked to conform to the environmental or labour standards.
Nigerians get paid crap for working for the company, have to deal
with oil spills and government repression, and we (citizens in
developed countries) get cheaper oil. [. . .] The unequal and violent
relationshi between Panem's capital and districts helps us reflect on
how violence and repression can create unequal relationships in our
"free" market global economy.
My reply to Bread & Circus:
You can and should find major critiques of capitalism and
totalitarianism in these novels -- just not any a leading capitalist or
tyrant totalitarian would be spooked by. If having dignity is
unambiguously associated with being dispossessed, and at major risk
of being lost if one starts to middle or better, totalitarians will know
you have a comfort level with being amongst counted losers you'll
never find courage to really shake off: denied everything, you can't be
shuck of being noble; start accruing, with dreams and hoped-for
aspirations suddenly quite realizable, and you're no longer spared
being assessed a self-focussed, spiteful aspirer.
*****
Jen Yamato:
It can certainly be argued that Collins' book series and the Gary
Ross-directed feature adaptation has the potential to influence a
generation of youngsters who'll come for the sci-fi escapism and
leave the theater appreciating its personal messages of personal
accountability and standing up for what's right in the face of
impossible odds. More subtle are the franchise's critiques of
capitalism, celebrity, and media exploitation; if The Hunger Games
469
up the control and force used to maintain the status quo in Panem.
What I like most about the Hunger Games is you can argue and
think about it for ages.
My reply:
If I sensed that the author wanted most for people to simply live
authentically, regardless of whether or not they're appreciated for
what they think, feel or do, I would have praised her for it. What I
sensed, was a novel that registered that its readers want to believe
themselves authentic -- but in truth really most wanted to be attended
to and feel the rush of being superior to every dispossessed one of
miniscule the rest of you. As such my criticism. The author so felt the
guilt of imagining herself annointed and above thee, she gave
everyone aplenty "truths" they as a chorus could unite behind to
abash demons popping up proclaiming -- nay!
----------
isn't anywhere near knowing the extent of his reach. Rue is supposed
to remind Katniss of Prim -- but this is crazy talk: she is further proof
that the Reaping took Katniss away from country debilitation toward
being amongst "Princeton's" shining elite -- these type have got it so
going on they even know what it is to loosen themselves to impish
play.
The favored district is composed of non-blanched meanies; but upon
watching the film I realized the experience of their involvement with
Rue, Thresh, Peeta and Katniss is kinda like the popular high school
set figuring out exactly how best to deal with spark-possessing new
varietals that one day might compose a competing rival one: even
while conniving how to dispose of them, pick them off, one by one,
they're experimenting with and enabling the mental/physical/spatial
relocations that could let them acceptably fit them in as their own.
This is a bit of a stretch, I know, but it is still the close high school
equivalent.
It's the crowds that stand apart. It may be that in their united fealty
to Katniss, District 12 figures in the imagination as pure, while the
Capital is set as a grotesque -- but I am pausing on this one. If so,
however, the film does enable a certain class of people for ruthless,
empathy-denied elimination -- the Capital's crowds of splendor-
entranced, disconcerned entitled elitists; and for this then should the
film principally be explored for its say on fascism.
*****
Jake's comment at Movieline.com:
[. . .] Consequently, I found the arrogant "bad boy" teen leading the
group of evil teens to be far more interesting a character with his
simple moment in the finale when he suggested that all the killing he
did was not worth it. That moment of regret showed more depth
than katniss, Peeta, Rue (sp?) and all the other characters combined.
My reply:
Cato's final moment wasn't for me so much the character regretting
as the film archly regrouping to argue the contest as simply an evil
thing, rather than as a glorious opportunity for come-uppance on the
472
----------
Almost from the start you feel the director's efforts to please the
audience's key and only regal lady -- the blossoming young woman,
traditionally picked on by patriarchy, and whose current allegiance
guarantees you status as a modern man that gets to lubricate with
subservience but without any contestation, the way ahead -- and so
the Queen's proclamation that it is her story being told is really
understood as falsehood, pretty much moment one. The film pleases
those who are pleased when people fuss effort over them -- and much
473
----------
Perhaps it's the foremost goal now for most people, not to be a
runaway success, but to situate yourself so you get a comfy-enough
seat in which to watch how it all unravels. It's been 13 years, and it
seem the point of the reunion is to strip away whatever attenuations
becoming visibly adult after high school brings upon you -- something
for self-esteem purposes you need to feel you'd donned -- to mostly
lounge back, lifelong, into a niche, a "knit," you've always known as
pleasing and comfortable. Well, for these characters -- good for them.
It'd be nice to see people settle into their permanent habitat after
they're fully formed rather than while shadows of greater essences --
of true world-exploring adventurers, of truly individuated, mature
couples; but I think even with where they remain they'll have fun,
know some good living.
I think they'd be wise, though, not to be made subjects for any further
films. Stifler, the only one of them who remains an agent of true
living -- that is, not just a joiner in common-place activities like
horking down hotdogs with genial-enough friends, but generating,
initiating upon them new adventures, experiences and landscapes --
seems pretty much near used up by film's end, exhausted from having
to play through all the requisite and predictable (note: in a time
where collectively to help bide time we make ourselves feel evolved
and accomplished perhaps primarily by ridiculing white male alphas,
it plays out as requisite, not a surprise, that his high school sports-
mates are all gay) humiliations that have to be suffered upon him.
----------
less appealing. For three decades, they, the ordinary people, those of
lesser psychoclasses, were mostly in-sync with the less ordinary, the
members of higher ones. They permitted and engaged with the
reforms, the expansions of experience, of pleasure, the more loved
and evolved amongst them lead them onto, were allowed to lead them
onto, owing to pretty much everyone feeling that some great
mountain-world of happiness had been earned to partake in by the
giant sacrifices endured through the Second World War and the two
decades of dreariness previous to it. Three decadesuntil the more
regressed psychoclasses experienced in a way that could not
temporarily be abated through war or recession but only through the
more total sort of renouncement involved in what we understand as
historical group phase change, their maternal alters chastising them
for pleasing themselves too much, threatening upon them
abandonment which spoke to them as death.[3] Truly good things
began to look mostly sinful, and bland things, more appropriate, if
not exactly desirable, for the former speaking louder of guilty self-
pleasure and the latter of its forsaking. And they decided to help
more fully demarcate themselves from those with self-respect by
bonding themselves to the likes of sludge-pile Limbaugh while
innovation-prone liberals sought out refinement on the coasts, with
Prada, with Armani.[4] And what happened to the 80s psychoclasses
that finally succumbed should be understood as incurring upon Chris
Hedges right now.
Hedges is now fully with the people. He announces this fact,
entrenchs it so that it is sunk into his every thereafter-moment in the
text, by beginning his book with a vivid personal account of one
suffering owing his being criminally forsaken: people like him
specifically, one Ernest Logan Bell are not only always on his mind
but much closer than any time previous, his near proximity. He
makes clear he wasnt always here, though, that before as an
employee of the New York Times he existed within a highly seductive
culture, daily-exposed to voices that baldly tempted sin but also
heights fully and thrillingly aloof from pedestrian morality. Exposed
482
to the same, he lets Doug McGill, an employee of the Times for ten
years, recount its essence: [I]f you keep writing good stories you will
keep getting access to the CEO plus perks like lunches and home
telephone numbers for future stories (133); I was beginning to get
too used to having mayors and governors and CEOs call me up, as if I
were a friend, and pay for my dinners and give me their press releases
and have me describe them in glowing terms (134). But he, Hedges,
found way to stick to his principles, something that ultimately lead to
his being loudly booed at universities and coldly dismissed from the
Timesbadges he wears and prouds around in his book that serve,
like warriors wounds, to announce his commitment away from
himself, apart from his previous life which he had come to
essentialize as soul-claiming and self-indulgent for so baldly
proclaiming that it might be okay to claim something all for yourself,
without even any tinge of morality to buttress or qualify it. Given that
all such are described as having to go through the same humiliations
and be clear, the humiliation rites he describes are not really to be
understood as descriptions of what happens to those who balk
establishment expectations but as markers required to delineate one
as martyr-hero[5] it leads to him being counted in his own mind
within the same class of those, the real greats, who, for speaking
inconvenient truths, incur sharp miniaturization in status and
subsequent near-empty-cupboard levels of financial compensations.
It could us draw us to think of him along the lines of Chomsky, who
comes up frequently in the text to serve as the lone hero who braved
balking establishment consent we should all try to emulate, or of
Michael Moore, who got booed and jeered at the Oscars for speaking
off message, or of Ralph Nader, who drew upon himself a whole
chatter-classes animosity for presuming the same could be
institutionalized and perhaps one day even the norm; but perhaps
because it is difficult to talk of these renowned figures and simply
conjure up feelings of disavowal, to delineate the fate of those who
speak truth to power he temporarily delimits our attention to the sad
fate of mostly-unknown-to-us Finkelstein, who for refus[ing] to back
483
[2] This is not to say that unification during the period Hedges speaks
of it largely arising the First World War wasnt actually mostly for
a short time simply a truly regrettable regression into growth panic-
spurred group think, but that its ongoing continuation should be seen
as owing to psychoclass innovation.
[10] Presuming higher discourse than the like hed encounter on Fox
News, after having previously been asked by Kevin OLeary if he was a
left-wing nutbar on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company)
interview show, the Lange & OLeary Exchange (Oct. 6, 2011), a
disgusted Hedges snorted, itll be the last time, after at the end
being thanked for appearing. One wonders how less offensive
Hedges own scornful 3-word encapsulation of the liberal class would
be and if something likely, like fetid, cowardly, sycophants, if this
would be something hed hesitate to say on a respected stage?
Jeffrey Record, in Wanting War, would have you know that the Iraq
war was/is a war of hubris, that Iraq presented no pressing threat but
an enticing prize, neo-cons and George W. Bush made use of a
nations powerful need to simply trust to empower their intent to go
after. Im sure youve heard this one before, and possibly long, long
ago accepted it in full, thinking what we most needed to know about
the war has been repeatedly revealed; and perhaps for this reason,
principally, we should go into why Records account does us all little
good.
BUSHS LURCH
take over. His title bespeaks of id, but theres no room for
psychobiography given here: ones background can certainly
influence you as Bushs particular religious upbringing plays upon
him but, ultimately, the choice is yours as to whether you take the
easy or the hard way. Its Kings Speech, stripped of its
Freudianism. And recognizable as such, I think that the primary
concern we would finish the book with is how we might work against
this wall which can freely permit talk of delusion and unreality and
binary thinking (though of course this actual term is never used), but
staunchly still keep psychology (and empathy) out while leaving
moralizing and righteous anger clearly in.
But if were left stumbling over this problem, and wishing if only
people could read it and see it as but a facilitator to the gates of
something about Bush weve written, weve let ourselves be more
worsened than marginally informed by the book; for wed at the end
be thinking mostly leaders, when psychohistorians should never find
themselves thinking mostly of them. Psychohistorians should be
wary when anyone puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of our
leaders, who we know are but people we study to aptly guess at the
psychic needs of those who wished them in, and this indeed is the
only place Record puts it Americans-at-large are to him, sensible, if
not pronouncedly disgusted by excess and lack of good sense (other
nations [or at least the ones America has tended to have wary
relations with] come across as level-headed as well, with them being
not-at-all sacrificial and in fact realistic and savy in matters of war
[pp. 174-75]: Bush and his neo-cons are in this account, astoundingly
alone.). To Record, Most Americans do not believe that it is their
countrys mission to convert the rest of the world into like
democracies, and they have limited tolerance for costly crusades
overseas that have little or no foundation in promoting concrete
security interests (p. 149). But arent we also the lot thats spent the
492
[1] To Record, Bush Sr. took a weightier account of the world which
drew him ultimately to respect restraint (pp. 155-56), and he and Jr.
end up seeming as much good path-bad path brothers in the same
fraternal order as father and son.
----------
David, I'm glad to hear you read the comments. I feel it's always
appropriate, but not always a class-circumspect thing to do (or at
least to admit to).
It's hard for us born loving meat to know for sure, but if true, we
shouldn't be afraid to admit this even as we lessen the pleasure we
take from fat, expand that we take from vegetables and legumes, and
refuse to inconscionably kill what should simply have been respected.
----------
[. . .]
another perspective
What is noteworthy about these comments, aside from their
viciousness, is their complete failure to understand the point
of the article they are commenting on. A serious issue is
raised, and it is not what President Obama reads or doesn't
read. It is the fact, well documented (as is pointed out) that
women writers do face a struggle for recognition beyond that
confronted by all writers. Since President Obama's reading
list was made public, it afforded a perfectly reasonable way to
raise the larger issue. It's too bad that commenters have
seized on this harmless illustrative device as if it were the
central point of the article; had they bothered to read in order
to understand, we might have had an interesting discussion
instead of an outpouring of venom. (mysteryperson)
@mysteryperson
RE: It is the fact, well documented (as is pointed out) that women
writers do face a struggle for recognition beyond that confronted by
all writers.
Really, people?
The vast, vast majority of these comments just go to show
how important it is that SOMEONE make the point(s) Robin
Black made in her piece. Otherwise, the myriad sexists on the
internet and off might never come crawling out of the
woodwork spitting their venom.
502
I invite you to call me a feminazi for posting this, but the issue
of gender in the arts, and how prominent people consume
them, does deserve to be examined. The sickening anti-
woman stench coming off of this comment thread is evidence
enough of that. Once Obama's summer reading list has been
publicized (and it has been!), critics have the right to ask
questions about it. And the lack of women writers on Obama's
summer reading and other reading lists - conscious or not -
just speaks to a larger, society-wide issue.
The New York Times reviews far more men than women
(http://www.slate.com/id/2265910/pagenum/2) and, (again)
whether it's conscious sexism or not, it's reflective of a bias
that (AGAIN) is also reflected in this disgusting comment
thread.
seriouslah
Re: I invite you to call me a feminazi for posting this, but the issue of
gender in the arts, and how prominent people consume them, does
deserve to be examined. The sickening anti-woman stench coming
off of this comment thread is evidence enough of that. Once Obama's
summer reading list has been publicized (and it has been!), critics
have the right to ask questions about it. And the lack of women
writers on Obama's summer reading and other reading lists -
conscious or not - just speaks to a larger, society-wide issue.
were you too much prepared to enjoy your indulgent haughty snark to
internet plebs to consider it? Still, what did you make of my argument
that masculinism owes to a need for compensense, for boys who grew
up with insufficiently loved and respected women who could not then
but help using their dependent boys to feed them some of what they'd
been denied?
How to disagree
It is with some discomfort that I disagree with Robin Blacks
piece. I am a friend of Robins and have been an admirer of
her writing since before she was published. The problem with
her premise, I believe, is that she is conflating two things that
on the surface appear to be related but which are not. The
coverage and positioning of female writers (sorry, I just cant
go with the popular usage of women writers) in the media
and what President Obama chooses to read in his free time
are vastly different. One is a business/editorial decision and
the other a matter of personal taste. Could both have
influence? Sure. However I think its reasonable to assume
that someone in the editorial meeting at Time magazine
thought Jonathan Franzen was a pompous gasbag but still
sided with putting him on the cover. Hopefully the President
chooses to read books that he is truly interested in and not
because hes trying to make some sort of impression.
Robin Black does not need anyone to defend her. She is quite
capable of that all on her own. I find it, however, despicable
the language used and way in which some here have disagreed
with her. Many of the cowards who have posted comments
would shirk from the chance to voice their opinions publicly
on matters of art, politics, or society, and yet feel free to do so
in the basest, most vulgar ways on the internet because of its
504
@dudlick
Re: Robin Black does not need anyone to defend her. She is quite
capable of that all on her own. I find it, however, despicable the
language used and way in which some here have disagreed with
her. Many of the cowards who have posted comments would shirk
from the chance to voice their opinions publicly on matters of art,
politics, or society, and yet feel free to do so in the basest, most
vulgar ways on the internet because of its faceless, impersonal
nature. Yes, we live in a country where freedom of speech is a right;
however, shame on us if we dont use it in a manner that is
commensurate with its importance.
Dudlick, I'm not sure if you're a dude, but you sure sound like a
gentleman concerned to defend his lady from unruly ruffians. Just so
you know, feminists have long ago dissected such ostensibly women-
serving behavior as vile and inherently patriarchal, because it
reinforces the idea that women, however becoming and noble, are
more delicate than men, which would leave contentious stuff like
politics and business mostly to those better constituted for the fray.
Yes, you begin by saying she surely is capable of defending herself,
but with her absent from the discussion and you immersed within it,
this seems about anxiety-calming, about manners, and being
fundamentally disingenuous, and this too does your case no good.
selfishly making claim to the chick and dicking her, dudlicks. Thought
you should know.
----------
I think I know the answer -- and it's not the ad campaigns that
make meat seem like a rational choice ("Beef: It's What's for
Dinner"), a healthy alternative food ("Pork: The Other White
Meat") or a compassionate cuisine decision (Chik-fil-A's
billboards, which show a cow begging you to spare his life by
choosing chicken). No, Isaac's going to have questions
because of the grocery -- more specifically, because of the
vegetarian aisle that subliminally glorifies meat-eating.
I realize that sounds like an oxymoron, but the next time you
go shopping, imagine what a kid gleans from veggie burgers,
506
Turkey dinners
If you grew up loving your turkey dinners, if some of your favorite
childhood memories are of the times around the succulent-meat-a-
plenty table or excursions to eat fatty steak, burgers, or prime ribs,
then you remain fidelitous to the good things in your past when you
choose Tofurky and veggie bacon after really connecting with and
deeply caring about the truth that it is a terrible thing to kill animals
for sustenance. For you, it isn't transition but fidelity to the blessed
things of your past that were very much part of the furnishings for the
love that made you care. Though it might be even more mature, to
move on entirely might well in fact for you be about birthing a new
kind of inorganic rupture and violence.
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that fools everyone in the political press for a year or so, ultra-
conservative Republicans! (Alex Parene, Tea Party
people less popular than many other hated minority
groups, Salon, 17 August 2011)
Few of us will escape the drive to make someone else embody our
own -- to us -- increasingly suspect selfishness. Tea Partiers first, and
then in a far more brutal way -- for their representing it vastly more
convincingly -- their inverse: the best, least regressive people alive,
true progressives.
Link: Tea Party people less popular than many other hated minority
groups (Salon)
----------
510
David, I'm glad to hear you read the comments. I feel it's always
appropriate, but not always a class-circumspect thing to do (or at
least to admit to).
It's hard for us born loving meat to know for sure, but if true, we
512
----------
[. . .]
513
Holy crap!
I bet he doesn't have any Sarah McLachlan on his iPod either!
The cad! (greengoblin)
-----
Because
Women aren't good writers. Hey, write a stupid article, get a
stupid response. (g50)
-----
This is a ridiculous article
I'm sorry. This just sounds like one more dumb reason to
bash Barack Obama. I think the President should be able to
read anything he damned well pleases on vacation. This is a
waste of brain cells and energy. (gaylefleming)
-----
A Reason NOT to Be President
At least if you're NOT president, you don't have people
complaining that your reading list doesn't have gender
balance among the authors.
Geeeeeez! (cross1242)
-----
another perspective
What is noteworthy about these comments, aside from their
viciousness, is their complete failure to understand the point
of the article they are commenting on. A serious issue is
raised, and it is not what President Obama reads or doesn't
read. It is the fact, well documented (as is pointed out) that
women writers do face a struggle for recognition beyond that
confronted by all writers. Since President Obama's reading
list was made public, it afforded a perfectly reasonable way to
516
raise the larger issue. It's too bad that commenters have
seized on this harmless illustrative device as if it were the
central point of the article; had they bothered to read in order
to understand, we might have had an interesting discussion
instead of an outpouring of venom. (mysteryperson)
@mysteryperson
RE: It is the fact, well documented (as is pointed out) that women
writers do face a struggle for recognition beyond that confronted by
all writers.
for Obama for what actually leads to him needing these periodic
escapes -- because you sensed in him someone constituted, fully
broken, to respond to your distress and needs.
Really, people?
The vast, vast majority of these comments just go to show
how important it is that SOMEONE make the point(s) Robin
Black made in her piece. Otherwise, the myriad sexists on the
internet and off might never come crawling out of the
woodwork spitting their venom.
I invite you to call me a feminazi for posting this, but the issue
of gender in the arts, and how prominent people consume
them, does deserve to be examined. The sickening anti-
woman stench coming off of this comment thread is evidence
enough of that. Once Obama's summer reading list has been
publicized (and it has been!), critics have the right to ask
questions about it. And the lack of women writers on Obama's
summer reading and other reading lists - conscious or not -
just speaks to a larger, society-wide issue.
The New York Times reviews far more men than women
(http://www.slate.com/id/2265910/pagenum/2) and, (again)
whether it's conscious sexism or not, it's reflective of a bias
that (AGAIN) is also reflected in this disgusting comment
thread.
seriouslah
Re: I invite you to call me a feminazi for posting this, but the issue of
gender in the arts, and how prominent people consume them, does
deserve to be examined. The sickening anti-woman stench coming
off of this comment thread is evidence enough of that. Once Obama's
summer reading list has been publicized (and it has been!), critics
have the right to ask questions about it. And the lack of women
writers on Obama's summer reading and other reading lists -
conscious or not - just speaks to a larger, society-wide issue.
How to disagree
It is with some discomfort that I disagree with Robin Blacks
piece. I am a friend of Robins and have been an admirer of
her writing since before she was published. The problem with
her premise, I believe, is that she is conflating two things that
on the surface appear to be related but which are not. The
coverage and positioning of female writers (sorry, I just cant
go with the popular usage of women writers) in the media
and what President Obama chooses to read in his free time
are vastly different. One is a business/editorial decision and
the other a matter of personal taste. Could both have
519
Robin Black does not need anyone to defend her. She is quite
capable of that all on her own. I find it, however, despicable
the language used and way in which some here have disagreed
with her. Many of the cowards who have posted comments
would shirk from the chance to voice their opinions publicly
on matters of art, politics, or society, and yet feel free to do so
in the basest, most vulgar ways on the internet because of its
faceless, impersonal nature. Yes, we live in a country where
freedom of speech is a right; however, shame on us if we dont
use it in a manner that is commensurate with its importance.
(bdudlick)
@dudlick
Re: Robin Black does not need anyone to defend her. She is quite
capable of that all on her own. I find it, however, despicable the
language used and way in which some here have disagreed with
her. Many of the cowards who have posted comments would shirk
from the chance to voice their opinions publicly on matters of art,
politics, or society, and yet feel free to do so in the basest, most
vulgar ways on the internet because of its faceless, impersonal
nature. Yes, we live in a country where freedom of speech is a right;
however, shame on us if we dont use it in a manner that is
commensurate with its importance.
Dudlick, I'm not sure if you're a dude, but you sure sound like a
520
make meat seem like a rational choice ("Beef: It's What's for
Dinner"), a healthy alternative food ("Pork: The Other White
Meat") or a compassionate cuisine decision (Chik-fil-A's
billboards, which show a cow begging you to spare his life by
choosing chicken). No, Isaac's going to have questions
because of the grocery -- more specifically, because of the
vegetarian aisle that subliminally glorifies meat-eating.
I realize that sounds like an oxymoron, but the next time you
go shopping, imagine what a kid gleans from veggie burgers,
veggie bacon, veggie sausage patties, veggie hot dogs, Tofurky
and all the other similar fare that defines a modern plant-
based diet. While none of it contains meat, it's all marketed as
emulating meat. In advertising terms, that's the "unique
selling proposition" -- to give you the epicurean benefits of
meat without any of meat's downsides.
Obviously, this isn't some conspiracy whereby powerful meat
companies are deliberately trying to bring vegetarians into the
megachurch of flesh eaters. If anything, it's the opposite: It's
the vegetarian industry selling itself to meat eaters by
suggesting that its products aren't actually all that different
from meat. The problem is how that message, like so many
others in American culture, reinforces the wrongheaded
notion that our diet should be fundamentally based on meat.
For those who have chosen to be vegetarians, this message is
merely annoying. But for those like Isaac who are being raised
as vegetarians, the message is downright subversive. It
teaches them that as tasty as vegetarian food may be, it can
never compete with the "real thing."
That message will undoubtedly inform Isaac's early curiosity
-- and maybe his questions won't be such a bad thing. Maybe
they'll motivate me to spend more time in the supermarket's
raw produce section, and maybe my ensuing discussion with
Isaac will help him better understand why our family has
made this culinary choice.
522
Turkey dinners
If you grew up loving your turkey dinners, if some of your favorite
childhood memories are of the times around the succulent-meat-a-
plenty table or excursions to eat fatty steak, burgers, or prime ribs,
then you remain fidelitous to the good things in your past when you
choose Tofurky and veggie bacon after really connecting with and
deeply caring about the truth that it is a terrible thing to kill animals
for sustenance. For you, it isn't transition, but fidelity to the blessed
things of your past that were very much part of the furnishings for the
love that made you care. Though it might be even more mature, to
move on entirely might well in fact for you be about birthing a new
kind of inorganic rupture and violence.
Few of us will escape the drive to make someone else embody our
own -- to us -- increasingly suspect selfishness. Tea Partiers first, and
then in a far more brutal way -- for their representing it vastly more
convincingly -- their inverse: the best, least regressive people alive,
true progressives.
Link: Tea Party people less popular than many other hated minority
groups (Salon)
525
---------
(Link:http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100
101050/starkey-racism-row-it-is-the-political-elites-
ceaseless-denigration-of-white-working-class-culture-that-
has-turned-kids-black/)
@Duchess
The liberalism you despise is about to come to a complete close. The
reform in manners you hope for will come to; it'll keep people feeling
contained and controlled as a snug-fitting Nazi uniform.
Liberalism has been just awful for quite some time, but the truth that
is so important to understand but near impossible to be
countenanced, is that everything since the late '70s was due to
become a frustratingly warped form of its earlier incarnations.
528
Liberalism will once again unambiguously shine golden, but this will
require the commencement of a new golden age, where regressives
give progressives some stretch and more or less for a time let them
lead the way, and where progressives themselves are free from self-
shakles they'll end up applying when they too have decided society
has had it too good. This will come only after what we're about to see
here: the emergence of the everyone-agreed -- noble working
classer, the emergence of the spritual greatness of original stock folk,
and a war against polluted others that everyone will feel good about
but that will obnoxiously, terrifyingly outdo in carnage the
scapegoating and casually applied debasement you goad liberals for.
--------
--------
[. . .]
ever lived, who surely deserved what they got. Some of those left now
without any sustainable defense, will wish you could have been a bit
smarter.
@nortonshitty
A slight mistake Mr Shitty? Read it here:
Dan Savage--Oct. 2002-"Say Yes to War on Iraq"
You see, lefties, there are times when saying "no" to war
means saying "yes" to oppression. Don't believe me? Go ask a
Czech or a European Jew about the British and French saying
"no" to war with Germany in 1938. War may be bad for
children and other living things, but there are times when
peace is worse for children and other living things, and this is
one of those times. Saying no to war in Iraq means saying yes
to the continued oppression of the Iraqi people. It amazes me
when I hear lefties argue that we should assassinate Saddam
in order to avoid war. If Saddam is assassinated, he will be
replaced by another Baathist dictator--and what then for the
people of Iraq? More "peace"--i.e., more oppression, more
executions, more gassings, more terror, more fear.
Because claiming this victory means backing this war, and the
American left refuses to back this or any war--which makes
the left completely irrelevant in any conversation about the
advisability or necessity of a particular war. (Pacifism is faith,
not politics.) What's worse, the left argues that our past
support for regimes like Saddam's prevents us from doing
anything about Saddam now. We supported (and in some
cases installed) tyrants, who in turn created despair, which in
turn created terrorists, who came over here and blew shit up...
so now what do we do? According to the left, we do nothing.
534
It's all our fault, so we're just going to have to sit back and
wait for New York City or D.C. or a big port city (like, say,
Seattle or Portland) to disappear.
Ccommentator
I think you'll find a lot of gay men are unconsciously drawn to support
efforts -- like Bush's wars or Obama's collective sacrifice -- that ends
up looking at the finish to have been mostly about purposely
destroying the lives of multiple innocents. Being gay is a defense
mechanism against the overwhelming mother, one of a number
possible. Children of such insufficiently loved mothers understand
that they are bad if they do not devote themselves entirely to them --
an "education" that later in life makes them susceptible to "gay hags,"
women who blithely readily presume upon them and dehumanize
them as property. Since life cannot but be about some growth and
"selfish" acquisition, as means to safeguard themselves from
annihilative punishmen, unconscious self-protective alters within
them will drive them to find some guilt-free way to punish other
innocent children for their own neediness. At the finish, after using
536
@Patrick McEtc-Etc
"Being gay is a defense mechanism against the overwhelming
mother -- one of a number possible."
And it is a well-established fact of geography that if one sails
too far out in the ocean, one will fall off the edge of the Earth.
It is also a proven medical fact that rhinoceros horns and tiger
penises are wonderful cures for impotence. (robwriter)
robwriter
Psychoanalysis pretty much died in the '70s, and it's a well-
established fact that whatever happened afterwards was so much
better for mankind.
[. . .]
*****
@Recovering lawyer
RE: Yes, there were Southerners who were genuinely evil--the
murderers of Emmett Till, Bull Connor, etc. But most people in the
South were simply people who had been raised with racism as part
of the fabric of their everyday existence, and to whom it had never
really occurred--or only fleetingly--to question that racism.
Terrorism of a people isn't seen or felt to be abnormal owing to the
fact that one was raised to see it as a fact of life, but because the
people doing the terrorizing (or who see it as a matter of course) are
perpetrators suffering from mass dissocation. In regards to the
Germans in Nazi Germany and Americans in regards to the Iraq war,
Lloyd DeMause explains this phenomenon this way:
543
tone...
ever be able to show things simply from the black perspective. If you
couldn't show them as principally heroic in the masquerading-as-
uninflated, simply-honest-accouting mode, and had to show them as
grown-ups know they had to have become after knowing a life of
torture, submission, and fear, my guess is you'd actually lead the
effort to again making whites and their evilness the principle concern,
in hopes that our narrative needs would mostly apply to the tortured
blacks the noble status reality would guaranteed steal from you.
The black community drew together and supplied the support and
love that whites would wholesale deny? I would recommend not
taking a closer look at that one either, and in fact leaving this actually
oppression-supporting argument for soul-nurturance fully alone.
(The great thing about this depression is that you know it'll be
narrated by a future generation as an occasion to forego idleness and
selfishness and develop community -- something, that is, like
ginormous pointless sacrificial wars, to make a people "great.") They
brought it with them from Africa and found some means to keep it
alive? Again, I wouldn't touch it: not just my poor demon-possessed,
jealousy-moved and other-fearing peasant Celtic and German
ancestors weren't doing all that well even just a short while back. How
we all love the folk, though, with their community focus, common
touch, and faith in things unseen.
----------
TUESDAY, AUGUST 23, 2011
Michelle Obama's sacrifice
[. . .]
[. . .]
Liberals don't get much of a kick from Bachmann, but however much
they're willing to press her on her submission, with their collective
failure to admit they kind of liked Michelle hemming in her career a
bit, I'm not sure they're exempt from liking the idea a considerable
some as well.
---------
knots.
But once the fat is on, it is hard to get it off. When you get it
off, it comes back with a vengeance. My parents could never
quite bridge the gap between what was recommended and
552
That's the real point here: We are healthier for their efforts.
No matter our size. (Stacey Hall, Should I blame my
parents because Im fat, Salon, 14 August 2011)
punishment-worthy.
Most people, sadly, are in some way like this, and all people who
share multiple siblings are, for we get this way from learning at an
early age that we exist primarily to meet some of the unmet needs of
our parents (mothers who have multiple children have them
primarily because infants and very young children are absolutely
focussed on the mother, make the mother feel primary, important
and loved, while older children inevitably begin to focus on their own
needs, on concerns/interests outside the home, necesitating the
plopping out of yet another sure thing!), and our insufficiently loved
parents always interpret our later desire for independence and self-
exploration as us rejecting them. A betrayal they instinctively
countenance by such for-the-child catastrophic things as complete
disinterest and rejection. Ever-after do such children remain loyal to
their parents, protect them from knowing that much of their future
life was predicated on never feeling they'd done something, acquired
anything, insuffiently adorned or trumped by some sobering
disability/curse/deflation that it made them feel worthy of a revisit of
this super ego-installing punishment.
This writer is fat, and, thanks to a fat-hating society and efforts from
people like her to keep it seeming pretty much inevitably always so --
despite every valiant effort! -- she's thereby found way to make
whatever true life gains she acquires something she feels a bit more
okay about savoring. (Even better, it's left her in her preferred
position of stalwartly defending her ostensibly primarily self-
sacrificing parents: oh how the pieces delightfully fall into place!) You
may not be, but perhaps you'll be lucky to count yourself amongst the
people truly stricken through this depression, which will glory you
with sure means of demonstrating how incontrovertably
unbegrudable have been your own claims upon, and acquisitions
through, life.
554
M.A. Mayo
Re: "Really, if this were a matter of walking an hour a day, or just
maintaining an 1800 kcal. diet when we notice ourselves gaining a
couple of pounds, or keeping the kids away from candy, nobody
556
jcc126
RE: The author's love for her parents is palpable and lovely. Don't
blame them - plenty of kids get the same food and are skinny. I
suggest instead reading Gary Taubes' books - Good Calories, Bad
Calories, and Why We Get Fat and What to Do About it - and forget
about feeling sad. Ms. Hall's parents were great.
What is palpable is the author's need to so essentialize her parents as
557
XyzzyAvatar
Re: I'm near the author's age, and virtually all the kids in
elementary school & junior high were skinny yet had a lunch just
like she describes -- so I don't buy for a minute that her weight was
from what she ate for lunch.
So Europeans are skinny owing to their superior genes? Or do we get
some kind of wonderful compensense in exchange for our absurdly
cruel collectively-held genetic defect, which has so many of us gaining
weight, not just on regular, but even on starvation diets of water,
whole grain, and non-sugary spread?
RE: Fortunately, the anti-depressant I was prescribed (Wellbutrin)
speeds the metabolism up or something, so I finally reverted to
being a proper weight (5'2" ~112 lbs.) even though my
increasingly painful neck deformity meant I couldn't work out at the
gym anymore.
One of the problems about people you know are on anti-depressants,
or "inclined" to go on them, is that they have a tough time seeming
entirely trustworthy in the tales they tell: truth seems never likely to
have it over giving just the right sort of lift. Your increasingly painful
neck deformity that you tell us about is mostly in service to your
explanation, or is it something of a primary point in itself? That is,
did you want us to finish reading and consider how damnably cruel
and mis-understanding others must have been in assessing your
likely reason for quiting the gym? Another thing, beyond weight, that
unfairly draws scorn upon the innocent, to be used to draw satisfying
consolation from oneself and (complicit) others?
559
@Charley Horse
RE: Just stop consuming easily consumable, easily digestible
carbohydrates. It shouldn't be difficult, decades ago most people
managed to do it without having to think about it.
Just like decades ago (lets say the 60s and 70s) pretty much every
Republican was more liberally in support of social programs than
most democrats are now. That is, "decades ago" is sadly a realm no
one living now is easily going to be able to resurrect or revisit; no
560
matter how hard think someone thinks about it, "they're" not likely to
come to know it.
If we as a people collectively "Jamie Oliver" lose weight now, it'll be
for terrible, non-praiseworthy reasons: namely, to essentialize
ourselves as pure and fit and isolate poisons neatly in some other
culture/group; and two, to emphasize the difference between
ourselves and the readily indulgent elite, something that serves our
masochistic need to feel noble, selfless, and less inviting of the harsh
judgment sweeping over a land that clearly previously had suffered
way too much scarcely limited and unquestionably unearned gaudy
spoils and unrepetant fun.
----------
happening,
[. . .]
I've heard somewhat sheepish arguments to the effect that
the white folks' stories take center stage in these films
because they're more clearly dramatic. Why? Well, you see,
it's because drama -- commercial mainstream drama,
anyway -- is about people learning, changing and growing,
and the non-white characters' stories are less dramatic
because they already know discrimination is bad, which
means their "arcs" are inherently less interesting. No, I
promise you, some moviemakers really do think this way.
The only proper response to this kind of thinking is to smack
one's forehead -- or better yet, the filmmaker's -- with a tack
hammer. At least it's offered timidly and rarely, and as a
commercial rather than an artistic defense.
Even more problematic is the overriding sense -- conveyed
not just in "The Help," but in so many historical movies --
that the era being depicted is tucked safely away in the past,
a closed chapter, and the collective insanity that gripped
society has dissipated thanks to the efforts of good-hearted
people like you, the viewer.
It is inconceivable that any viewer of any race, age or
gender could look at the bigoted, greedy, petty, pinch-faced
shrews who torment poor Aibileen and her colleagues and
think, "That person reminds me of myself," or "I know
somebody like that." They're not fully rounded, likable
people who happen to have a few revolting qualities, and
who therefore complicate our reactions. They're paper
targets that the film can pepper with rhetorical buckshot.
[. . .]
It might not be a bad idea for filmmakers to lay off the big,
tried-and-true historical topics for a while -- civil rights,
slavery, the Holocaust, America's righteous participation in
World War II, the moral tragedy of Vietnam -- and deal with
563
So let's tell it straight? But what if this gets the story all
wrong too?
Re: And so, yet again, for what seems like the zillionth time, a heart-
tugging Hollywood film transforms a harrowing and magnificent
period of African-American life into a story of once-blinkered white
people becoming enlightened.
------
The wall
For Matt the wall that blocks all further forward progress, all further
larger public engagement with the real and trespasses into exciting
unexplored possibilities of who we might become, is white people's
need to enslaven all narratives to their need to feel important. It's
gotten as far as they (i.e., white people) can allow. Bit by bit,
previously simply demonized Others have long not just been exempt
from demonization, but even granted memorable roles for supporting
actor/actress nomination. But they cannot be made primary to white
protoganists, for we've collectively learned we need these protagonists
565
The problem for me is that Matt's own heroism is the one that seems
most unfairly protected from deconstruction. What Matt will never
permit you to consider without being made to feel grossly
punishment-worthy for it, is that disenfranchised people may not be
empowered to show any of the traits we ought rightly to consider
ennobling or heroic. He wouldn't have you consider that if you
focussed purely on the blacks that all you would mostly see is the less
pretty things that happen to people after suffering ongoing abuse:
that you wouldn't just discover how awful torture is, but that suffering
from whole-scale torture makes a people, though absolutely worthy of
essential respect, still truly hard to like, leaving them, not so much
with assertive, pronounced, striking and nobly defiant souls, but near
bereft of all such entirely.
He certainly wouldn't have you consider that black culture might not
have been so pretty to begin with, even before the in-fact truly
demon-haunted, unloved and unevolved whites set themselves upon
them. If you consider any of this, Matt'll show no nuance in IDing you
as evil, for to him your primary use is to ensure that he himself is
never in the end mistaken for being evil himself. Nothing of the mass-
bucking/disregarding, controversial things he says can suggest a core
lack of empathy or sympathy, because of how clearly he distinguishes
himself from you indisputable monsters. Making clear your
inarguable evilness/villainy keeps him within the pale, bravely
looking like he might even risk being horribly misunderstood to keep
himself -- and hopefully thereby some of us -- at the forefront of
reality exploration/confrontation. That is, Matts own kind of
narrative needs, for their actually also too very much being privileged
over bare truth, however much parading as the very opposite, are to
me what is at risk of keeping us all from stretching out into
unfamiliar, more discomforting territory.
566
----------
prove beyond doubt that liberals may have a point in thinking we now
might deserve better and in doing what they can to finally actually
enact it. We're in for such good times, people -- we always get what
we want. The rich are but toys we wind up again and again to undue
the good things we've become highly anxious over possessing.
----------
[. . .]
Stockett herself was not born until 1969, and drew on her
own experiences being raised by African-American women
who worked for her parents in the '70s and '80s. Her book is
set in the dramatic context of the early '60s, when the civil
rights movement was just beginning to capture national
attention, but as she has said in interviews, relations
between affluent white Mississippians and their black hired
help really hadn't altered much between that time and her
own childhood. And for all the cultural shifts America has
experienced since then, the fundamental economic disparity
between whites and people of color has hardly improved, if
indeed it hasn't gotten worse. A recent study by the Pew
Research Center suggested that the current recession -- and
can we stop pretending it ever ended? -- has slashed the
median net worth of black households by 53 percent (and
Hispanic households by 66 percent), while white wealth fell
by just 16 percent. The raw numbers are even more
570
the East Bay with promises of a better life but instead kept
her as an indentured servant for nearly two years.
Mabelle de la Rosa Dann, 45, also known as Mabelle Crabbe,
was indicted by a federal grand jury in June. She has
pleaded not guilty to a charge of harboring an illegal alien
for the purpose of private financial gain.
Dann and others brought Zoraida Pena-Canal, 30, of Peru
into the United States on a three-month visitor's visa in July
2006, authorities said. Pena-Canal had worked for Dann's
sister and Dann as a housekeeper and nanny in Peru several
years earlier, investigators said.
----------------------------------
"Ooops! She Did It Again: Susan Tabas Tepper is
Serial Nanny Beater?"
Link: http://www.phillyfuture.org/node/5328
Dahhhlings, how are we? I have been silent for too
long...been contemplating new summer fashions (Lily is
definately out, but strappy sandals and espadrilles? Sooo
In!)
So there I am minding my own business running errands
and what comes over the radio? Main Line Social
LIGHTweight, Susan Tabas Tepper, has oops done it again!
"Alleged serial Nanny abuse" - look out our own Naomi is
back in action...
Susan is beating the help...again? In a sick way I can't help
but mention that it was almost a year to the day since the
last incident...then she was wielding carrots (organic,
natch!)...today she might need a mani/pedi as she is accused
of doing it the old fashioned way - hands, fists, nails,
whatever.
----------------------------------
"Annette John-Hall | The quiet anger felt by 'the
help'
By Annette John-Hall
572
Inquirer Columnist"
Link:
http://www.saveardmorecoalition.org/node/1612/nannyga
te-update-nannies-speak-out-tabas-tepper
The news that Main Line socialite Susan Tabas Tepper had
allegedly gone all Naomi Campbell on a nanny again didn't
sit too well with the sisterhood of nannies gathered at
Rittenhouse Square yesterday.
That's where most of Center City's babysitters congregate.
You know, down on 18th and Walnut, by the fountain.
Especially on perfect mornings, nannies on the Square are
as predictable as perennials in the springtime.
Yesterday, they were out in force - black, white, Asian,
Latino, almost all foreigners - a virtual bouquet of
caregivers, their caravan of strollers parked, their eagle eyes
focused on their preschool charges, almost all of them white.
You better believe they had an opinion about Tepper, the 44-
year-old Villanova villainess who stands accused of
assaulting her most recent nanny, Urszula Kordzior, only
months after landing in community service for smacking
down another valued employee. The nanny's 9-year-old
daughter allegedly got pushed when she tried to help her
mom.
It appears the hits just keep on coming.
The Rittenhouse nannies agreed to talk only if I didn't use
their names. After all, they like the families they work for.
Oh, and they want to keep their jobs.
"If she did that to me? I would fight back, yes I would," says
a Jamaican nanny....The problem with privileged folk, she
continued as the children clung closely to her, is that they
often view "the help" as nothing more than another child, to
be seen and not heard.
Course, while they're at the wine sip, "the help" has the all-
consuming responsibility of raising their kids.
573
_____
lunacy than the few true progressives out there.) Laurel, you'll note, is
beginning to seem comfortably settled -- maybe she senses it's near
her time. Indeed, the difference between her and Ehrenreich,
defender-of-the-noble-but-ever-put-upon working classer, didn't
seem so legion to me.
----------
michaelira
Re: Think it can't happen here? Think that Americans in the 21st
century will quietly queue up in bread lines as they did in the 1930s?
Yes, this is what some of us think, as:
Economic depressions are motivated internal sacrifices which
often kill more people than wars do. Cartoons prior to and
during depressions often show sinful, greedy people being
sacrificed on altars, and the depressed nation becomes
paralyzed politically, unable to take action to reverse the
economic downturn. Just as depressed individuals experience
little conscious anger--feeling they "deserve to be punished"--
so too nations in depressions are characterized by
"introverted" foreign policy moods, start fewer military
expeditions and are less concerned with foreign affairs. The
577
Why do you think it'll be different this time around? I'm genuinely
curious.
respectfully,
patrick
----------
[. . .]
[. . .]
The most cynical take is that smaller class size also increases
the number of teachers who are hired and strengthens the
union that supports them. Randi Weingarten, head of the
American Federation of Teachers, acknowledges that raising
class size is a branch on a tree of hard decisions that cash-
strapped states are facing. But, she says, "if somebody says
they want to raise class size, theyre doing it because they
want to cut the budget, not because its actually going to help
children." Teachers union representatives point out that the
same fiscal conservatives and corporate-type reformers who
encourage high student-to-teacher ratios in classrooms are
often the ones who send their own children to private schools
where -- you guessed it -- the kids receive instruction in
small groups, often twelve to fifteen in a class.
[. . .]
580
So, what happened? No one is sure. But there are two strong
hypotheses: either the Tennessee results were specific to that
state and that experiment, or -- and this is one that most
educational experts favor -- teacher quality matters more
than class size. (Peg Tyre, Does class size really matter,
Salon, 5 August 2011)
factors
For example a small class of 15 would not do as well as a
larger class of 24, assuming that the class of 15 kids ONLY
ATTENDED 5 hours a day, and 180 days a year, and the
class of 24 attended EIGHT hours a day, TWELVE MONTHS
of the year....just like kids in Europe, Japan, China -- every
place that beats our socks off.
@Engineer Bill
Teachers have a right to decent working conditions; I agree.
But they have FAR FAR MORE THAN THAT -- they have
Socialist benefits that would stagger the most affluent
European. Even EUROPE, nobody gets THREE MONTHS
OF PAID VACATION. Nobody works only 4 hours and 45
minutes a day!
And they earn far more than "people who have advanced
degrees", according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- more
than engineers, more than nurses, more than architects,
more than physicists, more than Optometrists. WHY?
because those folks work all day, 12 months of the year.
Teachers only work a 5-6 hour day, max, and they get all
summer off, 2 weeks at Christmas, 1 week at Easter and they
can retire FIFTEEN YEARS EARLY at 90% of highest salary
(which is often six figures).
Don't bother, BTW, with the crap about "but they must
grade papers at night!" You don't grade papers in gym class,
in typing class, in health class, in KINDERGARTEN. And I'm
a working professional, and I take work home frequently,
and nobody has a pity party for ME. Every professional I
know has to take work home -- reports, professional
583
The truth is finally OUT and being heard by the public, and
changes are afoot. Thank god for the courage of people like
Gov. Chris Christie in speaking "truth to power' when he lets
the public know about the greed and corruption in the
teacher's union, and how it has dragged our national
educational levels down to that of Latvia (and that's an
insult to Latvia).
***
BTW: I went to school in the sixties -- height of the baby
boom. My classes had 40-44 kids in each -- I have the class
pictures to PROVE THIS. And we had ONE teacher per class
-- no aides, no assistants, nothing -- and we got a good,
decent education. A far better education than 7/8ths of kids
today get! We didn't have inflated grades, we did not have
social promotion.
I've met kids from your precious schools, and they are all
spoiled, entitled brats.
Do us a BIG FAVOR and tell us what ONE YEAR'S TUITION
is at your "Whitey Rich-Kid's Academy".
They said "raise our salaries! double them! and your kids
will learn!" so we raised their salaries to double and more,
and our kids failed worse than ever.
They said smaller classes, they said teacher's aides, they said
more computers -- we tried everything.
Today, adjusted for inflation, we pay TWICE what we did in
1970 per child, and teachers make more than double in
adjusted dollars (and far more benefits) but our kids are
worse off than ever.
587
Here is how you solve this problem (Lord Karth is close, but
not quite): fire every single member of the teacher's union.
Then go to the local unemployment office. Ask who has a 4-
year degree in any subject. Hire those people for $25 a hour
(WORKED HOURS only), and a decent but not lux health
plan.
Watch our kids thrive and succeed. Because ANYONE chosen
at RANDOM would be better than the lazy, useless,
goldbricking members of the nation's most corrupt union.
Remember these words: CLAW IT BACK.
Misery
Most liberal Americans are regressing; it's why they're mostly still for
Obama (the key lie is not the one Greenwald, with his insistance that
Obama actually got the deal he himself wanted, exposes, but the one
he ignores: that MOST LIBERALS THEMSELVES at some level
MOSTLY KNEW this about him, and mostly explains why they chose
him over the "less cooperating" Hillary) and why someone like
Laurel/_bigguns talk of "lazy, spoiled" whatevers now appeals to their
sensibilities, when before, when they Gollum-in-his-better-mood had
kowed back the demons threatening to overwhelm their minds, they
would have associated such talk with the Archie Bunkers they were
hurriedly leaving behind in the dust.
588
The talk now is of how the Tea Partiers are responsible for bringing
down the whole nation. In my judgment, they're something of a
convenience for many liberals who have become more and more
comfortable with crackdowns, and are at some level pleased to have
them to help hide from themselves for awhile the real fact of who
they've become. Without the Tea Partiers, they themselves would
have had to figure out a way to argue for the sort of cuts we've just
seen, and though they would have found a way it never would have
gone down easy with them: guilt over doing the unconscionable
would have chomped good portions of them up.
BTW, EVERYTHING worked better in the '60s and '70s; the reason
for this owes to the fact that after periods of war and mass sacrifice,
people feel entitled, permitted to make life once again about growth.
EVERYTHING went downhill in the 80s, and this owes NOTHING to
what went on previously -- the truly beneficent 60s social agenda that
Laurel complains about, or whatnot -- excepting the key fact that
what went on was mostly unambiguously spread-out improvement
and dream realization, and this is only permitted a short while before
we once again collectively decide we are the sort of immature, sinful,
ungrateful cretins to be rightly filled up with a heftier portion of
constriction and misery. Republicans go for this sort of thing whole
hog, of course, but more liberals than we have yet permitted ourselves
to appreciate do also.
Laurel/_bigguns has voted for moderate democrats the whole of the
way, and though currently still here a troll she is for the most part
representative. This will become more evident here. Even with her
talk about gay marriage and teachers, that is, though right now she's
considerably ahead of the curve, you can already feel preparations are
dutifully being made so that much of the rest of Salon at some point
keeps pace with her. It's one big nightmare. I wonder what will
happen to the Krugmans, who seem completely absent the afflictions
of the punitive superego?
---------
I don't know about you, but the chirpy tales that dominate
the public discussion about aging -- you know, the ones that
tell us that age is just a state of mind, that "60 is the new 40"
and "80 the new 60" -- irritate me. What's next: 100 as the
new middle age?
Yes, I said stigma. A harsh word, I know, but one that speaks
to a truth that's affirmed by social researchers who have
consistently found that racial and ethnic stereotypes are
likely to give way over time and with contact, but not those
about age. And where there are stereotypes, there are
prejudice and discrimination -- feelings and behavior that
are deeply rooted in our social world and, consequently,
make themselves felt in our inner psychological world as
well.
After I fussed and fumed for a while, I called back and asked
to speak with someone in authority. A soothing male voice
came on the line. I told him my story, and finished with, "Do
I have to remind you that there's a law against age
discrimination?"
591
[. . .]
age
Thanks for the truthful article, though I'm glad several have
pointed out that the life-span of U. S. citizens has not
increased significantly in years.
The self-satisfied cretins who have commented, indulging in
the very stereotypes you write about, show just how
dominant age bigotry is. If the old wanted to be mean, they
would point out that all these commentors will die someday.
Of old age, if they're lucky. If they continue to push the
stereotypes, they will know exactly the dismay the aged feel
now, and one hopes they suffer for it. If they really believe
they will be exempt, well . . .
Betty Davis is reputed to have said, "Old age isn't for sissies."
Amen. It takes a strong character to accept and understand
that your body is getting weaker and you will die and
though you might improve your situation with exercise and
diet and activity, as I do, there is absolutely nothing you can
do about the process as a whole.
Ahh, but why should the young care? They know they will be
young forever. (hontonoshijin)
that they'll remain forever young, something they haven't even really
known. Most of the young are looking at two or three jobs and 60
hour workweeks, and if you listen to them their recompense for this
true life-denying awfulness is that it has them feeling more adult,
clearly -- and without all the wastings and wiping-aways that later life
"provides" -- buying into the idea that denial and suffering somehow
GIVES you something, when all it truly does, despite the saintliness it
floats you, is deny. When a whole generation believes denial, wounds,
and withering gives you character -- which this lot increasingly does
-- the aged have enacted a sparse, neutered future as a big part of
their legacy. Personally, I'm ignoring the aged who despite every
attention, pretend themselves right to be aggrieved they're being so
ignored and humiliated, and stick to or at least remember the
boomers who showed the noble life is yours when you pheonix-like
rise way above where anyone else has gone before, not when you
accept the inevitability of blockages, hinderances, sags, and stop-
signs.
PMH
Interesting how much you know about me, Patrick McEvoy
Halston. Why you must be psychic, little boy.
I've read your other letters, and have a pretty good idea both
of the level of your intelligence and empathy, and what to do
with this particular letter. (hontonoshijin)
hontonshijon
If it's to wipe your dripping bottom, wonton, I wouldn't depend on
one measily letter ...
---------
---------
With the details of the pending debt deal now emerging (and
598
for a very good explanation of the key terms, see this post by
former Biden economic adviser Jared Bernstein), a
consensus is solidifying that (1) this is a virtually full-scale
victory for the GOP and defeat for the President (who all
along insisted on a "balanced" approach that included tax
increases), but (2) the President, as usual, was too weak in
standing up to right-wing intransigence -- or simply had no
options given their willingness to allow default -- and was
thus forced into this deal against his will. This depiction of
Obama as occupying a largely powerless, toothless office
incapable of standing up to Congress -- or, at best, that the
bad outcome happened because he's just a weak negotiator
who "blundered" -- is the one that is invariably trotted out to
explain away most of the bad things he does.
It appears to be true that the President wanted tax revenues
to be part of this deal. But it is absolutely false that he did
not want these brutal budget cuts and was simply forced --
either by his own strategic "blunders" or the "weakness" of
his office -- into accepting them. The evidence is
overwhelming that Obama has long wanted exactly what he
got: these severe domestic budget cuts and even ones well
beyond these, including Social Security and Medicare, which
he is likely to get with the Super-Committee created by this
bill (as Robert Reich described the bill: "No tax increases on
rich yet almost certain cuts in Med[icare] and Social
Security . . . . Ds can no longer campaign on R's desire to
Medicare and Soc Security, now that O has agreed it").
Last night, John Cole -- along with several others --
promoted this weak-helpless-President narrative by asking
what Obama could possibly have done to secure a better
outcome. Early this morning, I answered him by email, but
as I see that this is the claim being pervasively used to
explain Obama's acceptance of this deal -- he was forced into
it by the Tea Party hostage-takers -- I'm reprinting that
599
the Democrats.
Unless there are choices for alternatives to the Republicans,
that doesn't really leave a choice of votes. Glenn has
criticized people for their "wildly premature" decisions, and
for what he sees as handing over the keys. But he has
articulated nothing that amounts to a viable strategy for
doing otherwise, given the above. Unless he really doesn't
believe the above. I would like to know who killed Amiram
Nir before I trust that it's okay to put any Republican back in
office for a third re-run of the "off the shelf clandestine
organization out of the reach of congressional oversight."
(ondelette)
**********
ondelette on wild prematurity
Really? What makes you think it's "wildly premature"? Tell
us what you think is a real, honest voting strategy for 2012.
Ingredients:
1 tolerable Republican candidate, warmed over(*)
20 million crossover Democrats, blue-state are best
So we're standing here staring into the fridge with only a
short time before dinner. What have we got to work with?
* When prepared in Massachusetts some years ago, a
version of this recipe using Mitt Romney proved surprisingly
delicious. (Amity)
**********
Okay, Amity
So if the third party route is taken, you need to do a two part
assault. You need the party machine and candidate. I
suggest Elizabeth Warren for the candidate. A lot of people
are pushing Bernie Sanders, and he's good, but Elizabeth
Warren is a genuine pedigree stamped outsider right now at
a time when pollsters are saying that voters are so mad with
everything in Washington that they genuinely don't believe
that whoever they vote for will change anything and
whoever they vote for therefore has to at least begin the
process of changing that during the campaign. She has the
credential that she was actually kicked out of Washington.
For machinery, you need to pick people who aren't tainted,
which will be a trick, but she can probably do that. She has
been working on ending corruption against consumers for
20 years, she knows how to smell it, and she just put
together one large organization.
The biggest thing that's different with a third party
progressive run against the establishment, if it's going to be
an anti-corruption run, is that it needs to run against the
media. For real. To do that, it needs to create at least its own
quasi-media to run with. So it will have to tap resources that
most campaigns don't tap, suggest getting people from the
605
I think this will be phase one, where a leftist populist movement does
arise, comes to realize just how few are truly with it/them (like "the
douche" Paul Krugman, they'll represent [at least] abundance, galling
insistence on indulgence, when everyone agrees its all about some
kind of hemming-in/osterity now), and then retreats into forms that
eventually, but for a huge bulk of time anonymously, crystalize into
new and greater kinds of civilization. When the second phases arrives,
the sort of progessives I have been talking about will want no part of
them either; but here, for very good reason, as they will be the ones
Chris Hedges in my judgement conjures with his disgust of "boutique
liberals," ones who are denied all the good things decorum-concerned
progressive Salonistas embody: an acceptance of "your" feminine self,
being pained when the manners and sensitivities necessary for
productive, enjoyable discourse have become illegitimate for their
somehow being simply weapons of the already franchised, for their
revealing your posturing, feminine, primarily self-concerned douche
"stank." This new movement will in fact be composed of trolls, bullies
-- Masculine, hard, intolerant, joy-fearing "old left" bullies/machines
who'll insist you evidence your battle scars, your poverty-responsible
work stink, your hurried impatience with rational discourse/reasoned
assembly -- for yet more talking(!!!) -- rather than your concern to
politely engage and lather properly for the debate to count yourself a
member of their tribe.
On the plus side, if you're older and relatively affluent, even if you
find yourself trapped/pinned in spot, trapped into repetition for
having no welcoming other place to go, no one really wants to have
much of a go with you: dont fret too much; however longterm, you'll
be assured a comfortable-enough "cell." They know you still have
fight, and the concern will be to concentrate on those who've near
been bred to be filled with yet more suffering.
----------
@Laurel...
Well, it's this, Vicar. Salon (and other lefty publications) are
on a major, BIG push to destroy traditional marriage. Gay
marriage is the biggest, but not the only, weapon in their
arsenal.
But as long as you can keep your fantasy that this has
anything to do with "destroying" something (how very
constructive of you), then you can feel noble and good about
your intentions, as if you're the "protector" of something
sacred, and that "they" are your sworn "enemies" and "they"
need to be "defeated", as if this has anything to do with
triumph and defeat, or winning and losing.
@Astronomy
Of course it does. Redefining marriage is a big step towards
destroying it. (Undoubtedly legal polygamy, incest marriage
and bestiality will finish up the job.)
procreate anyways.
It's not a matter of what "I agree with". It's a matter of what
Americans want in America, which means "not what lefty
judges and ideologues and bribed corrupt legislatures" want
to do to us and our social customs, without a vote.
@Astronomy
What do you exactly suppose that is supposed to be "destroyed"?
You can still get married and remain married, and nothing will be
changed on your part. You will still be married just as you were
616
before.
Laurel is arguing that they can't get married anymore, because
"marriage," all marriages, has/have been redefined by permitting
gays to marry, as what they do is more along the lines of best friends
with benefits. According to her, one of the points of marrying is to
submit yourself to the power of a longstanding tradition/higher ideal
that will help you remain fidelitous, true to your one partner; this, to
her, no longer exists, and we can expect marriage now to be less
effective in keeping married couples loyal to one another.
It's not an assumption. According to a recent Gallup poll, for the
first time more than 50% of the Americans favor gay marriage. Kids
these days grow up looking up to people like Lady Gaga, who is
bisexual. More and more people are having less problem with
homosexuality ITSELF, much less gay marriage. The times they are
a-changing. I would give it another decade or so until
homosexuality is completely accepted by society.
People saying they're for gay marriage may be them saying they're for
easy-reach enlightenment, one more stay from focussing on un-dealt-
with personal issues. That is, they may be for gay marriage in the way
they are for a greener America and a black, well-spoken President:
mostly because it demonstrates more that they've all got it on than
that they're pretty close to falling apart. Once the Tea Partiers are
dealt with, confirmed by all as public waste, and more regressive
postures can be undertaken by the holy majority without making
them seem akin to them -- that is, base, neanderthalic, defined by the
overwhelming inner psychoses that have determined their mongoloid
outward forms, and rather in an old school but encouraged way,
which I think Laurel actually mostly represents -- I think all this
current celebration will probably work against homosexuals. It will
likely help cement them as those who danced as the bulwark of
civilized society -- the moral values (ostensibly) our grandparents
bound themselves to and thereby made sure to keep intact -- breaks
apart. We'll see.
I am for gay marriage, btw, and a true friend of those who hope
617
marriage gets redefined in allowing gays to marry. Only this bit about
the likes of Laurel being cast permanently in shadow can be sustained
in my judgment only for a short while. Obama will ultimately prove
no real friend to the gay community.
Link: Is monogamy like vegetarianism? (Salon)
----------
It's not that I don't enjoy idle time. I love it. But I can't
escape the feeling that I should be improving my life right
now, getting organized, simplifying my routines, creating
platforms for future income, educating myself, getting
smarter, getting better.
618
[. . .]
[. . .]
[. . .]
I don't know that I'll ever stop feeling bad for not being a
Type A personality. Or worrying that I'm not
accomplishing enough. After all, I do want to own a home
some day, and to retire when I'm old, and not to stress
about how I'll afford kids. But maybe for now, I should
enjoy my idle time. Sit around talking to my aunts and
uncles about the absurdity of it all. It may not get me
622
I'd almost say "maybe at heart, you are a bum". After all,
some people ARE -- we all know one or two. They just
have zero ambition and don't care if they have to sleep in
their car, because the very idea of "doing thing" is
repellent to them. So long as they don't mooch off relatives
or Uncle Sam, that's their right.
But it does not compute, because you have had serious
624
Also, with people like _bigguns/laurel, can you imagine them EVER
believing life should be about ongoing comfort and play? Even if
benevolent aliens arrived on the planet and gave us every indulgence,
without limit, guaranteeing it without recompense and for eternity,
626
_bigguns and her like would still see day-to-day relaxation and ease
as something that had to be EARNED, not as something which leads
to greater things, not as something surely you're shown up as crazy
for, with impetus removed, not just immediately sitting back and
enjoying; and would find some excuse to explain why everyone still
needs to delimit themselves, their day, and most of their lives with
driven effort, duty, purpose, and labor. Without such, and against all
evidence, people like her will insist the world will fall apart, and in
this context mostly show the real concern all along was that without it
they themselves would.
Mothers have kids because kids focus themselves entirely upon them
-- they make the MOTHER feel loved and central, something
someone who has nine children clearly hadn't known enough of
elsewhere previously. This is primary; the rest, all their mountains of
efforts selflessly, witheringly taking care of children without break for
spans of years and years make them feel as if they've made life
sufficiently about suffering that they shouldn't be punished for the
indulgences they've permitted themselves before they've parked
themselves in the feedlot that disposes one out of the world. This
backbreaking work is PRIMARILY selfish too, that is. Please don't
nobody back down too readily to the ever-looming, chastising,
overworked Mother.
----------
627
@kaonashi on music
"At age 43, the CD player in my car broke; I never got it
fixed, and now, three years later, I'll listen to a Youtube song
when the urge strikes, but I no longer surround my life with
racket."
All this paragraph shows is that you're old, not that you're
enlightened about music. If you think of all music as "racket"
then it sounds like you never had taste in music to begin
with. Music represents multiple modes of thought: Some
629
@rattigan glumphobo
The sad thing is that I think we're enabling a culture in which sane,
critical people like yourself just don't get it. The only way in which
you should be able to feel you can get away with such bland thoughts
-- hers, not your own -- is if critical analysis, somehow for just being
critical analysis, has confidently in the broad context become alien
and unwelcome. We're being floated a lot of the kind of comments of
the sort you're rightly critiquing here, and yet it's like your sharpest
strike mostly works to better show up the kind of environment we
now find ourselves within: these voices proceed, unchanged, and in
greater aggression, as if they hadn't encountered any obstacle at all. I
think we're being made to understand that for some basic but
essential surrender some people are going to be able to say anything
they want, the more absurdly childish and afloat from reality the
better, and more than get away with it: the extent of this prize better
demonstrates the fact that a new kind of judge has arrived on scene,
with considerably different expectations than we've been used to.
I think you're the person I once recommended write some stuff for
Open Salon. I did so because I thought OS was on the ascent (as it has
proved to be), would float more and more of its "finest" to the front
page of Salon, and because you, owing to your interesting, challenging
thoughts and fine writing, would find yourself there, for your and our
benefit. I see now that until you more come to cooperate in seeing the
631
My mistake
I realize now you were referencing one of the poster's comments, not
the article. Sorry for the sloppyness -- I had read the article earlier, as
well as all the comments, and had readily blended kaonashi into
Jowita.
---------
@_bigguns
There are no good arguments against gay marriage. They
are all bullshit.
You can't argue that you're right because "marriage is
between a man and a woman". There is no "marriage".
There's no Magic Space Library on Jupiter where a Super
Dictionary is kept in which words are universally defined
throughout space and time. "Marriage" used to involve (and
still does, in some parts of the world) a woman being handed
over like property to a man who can treat her like garbage if
he wants. Women in "traditional marriages" couldn't work,
vote, inherit property, get divorced or even testify in court
against him.
@Clavis
You know, people who are opposed to safe, legal abortion
use your same argument, i.e. "there is no argument FOR
legalized abortion; it is always wrong".
Of course in your eyes, gay marriage is always right. But
you are in a small minority of extremists.
existed).
I mean, you just said that THE UNIVERSE does not care if
"your pee-pees are the same or different". So surely the
universe does not care if you marry a dog, or a dolphin, or
your own father.
The fact is, there are RULES about who you can marry and
how and why, because without RULES, you'd have CHAOS.
The fact is, those talking points ARE TRUE. Lefty social
635
That's evil.
BEFORE the vote, by the way, pretty much equal time with
pro-marriage equality protesters (including endless
nonsense from the Catholic Church). And then what
happened?? Oh yeah, you and they LOST, BIGTIME!!! So
now the news coverage has moved on to the celebration, to
the people whose lives have been improved by this. So
moving on might not be a bad idea for you too.
@rm2gro
I think a march with 10,000 people, on short notice, is
significant. The piece I quoted showed where the protest
march was ignored, while pro-gay marriage activities and
celebrations were given huge media attention; that's the
POINT.
New York CITY is an outlier, because of its vast size, media
industry/domination AND its huge gay sub-culture. The rest
of New York State is completely different, and would likely
637
have voted against gay marriage had they been given the
right of referendum.
Rm2gro, I suggest you google and read the recent, very in-
638
I agree, it is significant.
---------
----------
*"We all live and die amid confusion and injustice; life seems
too short no matter how long it lasts; and the days we have
are miraculous, and then they are gone." - Andrew O'Hehir
(Clavis)
-----
Why did the movie bother you? What about the alien twists
was lame? Which parts were hackneyed? The headline says
it's a lame hackjob, but the article says Jon Favreau's
directing is "reasonably accomplished," or something.
Heh
While I have no intention of seeing this film, I found your
review to be cliche piled upon cliche of hackish, uppity movie
criticism, which--as you might guess where I'm heading--
just ends up being irritating. Very irritating, before the end
of the first paragraph even. You might want to rethink your
approach. (ban-ghaidheal)
-----
Matt Seitz
re: Blah blah it's only a movie, dude, blah
Relax and lighten up, dude, it's only a movie, dude.
Just thought I'd throw that out there, since it's the standard
response to reviews like this and SOMEBODY HAS TO SAY IT.
It's THE LAW.
All good. Surely takes some balls. Except some of us are wondering if
even a couple years from now, when most of America is pretty well
showing how maybe the last thing they need is to be made more sport
of, if you guys are going to keep this good stuff up. Hope so; but my
bet is you'll actually be TARGETING people still talking like you're
talking now. May this feedback make it less likely you'll end up so.
-----
@Alix Dobkowski
You know, Alix, my complaint about the headlines not
matching is a perfectly valid comment. It's so valid, in fact,
that I notice Salon's editors have now completely excised the
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---------
RESPONSE BY LK WALKER
I usually don't reply to letters as this is an open forum for
readers where you can vent. But I have to correct one thing.
I never used the word 'loser' in any part of my article, and I
never would use that word to describe anyone. That is a
word chosen by the editors to incite readership. And look! It
worked.
As my ex-fiance's grandpa used to say: There's a lid for
every pot!
Thanks for reading... (LKWalker, comment in
discussion thread of LK Walkers How I learned I
dont have to settle, Salon, 26 July 2011)
May I suggest next time you enter the discussion you provide
652
consistent feedback, and say something along the lines of, "I usually
don't reply to letters as this is an open forum for readers where you
can vent, however ... That clarified, by all means continue on with
your expletives and rants -- hey, it's your shitbox. Thank you for yet
remaining being able to mostly read."
[. . .]
[. . .]
----------
[. . .]
[. . .]
you follow to (3) kill the victim alter ("Bad Child"). Empathy
for victim scapegoats is lost because they are so full of our
negative projections and are seen as bad children-growing,
striving, wanting too much. The larger the success and new
freedoms a society must face -- the more its progress
overreaches its childrearing evolution -- the larger the
historical punishment it must stage. When an American
Senator, voting for more nuclear weapons, said that even if
a nuclear Holocaust was unleashed it wouldn't be too bad
because we would "win" it ("If we have to start over with
another Adam and Eve, I want them to be Americans"), the
weird trance logic can only be understood if nuclear war is
seen as an "object lesson," enabling us to "start afresh with a
clean slate."
--------
[. . .]
But since moving back to Texas from New York last month --
and embarking on the string of reunion dinners and meet-
ups this entails -- I feel I owe my former drinking buddies
fair warning. I know what it was like to anticipate a
debauched evening at the bar only to hear, "I'm pregnant!"
Or, "I've decided to cut back." And what was going to be a
last-call rager got tragically downshifted to two guilty
glasses and bed by 11 p.m. Yay, good for you, I'd say, sipping
a glass of wine that suddenly felt like it was the size of a
thimble.
[. . .]
[. . .]
----------
fuck that
Thats a lot of nerve about choosing a "healthy
lifestyle"........try boring. Not to say getting drunk off your
ass every night is a good choice but the fact is that sobriety
as it is preached by the American Prude Movement, both
right and left, is pretty fucking boring. So what do you
do?????Play board games and drink decaf coffee. Bad choice,
unless you were headed to the grave on the fast track. And
even then, Fast track to the grave may be a lot more fun than
singing the blues about boredom. (quiet man)
-----
"Lush"
So people who drink are "lushes". Whatever.
(kugelschreiber)
-----
Allow me to be bold, as an anonymous voice in an electronic
wilderness. There is a book; a short, simple, cheap book, that
neither preaches, nor feels like self-help in any way. But if it
helps you even a tenth as much as it helped me, it will be
worth you picking it up.
It's called The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle.
I think what you seek will not be found in husband, kids,
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drink, job, or any of those things, for those are identities, and
in the finality of it all, fictitious.
The identity is the problem, and this moment is the solution.
My best wishes and best of luck to you. (John McCall)
-----
Think of things you like to do and do them
Take a class at the local college. Go on an alumni travel tour.
Hang out at museums. Learn to ride a horse. Find a really
nice cafe and make some new cafe friends. My late mother
used to go out for breakfast at the same place every day.
She'd only have a Danish or some toast and coffee, but over
time she got to know the regulars and so it was always a get-
together. (expatjourno2)
-----
Ms H, I Know Just How You Feel...
Way back in my 300+ lb days, before I learned I was a Type
2 diabetic, I treated food the way you treated your drinking.
But in my case, I had to stop using food as I had: I ate from
boredom, recreation, fear, anger, fill in the blank.
Once I regulated my eating habits, I learned how to eat
again: B/C I WAS HUNGRY. I was amazed at how much
time and $$ I was wasting on my earlier habits. That's when
I got a life--and I still regulate my blood sugar w/diet and
exercise alone, 15 yrs later and 140 lbs ago.
What you did is what I did: you reclaimed your life and time.
And as you age, you come to appreciate how precious time
really is, and learn not to waste it.
Good for you! (elsma03)
-----
A year sober
Congratulations!
You've already kept sober for a year and made a major
lifestyle move, back to TX.
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I'm assuming you've GOT to have a car now, and there are a
lot of scenic and historical things to see...and since it's now
safe for you to drive... (Greeneyedkzin)
-----
Identity
You probably know this but I'm going to say it out loud. It's
not that there isn't anything fun to do outside of going to
bars -- it's that the people you want to spend time with only
know how to have fun at bars. It's a quandary. There are
tons of interesting people doing interesting things at all
times of the day and night without alcohol -- but you have to
shift your sense of your self to find them.
Good luck. I enjoy your writing and I hope that you find
something that works for you. (And have you thought about
corresponding with Roger Ebert?) (amspeck)
-----
Realize this.
Those old drinking "friends" aren't really friends if they only
like you because you drink with them. I put the cork back in
the bottle twenty-five years ago. There are people I used to
see and drink with weekly who I haven't seen nor spoken
with for twenty-five years. They only wanted to be around a
"Good-time Charlie" and I only wanted my sobriety and life
back. I have new and better friends now, people who enjoy
my company because of who I am, not who I become when
drunk. Good luck. Once you get past the, "nobody loves me"
stage of your new-found life, you'll will get on with the
business of actually living. I wish you peace. (Robert
David Clark)
-----
Put away your prejudices and the insecurities that you hid
with drinking and choose exercise. Go bowling! Go to a
softball game. There may be drinking there as well but you
might find it easier to avoid. If you can't, go to a yoga class
or a spin class. No drinking there and no one will judge you
if you aren't great at first. You'll find a social circle among
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How about just dwelling on the fact that you appear to have left
something damning behind you, and just in time? I mean it; every
day you could just look at the rest of America that is still, despite all
the news and bad press, keeping on with their depressing bad habits,
their indulgent, self-destructive ways, and know that they -- not you --
are going down. You'll find many other former sketchy ones who now
too count themselves amongst the pure -- like that former Salon
editor who lost 200 pounds and kept it off for a year, who wrote in to
let us know that and also of how he has learned to subsist on less than
1200 calories a day, leaving us to think his new reformed self is such
that he needed to learn he still required more than the random
nutrients you inhale as you walk through the streets of New York to
survive; or the new food writer, Felissa, who has left luxuries behind
her and made life "an exercise of reduction" and humility; or the
young un Drew Grant, who newly preaches how "you still owe them
[i.e., your parents] your life and your respect," showing how you're
never too young to scold like an elder and to abort much that could
have interesting in your life for a surer sense of earned protection.
I truly think this is going to get you by. You'll more than survive, and
even thrive, and every day you'll be encouraged to think yourself
elected and deserving. Whatever great adventure you make of your
life now that you've finally begun living, whether it's joining exciting
groups, seeing America's notable sites, or just settling into a less
complicated but more human, satisfying life, it will be this pleasure
that foremost makes you feel you've made a turn for the better.
--------
----------
It may be even here, with the inevitable spread of gay marriage that
will so show laurel how out of touch and impotent she is -- "rage
away, lunatic; you're still fated to be just washed away in the torrent!"
-- what we're actually seeing is a setup that will empower, justify a
later heavy and nasty turnabout. The narrative setup may be here to
make it look like the "fallen," homosexuals, almost took control of the
very reigns (!) -- i.e., marriage -- that sourced the most profound
virtues of the country!!! It may be something which will at the end not
so much leave her soaked and humiliated, barely able to stand let
alone shriek, but comfortably throned, expecting the cascade of
inevitable tribute to start, with you just nearby on a spit. You're her
greatest nemesis, and she'll ultimately dine on you, enjoying every
chew of your multi-morseled torso-kabob, and in full concentration
("Beans&Greens but no beans and greens for mEEs tonight!"), but
room first for a few more satisfactions of repentant Salon staff
shuffling up to thank her for her early and brave more good faith
stances, of the kind they humbly submit you couldn't deny they were
at least attempting, but hadn't anywhere near the earthquake of soul
to show it first so boldly and undisguised as she was able.
I would recommend people begin to more see and consider the
implications of the numerous liberals about who are beginning to
sound more and more conservative -- notably in regards to sex and
relationships, but elsewhere too (note the commenter who explained
how Andrew Leonard's ostensibly liberal stance towards government
debt would have seemed conservative 40 years ago). What is going on
here is not so much a change in heart -- though it is about turning on
their own liberalness, "fretting" it now more and more as suspect
permissiveness, unfettered indulgence, excess -- but a concern for
purity, something which always works against groups like
homosexuals for their readily being made to seem those who prosper
when civilization has lost its way, an embodyment of its decadence.
667
If this happens, the best out there -- good people like you -- will still
be supporting gay marriage, but I'm wondering if even for you this
voice of love and support comes out strangely and humiliatingly
muted, for your realizing you needed to believe homosexual love was
the same as heterosexual love to provide so much unsecond-guessed
support, to people who deserved your full support regardless. You
might perhaps avoid knowing this, but because the source of this info
will now becoming as much from ostensibly liberal sources as
conservative ones, you'll have a tough time doing so.
-----
If ANYONE here can understand Patrick McEvoy-
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Halston's rant...
...I'd love to know what the heck he is saying. Honestly, dude,
I cannot make ONE LICK OF SENSE out of anything you
write -- not one -- and I can't even figure out what side you
are on. (_bigguns)
I've heard your call/request, and I'll interpret my post for you: I am
NOT so much someone who suspects that at the end of the day you'll
find yourself helplessly neutered from having any influence here at
Salon letters or "abroad," but rather someone who thinks that even
now you're increasingly "tolerated" here out of felt intuition that
where, that who you are now is kinda where many Salonistas are
going to find themselves in some not-so-long while.
---------
Some say that all narratives ultimately tell only two stories.
One: Someone goes on a journey. Two: A stranger comes to
town. The summer before my eighth-grade year, when I was
12, I experienced the intersection of both. In other words, I
learned how to escape.
This was 1979. My mother had been home from the hospital
for a few months, and my sister, brother and I were just
coming to understand her. Our "new" Mom.
The new version of my mother was a changeling. At 38 years
old, she had suffered, and barely survived, a ruptured brain
aneurysm. The head injury caused her to be mostly
paralyzed on her left side. Her brain became scrambled. She
limped around the house, couldn't tell time and didn't know
670
[. . .]
That summer, I kept making Super 8 movies, but D&D soon
took over. It quickly became more than a game: It became a
vital experience that let a geeky, introverted, non-athletic kid
-- a kid who felt about as powerful as a 3-foot hobbit on the
basketball team -- take action, be the hero, go on quests, and
kill monsters. Not that all guys (and they were mostly guys
in those days) who played D&D were geeky, introverted,
non-athletic kids, but enough were, and at least this one felt
invisible. With everything going on at home, perhaps I was
the perfect candidate for escape. But I was also drawn to the
idea of this game. I had always sensed that something was
missing from the real world. My no-budget movies were one
Band-Aid. But shooting my "Star Wars" remakes and clay
monster battles took weeks and resulted in three-minute
movies. Entering the D&D fantasy was effortless,
instantaneous and endless. Epic.
I now see it was no accident that the year I found D&D, or it
found me, coincided with my mother's return from the
hospital. It took courage for a teenage boy to deal with the
Momster -- more courage than I could muster at the time. I
couldn't face down the creature that plagued my own house.
But playing D&D let me act out imaginary, possibly
symbolic battles instead, and distracted me from the
prospect of facing the real ones waged within my family's
four walls. In the D&D playscape, I learned to be confident
and decisive, and feel powerful. Even cocky. Some of the guts
and nerve and derring-do I role-played began to leak into
my real world. By the time I graduated high school, I had
transformed. I had used fantasy to escape but also to gather
strength for later, when I could face and embrace my mother
again. Which, as an adult years later, I finally did.
But in the summer of '79, I was but a newbie. I needed to
gain experience. I had only tasted the power Dungeons &
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How does hanging out with other geeks end up making you less
somehow of a geek (giving you true courage, of the kind that applies
to the "real"world, etc.)? How does zero plus zero generate anything?
I'm wondering if the truer story is that somewhere along the line
society decided geeks were preferable to healthy self-esteemers, for
their preparedness to take shit, bow to bullying power, and in service
673
to it, humiliate others with more true backbone: that is, for having no
real self-respect. In preverse times, their disadvantage, their
malformation, actually rendered them more fit, and they ended up
with subsequent life stories that allowed them to believe their
adolescent escapes had been subsequently revealed as healthy, even
leaderly, pasttimes. Rather than socially retarded, time has
apparently shown them they have as much a claim to being vanguard!
And, oh, the part about his mom becoming the momster, principally
owing to her illness, is foremost a lie: he'd have been hiding away
from a tyrannical mom, battling her bulking likeness in the form of
dragons, demons, and whatnot, regardless. That despite everything
he has accomplished and come to realize, he still cows to her and has
therefore in some profound sense barely moved an inch, is evident in
his emphasizing the illness so you don't think momster was due to
make her years-long appearance in any case. "It wasn't YOU, mom; it
was just the illness: I'm still your good, loyal, appreciative boy brave
knight to your cause, tending cleric to your maladies."
The cruelest fate for fabulous endeavors which would make YOU part
of the tale, is that its history is largely about compensating for a
bullysome world, or rendering it more appropriate for trauma-
satured minds, rather than about boldly encroaching upon an
insufficiently magicked one even when it shines golden, as it did
during the 70s when D & D was born.
--------
[. . .]
[. . .]
----------
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Overpriced???
In the last couple years I have put a commercial kitchen in a
barn. My business has a 3 acre orgranic farm where the
kitchen get its ingredients to make locally grown, locally
processed products like roasted tomato sauce; marinated
mushrooms; pestos; jams; dehydrated herbs (and kale and
apples); pickles galore... the list could go on an on. It is
delicious and fun -- but as you might also guess, expensive! It
just kills me to read (constantly) that foods priced right
(even underpriced!) are considered "elitist" or whatever.
Does it ever occur to anyone how expensive it is to grow and
process locally? We pay local (fair!) wages. We pay payroll
taxes out the wazoo. Workers Comp. About 4 other kinds of
insurance. Plus, I think our kitchen is the only building in
town up to code. Then property taxes and on and on.
I'd like to ask these people who think our products are elitist,
"How much do you think quality, traceable food is worth?" If
the answer is, say, more than your latest tech gadget, then
what's the problem? No, you can't have it all and you have to
make choices. Back in the 1900s when people paid the true
cost of their food there weren't fancy ipads to tempt them
toward frivolous spending while still needing to eat. If you're
so outraged by price then you should be doing something
about farm subsidies -- which go 99.99% to commodity
producers of corn, wheat, cotton, soy. NOT fruit and veggie
farmers!! If that box of twinkies was actually priced to
reflect the true cost to make it, then a $4 bunch a kale would
seem a lot more reasonable.
Producing food (organically, esp) takes a lot of work, a lot of
energy (human or otherwise) and a lot of money. So if you
care about the food your family eats then stop complaining
about the price, and start feeling lucky there are farms out
there willing to undertake the substantial financial risk to
677
make it available.
I will be lucky if my business ever breaks EVEN let alone
makes any money for me. I fully expect never to recoup the
kitchen construction costs. (And yes, this irrelevantly means
that I have off-farm income somewhere. So I do this work at
great cost to my family.)
Good food costs a lot to produce -- it's just that our country
has been conditioned to think otherwise. Get used to it.
(nycmom)
-----
@nycmom
I fear for your heart. You took a simple comment about a
grocery store's prices and took it in all sorts of directions. I
shop monthly at Puget Consumers Coop in Seattle which is
likely the store she is referring to. I paid $2.59 there the
other day for a can of black eyed peas. Ihe discount grocery
outlet sells them for 79 cents. Sure 79 cents doesn't buy
organic. But that is still a helluva price disparity.
I recently retired early on social security alone. Needless to
say I'm not living fat on the hog. I'm a vegetarian anyway.
But not eating out and watching prices closely on everything
allows me to be done with a job that was killing my soul and
not doing anything positive for my body. And my weight is
going down and I am much more cheerful and aware.
nycmom-I recommend that you do some soul searching. To
spill so much bile over her comment about grocery prices
does not indicate a happy life being lived.
(Ccommentator)
-----
Ccommentator
Thank you, but you do not need to worry about my heart or
soul. They are just fine because I AM taking action about the
issue most important to me.
678
that you can quote the prices of the produce you buy. Bet you
have no idea of the costs to produce.
Here in the northeast, we have a VERY short growing
season. So preserving that produce for the off-season is
important.
I NEVER said anyone is "bad" for not buying $4 kale. I never
said we sell it for that price. What I said is that I understand
the actual costs involved in growing, and getting
produce/products to market. Retailers take their own cut,
remember. We operate a low-income CSA. We take food
stamps. We have a farm store. We sell to restaurants. We do
farmers markets. We know a lot about growing
(organically) at as low a cost as possible. It's still not that
low to hire local labor, and pay them fairly and legally, no
matter what you all prefer to think.
So you can make all the assumptions you like about
something you know nothing about. I would love to hear
from other growers and producers, but hey, I don't think
there are too many of them on Salon. I am not angry, I love
my work. I am often frustrated at the expense and red tape
involved. Don't call me entitled. I work around the clock and
invest money in the food system when I could be vacationing
and wearing Prada.
I am not the one being judgmental. I am offering a
perspective that is not offered often. I can promise you your
local (fruit and vegetable) farmers in every state agree with
me. It is unfortunate that food, and especially processed
products are so expensive. God knows, I wish they weren't.
But the reality is that they are. Should I offer a product
below the cost of production? There are not many other
businesses doing what we are doing, and those that are feel
the same way: that consumers must learn to pay more for
local, sustainably-produced food. That's all.
The fact that the economy is in shambles is not our fault. The
684
-----
@nycmom
Rest assured that plenty of people appreciate what you've
written here. Farming is hard work, and your commitment
to organic farming says much good about you. I would buy
your stuff in a heartbeat.
One more thing, since you seem to be new here. There are
two Salon letter writers with similar names. The first is
Bigguns, a longtime Salonista who I and others like and
respect, and then there is _Bigguns (note the dash before the
B), a troll. For the sake of the former, whom you might meet
if you stick around here long enough, please don't confuse
her with the latter. (Beans&Greens)
-----
Thank You!
Thank you Beans&Greens and XyzzyAvatar. Thank you so
much. And many many apologies to the real Bigguns.
Yes, I am new to commenting and do not know the rules. I
read Salon occasionally but it takes something really big or
something about local food to really feeling active.
I am doing the best I can, as I'm sure we all are with what
we're given. I do not intend to seem angry, but I feel
attacked. And I feel attacked not for what work I am doing,
but because a few people have made some very large
685
@Beans&Greens
I like you very much, sir. You are indeed an inspiration. But you are
also such a tool for calling _bigguns a troll. She moves quick, has
things to say, and can do magic ... and you make her seem as dullard
as your diet, as unappealing as your hobbitan smugness. To some of
us you're BOTH the best and the worst of the baby-boomers. To be
nice, I'll just say you're both inspiringly full of life (truly, you are), and
soon -- to be not so nice -- hopefully, full of the holes some of us will
put in you, to help finally rid you out of our way.
@Greeneyedzkin
The essential part of the post you are referring to is not really the part
of wishing them (baby boomers like laurel and G&B) full of holes,
believe it or not, it was actually the part about them being so full of
substance, holes become more notable for their working more as
marked inversion. I'm actually not truthfully interested in even
disposing them -- not even just to let some other generation have
their chance: the idea of making anyone shut up, live life with a
shrunken, diminished status is obsene to me: the idea really is just to
enfranchise everybody, and I'm glad I don't think that this is only
accomplished violently, by finding some way to disenfranchise,
discredit or monument and/or "etherealize" (as by, for instance,
making them Elders, Emeretuses -- people already half-way shuffled
off to a higher plane and half-way otherwise sedimentation) the
already strongest voices on the scene. I think baby boomers have yet
more to say, and I would have them say it: but only if it means
fighting through an enfranchised, accustomed way of looking at the
world that actually mostly does them credit -- you are mostly great,
world builders! of the great-Eden-within-a-rock-from-Wrath-of-Khan
type -- but that still prevents them from doing the good they could to
generations after them that are suffering and are determined to suffer
far more yet.
People like Felissa are my more natural true opponents. What she is
up to is I think predatorial -- she is making the worldview of baby
boomers, she is making baby boomers, seem discard-worthy, right
even before them, knowing that because of how she presents herself,
because of their own desire to fit her within their preferences, and
because of their flacid ability to recognize alien viewpoints for so ably
and for such a long time dominating the world scene that
690
the beginning of liberal times, but have little weight because their
carriers are too readily made to seem the ones lacking in invigorating
spirit. When they appear at the end of liberal times their weight is
considerable because the mood shifts so that when people compare
foragers and isolationists to domesticators, exchangers, shoppers,
markets and crowds, "domestication" less seems where civilization
finally got its start than where mankind must have first lost its
fighting spirit and soul.
Though she here and there makes herself seem akin to the Michael
Pollan crowd, I wish it were more obvious that when people tell
Felissa to start greenhouse-farming and going on food stamps that
this is just so laughably something she is building herself to naturally
consider more unwelcome than spotted cougar scat. What she is up to
now is hurriedly doing the struggling, the daily encounters with
survival that surely made her and our ancestors hard but reverant and
spritually great, so that she can feel through accumulation, in
constitution more akin to them. She's effortlessly becoming the story
of how she puts food onto her plate, while you bait her with
remissions that just ensure her course.
Even if the world ensures that there continue to be means for Felissa
to get better foodstuffs, and to get it easier, there is a sense she would
actually take ultimate withering over such easing: it would firmly
include her within a harsh but awesome universe that would
recognize, understand, welcome and incorporate her, in a way it
would surely not if she had allowed herself to become what she is
accused by the ignorant of being: a hipster foodie, whose life is
fundamenally about fun and play rather than really just surviving.
But Felissa and a generation that is mostly like her, because they want
civilization to be shamefully shown up as unequal to the ground it
built itself upon, will ensure politicians happen to get in power that
can't but further wreck it, wiping out social programs that, ostensibly
-- but to her, fully debatably -- help the weak. Eventually social
692
programs will find their way back in, but only when they point to the
considerable fibre built into a nation of hardy survivors, not to their
absence or fast dissolution, and this is going to take an awful lot of
suffering and fear-encountering/battling days to ensure.
---------
[. . .]
----------
Success story?
Did the psychological troubles that moved your over-eating disappear
with the weight loss too? Or have they just been differently
channeled, and into a form that very pleasantly draws little attention
to their existing?
694
@Patrick M-H
What psychological problems? Where is that in the article?
Please point it out for us.
The author moved from an area where not only did he have
to drive everywhere to get around, he was surrounded by
overweight people who consistently made bad food choices.
In New York, you have no choice. You walk. Just about
everywhere. It's like Toronto or Chicago that way. San
Francisco? Same deal. You might as well walk. (Wasn't it
Mark Twain who quipped that the women in San Francisco
have the best legs in the world?) They're set up as pedestrian
cities.
If you're staying in a reasonable (by that I mean a couple of
miles) distance from home to get things done, you have no
choice but to walk. If you are dumb enough to drive, and IF
you're lucky enough to get a parking spot, you're going to
end up walking about the same distance anyway. There's no
point.
When we moved to Texas from Toronto, I gained 20 pounds.
I never changed my eating habits, I just couldn't walk
everywhere like I used to. There were no sidewalks, ground
level ozone levels were downright dangerous because of all
the trucks and even if I ignored all that, we lived at LEAST a
30 minute drive to go to the grocery store.
When we left that suburbopurgatory and moved to Chicago,
that weight was gone in about 6 months. It was all about
activity level. (Aunt Messy)
@AuntMessy
The author believes it is all about activity level, and makes it seem as
if this is obviously the case, in his losing pounds so readily when he
actually had to walk, but his primary previous difficulty wasn't the
695
lack of a firm prompt to exercise but that he gorged himself too much,
that he had, as they say, an "unhealthy relationship to food" -- that it
likely served as compensense for his previous profound lack of
attention during childhood. He went to exercise and good foods --
though maybe in body-hating and certainly body-taming portions:
starvation-level -- because he finds opiate nourishment in belonging
to this new of-the-moment elect club of puritans, who have in their
attainment passed beyond the point of having to look back at any
previous inhibiting sin. If this obese-to-thin movement wasn't now
the rage, beckoning through the privilege of full loss of disavowed self
to join its membership, Michael Humphrey no doubt would, even in
walk-to-work New York, be tagging along that extra-package that ice
cream bars and whiskey surely gift one with.
I hope Salon doesn't become wholly constituted by people in a hurry
to lose all touch with reality. Michael Humphrey isn't fat, but he likely
remains the same man: and that's surely his still ongoing problem.
[. . .]
But since moving back to Texas from New York last month --
and embarking on the string of reunion dinners and meet-
ups this entails -- I feel I owe my former drinking buddies
fair warning. I know what it was like to anticipate a
debauched evening at the bar only to hear, "I'm pregnant!"
Or, "I've decided to cut back." And what was going to be a
last-call rager got tragically downshifted to two guilty
glasses and bed by 11 p.m. Yay, good for you, I'd say, sipping
a glass of wine that suddenly felt like it was the size of a
thimble.
[. . .]
[. . .]
697
----------
fuck that
Thats a lot of nerve about choosing a "healthy
lifestyle"........try boring. Not to say getting drunk off your
ass every night is a good choice but the fact is that sobriety
as it is preached by the American Prude Movement, both
right and left, is pretty fucking boring. So what do you
do?????Play board games and drink decaf coffee. Bad choice,
unless you were headed to the grave on the fast track. And
even then, Fast track to the grave may be a lot more fun than
singing the blues about boredom. (quiet man)
-----
"Lush"
So people who drink are "lushes". Whatever.
(kugelschreiber)
-----
Allow me to be bold, as an anonymous voice in an electronic
wilderness. There is a book; a short, simple, cheap book, that
neither preaches, nor feels like self-help in any way. But if it
helps you even a tenth as much as it helped me, it will be
worth you picking it up.
It's called The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle.
698
A year sober
Congratulations!
You've already kept sober for a year and made a major
699
Realize this.
Those old drinking "friends" aren't really friends if they only
like you because you drink with them. I put the cork back in
the bottle twenty-five years ago. There are people I used to
see and drink with weekly who I haven't seen nor spoken
with for twenty-five years. They only wanted to be around a
"Good-time Charlie" and I only wanted my sobriety and life
back. I have new and better friends now, people who enjoy
my company because of who I am, not who I become when
drunk. Good luck. Once you get past the, "nobody loves me"
stage of your new-found life, you'll will get on with the
business of actually living. I wish you peace. (Robert
David Clark)
-----
Put away your prejudices and the insecurities that you hid
with drinking and choose exercise. Go bowling! Go to a
softball game. There may be drinking there as well but you
might find it easier to avoid. If you can't, go to a yoga class
or a spin class. No drinking there and no one will judge you
701
How about just dwelling on the fact that you appear to have left
something damning behind you, and just in time? I mean it; every
day you could just look at the rest of America that is still, despite all
the news and bad press, keeping on with their depressing bad habits,
their indulgent, self-destructive ways, and know that they -- not you --
are going down. You'll find many other former sketchy ones who now
too count themselves amongst the pure -- like that former Salon
editor who lost 200 pounds and kept it off for a year, who wrote in to
let us know that and also of how he has learned to subsist on less than
1200 calories a day, leaving us to think his new reformed self is such
that he needed to learn he still required more than the random
nutrients you inhale as you walk through the streets of New York to
survive; or the new food writer, Felissa, who has left luxuries behind
her and made life "an exercise of reduction" and humility; or the
young un Drew Grant, who newly preaches how "you still owe them
[i.e., your parents] your life and your respect," showing how you're
never too young to scold like an elder and to abort much that could
have interesting in your life for a surer sense of earned protection.
I truly think this is going to get you by. You'll more than survive, and
even thrive, and every day you'll be encouraged to think yourself
elected and deserving. Whatever great adventure you make of your
life now that you've finally begun living, whether it's joining exciting
groups, seeing America's notable sites, or just settling into a less
complicated but more human, satisfying life, it will be this pleasure
that foremost makes you feel you've made a turn for the better.
702
---------
----------
It may be even here, with the inevitable spread of gay marriage that
will so show laurel how out of touch and impotent she is -- "rage
away, lunatic; you're still fated to be just washed away in the torrent!"
-- what we're actually seeing is a setup that will empower, justify a
later heavy and nasty turnabout. The narrative setup may be here to
make it look like the "fallen," homosexuals, almost took control of the
very reigns (!) -- i.e., marriage -- that sourced the most profound
virtues of the country!!! It may be something which will at the end not
so much leave her soaked and humiliated, barely able to stand let
alone shriek, but comfortably throned, expecting the cascade of
inevitable tribute to start, with you just nearby on a spit. You're her
greatest nemesis, and she'll ultimately dine on you, enjoying every
chew of your multi-morseled torso-kabob, and in full concentration
("Beans&Greens but no beans and greens for mEEs tonight!"), but
room first for a few more satisfactions of repentant Salon staff
shuffling up to thank her for her early and brave more good faith
stances, of the kind they humbly submit you couldn't deny they were
at least attempting, but hadn't anywhere near the earthquake of soul
to show it first so boldly and undisguised as she was able.
I would recommend people begin to more see and consider the
implications of the numerous liberals about who are beginning to
sound more and more conservative -- notably in regards to sex and
relationships, but elsewhere too (note the commenter who explained
how Andrew Leonard's ostensibly liberal stance towards government
debt would have seemed conservative 40 years ago). What is going on
here is not so much a change in heart -- though it is about turning on
their own liberalness, "fretting" it now more and more as suspect
permissiveness, unfettered indulgence, excess -- but a concern for
purity, something which always works against groups like
homosexuals for their readily being made to seem those who prosper
705
If this happens, the best out there -- good people like you -- will still
be supporting gay marriage, but I'm wondering if even for you this
voice of love and support comes out strangely and humiliatingly
muted, for your realizing you needed to believe homosexual love was
the same as heterosexual love to provide so much unsecond-guessed
support, to people who deserved your full support regardless. You
might perhaps avoid knowing this, but because the source of this info
will now becoming as much from ostensibly liberal sources as
conservative ones, you'll have a tough time doing so.
-----
-----
706
I've heard your call/request, and I'll interpret my post for you: I am
NOT so much someone who suspects that at the end of the day you'll
find yourself helplessly neutered from having any influence here at
Salon letters or "abroad," but rather someone who thinks that even
now you're increasingly "tolerated" here out of felt intuition that
where, that who you are now is kinda where many Salonistas are
going to find themselves in some not-so-long while.
there are in truth way fewer of these truly ideal Salonistas out there as
you make seem, they're increasingly listening to the part of
themselves that has judged this is a time for curtailment and
responsibility and sacrifice, not yet more stretched-out claims for
indulging yet more me!me! satisfactions -- what surely got us in these
dire straits, in the first place.
Some say that all narratives ultimately tell only two stories.
One: Someone goes on a journey. Two: A stranger comes to
town. The summer before my eighth-grade year, when I was
12, I experienced the intersection of both. In other words, I
learned how to escape.
This was 1979. My mother had been home from the hospital
for a few months, and my sister, brother and I were just
coming to understand her. Our "new" Mom.
The new version of my mother was a changeling. At 38 years
old, she had suffered, and barely survived, a ruptured brain
aneurysm. The head injury caused her to be mostly
paralyzed on her left side. Her brain became scrambled. She
708
limped around the house, couldn't tell time and didn't know
the day of the week. Often, she'd make inappropriate
remarks, swearing at the slightest provocation or making
some lewd joke in front of friends. At times, she scared me.
"Ethan!" she'd yell from her lair. "Help me get up!" She
might be half-dressed in her bed, or on the toilet, or on the
floor, or in the bathtub.
Years before my mother's "accident," as we called it, my dad
had moved several hours away. We saw him regularly, but
he and my stepmom were largely out of the picture. A family
friend had moved in to help take care of my Mom, my
siblings and me. The theory was, Sara Gilsdorf might make a
miraculous recovery, and the friend would move out. We
eventually discovered this would never come to pass.
It didn't take long to figure out I couldn't tame my mother,
not this beast. I knew I couldn't save her, either. I fought
with her for a while, usually battling over her inability --
what I mistakenly read as her refusal -- to regain her old life,
be it making a cup of coffee or making a family decision.
After a while, I gave up. And kept my distance. I was stuck
with a mother I was afraid to love.
We began calling her the Momster.
-------
[. . .]
Then, later that same summer of 1979 when my mom came
home from the hospital, a stranger came to town -- a new
kid moved into the neighborhood. And a new path appeared
to me.
[. . .]
I hung out a lot at JP's house that summer. After a few weeks
of watching "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century," listening to
Electric Light Orchestra's "Discovery," and programming
primitive video games in BASIC on his TRS-80 Radio Shack
computer, JP told me about Dungeons & Dragons.
709
-------
[. . .]
That summer, I kept making Super 8 movies, but D&D soon
took over. It quickly became more than a game: It became a
vital experience that let a geeky, introverted, non-athletic kid
-- a kid who felt about as powerful as a 3-foot hobbit on the
basketball team -- take action, be the hero, go on quests, and
kill monsters. Not that all guys (and they were mostly guys
in those days) who played D&D were geeky, introverted,
non-athletic kids, but enough were, and at least this one felt
invisible. With everything going on at home, perhaps I was
the perfect candidate for escape. But I was also drawn to the
idea of this game. I had always sensed that something was
missing from the real world. My no-budget movies were one
Band-Aid. But shooting my "Star Wars" remakes and clay
monster battles took weeks and resulted in three-minute
movies. Entering the D&D fantasy was effortless,
instantaneous and endless. Epic.
I now see it was no accident that the year I found D&D, or it
found me, coincided with my mother's return from the
hospital. It took courage for a teenage boy to deal with the
Momster -- more courage than I could muster at the time. I
couldn't face down the creature that plagued my own house.
But playing D&D let me act out imaginary, possibly
symbolic battles instead, and distracted me from the
prospect of facing the real ones waged within my family's
four walls. In the D&D playscape, I learned to be confident
and decisive, and feel powerful. Even cocky. Some of the guts
and nerve and derring-do I role-played began to leak into
my real world. By the time I graduated high school, I had
transformed. I had used fantasy to escape but also to gather
strength for later, when I could face and embrace my mother
again. Which, as an adult years later, I finally did.
But in the summer of '79, I was but a newbie. I needed to
710
How does hanging out with other geeks end up making you less
somehow of a geek (giving you true courage, of the kind that applies
to the "real"world, etc.)? How does zero plus zero generate anything?
I'm wondering if the truer story is that somewhere along the line
society decided geeks were preferable to healthy self-esteemers, for
711
And, oh, the part about his mom becoming the momster, principally
owing to her illness, is foremost a lie: he'd have been hiding away
from a tyrannical mom, battling her bulking likeness in the form of
dragons, demons, and whatnot, regardless. That despite everything
he has accomplished and come to realize, he still cows to her and has
therefore in some profound sense barely moved an inch, is evident in
his emphasizing the illness so you don't think momster was due to
make her years-long appearance in any case. "It wasn't YOU, mom; it
was just the illness: I'm still your good, loyal, appreciative boy brave
knight to your cause, tending cleric to your maladies."
The cruelest fate for fabulous endeavors which would make YOU part
of the tale, is that its history is largely about compensating for a
bullysome world, or rendering it more appropriate for trauma-
satured minds, rather than about boldly encroaching upon an
insufficiently magicked one even when it shines golden, as it did
during the 70s when D & D was born.
Link:MysummerofDungeonsandDragons(Salon)
[. . .]
[. . .]
----------
714
Overpriced???
In the last couple years I have put a commercial kitchen in a
barn. My business has a 3 acre orgranic farm where the
kitchen get its ingredients to make locally grown, locally
processed products like roasted tomato sauce; marinated
mushrooms; pestos; jams; dehydrated herbs (and kale and
apples); pickles galore... the list could go on an on. It is
delicious and fun -- but as you might also guess, expensive! It
just kills me to read (constantly) that foods priced right
(even underpriced!) are considered "elitist" or whatever.
Does it ever occur to anyone how expensive it is to grow and
process locally? We pay local (fair!) wages. We pay payroll
taxes out the wazoo. Workers Comp. About 4 other kinds of
insurance. Plus, I think our kitchen is the only building in
town up to code. Then property taxes and on and on.
I'd like to ask these people who think our products are elitist,
"How much do you think quality, traceable food is worth?" If
the answer is, say, more than your latest tech gadget, then
what's the problem? No, you can't have it all and you have to
make choices. Back in the 1900s when people paid the true
cost of their food there weren't fancy ipads to tempt them
toward frivolous spending while still needing to eat. If you're
so outraged by price then you should be doing something
about farm subsidies -- which go 99.99% to commodity
producers of corn, wheat, cotton, soy. NOT fruit and veggie
farmers!! If that box of twinkies was actually priced to
reflect the true cost to make it, then a $4 bunch a kale would
seem a lot more reasonable.
Producing food (organically, esp) takes a lot of work, a lot of
energy (human or otherwise) and a lot of money. So if you
care about the food your family eats then stop complaining
about the price, and start feeling lucky there are farms out
there willing to undertake the substantial financial risk to
715
make it available.
I will be lucky if my business ever breaks EVEN let alone
makes any money for me. I fully expect never to recoup the
kitchen construction costs. (And yes, this irrelevantly means
that I have off-farm income somewhere. So I do this work at
great cost to my family.)
Good food costs a lot to produce -- it's just that our country
has been conditioned to think otherwise. Get used to it.
(nycmom)
-----
@nycmom
I fear for your heart. You took a simple comment about a
grocery store's prices and took it in all sorts of directions. I
shop monthly at Puget Consumers Coop in Seattle which is
likely the store she is referring to. I paid $2.59 there the
other day for a can of black eyed peas. Ihe discount grocery
outlet sells them for 79 cents. Sure 79 cents doesn't buy
organic. But that is still a helluva price disparity.
I recently retired early on social security alone. Needless to
say I'm not living fat on the hog. I'm a vegetarian anyway.
But not eating out and watching prices closely on everything
allows me to be done with a job that was killing my soul and
not doing anything positive for my body. And my weight is
going down and I am much more cheerful and aware.
nycmom-I recommend that you do some soul searching. To
spill so much bile over her comment about grocery prices
does not indicate a happy life being lived.
(Ccommentator)
-----
Ccommentator
Thank you, but you do not need to worry about my heart or
soul. They are just fine because I AM taking action about the
issue most important to me.
716
that you can quote the prices of the produce you buy. Bet you
have no idea of the costs to produce.
Here in the northeast, we have a VERY short growing
season. So preserving that produce for the off-season is
important.
I NEVER said anyone is "bad" for not buying $4 kale. I never
said we sell it for that price. What I said is that I understand
the actual costs involved in growing, and getting
produce/products to market. Retailers take their own cut,
remember. We operate a low-income CSA. We take food
stamps. We have a farm store. We sell to restaurants. We do
farmers markets. We know a lot about growing
(organically) at as low a cost as possible. It's still not that
low to hire local labor, and pay them fairly and legally, no
matter what you all prefer to think.
So you can make all the assumptions you like about
something you know nothing about. I would love to hear
from other growers and producers, but hey, I don't think
there are too many of them on Salon. I am not angry, I love
my work. I am often frustrated at the expense and red tape
involved. Don't call me entitled. I work around the clock and
invest money in the food system when I could be vacationing
and wearing Prada.
I am not the one being judgmental. I am offering a
perspective that is not offered often. I can promise you your
local (fruit and vegetable) farmers in every state agree with
me. It is unfortunate that food, and especially processed
products are so expensive. God knows, I wish they weren't.
But the reality is that they are. Should I offer a product
below the cost of production? There are not many other
businesses doing what we are doing, and those that are feel
the same way: that consumers must learn to pay more for
local, sustainably-produced food. That's all.
The fact that the economy is in shambles is not our fault. The
722
-----
@nycmom
Rest assured that plenty of people appreciate what you've
written here. Farming is hard work, and your commitment
to organic farming says much good about you. I would buy
your stuff in a heartbeat.
One more thing, since you seem to be new here. There are
two Salon letter writers with similar names. The first is
Bigguns, a longtime Salonista who I and others like and
respect, and then there is _Bigguns (note the dash before the
B), a troll. For the sake of the former, whom you might meet
if you stick around here long enough, please don't confuse
her with the latter. (Beans&Greens)
-----
Thank You!
Thank you Beans&Greens and XyzzyAvatar. Thank you so
much. And many many apologies to the real Bigguns.
Yes, I am new to commenting and do not know the rules. I
read Salon occasionally but it takes something really big or
something about local food to really feeling active.
I am doing the best I can, as I'm sure we all are with what
we're given. I do not intend to seem angry, but I feel
attacked. And I feel attacked not for what work I am doing,
but because a few people have made some very large
723
@Beans&Greens
I like you very much, sir. You are indeed an inspiration. But you are
also such a tool for calling _bigguns a troll. She moves quick, has
things to say, and can do magic ... and you make her seem as dullard
as your diet, as unappealing as your hobbitan smugness. To some of
us you're BOTH the best and the worst of the baby-boomers. To be
nice, I'll just say you're both inspiringly full of life (truly, you are), and
soon -- to be not so nice -- hopefully, full of the holes some of us will
put in you, to help finally rid you out of our way.
@Greeneyedzkin
The essential part of the post you are referring to is not really the part
of wishing them (baby boomers like laurel and G&B) full of holes,
believe it or not, it was actually the part about them being so full of
substance, holes become more notable for their working more as
marked inversion. I'm actually not truthfully interested in even
disposing them -- not even just to let some other generation have
their chance: the idea of making anyone shut up, live life with a
shrunken, diminished status is obsene to me: the idea really is just to
enfranchise everybody, and I'm glad I don't think that this is only
accomplished violently, by finding some way to disenfranchise,
discredit or monument and/or "etherealize" (as by, for instance,
making them Elders, Emeretuses -- people already half-way shuffled
off to a higher plane and half-way otherwise sedimentation) the
already strongest voices on the scene. I think baby boomers have yet
more to say, and I would have them say it: but only if it means
fighting through an enfranchised, accustomed way of looking at the
world that actually mostly does them credit -- you are mostly great,
world builders! of the great-Eden-within-a-rock-from-Wrath-of-Khan
type -- but that still prevents them from doing the good they could to
generations after them that are suffering and are determined to suffer
far more yet.
People like Felissa are my more natural true opponents. What she is
up to is I think predatorial -- she is making the worldview of baby
boomers, she is making baby boomers, seem discard-worthy, right
even before them, knowing that because of how she presents herself,
because of their own desire to fit her within their preferences, and
because of their flacid ability to recognize alien viewpoints for so ably
and for such a long time dominating the world scene that
728
the beginning of liberal times, but have little weight because their
carriers are too readily made to seem the ones lacking in invigorating
spirit. When they appear at the end of liberal times their weight is
considerable because the mood shifts so that when people compare
foragers and isolationists to domesticators, exchangers, shoppers,
markets and crowds, "domestication" less seems where civilization
finally got its start than where mankind must have first lost its
fighting spirit and soul.
Though she here and there makes herself seem akin to the Michael
Pollan crowd, I wish it were more obvious that when people tell
Felissa to start greenhouse-farming and going on food stamps that
this is just so laughably something she is building herself to naturally
consider more unwelcome than spotted cougar scat. What she is up to
now is hurriedly doing the struggling, the daily encounters with
survival that surely made her and our ancestors hard but reverant and
spritually great, so that she can feel through accumulation, in
constitution more akin to them. She's effortlessly becoming the story
of how she puts food onto her plate, while you bait her with
remissions that just ensure her course.
Even if the world ensures that there continue to be means for Felissa
to get better foodstuffs, and to get it easier, there is a sense she would
actually take ultimate withering over such easing: it would firmly
include her within a harsh but awesome universe that would
recognize, understand, welcome and incorporate her, in a way it
would surely not if she had allowed herself to become what she is
accused by the ignorant of being: a hipster foodie, whose life is
fundamenally about fun and play rather than really just surviving.
But Felissa and a generation that is mostly like her, because they want
civilization to be shamefully shown up as unequal to the ground it
built itself upon, will ensure politicians happen to get in power that
can't but further wreck it, wiping out social programs that, ostensibly
-- but to her, fully debatably -- help the weak. Eventually social
730
programs will find their way back in, but only when they point to the
considerable fibre built into a nation of hardy survivors, not to their
absence or fast dissolution, and this is going to take an awful lot of
suffering and fear-encountering/battling days to ensure.
Hitler in the dark early years of World War II. I don't know
whether J.K. Rowling has ever discussed the Battle of Britain
as an influence on her fantasy universe, but she's precisely
the right age to have been raised on such national
mythological tales of Churchill-era nobility and sacrifice.
While most of "Deathly Hallows: Part 2" is set in and around
the climactic siege of Hogwarts -- in which, yes, some
beloved Potterworld personages will die -- we also see
Harry, red-headed Ron (Grint) and shockingly grown-up
Hermione (Watson, of course, but in this sequence also
played by Helena Bonham Carter, and don't make me
explain) stage a daring raid on the Gringotts Wizarding
Bank, which ends with an abused captive dragon totally
destroying the place. Any consonance with current events,
which renders it especially satisfying to witness a bank
reduced to rubble, is presumably coincidental. (As we now
know, many financial institutions in the Muggle universe are
also run by greedy and untrustworthy goblins.)
----------
@del rio
Will you make your point more strongly why we shouldn't want to
disconnect ourselves entire from a time of lords and peasants, of
knights, hacking one-another to death, for the smallest of slights?
Perhaps healing begins only once you've made the source of pain go
away, when you've developed the courage to balk expectations and
simply walk away.
We needn't look to the past and see relatives, you know. I simply see
different people -- almost different things, and not ancestral ones;
ones I wish knew the self-aware states possible to many of us, proved
actually worthy of remembering, emulating, commuting with, without
this really amounting to wrong-headed fancy, a regreful waste of
time.
It may be that it requires "disciplined willpower to divine the
medieval experience of Art," but it surely more requires an evolved
ability to see things straight, and, in my judgment, an ability to access
mental states that are significantly inferior to your own; and I'm not
sure the two can go together. It might well be impossible to be a
Medieval historian (or historian of the Medieval Ages, if you prefer) --
what a fascinating, and quite possibly true, thought!
@helpmehannah
Re: The fact is there has been no serious public scandal surrounding
the cast (Mr. Radcliffe's recent admission about his issues was not
dragged through the public eye), that all the young actors in the film
seem to have matured as a group as pretty straight forward and
regular people with the potential to become skilled in their craft or
move on to other pursuits.
These films are a progression as the books are.
As for what is more entertaining, a repeated group of adults getting
drunk and losing consciousness in movie after movie or a group of
films that strung together that tell a story... well, juvenalia has
nothing to do with age now does it.
The kids have "matured" into a time when they will spend the rest of
their lives as royalty, where the public will mostly constrain
themselves to see royalty as regal-but-plain stalwarts, and where
royalty will consent to make it very easy to imagine themselves this
way -- not insisting on dragging their whatever erroneous
misadventures/wanderings through the public eye. At some level we
understand that behind the scenes they're uncentered, skitterish,
unstable, fully-dependent and mostly-infantile catastrophic messes,
but they are constituted to stand erect and do what is expected of
them while in public, and to do what they can to at least attempt to
blanche/fagellate anything interesting and unexpected out of their
personal lives as well.
Their parents got to be individuals and free and genuinely interesting
-- even if now mostly just seen as pompous, absurd, scene-
crowding/stealing douches; these kids are the relief from true
740
a parent-centered anticlimax.
But there it is-- we may grow up in a magical world, but
sooner or later we turn into boring grownups-- so don't
worry, Andrew! (Shepa Dorje)
@Shepa Dorje
This doesn't help: "pretty brainy responses for a kids movie!
I love to see folks exercising their grad school muscles."
This does: "HPATDH2 displays the book's major plot weaknesses--
so much depends on random chance, like it happening to be Draco's
mom who examines Harry, or Harry stumbling on Shape in time to
get his all-important memories.
I'm not impressed with Daniel Radcliffe-- he just doesn't seem to
have much character. Sorry, I said it. The parts of the movie that
shone for me were when the grand old actors roused to the defense
of the castle-- the kid's parts were like Gap ads in comparison.
----
Nobody is remotely suggesting "oppressing homosexuals"
unless you think that gay people living openly and freely,
having the vote and the right to free speech, living where
they choose, owning property and businesses, having higher
than average incomes and education, constitutes
"oppression". (_bigguns)
----
The New York laws won't go into effect until the end of the
month. And I don't live in New York State.
But yes, PEOPLE IN NEW YORK STATE have just had their
real marriages devalued because they have been
"downgraded" to "partners A and B" instead of husbands
and wives. The very concept of marriage in New York has
been REDEFINED from a real marriage to a pretend gay
marriage with partners, and a kind of "best friends with
benefits" relationship.
Long term, I believe this will result in fewer traditional
male/female couples bothering to marry, because the
tradition of marriage is demeaned....it isn't special or
important anymore, it's something any pair of gay guys can
do as a joke (see Savage, Dan).
I believe that NEW YORKERS themselves had a right to vote
on this, and that right was taken away from them. I can only
hope they rise up to remove their corrupt legislators who
were bribed and coerced to pass this bad legislation, and
hopefully, in time, like Iowa, they will pass a Constitutional
Amendment to define marriage as a relationship between
ONE MAN and ONE WOMAN.
Hint: you don't get to say what makes OTHER PEOPLE
suffer. I believe that gay marriage is causing a lot of
suffering, if nothing else, simply in the way it is fracturing
society, and harming the Democratic party, and might result
(again) in Republican wins, because the Democrats are
744
(again) so vested in a social issue they can't see the forest for
the trees and reveal they are woefully out of touch with the
public.
(And Beans: the reason YOU DON'T CARE is you don't have
kids, so you don't care about the future. For you, it's all
about YOU, and your lefty creds. If you have to sell out the
rest of humanity for that, it's A-OK with you.) (_bigguns)
-----
I continually post the anti-religion screeds here back to
places like the Jewish ADL and NOM and other faith-based
organizations that wish to protect ACTUAL religious
freedom -- not just demean any people who believe, in favor
of lefty social policy. (_bigguns)
Pixie play
Laurel/_bigguns believes that legalizing gay marriage is a VERY BIG
step towards the end of civilization. Fundamentally what it does,
according to Laurel, is weaken the ethical bedrock which not just
strong marriages but civilization are/is build on -- sacrifice,
selflessness/other-concern, duty; promoting instead instant, nixie-
pixie whimsical gratification, whose aerial insubstantialness is to be
understood as finally reaching the higher plane. You combat it, and
you become rightwing -- even if your entire past has been a voting
record of middle-of-the-way, steady-as-she-goes democrats; but she
takes on the burden -- truly -- mostly out of faith to goodness -- to
you -- anyway.
Others believe Laurel/_bigguns probably isn't aware of how her
defence of marriage is mostly based on a distaste, a repulsion for gays
-- something she reveals, so believeth they, starkly, in near
essentializing gay "relationships" as two people so self-involved that
basically no intertwining, no relationship! ever takes place. They
believe that only at some level does Laurel believe homosexuality is
gene-determined, for everywhere in her portrayal of them does she
show she most deeply believes them spoiled, laggard second sons,
745
@Jake007
Re: Are child molesters "gene-determined" in your learned opinion?
No. They're sufferers of child-abuse/molestation/incest, just like all
conservative Christians. Children who've been abused end up
possessing voices, parental alters, in their heads, which tell them they
deserved the abuse -- a near life-saving measure, for it allows them to
believe that those they were and still are most dependent on, i.e., their
parents; their mothers especially -- weren't so much intent to hate
and hurt them but to do what needed to be done to help them; that
they've been bad, simply for being weak, needy, and vulnerable, and
seek out throughout their lives weak dependents -- people like
themselves -- to victimize/punish for their own dependency and
innocence. For their being truly innocent, they are sinful, and mostly
deserving of punishment: this is the "logic"/"truth" that drives pretty
much the whole lives of conservative Christians and child-molesters.
@jake007
You're welcome, Jake. I hear you, but please note that I however do
not think I'm over-generalizing: I truly believe what I said.
-----
@Patrick McEvoy-Halston
You know, Patrick, I honestly think you write sincerely, but
you are so obtuse that I often literally can't tell what you
mean or how to respond to you. But I'll try to answer your
allegations.
I do not have any distaste whatsoever for gays or lesbians.
I am not repulsed by them. I am not "squicked out" by gay
sex (or anal sex). I know a fair number of gay people -- at the
747
_bigguns/laurel
Re: No wonder you think "Jews have a secret cabal that punishes
people who speak out!" -- YIKES.
You have taken to LOUDLY pointing out how you're reporting
749
_bigguns/Laurel
Re: In point of fact, the only really hateful, malevolent scum-like gay
people are the ones I have met HERE ON SALON, who insist on
attacking and threatening ANYONE who opposes their views.
You do work to essentialize gay relationships as less serious than
heterosexual ones; you do work to make heterosexual relationships
seem where the important stuff of civilization -- what amounts to the
bedrock: duty, selflessness, commitment -- takes place. I stand by my
assertion that you work to make homosexuals in general -- not just
the (quote-unquote) scum-like ones you are afflicted with here --
seem, at best, not serious: as, I've suggested, spoiled second sons, not
especially taken to duty or purposeful labor. Parasites.
Re: The economic recession (or depression) is not related to gay
marriage; however I am increasingly appalled that many of the
brightest and most potentially effective political entities of our
750
Jake007
Re: Whether you want to believe it or not, you are over-
generalizing, in at least one regard. My wife and I are conservative
Christians -- and so are our four children -- and none of us were
molested as a child. Maybe we are the only six in the world, but
that's still six more than zero : )
Well, you're a "conservative" Christian who is at ease discussing
civilly, familiarly, at a largely liberal website. Further, you seem good-
humored and loving: since you're surely a fount of inspiration and
growth, I am hardly mostly interested in showing how ill a person
you've become owing to your background, and more in mind to clarify
what I mean by "conservative." Very best to you.
re: Imagine the uproar here if I stated that all homosexuals were
molested as children?
A conservative Christian can expect to get in real trouble over this;
the liberal but psychoanalyticaly-inclined can most likely expect to
simply be ignored -- 40 years out of date, and all: they REALLY ARE
beyond the pale. : )
Jake007
Okay Jake: yes, if you do not find natural kinship with liberals and
find it instead with conservative Christians, then GUARANTEED you
have suffered from child-abuse, from mother-neglect/misuse -- every
conservative embodies their early trauma, even the inventive,
charming ones (we saw more of them in the '60s and '70s, when
everyone was inflated to be essentially more liberal, more permissive
-- witness the William F. Buckleys); every liberal, more evidently,
their early good treatment and care.
There are no "six exceptions." I was playing to the part of you that is
good, that aspires, not interested in simply sinking you into reject.
Are we really now further along?
Moronic
Okay Jake: yes, if you do not find natural kindship with
liberals, and find it instead with conservative Christians,
then GUARANTTED you have suffered from child-abuse,
from mother-neglect/misuse -- every conservative embodies
their early trauma, even the inventive, charming ones (we
saw more of them in the '60s and '70s, when everyone was
inflated to be essentially more liberal, more permissive --
witness the William F. Buckleys); every liberal, more
evidently, their early good treatment and care.
There are no "six exceptions." I was playing to the part of
you that is good, that aspires, not interested in simply
sinking you into reject. Are we really now further along?
Just moronic. Even from someone who generally despises the
mouthbreathing drooling right this is just idiotic.
May I remind you that in our parents day it was considered
impolite to discuss politics and religion (the longer I live the
more I realize they knew what they were doing). In fact it
wasn't until the 90's where am radio blowhards made it
popular to spout about politics and be proud of being a
misinformed ignoramus.
Thus, throughout history politics was not any sort of litmus
test for friendships and among many people they still aren't.
Imagine that. (atyourthroat)
@atyourthroat
Re: May I remind you that in our parents day it was considered
755
impolite to discuss politics and religion (the longer I live the more I
realize they knew what they were doing). In fact it wasn't until the
90's where am radio blowhards made it popular to spout about
politics and be proud of being a misinformed ignoramus.
Thus, throughout history politics was not any sort of litmus test for
friendships and among many people they still aren't.
I think there are periods of time throughout history where everyone is
more in mind to count themselves amongst people rather than go at
one-anothers' throats, and I think our parents did know a good
stretch of such times -- as I've said, as many have noted, a few
decades back everyone, even the conservatives, for example, seemed
permissive -- liberal. I think you're right to favor those times, and to
disparage the '90s on (I would go earlier, and disparage the late '70s
on), but still think politics IS a litmus test for friendship -- you can
know what KIND of person someone is, if you know the kinds of
voices they find familiarity with.
Pity you didn't bring up the fact that once the all-'round good feeling
for being prosperous and American died down (i.e., our parents'
time), the left left for the coast and the right stayed fly-over: when
actual personality-differences became more inflated, more tabled, the
different-of-opinion no longer much wanted to remain close enough
to one another for there to be any point finding out the politics of
your dinner guests. That is, it wasn't mostly about economic class, but
about how your neighbor "smelled."
@Patrick McAvoy-Halston
"Prediction: 5 years from now you won't suggest any such
thing: for well-raised/loved/praise-worthingly self-satisfied
you will mostly be keeping your head, while the regression-
prone, primarily DENIED -- conservatives, rightwingers --
will, through their inevitable regressions, show more starkly
the nature of their actual "inspiration."
Well, I remember one insight from Freud: he pointed to "the
narcissism of small differences."You seem to be seeing a Black
756
@benthead
Re: Now, it's true that Michelle Bachmann and I, for instance, see
the world quite differently. But in the big picture, our ideological
difference is a tension *within* modern Western liberalism (in the
broad sense). She's a lawyer; she and her husband own a private
therapy practice; she's a *woman* holding political office, for
goodness sake. She's running for US president!
In my opinion, Bachmann is who she is because she is modern *and*
reactionary. Her worldview is one kind of adaptation to the
uncertainty of our current modern predicament; my progressive
adaptation (as a middle-aged female professional, like Bachmann,
but one who turns to the left rather than the right) is another.
She's not my opposite. And she hardly offers proof of childhood
abuse just because she takes an extremist reaction to the
contemporary world.
757
[. . .]
deflect the masses. You are there to collect a predictable resource. It's
not about learning, science, but recharging and sacred rite.
---------
her out of the bar and into the elevator, where he said, "Don't
take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting and I
would like to talk more. Would you like to come to my hotel
room for coffee?" This is what she had to say about the
encounter:
Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your
genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and ... yawn ...
don't tell me yet again, I know you aren't allowed to
drive a car, and you can't leave the house without a
762
Who knew Dawkins had such flair for creative writing -- and
for being a dick? OK, so, many people had already concluded
the latter from his atheistic pomp -- but, being an arrogant
nonbeliever myself, I resisted such a reading of him until now.
He's of course correct that there are much worse things going
on in the world, but that's a crap rhetorical move meant to
belittle and silence. It's an argument that could be easily made
against Dawkins' own work: Why are you arguing over
whether God exists while children are starving in Africa.
[. . .]
He went on to make fun of Watson's defenders who have
pointed out that she was "stuck" in the elevator with the man,
whom she hasn't directly spoken with until then: "No escape?
I am now really puzzled. Here's how you escape from an
elevator. You press any one of the buttons conveniently
provided."
Clearly, Dawkins has never experienced what it's like to carry
around the fear of sexual assault, as most women do on some
level. Myers helpfully explains why fear in this particular
situation would be understandable: "Try googling 'elevator
rape'. [. . .] All that said, though, it actually sounds like
763
true resistance "there." You'll help take down actual good men,
leaving those who know how to tend your needs in ways you find
immediately satisfying, but are quite sinister. You'd take down those
few around who could actually lift you up.
It was probably to the writer's discredit that she DIDN'T take him up
on his offer. Someone should write an article about that.
-----
@ramparts
re: Looking fromn the photo at how geeky Dawkins is I'm certain
he's had to deal with a lifetime of rejections by women. Guys like
him who gain a position where they can lash back often times take
the opportunity to do so with gusto.
Dawkins obviously harbors many years of resentment towards
women and his angry over-reaction against this woman reflects all
of that pent up hurt. It explains his juvenile behavior, but it does
NOT excuse it.
-----
Oops!
Well, I've just learned that Dawkins was not the "accoster." I so
assumed it I blurred my way through the evidence. I took this as a
prompt to actually watch the video as well.
So my guess is now that she was not attracted to this guy; she was
repulsed by him -- and I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out he was
a creepy, because I suspect he is the kind of guy who is perhaps
foremost attracted to victimizable women: people like Rebecca, who
communicates in her every exaggerated kick-ass gesture that the
world foremost is a threat to her.
Seeing the video, is it possible to imagine Dawkins being attracted to
her? I would say actually a bit yes. Even though I stand by my
assessment of him as MOSTLY well-souled and mature, there's
enough of the hurt geek in his well-expanded-upon personality (as
there is in other wondrous "douches," like Ebert and Krugman) to be
drawn to pretty, clearly-vulnerable coltish women, charmingly
making every effort to insist themselves all grown up. If he had, she
would have spurned him, but not as effortlessly just lambasted him --
even with him being a married man and all. She's kinda the "Girl who
kicked the Hornet's Nest," and he's the man she's never really known
who'd, not only mostly do no harm, but mostly provision the
opposite.
In any event ... The most important thing to note IS that it is likely
time for good-souled baby-boomers to take their fall (it is appropriate
that this guy mostly remain anonymous, and Dawkins to stand out so
for our accosting). Their well-being and self-satisfaction makes them
an affront to our consolidating Depression mindset; serves as a
reminder of the kind of tasty goods whose eager partaking, foremost
doomed us. Rebecca and her ilk can accuse and destroy because
establishments know they can just assume them, just so long as they
ensure they can go about their ostensibly righteous destruction
against ostensibly horribly-empowered opponents without reprisals;
767
@M.Fast
People are objecting to "creepy" because we're all hearing the word
applied now, not in service to precision and fact, but to communicate
that what we're up to is not really so much a matter of conversation
but about repeatedly cuing how we're LONG past the point of debate
and simply into the execution of sentence. Those out there who fit
well with tyranny -- and decimated specimens, warped, insecure
feminists like Rebecca do because they can be purchased so easily by
guaranteeing them satisfying reprisals to male enemies (and their
stupid, servile female defenders) that will never stop making their
appearance -- increasingly intuit that they will be given unchecked
license to "resolve" every inner tension by unleashing wrath upon
768
deserving "victims," and are cuing us all to this fact while enjoying
their practice run -- their first exercise completely outside restraint --
by applying the word "creepy" to near every man in sight. As they
grow more sure, the usage might well lessen, but each use will spell
out more doom.
[. . .]
[. . .]
769
Why
The obvious reason, as stated by a previous poster, is that we do not
sufficiently love our kids. We still send them to school to humiliate
them, abandon them to testing that will tell them that what they are
are all potential misfits that need to be kept under constant, if distant,
surveillance and control. We like them this way: a whole nation of
little Big Macs, so still inherently sloven, slacking and ill-defined we
have just cause to round them up and send them off to war or prison
or low-paid assistants-to-aging-boomers life-long servitude, without
much accord for their rights as affirmed human beings.
Some people in this country have experienced the long and slow
growth in empathy that can happen when one generation of mothers
gives to their daughters slightly more empathic treatment than they
themselves received. These type would make teaching the most
respected occupation. Others have grown not at all; are barbarians;
and if left to their own would make education nothing but a lengthy
series of humiliations and hurts, and life would be for their children
mostly about recovering from hurts, not generating anything exciting
and new. "Society" would sit still for milleniums, which was the case
for our earliest ancestors, who had just barely arisen from the muck,
and true kindness had not yet come in the universe.
We do not respect teachers, but we make our ivy-league professors
into old-world gods. We cannot allow teachers full respect because
that would make us truly in spirit democratic, which we aren't
comfortable with because it puts ultimate authority, ultimate
responsibility, too close to home. We sense that our own psychic
makeup is such a disorded mess that we need institutions, distant
770
---------
and a better source of eggs, which means eggs that are lower
in cholesterol and higher in nutrients.
[. . .]
[. . .]
----------
-----
Bears
RE: It would give you and your husband a "baseline"; enough
money to buy healthy basics like meat, milk, cheese, fresh
vegetables, bread, cereal -- and then if you WANT to experiment
foraging or creating low-cost budget meals: more power to you!
Many people are struggling today, and would truly benefit from
articles on clever ways to economize, budget and save money.
But playing with food insufficiency is just plain stupid. At a certain
point, it won't work anymore. What if Salon ceases publication?
What if the road crew has to cut back, and your husband loses his
job cutting brush? What about if your garden fails? What if winter
sets in early? What if you became pregnant?
I think we get closer to what she is (and good numbers of her
generation are increasingly) about if we imagine that, after Salon
ceases publication, the road crew cuts back, her husband loses his job
775
cutting brush, her garden fails, the winter sets early, she becomes
pregant, her first thought thought is on how much nourishment she
might take from carving out chunks from fretfully imaginative people
like you, who have no clue that this all, the real reality of it -- that
clearly, would so scare you -- might just even better suit her mood.
She is making posts on a smug, beans-and-greens, baby-boomer-
pleasing/placating kind of site, and, admittedly, looks to be all about
youthful experimentation and foodie play -- of the kind that might
invite the understanding and appreciative baby-boomer elder to still
want to wizen by cluing or even startling her (as needs be) to her true
straits, and thereby better the resources very much available to her --
but what she is, I think, is getting closer to this type: someone who
can't but forage out for sup because her primal instincts are finally
being unloosed, and, with the overall environment increasingly
responding to /echoing them than to the admittedly still-in-place,
effeminate "food stamp" safety nets, this time -- given the leverage --
there's no tightening back in the beast:
http://nplusonemag.com/mother-nature-s-sons
I'll try and respond later this weekend on this subject. It's an
important one, that delineates how the baby boomers are without
their knowledge, with them actually sort of dumbly playing into it,
being zooed while the rest of us are getting busy engaging the wild --
such a neat but true "turn" from trite simplicities like gentrification
and liberal class retreat.
-----
spirit much the same as you; and so you mostly delight in her
adventures, with only a cautionary word to ensure she doesn't, owing
to inexperience, make that one youthful, arrogant misstep that you
know would stop her adventures cold. And so you viraciously defend
her, while gently cautioning her (here, even Laurel has stepped back
her attack a considerable some -- gauging Felisa mostly now a martyr
["I respect your staunchness, but you hurt yourself more than you
have to"] rather than a fraud), and she modestly but appreciately
thanks you for your support.
I would suggest, however, that you all consider seeing her as -- and
I'm sorry for this, Felisa -- a worse sort than the actual foodie you
once had in mind to destroy: Gerry Mak, the struggling, unemployed
20-something who actually went on food stamps, but to buy pretty
much anything! he wanted so to find himself eating better than he
ever had before! Mak, certainly as he was first presented to us, with
pretty much his food stamp-purchased cases of Perrier, was an
affront to everything decent: in his tough times he found means to go
about life pretty much pheasant hunting-pleasantly along, leaving you
with no one to sympathize with, no one to tend to, no one to remind
that even in depressed America it's still not the Medieval Ages, dear:
don't martyr yourself, Gerry Mak; I can tell you means to make that
foie gras/grass-fed .../blueberry fanna cotta stretch over two meals
rather than the one you had planned, before whistling in tomorrow's
lobster cognac -- why not? -- one day ahead, if you only follow how in
the same straits I cunningly made my batch of eggs-and-leeks
whatever garbage goo last two whole weeks rather than the single one
I had planned! Mak is a genuine foodie (though he looked at last
sight to be repenting his truly-glorious achieved heights) --
fundamentally a lover of ease, a specialist in refined taste, a friend of
conversation and (therefore) of the salon, if not quite, maybe in its
present form, as clearly of Salon -- while Felisa is a fraud: not because
she might actually have money behind her she isn't owning up to --
there is a sense that, even if the case, this is of no import -- but
because she foremost isn't actually one of the foodie you; closer, is she
777
you're farmers' cattle and on and on about the benefits of farm life,
when the care-taker farmers themselves are even now leaving as the
wild spreads and overtakes, with the doom of wolves already even
now more than one step beyond just a loud chorused, chilling howl
and an increasingly-close check-in; because she knows you're not so
much potentially saged kin as you are, if things get really
neanderthal-stark desperate, to be categorized as last-ditch food
supply, Felisa is taking advantage of your self-absorbed, past-relevant
"signaling" to but fix the clarity of her understanding of who she now
is -- thinking of, and further respecting, the old ancestral, pre or
contra-civilization voices she knows she will increasingly be attending
to and be influenced from.
I am principally a Salonista, but I would encourage you again to check
out N + 1's thoughts on this new type. See the clear hunting wolf here
in omnivorant, badger-foraging clothing.
-----
The Wait
---------
Felisas articles (Salon):
How my hippie parents turned me into a consumer
How I learned to stop worrying and love football
How the recession turned me into a scavenger
780
----------
Pity the children
Re: She remained beautiful and unfriendly, but now completely
irrelevant to me. As is so often the case with a bully, I learned later
that C's family life had been particularly unsavory during the year
she picked on me.
She had become completely irrelevant to you, but once again and it
looks like for the longterm picked up relevancy in your now for some
reason having to chastise her further -- in your following noting her
absolute inability to "blanche" you, given your acquired superhero
signia of popularity and friends, with you situating in her the
principle seat of victimization and private misery. Pity you didn't also
learn later that bullies pick on people who best represent their --
you're right -- victimized selves, but your putting your head down and
scuttling along tells us what we need to know: you're still the bullied
person she keyed in on because she sensed your already-bullied
status would allow her to perfectly engage the rather more pleasing
role of the tormentor rather than the tormented, and are hoping to
work out a pretend victory against tormentors closer to home than
her -- but that you cannot even now manage to face at all -- by
effecting some kind of satisfying turn-about upon her.
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
(addressed to Mr M-H, whose comment is above)
you DO recognize that what you are doing (accusing the writer
of this article, whom you have never met, of being weak) ... is
itself a form of bullying?
You have wrapped your point up in an enormous number of
words, but the bottom line is that you are simply attacking
her, and you do so under the guise of educating her, which is a
particularly revolting way of trying to tell someone that you
think they are weak.
Wisely, I think, Ms Kho will likely not give you the rise you are
seeking to provoke from her. But I'm quite happy to call bulls
%$t when I see it.
Re: the misuse of the forum to project and work out one's own
personal issues - have you looked in the mirror lately?
(mateomateo)
-----
ignore Paddy McHalston-Klein
He's a good example of a rare breed - a well-spoken moron.
He has a certain way with words, but when you look at the
actual content of what he's saying you discover it's pure drivel.
(Sour Scribe)
@mateomateo
784
This isn't simply somoeone telling us how she set herself free; it's
someone who's taking advantage of a spreading environment which
buttresses and praises those who'll lose themselves to lies, while
pretending absolutely different, and which will come, which IS
COMING, at the expense of any irritating counter who smells the rat
and is keen to point it out too. The mob is trying to blob out sane
response -- it aggresses; and the only sane response response is
letting it know you're cany to it and won't be backing down. It's about
self-defence, your survival, too.
People who are bullied at school inevitably have been bullied FIRST
at home. Bullies pick on them, sensing their already-victimhood: in
picking on them, they become that much less the kind of person who
is foremost a victim themselves. This author is quite willing to dwelve
on the family abuse inevitably to found driving bullies, but not at all
interested in exploring if something of the same is at work in
producing those who'll prove their victims. In a sane world, we would
all notice that, and direct her attention to it. In a different
environment, one in which sanity is secure or on the ascent, I would
reply with much less fight. Believe it or not, I mostly do wish her well,
but not at my expense.
@Patrick M-H
You're kind of a prat, aren't you? In your world, everyone is
"mentally ill" except for yourself, is that it? What a sad little
life that must be for you, being the only healthy person on the
planet.
I have to say that the last time I saw my Grade 1-12 nemesis,
she had gotten so obese that I had to look twice to see if it was
really her. She was always heavy, but she used to have a neck.
I think she recognized me, but thought twice about talking to
me because I was laughing so hard at her that I had to sit
down.
Karma's a bitch. (Aunt Messy)
785
-----
@ourwisemodel
re: You stood there on the sidewalk, charring with er like you "wre
too old friends." So you are still playing along with her fantasy. She
gets to treat you now like *nothing ever happened.*
Why didn't you say "Why were you such a bitch to me in 4th grade?"
Or "What made you decide to turn my life into a living hell?" or "Did
you ever get over the perverse satisfaction you got from torturing
another human being, or are you still doing that in your place of
786
employment?"
Or even, "I heard that your family life was really unpleasant when
we were in 4th grade. Is that why you were so mean to me?"
Look, I'll help out: dwelve a bit; please just start, just start
considering what your mom and dad were doing to you at the time
that served you on a platter for an everyday bully like me. I guarantee
they had made you someone who was ready to shrivel, perhaps
someone who felt bad enough about herself that she actually desired
and prompted further shriveling, and I simply took advantage of that
-- using you to enable my need to feel an empowered tormenter
rather than a cowed victim -- and/or responded to your masochistic
desire to show how your bad self had gotten the fair response it surely
deserved, that you were going to seek it elsewhere in life, on and on.
At base, I'm not someone you should be looking to get square with,
787
but a possible prompt you should learn to use to get you in line with
where you need to get looking. The way to get mostly fully past me, to
miniature me, despite all my awful bullying, incredibly just into one
of the people you once knew, the way to ensure you'll be a
compassionate parent and not just perpetrate the crimes you've
suffered from upon your children, is to focus on how your parents --
not me -- debased you. As is, you're likely just another parent who
maintains the near life-sustaining illusion that she has the stuff to
learn from the past and escape mistakes, without the capacity to
appreciate that likely inevitably for her not facing the real issue, she'll
be driven by inner haunts to look at her children the same way her
parents were driven to look at her: as deserving bullying punishment,
simply for being vulnerable and desiring of love.
If you're going to write about this encounter one day, I hope it's not at
some place where you so expect people have themselves been
sufficiently bullied to need to pretend you as having delightfully
moved on so they can pretend themselves the same, that all you've
ensured yourself are a lineup of 'you go girl!' replies. Peace."
Wow @Patrick
Based on the skimpy set of facts in her article, I'm trying to
figure out how you know so much about the writer that you
can accuse her of lying.
Also, what does "dwelve" mean? I plugged it into the
Merriam-Webster online dictionary, and "drivel" came up in
the list of words I actually might have been searching for.
(SoFla Kate)
Dear Cary,
I follow your column off and on, and I appreciate the way you
handle questions from all ages and types of people. I am a 56-
year-old man, married with a teenage son. I live in the town
close to where my parents grew up. I have relatives here that I
mostly avoid, even though I was close to some of them when I
was younger. My father died about 20 years ago from
complications of alcoholism. He was living in another state
(unintentional pun), and his family brought him back here to
die. I am pretty sure that they expected me to take care of
him, but I refused.
He had left us years before, and maintained very little contact.
When I told his family I wasn't going to be around to help, this
created a lot of hard feelings, and they set me up as a villain,
even telling the story to other people, their version of course. I
basically wrote them off, but have kept up marginal contact
with some of them. I don't really have many friends here and
would have left years ago, but my wife and I have good jobs,
my wife and son like it here, and my mother is here.
Now my mother, who is 87, is in a nursing home dying of
leukemia. She probably will only live another two months.
Since I am the only one of her children living here, I have had
to assume a lot of the responsibility for her care. My sister and
brother both live a day's drive from here. I owe my mother a
lot. Besides the fact that she took care of us as a single mother,
she also had to help me through an accident I had when I was
10 years old, which involved a number of surgeries; she made
sure we were housed and fed, and she pushed us to get
educations. My sister has a master's degree and my brother
and I both have Ph.D.s. She was a quiet person, and like many
women in her generation, she valued family and getting along
with others. She also served as baby sitter/daycare-giver for
one of my nieces and for my son before he started school. She
789
Tyranny of closure
My mother has contrived cunning means by which my duty, after I
insisted on my adulthood, was to never cause her trouble and to try to
790
appease her -- make her eyes light up! No time that I subsequently
lent myself to her, did I not feel once again taken: er, I don't exist
simply to delight you out of your depression. If your difficulty is
actually more like mine, and it probably is, in your being the child of a
single mom who clearly has steered and intimidated you all into
thinking her always selfless rather than, say, simply masochistic ("Oh
look at me, always thinking of other people and never of myself!") --
as forever after, even though she would ostensibly never claim such a
thing, rightfully, at least, in her full always service, though you were
no doubt already all along that -- and have all had difficulty never
allowing yourselves to distance yourselves too far from her, I would
recommend not seeing her. At some level, she might respect that she
raised a son who could resist her and guilt and everyone thinking him
the worst-of-the-worst, to aggressively demarcate at this time when it
easiest to disavow his true needs, that it's actually going to be about
him (and please don't lie to yourself: refusing your father was not you
remaining firm to yourself and stalwartly refusing to defer to good
opinion: it was actually easy, and probably actually mostly at your
expense, because it was an ideal way to show yourself loyal to the one
whose opinion of you you mostly need to fear, your [as the story goes]
betrayed mother). Rather than simply feeling guilty, as having missed
something you'll always regret, it must be suggested that just as likely
you might feel proud of yourself for finally this time not giving in -- so
much better than trying to take nourishment from what is actually a
false simulacrum: your giving your dying dad the bird. And
regardless, it's about time he, that you, did.
I'm guessing, though, the tale will end with her owning you the whole
of your life (and, my, doesn't that reflect badly on her!), with you
never escaping her preferred narratization of her and her use of you
("I owe her a lot!": no dear, you were pretty much born to make her
feel good; she pulped you good to nourish herself, whatever you-and-
your-sisters' accumulated shiny MA and PhD baubles, that, we won't
fail to also note, no doubt made your mom's eyes light up good!), and
you taking out the lifelong-accumulated frustrations from pains you
791
@ Patrick
I can't even be mean to you, because clearly you are in
tremendous pain and were, at least in your imagination,
horribly hard-done-by.
But please do try to remember that not every mother is
abusive or narcissistic. I'm sorry if yours was. But to project
your inner torment onto a total stranger is just...wrong. It's
not the LW's fault that you are suffering. (Dorothy Parker)
@Dorothy Parker
Alchoholic father. Abandoning, betraying father. Alchoholic,
betraying, abandoning -- self-serving -- father who at the end of his
life, would deny even more of you.
Selfless angelic mother, who is to be summed up by all she has given
her kids and all they rightfully -- though she of course would make no
claim to it -- owe her.
Son who wants to delineate for himself his ability to remain true to
himself in face of cowing further expectations and guilt, but has only
worked himself up to doing so in his safe trial run: when spurning
someone he's taken care to describe as obviously having more than
earned his spurning -- his father, an act he still takes care to also
communicate his loyalty to his spurned mother, as being perhaps
principally in service to her rather to himself. "You abandoned her
when she needed you most, so I'm ignoring you now -- fair turn-
around, asshole": and so our writer surely plays the puppet for his
mother's revenge fantasy.
I recognize this guy, and see what he's working himself up to but fears
there's no way he'll manage. How about from the very available clues
he has fortunately been able to give us, we try giving him the
encouragement he really wants and needs? Wakey-wakey, people.
792
@Dorothy Parker
Further, if there is something Freudian going on here -- and I'm with
you in thinking there is -- it is in how the writer portrays his father.
Very likely, he cannot admit to himself how he actually understands
his life alongside his mother -- as feeling abandoned to someone
devoted to principally nourishing her own unmet needs -- but still
finds way to punish her for her endless self-satisfying in isolating her
crimes in the person he has been made to feel permitted and
encouraged to resent and disparage, his father. The reason there is
such disbalance, with a father who ends up looking like he should
know he amounted at the finish to nothing that shouldn't rightly be
ignored, and who remains such a nothing he can fairly readily be
made sport for irreverant jokes, and a mother it looks like the worst of
crimes to harbor any feeling of neglecting at all, is owing to this
displacement.
@ Patrick
Never mind, dude. You're just off some kind of deep end. I
don't see any Freudian anything, I see you very blatantly
ranting about your own highly narrativized life and
attributing it to a total stranger that you claim you "know" and
"recognize" (hint: you don't, this is the Internet)...and I've just
read your other letters around Salon, and...forget it. (Dorothy
Parker)
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not visiting her at all than to tell her that. In fact, it is part of
LW's filial duty not to let his mother think that duty is his
motive for being there, but rather that he is there because he
wants to be with her at the end. In other words, he has duty lie
about how he really feels.
But the advantage of emphasizing duty is that it is primarily a
matter of behavior. You don't have to feel anything to do your
duty. You can even have the "wrong" feelings, and still do your
duty. If LW tries to force himself to have the sentiments
recommended to him, it will only make what he has to do
even more difficult. It is not in him to feel those things. But
telling him to do his duty imposes a much easier task, well
within his ability to perform. (disinterested spectator)
you don't want to be there but come to her anyway, the only way
this'll work -- other than you coming to enjoy your time with her -- is
if she is someone who is readily able to take from you even while
you're evidently not in mind to be supped. But if she is such a person,
and the fact that she is explains why none of you really left so far from
her that you're not all at least potentially available for a "late-night
snack" -- even with you being the meal of choice, your siblings live but
a day's drive off -- then the reason you don't want to be with her now
is because of the carnage to self composition that might follow when
duty demands than you lay down every self (defence, interest) in
deference to her, not duty. If LW listens to you, disinterested
spectator, he'll come in a knight to Duty, but Mother will make short
work of that ignoble spurning and leave him feeling royally screwed.
His only real compensense will be that he did what his siblings didn't;
but like he likely did with his father, in his in some way taking them
to task for their absence and neglect, he'll just further cast a shadow
on his mother's true legacy.
At the finish, LW, your true feelings showed you were agnostic
towards your mother. Whether you see her or not (though we all
know you will -- this letter served as the only resistance you were
going to permit yourself), time to focus on why all this selflessness on
her part still strangely left you in a state where some of us would
counsel you away from showing how you truly feel.
----------
THURSDAY, JULY 7, 2011
Go the F**k to Sleep
[. . .]
797
----------
Link: "Go the F**k to Sleep" and Tracy Morgan's comedy battle
(Salon)
------
801
I just wonder
how the other half lives.
This was, unexpectedly from its title, a wonderful piece. From
the early comments, though, you can see what the overall tone
will be: many folks see this 'back to nature' as a smokescreen.
For those of us who grew up with a tub of lard handy, this
particular essay rings hollow.
Good writing, really, but I've never met anyone who's tasted
truffle oil. (Pulcritude)
-----
Uh...lard?
Unless you live in a tree above the jungle canopy, I feel certain
that a pig farmer or abattoir lurks nearby. Lard rendered from
pork fat is beyond cheap---most butchers toss itand the
ancillary product is yummy cracklins for snacking or salads.
Pork fat is WAY better for you than any veggie oil, has a
neutral taste and a very high boiling point. Fries in any other
oil or fat do not make it. I have a friend in Northern B.C. who
hunts bear and does a real snout to tail by rendering bear fat
into lard and his pancakes with wild berries are like kissing
the hem on an angels gown. If youre really insistent on living
off the local land, find the oldest folks in your area who went
through the Depression and ask them how they ateor else
just continue to be the whining dilettante. (Panama
Borsalino)
-----
or butter. They all rely on some form of fat for most of the
cooking techniques.
It's not just aesthetics or tradition. We need fat soluble
vitamins. No matter what Beans&Greens gabbles on about
they're difficult to get from a vegan diet without heavy and
expensive supplementation. And they're nearly impossible
without fats.
It absolutely is hard to live without cooking oil.
Of course, this is where bulk buying and friends come in
handy. You might not be able to buy your designer extra-
virgin cold-processed olive oil hand-pressed by wizened
artisans from one particular valley in the Tuscan hills. But
four people can club up and split a 20 liter jug of canola oil for
a reasonable price.
And no, the fat you saved from that cut of meat is not "dog
food". It's full of those all-important vitamins. And it doesn't
take much to get those nutrients or make a tasty meal.
(anuran)
-----
Really Enjoyable
Thank you for this piece. I so enjoyed how, all at once, you
employed enough detail to: make us realize what we have and
take for granted (down to the specific detail of city dwellers
like me who currently have both a change jar and corner
store); give a growing sense of horror while keeping a sense of
perspective on how temporary and soon-to-be-fixable it is,
even admitting things you could do but don't; and provide an
excellent recipe that I'm going to prepare for breakfast right
now. I laughed at how much this felt like a funny, scary movie:
I was just so relieved it had a happy ending of found fat and
potatoes. The "happy ending" makes the recipe itself even
better. Well done! (Agniescka)
803
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Stories..
Beans and Greens- I completely agree with you. They don't
live on their own land, they beg-borrow and steal to make
ends meet, have neighbors that give them meat, milk, eggs
etc.
I think that these "stories" are mostly made up by a young
(childish) idealist that thinks a life of poverty is a glamorous
adventure. She seems to have grown up with these
adventures.(Grown up may be a bit of a stretch)
Felisa, do you pay rent? Do you have access to the whole 58
acres that you talk about or just a house? How do you afford
internet service? (Internet is a priority, but basic food needs
are not?)
I also live in the country and have cows and chickens. We do
all we can to help out our neighbors in need, but eventually
you see that one or two are just living in the area so they don't
have to get real jobs.
I live on a fairly decent income in these times and certainly
can't afford things like bacon, wine and coconut oil.
I would think that things for you would be less stressful if you
lived in your car and begged on a street corner nearer to a
806
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(Holly McLachlan)
-----
Adapting
Wow. Lots of haters out there! For those who say "oh, none of
us have ever done that, or know anyone who has ever used
truffle oil," I think a lot of us lived differently before 2008. I
would spend $5.00/day on a mocha coffee because I thought I
deserved it working at my crazy job in the big city. And then I
was unemployed and my high-minded ideals of never
stepping into a WalMart ended because they did have the
cheapest cereal in our rural town we had to move to for my
husband's job. So, enjoy the article for what it is--a story of
changes of life, adapting, cooking. Each of us experiences life
differently and through our passions; our kids, cooking,
Bunco, whatever. Oh, and if the author's articles drive you so
crazy, STOP READING THEM! (Caseystay)
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@NINALOCA
Nina, Felisa is a very nice young lady, with a lot of very
gourmet food tastes and a lot of naive and charming ideas of
"foraging and living off the land....FOR FREE".
I grew up in the 60s and 70s and I got a lot of that from
friends and schoolmates; this idea was all the rage 40 years
ago. Communes, Birkenstock sandals, the Whole Earth
Catalogue, yadda yadda yadda. Felisa is way too young to have
heard of any of that, so she must have gotten a hand-me-down
version from her parents.
Most people gave it up because honestly, it is tough way out in
the country and lonely (a bit better and easier today with cell
phones and the internet, but still) and it's not actually CHEAP
but kinda expensive (you need land and tools and seeds and
labor and fuel and stuff).
It is definitely NOT a solution to "I lost my job and my UI
benefits ran out". That's crazy talk.
That she's not thinking either "country/rural" or
"survivalist/forager" is clear because she is still spending the
pittance of income they DO have on soy sauce, olive oil,
coconut oil, key limes and other items instead of stuff like
dried milk, rice, flour, pasta, plain generic vegetable oil, lard
and other cheap, reliable menu stretchers.
I understand some of this, because frankly, I hope (AS GOD IS
MY WITNESS!) never to have to eat commercial white bread,
cheap hot dogs, margarine or powdered milk if I don't
absolutely have to, to avoid starvation. Been there, done that.
The solution is elegantly simple: APPLY FOR FOOD STAMPS.
Felisa and her husband would likely qualify for $300 in free
food (and the program is quite generous; you can buy
imported olive if you like, even truffle oil).
This is false, hair-shirt poverty -- a bit like whipping one's self
810
with a cat of nine tails to "beat the sin out". In this case, the
sin appears to be material well-being.
@Beansy
Just because YOU are healthy, Beans, does not translate into
"this is a healthy diet for other people". You may just be an
outlier. Or you may be a poor judge of your own health. We
could easily find a few outliers who are perfectly healthy (BP,
weight, etc.) eating at McDonalds! That doesn't make
McDonalds an ideal diet.
@Alkaline
Don't burst an aneurysm, sweetie. I was making an educated
GUESS, because Felisa states "she dreams about truffle oil".
Those are not the words of a poor rural mountain gal, foraging
off the land, but a urban hipster who has expensive Whole
Foods tastes. Most of urban hipsters I know will drink
NOTHING in the dairy department EXCEPT fat free skim
organic milk, and indeed, it does cost about $6.50 a gallon. (-
Greens&Beans)
-----
@AnnNonomouse
Thanks (I think you mean me!) and yes, I think Felisa is living
in a cabin her parent's used to own (or still own) and she is
paying rent, but it seems like very minimal rent.
It sounds like she has nice caring neighbors -- they gave her
elk meat! -- but has let her reserves run down to almost
nothing anyhow. How much of this is "poor planning" vs. how
much is "I'll see how little I can get by on!" vs. "I'm dead
broke" -- I don't know. She's a bit cagey on the details.
Yes, I think like many young people having wi fi internet is a
priority over food, clothing, shelter and heat. I know people
who have been FORECLOSED ON, and their children literally
thrown out of their own bedrooms, and those people still have
811
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@Leeandra Nolting
I agree. I think most country folks would be very OK with a
neighbor borrowing a stick of butter or cup of oil, and
probably say "honey, don't even bother to repay me!" I think
even SUBURBAN folks would do this. It's simple
neighborliness. I pity anyone with neighbors so mean or
parsimonious they won't loan you an egg or a cup of milk in a
pinch.
Now, doing it constantly: not good. I am not endorsing
mooching, just honest borrowing once in a while. And it goes
both ways, naturally.
As you say -- and good point -- mayo can be used for an oil in
some things. I have used it in cakes to substitute or oil or
butter and it works well; mayo is made out of OIL, EGGS and
seasoning.
I've also sauteed in Italian dressing when I had nothing else
on hand; it's mostly canola oil and vinegar. It won't work for
everything, but is fine to saute some strips of chicken for a stir
fry (it won't take much heat).
Country Crock is pretty gross IMHO, but yes, it's very cheap. I
wouldn't want to sentence anyone to eating margarine -- I
believe it is very unhealthy -- unless they are dirt poor and
nothing else is possible. Corn and canola oils (generic brands)
are not expensive and some house brands of olive oil on sale
are just as cheap. Lard is even cheaper than that. I'd only eat
margarine if there was ABSOLUTELY nothing else
whatsoever. (Greens&Beans)
814
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Greens-
My story- I have a small farm in rural Eastern WA. No "hired
hands" no employees. What comes in goes back out. Its a
heart felt commitment to no savings and no health insurance.
But we do well enough to take care of our needs and help out
in the community. Kids in school + homework= INTERNET
PRIORITY. Whereas gas is a priority over wine, canning
supplies over specialty oils and vacuum cleaner bags over key
limes.
I don't know Ms. Rogers or what parts of her storys are real
life. I loved the foraging articles and am a sucker for
sourdough. Very humorous and insightful, but would have
been just as enjoyable without the "feel sorry for me" pitch.
True hunger is something I don't wish on anyone, but to play
up (should I say play down) your life just to get the emotions
of the readers is fiction. These articles lead us to believe they
815
-----
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@LaurelGreenBeans
"...also a local map of NEXT DOOR Mapleton, Oregon, which
has a dozen supermarkets and is close enough that she could
walk or bicycle there (less than five miles)."
Well, Laurel, people say you make things up because, well,.....
you make things up. A lot.
The closest Safeway and/or Fred Meyer to Deadwood is either
in Florence, OR (32 miles away) or in Eugene (nearly 60 miles
away).
There are NOT a dozen supermarkets in Mapleton, OR. There
seems to be but a few mom and pop type stores in that small
community.
818
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@holly
You have absolutely no idea who you are hectoring and you
are so completely offbase in your assessment of me that the
urge to laugh and tell you to STFUB passed immediately and
all I could do was feel sad. It sucks to be poor and its easy to
feel as if your dignity is constantly under assault so Im going
to just assume you're not an asshole but someone whose been
fucked over and feels shitty.
BUT
If I take the time to say,'You can get 5 lbs of cheap chicken,5
lbs of rice and 5 lbs of beans for the cost of your expensive
oils" and you choose to see that as proof of hatred, contempt
and disdain for the poor thats on you.
Your concerns are at about Level 4 on Maslows Heirarchy of
Needs. Laurel and I are focusing on #1- physical survival.
When someone tells me they are hungry but then complains
820
that they need chocolate and EVOO and coconut oil because
fuckdammitlifeishardandicantbedeniedmhumanity it feels to
me as if I were a surgeon tring to perform an emergency c-
section but the patient starts bitching that the incision would
damage her abdomen and appearance and consequently her
selfimage and self esteem. Self esteem and dignity don't mean
jack if you're dead.Lets get you a little further from being dead
THEN lets worry about the other stuff.
Greens&Beans and I are from the same town. I wonder if its a
cultural thing, because I'm 100% with her on this one.If I had
$20 and needed to feed my kids for a week, I want her to give
me advice even if it means I feel criticized for my past choices.
I dont want someone to tell me- give the bones to the dog and
go ahead and get the coconut oil.
I volunteer with the homeless a fair amount. I cook,serve food
and donate handmade items and toiletries. I always take the
time to cook nice items, to cook them as if I were cooking for
honored guests and serve them as if they were paying
customers. I donate not my leftover items, but toiletries of the
same quality that I buy for myself.I also collect them from
others to donate. And I make things for kids and I make them
nice with yarn I buy or solicit myself because life is hard and
ugly and the poor suffer enough without having to be fed
donated slop and wear donated rags and cast offs.Nothing
pisses me off more than people acting as if the poor deserve
no better than some slop they half ass cooked,some ugly assed
dismal miserable undecorated shelter to sleep in and all that.
Individuals may not be able to provide for themselves more
than the basics.Organizations may struggle to provide more
than the basics. But whenever possible,after the basic survival
needs are met I believe strongly that people also need
beauty,that good tasting food and clean aesthetically pleasing
surroundings are needs not luxuries. They just arent the
MOST urgent need.
821
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-----
No
You have absolutely no idea who you are hectoring and you
are so completely offbase in your assessment of me
No. I am not.
I could be utterly incorrect about your age, sex, location and
nationality, but your lame, sick motivations are obvious. Your
retreat into pedantic nonsense is likewise, both foul and
822
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@beshok semaj
Of course if one eats a diet of raw foods one doesn't have to
worry about cooking at all (except for the use of a dehydrator).
Then one is being stupidly wasteful. It's been so well
established that it doesn't even need to be demonstrated
again. Raw food is much less nutritious than cooked food.
Meat. Eggs. Fruits. Vegetables. Flowers. Roots. All of it.
Cooking makes proteins much more readily available. It
gelatinizes starches. It breaks cell walls. You get significantly
more minerals, calories, protein and so on from cooked food.
In controlled experiments with the highest quality raw food
people on three to four thousand calorie a day diets could not
maintain body weight. In the studies of women of child-
bearing age even highly prepared uncooked foods in gorge-
yourself quantities were insufficient to maintain menstruation
in over half of participants. That's with modern varieties of
fruit which have undergone thousands of years of selective
breeding to be more nutritious.
There is no human society in recorded history or the
archeological record which subsisted mostly on raw foods.
Not one. Our near cousins the chimps and bonobos do. But
they have jaw muscles which go all the way to the sagittal crest
(which we no longer have), pouchy, muscular lips,
enormously stronger teeth (ours are like an ape's baby teeth),
and a significantly longer digestive tract. And at that they
spend 6-8 hours a day just chewing and digesting.
We are the ape which cooks its food. That is one of the few
universal defining characteristics of all human cultures.
823
(anuran)
-----
Well... I enjoyed it
Flame wars aside, I thought that was an excellently-written
article. It reminded me of my "getting started" time years ago,
when I used to comb through the couch trying to find enough
change to go buy Ramen.
I don't miss those days at all. (Dancing_Angel)
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-----
deer that sneak in and pilfer the produce from time to time).
They buy everything in what seems to me to be ridiculous
quantities or sizes (flour, oil, eggs) and yes, save up the bacon
fat in the fridge. My father-in-law even got into making his
own wine from those kit things. He filled about half of their
basement with the results.
I can't imagine them ever running out of cooking oil, even
back when they were living on the farm (not sure, though, that
they would ever have had coconut oil on hand).
So, to me this reads like someone who had idealized the rural
life, but who now has has gotten into it without having the
instincts.
Learn from this, do what the neighbours do and stock up in
quantity (on the cheap stuff -- and really, bulk canola is the
cheap stuff). And then, as other posters have said, feel more
free to borrow from them, but because you'll have bought in
bulk, you'll also have something to give back if they run low.
(Michael Mackinnon)
-----
@mammalicious
I got that info straight off of Google yellow pages. I don't live
in the area, but I can read a map! Mapleton is right next door
to Deadwood.
Even Felisa admits there are small stores in Mapleton, but
SHE DOESN'T LIKE THEM, so she won't even buy a STICK
OF BUTTER at such stores. I suspect she "has to go into
Eugene" because Eugene has a Whole Foods or other gourmet
emporium she LIKES better.
@Leeandra Nolting
I've chatted with Felisa several times about food stamps or
even food banks (which have no paperwork nor limits of
income, just "need"). She doesn't want to do it; she's either
826
too stubborn or too proud. (Or has some money she doesn't
want to reveal that disqualify her from the SNAP program.)
It also suggests this is a stunt, based loosely on "No Impact
Man". I don't believe a smart, educated woman would sit
there with NO FOOD IN THE CUPBOARD, and eat nettles,
when she could be eating cheese, meat, fresh veggies, fruit,
milk, bread and other healthy items.
Yes, I also said that "Country Crock is cheap but tastes awful".
Magarine is a chemical "soup" of junk vs. butter. But I know if
you are poor, you can get a big tub instead of one stick of
butter at the same price. I don't look down on anyone trying
to survive poverty. (Greens&Beans)
-----
writer by trade. And she could get FOOD STAMPS any day;
she choose not to. That's a very unusual choice, and we have
every right to question it. (Greens&Beans)
McLachlan. (Greens&Beans)
-----
12.9 mi
1417 6 St, Florence, OR 97439 map
Cleawox Market
13.5 mi
85150 Highway 101, Florence, OR 97439 map
Abhi One Stop Market
13.6 mi
85039 Highway 101, Florence, OR 97439 map
Lakeview Grocery
16.8 mi
19385 Highway 36, Blachly, OR 97412 map
Smith River Store
17.5 mi
16334 Lower Smith River Rd, Reedsport, OR 97467
Horton Market
21.7 mi
94636 Horton Rd, Blachly, OR 97412 map
LOW Pass Market
22.8 mi
22501 Highway 36, Cheshire, OR 97419 map
ALSO:
Waldport Food Share (a food bank that provides FREE food
supplies for needy families)
28.6 mi
*****
Felisa, my question is this -- is your problem more about a
snobbery for shopping at "down market" chain stores like
Safeway or Fred Meyer or Stop n' Shop -- OR that you are
deeply vested in shopping at the Whole Foods store (or
similar) in Eugene? and you won't "settle" for shopping
elsewhere? (Greens&Beans)
-----
832
-----
-----
@Felisa
I sincerely hope you get a commission on click revenue for
833
Old youth?
It has been suggested here that Felisa Rogers has been ganged up by
resentful, aging, menopausal boomers. Probably has been; but we
remember in her articles that she's not exactly been their biggest
supporter either. Felisa is about continuation of age-old traditions.
Keeping matrilineage, patrinlineage, intact; descendents keeping
faith to a blessed tradition; passing on with fidelity and love; one
generation to the next. Getting married by the same old tree whose
branches grandma used to scrape her teeth clean on. Except when it
comes to the self-indulgent boomers, who knew hardship and sparcity
only as a lifestyle choice -- letting it be known that heritage and
environment and grand/parents and the old hanging-on world were
at their service, never themselves to "it." In regards to the boomers,
tradition isn't about continuation, but exclusion. It becomes, not
about fidelity and love, but about crime and retribution -- it becomes
old, in a mean and twisted and unforgiving sort of way, pretending
them (i.e., the boomers) as a bastard aberation that strayed so far
from message -- and so readily! so maddingly flippantly! and so
damned near totally! -- they're to be at first heavily scorned at, and
then simply not to be brought up at all anymore.
Felisa is channelling the spirits of Depression-era grandparents, so to
sublimate herself into/with them. She's all about the icing on the
cake, but in her recipes she almost seems to be laying herself out bare
for their taking. Here are the spare and plain ingredients for my
(however savory) spiced nettle soup. (There's talk and evocation of
truffle oil -- but to show how rarely I'll indulge the real thing again;
how akin I am to you and your periodic Hollywood escapes to
834
LINK TO DEBATE
----------
King Ape
If what we were debating here was if there was some deeply satisfying
pleasure we have been missing out on had society enabled the more
primitive instincts -- not just male -- in us some play, I think we're at
the point where the onus is on the person intent to disagree with this
possibility. Not so much the male self, but the rather traditionally
male-seeming neanderthal, our TRUEST WHOLE selves, everywhere
we're learning/rediscovering, has been suppressed; our everyday
normal life is being revealed not so much as civilized, however
compromised, but as perverted -- in denial of who we really are. The
food we've been eating is too processed and finely prepared; our
delicate take on children (and child-rearing), so distorted to demand
stark reveals; criminals, vandals, too tenderly treated and
optimistically imagined; Pittsburgh steel workers dispossessed and
scrambling while East Coast literatti tea; Others' sensitivities and
rituals, too long in the way of common sense and what is really good
for our country. Distortion after distortion -- it's past time to get back
to bare knuckles, to cease this nonsense of being tolerant and civil.
Both Scott and MEW seem similar in that they've both had it with
patience and are FOR the melee -- neither of them (at heart) would
seem too discomforted if the Gods and Authority in their arguments
837
-----
MEW is victorious here, but in victory she mostly proves the essence
of poor, marginalized, emasculated Scott's point: that there is
something not just natural but GLORIOUS in our more aggressive,
primal selves, that feminizing civilization / sociability can only
understand as barbaric -- to be kept in check, if complete banishment
isn't possible. Scott is willing to miniature himself -- "I accept Society
838
----------
[. . .]
But if marriage equality happens in New York, legislatively
and not through the courts, it will have passed with
Republican support. Which will be embarrassing for the
White House. (They're New York Republicans, yes, but Staten
Island Republicans can go toe-to-toe with the Iowa GOP any
day of the week.) With the president still "officially " opposing
gay marriage, he won't be able to celebrate the victory -- or
criticize the failure, if the New York state Senate acts like the
New York state Senate and the talks collapse at the last
possible moment.
If it does pass, though, Obama will have a very nice
opportunity for a fabulous coming out party. (Alex Parene,
Barack Obama should come out for gay marriage already,
Salon, 21 June 2011)
---------
@sethew
1.) I do think THIS GROUP of polls that came out recently
reflect bias on the part of the people constructing them; polls
are only as useful as the questions they ask and the
methodology supported.
If indeed Americans are now solidly pro-gay marriage, than
MY OPINION should not be getting people riled out -- all
you'd need is an easy-peasy ballot issue and hurrah, gay
marriage for all. Clearly it is more complex than that.
We do have rights and they are ENUMERATED in the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and nowhere do they
address marriage (or homosexuality). They are about the right
of free speech, free assembly, the right to own firearms and
the right to own property and so forth. Gays already have ALL
THOSE RIGHTS (and had them long before women or blacks
did!).
Laws about marriage reflect our customs and traditions, and
go back to antiquity. If laws about same sex marriage are
840
You can live anyway you choose, but you can't ever be
married, because you are two men -- and you can't ever have
children, because men are NOT CROSS FERTILE WITH
EACH OTHER.
You are probably nice guys, but honestly: time to come down
to earth.
-----
Still havent answered the question, Laurie...
Do you tell your gay friends and family members that they are
among the same variants as incest and polygamy? No, really -
I want to know....do you? And if the answer is no, why not?
My marriage to my husband is recognized in my state - it is a
state's issue, right? You do know that we live in a
Constitutional Republic, don't you? Constitutional republics
attempt to weaken the threat of majoritarianism and protect
dissenting individuals and minority groups from the "tyranny
of the majority" by placing checks on the power of the
majority of the population.
No matter what you say, please go to bed tonight knowing we
have a marriage license. And that we are going to have
children. We are right here on earth living a life that you
abhor - and there is nothing you can do about it. And if one of
your grandchildren turn out to be gay, I really hope you keep
your online identity anonymous - you have no idea the
damage you would cause them. (Doc1976)
@laurel1962
Personally, I am for gay marriage / polygamy / incest MOSTLY ONLY
because of the bedrock who's for it -- the Salonistas, that you mock.
THERE IS a huge ridiculousness about them, in that they ecstatically,
enthusedly triumph things they would actuallly prefer ... that they
cannot ALLOW themselves to know too much about, because their
gleeful, righteous triumphing depends on a certain image they have of
ALL groups / ideas the rightwing, conservatives have traditionally
845
@laurel1962
Re: This seems like an "easy victory" and yes, they see marriage as
"romantic self-fulfillment" entirely without real obligation, fidelity,
sacrifice or dedication, so is cheap and easy to extend it to anyone
who claims to want it.
-----
848
LAW to give babies and toddlers (who have the best shot at
having a mother and father in a traditional marriage parent
them) to gay and lesbian couples.
Naturally gays and lesbians cannot have children by ordinary
means (lesbians always have the turkey baster, but many are
too old even for that) so they by DEFINITION are going to
make up a disproportionate number of potential adoptive
parents.
Look at Doc1976: he had a marriage ceremony with his
boyfriend, now he wants to ADOPT. He is a DOCTOR with
plenty of money to buy any kind of adoptive infant. Would
you want to be an ordinary middle class married straight
couple trying to compete with Doc for ONE OF THE VERY
FEW INFANTS UP FOR ADOPTION? OR compete on the
foreign market with him, when he has a huge income to travel
or hire legal assistance?
If you mean "older hard to place children", I know a few older
gay couples who are indeed raising such children. But YOUNG
gay couples refuse to consider this -- they want WHAT
STRAIGHT PEOPLE HAVE, which is a perfect tiny adorable
infant. And they often have the means to edge out ordinary
middle class straight couples in the competitive adoption
market.
If we want to talk about assisted fertility -- donor eggs, donor
sperm, surrogates -- that is a problem too. There are countless
celebrities who are at this moment openly abusing fertility
technologies designed for infertile STRAIGHT couples so they
can have a "gayby".
Most of these gay and lesbian celebs are not remotely infertile;
they are young and healthy. They just can't come to terms
with being in a non-procreative partnership and want "what
straight people have", which is an infant.
Most are so cruel and selfish that they do not consider the
needs of the child FIRST: that a child above ALL OTHER
850
-----
@Laurel1962
Re: Most are so cruel and selfish that they do not consider the needs
of the child FIRST: that a child above ALL OTHER THINGS needs a
mother AND a father, if not his biological parents, then a substitute
set of male and female. Anything else is not going to be the same,
and the child will have a serious deficit in his/her life.
First off, people who are eager-ready to scold people for their
selfishness are no doubt way worse than couples who'd marry
primarily for their self-pleasure: when they have kids, be sure they'll
communicate to them mostly that what they are is primarily sinful
and selfish, from the start denying their parents the love and
admiration they deserve for commiting themselves so selflessly to
them. Anyone who rants against selfishness is someone who
"learned" early that their own rightful claims were somehow rotten,
suspect, owing to them amounting to love toward something other
than their immature parents. When they rant they imagine their own
parents approving them for defining themselves as willing to give the
whole of themselves up to satisfy other people's (their parents') needs.
They have their own self-soothing in mind; they are being selfish.
Secondly, I agree that children really need both men and women in
their lives, and I really like that the current understanding of
marriage communicates this need. However, as important as this
need is, it is rather more important that they grow up in a loving
family, and it is far more important that marriage communicate
THIS. As is, traditional marriage doesn't: the barbaric couple that'll
851
-----
Patrick
Loud & clear. (g50)
-----
Apocalypse Cow
It's time for another special edition of cow talk, ladies and
gents and ... er.. Laurie.
Apocalypse Cow. We believe this is an allusion to the Bayeux
Tapestry, a 50 cm by 70 m embroidered cloth which explains
the events leading up to the 1066 Norman invasion of
England.
We would welcome any enlightenment on this subject from
that master of lighten himself...@Patrick McEvoy-Halston!
Bravo, sir. Tis a sore deed that you do so deededly. Also. Well
done.
Other Worthy Moo Outs:
@Doc1976...many sincere moos of happiness and
congratulations to you and your husband. If you ever tire of
saving lives, there may be a big future in flagging waiting for
ya. A worthy aspiration on this thread.
@sienar and @orange swan... valiantly guarding the
Normandy invasion from revision and moo(t) interpretations.
852
Link: Barack Obama should come out for gay marriage already
(Salon)
----------
River.
[. . .]
Really, Andrew?
You live in Brooklyn? That's just astonishing! Imagine a Salon
writer who lives in Brooklyn....oh, wait. ALL Salon writers by
edict must live in either A. Brooklyn (preferably Park Slope)
or B. San Francisco/Berkeley.
It's amazing how you guys manage to bypass every writer in
flyover country, thousands of cities, 48 states (and Guam and
Puerto Rico!) and all types of writers from every religion, race,
culture, ethnic group and economic level.
How many writers here are from (or working IN) the
Midwest? The South? The Southwest? Rural Maine or urban
Des Moines, Iowa? Arizona or Rapid City, South Dakota?
Huh. That would be NONE.
How many writers here are affluent, educated, WHITE, urban
and live on the East or West Coast? Huh, that would be ALL
OF THEM.
No wonder we have no diversity here of opinion or attitude or
lifestyle or awareness of how the other 95% of American lives,
works, thinks, dreams. No wonder you are clueless and wrong
855
style -- but what they mostly want you to know is not that, at base,
they're still of the working class, but rather that they're so much not
that that even being born a world apart couldn't prevent them from
junking it behind them, once independent and adult. They're showing
their essential modesty in a savy way that mostly works to highlight
their exceptionalism. They laugh when people understand them as
elite, as they know that, even in living in a way they casually, easily
admit to really, really enjoying, there is pretty much everyday
sufficient aggrievances, humiliations, to make plain what they still
mostly are, sigh, are at best modestly-empowered, and possibly most
truly, anonymous and small. And because those aggrieved at them are
so ignorant to jolt them to guffaw at the inflation and ridiculousness
of their visions rather than to secure and consider their truths, they
don't have to think on how their everyday true understandings of
what it is to live "at court," which serves as ready counter, both shows
them as not now merely newly arrived and makes them seem, I think,
actually part of the complicated but undeniable nesting of manners
and experience that produces the miracle of community, of civitas,
that rightly draws subsequent others in.
Yet there is a sense that that this is all quickly becoming passe.
Whereas before, to be relevant, to be truly part of "the discussion"
with the distinct, those in focus, those that matter, YOU'D BETTER
call this nexus your home -- or have gone to the right MFA schools, if
not -- I think it's quickly becoming a place that will ID you as actually
irrelevant, the wrong part of a publicly shared joke, really. It may be
that right now if you want to secure a place as a relevant
writer/thinker in the upcoming age -- which is different than just
feeling safely ensconsed as one -- your best bet would be to NOT
make the move to Brooklyn/Berekeley, as it'll make you seem
ungrounded, detached, flighty, vain, thin -- opposite of hearty, and
oblivious to the obvious. Better for you to really demonstrate your
essential groundedness, your true proletariansim, your relevance in
an age where bards must be of the same sinew and blood of the
suffering -- else just be boutique -- to have never left Indiana. I think
859
writers are cottoning on this. Look for more and more of them to
announce -- in what really amounts to a self-serving, tactical move --
to their being possessed of that (now special) something that drew
them, not to seek out New York, but to stay faithful to home. (Perhaps
too, to their never having been part of any signficant MFA program,
mostly out of sensed distaste for the kind of seekers, the enfranchised
mama-boys and princesses, who'd find themselves there.)
The future in writing, I'm sensing, may belong much more to the
Aaron Traisters (Pittsburgh) of the world than to the Rebecca
Traisters (Brooklyn). They'll be the ones society will highlight; they'll
be buoyed and sought out; and it's going to be bloody hard, as they
posit their beer-bellies and craggy appearances smack down,
immodestly, before us, to target them as they now really are -- elite.
Our cultural critics are going to have to get really good, or these
bullies are going to ride rickshaw ...
----------
Breach
Does anyone else get a sense that with Tracy Morgan and Russell
Crowe, some shells have hit the sides of a vast and thought-
861
impenetrable battleship, and for the first time made some significant
dent? Yes! This here ... this is the way!
The story ostensibly here is that if you attack Hollywood, no matter
your inner bulldog, you'll find yourself backing down and apologizing
while still finding a way to pretend you've stuck to your principles.
But it isn't.
Rather, as with Tracy Morgan, the story here is that the
establishment's ability to ostensibly back you down, is beginning to
seem cover for the fact that some means has been found to effectively
make a strike. After the fact with both of these two men, is that
neither really is going to take a lasting hit for their tirades. They have
been ostensibly put in a place by an empowered friend, not-at-all
associated with their mindset (a follow-up we hesitantly obliged for
Whoopi [with Gibson], but eagerly here with Roth). But with their
breaches, they are both are serving to successfully nest in the public
that there IS something intrinsically immoral and manipulative about
Jews and Gays. Mel Gibson was not permissible! Tracy Morgan and
Russell Crowe, are coming closer to just right.
Also, I am against circumcision. It's child hate. (Not much one for
God, though, either.) Can't agree with Crowe, because I think there is
intent in him to demonize people. It's not just saying what has too
long been obfuscated, and so must come out of you in a way to blast
through layers of bulk. Could be narrated this way; will be narrated
this way; but it's not mostly true. The soothing here, for some, is not
from seeing a more genteel way to handle differences, but from a
successful breach, without retraction.
@Patrick McEvoy-Halston
But with their breaches, they are both are serving to
successfully nest in the public that there IS something
intrinsically immoral and manipulative about Jews and
Gays.
If you really believe that, then I pity you. (Beans&Greens)
862
@Beans&Greens
RE: But with their breaches, they are both are serving to
successfully nest in the public that there IS something intrinsically
immoral and manipulative about Jews and Gays.
@ Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Being anti-circumcision is not the same as being anti-Semitic.
I personally know (and you can find in this thread) many
proud Jews who don't feel the need to have their sons
mutilated for an imaginary bloodthirsty sky-demon. There are
anti-circumcision groups in Israel. Circumcision among Jews
in western Europe and Latin America has dropped
precipitously - not out of fear, but out of recognition that
hacking off part of a helpless baby for "G_d" is a sick
unnecessary barbaric way of welcoming a child into the world
and into a religion. If anything, Crowe is given a pass here on
the crudity of his statements due to the fact that he has always
been publicly rude, crude, abrasive and insulting. I rather
think he would make similar comments about any group, not
863
@eshu21
re: Being anti-circumcision is not the same as being anti-Semitic.
I know this. That's why I said that in some contexts anti-circumcision
is about progress -- which would never entail hatred toward another
group, because progess is always about increase in empathy and love;
about helping the child, not demonizing then hunting the perpetrator.
However, it CAN mostly be anti-semitism. I've read through your
letters, and you're one of the beautiful reaching out to help stop abuse
of children, without yourself being hateful to those emotionally-
disturbed enough (cultural heritage can't move you to long appreciate
what-you-at-some-profound-level know to be abuse) to be driven to
do the tormenting. I know that circumcision has been too long
protected in America, and it is agonizing to be amongst those whose
efforts to do good are readily made to seem -- however absurdly --
evil. But please take care when taking advantage of the avenues
opening up now to finally make your argument more fully heard, as I
believe that many of the openings now owe to a public interest in
withdrawing the protections against select groups, in empowering
righteous demonization, and not to evolution in consciousness. There
is some of that too, though. My sense, not so much here with Crowe.
respectfully,
patrick
-----
Barbaric science
I think we will find that increasingly the "science" protecting
circumcision is going to be loudly questioned, that despite whatever
eras long surely protecting it, it's about to lapse and crumble very
quickly. But again, the reason will owe mostly to it being linked to an
effective means to legitimize anti-Semitism -- though every article will
864
take care to point out how this is NOT "their" aim, and how "they"
especially would be amongst the first to stomp-down those who
would use their research for such an end (so with it, also, a culture-
wide absolute non-tolerance amongst the civilized for blunt, loud
anti-Semites -- old models -- of the kind we get here at Salon). (True)
Progressives, largely unable to control themselves, will celebrate the
ostensible emergence of sanity over barbarism, of true clear-sighted
science over science in defiance of evidence -- false science. And with
this, they'll have spent some of their life and energy growing a worse
enemy they do not want to fight. I hope they're attentive to tone.
-----
@laurie1962
I personally see circumcision as child abuse, though I know of many
salutory liberal Jews, people who are heads above the level of sanity
and beneficence of most Americans, who practice it. (Their children,
who hopefully will be a notch better than they are, will hopefully
disfavor it.) But I think your fear about what an enlarging argument
against it means for Jews has real merit -- EVEN in liberal /
progressive communities, like those arguing against it in California.
For me, it's a matter of the time discrimination comes about. There
869
@Partrick McEvoy-Halston
Honestly, I have a hard time reading your letter; I can't even
quite tell where you sit on this issue.
I do NOT promote circumcision for gentiles; I think it should
be legal if they want it, but I don't think it should be pushed
on anyone for health reasons. There ARE health benefits, but
in western industrialized nations, the benefits are minimal.
It's a personal choice, and as such, there are "trends" and the
trend is away from circumcision for GENTILES.
However, don't expect it to just "die out" among Jews and
Muslims. Our traditions go back THOUSANDS of years and
we are not likely to give this up without a fight. I believe the
Constitution guarantees our right to practice our religion(s).
This is a harmless procedure that does NOT mutilate or harm
babies or adult men, has SOME medical benefit and is a
deeply cherished part of our history and faith. You don't like
it? Too bad.
I don't think the current California initiative will pass and if it
does, it won't survive on appeals. It is a clear cut affront to
religious freedom, and when justices get a glimpse of the
promoters "comic books" with racist caricatures of Shylock-
like mohels...I'm not seeing it upheld.
If it was ever criminalized, you'd obviously see Jews and
Muslims go "underground" and do this in secret. So you'd
have to empower some kind of squad of nurse practitioners or
physicians to do exams to "prove" little boys were not
circumcised and then to "turn in" the offenders for jail time
for "mutilating" their sons in keeping with their religious
871
faith.
Jews and Muslims together outnumber the gay/lesbian
population of the US, so imagine the problem in chasing
down and incarcerating EVERY PARENT of a newborn baby
boy. Frankly, I wouldn't want to be the legislators who pass
THAT piece of B.S. nonsense.
It's sad how these things, which are so extreme and out of the
mainstream (curtailing religious freedom) are so popular on
Salon, and so rigidly held. It's not enough to say "do whatever
you like within your own family"; no, you must be judged and
harassed and lectured and lambasted for an ORDINARY
minor procedure that has been done to babies for
THOUSANDS OF YEARS without ill affects, but suddenly it's
"torture and mutilation".
You guys missed great careers with fundie abortion groups,
gunning for abortion doctors. You have all the techniques of
thought-control and damnation and loaded phrases and
fanaticism down pat. (Laurie1962)
Intentions
Re: I don't have to. I have seen OVER 20 ACTUAL
CIRCUMCISIONS including my own child, you moron. I also do not
watch anti-abortion films, where they show regretful sobbing
women begging the monstrous grinning abortion doctor "not to kill
my BABEEEE" but the doctor cuts their baby up into pieces (while
the baby screams) in an OCEAN of red blood.
Do you have any idea how similar your tactics and rhetoric is to
that of the anti-abortion movement? Are you shortly planning to
have radicals execute mohels? The way Dr. Tiller was
shot?(Laurie1962)
----------
-----------
Tina Fey
"the Tracy Morgan I know...is not a hateful man and is generally
much too sleepy and self-centred to ever hurt another person."
The Tracy Morgan she knows can actually be angry and hateful. The
question I would have Tina Fey ask herself is, why does she find
appealing the sort of man who could reveal himself to be, who could
strongly sway, antigay? Why isn't she just drawn to better people?
Why do we idolize her so much? Is it to put a managable ceiling on
what we'll permit to be extraordinary?
-----
-----
Scriptorum
RE: Liberal Jews and Gays control the media. They run it, they
staff it, they are it. And they will make fun of and trash anyone they
damn well please, but woe to the man or woman who makes fun of
or trashes them. (Scriptorum)
The most emerging liberal voice is Chris Hedges', who maintains that
liberalism has become as exclusive, self-concerned, as unfair and
inert as you believe it to be. When you read his language of justice for
the working man, see how well anyone not typically understood to be
constituted of working stock, of pure blood, common man aspirations
-- of the Appalachians, perhaps -- could find themselves belonging
within it -- however much he may salute the gay community or what
not.
Liberals have been exclusive. The people they so eagerly disparage
have been victimized. But the people they have antagonized are WAY
877
worse than they. When the tide tends their way, how easy a time they
are going to have in rebuttal when many liberals are themselves
looking to distance themselves from the remnants of hippie liberalism
in favor of something stockier, and when the IMAGE of the
dispossessed minority is allowed to fade at a time when the casual
truth of who "they" everyday are, conveys an instant accusation
against them -- even if it's just simply their urbanity. "You've spent 50
years defending this! -- and against humble, unassuming, TRULY
tolerant, TRULY put-upon us!" Blood on the streets.
-----
@Scriptorum
Gays are prominent in the entertainment industry because a
number of us are very entertaining!
The biz is one of the most competitive in the world. If you
aren't pleasing a lot of people in one way or another, then you
are OUT, and there are a thousand people in line behind you
ready to take your spot.
Are you bemoaning the fact that 'your folks' aren't adequately
represented in the entertainment business? Well, then, maybe
you should go into show biz and see how easy it is. Start
producing media/entertainment, instead of just being a
consumer. You'd get an education, if nothing else. (willie99)
willie99
Gays are prominent in the entertainment industry because a number
of us are very entertaining!
The biz is one of the most competitive in the world. If you aren't
pleasing a lot of people in one way or another, then you are OUT, and
there are a thousand people in line behind you ready to take your
spot.
So gays are prominent in show biz because they are more willing to
please a lot of people in one way or another than people like
878
Scriptorum are. This may be reality, but do you think this reality sits
well with a public that hates the fact that their feeling the need to do
the same has made them effeminate, an affliction they are spending
much of their spare time compensating for? You'll draw ire with it,
because your success mocks, and demonstrates to many people what
is most wrong with America.
@Patrick
I don't really understand your post.
I don't think effeminacy is an "affliction". However, I DO
think that a lot of homophobic men (both straight and gay)
who have ignorantly equated effeminacy with homosexuality
evince an irrational fear of being perceived as effeminate, and,
therefore, they spend a lot of energy trying to compensate for
that.
It's kind of sad hearing them try to lower their voices, or mute
their facial expressions, or censor themselves in the language
they use, lest someone think they are suspiciously effeminate.
Anyway, back on topic, I hope Tina Fey fires Tracy's ass.
Tina's comments were funny, and appropriate, but Tina and
NBC need to take action, otherwise they're just hypocrites. A
tap on the wrist isn't enough. Sorry. (willie99)
willie99
I don't think effeminacy is an "affliction". However, I DO think that a
lot of homophobic men (both straight and gay) who have ignorantly
equated effeminacy with homosexuality evince an irrational fear of
being perceived as effeminate, and, therefore, they spend a lot of
energy trying to compensate for that.
Clearly YOU don't think effeminacy is an affliction, but I am
suggesting that good a good bulk of the American public
(increasingly) does. What do they think effeminacy is? -- well, of the
likes of being constituted to read and please the endless expectations
of other people, something you say is ACTUALLY sufficiently
879
-----
@Scriptorum
Re: Jews never assimilate to the societies in which they live,
they always set themselves apart, they always look down on
others. Their own Rabbis preach that non-Jews are less
human. So it is just coming out of the wash now. They can't
hide it, and they don't even try to hide it anymore.
(Scriptorum)
the reason:
We SHOULD read history, 'cause it's such a great way to distinguish
ourselves for all those Republican hippie soul-searchers.
-----
There's ALWAYS an alternative to war, if that's what you
REALLY want
I think abolition was inevitable as well, and that both sides just
happened to want war, NEEDED war -- that is, to project unwanted
aspects of themselves into convenient "containers," and eradicate
them: producing a wonderful bounty of sacrifices so a nation could
feel delightfully less burdened by sin. This said, Northerners overall
were less primitive than Southerners were. But both were crazy.
N.B. If Catholics had greater numbers and power, they'd have been
882
@benvorhauer
They evolved out of it. Money gets made, but I like when people point
out that things like slavery and wars are so not at the root about
money that they are effected in instances when about no-one -- no
even, hardly, historians so running away from themselves they can
883
Link: Everything you know about the Civil War is wrong (Salon)
----------
bored lords?
It's the problem with being a movie critic these days. Everytime you
watch "non-boring" movies that appeal to the current nervous state of
the masses, that play to the limited kind of stimulation they can
handle and assurances they require, you're for a couple hours
grouped in with them, always at risk of being reminded of ways you
may remain like them -- not a pleasing thing when what defines the
masses these days is not so much their low-brow taste but their for-
sure susceptibility to a brutal fate.
But at least it gives you the sense that you're still engaging with your
fears, something you couldn't get if the gig was mostly about
critiquing high-brow fare. And there is a remedy: some involved
discussion afterwards of things that remind you you aren't really SO
much one of them, despite whatever shared background and lingo.
(Even better when the discussion can count amongst its participaters
886
----------
Hobbits
How is it grown up to enable a way to easily justify/excuse/not-
contest your love for an artist's work, upon learning about their
personal sideshow extras? Maybe the clearly damnable ostensible
other side of the author is actually front in view of you within the text
888
itself? Maybe you haven't just come to learn that the author you loved
has aspects that are not at all admirable, but that the love you felt for
the text itself was flawed --apparently simply damnable as well -- but
ran away to the first opt-out you could find to avoid seriously
considering that the sudden realization you had was just as much
about your own being attracted to what is perhaps ultimately suspect,
as it was the author's.
Also, really be brave: if you learn things about the author you do not
like, but still very, very much like what they wrote: don't dismiss, but
EXPLORE what they were doing in their lapses and villainy. It might
not just be shadow, but, strangely, the light extended, from page to
life. Let's not all be hobbits afraid to venture out our door.
-----
is Carroll = pedophile
William S. Burroughs = murderer
Gunter Grass = Nazi
Have read books by all of them, enjoyed all of them.
(Krasnaya Zvezda)
@Krasnaya Zvezda
Have you considered that some part of you may be a pedophile, a
murderer, a Nazi? Or is this dark-side-of an-otherwise-brilliant-artist
concept, strong enough to keep you from ever feeling compelled to do
so?
@Patrick
Have you considered that some part of you may be a
pedophile, a murderer, a Nazi?
That is seriously the dumbest shit I've ever heard.
Have YOU considered that grown adults can read things
objectively and enjoy them on their own merits without
turning into monsters?
What are you, 11 years old? (Unsinkable Bastard)
889
@unsinkable bastard
What we're all concerned to protect is the idea that the vile Other
we're aghast/disheartened to learn about, is not somehow very much
ALSO within the work of art we enjoy. It maybe needed be -- but the
only reason I would allow this possibility is that I know such things
like that the majority of nazis had/have split personalities, where one
part of them detached itself from what the vile other part concerned
itself with and enjoyed: but clearly, even here, even dealing with their
'better' parts of themselves, we're not dealing with especially
wonderful people -- the kind that would never feel the need to split off
and do/experience such things -- and for liking THAT, finding worth
in the artistic production produced by that, something is probably off
with us. I don't think we're grown up if we're not considering this
possibility. "Alas, we're all imperfect" is obviously mostly escape, not
engagement. Look for immaturity there.
Of course, we're living at a time when the good person increasingly
seems suspect of being just the NEUTERED person, determined at
the cost of any self-elaboration to show how willing they are to sit in
place for life; and at times like these, you must look for life, goodness,
in strange places. In case this isn't clear -- never, however, in Nazism.
Just use your imagination.
-----
@morning's minion
You have a way of making sins seem mostly about will, deviation, and
activity -- very much part of Greatness/Genius, not its unfortunate
accompanyment.
There's no way you'll lose this argument, phrasing it as you do: to go
against you, to suggest that in your faith you've decided to
shortchange yourself future growth, you have to go up against every
significant pillar of Civilization.
But it seems like something of this sort has to be enabled, because
most great artists I love -- and that I would think you should come to
love -- are to be known mostly for their love (the core of it all,
even/especially self-love) -- both on and off the page. Humanities
departments were kind of up to that, actually, and for quite some
while -- how many literature professors -- even at the cost of some
self-deception -- were mostly concerned to involve themselves with
'Great' works but to undermine them? -- but I think that this hubris,
though long lamented to be everywhere spread and unstoppable, is
near close to coming a full stop, owing to the re-energizing of the
power of elder-worship, youth-scorn/hate, Traditionalism.
I don't think we really care for what the Ancient Greeks were inspired
by: our concern is for what they themselves were up to. Something
like that has to be enabled for a future generation -- for them to be so
great, and so good, it really becomes mostly about them now: bye-bye
500 years of Euro story, and so the authority implicit in every
mention of its heroes. Most Great Art should at some point in human
evolution be forgotten -- there's a better 'man' to come, and should
look to what s/he's up to mostly for satisfaction and prompting self-
awareness: we were historically mostly about making sure s/he got
there, and personally about engaging thrillingly with life.
-----
very nice
892
@colinjames71
----------
Standing tall
Leave out the part about you not wanting to be the discount store T.S.
Eliot essay contributer. Also the part about your bud nudging you on
how poetry readings are better than some tv. Also the (actually self-
effacing) estimation of yourself as a parasite on the underbelly of the
film industry. Also the part in your reply about you knowing that you
haven't any influence on box-office returns. You've seen crap; know
you can will yourself to speak against a crowd, against true T.S. Eliot
types (Ebert's so casual, so American, but this Pulitzer Prize winner
qualifies a bit, doesn't he?) when it speaks to Truth; and you know
deep-down this all speaks FOR you. Communicate this. "This is crap;
and if you mostly like it, something is quite wrong with you. I
understand this means I think I'm better than you. I do; I am. Now
use what I've given you to start bettering yourself."
Also, in your reply, I don't get how you can argue that you don't want
to interfere with anyone's enjoyment along these lines (i.e., libidinal
and visceral enjoyment of a film, rather than intellectual), when your
whole review suggests that that this is in fact your drive. I think you'd
be better again to not be charitable, and EXCLUDE the film entire
from ones that do SO satisfy libidinal needs -- something not only
more basic or needed/required but more mythic (deeper?) as well --
to put those who'd just make wry cuts on the film on absolute
defence: everyone knows they're missing something essential --
Laputans.
I think you saw the film and knew that that if it became popular it
would not do to have it excused even by critics as owing to relaxed
summer expectations. I think you knew that this meant that
something very wrong was happening to people that they actually
found satisfaction -- or worse, meaning -- in this kind of shallow
offering, and had in mind to be amongst those who'd try and let them
895
----------
Empathy
How does one become emphatic? In my judgment, it owes to
896
-----
essentially modest and small -- of the sinful; keeps the demons at bay;
but doesn't lead to much presumption or growth. The later surely at
some point invites the demons: but for awhile can lift a generation on
to great things ... before the also-consequence. But next time around,
though the same nasty flip, it's not as devestating.
Link: Does reading great books make you a better person? (Salon)
----------
"The angry black man" returns -- but only for a short while
So the fact that we elected Obama is being tested -- successfully -- to
make the angry black man once again acceptably "the angry black
man." This way, rational, fair, mature, concerned Obama can ensure
the Depression -- his ultimate role in history, I think -- and those
most likely to be hurt, become primarily fair creatures of sport. (For
me, with the examples that foremost come to my mind -- with West,
with Armond White, with the brother in "he's climbing in your
window," emotional,"irrational" black men are being set up as
deserving whatever might happen to them: instantly dehumanized.)
I think this is only temporary, however. Once the Depression is really
rooted in, I think that like the last big one, everyone who had for a
short while snickered at the habits and inclinations, the evidence of
upset, of the poor and disenfranchised, will suddenly see the suffering
masses as noble. No more talk of birther-politics. And, I think, no
more illustrations of the angry black man. Instead, I think anti-
semitism rises, becomes legitimate amongst the literate classes, even.
America, everyone once again agrees, demonstrates its purity, its
intention to be true to its heritage, its brothers, its folk, by reparing
the damage done by slavery and keeping faith with black people -- by
NEVER allowing blacks to be fair subjects of sport: and who must it
have been to have done the considerable evil in temporarily swaying
them away from their faith?
Plausible?
-----
The core of the matter
Black men's "theatrics," style, heritage, voice is now being readily
deconstructed, brushed aside by liberals as really just plain
inexcusable disrespect. This is amazing. It's the opposite direction
from the '60s, which was about empowering the carnival of the
disempowered -- whatever its true virtues -- not using it as evidence
that they need not be listened to. Obama empowered this? That
901
because you remain in support of him the very last thing you can be is
racist, so enough of what-is-in-truth-your-inexcusable clownishness
that we've long grown tired of pretending as otherwise? It empowers
it, I think, but what motivates it is, one, that what-is-in-greatest-truth
interestingness, signs of individuality, of being well nurtured,
emboldenly ensouled -- what great black men like West and Armond
White and Jesse Jackson mostly "are" -- is not allowed anymore: that
these men flowered to the point of being so rich in individual
personality suggests the permissiveness of the '60s, not the fearful
restraint, denial of today (something Obama, ever careful, ever
dispossessed, "embodies"); and two, because it's not going to last so
long that guilt at what we liberals are up to cripples us.
At some level we all know that two groups in particular are getting
destroyed out there: the working classes, and those most traditionally
disenfranchised -- black people. And at some level we all know that in
making Birthers the most ridiculous people in the universe, those
who most fundamentally need our opposition, we are making it so
that we don't need so much to see the awfulness that is happening to
great segments of the working classes -- those, who, if they're not
birthers, are most likely to support such populist creatures as Rush
Limbaugh. Krugman can rant all he wants about how Obama is
enlarging the dispossessed, and yet he is trumped by an image or two
of them -- that calls up the multitudes we've been exposed to and
hated on -- crazily doubting Obama's heritage. He can't really
communicate, because we've activated a switch, an alternative, which
empowers us to hear him but to not let it squarely sit -- he is referring
to a people disconnected from what is most in play in the public
arena. And at some level we know that in making it so that emotive,
"unaccountable" black intellectuals like Armond White and West are
mostly clowns or trolls, we're setting up the tradition they've been
characterized as representing, embodying, as clownish too, which
means that when we encounter the large swaths of black men who
angrily loathe on Obama, who will suffer most under his
management, our instinctive reaction is not to emphatize but to
902
mock, to hate. "You're not just showing your 'color' -- in fact, it's
never really been about that. You're just being disregarding and rude;
probably from the beginning, mostly deserve to be put in place; and if
this is what Obama is effecting -- good friggin' for him." We might not
allow ourselves to quite THINK this, but we feel it automatically --
and it'll doom them of empowered friends. But I think it likely that we
at some level know that we've not commited ourselves to being
opposite to two groups we're supposed to want to enfranchise and
represent: that we've untethered ourselves from exactly what made us
liberals in the first place. Once the Depression has irrecovably set in --
and so long as Krugman still insists that government spending can
still sway us away, it probably hasn't -- like the last Depression,
liberals stop mocking the habits of the poor and become one hundred
percent behind them. In fact, it'll be all we'll do, non-stop, for ten
years at least. That is, even if the majority of the dispossesed were
holding the craziest political inclinations, supporting the most ugly of
populist leaders, and if black men were ranting away in the most
outlandish, disrespectful manner, all we'll let ourselves see are noble
people being unfairly picked on by cruel, corporate culture. Like the
last Depression, this won't ultimately do much for them -- it was the
awesome suffering, which empowered the belief that some gain is
now surely deserved, which ended the Depression. And, as I
suggested earlier, what it might actually empower is a spread of anti-
semitism: in full regret that they for awhile turned against the
common man and the descendents of slaves, that they swayed the
very opposite of Good, liberals will lascerate themselves -- but also
look to punish the sneaks surely responsible for their temporary,
grotesque transmogrification.
I like West, and am inclined to want to defend him, but 5 years on I
think he'll be very empowered again ... and heeded -- about what he
had to say about Jewish influence. What he has to say about Jews is
grotesque, and I am glad Joan was angered by it. It's not carnival; not
now, because it's time for other groups to be picked on, but it can
produce carnage.
903
---------
@Benno
Youre welcome, Benno. Hope you enjoy the work as much as I did.
There's also a bit from one of Jacques Barzun's books that comes to
mind: perhaps in "Classic, Romantic, Modern," he gets at why all of a
sudden the New -- in this case, Romanticism -- suddenly became, in
his words, "easy" to produce. The reason he offers -- that the previous
mold had exhausted itself to the point that everyone suddenly could
not but be aware the current course had exhuasted itself, and so
finally onto gleeful, productive experimentation -- is probably very
906
----------
------------
True, the desperate drive and denial that pushes towards the
American "orgastic" future could be captured, at least as an
essential visual energy.
I just fear that the wealthy and their "retreat into
carelessness," essentially that the "love story" is one-sided,
that Daisy would rather live within the confines of the
illusion of control offered by material possession than risk
relating through an unmediated reality...
I just hope he makes it the tragic portrait of the thwarted
masculine that it truly is. I don't want to see a post-feminist
revision of Fitzgerald.
And so far, Mr. Luhrmann's portraits of the Masculine and
the Feminine seem like the exaggerated plasticine figures on
a wedding cake-- what an effeminate spazz locked out of
that particular existential struggle would think of it if he
were simply reproducing its surface features.
You know- the very idea of Nicole Kidman as Woman, and
Hugh Jackman as Man. Someone is very confused. Or either
obsessed with making a subversion of gender to the degree
that this could overshadow the essence of Fitzgerald's
unflinching text. (Jack Knive)
It is odd his deciding to do Gatsby at the onset of what looks like (by
which I mean, for sure is) a new long depression, since Gatsby was
written comfortably within one of the millenium's foremost go-go
times. That itself to me seems very odd, has me suspect its moving
energy, and has me fretting the film -- though I'm for sure going to
see it now!
About your comment on material possessions: I'm turning to the
book, again suspecting Fitzgerald would have a tough time at the time
showing up luxury, never-ending glittering things, persuading us that
the text is best understood as tragedy or critique rather than
celebration, when frequent and always-varying partying, lavishness,
909
catch and INITIATE its evident actual spirit, powerfully contests this
thesis, and you're not so dumb not to at some level know it. All your
lesson is is that you might still find it all the more comfortable if you
sometimes keep to the sides -- but still, very much, within.), and was
in mind to partake of another big bite of life of the Big Apple myself.
(I was evicted, but was never persuasively made to see the rightness
behind the eviction: am I safely away from the tempting sin-laden
tree, or just behind "Soviet" walls, bidden to the very worst of masters
-- tired, I suppose, somewhat pleasingly familiar but awfully well-tred
moral truths, and dumb sobriety?) I suspect the 20s generation that
loved the book and weren't anywhere near-ready to shift into, geez,
"mommy and daddy did know best" old-timer think, sure, took the
ending as a possible anticipation of what might follow -- we're
ultimately damned for our fun; it's all an (albeit impressive and
powerful) staving off, and we know it -- but recognized the book
overall as one OF its era, an authority and a catalyst for further
MORE of just their kind of fun, where if this here is proving a
disappointment, another surely awaits in the 'morrow, and you know
with the added focus it's sure to be more even more splendid than
ever! And this is in fact the true glory evil, degrading, past-dismissing
Capitalism befell upon them, for another four to five more years.
Lucky buggers!
I'm hoping Luhrmann helps remind us all that this great era actually
happened, and was worthy, even if this means being blasted by
incredulous critics as an attempt at a Sex and the City 3, after number
2 was just loudly everywhere damned as a must-never-be-seen-again,
worst kind of inexcusable out-of-stepness and excess. If it's just loud
and sure morality tale and damnation, then it's just Dick Diver, and
what ten years of the Depression did to Fitzgerald, as he lived out his
second act.
You're point about desire, to the hopeless task of catching and
keeping what will only surely slip out of your hands the very moment
you grasp it: Nick says something along these lines in the text, but
Fitzgerald writes him as someone who delights in his smart and
913
now. She comes into the store one day; he not-so-subtly puts
the moves on her, telling her he works for Goldman Sachs (in
the old days, this was supposed to drive girls wild). They
agree to meet later at a huge Labor Day bash, where Matt
will be able to perpetuate his silly lie and, with luck, win the
girl.
[. . .]
I get that Dowse (Fubar, Its All Gone Pete Tong) isnt just
mimicking 80s comedies; hes actually trying to make one,
trusting, I suppose, that the audience is in on his ultra-ironic
joke. The movie is badly lit and cheap-looking, presumably
intentionally. But if modern audiences are really looking for
sub-John Hughes, Adventures in Babysitting-caliber
filmmaking, theres nothing to stop them from going straight
to the source: You can pick up a treasure trove of this stuff
for a few bucks from the revolving rack at your local
convenience store. (Stephanie Zacharek, Coke Adds Life
Just Not to Take Me Home Tonight, Movieline, 3 March
2011)
Re: But if modern audiences are really looking for sub-John Hughes,
Adventures in Babysitting-caliber filmmaking, theres nothing to stop
them from going straight to the source "
That's it, that's what they're looking for: an ecosystem of worn and
repeatedly-done-before you can safely imagine participating in
without a whiff of maybe-anxiety/uncertainty-causing counter or
contention (genius or original voice, mostly certainly counting here),
to get some kind of "I exist!" thrill to take home and cuddle. The
concerned move reviewer who cares enough about what we've all got
to deal with now, might soon realize "their" task is perhaps mostly to
take whatever moment of demure stir to be found issuing from
current movies, and while praising it -- genuinely (imagine you're
dealing with terrorized, hide-prone children, and so thereby find the
way) -- still relate it carefully to something a tiny bit more daring
917
done before or elsewhere. It's how the good genius Stanley Greenspan
got former autists, completely set to turtle before, to never really see,
everything but a very narrow spectrum of stimuli -- a narrow
spectrum, mind you, that could be expanded to eventually make at
some point for an actual, deep conversation -- back to normal-level or
better emotional functioning, to no longer be autistic. Otherwise, the
fate may be to be tuned out entirely, except by those with already a
nose for quality, or maybe not so concerned with helping. It sadly
isnt true that just exposing people to greatness will instill amongst
many of the previously ignorant a desperate search for more of it.
Something has to tease you first through instant recognition, and you
have to be inclined to want it, for growth to happen. A whole
generation can actually want otherwise, though, to actually seek to
reduce themselves and without it really being Big Brothers doing;
and not even a tower of Great Artists is going to be much able to get
through to them: theyre just going to have to more or less sit this one
out, and wait for a better audience.
Link: Report From Yale: James Franco Still Likes Doing Things
(Movieline)
----------
----------
Lloyd. Your current posts would not make it past your own
1999 - 2005 filter for *others'* posts. (Rachel Stoltenberg)
-----
Lloyd!
"Rachel: Did you see the ABC News report on Chinese
children now all learning English from the beginning of their
922
Lloyd, for me the concern would be that you tend to make America
seem "bad," fully worthy of the downfall it seems intent on willing on
for itself. The rest of the United Nations Europe, whose social
improvements you frequently delineate for us, mostly, but also now
not-so-long-ago, absolute-progress-stopping, foot-binding China (are
you for memory, or not?; or is it that you would just have us put aside
or showcase as suits the momentum of your current inclinations?)
are by contrast mostly made to seem sane and civil. You kinda get the
sense that you're mostly concerned these days, through the like of
flattery and appropriately directed scorn, to count yourself amongst
the few deserving Americans around still able to appreciate the
maturity of the international community, and who maybe won't be
suffering from what their peers' folly has earned for themselves. The
feeling is that you're shirking most of the rest of us off, to count
yourself amongst the bland but safe. Lloyd the revolutionist is at the
end neutering himself to seem as prosaic as denatured,
internationalist Obama.
Patrick
-----
Patrick wrote the following: "The > feeling is that you're
shirking
most of the rest of us off..."
923
Patrick: You cannot tell what my views are when you have
never
subscribed to my Journal
and read my articles. You just endlessly attack me on
realpsychohistory for unstated crimes.
Lloyd (Lloyd DeMause)
-----
who would approve of all he is saying, of the clear deference [to Her]
he is with his words communicating.) He is making himself more
boring and certainly more "in-line" than he actually is, as Pauline
Kael used to remark about fellow critics, feeling inclined to turn
traitor, I'm sensing, on people who represent the striving and
accomplishing Lloyd he could never quite convince himself would
ever find safety from retributive attack.
And just a reminder, guys. When the next purity crusade is on us, an
era in absolute obeisance to the sacrifice / punishment-desiring
maternal alter, it will not come about in any form that would tip its
hat to its true nature it cannot, cannot, cannot make the liberal,
well-behaving, civilized amongst us feel anyway GUILTY. That is, it
will not be (for example) anti-Semitic (the exact last thing it will in
fact be), anti-black, against homosexuals, anti-woman or aggressively
for the alpha male, for banning ALL alcohol, not Green, anything
really Bush / Cheney, previous prohibition-looking in origin. It will
come across as eminently sensible, reasonable, evolved, moderate,
adult. Therefore it will be FOR education reform, digitization and
access, for making America once again ahead of nations (like China,
that now shame us) it was once so far ahead of before (as the story
goes) individualism and greed became the cancer that destroyed its
host, for reform /re-invigoration of industry, manufacturing,
transportation the muscle fiber of the nation for making it clean,
925
----------
focus on the kiss -- close up: the public demanded yet more instances
to demonstrate their too being enlightened, righteous, and of the
Now. It may, that is, not have most to do with sexuality as with hints
of an unimpeded spirit of indulgence and excess, when the mood has
shifted sharply to the austere, self-denying, and deferent. That's the
consideration I'm playing with.
Could be. But it does strike me that not so long ago it was definitely
the thing to be actually hetero but to show your non-Bushness / non-
Tea-Partierness / just-plain-reasonable-headedness by finding
someone center of stage of the same sex to kiss, each and every time
you possible could, and I think most of America was ALL FOR IT: it
became SO mainstream, in my judgment, the censor's ingrained first
instinct became to be most wary of FAILING to show rather than to
show it, as I just said. This here wasn't about a first man-on-man kiss
at an Oscars, a broach through to-the-must-now-be-okay which
couldn't be allowed to be okay; it was about adding one more to a
huge tilting pile that seemed maybe about to spill all over everyone.
Even just a reasonably short while ago, however often it had been
done, I don't think this worry would ever have surfaced: each add-on
928
Link: Bruce Cohen is a Liar: Gay Oscar Producers Wiki Bio Attacked
Over Censored Kiss (Movieline)
929
----------
The contest:
The King's Speech:
Bertie: Cant you just give her a nice
house and a title?
David: I wont have her as my mistress.
Bertie: David, the Church does not
Recognize divorce and you are the
head of the Church.
David: Havent I any rights?
Bertie: Many privileges
David: Not the same thing. Your beloved
Common Man may marry for love, why
not me?
Bertie: If you were the Common Man, on what
basis could you possibly claim to be King?!
David: Sounds like youve studied our wretched
Constitution.
Bertie: Sounds like you havent.
VS.
Once, being anal and clingy only meant your likely to poop diamonds,
now it means youre apparently just the stuff to balk back Hitlers and
are due the throne.
----------
some for his helping gift our preferred conversation about bottom-
rung women: is anything more society-approved or desired these days
than a teeth-out hunt for barmaids and hookers?
----------
Before:
In addition, the U.S. is the only nation not to sign the U.N.
Convention on the Rights of the Childall of which helping
us understand why the U.S. spends half of the worlds
military budget. (Global Wars)
Before:
Sorry, can't find the exact quote. But it's more that the reason for
America's comparatively enormous military budget lies with its "right
to happiness" philosophy: that is, owing to the marked allowances
permitted by the long-ago psychoclass innovators -- the American
founders -- not its mostly reactionary (psychoclass-lagering) "core." I
wonder if Lloyd believes that America is not even home to the best of
933
as you are being pressed upon to the point that you sense that some
people are trying to completely lay waste to you, your language will
start seeming as if composed of an alphabet of missiles while your
confidently empowered opponents -- representatives of the Great
Maternal, who they know has surely got their back -- will have an
easier time seeming moderate, patient, more-than-fair, and perhaps
even laid-back considering, and finally, reasonable, and grossly
affronted by your unruly conduct. This advantage wouldn't make
someone like Johnson become less hyper-masculine in style, but it
will probably assist Obama in remaining so. In sum, be careful: when
regressives are getting their time, and by regressives I'm not thinking
so much tea-partiers as I am the regressing center, the regressing left
-- the Obama-loyal -- part of what'll assure them of their rightness is
how calm and reasoning they remain while their opponents flap about
like nut-cases. Remember, the likes of conservative-and-ultimately-
deficit-focussed-and-therefore-massive-sacrifice-enabling David
Brooks, who recently wrote an article titled Make everyone hurt
and wasnt so much not kidding as licking his lips who laughs at the
more moronic of Republicans but points out more vividly the Hitler
talk used by Democratic public unions as well as their Orwellianism,
who is looking for founding fathers of austerity who will show the
public, [b]y their example, [how to] [. . .] to create habits that diverse
majorities can respect and embrace, when, as Krugman points out, it
was largely through oligarchs that the deficit-bloom was created in
the first place, which should, you would think, lead everyone to focus
a bit more on what the mass of public benefactors have to say about
all this rather than to a rarified elite, is probably playing out as the
voice of reason here.
Watch all this Wisconsin business, how it plays out. Pay attention to
who is using hypermasculine terminology. My guess is that the people
under normal circumstances are least likely to use it -- the real
progressive left, those of the more advanced psychoclass - are
actuallly going to be the ones caught out for their threatening,
disturbing aggressiveness, their unbalanced mental state. The
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----------
Re: "In a world more perfect than the one we live in, my favorite
movie of the year, Sofia Coppolas extraordinary, steel-rod-delicate
Somewhere would be on this list. Its not a movie about a rich,
spoiled, Why should we care about him? movie star; its a story
about a human being whos lost his way."
My particular complaint about Social Network isn't that it would have
937
----------
-----
could say that the reason this romance works so well for so so many
people, is because they're just filling their own expectations and
dreams onto what is really so thinly put before them, but for me at
least, this just isn't true here. Cameron's magic isn't just in his action
and exempt everywhere else; his genius owes to his really
understanding what breaking free is, what romance and play is, and
he wouldn't tolerate creating films where you couldn't hope to realize
it some for yourself as well.
The problem for me with Cameron is that though he clearly got
somewhere really good, it certainly wasn't SO good he shouldn't have
moved on a considerable some from there. I think it's false to say he's
a forever adolescent, because I would cheer if adolescence actually
meant even for a brief while feeling as uninhibited as he is. But still,
once you yourself have made passage from being the trimmed rose to
being the wild one -- and most of you blessed discerning, haven't --
you really only need revisit him now and again out of friendship, to
say thank you. He's set, in a fairly good place, but further progress lies
with you.
...
This film, though, does deserve to be in the "great movies we however
rightly mock" category, however. A service is done, by pointing out
the numerous things in this film that really are problematic, that if
viewers weren't onto, they're not a sufficient number of steps away
from stupid.
Most central for me is that it helps keep the truly ignorant and stalled
feeling smugly enlightened. If YOU know who Freud or Monet is, this
knowledge doesn't mean you're in the same position as Rose
ostensibly is: she is supposed to be an early appreciater of the New,
possess sufficient sense of independent judgment that she is on to
quality from the start, while as someone alive now your knowledge of
these folks only means you're in the same position the Edwardian
mundanes were when they'd long accustomed themselves to once
rabble-rousers, now ho-hums, such as Darwin or Dickens. That is,
your being onto Freud or Monet could easily mean that you're really
940
just the prosaic Cal, who actually has no appreciation for new genius,
not the avant-garde Rose -- and given how the not-especially-
inspiring mass went for it, probably does. The question you fairly ask
yourself as you remember those who found such meaning in "Titanic"
(including yourself, if you, like me, are one of them) is how many of
them could pass over the film's knuckleheadedness out of fair faith to
its mighty spirit, and remain those of praise-worthy, TRULY
sophisticated taste? It's a question which would have you juggling
around greats like Ebert and Zacharek, ultimately deciding to let one
or the other -- or even both -- "fall."
Knuckle-headedness isn't always damning, though. Sophistication
isn't always a sign of elevation. The '60s generation were not
sophisticated, and its elders constantly hoped to blast them back into
supplicants for their untutoredness, their lack of refinement, their
"stupid" discare for how things had been and "really were," but were
spiritually evolved and Good. Late 20th/early 21st-century products
like Franzen and Martel are hugely sophisticated, smart, aware, but
maybe in the end mostly deferent and perhaps defeated and warped
-- not so good.
Link: Bad Movies We Love, Oscar Week Edition: Titanic (Movieline)
----------
[.]
Your friend Laura Miller (kinda) wrote recently that precise prose and
careful delineations are also tiring to the eyes and mind -- slows down
reading speed, sometimes to a crawl, when you know you've got a
whole book ahead: I'm wondering if some people have to prepare for
your reviews akin to how you did this double-feature: in this case,
with a bit of "Oh God, another load of particulars and careful
delineations about some film I have no sense of!," to gird for
themselves some countering camaraderie within the melee of
942
stimulation they may soon be treated to? I'll wait 'til I've seen what
you've seen to make reading your review more an immediate
experience of compare and contrast -- "look, sister, I take your point,
but this is what you didn't see --." For now it's the reality-
possibilities ... like is it true that what is jarring can also be
compelling? You seem sure of it, for how else last time would "the
land look menacing and alluring at once?" Mind you, "menacing"
already has something of the alluring within it -- you're wanted-
enough to be wholly devoured; "compelling" here is a smart wink, and
a hinted-at better path ahead, after having had a door slammed in
your face: it's harder to see how you'd ever after let yourself just be
drawn along, when all the time you're surely mostly thinking how you
can knife the f*cker back in return.
Link: Berlinale Dispatch: Wim Wenders Takes His Place in the 3-D
Vanguard (Movieline)
Link: Why We Love Bad Writing (Laura Miller, Salon)
----------
When you see an article titled The Day the Movies Died,
you can probably expect a boatload of negativity. That said,
Mark Harris polemic in this months GQ on the state of
Hollywood is pretty even-handed. After all, it blames the
upcoming string of lame comic book movies and sequels on
the one group you might not have expected: Us, the people
who do most of the hand-wringing. We can complain until
were hoarse that Hollywood abandoned us by ceasing to
make the kinds of movies we want to see, but its just as true
that we abandoned Hollywood, Harris writes. Studios
make movies for people who go to the movies, and the fact is,
we dont go anymore. [] Put simply, wed rather stay
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home, and movies are made for people whod rather go out.
The moral? If you like movies, start supporting the good
ones and ignoring the bad ones. [GQ] (Christopher Rosen,
Only You Can Save Movies, and 7 Other Stories Youll Be
Talking About Today, Movieline, 18 Feb. 2011)
Anyone who reads Movieline would note that the particular "adult"
movie -- Inception -- Harris laments hasn't become the model for
Hollywood, is exactly the one Stephanie here blasted for being at-the-
core infantile. And something of a sham: putting itself in place of
something -- Hitchcock -- that truly was adult, so that the truly
childish could never not know themselves to be not-adult (I hope I got
that right). They'd also know that The Social Network was hit hard by
Armond White for its uncritical look at what is essentially immaturity
and a-whole-generation-spread psychological disorder -- autism.
Black Swan, too, again by Stephanie, for being so obviously cliche-
driven, and yet flummoxingly completely ignorant of it. And though
she really liked it, still made aware by her that The King's Speech was
first reacted-to by friend critics as essentially middle-brow -- which it
is: a taste for luxury and refinement, mass taste/opinion disregard,
equals Bad; mostly maintained anal-retentiveness -- this, taking into
full consideration all the expletive-exhalation exercises -- just-
assumed self-sacrifice for the nation, equals Good. And personally,
though I loved True Grit, it had the feel of satisified film-makers
who've found their peace (congrads! you deserve it!), and are mostly
now offering the field to self-assured new-comers they'll insist to
themselves represent a vital, respect-worthy energy, rather than the
likes of the gibbering nincompoops we hear of in the film, inflated to
emboldened crusader status for embodying an energy way more foul
than that (I'm not actually so much thinking Hailee with this -- but
more what's to follow). If the lament in the article is mostly that there
are few good films being made, I'd say for me it's that the problem
Harris identifies throughout his article -- a preference for formula;
abandonment of anything "hard" or truly challenging -- afflicts the
944
Link: Only You Can Save Movies, and 7 Other Stories Youll Be
Talking About Today (Movieline)
----------
[. . .]
She had her husband in "Me and You" burn his hand before their
kids, and you had a sense throughout that anything vaguely
dependent was being kept around, sometimes for knowing
commentary, but just as much to be savy but still for-sure compliant
deposits of sadism. If this proves the voice of a generation, it's one
that wants to be put out of its misery. Seems untenable; can't go on
like this. There's got to be some purpose to make self-sacrifice seem
just plain necessary or, even better, noble, rather than so apparently
just a grotesque entrenched impulse to repeatedly play with
sacrificing themselves or near-obvious "them" substitutes into the
cairn. A generation that indulges too much in being, not profoundly
lost, but repetition-driven, pointless, is going to stop licking and
pointing to its wounds when it fears that too much time is passing to
keep their old wounds and wound-makers relevant to their current
behavior; at some point, with even entrenched old tormentors surely
now onto many other things, with even the recent past, in the
increasingly rare instances we really focus on it -- as today's daily
survival and urgent reverberant events commands all our attention --
at best just a bafflement of how could they have done or thought
this?, their urgent scrambling for a hold will mean their taking
whatever proffered to upgrade from "meh" to become the "greatest"
generation: what the post 1920s depression generation did as it went
from the crowd that doesn't get to have any fun to one that
entrenched itself into cultural memory for maybe millenniums.
947
Even poor cats are a bit hard to imagine as having pleading eyes, or as
ever really being that attached to you; the death-dealing vet could
probably near as easily provoke it into one last purr as readily as a
ten-year owner might: I wonder if she selected a cat so to be an
improvement on the kids in her first film; something actually
stronger, more distinctly alien, to push back with an empowered
unrelatingness against her scary, rebounding play with snuffing the
vulnerable but "hip to" out? I wonder if shes already looking for a
better hold, and not so much just waiting, agonizingly?
Link: Berlinale Dispatch: Miranda July Cant Quite Read The Future
(Movieline)
----------
excites their purpose now is covertly mostly a managed hand out for a
rescue.
This reviewer had better not be an Obama fan. If he is, he is beyond
laughable.
But the film is maybe not so much FOR the average man who has this
problem, concerned as it is for giving "them" the one and only dose of
support, before launching them off to unrelenting even-worse
deprival. Yes, once they're all either half-downed in combat or shell-
shocked from bombing or winnowed spiritless from endless
endurance, the film would have it that they receive receptive tending-
to for their ailments -- if the world were just. Without that, if you
already have the look and carriage of a pathetic Tiny Tim, it's for you
as well, just as automatically as it is for the king. But if you ultimately
romance and legitimate the suffering part, the overcoming should
seem suspect. I know it's not clear-cut with this film, but it's certainly
not uncontestedly against the ridiculous tortures people have endured
for no actual purpose: no film that is actually for war, for
ennoblement through collective, shared sacrifice, is against all that.
951
Every aesthete in the world should tell this film to go scr*w itself. To
right its wrongs -- for one thing -- for what it did to Edward VIII.
Link: Will This Awesome Kings Speech Takedown Rock Oscar Race?
(Movieline)
----------
[. . .]
----------
For what it's worth, I really like this bit of dialogue from "Avatar":
GRACE: Alright, look -- I don't have the answers yet, I'm just now
starting to even frame the questions. What we think we know -- is
that there's some kind of electrochemical communication between the
roots of the trees. Like the synapses between neurons. Each tree has
ten-to-the-fourth connections to the trees around it, and there are
ten-to-the-twelfth trees on Pandora --
SELFRIDGE: That's a lot I'm guessing.
GRACE: That's more connections than the human brain. You get it?
It's a network -- a global network. And the Na'vi can accessit -- they
can upload and download data --memories -- at sites like the one you
destroyed.
SELFRIDGE: What the hell have you people been smoking out
there? They're just. Goddamn. Trees.
----------
----------
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2011
Discussing "The Social Network": film about the maker of facebook
----------
957
Lets just get this out of the way up front: Great job,
Academy! That the AMPAS found room for everything from
Winters Bone to Toy Story 3 to the ferocious performance
given by Movieline favorite Jacki Weaver means they
deserve a bit of kudos. (If youre one of those, Yawn, Im too
cool for the Oscars! people, just go back to bed today.) Of
course that doesnt mean many, many deserving nominees
were left out in the cold this morning. Ahead, the six biggest
from the major categories. (Christopher Rosen, Your
Favorite was Robbed: The 6 Biggest Oscar Snubs,
Movieline, 21 January 2011)
----------
-----
I agree. Hailee should have been nominated for best actress, best
movie, or not at all. The lesson in the film is that a smart, head-
strong, civilized girl can make most of the wild have to be at their
best to not already seem akin to a tamed wild-west show. Rooster has
his (touching) wild ride, Laboeuf gets his miraculous shot, but there's
a sense that her only equal was Ned, the compelling leader of the
congress of louts. The gun recoil and the snake terror ease her into an
easing, more capitulated form, and leaves Rooster alone to
demonstrate his experience, endurance, and drivenness, but had she
been a couple years older, we would have been left without all that,
and it would have simply been: "THIS is all you can conjure ..." As is,
the night-conjured wild stars reign supreme, and clear the deck.
I'd like to have seen Damon nominated for best supporting. He's like
Wilbur proving he's really quite the pig after all, and it made me
cheer!
----------
I wonder where Ashton gets his instinct to please from? Maybe there's
something in the roles he takes, or the kinds of women he tends to
date, that could give a hint? Anyway, it's surely wholly commendable
-- who'd want to just a horse when you can be the prancing pony the
whole of your life? Unless of course you could be the embarrassing
jackass, Gervais: you'd think seeming like you'd never crawled out of
the crib would count against you, but I swear he tore down the world
sensing that life-long babies are morphing into scarily-bequeathed
enfants terribles, who won't much longer have to know what it is to
have to back down to adults.
Speaking of adults: Stephanie, you're always commendably calling for
more films for them; let's keep up some voice for more adults in film,
too: I know this one's about childish adults, but I don't want to wait
for Ashton to be in some cancer role for someone to tell him it's NOT
this time his part to play the fool.
Link: Actions speak louder than dirty words in No Strings Attached
(Movieline)
----------
saw it. Its dumb. Loony. Its got a lot of nerve. But heres a
secret you and I share: Were both attracted to bastards, and
Forrest Gumps the slimiest john I know. Lets love it.
Synopsis: Tom Hanks plays Forrest Gump, a man with an
IQ of 75 who assures the world that in order to be an
inspiring mentally challenged person, you need only to act
like Winnie the Pooh. Point to your head and say, Think,
think, think. Cock your head when others are speaking.
Dont understand when youre playing a football game.
These things.
[. . .]
Heres the key to loving Forrest Gump: Our heros life
includes run-ins with war, the Black Panther movement,
several presidential assassinations, drug culture, and AIDS,
yet the movie manages to have nothing to say about them
other than, This cloying cipher doesnt really get it. Cute as
hell. Shhh, those angry black people can learn from him.
Every opportunity to reinspect history is a red herring. This
movie is a red herring. This movie is like some direct-to-
video sequel of Being There called Bein Everywharr!, and
Chauncey the Gardener is replaced by one of the Rugrats in
a Tom Wolfe suit. This movie honestly wants you to gawk at
its glib, twee (your two favorite adjectives) instincts, forgo
common sense, and melt into its outrageous story. Word: Its
not that hard. I just did it!
Lets take a look at some of the zestier accomplishments in
Forrests life.
When a bunch of bullies approach Forrest on the street,
Forrests damaged friend Jenny (Robin Wright[-Penn])
encourages him to run as fast as he can. Now, Forrest starts
the movie in rigid leg braces, but no matter: He turns into
Forrest Griffith-Joyner (ya-pow!) in seconds, the leg braces
tumble off his body, and hes cured. In high school, when
bullies follow him in a jeep, he outruns the jeep. If this Jenny
962
can detect who among the physically disabled can heal their
handicap and outpace a Cherokee, she deserves more than
these Curious George books shes reading.
He plays college football and nails 99-yard touchdowns with
his nimble little gams. The crowd cheers, cries, and holds up
signs telling him to stop running once he hits the end zone.
This condescending malarkey precedes Susan Boyle by 15
years, so I cant discredit Forrest Gumps soothsaying
powers. Its like the new Network that way. Except Faye
Dunaway is too subtle for this movie. For real.
He saves his lieutenants life in Vietnam. But war-proud Lt.
Dan (Gary Sinise) didnt want to be saved, and he resents
Forrest afterward until they start up a shrimping
company together and fulfill the dream of their fallen
comrade Bubba. Lieutenant Dan pulls off the Helter Skelter
zeal well. Which makes sense because this is ThE SeVeNtIeS!!
1!
He gets real good at ping pong and it heals international
disputes with China? I dont even know what Rob Zemeckis
was going for here. Whatever happened, it allowed Forrest
to meet the president an occurrence he enjoys a million
times this movie.
Holler, LBJ! Bad news: Forrest Gump isnt a real person, so
to make his interactions with super-for-real presidents for-
real, the movie uses special effects to manipulate stock
footage of our great leaders and make their mouths look like
theyre saying droll things to Forrest. It looks freaky. LBJs
twitchy CGI mouth looks like lost footage from the
Sledgehammer video. At this point, its clear Forrest can
zap himself to any notable moment in history whenever he
wants. You might know this movie by its original working
title, Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?. (Or Zelig Gump.)
Forrest gets on The Dick Cavett Show, mumbles something
about religion and heaven, and fellow guest John Lennon is
963
well i see the "Bad Movie" part, but where is the "We Love?"
(response to post, Citizen Bitch)
964
It's there at the beginning, Citizen Bitch, but yes, I think "Forrest
Gump" is one of those works of art that if you are too much concerned
to explain why you like it, were/are affected/moved by it, you're
stained for life. Just to mind as another example, is when some Salon
writer a number of years ago "explained" why she had once fallen for
Piers Anthony's Xanth series: you ended up more aware of the series'
"ridiculousness" than its (what remain, thanks to "you")
OSTENSIBLE virtues, and you had the sense the writer had braved as
much as she was able, mostly in admitting to having liked the series
before company she'd normally expect to pull away from her after
that: her chore thereafter was to look to have pulled off the feat, but
also to have made clear that NO ONE would more shun -- or maybe
stomp and kill! -- the fiend who went a smidgen further than she was
willing, in testifying to its qualities: "you" end up okay, because "you"
didn't so much break the dam but remade it anew, in territory too
riskily befouling for concerned others to consider undertaking the
nagging job (and here, discussing "Forrest Gump" was a problem that
was nagging -- IT was the one that won the oscar, as well has having
as much broad-effect as the ongoing hero, "Back to the Future"),
AND all the while making the snidish feel themselves open and fair.
You may never be a great writer/reviewer, but we remember your
sacrifice of yourself into besmirching territory.
If you mean to do the in-your-world brave and stand up for the likes
of Xanth, "Titanic," "Forrest Gump," "Dangerous Mind," it requires
an awesome feat of steadily-maintained, artful, protective
dweamorcraft to get the job done -- and I don't think I've ever seen it
managed, not even by A. O. Scott, who, for example, will often defend
Tom Cruise, but NEVER without letting you know the actor doesn't
have extensive range (very brave, A.O, very brave: how about just a
compliment, and leaving it at? Such things are possible.); if that's too
daunting, you just make the praise (as with here) amount to worse
than some (in this case, most) critiques -- that's safe enough. The
whole point is not to really get at why?, be fair to the film and its
965
lasting influence on you, and air it out, but to see if you can manage
something akin BUT WITHOUT being caught out by misstep -- we're
all watching -- and it makes for something of an abominably unfair
effort, and usually just a resort to curses.
Personally, I liked the brazenness of Forrest's life being tested but not
really affected by "major events" that ARE SUPPOSED to stop you
cold, if you care or are human at all: he was allowed to breathe,
following his own rhythm. Gene Siskel WAS stopped cold by these
events -- Vietnam, JFK'S death, etc -- but loved the movie for feeling
it had helped quit shocks he personally had still been suffering from.
There must be something considerable in a film to accomplish
something as wonderful as that. (According to Movieline's twitter'
feed, Gene Siskel's birthday is today. I think the episode is on
YouTube.)
----------
[. . .]
The filmmaker participated in the Dunhill conversation
series opposite actor David Morrissey who elicited the
following response with a simple inquiry about
Greengrasss early days in documentary:
One of the problems we have in our industry is that young
people in our industry are being exploited. There are
companies in London, sadly, that are making very good
livings on work experience which really means people
being expected to work for nothing. And if we we in the
industry whove had good livings think that we are creating
a sustainable industry by raping and pillaging young
people, then were very, very sadly mistaken. And if I were
to point to a single issue in our industry that is not being
dealt with and offers the most profound threat to the
regeneration of our industry, it is the way we exploit young
people.
Preach it! Or not? I think we all know the difference
between low- or no-pay and pure exploitation the
former offers exposure to professionals and actual work
experience on a film or TV set, while the latter amounts to
cleaning and coffee-fetching with little if any access to the
happenings either behind or in front of the camera.
Sometimes the job descriptions blur. But as someone
whos worked an unpaid internship or gopher role on
more than a few sets and offices over the years,
opportunity is more often than not in the eye (and
initiative) of the beholder, and making smart decisions
about certain gratis duties and jobs and employers
(especially employers) can entitle rookies to a little more
experiential leverage than a paycheck gets them. (S. T.
Vanairsdale, VIDEO: Low-Wage Hollywood Has a
Champion in Paul Greengrass, Movieline, 16 Dec. 2010)
967
----------
970
hardship, and provide them magically with instead their every dream
come true, they would hate you to the point of wanting to kill you for
giving them way beyond what they're prepared to accept -- for
adorning them after they've finally near sheared the most
compromising parts of themselves off. So instead, a future of a first
long bleakness; then some bits of New Deal solace amidst the shared
suffering, the untended to, valid complaints of indifferent, resistant,
ongoing corporate culture; until some massive sacrificial war permits
a later generation to the moving-beyond actually involved in growing
up. ("You can never outdistance your ancestors" -- I look forward to
all the "growth" that'll follow that thought / inclination.) The
challenge now is to make sure we don't too-fast race into the
depression mind-set -- getting "there" before it too much settles in,
would suggest it might just be following our lead.
I hear your point, but to me, people get the economy they actually
want. If they truly feel they deserve (have earned), if they truly want,
happiness, you get the like of the 30 years of on and on growth that
was 1950 to 1980. Nothing could put a stop to it, not corporations,
late capitalism -- run-amock, widespread greed -- terrestrial limits,
Celestial scorn, ancestors-all-in-disapproval -- nothing. However, if
what they want is to be "Americans simply struggling with being
poorer than they'd like to be," to be some (idiotic) generation that
renewed all the "ennobling," "necessary" sacrifices their grandparents
972
were stupefied (and stupided) by, who could believe themselves truly
desiring of better ONLY given there being little chance any such
would befall them, then nothing could stop it either. If aliens landed
on the earth right now and forced endless bunches of riches into
everyone's pockets, we're very near the point where we spoiled
Americans would monk and monastery ourselves before the
abundance. If they took that refuge away, and forced us forever into
5-star accommodations, then we'd deem virtual reality the "truer"
one, and absolutely refuse to forego the Xbox so we could reify (yes,
maybe even the likes of snobbish "I don't own a TV" critics) the likes
of "Fallout 3" until the even-more-appropriate "Penance 2morrow"
could be made. If they took that away, then we'd slowly go insane,
depriving, UGLIFYING ourselves near to the point of hacking off our
own limbs -- even if that 5 star-occupying, top-of-the-line refrigerator
couldn't be managed to be appropriately tumbled to provide some
unlikely-but-maybe-still-possibly? excuse
... unless of course they yet somehow proved killable, then, yes, we
would kill them, for feeding us abundance when what we want is
hardening through suffering, for drawing out our deepest, and truly
regrettable, wishes, and forcing us to catch some sight of them. The
zombified of the 1930s weren't perseverers; they were (in greater
truth) grotesque willers of their own penance-born deterioration.
Some (the interesting) mocked their own back then -- that is until
everyone was about ennobling. Let's start with that, and see where it
gets us -- I don't want a rehash of the 1930s/40s, even if it did end up
serving out "adult" dishes of grace and wit, in film, in art, that
apparently no critic seems to see the main drawback to (that it was
always born out of and remained true to an ethos of compensation,
not really enrichment).
because the fuse has been lit and the bomb will go off at any
minute, but you do get odd moments of true freedom before
the sh*t hits the fan.
God did not decide this is the way things should be. Jesus
doesn't want you to pay rent nor does Mohammad respect
you for all of your hard work. This system was created by
humanity and humanity VOLUNTEERS to work with-in.
The bottom has dropped out leaving people who work at
Wal-mart paying money to eat at Red Lobster so the people
who work at Red Lobster can afford to shop at Wal-mart.
The only real change will occur when enough people say,
"I'm mad as Hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
Thru out history this is known as REVOLUTION. And
sometimes, this point of action succeeds in evoking positive
change. Many times it just cuts off the head of one beast and
replaces it with another more or less terrible entity.
But when things have gone as far as they can go, and things
have gotten as bad as they can get> Is it worth the risk?
Gandhi once said, "10,0000 Englishmen simply cannot
control 350 million Indians, if those Indians refuse to
cooperate."
This has become us and our corporate masters.
Question is> What are you going to do? (Sunnydaze)
I disagree. When people are mad as hell and not going to take it
anymore!, they do the likes of chopping off leaders' heads -- along
with those of anyone even remotely connected to them, until numbers
pile up beyond number, and even your best friend begins to seem
suspicious. Only AFTER bodies of both sides lie everywhere, now so
much seeming more born of the same purpose than foes of opposite
stripe, only AFTER people have begun to forget the point of it all but
still gauge that surely some awful blood price has more than fully
been repaid, does society move ahead -- rock and roll, flower power,
974
Link: The Company Men Offers a Rare Portrait of the Working and
the Nonworking World (Movieline)
----------
Link: Espionage Caper The Tourist Offers Mystery and Glamour, Plus
Depp and Jolie (Movieline)
----------
Salon readers have never been the shy and retiring type, but
Monday's Life story -- "How I Became a Con Artist" --
certainly brought out the knives. "You don't deserve to live in
a civilized society," read one of the 200+ outraged comments,
peppered with such descriptors as douchebag, degenerate and
morally bankrupt. At least one furious reader actually e-
mailed writer Jason Jellick's employer to complain. Readers
directed their scorn at us as well. "Is this the best Salon can
do, especially at the start of the Christmas holiday season?"
Ouch. We weren't just ethically bankrupt. We were ruining
Christmas.
To clarify, Salon doesn't advocate stealing -- but for that
matter, neither does Jellick. His account of a youth spent
indulging in petty crimes against chain stores and other
corporations ends with a hard stare at his own shady
behavior, with a realization at just how much damage his
behavior has wrought. Jellick's story is one of regret as much
977
-----
Thank you for your expulsion from Eden; welcome to Salon
All your life stories read like this, to the point of feeling prescribed.
This isn't about discovery; and certainly not complexity, either. It's
more about self-fashioning, and probably mostly about salvation: a
collective concern to identify yourselves as amongst the repentant,
and therefore feel less guilty. So much so, that I bet the author of this
piece doesn't even allow himself to partake of what this piece is
tantalizingly ripe to offer him -- namely, further sense that in he is
rather still, artfully, nimbly, making use of others' route requirements
to benefit himself -- the fox.
At some level, the author believes himself braver than most others.
His true lack of courage comes not only -- as Hutman pointed out --
not doing anything near the Michael Moore and doing his thing
directly before empowered adults (though it is true that some people
might not manage what he managed, even if required for truly good
benefit, and that this lack isn't to be shamed but certainly to be dealt
978
----------
At one point you mentioned that no thing was guaranteed (to last, to
remain), and were okay with that, and Siva responded that he hoped
university could be, that is must be. I sided with Siva here a bit. I
think youve got a high self-esteem, and it is this that makes it so that
for you now the disappearance of ostensible societal necessities
wiki or what-not neednt automatically register as if your safety
blanket was suddenly lost to you. Youre more like, well, okay,
something substantial did just go down -- but is it possible that what
remains and is now better exposed to view, is actually better? And if
it is, youre glad the older, more primitive form is lost, and get to
making the more mature and evolved forms reach their potential
ends. And if it isnt, you point out the current flaws, and get back
what was wrongly disposed of. Youre fair, appropriately excited by
what could and should be, and just as appropriately impatient with
the mediocre and insufficient in its loud fight to on-and-on-and-on
still-prosper. But most people dont strike me as healthy as you are,
as secure as you are, and actually need some secure place that can
withstand their own storms as well as outside ones some
Hogwarts to exist, for them to have some chance of not becoming
mostly survivalist, feral, truly lost incapable of doing much
interesting with sophisticated technology, open acess, not out of
unfamiliarity, or from being priced out, but because they havent at
any time in their lives known the lengthy period of guaranteed
982
----------
[. . .]
[. . .]
984
Juiced?
I'm quite sure that every nation that went to war has examples of such
men. They were all -- Americans, Germans, Brits, Italians, Egyptians,
Russians, Japanese -- I suppose, members of the greatest generation.
But one has to wonder who it was who brought about this ready
heroism-enabling, life-destroying war about in the first place? Sure,
they fought off some sharks, but for collectively seeing the necessity of
wasting away millions of lives, maybe an asterisk beside their
extraordinary tales of heroic perseverance?
Remember Goldhagen ("Hitlers willing executioners") -- it's not
(just) the leaders: it's (primarily) the people, what they want.
Patrick
You would have preferred the alternative to the fight.
You would have been a Loyalist 235 years ago in the name of
peace. On yur knees MFer. You would have preferred allowing
the South to secede, splitting the Union and continuing their
slave industry in the name of peace. You would have stood
aside 68 years ago railing against the French Resistance as
985
oda
The Greatest Generation was a generation that got heroism, but out of
war. That's sick. They were sick. With this tale, near makes me root
for the sharks ... and I hate sharks.
-----
Can the same person "care for the soul," who would hack
their arm off to survive? Or is this just the province of the
beastial?
It is true that what you've given here is what you denied in your anti-
National Novel Writing Month post. A whole generation is worthy for
their mostly anonymous replication of the kind of marathon
struggling people like this dude demonstrated. Some of these very
same people who forced their way to 50 000 words in a month, might
just in the future be the ones to marshal their way through a
war/depression-induced hell of obstacles. (I couldn't do 50 000 in a
month, and you're not going to remember me for hacking off my arm
to save my life, either.) Given the power of your previous impress, you
come pretty close to implicitly making war into the missing backdrop.
(i.e. Their mistake is not that they would as a horde show fantastic
perseverance at the cost of discretion and care, of denying themselves
the ripened ability to enjoy other people's artistic talents, but that
they are doing as much outside of a context which would instantly
awe all outsiders to their exhausting performance.)
How about try instead, a whole generation left the experimental,
original (19) 20s for depression and war ravishment. When you take
any two who used to converse profitably but fall into squabble, there
may still be something exciting in their coming to and lasting through
blows, but boy does it pale compared to what they had going before
986
they broke down into squabbling and self-cover. I don't really want to
hear about those who survived or heroiced their way through bleak
striving: there must be something savage in them for them to
accustom themselves so readily to that much bleakness; and it's an
insult to those who might shrivel up some then, but who naturally
blossom when people SHOULD naturally do so -- when the
atmosphere is allowing, patient, gentle, kind.
Kindness
with muscles: He notes that, since 1982, G.I. Joe's Sgt. Savage
has gotten three times more muscular and Barbie's Ken now
has a chest circumference attainable by only one in 50 men,
but the luxuries of our contemporary lifestyle have caused a
steady decline in genuine physical power.
[. . .]
[. . .]
[. . .]
[. . .]
[. . .]
Nearly every group I've ever come across does it [i.e., hazing]
in some way, and the fact that the civilized, affluent West still
does it shows that it's, for want of a better word, a very
natural practice. One of the paradoxes is that this very violent,
abusive treatment actually serves to greatly heighten the need
of the initiate to belong to that group. It strips away their own
personal power and individuality, it makes them crave
belonging to the group and it makes them bond more tightly
989
Yes, as I thought, more honest. I hope you enjoy the show of what
finely-muscled Martu men can do to boys they've taken out into the
bush (take a break to sneak-peak on the boys just a little way over
"actually being subincised"!?). Remember, though, if ever back in the
city you see a lot of men rounding up street kids for maybe something
similarly penile-related, you probably ought to switch modes and
report it rather than report ON it. I'm sure they're actually just being
made manly men, but displaced into the less virile, less vigor-
appreciating city, it'll be deemed wrong.
-----
-----
991
Shakespeare's 2 cents
"Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek-headed [i.e.,
bald] men, and such as sleep o' nights. Yond Cassius has a
lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are
dangerous."
"Julius Caesar" (Act 1, Scene2) (austinboy, response to post)
*
Tough times
It could have been that our ancestors were not in fact stronger and
faster than we are, anthropologists could have uncovered that by 20
they were in fact so beat upon they had the constitutions of modern-
day 90 year olds, bones of brittle not hard metal, so long as we
concerned about perhaps lost virility no one who once ranged about
the plains, prepared to prey on or otherwise be preyed upon by beasts
and other men, can easily be apprehended by the brain as "weak." For
me, it doesn't do to show how those physically-softened but strong-
in-mind are truly more potent, or to show how the flabby are more
predictable and less riseable -- and therefore actually better for the
overall health and maintenance (the sturdy constitution) of the
"commonwealth": our complaint must rest with those concerned to
make the "issue" about strength and weakness in the first place, for
such people are orienting / priming, setting parameters around a
debate which will leave no room for valuing things most valuable
about our finally becoming civilized.
Men don't become "strong" when, rather than abuse their boys
through the kinds of "hardening" rituals they themselves might have
been subject to, they instead seek to free them from all that trauma
and seek another way -- they grow kind, compassionate. When we
start finding extreme physical exertion a bit exhausting to watch /
experience, and hard to imagine anyone want doing / celebrating, we
haven't gone soft, but become a bit more mature in our tastes.
Chimps weren't our ancestors, but I would suggest that when we're in
the right frame of mind there's nothing about virile homo erectuses or
now-"redeemed" bone-hardened 4 ft- tall Victorian factory workers
that should draw us to agree to recognize much of a link with them
either. Our concern is how to make our world more kind and fun --
994
not more virile or more fit. I know that the 18th-century liberal Brits
fended off their conservative "kin" by arguing that you could have as
much, a nation of shopkeepers, of fanciful fops, and still also the
strongest navy and most assured nation ever known, but this still
tipped the hat too much to those primitive-enough to still insist at-
bottom it has to be about meek and strong, meek and strong: as if to
move too far away from that, is to lose all that is most truly, assuredly,
human. Their fancy is okay, but BECAUSE it's proved itself just
another variant of the strong: the first stretches of a kind, welfare
state -- the 18th-century genteel were for animal rights, child-safety,
against slavery -- may have been defended by such thinking, but it
wasn't born out of it.
If we agree to this, to argue in terms of virility and strength, we are
agreeing to enter into a darker period of human existence: for no age
built on commerce, entertainment, experimentation and self-growth,
is not ever surely insusceptible to being charged luxurious and fallen
-- better to go back into base mode, less ample mode, more
restricting, more striving mode, where just being part meant
demonstrating you had it in you to live in tough times. But later, a
more mature generation will emerge, that will shirk you off like the
Tudor courtiers did their numbskull, French (effeminacy)-fearing,
dark age ancestors. They might relapse too into numbskullery, but at
some point humanity will streamline, and then just grow, peacefully
on.
----------
[. . .]
Tweaking
You give those who complain about having to spend so much time
with unlikeable characters, quite the scolding. You sick an erudite
critic on them, and equate them all to Amazon-commenter slosh. I
admit to appreciating spending time with characters who show what
it is to live better than I currently now do. Some of this same desire is
expressed in the novel, toward the end (please forgive the small
cheat), when certain characters address why they seek Walter out
(though you probably thought these imperfect meanderers, just
adults, the mature turn-away from implausible mary janes). MY
desire for someone better, at least, was motivated FOR a desire for
moral / sympathetic education, something I thought I found less of in
997
----------
Frozen Franzenage
[. . .]
-----
That's It?
I was somewhat disappointed in the short, rather superficial
answers to the questions considering all the hype this Q&A
received over the past month. (Jason C)
1001
Jason C
He knows we're looking for more, to open him up, so he answers
questions in such a way that HE remains tight and WE are likely to
feel as if we were less interested in answers than in satisfaction at his
expense ... even if we weren't (we're all flawed, don't you know --
though much more flawed than our superb but self-effacing and
delightfully polished and restrained god, Obama. [Franzen knows
this, and so his flawed self still has one up on all of us.]). It's not an
interview, it's a moral lesson. The best you can get from him is a draw.
He'll offer an answer that can be readily argued as inarguably
complete and honest -- all what we said we were looking for -- but
feels deliberately cut-short and essentially withholding. And you can
drumbeat keep moving on through with your interview. The world is
made a better place.
He doesn't read reviews ... One wonders how much of the current love
for Franzen (including Oprah's), is born out of our seeking abeyance
and approval by the cold and withholding? Even in his icyness, he's
probably just responding to our needs, and resents the hell out of us
for this.
Even in a frozen Franzenage, I'd still "take" Kingsolver. But not
without some power-ups -- his chill is everywhere, man!
Month.
[. . .]
The purpose of NaNoWriMo seems laudable enough. Above
all, it fosters the habit of writing every single day, the closest
thing to a universally prescribed strategy for eventually
producing a book. NaNoWriMo spurs aspiring authors to
conquer their inner critics and blow past blocks. Only by
producing really, really bad first drafts can many writers
move on to the practice that results in decent work: revision.
[. . .]
I am not the first person to point out that "writing a lot of
crap" doesn't sound like a particularly fruitful way to spend an
entire month, even if it is November. And from rumblings in
the Twitterverse, it's clear that NaNoWriMo winners
frequently ignore official advice about the importance of
revision; editors and agents are already flinching in
anticipation of the slapdash manuscripts they'll shortly
receive.
[. . .]
[. . .]
[. . .]
This is not to say that I don't hope that more novels will be
written, particularly by the two dozen-odd authors whose new
books I invariably snatch up with a suppressed squeal of
excitement. [. . .] But I'm confident those novels would still
get written even if NaNoWriMo should vanish from the earth.
Yet while there's no shortage of good novels out there, there is
a shortage of readers for these books. (Laura Miller, Better
yet, DONT write that novel, Salon, 2 Nov. 2010)
Valid complaint
Re: And from rumblings in the Twitterverse, it's clear that
NaNoWriMo winners frequently ignore official advice about the
importance of revision; editors and agents are already flinching in
anticipation of the slapdash manuscripts they'll shortly receive.
best (or at least better) what they want to say, you do have the sense
that few amongst them actually are literate, really appreciate what
literacy has to offer you OVER dopamine-rush excitements in
whatever form -- whether hurried novel-writing, or losing some two
hundred pounds of fat (and gaining a taut mind that thereafter only
thinks of muscle) to urgent use of the treadmill -- and I think it is fair
game here for Laura to insist on their trying-out a measured bit of
library book light-lifting instead.
Too bad, though, because there is a more interesting conversation to
be had here, one that would challenge literate writers to appreciate
that given all that they now tend to do when they edit, they might be
at the point where their work would benefit more than it loses from
being loosed out of grasp before the second-glance can reconvene and
reconsider.
@Patrick McEvoy-Halston
You work that superior dance, church lady.
How do you survive existing among such lesser beings?
softdog
@softdog
Re: "You work that superior dance, church lady.
How do you survive existing among such lesser beings?"
After our conversation / essential agreement on "Almost Famous,"
my sense was we were more the same than different. Still, I included
way too many "works" in my first post, and am too humble-feeling
now to orient on your most-any-other-time fair question.
This is a harder issue to just agree on than you might think, though.
Unlike Laura, I find what we get most of from our "best" writers is
agreeable, well-written work, that should still ultimately launch us
into tirades out of it being at bottom too nice, too safe, too much in
accord, too much of what literature is not supposed to be about, but
1005
Writing eight pages of text per day, even lousy text, still
requires a degree of patience, focus and frustration. The way
you describe it, the writer is sitting there merrily typing away,
going "Wooo hooo! I'm making literature here!" and then
collapsing into a misguided heap of euphoria.
Patrick: "I think it is fair-game here for Laura to insist on
their trying-out a measured bit of library-book light-lifting
instead."
Again with the Fallacy of Mutual Exclusivity. There is no
reason why a person could not both participate in NNWM and
also devote time and effort to reading more. (Obviously that
person would be strapped for time if he tried to do both in
November, but you get my drift.) (Xrandadu Hutman,
response to post))
@Xrandadu Hutman
Re: "Serious question: How do you know the ratio of people
who are self-critical and realistic to those who are self-
congratulatory and delusional?"
Okay. Honestly. Laura's comment that few in fact do the editing that
they all ostensibly agree is required, is a big tip-off. Also, I don't
believe we are going through a time when any collective effort that
would principally appeal to the self-critical and realistic, is going to
reach mass form. Franzen frowned on Oprah, for good reason; she is
still too much sensation. As mentioned in my post to softdog, I am
thinking of Stewart and Colbert's massing-for-sanity as well.
Well, there is some play here. But, yeah, I considered this point before
I wrote, but still wrote what I wrote because it smacked more true
than false. Pretty much the entirety of a year-long war can be (largely,
essentially) irrational, primarily dopamine-fueled and sustained,
despite the pin-point shot amidst the errant-fire, the frequent
intermissions, the thereafter General's talk of strategy and tactics; a
one-month slog at a novel is a stretch beyond the evening blur, but to
me, still readily potentially mostly rush. Barbarians used to raid bare-
chested, mostly drunk, sacrificing themselves to their foes; they were
coordinated enough to master running, charging, and axe-slicing, but
they went about their albeit-somewhat-coordinated business in poor
fashion for victory. I know I'm not convincing you with this, but it's
what comes to mind.
But Laura is saying that something about (the coloring of) this
movement attracts people who in the end DON'T do both, and it may
be true that something of the selling of this movement actually
further UPRAISES those intent on exhaling themselves all over the
rest of us, and DISCOURAGES, wicked step sister-like pushes away,
those into self-recalibration and interested, respectful, other-
attendance.
@Spectrum Rider
A whole novel in a single month, is like a plateful of hotdogs stuffed
into your mouth. If you market book writing as if you're appealing to
the carnival-accomplishment taste of the Doritos crowd, then I think
you should expect for the discerning to shy away, and creatures of
appetite to be all over it!
Like I said, massings can afford safety, and be all about wonderful
productivity and shared fun. A multiplication of but not really
different from the group games that lead Mary Shelley to write
"Frankenstein," and inspired her for the first time to actually feel fully
individuated and self-determined. My experience of groups right now
suggests this isn't much the time for this kind of thing, that just
hearing of collective enterprise should spur on individualists to take
on the mass. Laura I think is intent to take them on -- she wants them
1009
to improve. This makes her different from many of the cruelly and
truly snobbish (e.g. most movie critics who went after fan-boys of
"Inception"), who would produce in their own mind a land full of
stupids even if no such constituted the actual lay of the land.
@McEvoy-Halston
"we could have a whole population efforting to write their first
novel"
I'll read your criticism when your literacy and writing skills
improve to the point that it's beyond babbling incoherence.
And "efforting?" SERIOUSLY??? (Discoursarian)
*
@Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Patrick: "Laura is saying that something about (the coloring
of) this movement attracts people who in the end DON'T do
1010
Xrandadu
Re: "Like I said, imagine a film lover telling people they're
foolish for participating in the 48-Hour Film Project.
Or imagine a music critic scoffing at a program that
1011
@Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Patrick McEvoy-Halston: "I do not believe that Laura is
telling people to desist mostly because she sighs that the last
thing the world needs is yet another novel-writer..."
That is explicitly what she said. In any case, I'm not sure what
is to be benefited from doing guesswork as to Laura Miller's
motives.
Patrick: "If I was noting from 48-Hour Film Projects that the
produced work is not really working to deepen film-makers"
@Lary Crews
I bet you had to walk to school in snow up to your chest,
uphill, both ways, too!
Eh, different people are different. Anyone who doesn't
understand that is not human enough to be the kind of writer
I would want to read. Some people need a push, or a
challenge, or some way to turn off those nagging voices in
their heads.
Whatever works. NaNoWriMo works for some.
To you, and Laura and Patrick - get over yourselves. You're
not that special. (khalleron)
khalleron
You believe it's hard to get writing, and that NaNoWriMo is about
challenging, prompting, cajoling / aggravating people to finally get
doing what they've always wanted to do. It's a much-needed /
appreciated agitant, not some facile enabler: it's actually working to
bring people a bit closer to where Laura would hope they become, and
it could only be out of still-haughty ignorance that some good person
1014
like her could disparage it. Some of us see the situation differently,
sense the movement is somehow mostly about gathering,
aggrandizing, authoratizing mass "preferences" (your brave extension
is for us a sighted effort of significant overlay we are no so stupid as to
dismiss), and hope some people out there in some credible position to
do so will insist on doing the soon truly dangerous but intrinsically
kind / hopeful, and prompt, aggravate, members of the forming
assemble so that it settles less readily / assuredly into something that
would block from consideration what is clear-seeing, en potentia --
sane.
When Stephanie Zacharek insisted in her review of "Inception" that
Nolan is no Hitchcock, she wasn't just being smug; she was trying to
be fair to her informed sense of what is truly right, and be helpful. She
sensed the encroachment, the false substitution, and knew it was
ultimately instigated out of a need to do the required to block from
view authorities that still "stand" that complicate efforts towards
uncontested group-think, that could disturb one or another from
trance, and played to whatever part exists in those who are
succumbing that has been drawn previously to what she has to say, in
hopes of keeping that much more sanity "in play."
Laura is doing the same thing here. If you like what Laura has to say
before this, please know for sure that if she met more of you, caught
better sight of how much you actually do read, actually participated in
the event, and read more of your produced work, she wouldn't think
any different. You honestly think you want to "acquaint" her, but
don't realize just how much you would rather more have her
succumb. (The instant Laura stood amongst you, you'd know the
issue is how to break her -- she will not cooperate, "friend.") We know
you're about the modest, the smallest pretense, claiming only the
tiniest of space and most modest portion of our time, but we sense
something in the nature of the time we live in that tells us you're
actually already probably at some level aware you're going to be
carried along to trample all over us. You think elites like Laura are the
ones with power -- and right now you'd prefer to never think different
1015
-- but power now really belongs in those who would abstain from
being interesting and would orient the elite to be less true counter
and more an assumed part of the story. The most sane and good
"about town," won't go down without a fight, for both your and our
sakes. Franzen obliged Oprah, and "Freedom" was his proof of
submission; his friend, Laura, liked his book but was irked by its
terminating capitulation, and stands still, trying to not let you down.
@Patrick
Oh, did I hit a nerve?
Good.
I love puncturing pomposity, it's my fourth or fifth favorite
pastime.
Boo! (khalleron)
-----
Why not...
As a published writer, NaNoWriMo interested me. I have
previously only written poetry, and if there's anything that
sells fewer copies than fiction, it's poetry. In fact, fewer poetry
books are actually read, purchased, or stolen than any other
genre. I applaud anyone who picks up a book of poetry and
actually reads it. (Windebygirl)
*
Everyone's entitled to an opinion
I'm am an independent author who'd never written anything
longer than a short story before learning of NaNoWriMo back
in 2007. (Gldrummond)
*
Laura,
I found your piece and read it thoughtfully. I completely
understand your point of view and agree that you make some
fine points when speaking in generalities.
However, NaNoWriMo's contribution to art and letters is not
about the hundred thousand participants who never finish
their novel. Nor is it about the thousands more who fail to
properly set the first draft aside, move on to another project
to reinforce the habit of writing each day, and later return to
the initial manuscript for an honest and thorough rewrite.
NaNoWriMo, in my opinion, isn't even entirely for the
hundreds of writers who *will* follow the proper steps,
perform the due diligence and just fall short on the talent
curve.
NaNoWriMo, in my opinion, is for two kinds of people: buried
treasures and lifelong readers eager to try their hand at
creating what they have so voraciously consumed. (Statesboro
blues)
*
I think it was just last week that I wondered why she was
suddenly (and this is a cheap, obvious gimmick that's simply
become all-too-common on Salon) asking "What fictional
characters would YOU equip with modern
technology?....WRITE IN AND TELL US WHAT YOU
WOULD DO!!!!!!! We'll look forward to seeing your responses
on Salon.com!!!!!".
I read that (and I've obviously paraphrased it) and was
instantly reminded of the recent time when I heard that a
previously very-fine program produced by our local NPR
affiliate was going to be IMPROVED (!) by adding "listener
call-in, requests, and audience INTERACTION!!!!". (David
Terry, aka Dterrydraw)
*
What a cow!
Ms Miller,
You are an arrogant (insert ugly word of your choice).
You don't sell well and perhaps you need to read something
along the type of books you write: Article Writing for
Dummies. (Anya Khan)
Disappointing
Another published novelist here -- in about 10 countries, with
fiction nominated for major awards and, to top it off, a Ph.D.
and publications in VOGUE, NY TIMES, and many other
prestigious markets. Am I good enough to address you, Ms.
Miller? (Greeneyedkzin)
*
editors who know slush-pile better than Laura does -- even of picky-
picky literary journals. Heck, even the voice of all that is generous,
patient, allowing, reluctant, restrained, thoughtful and considering --
David "draw" Terry -- has decided he must show up to let Laura know
she's maybe having a bit of an off-day with this one. David does all his
modesty and fairness in a way which probably makes more than just
me feel as if he's being wide-stanced into a corner while listening to
this most 'greeable of personages, but, overall, we're still though,
comfortably all-agreed: Laura is so beyond-all-evidence off on this
thing it may not even be unfair to start considering if she IS actually
lessening into a witch, an isolated cretin whose crime though is not
just ignorance but greedy jealousy, who figures some score that no
other than she is aware of will be settled if she collects together some
large share of clicks from out of other people's misery.
But is it possible for representatives of every position to "convene,"
representing the entirety of everything at-all possible to be
considered, and yet for it still to amount to a collective assembled to
keep out anything dissonant that does exist and that would provoke it
out of a drama it's drifting into and that JUST MUST be lived out?
Well, yes, it is. During the Great Depression, for instance. For a few
years at the commencement there were pot-shots taken at the
struggling / trying, but very soon everyone was agreed -- the
astonishingly literate and completely illiterate, the earnest and wise-
cracking: all -- that the people are as they are being presented here,
decent "folk" with no pretensions, giving it their best shot, doing the
intrinsically American and just trying to make something more of
themselves and of their lives, and only the hugest ass would know
them different. The few people who "objected," who argued, no, these
people are shrunk, lacking in sustenance, personality -- requiring not
a voice at the table but some beginning of a differentiated voice at-all
worth hearing -- hardly existed, and when present, hardly known,
gaining larger recognition only 30-years on, after the war, with the
beginning of a new era-long period where everything that was known
for sure could finally be seen in a different light, and be reevaluated.
1020
back to the 60s: you've got ammo on your side that might balk back
arguments that you're not reading enough, or that you're not reading
the right type, or that you may be reading the right type but not in the
right way, without any recourse to proof of contra; for all the same
was said of even the intellectuals of the 60s, and who now looks to
Trilling as Ginsberg's master/better?
But if we're heading into another 30s / 40s, then understand that you
aren't going to prove true Romantics, together, urging on your own
voice / creativity, but a gobbling, intolerant horde -- the most
profoundly societal-inhibiting / repressive / scolding / all-
determining force; the soon-to-be-in Laura's ostensible place -- and
you'll be making sure that the few people like she who is not
dismayed, find no respected vehicle for their voice to be heard.
----------
Is is possible that Jon Stewart and his gathering crowd are attempting
to serve as "filth men," in the way Lloyd describes? Jon Stewart has
Obama on his show to cement the link, and then gathers his crowd in
Washington to intercept / counter poisonous feelings ("insanity")
directed at him (Obama) during this unnerving midterm election.
Obama, we know, is losing Rahm, and for the most part seems more
"naked" than he does at other times (casual self in "supplicant" /
lower position on "Daily Show"). Tea Partiers will get their place; they
will find office at a time when Obama is less potent than he will likely
at some point once again become; but a considerable body has
manifested itself near the same time in Washington that shows it
exists to absorb / counter some / much of the hatred that Obama
might for the moment be imagined as not quite being able to handle
without "collapsing."
Different thought: We know that after long periods of growth, when
we're about to enter that horrifying stretch of time that follows manic
growth, the termination of the historical cycle, we're all inclined to
merge back with the engulfing mother and sacrifice substitutes of
ourselves to Her.
Is this move into government, in near proximity to socialist /
engulfing Obama, means for the Tea Party movement to in fact
become part of Her (Obama as agent of Mother) (something Jon
Stewart is also doing, and perhaps ultimately for the same reason, in
his own massing on Washington)? Should we expect them to function
as Gingrich et al. once did and continuously oppose the president? Or
will they at some point -- after he has suffered and endured their
anger, accepted their presence within government -- essentially serve
as extensions of him, and cripple -- believe it or not -- other righteous
"crazies"? Should we expect Tea Partiers to in fact quickly become
denatured -- offering up their own potency to Obama, perhaps -- a
1023
Amendment:
Concerning my last thought: It may be that what we need time for
isn't just to slip into a more disassociated state, but to make a
forthcoming long Depression, extensive sacrifice, less guilt-arousing,
something we may in fact be doing by the likes of the apparent
scholarly return to / redemption of "culture of poverty" thinking,
which -- as it suggests government is limited in what it can do to
change people, and has historically been used to effectively stigmatize
the poor as being largely responsible for their own debased condition
-- works against the efforts of near-undeniably, wholly-conscious,
good people like Paul Krugman to make us feel like some foul part of
us must actually want sacrifices to not now allow the spending we
know from history would have prevented the Great Depression from
ever occurring in the first place.
Patrick
-----
1024
Stewart and Colbert still now strike me as the type liberals will look to
to ensure a guilt-free purity crusade. Ostensibly, what they champion
is sanity, reasoned discourse, but what they are against is uncurbed
personality, individuation, show that you still respect / value (are
reluctant to denigrate) that part of you that still aims to make your
own particular mark on the world (Colbert's "I AM AMERICA"): they
want denatured, reasoned neuters reporting both sides of the news,
becalmed not from being reasonable but for being in denial of
agitating emotions, for being wholly in sync with the needs of the
purity crusade -- for the pervasiveness of this type, and its successful
idealization, will show Mother that the kind of self- attendance
(mother-neglect) that leads to personality has been throughly
repudiated from the public scene.
The following DeMause quotes are playing on my mind (taken from
"War as Righteous Rape"). From them, I am alert to think of non-
pejorative forms of our desires that people like Stewart and Colbert
1026
are blasting in their call for sanity. Along with genuine lack of
reasoning (as we see every time Stewart showcases any of the
genuinely always-unreasoning FOX News types), we will see grouped
its actual opposite: the impassioned fight to resist obfuscation,
curtailment of truth, flight from sanity toward group disassociation,
we consistently find with the likes of Joan Walsh and Chris Matthews
(two liberals who have showcased as insane -- or at least as talking
insanely -- by Stewart). As I have suggested elsewhere, I have no
doubt that Krugman will be targeted by liberal "reasonables" as
amongst the clearly unreasonable. They have to (go after him), for he
has too strong a claim on being reasonable right now himself -- on
defining what it is to be reasonable in our current era -- and yet so
strongly and genuinely opposes the sort of personality-killing
depression / suppression most liberals are increasingly drawn to near
openly insist upon. It's risky, because disposing him (considerably)
arouses the spectre of undeniable guilt -- of feeling impure,
fraudulent, intrinsically hypocritical. So when they close in on him,
psychohistorians have to be prepared to remind them throughout
their efforts of deposition that the only way HE could now be the one
they target is if THEY are in fact the ones behaving irrationally,
crazily -- scrutiny-worthy. That is, their upcoming attack on Krugman
will in my judgment be our best means of playing to the part of
liberals that may yet resist this strong pull towards ensuring the
depressive end to this historical cycle (of seeing huge crimes against
people). It can be used to draw some back to sanity, and keep some
part of our age still innovation-prone, genuinely aspiring and happy,
despite the clawing, claiming efforts of the regressive-prone.
Patrick
DeMause quotes:
1) If there ever were a society where parents really helped their
children to individuate, it would be a society without growth panics,
without engulfment fears and without delusional enemies. The enemy
is a poison container for groups failing to grapple with the problems
1027
Evidence
The U.K. has cut back expenses hugely and fired millions.
It will certainly go into a major Depression. As Tony Blair
said when asked why he hit his one-year-old baby: "You
have to discipline them!"
Lloyd ("U.K. Cuts Back Gov't Expenses,"
realpsychohistory, 21 Oct. 2010)
-----
-----
You may all have read it already, but here's Paul Krugman on the
cutbacks:
-----
at all.
However, whenever I read his work --- and I do enjoy it
--- I am usually struck by the observation that he
conveniently leaves off an essential part of his neo-
Keynesian argument.
That point is that the reason the U.S. can get away with
heavy deficits, and heavier trade deficits, is because of our
military control of MidEast oil. As long as this remains in
effect, the excess dollars can be exported overseas and
other countries, particularly China and Japan, are
obliged to accept them -- as OPEC oil is sold for dollars.
Thus those excess dollars can be buried in the desert sand,
i.e., recycled by Arab elites into Dubai skyscrapers or
Saudi Rolls Royces, or sent more directly back to the U.S.
in purchase of low interest Government notes and bonds,
and high priced U.S. stocks.
The U.S. military control of the oceans is a key part of
this. If China were to get too horsey about accepting the
diminishing-value US dollars, the U.S. Navy could shut off
China's oil supply at will. This may sound drastic, but the
step was actually carried out, very successfully against
Japan (before Pearl Harbor!), and has been hinted at as
recently as this year in the currency disputes between the
countries.
There are a couple of problems with continuation of this
neocon wet dream, of course. One is the possibility that
U.S. deficits and debt hit a tipping point, where the dollar
actually collapses. contemporary Kondratiev wave theory
would suggest (according to some professional
interpreters) that the hyperinflation danger is still at least
a couple of decades away. The other challenge is the
mysterious potential that MidEast Oil depletion takes
effect sooner rather than later. When/if this occurs, the
grand strategy of the U.S. will have the rug pulled out
1031
-----
-----
-----
Re: Unless you have access to information about the early childhoods
of Krugman and other economists, then you are simply NOT
permitted to make assumptions about psychoclass based solely upon
observations of the adult.
(James, if I'm not sane, don't bother reading what I've uncovered
about someone's childhood. If I'm sane, focus on what I've observed
from sheer experience of the living presence of the thing. Circular,
square, linear -- whatever; it's true.)
We of the advanced psychoclass recognize one another. There is
warmth and sanity in Krugman, chill or at least repression in most
others (i.e., "crazyness"). From the adult formation, you know the
origins. I do. You can't win an argument with someone who wants to
convince you that Obama, for example, is high psychoclass through
their studious digging-away at his childhood, because these people
are intent to make what is so readily before you for assessment ("I'm
right here, guys -- on friggin' Oprah, for heaven's sakes. No historical
figure, me") something to be trumped by what they feel they are in
position to put a smothering control on. When Lloyd was in mood to
convince us that Obama is well loved -- capital "P" progress -- you
couldn't counter by showing how evidently uncomfortable he was
1033
sitting beside Hillary during the campaign (he always seemed to turn
away from her, drawing back from her maternal thighs; a boy who
knew what it was to cower before mama -- and often) -- that is, by
pointing at the obvious -- you couldn't effectively counter at all,
because he oriented on a particular uncovering of his childhood as
"true proof," one he could count on (with he himself being silent on
this one) being defended as unassailable not merely by the here-and-
there Obama-rejoicing psychohistorians, not merely by the wall of the
type of timid liberal historians he has spend a lifetime lampooning
and being lampooned by, but by the Historical Enterprise itself.
"What is your lone opinion, intuition, against this mass of adult,
authoritative research and evidence, young man?" ("But sir, if I can't
read him well now, what makes you think I'll focus well on what is
offered up from his childhood past?" "Does anything you've ever
written say different?") This was Lloyd of recent past, as he leveraged
History in its sense as the most conservative and repressive of
studies, as an abode of monastic, professional stewardship / control,
as he smacked of everything he has spent a lifetime lashing out at.
On a related note. One of the great things about psychohistory is how
wonderfully hippie anti-authoritarian it can be. Some Phd launches at
you with tombs of research, and contends that you can't even begin
until you plumbed somewhere near equal. The advanced-psychoclass
lounger responds by lamenting that the Phd didn't spend all that time
in nurturing therapy so s/he could have commenced the whole
enterprise in a spirit closer approximating sanity ("In short, I'm not
really quite sure you've even begun, sir." "That is, it's probably on the
mark to say that once I begin sentence one, I'm already ahead of your
library of time with the thing.").
Patrick
-----
-----
With my sense of (at least current times) America, Rachel, I'd have
been more convinced if you'd argued that most everyone deep-down
thinks they're shit, that they probably don't deserve to be happy
(they've got their maternal alters to thank for that), only that hippie-
types who hope they might be / deserve otherwise, and the poor and
vulnerable who publicly demonstrate their very own shameworthy
neediness and dependency, are so much more rotten than they are.
Once on crusade against them, in service of the Maternal rather than
to themselves ... yeah, they might own up to feeling pretty righteous,
I'll grant you that. But in reality these monsters are FEEDING, not
feeling -- that's what their would-be food, us hippie-type,
emotionally-healthy, advanced-class hipsters do. You know it.
Patrick
-----
-----
re: Problem is, every one knows that they're right. Good luck
finding some one who really believes that they are crazy, wrong and
out of touch.
These crazy, chilling, repressed folks you mention know, like you, that
they
are correct. Why, they can just *feel it*.
that (he thought that), and it's probably why in the next post I jumped
right to it: with psychohistory, it's not about the argument anymore;
it's about your state of well being. James's point that with
psychohistory you can't infer backwards (which is dubious, or at least
very, very complicated, to me) is not something I got into, because to
mind instantly I knew that this whole thing isn't so much about
knowing more, but about caring / feeling more. The more advanced
psychoclass is able to, and cares now to, see the abundant cruelty,
insanities, that previous generations, more regressed people, could
not see, despite it being everywhere before them. Members of such a
psychoclass can't be convinced that to convince what they need is
more information, or different sources, not just because they just
know they've already got plenty before them of a kind that "proves the
point" (If Jimmie Carter listens well, respecting you, respecting your
point, but never deferingly / self-diminishingly; if Paul Krugman talks
with charm and style but also with deep concern and serious intent; if
Jim Henson reaches out in ways that make it no surprise that beyond
a generation have through their encounter with him felt more worthy
of being loved; and you see / sense all this, you just want to laugh
when someone feels this isn't what you should be pointing at to prove
how a person is constituted [i.e., their psychoclass]), but because they
know the problem before them isn't really evidence -- it's the
inability, disinclination, of the person you are talking to see the
obvious. I know I'm not going to convince by digging at childhoods
"here" (which to me was foremost here who Obama is now as a
person, not how you just know he must have "gotten on" with his
mother), so I don't get into it. What I do is try to prompt out people to
act in ways which show them aspects of themselves which I suspect
may be used to suggest to them that the problem isn't really my
inability to argue properly -- however well I am in fact arguing -- or to
look at what I should have drawn upon, but in factors working against
their ability to cooperate in well attending to what I have to say. How
does Lloyd convince (and the point can be made that even amongst
psychohistorians, he HASN'T, mostly -- how often do you encounter
1037
-----
gov't expenses, so I think this is the last I'll say about it.
re: Problem is, every one knows that they're right. Good
luck
-----
-----
-----
and uses them, and hunts those still seemingly intent on building on
themselves. Here at Salon we've seen Mel Gibson, (recently) Pat
Buchanan, Jodie Foster, Geraldine Ferraro, Ralph Nader get this
arrogant treatment. Jew-hating Gibson, that is, actually gets it for the
same reason Hippie-man Nader gets it: It's not about having once
raped/viscously hated somebody, but about having spent enough
time in your past being loyal to yourself. We point to all they've
accomplished, and try to make the presumed verdict the crime, when
all we're really doing is laying out the proof that justice has here
clearly been served.
Substituting a goat
[. . .]
[. . .]
.....
two minds -- one that creates, the other that rages -- is even in the
sympathetic, saner part, "incomplete," still crazy). (Artists may be
delegates; do what we wish/prompt but do not dare. But no one sane
responds this way.) If you find out a culture was cannibalistic or
sacrificed legions of virgins to some hairy god, take another look at
the colorful art you used to praise: hopefully it required looking at it a
bit distracted/askew or objective-intent, to deem it Beautiful. But the
problem isn't just in the art or the artist, it is you too. Reassess,
slowly; be kind to your former self; and hopefully grow. That creation
fundamentally comes out of knowing love and tolerance is only made
hard to see for it being historically rare. Amidst cultures that sacrifice
children, substituting an innocent goat that-never-did-no-harm-to-
nobody is a miraculous, beautiful thing.
The time has come to admit it -- Jodie Foster is not all that.
Foster, beloved child actress turned two-time Academy
Award winner, Yale magna cum laude, respected director
and person who has lived in the public eye for 40 years
without a nip slip, bar brawl or nutty Twitter outburst,
seems in many ways the epitome of graceful modern
womanhood. She is serious about her work, she is devoted to
her children and she was honored Monday as one of Elle
magazine's top women in Hollywood. And it was there that
she spoke of "an amazing actor, an incredible friend, a loyal
friend of mine for 18 years." She described him as
"incredibly loved by everyone who ever comes into contact
with him or works with him ... truly the most loved man in
the film business, so, hopefully that stands for something."
1047
[. . .]
[. . .]
However, I don't care who his friends are (or are not) and
certainly do not judge people for staying friends with
someone I myself would personally not hang around with. If
you do that, MEW, in very short order you will find yourself
with few friends (or none at all) as human beings are
naturally and perhaps tragically very imperfect beings.
(Laure1962, response to post)
"Friends"
MEW is at no risk of losing friends with this, because she is showing
here that she is intent to smear anyone out there who suggests some
kind of troubling independence, someone who can't ultimately be
counted on to just defer, who isn't yet defeated and might balk, is
resisting, stalling, beginning to talk/snarl back, and most of her
friends will increasingly be defined by their "subscription" to this life
prescription. Well, not friends, maybe, but a whole host of people
conjoined in servicing the current ethos -- "show you will be no
different; show you will defer." There will soon be lots of them, but for
awhile they'll feel themselves first-ascendants to an exclusive,
exhilarating adventure -- maybe the only one actually available right
now: they'll be smeared by those they cast off, will feel themselves
brave and afflicted, loyal and (therefore) loved: they'll think
themselves friends, and may never know different.
The point of these early depression years seems to be about
"familiarizing" everyone with the new ethos -- true individualism,
pokings-about in what may be genuinely new directions rather than
whatever sanctioned ones, resistance to trends that just must take
over -- is over. You will be cued as to what you are supposed to
think/believe "now" -- likely, first hate the stupidity/spoiled
indulgence of everyone everywhere, then, when the depression has
fully kicked in years hence, count yourself once again amongst the
1049
"injustly suffering masses" (i.e., the mass you did everything you
could to create by not too much focusing on the economic decisions
which ensured their creation during the first years of the depression,
and instead mostly on the particular variant of craziness in the
unveiling list of never-ending crazies -- such a perfect counterpoint to
the distanced-but-rational primary Depression executor, Obama) --
and you will be made to feel as if your very survival depends on your
speed of adoption.
They're starting off easy, for an assured trial run. Past-date Jodie
Foster and anti-Semitism. Repeat. But so you're properly on the
watch, notice now the long, long stretch required to dethrone (or at
least submerge) Krugman, which you feel they're already
"considering," finding some way of floating into consciousness,
seemingly just to show their frowning-upon-it but actually also to
venture out for further straight, larger public consideration, and
which looks like it will commence shortly. The frown-prone Brits are
currently frowning upon Keynesian economics (Krugman is all
Keynesian: spend! Goddamn it, spend! -- what are you waiting
for?!?). Will this luring, brutal British stoicness prove means for
some sanity-intent liberals to join Republicans in venturing him as
possibly too hippie, too permissive, for our current, deadly serious,
economic conundrums?
...
Why Salon? Because it feels like where the fight for the soul of all
liberals will be staged; lost or won. It looks like where we will
determine whether hope, true straight-talk, is something that can
sustain through the heat of battle, survive the light of day, or
compelled to lurk in shadows, find friendship with the oblique,
deform into it, to be less visible, more overlookable, but less
penetrable/vulnerable. Right now, it's certainly "be alert to and fear
the whip," but the fight hasn't fully settled yet.
Retreat
Freedom, apparently, is something we pursue until the point where
we can chase down what we really want -- rapprochement -- under
our terms. All this early consideration of the rape, as if it were a
"rosebud" moment, when what it was was a vehicle to leave parents
behind you -- justifiably -- so that you can explore / be carried along
the currents of the times that move / accompany your adulthood, and
rejoin your heritage later as an encounter between one who has
experienced and lived and those who have been kept back. Patty
doesn't only find her way back into old patterns; she pins down as
much as possible both parents on points that have always concerned
her. With neither of them is there much potential for an enlarged
conversation -- which is just fine if the point is to momentarily enjoy
your ability to stand before them undaunted, witness their fainting
back and retreating, and thereafter without complication just savor
their ties to old assured ways and old strengths before admitting
you're -- alas -- confined to always be one of them, intent as you are
now to merge back into them.
To this particular contemporary reader, the book feels like (I
experienced it as) an accurate account of the last 20 years of
liberaldom. A good stretch at first of other-daunting, hells-bells,
frontier-like freedom -- ethical households multiplying out of
nowhere in run-down neighborhoods -- experienced as without
doubt, as pushed forward, as is any first opening of a frontier ("Good
neighbors"). Then, Iraq, and terrible self-damning experiences of
guilt for voting in a near unified swath of Democratic politicians who
supported the war, of seeming as oil-stained as any ol' coarse
Republican ("Mountaintop," "Bad News"). Rescue, with Obama --
dramatic re-imagination of image -- ("Fiend of Washington") but
troubles still with the economy, with the first couple years, especially,
1052
where no one was really confident that the sorts of people who were
most going to go under had crystallized (first struggles between
Walter, alone, and Linda). And then at the end some sights of a
gradual awakening to a realization that a certain class of liberals were
going to do okay, to the sense that a certain, specific kind of target
was desired, and that you actually have more freedom than you think
to move about, to err, and, apparently, to be arrogant (Walter's soul-
saving, other-diminishing tirade; then more confidently Patty's
expertly managed sequence of pseudo-kindness to Linda, sudden
total abandonment of her, and signed, departing "gift" of a cat-
balking, bird-turd enclosure), because your central concern for self-
abnegating rapprochement over freedom, your overall willingness to
cooperate in favoring the downing of emerging age-designated targets
-- even if not always with fervor or without regret -- has been
repeatedly noticed and unerringly proven to ensure you aren't one of
them, and that the way ahead will shortly be guaranteed for you and
as gratifyingly delimited, denatured, and era-defining (other drama-
obfuscating) as is a settled-upon war (Tea-baggers vs. the Obama-
loyal; mangy cats vs. implacable birds).
Walter is a monster for steeling himself to kill the cat, but he sees and
recollects Bobby's individuality, and through it, Linda and her
family's own worth. Patty "maturely" desists in attacking her
daughter's blog postings, choosing instead to restrain her true
response to it, to her, and just support her enthusiastically with
bland, unfocussed praise. To me, our near last sight of Walter was our
last glance of something maybe opening up, before a terminus that
sealed down everything that might otherwise have been challenged
and pithily grown.
going nuts.
[. . .]
Eventually I became a lot more aware of the ways in which
not only Hillary but also her supporters were being talked
about. I became increasingly sensitive to the scorn directed
at her, and it built and built as she continued to fight, and it
drove me nuts. Because I thought her continuing to fight was
awesome and hilarious. I thought it was completely
redefining how we view women and our expectations for
them in public and political life. She would not comply. She
would not give in. She would not do what the pundits
wanted her to do, what her opponents wanted her to do,
what reporters were insisting that she do, what everyone
was telling her was the smart thing to do or, in one case, the
classy thing to do. She just kept going. (Rebecca Traister,
quoted in Curtis Sittenfield, Big Girls Don't Cry: The
election that changed everything for women, Salon, 12 Sept.
2010)
Hillary
HRC WAS way better than Obama, guys. Only she reminded people of
their swarming, intentful mothers, so they looked away, moved apart,
and voted in the more denatured, affectless Obama. She WAS brutally
treated during the campaign; reporters could barely look at her, and
looked away as soon as excuse was given. Credit is due Rebecca for
noticing this; discredit, or considerable suspicion, for not being
drawn to her from the start.
@Patrick McAvoy-Halston
Patrick: "HRC WAS way better than Obama, guys."
Strange that you direct this comment at "guys." So there
weren't any female Obama supporters, is that it?
Patrick: "Only she reminded people of their
swarming, intentful mothers, so they looked away,
1055
@Xrandadu Hutman
No, not satire. When they (the press) could switch from talking to
Hillary to talking to Obama, they seemed relieved. They did almost
enough (though not enough: note the SNL skits which played on the
press's strange aversion to Hillary) to save face, but it WAS as if they
were risking close contact / involvement with some toxic medusa.
They engaged with her scrunched up in a grimace, bracing themselves
to the first touch of her affect. Obama was cool, smoke in hand. For
all the talk of charisma, it was his sparing absence which drew "us" to
him.
Palin you can bond to, have carry around her like a pistol in her
holster, because you'll be killing baby seals and runt liberals, not
bonding with her in some cuddled global village. The first sense we
have that she's turning to make us into one of her sprats, we'll turn
her into our first lady, permanently ensconced as secondary to
Obama. There is a sense, perhaps, that she's settling into that position
right now. Can Obama master his uppity (Palin) wife, like he did his
previous mistress?
That Salon gave Hillary support, speaks FOR Salon.
Link: Big Girls Dont Cry: The election that changed everything for
women (Salon)
liberal crazies
The thing to be careful of is equating the crackpots--the "extremes"
on both the right and the left. If they're on the right, they are those of
such psychic fragility that they cannot stand when society changes or
grows too much, so when it does they cannot but come untethered. If
they're on the left, then they're those of such psychic healthiness that
they can see that the next period of American political life will largely
be about coating ongoing economic disparities and war in a way
Obama-liberals can well live with, feel right about, and are hardly in
the mood to cooperate with this evil. Both will scream and screech,
only one will register madness, while the other, fair alarm; but to
Obama-liberals they'll both neatly be grouped within the same arising
wave of loonies-emerging.
Also, if you're a liberal who is coming to understand that s/he is going
to be of the ones who'll actually prosper under Obama, one who still
gets, is in sync with, his "style," his age, then its pretty easy for you to
remain becalmed and rational. What emotional agitation you do feel
can safely be expressed, manifested through the rest of us, so you
don't have to be at all troubled by it.
Like its star, Salt is a spare and lean piece of work; its
everything a modern action movie should be, a picture made
with confidence but not arrogance, one that believes so
wholeheartedly in its outlandish plot twists that they come
to make perfect alt-universe sense. The story the script is
by Kurt Wimmer draws numerous outrageous loops, but
Noyce neither dwells on them ponderously nor speeds
through them in a misguided attempt to energize his
audience. And he makes fine use of his star, an actress
whose lanky gait is as delicious to watch as her spring-
loaded leaps are. Noyce frames the movie around Jolies
finely tuned sense of movement, and yet its her
expressiveness that anchors the story emotionally: In an
old-fashioned, old-Hollywood way, Noyce and his
cinematographer, Robert Elswit, are wholly alive to her face
and all its possibilities.
[. . .]
Noyce has made his share of action thrillers (hes the
director behind the Tom Clancy adaptations Patriot Games
and Clear and Present Danger), but hes pulled off more
serious, emotionally complex material too (like his
meticulous and thoughtful version of Graham Greenes The
Quiet American). Salt is, of course, closer in style to the
former than the latter; still, Noyce approaches the material
with a healthy sense of humor. The subject matter alone is
likely to give moviegoers of a certain age a pleasant shiver
of Cold War nostalgia, and Noyce runs with that. (The Cold
War wasnt so much fun while it was going on, but as much
as we feared that the Soviets might someday come over and
liquefy our buildings, they never actually did so.) Touches
like Orlovs dumpling-thick Russian accent, or the way Salt
wraps herself in a swishy fur-trimmed cape, topped off with
a Dr. Zhivago toque, are served up with a sly wink.
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parody this one in her "Die Another Day" video? Isn't it the
opening scene of every episode of Alias ever? Thank God
Salt's there to keep the hoariest of cliches alive. (Chris,
response to post)
She really liked "Letters to Juliet," and it wasn't so much cool and hip
(in fact it wasn't at all that) as it was bright, warm, relaxed and ---
conditionally -- AVAILABLE: I think, the opposite of hipster. I think
you can provide a lot of examples of the cool and hip she goes for, but
it would as you know need targeting to convince, because with just
hearing that she goes for the hip and cool it's too easy to think of
movies that are a kind of cool, that are in fact so LAMENTABLY
cooled down that you recall most vividly her attending to the few
instances of vibrant "aliveness" the films did allow, the refreshing bit
of color -- glam? -- in landscapes otherwise so everywhere neutered
and grey. Your claim that she is attracted to glam is interesting,
though. As I've suggested / implied, it could be made to be about her
preference for color over drabness, part of her war against freezing
mannerisms -- which would be a sign of her own aliveness, her
expectancy for soulfulness, much more than it would her girlish
adolescence -- but you mostly want to make it equivalent to the
stunted guy's going for glum and grime it would seem.
You made the point earlier that the legacy of Pauline Kael (I
remember now I actually did try to get into her work -- a couple of
times in fact -- but so wasn't drawn in that I could barely recall having
1075
tried her on: I was always way, way more for Nathaniel Branden than
I was the kinda alien creature-seeming Ayn Rand as well) has been
the omnipresence of critics who cannot allow that their ostensibly
more evolved, more involved engagement with films has mostly been
a kind of cunning skating on the surface, an ongoing disinclination to
throughly analyze, deeply involve oneself with film, in preference to
sporting with them. You focus on Stephanie because you think she's
so beholden to her, because she represents THE PROBLEM -- the log
jam -- it would mostly seem, and not because you're a masochist
(though you say this, and I accept it, and hope you know it's worth
your exploring too). And it seems -- from one of the things you said
on the "Inception" thread -- also because you have seen what she can
do, and sense her potential. If I were you, I would continue to finesse
out where she goes wrong, and -- very much please -- at some point
also where she goes so wonderfully right, for all our sakes. Maybe you
could best do so by responding after you've just seen a film she's
"taken on."
You know the challenge involved in showing the kind of reviewer who
seems attendant and responsive to every film molecule to be actually
mostly closed off / shut down, so I wish you a universe of good luck,
as well as an unbeknownst deity or two to have your back. But my
rooting for your cause is genuine: Wouldn't it be wonderful if one day
Stephanie looked back and recalled "Avatar" in such a way that you
wouldn't be drawn, as one commenter on the Salon thread did, to ask
if she in fact had a limbic system? As I thought the alien flower she so
appreciated and attended to in the film notable but still so easily and
immediately trumped preamble, I had to wonder too, and would
certainly cheer at this!
Toy Story 3 takes a rather dark turn near the end (be
prepared for this if you plan on taking really little kids), but
the resolution is so funny and so joyous truly a
Sometimes theres God so quickly moment that I dont
think it will cause any nightmares. (Stephanie Zacharek,
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It should give you nightmares. Two futures are presented in this film,
one that will soon be familiar to the cast-aside -- a nightmare of being
used, tortured and ruled over, without respite, until you're broken
and finally gone -- and the other for those who have found some way
to sculpt themselves to be relevant -- another couple decades of
feeling vital to the future of the American dream. I think most liberals
feel that if they continue to fight for the impoverished, to fully side
with them, they risk joining the nightmare of junk, and sense that if
they only persuade themselves Brad Bird-like that there is simply no
hope for the damaged-to-the-point-of-grotesque, that they can
continue to accumulate and thrive, enjoying even a sense of now rare
election (in a suitably self-downplaying way, of course): it's simply the
way of the times. Bird showed he was for construing society so that
many of those who saw his films should probably rot, a few films ago.
"Wall-E" showed Lasseter still moved by enough of something special
that he seemed still for all of us. Not here, though. Another liberal on
the other side. May he at least feel guilt pains.
"It's vintage!": for safety, another clue to abandon your status as a
hipster, and possibly as a homosexual.
-----
And it was brilliant and funny and exciting. But it was also
possibly one of the tear-jerkingiest movies to come out of
Pixar yet. Click through to see what scenes caused the most
waterworks, but, of course, beware of spoilers.
5. The Toys Accept That Andy Wont Play With
Them Anymore
4. Andys Mom Takes In Andys Room
3. Woody Has to Leave Bullseye the Horse Behind
2. Woody and Friends Accept Death Together
1. Andy Hesitates Handing Woody Over to Bonnie
(Dixon Gaines, You got a friend in me: 5 tear-
1079
Re #5: It's not so much that they're not needed, but that they don't fit
his understanding of himself as one of the chosen still permitted the
path of blue skies, clipped yards and picket fences; college on; the full
realization of the American dream. Bringing one precious toy with
him would just show anyone who happened inside his dorm room
that he came from the right past of involved parents and idyllic
(romanced traditional) childhood interests and attachments. Bringing
the whole horde would suggest he's too much akin to those broken
who won't now find their way to college (increasingly, probably not
even the full way through high school), who cannot but now cling to
everything with some, with even the faintest bit of, friendly link, as
the threat of abandonment or disaster can never now be pushed far
enough away from conscious presence to not seem an any-moment
possibility.
Re #4: Andy's mom is acting out the drama of son departing for
college, in just the fashion all mothers continue to dream of acting out
-- because of its resonance of family fitness, healthiness, job-well-
done election -- but which we all know and sense that fewer and fewer
will able to realize. The mother's look inside the barren room is
today's version of Marie's "let them eat cake." Sad indeed.
Re #3: Woody is still infused with a sense of election from proving to
have the stuff to be the only toy to find uncompromising relevance in
Andy's movement along the right path, his shift away from all that
might compromise him. "Bullseye, you're just so sad. Just like a kid,
you were always too dependent: no would-be emerging adult in this
biting world wants to be reminded of having once been THAT
vulnerable. May you find solace in the trash ... but whatever you
dumb clinging pony: just find some way out of my sight. Now that's a
good pony."
Re #2: Sad, because we all know it's a result of Woody's naive sudden
trust of Lotso (what happened to the Woody who took like forever to
1080
Thanks for the great counter -- particularly your Stinky Pete example,
which I admit I don't remember all that well, and will have to look at
again. Examples aside, though, my overall sense of Woody as
someone too worldly-wise and adult -- and sometimes cynical -- to
not only feel the need to urgently rescue Lotso but to trust him to
rescue them rather than once again deceive and abandon them, was
established in the first film, with his long exasperation at everyone
elses' idiotic simple trust and naivety (their pre-schoolness), their
dumb eager willingness to fall for what should be the most obvious of
scams. In TS 3, his instant naivety was meant to make him seem too
innocent to thrive, and make their rescue and new home more
salvation-like and cling-worthy -- you weren't thinking of the games
they were going to enjoy, but simply that they'll have the mercy of a
few more years away from the curb.
-----
"because we all know it's a result of Woody's naive sudden
trust of the bear-thing (what happened to the Woody who
took like forever to accept the spaceman?), which seems
strangely out of character..."
Nope, not out of character...he saved Lotso because he was
going to die. It would have been out of Woody's character to
watch a helpless toy die. (LEM, response to post)
the uncomfortable
Watch when they get the vote, and then you'll see!
Re: "Contrary to the way they're often depicted by frustrated
authors, the agents and editors I've met are in fact committed to
finding and nurturing books and authors they believe in as well as
books that will sell. Also, bloggers or self-appointed experts on
particular genres and types of writing are, in my experience, just as
clubby and as likely to plug or promote their friends and associates
as anybody else. Above all, this possible future doesn't eliminate
gatekeepers: It just sets up new ones, equally human and no doubt
equally flawed."
Probably would have been better to have written, "Though they ARE
clubby and likely to plug or promote their friends' works, the agents
and editors I've met are also committed to ..." As you wrote it, the
bloggers or self-appointed experts take the big hit you ostensibly
meant to be spread all around. Also, I gather you didn't mean to have
us thinking of the ghastly accumulation of oil spillage when you
referred us to this horrific massing of slush, but given all the inertia
and choking and pure ugliness we've endured of the former "spread,"
we may be a bit more primed to agree with your argument that we
might otherwise be -- for what American is going to readily assent to
the aristocrat's / gentleman's point-of-view: "Friend of democracy,
are you? .... let me show you some of the nincompoops of this navel-
gazing mob you so want to champion but completely misunderstand,
and we'll see if you'll still desire they be given the vote any time this
millenium!"
Sometimes the fall of a system represents evolution of HUMANITY,
of spirit, not just technology. There are huge hordes of bloggers /
writers out there that will create something WAY WORSE, more
punitive and self-serving, than what's currently in place, as they strive
to find their way to become what they've always loathed and
1085
Superego world
Tobbar,
I disagree that the problem is just that they're novices. If that was the
problem, Laura would have pointed that out -- she is very much one
to recognize and champion novice writers. What she is thinking of,
and has herself been damaged by experiencing, are the ghastly
multitudes of damaged people who believe they've got what it takes,
1086
but who really are in truth sadly undeveloped, deformed people with
worse than nothing good to say -- to the point that "you're" left
stunned that they aren't on, even in the smallest degree, to the gaping
extent of their own awfulness.
But I don't trust that publishers, editors, have the stuff to recognize
and praise work that makes them uncomfortable. I think they would
begin to become uncomfortable, be less genial, with a competent but
novice writer if s/he ventured into areas, ways of writing, they find
inexplicable, beyond disproved and everyone-knows asinine -- there
are so many things you're simply not allowed to say these days: what
have the last twenty years been about, if not that? If they had their
say, s/he would be disowned, removed from the conversation and
forgotten about. And that's not good enough.
-----
To Patrick:
Im going to have to disagree with your disagreement of my
original observation re: hatred of novices. I think that Laura
Miller champions a few select novice writers who are
already published or well on their way.
To use a borderline racist term that my friend assures me is
all the rage in the publishing world, Laura Miller seems to
champion the special snowflakes who have managed to
rise to prominence.
Further, although Ms. Miller may be sympathetic to novices,
you yourself do not seem to be: ghastly multitudes of
damaged people who believe they've got what it takes, but
who really are in truth sadly undeveloped, deformed people
with worse than nothing good to say -- to the point that
"you're" left stunned that they aren't on, even in the smallest
degree, to the gaping extent of their own awfulness.
Honestly, how can you know this about these people?
Beginner yoga students are probably undeveloped
(flexibility-wise) with worse than no skills in regards to
knowledge of poses, and may even be unaware of their
1087
Being real
Re: "Honestly, how can you know this about these people? Beginner
yoga students are probably undeveloped (flexibility-wise) with
worse than no skills in regards to knowledge of poses, and may even
be unaware of their shortcomings, but is it standard practice in
yoga studios to dump so savagely on those beginners?
Again I have to askwhy the hate? Why the language that seems to
thrive on denigrating the writers?"
It's not hate, Tobbar -- I'm just being real. I've read enough of Laura's
work to know that if most submissions were inadequate mostly owing
to the fact that their writers were still at the beginning of their
journeys, she would never have written her piece this way, as she has
always wanted to believe that in everyone out there is, or could be, an
inspired artist (or art appreciator) waiting to be born. She doesn't so
much believe this anymore because her long experience with what is
put in her hands -- and her strong hold on sanity -- has shattered her
preferred and high estimation of the average Sue submitter's
capabilities, as she has come to conclude that something very wrong
lies in emotional / cognitive makeup of these people. My experience
of people, of what has happened to them after near 30 years of social
assistance withdrawal, of enduring the realities of a meaner society,
has made clear to me that many people out there aren't so much
better than Hogarth's gin-drinkers, that we've pretty much forced
1088
them to devolve to the point that you figure it's pretty much done for
them, and you're mostly hoping they don't have too many kids. We're
not all blank slates. Whole bunches of us are near born, filth-smeared
and broken. I'm figuring many of these might estimate themselves a
genteel author, and do the pre-requisites (send the finished
masterpiece to a reputable publishing house), but also that you'll
meet nary one of them in your average yoga class.
-----
the uncomfortable
Also, about the gifted writer / thinker who puts forward the
uncomfortable: Lloyd deMause's books have all been self-published,
and they've proven amongst the most important I've ever read. His
version of psychohistory was something you could almost get away
with in the more permissive, free-wheeling 70s, but even then, though
a few prominent and even universally respected names (the historian
Lawrence Stone comes to mind) were considering giving his unusual
ideas credence (Stone eventually backed away), most historians were
affronted whenever his essays found their way amongst more
preferred takings of history, and his longer works had to be self-
published. Today's "Lloyd deMause" would have it worse: even in
Laura Miller's trepidation in an author arguing a king would envision
"the nation as a version of his own body and vice versa" (a bit from a
book review of hers), I saw how the palest version of a kind of
exploration I find most meaningful and fruitful, has become more
bemusing than Freud's most far-fetched. If it's psychohistory, and it's
published, it'll be the most tepid, backpedalling of stuff -- there is no
other option. Self-published -- it might just be a prompt for where we
can go next. So I'm for self-publishing, and seeing what self-
publishers might just be up to.
spirit of punishment
this bare-ass whipping erotic, that you are to be counted amongst the
"potentials" who were aroused while watching it? Or that it JUST IS
erotic and violent, smartly rigged to potentially or even likely trigger
libidinal responses, ostensibly possessed by all of us?
If YOU found the scene erotic, I wish you had just said as much, and
made clear whether or not you were also aroused by it -- and if not,
how you were able to sense that others would find it so -- and either
defended the remarkable possibility that you can be fundamentally
woman-loving and experience eroticism and arousal in a scene of this
nature, or brought forward the possibility that the fact that you did
enjoy a scene you suspect you shouldn't have enjoyed, means you're
not quite in fact so distinguished from the clearly mongrel, beyond-
the-pale male who relishes this kind of violence.
-----
Killer inside of you
Personally, I think it unlikely that many men don't get a hard-on
while watching explicit scenes of female victimization, not because
they all regrettably still are in the possession of reptilian brian-stems
that make they forever capable of lapsing brute animalistic, but
because most were raised by mothers who were severely
emotionally / intellectually deprived in the patriarchal societies /
families they grew up in, and therefore spent their earliest part of
their lives foremost serving their mothers' unmet needs rather than
their own. Deprived mothers aren't magically capable of producing
nurturance; nurturance only comes from the well-cared-for, the
respected, the loved. So most men find ways -- are driven to find ways
-- to enact revenge for their being used, but also to pretend that this
isn't what they are up to, as they also learned early on that the one
thing you don't do -- at the threat of abandonment, of experiencing
catastrophic aloneness, destitution -- is to convey that you are on to
the fact that mothers weren't entirely self-sacrificial and marvelous in
their motives (their version, the only version), that they wanted to
squeeze every bit of attendance out of you before they abandoned you
once aging, teenagerdom, turned you on to other things. Patriarchy
1093
hurts mothers; hurt mothers hurt their kids: any other version is a lie
"good boys and girls" have learned to, have been scared into, tell
(ing).
sacrifice
sacrifice
Kasich got to speak most of the time, with Chris trying to make him
feel respected and at ease, yet despite the pro-offered time and space
blew up when Joan poked at him for a brief moment. Once again,
mommy issues? Of course. You can't get to the heart of republicanism
and patriarchy without understanding that. Something to be explored
further -- and not simply derisively -- perhaps?
I also wish Joan had focused mostly on refuting the contention that
1094
tea-baggers are reasoning and sane, like she did when Buchanan blew
up at her. They are insane, "not well," and we need to spend more
time announcing this fact, getting comfortable being derided as
liberal elitists when we make our understanding of this clear, so we
can move beyond to exploring exactly what this means. Kasich feels it
means they'll (tea-baggers) respond to a world-view that entrenches
an elite, and resonates everywhere of "sacrifice" and children being
served. I think he's right about that.
Link: John Kasich, Lehman Brothers populist! (Salon)
As Obama frustrates more and more of the left, how sure is the
Republican leadership that its own people won't develop more love
for the man?
As Obama responds to every crisis in a distant, unemotional,
1097
There is oil gushing into the ocean and people are killing
humanitarian aid workers and the earth is still warming.
Those things are on a different plane of sad and have
already left us all terribly afraid and depressed and angry
this early summer. I didn't know I had any room at all to
care about the Gores' relationship, but maybe because it's
something so much smaller, so much more personal, a
headline so much easier to absorb than the other larger
tragedies playing out around the globe that this small piece
of political gossip turns out to be such an unbelievable
freaking bummer. (Rebecca Traister, the sadness of the
Gore split, Salon, 1 June 2010)
Giving way
1101
On the bright side, it makes it that much more likely that we'll never
need to doubt Obama's marriage -- our dependency on its beauty is
now upped a further notch, so that he could actually have been a
Tiger Woods, a thousand skeletons could begin to funnel out of his
closet, and we know we'd collectively pluck our eyes out before having
to attend to any of them.
A few further lords out of the way so Obama can be King.
Link: The sadness of the Gore split (Salon)
again rules supreme, tea partiers, for demanding people fend for
themselves, for wanting for people to be left without resources to offer
options other than long-suffering without complaint, is accepted as
legitimate.
Any public, good progressive will find him/herself dumbfounded by
how many of his/her ostensible friends will turn on them. I wouldn't
count on Rachel Maddow, for instance.
Link: Taking the Tea Party seriously (Salon)
Be careful!
This isnt the first time with Ridley Scott, but despite every bit of force
motioning us to despise the new king for dismissing the long-serving
Earl Marshall, I cheered for the royalty. In this case I specifically
cheered -- build dem roads! get dem taxes! Even if in this film
universe the moneys primarily going to wars and not as the king
argues, to run the country, and even if the reticent withholding
1104
northern lords arent withholding from the king because grain isnt
even on hand to supply their own dinner plates, let alone feed their
people, but in fact because they horde away their riches in gross
portions in the fashion of Friar Tuck and his stored-away barreled
conglomeration of honey, I know that the royalty, the government,
elsewhere --most everywhere -- has a good point: how do you do
anything new with your country when well-positioned people in your
own retinue judge all change as lapse of wisdom in pull of impulse
and whimsy? Scott didnt intend this, but when good people are for
one, mostly old, and completely frozen in disposition -- in grimace --
and outlook, all his ostensible villains need to do is poke at their
stoned faces with the slightest bit of sneer or mockery, have the
slightest bit of teasing fun with them, and our sympathies should be
theirs.
The film would have us believe that the greatest unearthed treasure
here is the revelation that way back in the 12th-century, a man
produced a document with implications so revolutionary they might
stop us in our tracks, even today, if we allowed ourselves to think on
them a bit. But for me it was the young to-be-kings continuing to sex
his french vixen, while his wizened, wrinkled, grandmother,
impotently beamed all her supply of wrathful looks upon him. What a
treasure! He understood his grandmother as just another of
Englands stony looming gargoyles, who scare away with show of
eternal judgment but who are born out of fear of life, of stupid
ignorance and misunderstanding of anything beyond familiar reach,
not lifetimes of accrued wisdom; and showed himself in tune with the
slow breaking of routine and duty in favor of mischief, mirth and
experimentation that marked the beginning of the English learning
from the French and the Italians, which marked the beginning of the
roots for the English renaissance!
Intriguingly, Scott doesnt actually have it in for the French. They are
it seems by nature driven to be smartly and ruthlessly conquistatorial
1105
and scheming -- its just who they are -- and they arent so
individually self-inflating they cant readily accept that they might
function better as each one of them part of a larger state, and so at
worst always have a comprehensive functioning state while England
could at any turn disintegrate into a swath of broken, squabbling
chiefdoms, and are possessed of an arrogant -- and actually in a way,
self-diminishing -- and ultimately limited, but still formidable
understanding of human tendencies. They are a formidable
opponent; are right to doubt that there is anything actually really
existing and worthy when the English are in mood to bash their
shields and herald their virtue before them; and they serve as a test as
to how well the English are embodying their in-truth potentially
superior selves -- as truly uncompromised, noble individuals, obliged
to a King but whose castles are their own homes, who when united
can repel huge armadas and armies as can any vibrant young body,
multitudes of weakness-drawn contagens. Who he has it in for are the
English who dont understand that their way to best form, is not to be
seduced by French novelties, things suited really only to those of
apparently unadulterated French constitution, but to uncover basic
truths concerning their nobility they seem everywhere either prone to
forget or cover over, or to twist into worst possible deviant forms.
This means remembering / learning to be honest, forthright, brave,
unrelenting, and so forth. It means boasting the soul of a stone-
mason -- bearing-out truths youd inscribe on an otherwise
unadorned sword: It means life becoming about not an increasing
awareness of, and adding of and an appreciation for complexities, but
about refusing to add layers, life, story, to sully perfect and simple
beginnings.
To say that Scott would have the English, would have us, work against
life amounting to a story, to make maturity delightful because it
means a constant conversation of previous experience, perspective,
with the newly encountered and just understood, is, for the most part,
actually fair. His heroes are too often attractive men and woman who
1106
Shes gone where Lady Di might have gone to if she was an American,
and her future husband has gone to Oxford -- where all boyish princes
who would be Kings must go. If hed gone to Cambridge, it would
have again made him REALLY seem invested in doing something for
the country by craft or trade -- which would have lowered and
coarsened him -- when it is his loftiness -- his sheer existence -- which
most keeps the regression-prone countryside from devolving into
dispersions of the-really-quite-insane, gnarly, garish multitudes. Yes,
of course, hes supposed to be a lawyer devoted to helping the weak,
which is supposed to sound like the lord turning away from
expectation and risking being forgotten about but which by this time
we all REALLY know means hes perfectly orthodox -- perfectly
certain, and safe, given our newly updated standards concerning
how lords are to define themselves.
It isnt a good thing when being as alive as a sunflower but not a wit
more interesting, cant make you -- an ostensibly ambitious human
being -- the subject of some ridicule. And yet this might now just be
where we are -- in that too many who can at some level see that these
leisured, liberal humanists / gentry, who ostensibly have the time,
quietness, and tutored capacity to range greatly and uninterruptedly
while in this world, are just beautiful script, lines curling up, down,
and on through a plot already known and before them, content to
take pleasure in the variances of sensation they can see ahead and
know are coming, but still very much to be taken pleasure in, because
vividness exists primarily in the rush of what is before you not in the
nagging memory of what you once knew, because they are in-mind to
give up the reigns to someone else themselves, and want no evidence
anywhere extant that makes them feel small, feel guilty, for doing so.
Claire --the grandmother -- could be a problem. Which is why all her
genuine gravitas is summoned but drawn to essential vacancy -- her
love of her life, who she once loved and never --ostensibly rightly --
learned to lose interest in, is SO MUCH perfect acquisition, perfect
object, well-groomed and already, beautifully-told story, that she
serves as unmistakable proof in the pudding, as General Colin Powell
1111
to George Bush, that what is not actually here in the film, IS actually
there, if only you had the capacity to find it.
Photo still: "Letters to Juliet." www.celebritywonder.com
I want one!
From a guy's perspective, it's not so much the eyes as it is the breasts
-- of course the film didn't feel flat: not even Disney's Nine Old Men
1112
could have dreamed them up! Egan was too nice: caught in a film
where the guy's dragging his gal all about the place is cause for
divorce, but where "his" driving Daisy everywhere she needs is
gentlemanly and appropriate, if he didn't evidence some
disgruntlement before the end, slobbering CALIBAN would have
climbed that tree, not sweet Percival.
Redgrave is living assurance that true love means a vineyard-owning,
warm Italian, with gentle manners: As a grown-up still-15-year-old
who's moved on from ponies -- or Tony Stark, in regards to "melons"
-- would say you just want one.
-----
Further, I'M a bit disgruntled that this film made losing your mom
into a mercilessly effective bargaining-chip -- as if the romancing the
self-abnegating knight bit wasn't enough to plot out how your man
might be wholly owned.
Correct thought
I think if you laugh at prose so that it strips it of authority (what the
Moderns did with their Victorian predecessors), so that your own
artistic ventures feel more legitimate, it is a sound thing to do. More
than this, it is a GOOD thing to do -- as laughter, mockery, is at the
service of growth.
If you're laughing at prose without any real authority, then you're not
servicing your own growth, rather, you're foreclosing it: as who
amongst the legitimate would risk writing anything that would leave
themselves open for laughter from their peers? None at all -- and so a
culture freezes in its preferred prose, state of mind, and current
grammatical correctness. Some time later, after they've crumbled
away, a new generation emerges that laughs "their" way on toward
unusual things. Or not -- and we're left with successive generations of
elites against the mob, complaining of plagiarism, not knowing that
IN ESSENCE, that is all they are.
@Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Whoah, thank you for reading my work with such attention!
I don't think that my reaction to Hunter's televised
revelations about her personal life have any connection to
my assessment of my own professional habits. But I'm very
flattered that you're such an avid reader.
Best,
Rebecca (Rebecca Traiser, response to post)
Divides
Rebecca,
If you felt the same pressure to be a good girl in your personal life as
1115
Oysters
The fact is, we tell women that being good people involves
agreeability, cooperation and a little bit of self-sacrifice. In
addition to telling them to be polite and deferential, we teach
little girls from the beginning that life is going to be hard
and involve compromise. This dose of realism is not terrible;
it girds us for some hardship along the way. But it also
lowers expectations for remuneration and recognition.
Despite those who say that women have lately been told that
they could "have it all," that promise has, in my experience,
always been accompanied by caveats that a) we probably
can't, b) if we do, it's going to be incredibly difficult, and c)
that if we somehow do manage to achieve any kind of
satisfaction or balance, we should be damn grateful.
Gratitude, I've found, is not an attitude that results in
promotions and raises. (Rebecca Traister, A nice girls
guide to getting ahead, Salon, 26 April 2010)
Oysters
I think we all need to remember that during the medieval ages, men
did their best to become like women, so they might imagine
1116
I chased down this quote because I think this is about where we are
today: men who do the the things that are supposedly lauded -- show
initiative, refuse to kow-tow -- in truth go the Jerry Maguire route,
ending up rejected and cloaked in failure, whereas men who try and
make themselves women by showing in some fashion that they can be
broken by whatever authority-figure they happen to be working for --
are allowed to pass on and on and on, on our current, good girl, A+
route of societal approval.
Male or female, if you grow up these days with truly healthy self-
esteem, you'll be too busy dealing with the unleashed sharks to find
any of those damned world-oysters you were expecting. Be glad
you're still inclined to self-lacerate, Rebecca. Cover's better.
Psychology of hoarding--explained?
1) When most of us look at an object like a bottle cap, we
think, "This is useless," but a hoarder sees the shape and the
color and the texture and the form. All these details give it
value. Hoarding may not be a deficiency at all -- it may be a
special gift or a special ability. The problem is being able to
control it. (Randy O. Frost, interview with Thomas Rogers,
Stuff: the psychology of hoarding, Salon, 25 April 2010)
The hoarder is Robin Williams from the Fisher King: a humble life-
poet who sees the magic in the (quote unquote) junk. Or a young Luke
Skywalker, in touch with the energy field created by all things.
Future prospects: A future magician who will show us the magic in
everyday life, help us move away from a consumption-oriented
society. Must learn to control his power, so it doesn't control him.
2) If you spend one weekend with someone with a camera
crew, a cleaning crew and no therapy, youre making some
educational contribution by showing people what hoarding
is -- and that its really an illness [. . .]. (Randy O. Frost)
Response
1118
We are offered two different accounts of hoarding here. One (the first
quote) makes it primarily a gift, possessed by someone who feels the
beauty in things in a culture that can no longer do the same. The
other (the second quote) makes it primarily an illness, to the extent
that a cruel show that effectively traumatizes those it pretends to help
still deserves kudos for it at least making this point clear.
If they're wizards, then not just house cleaners but therapists too need
to tread carefully, for they are dealing with those well beyond their
capacity to understand, and whom they must primarily not so much
try and help but begin to try and learn from.
If they are sick, then all this appreciation for shapes, textures, colors
of objects the rest of us understand less meaningfully, has to be
contextualized so we understand that the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer
appreciated certain objects this same way too.
Hope that's clear.
-----
Culture Changes
In the U.S., we've also gone from a culture where some
degree of hoarding was helpful and even necessary (when
items were expensive and stores were far between) to a
culture where "things" are widely available and cheap. It's
not surprising that some people go overboard.
My mother grew up in a poor farming family during the
Depression. To my grandparents, saving things was a
matter of survival. You saved every bit of wood and piece of
string, and reused every container and washed out every
bag, because you had to. My mother lived in the suburbs, but
she had a closet full of carefully saved plastic bags and
magarine tubs - it was just too ingrained in her to save and
reuse, she just couldn't throw away something that was still
good. She wasn't a hoarder - she didn't buy extra things just
to save them and she threw things out when she ran out of
space - but that impulse to stock up and save things "just in
case" is something that used to be a necessary part of life,
1119
@KayWWW
So if by some odd bit of luck, and if your mother had been born a bit
earlier -- in the free-wheeling '20s, not "your grandmother actually
knew best" '30s -- your mother actually found way to considerable
income during the depression, she wouldn't have developed into a
hoarder? Having known an era where treats were, if not quite
allowed, still very much enjoyed, every time she went out and bought
something new she wouldn't have said to herself, "this is selfish -- I'm
selfish," and more or less learned to just sit on her fortune, still
reusing the same container, over and over again? Possible, but many
people in the '20s thought they were going to be punished for all their
fun -- thought they DESERVED to be punished for all their fun: the
30's ruination actually "fit" their sense of justice.
Some people actually take pleasure when the drift in society is toward
war or depression, because it makes their own (truly) pathological
tendencies (sadism, anal-retention) seem too widely shared and too
appropriate to be anything other than rational. For a taste of this,
witness how delighted some now seem that the apparently near-
certain upcoming ruination of the Earth means that we all need to live
as invisibly, as minimalistically, as possible. Should have us begin to
suspect that things like wars and depressions, are actually things us
still sin-focused people will into existence to make sure we stick to
living in ways that make us feel guiltless or properly repentant.
[. . .]
So, Troy and I went our separate ways. I dont really
remember the party -- aside from the fact that it involved a
muddy hill, lots of pot, and that my best friend threw up on
her own legs. What I do remember quite clearly is seeing
Troy the next morning. As I walked up the driveway to my
parents house, where we had agreed to meet up for a post-
prom brunch, I spotted him through the window. His pink
cummerbund was loosened, and he looked tired, and a bit
sad, as he chatted with my mom while she flipped bacon. It
was only in that moment that I realized the error of my
decision, and I felt positively sick.
I had chosen the desire to "belong" over kindness. I had
placed my own fantasy idea of a high school "moment" over
someones actual, real-life feelings. I know, "belonging" and
the myth of "glory days" can be pretty powerful stuff when
youre a teenager -- but who am I kidding? I acted like a
total jerk, and Ive never really forgiven myself for my
behavior. (Johanna Gohmann, The night I ditched my gay
prom date, Salon, 8 April 2010)
The moment you grew-up
Re: As I walked up the driveway to my parents house,
where we had agreed to meet up for a post-prom brunch, I
spotted him through the window. His pink cummerbund
was loosened, and he looked tired, and a bit sad, as he
chatted with my mom while she flipped bacon. It was only
in that moment that I realized the error of my decision, and
I felt positively sick.
I had chosen the desire to belong over kindness. I had
placed my own fantasy idea of a high school "moment" over
someones actual, real-life feelings. I know, "belonging" and
the myth of "glory days" can be pretty powerful stuff when
youre a teenager -- but who am I kidding? I acted like a
total jerk, and Ive never really forgiven myself for my
1123
behavior.
You didn't strut into the after-party with your Ducky, but this
retrospective account still feels like a successful John Hughes
moment, though. You were of the sort to attract the devotion of the
most interesting, idiosyncratic person in school. You left him for
orthodoxy, but regret was instant (and enlightenment apparently
total) when you saw the remains from your neglect -- that sad but
striking and especially communicative moment of loose pink
cummerbund and flipping bacon, of downed boy touching casual
maternal routine. You've penned here an idealistic account, a to-be-
wished-for account, of a sad moving-on to adult realization. You had
your moment.
They fey-fearful
[. . .]
It is also important to remember that as brave as these men
were, as many sacrifices as they made, as many challenges
as they faced, many of them were unable to rise to the
challenge of even a modest leveling of the playing field
between them and their wives and sisters and eventually
daughters. The confusion of my generation and my father's
generation regarding their role and what is expected of them
is a testament to that fact. (Aaron Traister, Retrosexuals:
The latest lame macho catchphrase, Salon, 7 April 2010)
Raymond ...
Yes?
How many hits are you getting on that blog of yours?
Close to a thousand a day.
Good. Keep it up. (Raymond de Felitta, Blogging "City
Island": Why I did it, Salon, 5 April 2010)
stand on its own merits. That said, "Clash of the Titans" still
sucks.
[. . .]
The Kraken is big all right, and his design -- a small, turtlish
head perched on a gargantuan body -- owes a debt, as so
many modern movie creatures do, to H.R. Giger's design for
"Alien." But this Kraken is disappointing; there's no glamour
or mystery to him. He's overscaled and underwhelming, and
even in 3-D, he lacks dimension.
[. . .]
But what about everything Hollywood, with movies like this
"Clash of the Titans," is failing to give us? The movie is big
all right. But where's the magic? (Stephanie Zacharek,
"Clash of the Titans" could make the gods weep, Salon, 2
April 2010)
I promise you, boredom, demi-gods!
Minor spoilers (leakages):
Kalibos bleeds scorpions that are 500 times more powerful than he is
(and Kalibos rips people apart, making him 500 times more powerful
than regular-strength Perseus is). Medusa is 500 times more
powerful than heroes are. Kraken is about same as original, but here
you're left feeling he should have been the size of Jupiter -- the planet,
that is -- for right-balance sake.
Good movie to go to credit that your absolute unexceptional
normality keeps you well within demi-god range. Have to be able to
imagine yourself standing up to parents who promise a lifetime of
standing-around and being bored, though.
----------
You were right, Zeus! Spare us!
As a further note, I have heard that what in particular marks Art in
depression eras is showmanship and spectacle. As someone who was
into the 1920s but skipped the rest bit until "It's a Wonderful Life" or
so, I'm actually wondering if what Art most tries to prove during these
times is that man is about as ordinary, as humble-worthy, as
1135
2010)
-----------
Deducting penises
Deducting penises
Re: intimate violence affects both genders
Are you a mind-spirit, knowing best and first, signposts and
significations -- and all else denatured and cerebral -- and now have
trouble speaking for those unfortunates who've "known" spousal
1138
abuse"?
-----
Re: However, it's unlikely that an man who feels his
masculinity will be compromised if he reports abuse is
going to be persuaded [ . . .]
Man: "I feel my masculinity might be compromised if I report my
abuse."
Other man [to himself]: "If King Kong should fall . . ."
-----
[1] That having a penis is a sign of power, [2] that not having one is a
sign of powerlessness, [3] that penises are nature's way of signifying a
totally-not-abused person
[1] Penis = possession of power
[2] No penis = possession of lack of power
[3] Possession of penis = Other's (i.e., nature's) demonstration
through you that you are entirely without abuse.
-----
Re: Being a man without a penis is terrible, largely because
it makes you like all those other natural-born victims out
there with a reputation for dicklessness. You know:
Women.
Terminology
Patriarchy = invention by men and women to imagine society as
father-warded against maternal claims (i.e., collapse of self through
identity-dissolution). Improvement from matriarchy; enabled
civilizations; but is out-dated, and rightly IDed as cruel and way
1139
insufficient.
Men, according to (the worst of) academic feminists:
Determined by societal factors they themselves are oblivious to.
Through study and strict discipline -- a process of enlightenment
which has marked them unable wholly to return back, leaving them
still inclined to emote as sparsely / foreignly and speak as removedly
as do the cautious-learned logician-angels they've come to know --
and natural genetic superiority, academics/feminists see what you are
not able. Truthfully, they know -- unless you're a promising graduate
student -- you will never be capable of what they themselves were,
and so don't really work by changing YOU but by changing the
environment you are "subject" to -- that is, they work at changing
structures that will end up changing you (or, really, the next gen. of
"yous"), for the better but without your likely ever being aware. Even
while talking to you, that is -- something they are occasionally drawn
to do because, though their lives are mostly elsewhere, your fate is
their foremost concern -- their mission is with greater things. Their
looking away while talking to you, to the societal conditions that are
making you talk / think the way the predictable way you do, is
aggravating to someone involved in a conversation with them -- who
always hopes for one's full intention, respect for their own ability to
possibly influence / change "you" as well -- and this will of course
compound the aggravation you necessarily know and daily feel in
your being almost entirely the hapless subject of societal forces you
know not of. They know this, but it cannot be helped -- though "you"
are everything they fight for, you are also -- *sigh* -- the foul crop
that has already come in: all blithe; little to no promise.
In truth, their kind of looking away, to their own affairs, while
ostensibly looking at you -- their neglect -- is the kind of thing that
INSPIRES people to create less than humane societies. In-link to the
core of it, actually. I think at heart that we're at the point that many
academics sense this, and somewhere inside exult in their ability to
exult in their sadism, which creates frustrations which fuels their
right to continue-on laughingly at your expense.
1140
Man of Action!
Man of action!
Speaking of republicans, Here's an accounting of Ronald Reagan's
conversion experience, with which you can compare:
"His conversion from acting as a career to being an anti-communist
politician was, Reagan said, like finding "the rest of me," like moving
from a "monastery" into a life of action.(30) Now, rather than
accepting the self-image of a passive boy, guilty of his father's death,
he could assume the active role as a fighter against those who want
authorities dead. Rather than staying at home and endlessly watching
himself on the screen without legs, he could-like FDR, another man
who had used politics to conquer the loss of his legs-take action
against those who now embodied his dangerous wishes. The moment
he switched from being a liberal Democrat to a crusading anti-
communist, he not only found the rest of himself, he solved the
problem of guilt in his life, by taking all the things he felt guilty about
and putting them into an "enemy." At the age of 36, Ronald Reagan
had finally found how to live without crippling anxieties." (Lloyd
deMause, "Reagan's America")
1144
No better, no worse
was picking up all the slack and getting very little respect in
return. Before long, it seemed whenever I raised a qualm or
demanded help, he would say, "But I have a job!" I'd get
upset in return, of course, but my voice always seemed to
fall flat. Mostly I'll never forget how degraded those words
made me feel, nor how I stood there just praying that Julia
wasn't old enough to understand them.
[. . .]
In a sense, I have always lived life as if I were a character in
a movie perhaps every woman does. One of the strongest
memories I have of being pregnant is not how it felt to be
poked from the inside by my little girls, but of walking down
the street, large and slow, and feeling an overwhelming
sense of pride in the satisfied and sentimental looks of
strangers as I passed by them. It's the feeling of someone
else's approval, and it's probably one of the most powerful
things in the world.
My daughter knows that look; I know she does. She has a
pair of fairy wings that she loves to wear about town. She
almost always flutters in front of me when she does, and I
do love the look of joy and abandon on her face as she jumps
about, arms spread wide. I want to say there is a sort of
freedom there nestled in her curly blond hair, bouncing off
her round baby cheeks, and perhaps there is the freedom
you find in fantasy and imagination. I only wish that
sometimes she could stay in that little world, eliminate, that
is, the bystanders who walk by and smile, innocently
enough, at her in such a way that she beams and winks her
irresistible wink.
[. . .]
She knows her mother's been going through a hard time.
Sometimes, without warning, I cry in supermarkets and on
sidewalks, uncharacteristically unconcerned if others see me
without makeup on, or with it somewhere down around my
1147
pleasing when before her so often is the one in so much real due need
of fun and relief-from-pain, with you being so broken-down,
narrative-ridden, husband-disparaged, and only human and all.
When she broke down, dazed, fazed, and in dismay, and you knew
that that look of joy and abandon and freedom would likely only
thereafter be occasional and unsure, never fully unprotected yet
always mother-breachable, OF COURSE you reached out to her:
What a good girl!!! Her buckling proved your "wearerings" could own
her, and that she may never really stray -- that you'll have her maybe
forever in your mother-pleasing paddock, staying in line with
whatever your current mood holds is all she need know of the right
lessons of daughterhood.
Damn being beholden to what other people expect from you! Damn
the patriarchy!(?)
Mordred
Mordreds
When we sense that Morgana, not Arthur, rules the realm, the most
obnoxious -- for sensing themselves so obnoxiously-
1150
@softdog
I agree, softdog. That article may well have worked toward creating a
new underclass of people for the Newt Gingrichs (on the right AND
the left, apparently) to wage war on. We're about to pass healthcare,
and those least likely to find coverage under the bill -- students, part-
time workers -- are being set up by Salon as deserving less, not more;
as worthy of punishment, not assistance. (Akin to what Gingrich did
to welfare-"queens.") "They" should not want to play any part in
encouraging that evil. It has not yet been remedied.
When we feel a society needs punishment for its previous wickedness,
you might think all attention drifts toward the self-indulgent rich. In
truth, it goes there, but it is toward the youth that it settles most; for
the young represent OUR OWN striving selves, what we at heart most
believe brought us into a situation where somewhere above someone
menacing is calling for merciless crackdown and tributary sacrifice.
@Patrick McEvoy-Halston
1153
You said...
"...those least likely to find coverage under the bill --
students, part-time workers... "
I would be interested, do you have a link to back this up?
My daughter (a student and a part time worker ) was kicked
off of our policy when she hit 22. Now we have to help her
pay for an expensive "hit by a bus" policy.
Right now...
"a third of Americans age 19 to 29 are uninsured, the largest
and fastest-growing segment of the population lacking
health insurance. For those who aren't full-time students, it
climbs to 39 percent.
But the new HCB would let parents keep their kids on their
insurance until age 27, isn't that a big improvement? (ECHO
LEFT, response to post)
@ECHO LEFT
Admittedly, I was going on what I've heard other people say, and, to
be honest, an overall intuition that young people are not just not last
in line but strapped to tracks ahead of the Obama's societal-renewal
express. Glad you chimed in: It would be nice for kids to sense that
out there if they lapse or fall, isn't the boogie-man, but a kind catcher
in the rye.
All this said, I was for the healthcare passage earlier, primarily -- if
you can believe it -- because I think earlier it was passed through the
hands of an Obama with still, to us, some 60's progressive
effervescence, while now I feel that it has gone, and that the bill will
pass because somehow, despite it being about "health" and "care," it'll
be part of a conversation that would appeal to Moses as he espied the
heathens.
@Patrick McEvoy-Halston
What a lovely reply. You have a gift. (ECHO LEFT, response
to post)
1154
-----
and dog walkers. They temp, sling coffee and freelance. They
teach inner-city kids and counsel rape victims to make ends
meet. They come from all walks of life and from all parts of
the country, they are black, white, Asian and Latino, and all
of them struggle to varying degrees. What makes them less
deserving of assistance when they need it than anyone else
who qualifies, and why is it such a travesty that food stamp
recipients have access to quality, healthy food?
[. . .]
By the way, a whole rabbit at Lexington Market is $10, feeds
at least four people, and is healthier than factory-farmed
chicken (around $6 for a whole one at the same market).
(Gerry Mak, A hipster on food stamps responds, Salon, 17
March 2010)
Full Disclosure
I have reported all of my income. I receive no significant
help from my parents (they paid for college, so I wouldn't
expect any more from them even if they had the means). The
Department of Human Resources in Baltimore has my social
security number, and they know my employment history.
As for food, I generally don't even buy organic or local. I try
when I can, and usually that's with my own cash. Mostly
though, I eat sardines out of a can, which are sustainable
and high in omega-3s. I eat sweet potatoes, which are cheap
and nutritious. I sometimes eat chicken that I buy at the
halal market for about $2.99/lb. I eat a lot of vegetables,
mostly not organic, but I try to get stuff that looks good and
fresh.
I am only a hipster in that I make art in my spare time. I am
not good enough to have sold anything yet. For most of my
professional career, I have been paid to write and edit.
Unfortunately, the publishing industry is in dire straits,
which is why I find myself barely employed. (Gerry Mak,
1157
response to post)
firmly away in their own uniquely rich way of life, and this is why
we're in the business of trying to starve you out right now. If your
instinct is not to tell us to fuck off right now, to protect your right to
life of HAPPINESS AND PLEASURE!, you'll eventually find someone
else more spoiled than you to single out and bully, and so America
becomes one more person toward the barren, mean, and grasping.
-----
Sex, drugs, and rock and roll!: where art thy former (drop-
out) defenders now?
And I saw in my path a many-mouthed beast, which went by the
name of GLUTTONY; and another draped-over in silk, pearls, and
toy-poodle encumbrances, which went by the name of
EXTRAVAGANCE; and another adrift in endless hours of artful
posings, set for endless hours more, that went by the name of
IDLENESS -- and I knew God would be displeased if I failed to
ground to the dirt, every last spoiled-rotten one of them.
The American left? Who knew?
Patrick McEvoy-Halston???
Patrick, I think you take yourself a bit too seriously. Are you
for real??? I have two degrees; I excelled in my English
graduate program; and your verbosity and pomposity was
a marvel to behold, in equal measure. Congratulations. You,
sir, are a tour de force...
But all that was surpassed when I looked at your website at
http://patrickmh.blogspot.com/. My favorite of yours is
"Hey gang! You're at Me, Central--THE place to all good
things...."
Oh yeah, nice hat. (Keith Stroud, response to post)
Thanks, Keith
It's feels good to write something that can provoke a response that --
for me at least -- is one to remember. Hmmm. Maybe if I became a
successful writer, that would help solve the critics' current problem
(or at least help prove a point)!? It would be nice to help out, so.
I'm back in the west, but no longer cowboy -- I've got glasses that
keep me feeling just as singular but now urban and strange: where I
like to be.
Luminous
Sometimes cliches are necessary to get the work done, but
"luminous" really gets my goat (pardon the cliche). It may or
may not be a reviewer cliche yet, but it has been a blurb
cliche for the last 30 years. It sounds so earnestly
meaningful, but its presence on the backs of half of all books
1162
us. I think you use your columns for this purpose. It's so frequently
one arm fully-extended to us, but FOR THE PURPOSE OF making
clear that we no longer (are in) touch, that we are fated to drift away
from one another. "Sorry guys, I wish I could, but I can't!" Guilt
abates, even as your columns work to ESTABLISH that the rest of us
SHOULD imagine ourselves as amongst the unsavy and irrelevant
that really SHOULDN'T find their way to safe-haven before the flood.
So you write articles about why "Dark Knight" should have been
nominated, WHILE MAKING ABSOLUTELY CLEAR, not only that
you didn't much like the movie but that something is likely off with
you if you DID like it. You see in your comment section all the sad
fanboys, the easily entertained by, in truth, the truly unremarkable,
who ostensibly needed someone of gentle rank to speak for them, but
whom you can't sadly at all anymore relate to. Same thing with
LOTR. People thank you for allowing space to argue it one of the
2000's best when all you were doing was cruelly making use of
people's dismay to draw together a good lot of the sad hangers-on for
you to sigh at, disingenuously speak up for (highlighting ostensibly
imaginative responses by clear geeks, in an effort to essentialize
EVERYONE the films still speak to as being for the most part
unimaginative and uninspired, of non-professional calibre, of needing
over-enthused responses to their work to shore up their surely
flagging self-esteem -- as if being exulted might for a moment take
them away from their everyday experience of losing traction with a
world with no use for them), while twice or maybe three times making
sure EVERYONE knew the films no longer spoke to you or any other
professional film-critic you were in acquaintance with.
I would like to associate home-schooling with those who are getting
their children to know play. But I sense very little play in what you
write. "It" seems mostly about making clear that you are amongst the
elite, that an elite exits -- and owing somehow to its cleanliness, its in-
fact MODERATION in tone and ambition, in an age where many are
disassembling and rambling on on over to enthused, over-inflated,
left-or-right-variety crazyland, DESERVES to exist -- and that you are
1164
buoyed by having the good fortune of just having the right "look" to
allow you to innocently prosper while the rest of us get our messy,
panicky mental-states well away from your calmly-controlled,
securely-denatured presence. You well hide it from yourself, but you
are using our Salon, our meeting-place, to build for yourself, a small
fortress.
So it FEELS riskier, but it clearly isn't -- after all, we all know that
being Letterman/Clooney self-deprecating, pretending to think you're
heavily compromised and surely inadequate -- even clownish -- pretty
much is the only way to get a free-pass these days. Risky would
probably be to write, "hanging around young women actually can do
the trick," and to take yourself seriously as a man -- even if you know
this won't wash.
Whining
John, I can't tell you why the crop of novels I looked at this
month were mostly about middle-aged men, just coincidence
I suspect. But I guess I disagree with many of the
commenters here because I do think that it's a worthwhile
subject if the writer handles it well. I didn't like the Lipsyte
novel that much, but the Hynes book is great and obviously
I'm a big fan of the Kennedy novel.
Why not the Shapiro or the dominatrix memoirs? Because
this week I was looking at fiction, not memoirs.
Bebe, perhaps I'm naive in hoping that comments added to a
story are about the contents of the story. I like to think that
1167
-----
A pack of hounds...
...is what the "letters" bunch remind me of. I actually feel
that Ms. Miller's reviews were spot on, and showed a great
deal of insight. (yekdeli, response to post)
1168
@yekdeli
We're not hounds, we're Post-Whips. We're not here to rip apart the
posts; we're here to offer helpful correction -- to challenge the writers.
And we don't bite the hand that feeds us -- just little nips, and that's
it.
I've argued since August that the evidence was clear that the
White House had privately negotiated away the public
option and didn't want it, even as the President claimed
publicly (and repeatedly) that he did. And while I support
the concept of "filibuster reform" in theory, it's long seemed
clear that it would actually accomplish little, because the 60-
vote rule does not actually impede anything. Rather, it is the
excuse Democrats fraudulently invoke, using what I called
the Rotating Villain tactic (it's now Durbin's turn), to refuse
to pass what they claim they support but are politically
afraid to pass, or which they actually oppose (sorry, we'd so
love to do this, but gosh darn it, we just can't get 60 votes). If
only 50 votes were required, they'd just find ways to ensure
they lacked 50. Both of those are merely theories
insusceptible to conclusive proof, but if I had the power to
create the most compelling evidence for those theories that I
could dream up, it would be hard to surpass what
Democrats are doing now with regard to the public option.
They're actually whipping against the public option. Could
this sham be any more transparent? (Glenn Greenwald, The
democrats scam becomes more transparent, Salon, 12
March 2010)
1169
@Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Did you know Patrick-that Al Gore never claimed to invent
the internet? That he never claimed that the movie Love
1171
PS @Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Patrick-you characterize Kucinich as "munchkin seeming."
Why don't you post a photo of yourself so we can all see
what an asshole looks like. (Mister Dot, response to post)
P.S.
I was born with natural good looks, but the munchkin 's daring has
me wish I could at least ape his rare leadership, with a more
unexpected visage.
-----
than they want money -- they'll in fact lose plenty of the green, to see
more of the red (the largest story of what wars are about).
This won't be obvious for some time, however. And in the meantime,
those who sense the misdirection early -- people like Krugman -- will
very readily find themselves rendered Nader-Kucinich impotent and
ridiculous. "In the face of every possible bit of counter-evidence, he
yet still complains," will be the damning claim made upon him (and
so goodbye!). Eventually, with most Americans enjoying being part of
the movement, with them enjoined to the promise of the large-scale
persecution it will deliver on, people like Joan Walsh will loudly balk.
At that point, many Saloners will see her too in the way of tens of
thousands of lives being saved (or some such), with much blood on
her hands, and all sense that this expression is partly rhetoric will
have gone as many contemplate a more appropriate fate for those
whose stand hurts thousands of people, than simply being rendered
impotent.
You can substantial health care come to pass, but in a way which will
be sickly to progressives. I think this is what is about to happen.
Patrick
Yes, Star Trek is sticking with me. As a Trekkie, I was
worried it would suck big time, but it won me over with its
humor and its affection for the characters.
I haven't seen Avatar, but it looks like the usual bloated
overkill to me. I am afraid it will strain my nerves to watch
it. (Presumptuous Insect, response to post)
@Patrick McEvoy-Halston
I don't understand your argument. Why would medical
disorders prove to be environmental if talent and ability
prove to be? (Christopher1988, response to post)
@Christopher1988
The argument here makes genius the responsibility of good
childrearing, not (so much) good genes. If parents embrace this new
way of accounting for mental ability, they've positioned themselves so
they're going to have a tough time not feeling obliged to attend to
emerging arguments that make environment mostly responsibility for
mental DISABILITY as well. This doesn't seem obvious to you?
Maybe it's not; but it seems to me that it is. In any case, autism as
mostly childrearing, not genes, is essentially implicit in everything
Stanley Greenspan has written. And I really hope we haven't forgotten
about dear R.D. Laing -- the guy who helped stop Britains from
1178
@christopher1988
Re: There is a very huge difference between falling in the
normal range of human intelligence and how the way we
are raised leads this natural ability to flourish and being
born with a geniune medical condition that prevents one's
brain from working normally.
I hear you. And thanks for the feedback. But a good portion of what
we now delineate as "genuine medical conditions that prevent one's
brain from working normally," were once not so neatly tucked away
into the nurture camp. Even if "it" showed up at birth, people had in
mind to more investigate the nature of the womb environment than
speculate about one's DNA. Regarding things like ADHD, Autism,
Schiziphrenia/multiple personalities -- that is, mental afflictions a
good number now are estimating all about your genes -- not just some
worthy neglected psychologists/psychiatrists but a huge number of
the fretful parents who've helped ensure the current predominance of
(neither you or your parent's fault) nature theory at heart believe that
1179
-----
@DMSWhat
Re: That's different from telling everyone, "You, yes YOU,
can be a genius! You already ARE a genius!" This is just
pandering to the narcissism that's been running through
our culture for decades.
Yeah, and you had add that to the "it just takes lots of hard work" idea
-- a way of estimating your own life efforts that pretty much everyone
subscribes to (i.e., we're all suffering and working non-stop doggedly)
1180
If you convince with this argument, I can't but help that it's because
it's aided along by our tendency to associate creativity with IQ and
our preference/need to believe that out there are but a few greats
--who are so much greater for there being few of them -- we can
attach to to breast such things as our own personal depression and
fears of imminent societal collapse.
Personally, since I just think of genius as never really being cowed, as
seeing/imagining everything before you as in play -- and wanting to
play (and play! and play!) with them -- I think it's accessible to
everyone. (What does high IQ do for you, more than add another
couple of the same you might juggle with? Isn't everyone in MENSA
an autistic logic-puzzle solver -- that is, lacking of nuance, too
concerned with familiar repetition, and essentially retarded?) You
don't tell your kids s/he's a genius, you just keep challenging them,
communicating that their play and challenge is welcome and
wonderful -- not by saying this, but by the manner in which you
engage with them -- keep developing the "conversation," wherever it
goes. These kids will delight and astonish people (or scare the hell out
of them). It's guaranteed. But if we're intent on pushing them to
Princeton, if we need to see them a certain way regardless of who they
in fact are (leaving them ignored, and therefore, less developed), if
we're actually AFRAID of the new because it has the capacity to
unsettle in a way we worry we cannot handle, we'll see none of them
emerge when so easily we could have seen them everywhere.
To be a genius right now means to be ignored -- 'cause we're
1181
tightening up, going into stupid trance-states, and really just want the
predictable -- and so this (i.e., predictability/pliancy) is what you'll
find with everyone we now tell you is beyond brilliant. If you're going
to say something new and be accepted, make if the most incremental
of steps forward, and crowd it with as many people as possible that
assure you are saying much the same as what so many others before
you have felt comfortable suggesting. If we let it stand, we'll make a
very visible statue of you, not so much to salute you (though we do
ever-so-much appreciate you making us feel venturesome and bold,
without making us feel the least bit unsettled and anxious!) but to
clearly demarcate exactly where-beyond, no one further will be
allowed to pass.
@Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Doubt it? Stand your average parents with an ADHD-
afflicted child along a long wall of current books which
establish beyond doubt how ADHD is all genes, along a long
wall of full-agreement, confirmation and those-who-think-
your-affliction-means-there's-something-wrong-with-you,-
personally- are-just-scientifically-ignorant assurance, and
just start talking sceptic
continuing
@Angela Quattrano
1182
Would it hold water better if not a one of the long line of books on
ADHD on the shelf suggested that "your" mind went hither-tither
owing to your parents never letting it know safe-harbor? I've seen and
pa-roused the long line, and yet still wrote "genes": it may well have
been just nerves? bio-acids? chemical? but I went with genes cause
it's the "most usual" when we're retreating from mommy-didn't-love-
me assessments of our mental problems.
@Christopher1988
I think what I'm saying is that right now NOT EVEN doctors can get
away with explaining to patients/parents that an "affliction" is a
"nature" problem/benefit, because we've so long disengaged from
believing we've got to engage with our past to understand/move
beyond our present -- and at some level know how disengaged, how
vulnerable, this has made us at a time when we suspect whole
bunches of us may not (be allowed to) make it -- that you can't
suggest nature/environment in even the whitest of coats, the most
affectless (blameless?) of terms but soothing of tones, without people
thinking you're in mind to remind them of what it once felt like as a
child to know hate and fear in the guise of love, in those you HAD to
have love and want you. These same people can't handle, not just the
fact of what they may have done to their own kids to create such
chaotic minds, but a closer look at what-responsible? for the
anxieties/fears/"visitations" that drew them to have such ambiguous
relationships with their children.
presumption
This would have been a fun one to have seen and then commented on,
but regarding this bit
"Alice in Wonderland" does offer its share of slender pleasures:
Wasikowska plays Alice as bright and unassuming, and watching her
is never a chore, even when the story devolves into a "Girls can do
cool stuff, too!" empowerment tale. (Stephanie Zacharek, Tim
Burtons Alice in Underland, Salon, 4 March 2010)
-- I'm sorry to hear she plays it unassuming, mostly because I'm tired
of unassuming people being praised -- SPEAK UP, DAMN "YOU"!
DON'T SQUEAK ABOUT LIKE A MOUSE: PRESUME! PRESUME! --
but also because it's a significant deviance from the Alice I very much
liked in the book. Alice was notable as much (if not in fact, more) for
her default inclination TO PRESUME on the tilted creatures that keep
frothing up to spook at her with unsteadying strangeness, as it was to
accommodate and defer to them, and as a result she is often shown to
sort of spark the creatures she meets into a state that comes a bit
closer to recognizable sanity -- she gets real and recognizable, not just
crazed and abstract, conversations and reactions from them, and by
so doing SHE brings THEM into unfamiliar territory. You can read
Alice as an initially quiet and unsettled stranger who quickly becomes
someone who could see through the lies and breast the cowering and
possibly idiosyncrasy-inspiring intimidation, to near take down the
queer king (queen)dom. It's the Caucus Race where I first felt her
influencing Wonderland -- making "it" experience the uncertain step
toward a larger field of consciousness --not just reacting to it, but all
these instances are significant as setting her up as at least a potential
agent of unsettling change:
`Did you say pig, or fig?' said the Cat.
`I said pig,' replied Alice; `and I wish you wouldn't keep
appearing and vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite
1184
giddy.'
`All right,' said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite
slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with
the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had
gone.
@ Patrick M-H
Excellent comment.
I too read that bit of SZ's review and thought "... wait a
minute". What are either of the two Alice stories BUT "girls
can do things too" empowerment? In the first story, a girl
essentially stands up to tyranny. In the second, she become
QUEEN.
(Perhaps SZ's objection is to this movie's way of depicting
the empowerment; I haven't seen it yet, so I can't say. But
the theme alone is extremely "Alice".)
I'd like to see the film, even if I suspect it won't be very good.
I'm interested in the visuals, and I care enough about "Alice"
that I'd like to see even a bad version in order to be able to
talk about why I thought it failed. (If I end up thinking that.)
I'll say at the outset that unless SZ and other reviewers are
leaving out plot points, what has irritated me since the
beginning of the advertising blitz is this:
Carter is playing THE QUEEN OF HEARTS. Not the Red
Queen. Playing cards = "Wonderland". Chess Set = "Through
the Looking Glass".
I would find it interesting if this movie suggested that the
Queen of Hearts had assassinated and usurped the role of
1186
@sgaana
Re: "I'd like to see the film, even if I suspect it won't be very
good. I'm interested in the visuals, and I care enough about
"Alice" that I'd like to see even a bad version in order to be
able to talk about why I thought it failed. (If I end up
thinking that.)"
One of the things Stephanie does is show that there is fairly
considerable pleasure to be had in pinning down exactly what it is
about a BAD film/performance that made it so bad. I sometimes see
her as an artful cafe-flaneur, taking some pleasure in going wherever
needed to best delineate the experience of what strides/flashes forth
before her, who can near lull you into agreeing with her just so you
can accord her wordings some rightful permanence -- even, that is, if
something inside is telling you she may even be obfuscating, that she
did something worse than not nail it.
I'd love it if they'd let us know that certain films would stay on Salon
until the end of the weekend. I'd love to hear what this most
intelligent/sensitive audience of readers, after being challenged by
Stephanie's assessments, concludes about how THEY themselves
experienced them, and so offer the sorts of eye-opening, conscious-
raising disagreements/discussions we are able to offer when
discussion revolves around (for instance) a book we all happen to
have read. Stephanie's sharp, and makes you conscious of how exactly
you experienced things, and thereby, I think, leave you with tools to
1187
Alternatively, one might suggest that it says a great deal about just
how long barbaric practices can persist (I think child-sacrifice lasted
several millennium as well, and I don't think it ended so much owing
to the popularization of a new "script" for understanding deity-
1188
(Sheena Iyengar)
Actually, the two "scripts" are of actually desiring your fellow human
beings to live long and healthily, and of actually desiring your no-
doubt sinful "neighbor" to live insecurely, fearfully, as
demonstrations of intrinsic human fallibility and evilness. Can you
say something like this if you're a leading researcher? Or must it all be
so sober-sounding but completely disengaged and unreal?
about anything beyond raising hell over their own personal slights.
Six months later, I'm still mad at her for leaving. But I hope
that near the end she found a kind of peace, the peace you
feel when you stop struggling against the tide and just let it
carry you out. That's what I would feel if she'd had any
other fatal illness, because I know that's really what she had.
Not all suicides are depression-related, of course. And not all
depressed people kill themselves -- fortunately, many can,
with therapy or medication or both, control it. But Ali died
of the same thing that's eating away at approximately 21
million Americans right now, the thing that killed Alexander
McQueen and Andrew Koenig and now Michael Blosil. They
didn't take their lives because they were selfish. They did it
because they succumbed to a selfish disease one that
wanted them all to itself. (Mary Elizabeth Williams,
Depressions Latest Victim: Marie Osmonds son, 1 March
2010)
@Sara Rosenquist
I think you mean to use words like "choice" and "responsibility" to
provoke people out of willfully "succumbing [to the lure of being
victim] to a selfish disease" -- the retreat to science-legitimated, no-
further-thought required. I think your shock is helpful, especially
when Mary makes suicide after depression a Sunday to enjoy after a
six-day work-week ("But I hope that near the end she found a kind of
peace, the peace you feel when you stop struggling against the tide
and just let it carry you out"), means of imagining yourself bidden
toward a likely afterlife of lyrical ease and loving recompense ("They
didn't take their lives because they were selfish. They did it because
they succumbed to a selfish disease one that wanted them all to
itself.")
Still, if turning away from disease-theory means a movement toward
blaming others -- which is what most people will think of when we
associate suicide with choice -- it'll be regression, not progress. In
truth, I don't believe depression is a disease, but I do think it is an
affliction WHICH CAN determine a person's behavior and "choices."
Early childhood, if you did not know sufficient love, if you came to
understand your own needs as selfish and your role as someone who
pleases others (your parents), your adult, independent life will be
largely under the rule of an angry, watchful superego, which will
ensure that you are much more prone to make some choices than you
are others.
She was often a bitch, but at the end I swear I saw her Athena-helmed
and golden
She was often a bitch, but in the end I swear I saw her
Athena-helmed and golden
We've long been pilling our kids, and now we're overdosing our
parents: seems linked; sorta easy, actually -- in a the-road's-already-
been-paved kinda way. We did it to our kids -- if we can be honest
with ourselves for a moment -- just so that it makes "[a]ll the old
resentments and difficulties disappear," as we focus our purely loving
eyes upon the poor afflicted child whose difficulties AREN'T now
about parental abandonment, or any such messiness, but about
neurological something-or-another, and now we're doing it to our
parents so we can think of them as brave and blunt (as they would
have it) in an immature world, rather than those whose abuse
inspired a lifetime of nowhere-near-addressed "resentments and
difficulties."
If your lifetime experience of your parents was mixed with a good
portion of resentments and difficulties, if your own life was
inhibited/blocked owing to them, distrust any finish which has both
you and your parent feeling transcendent. You make "next-stage,"
"pure love," seem like so much escapist blather: isn't "next-stage"
really just another exit-stage-right (Don't bother me -- I'm planning
my death)?; out of excitement of the moment, how can you feel true
love for anyone who continually found means to shut people up, to
shut you down?
It's that I'm still coming to grips with how a woman could
possibly have dreamed up this spartan American soldier in
Iraq, who, while obsessively romancing death as a bomb-
squad ace, outdoes the most extreme images of machismo
ever produced by mainstream America. [. . .] Looks to me
1198
First off, if you were my wife, I'd be happy to go back to bombs too.
Secondly, I didn't much like the teflon-soldier, either. Had me
thinking at times of the worst part of Gladiator, when Maximus
steps back from the scribe who wets himself. I understand the current
appeal of narrowing your focus, though. Just get into a groove, do
something over and over and over again, and maybe when you pull
away, things will have changed. If not, back into the groove again.
That is, there is a sense that Norah Ephron's latest is actually kinda
like "Hurt Locker." A whole book of recipes, that drives her (the
blogger) away from being a nothing. At the end, with whatever
numerous potential recipe-bombs defused, with her now set to
master whatever daily recipe before her, one suspects she'll be apt to
go at it again, after her brief pause of no clear mission. No?
-----
There are also those who see him as a proxy. He is THEIR man, who
just wouldn't shut up and take it. He isn't yours. He isn't mine. But I
think we need to take care to note that in different situations, with
different individuals, WE TOO might become so focused on the some
particular someone who finally expresses OUR OWN discontent,
rage, that the humanity of other people is lost to some extent in their
becoming "wreckage" of our proxies' noteworthy concussive power.
These headlines of yours have me thinking a bit of the "finally,
someone speaks out!" excitement/relief, that has drawn many of the
right in this instance to lose all contact/interest in Vernon Hunter.
1) The President Obama we voted for
I'll let a smart friend explain why Obama beat the GOP and won back
his base, at least for a glorious day
2) Finally, some spine
The president gives (another) great speech. But it will take more than
words to get his agenda back on track
Why copy someone else, when you can copy yourself, risk-free?
better come to terms with this because children are, after all,
the future. You can't tell them anything! It's as if people
under 25 have become the equivalent of an isolated
Amazonian tribe who can't justly be expected to grasp our
first-world prohibitions against polygamy or cannibalism --
despite the fact that they've grown up in our very midst.
(Laura Miller, Plagiarism: The next generation, Salon, 16
Feb. 2010)
Boring, as a virtue?
@champers
Re: Canada has achieved what the architects of the
Enlightenment dreamed of.
They dreamed of a people that hides in shacks until unrulies have
found their distraction, elsewhere?
Re: We have a big space to play in, most of it beautiful and
full of food and water.
Great -- if you're otters; but what if you're urbanes like David Denby
and guess that you'd find all the Avatar-play a bit dull after awhile?
Re: We have a killer arts culture and all-round high
respect for creativity in all forms.
Otters ARE tool-using, and I'm sure take great delight in their stone-
polishing play, but why don't we let, say, New Yorkers assess Cdns'
openness to cultural creativity. I know that if I was doing my best to
slam shut the door to any notable (read: unnerving, unpredictable)
1207
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
@Patrick McEvoy-Halston
I'm going to skip the first couple of run-on sentences in your
post. It looks like you have your Tourette's under control
towards the end.
"know what a bland white-washing wasteland the Great
White North truly is".
Canada is only bland relative to America's own perception
of itself which is completely and utterly subjective. Any other
country, in most American's eyes, is just plain doing it
wrong - they (the foreign country) just don't quite get it.
Hence, the Yankee's frustration with Spaniards who don't
speak English or the bedazzlement of driving on the left
hand side of the road in some Commonwealth countries or
the complete befuddlement when the local currency is
printed in different colours.
Perhaps, in order to not appear too bland to Americans, us
Canucks should just start being more opinionated about
1208
You experience both nations as near the same. I hear you, and
appreciate you making the effort to convince me of their fundamental
similarities. But I admit to hating when things like mountain-biking
and surfing are put into play to salute a nation, primarily because it
makes non-literate pastimes seem the primary way to enjoy life on
earth -- in truth, makes a nation feel fundamentally suburban and
rural-minded in character, and book reading, city-culture, somewhat
alien. It is possible that a good number of people who enjoy these
pastimes, this vigor, are similar to one another in both countries, so if
this is the point you are making I am probably prepared to agree with
you. But though these are not all Republican-minded, a good number
of them are, and though I've loved sports in my time, these are not
primarily my people. The "out there" I attend to is in a different kind
of cultural-personal expression, and my experience is that Canadians
are far more likely to keep-in any novel thought of their own that in
the same instance an American would take wonderful opportunity to
express, out of "speaking your mind" not feeling like an imperative
but rather a natural inclination of "their" largely freer soul.
skinned as not so much "with me you get my family" but "with me you
get my race -- and every passed on ounce of suffering inflicted by
people colored just like you."
If it isn't you, and it really is some weird aversion on others' behalf,
you've got to be able to find a different crowd. The new Star Trek had
Spock and Uhura pair up: AND it was about the two TRULY most
sexy pairing up, not the black chick and the whitey -- a step way
beyond (and more evolved) than "look who's coming to dinner."
That's where most (especially younger) liberals are at, me thinks.
JackSparx
Nice one, Jack : )
Vulcan is kinda the new black. Uhura is just one of Starfleet -- what
distinguishes her is not her color but her strident smartness and
sexiness. Kirk wasn't her man, 'cause he is just too pliable, to
ultimately step-onable, to be taken seriously. But they do kinda make
Spock now a last representative of a blasted Vulcan-kind, and not just
the mostly singularly distinguished member of the crew. I'm not
suggesting that Uhura's love for him is a sign of liberal guilt -- an "I'm
in touch with those who've suffered most." It's not that, but it's a fun
enough suggestion for me to have played it out a bit in my mind.
@treming930
She's offering us a ton here. She's says guys don't know this fear, but
it certainly is something I'm familiar with. I doubt, though, that it's
just the distance that does it. The connection between finding yourself
alone, on your own, and very vulnerable to absolute dissolution,
requires something more than just having well known indifference
and huge-gapped distance. More likely, it is that as a teen on -- that
is, when you've moved beyond the stage of childhood, where you are
naturally drawn to your parents and the familial surround, to wanting
to explore a world all your own -- your poorly nurtured parents reject
you for the sin of moving beyond them (the same fate they suffered
from their own parents, when they stopped be so interested in feeding
their parents' own attendance needs). (So it's not the distance, but
rather the DISTANCING -- the INTENTIONAL abandonment.) So
even if you understand all your gains as well-earned, as the product of
hard-work -- that is, even while you try and tame down your joys by
associating them with long-suffering -- you always feel that at some
point being eaten away on the streets, will be in it, for you.
A big bag of warmth and love for you, Bag Lady. I'm sorry the therapy
didn't quite do it for you. That must have been very discouraging.
Link: The Bag Lady Papers: How to lose money and alienate people
(Salon)
1218
know him": sounds like the perfect gentleman. That is, it may well
have been a terrific performance, but he certainly offered us what we
wanted out of him -- just like Sandra Bullock did, when she
essentially helped allow every tyrannical middle-American woman to
understand their character faults as signs of saintliness, if they could
just make sure to align them with some currently fashionable larger
movement. For laudship, it is not usually enough just to offer a great
performance if who we get to know in the film is likely very off from
the person in real life. We may have liked Jack and Rose from
Cameron's Titanic (I did), but may still regret that the film could
isolate us from understanding history as means -- as a chance -- to get
to know people as they really were (the gentry, for instance). So it
seems Freeman provides us with the Mandela we all want to believe is
true. Pure love. In truth, I would be okay with this, if we were all also
well aware that the real Mandela is likely well different, that prison
(for instance) may have served him as it likely did John McCain (as
the SNL skit portrayed this) -- that we're just using the film version of
him to project for our consideration and good company, the ideal
leader. But this isn't what we're up to. Instead, this is the Mandela
who MUST be, regardless: we need him to be the unassailable
mountain of purity that can be counted on to keep straight and true,
even while the whole universe sags around him. With him, you dig
about a bit, and you just must find something even better.
I went after the person who went after Salinger because she wasn't
largely opening us up to a larger discussion, opening us to be more
aware, but dumping him into the pit of deposed men. If her purposes
were different, I would have just agreed with her: it's just sickening
when we see evidence of people being estimated largely out of our
own needs of the time; as liberals, of the more conscious, we've got
the make-up to demand more of ourselves. Good things happened
with Mandela, and I wish the best for him, but is he really more than
what our projections have set in place -- once past what we want of
him, will we truly discover something better? I'm not sure, myself. By
which I mean, I doubt it. But it would be still good for all of us to see
1220
Please wake up. Any time a famous man dies now, and we don't
thereafter learn what a junk of a human being he was to women, we
breathe a sigh of relief: My God! It is possible to die and not as a
retreating spirit have to watch a gaggle of awfuls piss on you in hopes
their evidenced disgust at you shores up their own immunity to the
1221
same fate.
Yes, we should be alert to how our own needs shape our
perception/taking of the real. Given the now, bringing up the women
made your important point inaudible amongst the shame-shame-
shames.
Thanks Mikki
He was a woman-hating male writer, like so many others.
Men don't want to hear about that. But women do. And we
also want to hear the truth and not a made-up version of
somebody's nobility.
Thanks Mikki for taking the time to write about that. (Deb
McEachern, response to post, Salinger)
I'd like to hear the truth, too, Deb. But there is NO SUCH THING as a
"woman-hating male writer," that is, some worst slum of demons
who's somehow prowled out of the dankest part of the inferno to
squeeze love, hope, and joy out of womankind.
Screw you for wanting to keep this pit of mad-mean myth alive and
open for more deposits. No one hates someone else, unless they've
been thoroughly beat upon. Unloved, unrespected mothers, use their
boys to satisfy their own needs. They end up hating them, when they
(the boys) focus on their own lives. This is where the woman-hate
comes from. No one is to blame. Our earliest ancestors knew little
more than the reptilian, and love has just taken a gargantuan ton of
time to start trumping that huge, long impress of savage. That is all.
Start dealing with THAT truth, and I'm with you. Then when we hear
of woman-hate, we're also hearing something else: reason, fairness --
love, maybe even -- no revenge.
@Angela Quattrano
The outrage is totally out of proportion to any accusation, which is
why it is clearly not rational in nature.
In may be no exaggeration to say that the entirety of pop-culture
analysis these days revolves around the periodic full reveal of great
men to puerile exposure, and a collective subsequent watching to see
all the blood rivulets and crass contours that develop in the desperate
attempt at some recomposition of the flagging victim / splayed
corpse. We get the day-to-day -- and then the lottery! Yay! Another
man down -- THIS time, WITH LETTERS!
---
Extending on the comments above about what it takes to plot
a movie, let's say that AVATAR *had* been nominated. Why
might that have happened?
Well, have you seen lengthy dissections of the Avatar plot on
political blogs as well as on science and tech blogs? Have
you seen the debates about whether the Chinese should be
allowed to see the film? People aren't having these
discussions about the future of 3-D. People are taking time
out of their day, day after day, to discuss the MEANING of
this story. How many films accomplish that even for one
day?
Aside from the effects, Cameron (for all his lack of social
skills, for all his pedestrian dialogue) has tapped into
something that resonates with millions of people around the
world. If, in the alternate universe in which Andrew Grant
lives, AVATAR had received a screenwriting nomination, it
would have been for creating a story that gets liberals
arguing with conservatives, that gets media interviews for
linguistics professors, that indisputably enters the zeitgeist.
(Brian Nelson, response to post, Screenwriting, the
mot meaningless Osar)
---
Brian --
Everything you mention about Avatar -- its politics, its
technological impact, etc -- is all perfectly valid, but the fact
remains that the dialog is simply dreadful, and I doubt any
critic praised it for its screenplay. It's a prime example of
lazy screenwriting, and an indicator of just how low the bar
is set. Its reliance on expository dialog is simply
embarrassing. (Though it didn't get an Oscar nomination, it
did get one from the WGA. That's concerning.) (Andrew
Grant, response to post)
1226
Good growth -- that is, growth in something other than the military,
which is just wastage, if not worse -- makes a lot of people anxious.
They simply did not grow up in nurturing-enough environments to
believe that they DESERVE good things in life, even if this just means
the equal opportunity to see a doctor as anyone else. If growth
continues, if Obama seems a president to some extent still intent on
making America more peaceful, fair, and hopeful, he would
increasingly make many, many Americans feel nervous, if not
hysteric. To them, good things, the chance at good things, means they
can expect punishment for aiming at something they cannot believe
they can have, seek to have, without being punished for their greedy
aspiration. To them, it is the parents -- the ones kids grew up trying to
placate, entertain, please, not disturb -- are the ones who MUST be
1229
attended to, lest they abandon you and make you feel absolutely
vulnerable. That these kids are now adults, doesn't matter -- their
parents are still in them, in the form of the superego, who/that rules
over the rest of the psyche.
Krugman grew up in a healthy background, and thus can't make sense
of what Obama is going through -- what many Americans are going
through. Obama is now in to make Americans feel less prey to being
punished, and he can accomplish this, by inhibiting America's chance
at good growth.
Dilly-dallyingly presumptive
I don't buy that it was the campaign. I think when Obama got in, and
both houses were democrat-controlled, many Americans felt
strangely hemmed-in by net. The tea-baggers were taken as feisty
fish, battering, this way and that (and thus were attended to way
beyond what support for their political stance, would by itself
allowed) -- and Brown's victory, the glorious emergence. Knowing
that escape is possible, it is actually possible that Obama's policies
1230
won't be opposed with quite the same vigor. Maybe they (Scott Brown
cheerers) just needed to feel they'd demonstrated why they need to be
attended to --their own self-importance, capacity for empowered self-
movement -- before they nestled in more comfortably with Obama's
plans.
No better campaign would have helped her, because the electorate --
and the press-- was in the mood to imagine her as dilly-dallyingly
presumptive, and her opponent as all vigor. If she hadn't gone on
vacation, something -- anything -- else would have been used to
maintain this fantasy. The fact of the matter, would, in my judgment,
hardly have mattered: it was going to be Rocky 2, regardless.
My book
Seriously. Ask anyone who's seen it, ask someone who's just
walking out of the theater ask them what happened in the
movie or if they remember any particular lines or scenes or
dramatic or memorable moments. (Amity, response to post,
James Cameron: Artist, termite, or elephant man? Salon,
20 January 2010)
And guys, let's talk less about intellect and theory, and more about
how we FELT as we LIVED the film. It was mostly real for many of us
-- and a hell of a lot of life happened to us and our friends out there.
Link: James Cameron: Artist, termite, or elephant man? (Salon)
Try watching WWE for a week, and turn back to your crush
No one can be part of the WWE environment for all that time, and be
all that sane. He'll blush, and play the puppet for you, but that's just
sad. On SNL, I root for him to be able to be TRULY in on the joke. He
1234
manages it, but just barely. He's known what it is to be long alone and
unsure of his worth, and he's not wholly downed, which is why I cheer
for him; but he's not much more than an amphibian to Pamela
Anderson's fishy-fish -- but a couple (well, maybe a few more than a
couple) steps up in the "fully there" department, that is.
He managed to do WWE and be hugely popular, all the while still
communicating that this was but a stage he'd be abandoning for the
more respectable -- which does say something for him. If you prefer
him to a Tom Cruise, it must have something to do with liking guys
who are more attendant to not be offensive, to soothe down the
nerved, than is healthy for them. I think that's it.
RE: And frankly, what about the farmers who enjoy their
life as it is and truly do not need to know the entirety of
"Hamlet" to have a good life and make a good living?
But what about the corporatists, those living in the metal jungle, who
well enjoy their life of millions but will never aspire beyond Dan
Brown? Will you speak up for them too? Or do you just have a thing
for the different kind of green? There are good ways to move away
from Shakespeare, but for me -- an urbane --pastoral romance is the
worst of ways. There is no wisdom in dirt, just random happenstance.
If we turn to it so we better understand "Shakespeare," okay, but if we
do so in an effort to make HIM the one who is optional, then the
ONLY reason this is still a plus is because progressives tend to be the
ones so turned on to garden-learning. Personally, I way prefer the
glass and concrete; I just want interactive, democratic, child-focused
learning, to be the norm.
Re: I was so angry after reading "Cultivating Failure," that
I assigned my 11th grade students a writing exercise on this
question: "Is interactive learning important? Why or why
not?" After 10 minutes of frantic scribbling, I heard about
the necessity of things like our school garden in my
students' own voices.
So something was bothering you, and you made your students sort it
out for you. Maybe next time ask what was really bothering THEM,
before assigning them to match your irritated state with their frantic
scribbling. You make it seem as if they eased your tension, with their
experiencing your pain. They're not extensions of you to use to stamp
1236
out internal fires. I hope one of them told you to piss off. And you
proved okay with that. That's the kind of fire I MOST want to see: I
could give a fig about the worms (mostly).
The old Jack is long gone, though, replaced with this sad
little half-caf Jack, who takes other people's feelings into
account and looks straight into his own daughter's eyes
when he's speaking to her. I mean, come on, Jack! What
have you become?!
[. . .]
But does Wilty Jack find Dead Inside appealing? Because,
let's face it, Wilty Jack is more like a Sexy Lady Victim Du
Jour this season, and Dead Inside is more like Classic,
Casually Murderous Jack, which means that Dead Inside is
likely to ignore Wilty Jack's pleading for sanity and mercy,
sallying forth heedlessly kicking ass and taking names as
necessary to round up plenty of wayward executail.
But we don't want someone with carefully applied mascara
on to save the world! We want Jack Bauer to do it, damn it!
(24: Jack Bauer goes soft, Heather Havrilesky, 16
January 2010)
pink. Neil Patrick Harris. Raphael Nadel is to you, all ass, not square-
jaw, and delights by dousing fires with a "charming response to a
jarring moment." Joseph Gordon-Levitt went all "dolled up as an
eyeliner-smeared Nancy Spungen for a fun stab at gender bending,"
to your approval. Neil Patrick Harris. You "finished" Zach in a way
you'd think would have finished him off, making him both a bear and
one who wants to cuddle-wuddle with the kids. You really turned on
to Lenny Kravitz, only when he tried on Nurse John. Clooney got
koodos for being "delighted to enjoy a snuggle with a nerdy goof like
Kristof." Levi got it for "going camp." Ted, for being "vulnerable and
disarming." Jamie Oliver, for getting kids to eat their broccoli, while
being so thoughfully "accessib[ly] charm[ing]."
Neil Patrick Harris.
That pretty much left Rahm as the only candidate for a Jack Bauer,
before he got soft. If you're true to your heart, you probably ought
now to spend more of your time watching your Rahm: think of him as
your agent, balled-up, and even closer to the heat of things.
*****
Jack Bauer doesn't give a shit
Jack Bauer doesn't just piss excellence, he also shits gold.
Bauer is so viral his simple gaze is substitute Viagra.
Jack Bauer is responsible for the birth of 4,440,000,
including his own grandchild.
Jack Bauer will have his cake AND eat it too.
There has not been a terrorist attack in the United States
since Jack Bauer first appeared on television.
Jack Bauer is the only reason why Waldo is hiding.
Jack Bauer doesn't give a shit and he knows you know he
knows that. (yojimbo_7, response to post, 24: Jack Bauer
goes soft)
But Jack Bauer NOW shits gold, and makes of it, a tiara.
But Jack Bauer is NOW fit for graze, beyond even the hope of Viagra.
But Jack Bauer NOW sighs his responsible, hoping for forgiveness
1238
Strange, this, going to movies which entrench cow poo in such near
proximity to all your memories of the genre's exemplars of wit and
charm. While you go to sleep, and you're not so there to keep their
1239
Link: Leap Year: One giant leap backward for romantic comedy
(Salon)
of TTT, when Shagrat and Gorbag are . . ." the further confident the
Andrew O'Hehir in most of us will be in its inclination to have little to
nothing to do with this film, for rather the longish while. Our decade-
end sum: For a moment, we kept fellowship with the geeks -- and it
speaks well of our humanity for doing so -- but, alas, they are very
clearly a breed apart: fiddling with their forever toys, are these lot of
unredeemable, squalor boys.
One wonders if in fact this article wasn't bait to coat the film-memory
well enough in sludge, so that it could be left behind for good, so
much more the cleanly. When you want to dump someone, you are
inclined to focus on the bad, and conclude that's more of what it was
really about than we -- in the moment -- could realize. So it was a
kind of joyous, silly play we allowed ourselves, but since it is now
obvious that those who stick with it amount to the small-towners who
never had it in them to last even a week in the big city, it is now time
to draw back, become more nuanced, and engage with an
unaccountably intertwined and complex world. This will require the
help of a different sort of film.
Of course it will prove a classic. Too much love and innovation in it
for it not to. But let's never allow its beautiful fellowship to seem all
that irrelevant to our current needs. Boy I liked Viggo's smile -- it can
carry you on through as assuredly well as can the latest "New Yorker."
We know this; let's not forget it.
January 2010)
Exposure to the truly beautiful and heartfelt can very much mean
being exposed to something new, something we haven't really known
before. There is a lot of heart in LOTR -- a lot of impetus to imagine
the preferred psychological state as open, accepting, giving. I think
the goodness in this is why we must try for a decade-end push to
ensure the memory of this movie isn't stamped over by those who
HAD been shut-down but have re-emerged -- now that the film's
protectors have flown -- who complain of plot deviations from the
book. The feeling now is of the scurried, pissing on the fallen giant.
Ever see "Can't buy me love"? -- it's the geek gone star, possibly in
position to be dropped on back down to loserdom, to absolutely
everyone's loss.
It is a manipulative film. You can feel Jackson trying to make you
dependent on him, to count you amongst a fandom which means
being grossly infantile, subject to shame. I understand; and there is
enough of it to make me want to polish off the uncouth bastard and
let him muck shit about in someone else's backyard. But there IS huge
good in the film, and it's worth our fighting for.
Why did LOTR drop off the critical radar at decade's end?
Methinks it's due to that perennial, fundamental disrespect
of the fantasy and science fiction genre, the same reason
"sci-fi" literature was/is ghettoized and consigned to the
bring-your-own-blacklight section of your local bookstore.
See Ellison, Harlan, or King, Stephen. Or better, Dick, Philip,
K. (while he was alive). "Fantasy" is just not as critic- or
award-friendly as, say, our annual dose of Clint Eastwood
1244
@SmartMoose
It is certainly pro-warrior, and could easily be deemed pro-military.
The problem in the film is not military, but a CORRUPTED military.
It is military distorted, disfigured, through lack of righteous purpose.
It is near evident in their physiogamy -- certainly in their unwashed,
uncombed, snide-ful countenances. They're elves turned orcs.
Afghanistan is already something different than Iraq. It's not yet
Green and save-the-earth -- it's not "blue-men," serving Eywa -- but
it's not so much Blackwater either. Let's just say it's already better
shaved, if not yet at the point where it's spun around to fire back at
the grunts with the gun.
Awakening-mother Ewya
@geometeer
Geometeer: "Perhaps the most wonderful thing in Avatar is
that the hero when human has a hand-rolled wheelchair --
two-century-old tech at the story's date, in a tech-
1247
Xrandadu:
It did that. But it also worked to set him up as sad and pitiful -- to the
rest of the "core." The point is also made, in the way the other (let's
call them) marines reacted to his disability, that they're now much
more paid grunts (the fallen) than they are military men: military
men may have teased him, but would have more readily appreciated
his I-can-do-what-you-can-do attitude. That the colonel looks past
this, baiting him with new legs but focussing entirely on his mental-
makeup, makes him a bit apart from the rest of the rangy crew. That
is, the colonel is never in the end the military man who went
corporate soft, but an old-style patriarch -- the devil? -- whose
formidableness can't match that of awakening Mother Ewya. In a
way, the last fight is a replay of what we saw in Aliens -- with a
mother and her colony against a lone, independent, let's-dance
warrior (Signourney, in Aliens) -- but with a reversed outcome. Felt
that way to me.
Right-wingers who complain about the film, see it as leftist, should
note that Cameron takes extra care to make the military grunts seem
like ill-groomed anarchists. That is, when people see them, they may
as quickly think anarchist street-youth -- or even, disspoiled tree-
huggers -- as they do military men. Got the Olympics coming to
Vancouver, and the public seems in mind to imagine its leftie
protestors as this kind of foul. The mountain-loving folk who just
can't wait, can't imagine why anyone would want to spoil their
outdoor, innocent, sporty fun.
1248
Link: What the news biz can learn from Avatar (Andrew Leonard,
Salon)
Generation interlude
But it seems to me, this is the story from Avatar. Out of ruin, dispirit
-- genuine uplift and communal embrace: the answer. I predict that,
eventually, people will drop this it's the technology cover they're using
to excuse / understand their being dazzled by the film, while they
gradually acclimatize themselves to an awareness of the fact that they
are now finding themselves drawn to the simple and reassuring, to
what hereto they would have, without remorse, lambasted with scorn.
The film did the miracle of laying out the storyline for our future -- in
the end, being ungrateful to it would amount to keeping company
with Selfridge, way distant from the excusing embrace of Ewya.
"What have you people been smoking out there? It's just a god-damn
tree!," is the voice of the critic, of an era, that is passing. Crazily, it is
-- alas.
Link: What the news biz can learn from Avatar (Salon)
-----
Why oh why....
is it continuously incumbent upon me to point out what an
obscene, blatant, pathetic hypocrite you are, Joan? I can't
for the life of me understand how someone like you with such
intelligence can have zero grasp of who she and her fellow
liberals truly are. Here's the deal: When you feel
passionately about my side of the argument, people like you
and your ilk (i.e. - Matthews, Olbermann, Maddow,
Grayson, etc.)are complete trash. The same is true for your
side. That's just the way it is. I agree with you about one
thing: I have no wish to see any harm come to you or the
others I mention above. I have a karma issue with that type
of wish. However, it is beyond insulting that you write about
your fellow liberals as if you all are the peaceful ones, and
conservatives are evil and hateful - as a whole. Come on,
Joan. Get a grip why don't you. In just a minute, one of your
liberal readers will see my letter and write something to the
effect of: "RE: Junebug4 - Fuck You!" Guess what? That
letter will get a gold star. Trust me, Joan - you are every bit
as evil and foul as you think Rush Limbaugh is. You simply
have to be on my side of the fence to see it. (junebug4,
response to post, Get well, Rush Limbaugh, Salon, 1 Jan.
2010)
@junebug4
Despite all you see, you are missing the crucial. Despite liberals
talking about pissing on Limbaugh's grave, most of them, in the
company of those who have done them the most harm, can still quite
possibly see/feel the humanity in their opponent. They would never
have them lined up and shot -- and not owing to some self-serving
concern to estimate themselves more civilized.
Some on the right, when they've begun to feel particularly untethered,
would save their opponents, only so they can be sure to torture them
endlessly first. Once dead, they'll attend to their victims, only to shout
1253
at them and beat them over the head a few more times. Remorse is for
the emotionally more evolved -- those who tend to find themselves on
the left, or in some way well within their company (Tucker, Brooks --
even a little bit -- though you're not going to believe it -- Coulter), if
on the right.
Whatever depraved are on the left, they are just nowhere as "gone" as
those on the right. Salon was right to focus on the crazies on the right
over those on the left -- one is beginning to slur his/her words, the
other is away gone in slobbering gibberish. The sane know this; and
they're only to be found on one side of the fence.
suspect that also true is that they may agitate some significant
putuponness that you've known a long, long while, that still draws
your return fire -- your, no, I will not let you do that to me! -- and can
carry you away.
Obama is the perfect aesthetic to make continued war sacrifice,
possible. The relief at his measuredness can so readily allow corporate
appeasement, to become the only thing to be done. This kind of thing
can just go on and on and on. Some of us can see 8 years on, a largely
expanded war (with, quite possibly, some talk of the draft), students,
young people, largely ignored -- if not now the newly suspicious --
and an increasingly expanding lower class (with many now being
shaped to seem responsible for their fate, if not actually in truth most
responsible for the ills of all Americans) -- and also a left
exasperatingly still so readily drawn to talk of Cheney et al.'s latest
disregard. Scares me. We're afraid we won't be seen, by people who
could protect us. And we are a left that will do immense good, if we
can make it on through.
awesome, feel the need for awe. There is a sense that it belongs in the
"mission accomplished" category, only much more successfully. That
is, it might mean we'll be getting on through by means of huge true-
life kicks like this.
The other image to be considered, is the one we are not prone to so
readily replicate / revisit (just try it in art, and see what happens). The
people falling. You felt there their experience. We briefly considered
it, and decided immediately that, however much art there was in that,
we will never, ever, allow ourselves to go back there -- not really -- the
whole rest of our lives. We've all agreed. And most of us won't. Our
super-ego allows the crash-bang, as cover, perhaps, of what it just will
not allow on through, because it would disassemble us.
Jack Sparx
You're great, Jack, but maybe consider my last comment. If you're not
careful, you may come to like / appreciate Obama, and we need you to
stay wholy sane.
My list
Wall-E
Beowulf
Rachel Getting Married
Wendy and Lucy
Step Brothers
Lord of the Rings
Nick and Norah's
Beautiful Mind
Observe and Report
Transformers
There Will Be Blood
Incredibles and Ratatouille struck me as films for editors, for they
make those who shape and control the rangey (i.e., Buddy), the
heroes. Wall-E was the film for artists, those who know its about
aggressing and going outside the lines, even if it makes you a fool /
child / Tom Cruise. (I saw the rat in Auto, and was glad to seem him
get his comeuppance.) Personally, I think it's hard not to be super
self-conscious/aware right now. I think this is just deadly for art, but
great for self-management.
release of some 600 movies not that any critic comes close
to seeing them all isn't any list made by any individual
human being going to be idiosyncratic in some way? The
notion that there's an acceptable critical view, that certain
movies must or must not appear on a list in order for
any given critic to be taken seriously, flies in the face of what
criticism is supposed to be. (Stephanie Zacherak, Stephanie
Zacheraks best movies of 2009, Salon, 27 Dec. 2009)
Going zero, in 3D
On the subject of Star Trek and new decades, perhaps we'll allow
ourselves a parallel universe this time around. The idea of going 2011,
just defeats. Not even Rocky got past 8 or 9. So we'll go zero once
again. The past will still be around, but he'll be like old Spock -- nice
guy, still there, but not hanging around to be obtrusive. When we get
to one, we'll decide if we'll let it roll on like we did last time, or if we'll
figure out some other way to imagine life. Might it be zero all the
time? Like some accumulating palimpsest? Or some ziggurat (but not
the kind legions of virgins were sacrificed to)?
We could still see movies. But maybe this time they wouldn't be like
the latest meal, or as near read and toss-away as a postcard (3 reviews
a week, as if, in greatest truth, they really did nothing to you
compared to the workaday), but experiences we live -- Avatars, even if
the prose is sharp, and the acceleration muted. They already are that,
but it would be exhilarating and genuinely universe-opening, if we
could acknowledge it, and consider the implications.
1262
Red Wigglers
The occasional article by people like Nan Mooney ('Not keeping up
with our parents") would be nice. I do think there is a chance that
some of the huge distress students are experiencing, might be missed
amidst all the better comics format, new and/or expanded Food, Film
and Books sections, and more Conason. Thirty percent student
tuition increases. Take yourself back to the 60s and imagine what you
would have done with that, amidst an aging left, still capable of
marked innovation but seeming susceptible to becoming more and
more adrift in once sages and Great Books. (Feel your pain!?: I can't
even see you, dear . . .) To be clear, the new sections/expansions
COULD prove great. I just hope it's easy to imagine liberal 20-year-
olds finding home in them, not just out of shelter from the storm.
Fewer articles written by people making sell-outs seem practical,
grounded, fit. Fewer articles making truly sane progressive thought
seem as "unbalanced" and unreasonable (i.e., crazy) as its
"equivalent" on the right. (Really, just count how many articles seem
mostly about helping their writers massage out muscle-tightening
feelings of compromise. I'm not broken; I'm a realist, patient, an
adult -- "you're" the one who's crazy!)
1263
You nailed it
Thank you, Stephanie, for that brilliant and perceptive
review. I haven't seen the movie - but I've seen the trailer.
And that was enough to convince me that your review is
spot on. (Boopboopadoop, response to post, Its
Complicated: Another missive from romantic-comedy hell,
Salon, 23 Dec. 2009)
(did you hear what that nasty person at Salon had to say about
Obama?! They've had their fun but isn't it about time they put an end
to it -- he's such a nice person, who is really, really, trying, and . . .).
We're afraid as a mass you'll not just be freezing your faces but all
cultural growth, lest it have the least potential to cause you any
anxiety, as you FINALLY come to focus on your own needs after a
lifetime of selfless giving and neglect. Some of us are thinking Brazil,
that is. And a bit, White Noise.
Open Saloners might hope they'll breach a Salon echelon trespass, but
when Salon itself is leaving some of the pointed and wirey behind
(think a Mary Elizabeth Williams over a Stephanie Z.) for the slow but
fiery, it may feel scary and alone when you get here, but you'll be
welcomed, made to feel as if you've become part of a club, as you
would upon leaving any salon.
Wit, brutal honesty, no longer ruled, once 20's style seemed but viper
threat in an upcoming age of mules.
(Originally posted as response to My visit to the skin-torture doctor
Mary Kelly, Salon, 18 Dec. 2009)
People who have daily contact with other people, eye-to-eye contact,
interactions, are the most important of people -- they do the daily
attendance, therapy, which can tilt a whole nation closer to the good.
Crazily, they tend to be set up sometimes as lessers who exist to
pleasure the powerful -- to please, and suffer further abuse. Please
figure out what is working away at you here. Take a time out. And
return to defend no group more strongly, than these most important
of people.
New Jerusalem
If it's going to help people, they should fight like hell to get as much as
they can, but also to pass it. I say this not because I don't believe more
substantial reforms couldn't be initiated later, but because I believe
this is the one and only year Obama is going to seem the least bit
liberal. It will be liberals who will come to fret the government, if
government -- even its social services -- comes to seem more muscle
1268
than nurture. Making a nation fit for war is not something we liberals
have in mind, but it is something ill-liberals could come to see some
sense in.
Liberals probably would be wise to at least begin talking succession.
New style -- with finesse, with the least amount of antagonism, of
course. There are just so many people in the US who want public
healthcare -- a good society; more than enough, that is, to populate a
country. When you come to realize that your dreams can no longer be
realized, and that you are at risk, you owe to yourself to set off. I mean
this truly. Start thinking about it. Return when you have the strength
to convert.
Link: Should the democrats start over on healthcare? (Joan Walsh,
Salon, 16 Dec. 2009)
know the intentions, but I really don't think it added to his prowess.
We allow it as we might any experiment, then agree that Sam worked
best when he spun away from the grunts, when his engagement with
the villain was less at their bequest. Soldiers are for Afghanies --
dumb and loud. Sam's is with the Devil -- intertwined, faceted, smart.
Not so coarse, but like you've got a million variant options.
Nimbleness, particularness, may explain why Transformers can feel
so libertous, so freeing, so exhilarating.
Also, not just a tomboy: she was more alive than that. Sam's got heart,
and they made a good pair. There was some charm in their pairing,
and she didn't seem a natural grunt's girl that he somehow got lucky
with. Again, objects interacting, in ways that work, with enough
distinction to afford charm.
Thanks, jfurg. . .
For first reading the article! (Kerry Lauerman, response to
post, Directors of the decade: No. 10 Michael Bay)
@jfurg
jfurg wrote:
If you actually, I dunno, read and think about what he's saying, you'll
find "you can't escape it" doesn't mean that you can't avoid Michael
Bay's movies, which of course you can and probably should, but that
1272
you can't avoid his influence over the way movies are being made in
Hollywood today.
The review certainly does emphasize Bay's influence, and thus his
relevance as a "historical document," but since you read the piece,
you'll also note that this reviewer, at least, would think those who
skipped his films missed the chance to see "hundreds of gorgeous
widescreen tableaux that most filmmakers would be lucky to compose
once in a career." Not just relentless bloom, blam, that is, but artistic
tableaux done with a magnificence and an assured frequency that
leaves most filmmakers seeming dumb fumblers.
To me, Bay is life-affirming. I'm glad he's around.
@pwakeman
"So much easier to cut from clip to clip on close up with a pan, while
the different sections of the robot 'transforms.' That way you can't tell
what happens, just a vague blur with the iconic transformation
noises."
This criticism is very interesting. It didn't seem like a vague blur: to
1273
me, there was a sense that what was happening was integral to the
transformation process -- that someone had thought it through; but it
WAS real fast, and it may mostly have worked to seem physiological
preparation -- muscle tightening, prepping, stance changes -- just
right before battle. There was considerable cunning in it, but if the
transformations weren't made to seem integral to particular battle
situations, there IS Village People effect in it also, some dumbness. I
can understand your being disappointed.
@Chad Mulligan
About Armageddon: maybe check out Siskel's "weird thumb's up"
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6WjXAZJ9P0). It's funny.
Your claim that Bay doesn't respect the average soldier is interesting
as -- especially in Transformers 2 -- there is a clear effort to seem in
sync, primarily sympathetic to, their point of view. How he glories the
soldier evidences his fakeness, makes him, in a way, less true than
Hitler -- astonishes. If true, and if the war march here proceeds, Bay
1274
@mikesteers
Until America grows up, settles down and takes its responsibilities to
its people and the world a little more seriously, crazy will be the
norm.
But how grown-up is a nation that still talks as if it were the
Edwardian? Can you imagine such a nation having its own 60s? If
not, it's not serious, or boring -- more like moribond, or dead, with a
gleam of rich sadism just lurking behind the peaceful facade.
Cdns like being boring because they thereby never quite feel like
they're kids with hands caught in the cookie jar, which is what creates
so much of the psychodrama in the American scene. So violence gets
abrogated, at the cost of self-minimization -- of living. Poor trade.
Still, Quebec got off, not because Canadians are so peaceful but
because they weren't yet in the mood for war. If they try it again a few
years from now, Canada will invade, punish, cripple, as many
Canucks decide, rather than be known for silver, they'd too like to
command respect through steel.
Declaring fealty
When myriad steroid scandals were finally overwhelming the flexed
bulk of big-leaguers, when every man with a capacious smile was
being brought down, Tiger might even have sensed his current morph
no longer suited the current taste. Someone said he's a republican.
My guess is that we'll see him start dressing more priestly and join
amongst Obama's ranks, as a man now most commited to rebuilding
America. The lords will fall, and we will have but one king.
@tnmc
Re: Why right now?
You'd think with republicans crying everyday about encroaching
communism, that the upcoming age would be of a lot more of what
we've seen lately: Glenn Becks rallying independents against Obama
overlay. In such an age, you'd figure stand-outs, stand-alones -- like
Tiger -- would continue to be buoyed by popular support, and their
transgressions unfocussed on, truly unseen, even if so well before our
eyes.
But all this talk of bend-over-and-touch-their- ankles rankles, on part
of republicans, is in my judgment -- and whatever the bombast -- just
the moment of concern and alarm before jumping in where the
water's well warm. That is, we think they're going militia when in fact
1277
they are actually going Obama -- they will join up with him, as Obama
proves a military king mostly concerned to stamp out progressive-
ingrates, the weak, needy, and "selfish" (i.e., the young and the poor),
who will come to seem the nation's worst problem. That is, I think
people, en mass, are about to lose themselves to the group, and in
such an era, as in the army, individual personality must be dissolved.
So whither Tiger, in his current guise. He was bound to join the pack:
the girls were / are the easiest way to precipitate this, so we used it
now, but we would have used anything. Not with scandals, of course,
but something similar will / is occuring with Oprah. It started just
before the election, when she went Oprah / Obama, and never quite
left. Obama, his minions, and the horribly at risk, is about where
we're headed, unless we able Salonistas figure out a way to head it off.
I would just love it if we could pull off a Silverado. That'd be
awesome.
@btrader
If the waking up of the real cancun democraphic means cleaning up,
donning uniforms, and off to war -- so mama can be proud -- I would
prefer they remained all beefcakes and booty-call.
Setting up kids as spoiled and selfish is always the pre-amble before
sending them off to war. We project our own selfishness into them,
and get rid of it all, by disposing of them. Leave the kids alone.
@calgodot
1280
Brian D: Wow
I believe some people need to re-read the premise for these "reviews."
I think it had something to do with which movies were the most
personally influential films, not perhaps the critical best.
The film had a similar affect on me personally, but I wouldn't say it
was the best film of the past decade. And yes, there are some issues of
gender politics in the movie, but name a film where there isn't. (Brian
D. response to post, Films of the decade: Almost Famous)
The premise behind this new Salon feature is to launch "salvos" and
otherwise get a spirited conversation going. How does, "And yes,
there are some issues of gender politics in the movie, but name a film
where there isn't" draw us further into the film rather than school us
on out? I was getting at something I felt fascinating and significant
about Crowe, that hasn't been much remarked upon, and was hoping
for expansion and engagement, not dismissal.
We all need a strong leader, even if it's just that little voice in
our heads telling us that the CIA is tapping our phone.
Dictatorships, domestic abuse, religions centered around
loving but vengeful patriarchs, the military, yoga retreats,
Oprah all symptoms of our childlike desire to be led
around by our noses.
And never before has the populace strained quite so
strenuously against the unbearable oppression of free will.
Look what our independence has bought us, after all:
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Houses we can't afford that are worth less than our gigantic
loans. A terrible legacy as the world's jackboot-wearing
cops. Lady Gaga. Where does it end?
[. . .]
So far this season, though, we haven't seen much evidence of
strong bonds forming between other players. Sometimes
we're kept in the dark about these bonds, but this year,
somehow it seems likely that they don't exist. In fact,
everyone seems to recognize that Russell is double-dealing,
but no one knows quite what to do about it.
Why? Because they've all enjoyed the luxury of being led by
their noses since they landed on the beaches of Samoa. If
someone else is doing most of your thinking and your dirty
work for you, and miraculously you remain on the island
day after day, why stir the pot? That's like landing in
paradise, then taking God to task for the inadequate flavor
profile of the pineapples there.
And let's remember, these players are weak. They're hungry.
They're not sleeping well. Is this really the time to take a
stand? Once it comes time to fight, will any of us recognize
that the hour of destiny is upon us? Most of us, when pressed
to face up to a big challenge, tend to order a pizza and cue
up "South Park" instead.
[. . .]
Will Russell prevail? Personally, I'd love to see him emerge
victorious. (Heather Havrilesky, Will Survivor
mastermind Russell reign supreme?, Salon, 12 Dec. 2009)
If we find ourselves in the position where we're cheering on, not only
abusive people, but justifications for abuse, let's hope somebody let's
us on to this fact, in a way we are likely to be able to hear. I don't
know if Heather is in full possession of herself right now, but what we
heard just here sounds like it was voiced from the persecutory alter in
her head, the "place" we switch to when reminding ourselves what it
is to be weak and vulnerable, is all too much to handle.
When nazis put jews in filth, feces, and torment, some would openly
masturbate in excitement. If this sadist here wins, and we exult, are
we participating in this sort of glee? Given this article, it sounds like
it.
Godwin
sure shows up in the strangest places. (sansh01, response to
post, Will Survivor mastermind Russell reign supreme)
We'll be just like the Red Guards in China, only less fit and
much more perverted."
Read more
I think that would be excellent too. Truly. But in this best of words,
men too would feel free to voice their foremost desires, without
instantly finding themselves set up as inconsiderate pigs. I noticed
you went from nipple-licking to vagina-tonguing: Does seem when
people now speak of women's foremost sexual desires, the prepped
picture that comes to mind is man's face on woman's crotch. This isn't
putting a bag on her head and doing your business, but it's missing
something worth preserving / emphasizing in the eye-on-eye and
flushed cheeks. Too porn, and gimme, gimme.
Link: Sexist female pigs (Salon)
to know they love T2 -- and often Aliens -- and I think it's because
you're kept alert, smart, and feel distinct, from beginning to end, in
many of his films.
This changes here. Stephanie yet again here saves the actress, but
she's the emotionally primitive date you lapse to when you've actually
now begun to tire of the Sigmourny Weavers of the world, whose level
of interestingness unceasingly demand you stay conscious and awake.
Stephanie's right about the guy. There is nothing particular about
him. He is just a wash, making him so different from what we usually
get with Cameron. And the villains: the corporate hack goes
Sigmourny's way in this film: he is nowhere as present and relevant as
he is in Aliens and (if you allow a bit of latitude) in T2 (I'm thinking
the psychologist). We get a truck, instead. And it, he, fights the tree --
the group spirit in this film, which arises in the end, to give you that
feeling you never get elsewhere in Cameron: being buoyed by a larger-
than-you spirit of righteous, benevolent goodness, that will address
all concerns, make you feel undefeatable, will make you whole.
(Actually, I suppose there was some of this at the end of Titanic, but
it's in full rush here.) The action could end up seeming less distinct,
moment-to-moment possible and crucial, and it would thereby PLAY
to the sense of enrapture, the mystical and pre-ordained. If I go,
there's another right behind me to take my place: you feel this dumb
awe which numbs / kows individual pretensions, at the end of film.
And this is philistinism. I feared it was our future, just as soon as
democrats chose dream-addresser Obama, over conference-maker
Hillary.
Someone said Gaia. This is my concern. Gaia was a concept by hippies
who, though they talked collectivism, were just as much about
nurturing individual difference -- your own special genius. Their
personalities unfolded, and they became particulars, names,
individual stand-outs. But this is Gaia as lapse into group belonging.
If the youth go for it, cosmopolitans will become alien to them,
become enemies to them, and we'll be surrounded on all sides.
-----
1289
Dear Pat
What I do when I find I am so late reading the thread that
it's already closed is post a link to the article and then say
whatever the hell I want on my own blog
( inkpaperwords.blogspot.com ). You might consider that
rather than interrupt a thread that has nothing whatsoever
to do with your comments. (Thesaurus Rex, response to post,
Long live The Young Victoria, Salon, 18 Dec. 2009)
@Thesaurus Rex
What I did was wait until I actually could see the film, before
commenting. This way I could say something about the film itself,
rather than just about Cameron or Stephanie -- You can't have a (or at
least much of a) conversation about a book before reading it, wouldn't
you agree? The thread's been up a few days, but that's only reviewer's
privilege -- opened here Friday, couldn't see the film until Saturday
morning, started writing about half hour after the film finished, and
the thread clunked out, ten minutes into the writing. So I posted here,
and wrote a letter to Salon encouraging them to do what's necessary
to make Salon conversations about movies as interesting as they are
elsewhere. Until they do the sensible and keep the thread up until
Sunday evening, I'll do everything I can to see the movie Friday
evening. I'm intending to keep this a one only.
My name is Patrick.
slippery in net.
Wilbur-bourbon
1292
as he ambled by my windshield.
But he just kept walking. (Ken Ilgunas, I live in a van down
by Duke University, Salon, 6 December 2009)
Cormac Macarthy U
Yeah, let's train our kids so they're ready for fracturing of America,
the clash of civilizations, the environmental collapse. They'll be all
jacked up on mountain dew --not the best neurochemical mix for
contemplation, but I've seen Gladiator et al. and know the first to go
is always the liberal arts "professor," who, despite all evidence, thinks
life's about peace, solitude, friendship, and soul. Heck, his/her excess
brains and lack of response-readiness make him/her sure zombie
meat anyway, so maybe sooner rather than later we should think of
using him/her to shore up our own body fat. Maybe if we all start
skinning rabbits, the more sensitive and weak amongst them will see
where we're going and nobly sacrifice themselves, in hopes the rest
will find some wry way away.
-----
@calgodot
Some of us don't want people to take a Call-of-Duty approach to
university. There are times when people go off the grid, and despite
the debris, it still smells of flowers. Dillard's stuff can still read like
that. Whole Earth Review still reads like that. Makes you more
soulful, and more truly civilized. Here we get the Call of Duty ethic,
cloathed in Thoreau. It is about bagging the biggest buck, survival of
the fittest, pretending that the worst thing in the world is the current
1296
Neat freaks
Salt and pepper sets are arguably among the most mundane
and ubiquitous of gifts. But this particular set, the Taste of
Talking, sums up a lot of what can be wonderful about
products that are idea-driven -- inspired by thought and
creativity.
The part with the holes? Those parts are mouthpieces and
earpieces from old telephones. They are NOS (new old
stock), not used. There are stockpiles of such product left
from the days when we all used such phones. They're
repurposed here to pour seasonings at the table.
[. . .]
There are a series of progressive values reflected in the Taste
of Talking. It's green: It uses recycled (and non-
biodegradable) parts that might well otherwise truly end up
in a landfill. And in using these mundane, disused materials,
a wholly unexpected result is achieved, which, I think,
changes your perspective on the materials themselves,
causing you to look differently at some of the castoffs of our
industrial culture. Beauty in a telephone mouthpiece, or an
auto sidelight lens? Yet, viewed through this lens, these
things are indeed beautiful.
And, these shakers are -- in a word that a lot of my design
community colleagues use -- democratic. They marry
1298
Neat freaks
If they were used stock but were really well cleaned, would it still be
possible to get AIDS from them? Is that the problem? 'Cause I think
you'd probably be okay.
I think the problem is that unlike most recycled goods, where the
story behind the materials gets sort of scrubbed away in the process,
this doesn't really work with spit. You'd be using your shaker, and
lifetimes of human interaction / distress / would assault your food,
with the dash of salt. Interesting that. Same thing would probably
happen if we knew car parts were owned by dead-enders -- the sort
that all too visibly are drifting into insanity right now; or bike parts,
from the kinds of kids we progressives are probably going to *sigh*
off to war. This could be compensated if we knew who designed them,
maybe -- clean, neat, super smart but never exposed, is what we want
to welcome into our souls.
Link: Taste of talking (Salon)
re: "We know it's sort of sad, but it's all we have until the kids become
a little older. Allow me and my kin to engage in our one conversation,
even if it's just to stay in practice for when we emerge from the
bunker. Maybe you can even find it in yourselves to muster a little
understanding for us next time you're out past 10 p.m. at one of your
fancy childless keg parties where you discuss the new Philip Roth and
the Phillies' amazing World Series defense. Because, who knows? You
may find yourself dumb like me someday."
We're hearing now of how some of the rich are beginning to spend
again -- Hermes, Jaguars. Maybe they (rightly) sense that America
actually gets kind of a weird kick of knowing some people are still
enjoying wall-street heaven, while everything else crumbles. But this
group of fortunates actually serve as cover for a more evolved sort --
those who not only know the right strategy to best enjoy the next
twenty, but how to properly exult in it, revel in their own
superiority/fitness, without anyone being on to them -- without
themselves really being on to what they're doing. They're THIS crowd
-- the ones who are full of "excuse me this," "mightn't you allow me
that": those who, if you let them, will try and convince you they are
nearly ridiculous, completely compromised, left out. But don't be
fooled -- somewhere inside of them they know that all those divorced
couples, all those bachelors with time for Roth, are strangely coming
to seem genetically / culturally unfit in the new America -- 20s
flappers/swingers, that had come to seem just WRONG when
America had returned back to the conservative hearth. Aaron will
forever persuade himself that the world believes YOU are the ones
who have it made, and will use this belief to enable his "but I get to
have my little bit, and it's actually kinda fun too!," but if you look up
1301
close at him and his ilk, you'll know what I say is true.
Don't be fooled into letting him have his "one conversation," without
a strong measure of (inevitably unreasonable) complaint: he makes it
seem so innocent and small-scale, but it's really about the new
revival, set to leave your flapper ass out in the cold.
Salon store
some starbucks' love brew, does this mean we get to have nothing to
do with those kids being shot and killed in afghanistan, having their
tuitions upped 30 percent, those poor suckers losing their houses,
considering military employment, and bound to have their kids turn
increasingly feral?
the goods look pretty good, actually, but it kinda feels like you're
opening the door to further wall-street bonuses, evidence that despite
it all, you really don't have to give a fuck this christmasy time of year.
Salon can feel rangey, but still be colorful and fun. You've put a neat
bow on the site, which makes us all feel a little less like them, which
isn't quite what our souls need.
Link: Welcome to the Salon store (Salon)
Amid the $1,000 (and $10,000) titanium-framed, fully
suspended, on- and off-road competition bikes for sale
around bike-obsessed San Francisco, I stumbled onto this. A
custom Sting Ray chopper re-creation. All chrome. With
spiral/twisted fork ... and high-density spoke wheel ... and a
steering wheel ... and mufflers ... and a spare tire, to top it
off, carried in the back, like my granddad's '35 Ford.
I called the phone number the next day. I found myself
talking to a young guy -- a kid, the owner/builder. He lived
in Richmond, an economically challenged city in the East
Bay. At the end of my day at Salon, I drove across the Bay
Bridge to have a look.
I drove up a street with no occupied houses, save for the one
that was my destination. It was encircled by a high fence.
There was a large dog in the yard. I honked the horn,
walked up and met a Hispanic family. There were three kids
playing in the yard and driveway, a well-kept house, and a
garage full of projects with wheels. No English spoken here,
save for the owner of the bike. Mom sat on the front stairs
watching over everyone, friendly but guarded.
[. . .]
Two-hundred fifty dollars was a lot of money for a bike that
1303
Clean slate
Is the hippie that sold out, now a redeemable aesthetic? Top-teer art
1304
you to test to see if you have come as far along as you deserve to have,
or if "old ghosts from the nursery" continue to haunt.
-----
beat me, I'm worthless
@smontgomery
re: "Most likely, if they have any decency, then they'll
apologize up and down, you can accept it--and then you can
have an *honest* friendship. And if they don't... you know
they aren't worth it."
I like the idea of bringing it up. But I think what one would hope for is
an honest response from them, more than you would an apology. It is
possible that they tormented her because she seemed almost to want
to be tormented--which is what masochism is all about. The sense
that her neediness made her bad, which still haunts her now, very
likely afflicted her then.
-----
@kisilano:
We weren't all extremely needy. Only those who were poorly attended
to were. These are the ones whose neediness was so profound, they
either tormented similarly needy kids, in an effort to DENY their own
neediness, or put themselves in a position to be bullied, to confirm
the rightness of parents who had assessed them as not worth the
time.
In any case, I'm all for going back. But the main problem isn't there:
it's earlier, and elsewhere.
-----
Writing under Ross cover
I don't think this article is particularly brave. For some time now
we've not lived in a society where all boats have risen, and we've all
come to understand geeks as those who later on in life are near
expected to become Ross-types from friends: their geeky traits
actually evidenced their appropriateness for our sophisticated
information age. Under this protection, we're seeing a lot of people
own up to being geeks. Intellectual, cautious, and accomodating, they
1307
American gothic
him as still, potentially, our great hope. Who is he? He's not the
crazies on his right, he's not the swooners on his left. In a world of
crazies, his prosaic origins beacon reason.
But these ARE portent times. Crazed goblins bounce about the body-
politic, away from office but everywhere still in our face; the blind
gain sight; hope has become an affliction. And it is appropriate, then,
that Obama actually be made to seem most like an idol -- something
near frighteningly unknowable. Someone/thing with great potential,
but yet remains inert and removed. Someone/thing we would draw
out -- to should and could!, but remain inclined to serve, to show
before we would dare have him prove.
Link: Im thankful Im not President Obama (Salon)
@ Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Your unfortunate relativistic gobbledygook is as exhausting
as it is meaningless.
"The universe, according to Dawkins, was put together
randomly--not out of love, or hate, or volition, or disinterest.
We find this disconcerting, because we are meaning-craving
human beings"
The knowledge we have about how randomly the universe
was put together has absolutely nothing to do with Dawkins'
(or anybody else's) assertions or beliefs and everything to do
with scientific facts.
Speak for yourself if you find it disconcerting. I am
positively nowhere near the "meaning-craving" anything
you choose to be.
"Shouldn't we become less interested in the fact of what is
out there, now that we know it better, and more interested
in how we--as meaning-making, as makers with the
potential to create out of empathy, true love--are prone to
see/perceive this world we have been born into?"
So now that we as a species are getting so good at really
understanding the world we live in, in the most wonderful
1312
@altaira99
re: "I don't understand why the self-assembly of our amazing planet
and the resulting biosphere isn't miracle enough for people's
spirituality."
It's cool. It's astonishing. But the fact that Moby Dick might
eventually be written if you let a bunch of chimps pound at a
keyboard for a few millenia, is interesting too: but if it was the fact of
it, I think our assessment of the book would lessen. It was written by
1313
Thing is, that derision is not only about Park Slope, and it's
not only about strollers, which have somehow become
synecdoche for the perceived ills of indulgent parenting
1315
@realconservative
Remember though, the most recent talk concerning parenting is
about over-parenting, about a need to give kids range, freedom,
again. It's more than the "newest": it has at least some feel of a
1316
@Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Maybe "Mom's" [sic] have "succeeded," but you still haven't
succeeded in figuring out where an apostrophe belongs.
I knew someone would come up with some Social Darwinian
jeering. It never, ever fails.
That, you know, is a sign of real happiness with one's lot in
life.
(Freudian slip -- I actually wrote Darwinish! I corrected it,
but had to mention it.)
The only people "relevant to the future" are those who
succeed in leaving something immortal behind them. I refer
you to Plato's Symposium for further details. (Gigi_Knows!,
Response to post, Everybody Hates Mommy)
@Gigi_Knows!
There are times when a culture tends to buoy certain groups, and
depress others, to an exaggerated degree. My feeling is that for some
time now, those who have strayed from paths society deems relevant,
potent, have been made to feel worthless-- a feeling they can try and
take advantage of, or ameliorate, by being masochistic, herald their
gains in ways which speak more of what they've been denied. I think
that currently certain groups of parents now feel that sense of
inflation, are often "on" the opiates it constantly encourages, and am
therefore not at all convinced that what they are up to is best
1317
@Gigi_Knows!
Re: "I knew someone would come up with some Social Darwinian
jeering. It never, ever fails."
Just so we're on the same page, my first comment was intended to
help point out how social darwinist our era feels--how the childless
have been made to feel, how awful it is. (Maybe my previous
comment to you pointed that out.)
I saw the error just as soon as I posted. These things happen, not just
out of ignorance or sloppiness. You know this--this is a conversation,
not a publication: it's about being as literate as possible, while you
partake in the energy and the flow. Not so much spellcheck; and it
may be the way the literate not just make unnecessary errors, but
possibly allow room for their language, grammar, to evolve, grow. Not
this time--sure: But free-range, not contrivance.
Patrick, dear
I'm sorry. I didn't know. I thought you meant it. (That even
happened to Glenn Greenwald recently, if you can believe
it.)
I don't have kids. I don't think it's awful.
There was a time when people who tried to make me feel
awful could. That was a long time ago, so long it's hard to
remember.
(My recommendation: Watch some foreign films. In fact, try
nothing but, at least for a while. Seriously.) (Gigi_Knows!,
1318
Literary awards are more than just ego boosts these days.
As the critic James Wood observed a few years back, "prizes
are the new reviews," the means by which many people now
decide which books to buy, when they bother to buy books at
all. There are some 400,000 titles published per year in the
U.S. alone -- one new book every minute and a half --
according to Bowker, a company providing information
services to the industry, and there are fewer people with the
time and inclination to read them. If you only read, for
example, about five novels per year (a near-heroic feat of
literacy for the average American), you could limit yourself
to just the winners of the NBA, the Pulitzer, the National
Book Critics Circle, the Booker Prize and then, oh, a Hugo or
Edgar winner -- or even a backlist title by that year's Nobel
Prize winner. You'd never have to lower your sights to
anything unlaureled by a major award.
On the other hand, if you've just self-published a book on
parrot keeping or your theories on how the world could be
better run (a favorite topic of retired gentlemen), what can
you do? If you weren't able to find a publisher who wanted
it, you can also expect to be routinely disqualified for review
in the general media and, above all, for prizes. Yet have no
fear, you Cinderellas of the publishing game, because (to nab
a line from someone else's promotional campaign) there's an
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@laurabb
It gets worse: around the globe, there's probably a thousand people
born EVERY SECOND! Could you imagine if we had a world/society
nurturing enough, that each and everyone of them could write
something particular to themselves, and great to read?! Could you
imagine a hundred million writers out there -- all good to great --and
what that would do to an author's self-esteem, place in the world, the
contortions it would inspire to his/her ostensibly progressive
sensibilities?! There's genius and beauty in every one of you -- what a
nightmare if that were in fact true!
Patrick
Whatever your problem is - I sense a case of toxic
resentment - it isn't with me. (LauraBB, Vanity Book
Awards)
@laurabb
What is your problem with a book being published every ninety
seconds?
----------
Being an author still carries status, and there are a lot of
unhappy people who want that. But they do not realize how
much work goes into being excellent, no matter what the
field. This is not necessarily their fault. Popular media loves
the Cinderella story in its many permutations, and
downplays the time and work that precede discovery.
In open-to-anyone writers' groups, there are people who
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Re: Being an author still carries status, and there are a lot
of unhappy people who want that. But they do not realize
how much work goes into being excellent, no matter what
the field. This is not necessarily their fault. Popular media
loves the Cinderella story in its many permutations, and
downplays the time and work that precede discovery.
Books felt like this about thirty years ago--now in so much that is
lauded, I smell deference, not discovery. Rather, you get a sense that
if someone actually came up with something new, s/he'd have slipped
off the only track those regularly published are capable of seeing
before them. It's why some literate people write books titled, "Is it
just me, or is everything shit?"; it's why some of the literate go
through blogs and letters more keenly -- where exactly are the
interesting to be found, if not in books?--than you might know.
re: In open-to-anyone writers' groups, there are people who
seem to learn the mechanics of writing even though they do
not possess the ear for it. It is akin to someone who is tone
deaf learning to go up a note and down two and sometimes
being on key, but invariably ruining a song by at least one
off-key assault.
They cannot help it.
But I thought you were arguing that the danger in too many books is
that it becomes more difficult for the truly literate to be spotted. This
portrayal of non-writers vs. real writers makes it seem as if those who
actually are "NBA" quality will always spotted, regardless of how
many towers surround them. Speaking of the NBA--one senses that if
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"they" learned they were missing the real talent, they'd adjust. They
care more to find talent, perhaps.
re: The profusion of books, including the self-published
ones, means the real jewels are often hidden beneath a pile
of mediocrity, and this reduces their chances of being
found, let alone read and lauded, as they should be.
I keep company with a lot of imaginative people. I don't see a world of
greats vs. non-greats. Rather, there are many greats out there: the
question is which ones are best suited for you. People need to be
sufficiently nurtured so they develop that sense you rightly laud, so
they really do become particular, large, interesting, but they also need
to know their voice counts--to get it out there!--so those who would
have a nose for their voice, for what they have to say, can find them.
Your vision of the few amongst the mediocre many smells of a need
for order, of grandiosity . . . comes across as fearful and cruel. People
who talk like this I think would be upset if the real truth developed
that there are actually a heck of a lot of really good writers out there:
that the buried gems analogy could not be well applied to reality.
They want a world of dum-dums hoping for props for their (snicker,
snicker) masterpiece.
Link: Vanity Book Awards (Salon)
advisor to monsters.
When Maurice Sendak's book was published in 1964, a
dumpster bin-sized amount of literature spewed out,
upchucking explanations for the monsters as oversized,
morality play characters, each representing a basic human
emotion. In Jonze's film version, monster Carol (James
Gandolfini) could easily be read as a transvestite with an
insatiable sexual hunger, hence his voracious appetite for
past kings. The asexuality of these creatures could make for
a Freudian buffet of psychoanalytic opinion. The book has
been said to demarcate the fine line between fear, comfort
and some deep-seated desire to gobble up your own mother.
But spare me, please. Enough is enough. This child of divorce
isn't interested in living a life obsessively psychoanalyzed.
Jonze has no patience for this either, which is why I left the
movie theatre surprised, but satisfied. The film reminded me
that loneliness is too easily made into monster, that
loneliness also has the power to conjure magic for a child
who lives inside excellent forts, and who possesses a
storybook that makes her the King of the Wild Things. (Mine
Salkin, Where the Wild Things Were, Tyee, 17 November
2009)
Down with Freud: give me a razor, and /or some pills, please!
re: "The film reminded me that loneliness is too easily made
into monster, that loneliness also has the power to conjure
magic for a child who lives inside excellent forts, and who
possesses a storybook that makes her the King of the Wild
Things."
Loneliness / abandonment does other things, like make you create
imaginary friends that talk to you when you're a child, then turn on
you to harrague you ever-after about how bad you are, how selfish
you are, adolescence on (oh those wonderful persecutory alters, split
personalities -- sorry, I meant wonderful spiritual animal friends!).
1323
than a bit of FOX in them. Not going to go Republican, but might end
up seeing a different tone in which his show engages with FOX,
though. Or different media targets. As with GG, perhaps more anti-
Tucker Carlson and David Brooks attacks, than anti-FOX.
Also, how Glenn Greenwald reported recently that George
Stephanopoulos admitted, through twitter, that GG was right to
lambast his reporting on some issue or another. Again, of the moment
-- both GS and GG seem psychologically similar, and I could see both
of them, in the end, being important supporters, essentially agents of,
Obama's administration.
Two absurd claims here. But I believe them both true.
@Saintzak
Those bigots you grew up with, wouldn't be ones who loved WWE's
the Rock -- the black guy who played Obama-Hulk last year on SNL --
would they? Maybe what is most key about bigots is that they possess
an intense need to project their own unwanted character traits,
feelings, onto others, and not their hatred of a certain, particular
group of people? That is, maybe they could all get behind Obama /
Palin, so long as they provide them with groups to hate, efforts in
which to sacrifice themselves for the glory of the mother-nation?
What is coming to mind here is how the Nazis turned to hating Jews a
bit late in the game--after all their anger and hatred was targeted at
the needy and poor, who were keeping Germany weak. Anti-semitism
was supposed to be a French thing (Dreyfus affair) but materialized
everywhere in German when "they" now seemed the most appropriate
group. The hatred was key; targets-flexible. Maybe true here too.
Something we will know for sure if these tea-bagger-folk end up
supporting Obama, as he sends off more young men and women to
kill muslims, sacrifices more of our "selfish," "greedy," "needy," youth
(representatives of our striving, ambitious selves) so we can all feel
pure and good again.
1326
Guys, he's not lying about the incidents -- Aaron WANTS / NEEDS to
think of himself as being wholy contrite, soul-bearing, here, so there's
no way he would make an error in any of this. If you focus on them, it
will in fact help enable what he is really up to: using Salon as a ritual
site, confessional, in which to establish himself as a sinner who aims,
at least, to be the good boy who'll attend to the neglect women have
suffered. He is returning to mother's lap; admitting how wrong he's
been; and how, now, he'll try to do good. It's more than about a
release from anxieties, from feeling punishment-worthy -- though it is
1327
that: it's about priming himself to war against all those truly bad boys
out there who cannot be deterred from understanding their own
needs as as important as their mothers', as their wives'. War against
the ostensibly selfish.
The falseness we're sensing here comes from this being part of a ritual
-- he wants it to appear soul-searching, about self-discovery,
realization -- but his course is predetermined, and those not similarly
on course sense the something strange that is up, here.
He's not the only in all this. Check out "Hi, I'm Marty, and I'm a
recovering Republican," to get a sense of what, I think, we can expect
an awful lot of here at Joan Walsh's (maternal), at Broadsheet's
(furies), Salon.
Hope you snap out of it, Aaron. Become even more truly self-aware
than your sister is.
But weren't all the dragons killed off in the 13th-century? I could
1328
understand having knights around then, but I don't quite see their use
now. But I guess if they've got all that royal blood, there's nothing to
be done about it.
Actually, what are doing with "nations"? Isn't that an 18th-century
concept? -- the successor to empires and fiefdoms? Anyway, if we're
stuck with countries, it sure is unfair Americans got all "unalienable
rights of man" rebels and "pursuit of happiness" dreamers, and
Canada got all the "what's with this rabble?" bores. Don't you agree?
Link: Prince Alarming (rabble.ca)
setting things up so that when they later turn all militant brutal, they
feel no guilt. With the way Bill sets this up, with self-involved
protestors taking away chance of a lifetime thrills, you know what
path he's on. Count him amongst those who will effort to crush those
who dare think and behave independently.
I wonder if someone was once awakened out of a fugue-like, sick
happy trance, by someone's independent action? Is this story about
dreams spoiled, and lifetime trauma incurred, or awakening to the
fact that there is life outside of McHappy town, and it's to be
preferred?
Ignored moms + spoiled children = trouble for non-
deferent youth
Further: Any story about ignored moms and attention-stealing kids,
is written by an author who learned as a child that his own attention-
seeking efforts, his attendance to his own needs, was wrong, was bad,
because his role was to attend to his mother and all her concerns. As
an adult, he will feel compelled to punish self-substitutes for his own
(always suspect) life accomplishments. They are punished, while he
stands up for moms everwhere -- and thereby feels exempt from
angry punishment.
As to Immigrant's other comments, try reading my columns
and blog - I've stood up for people with disabilites,
vulnerable children and others in need for years and will
continue to do so.
And I've written about them before and after the Olympic
protestors showed up - but I haven't seen most of those folks
at other events to support those facing cuts. (Bill Tieleman,
Response to post, Dissent and BCs Media)
his past and over-all intentions, and this one, where he blasts
Margaret Atwood for supporting the BQ's "social democratic
tendencies," in ignorance of its past, its primary purpose
(http://thetyee.ca/Views/2008/12/02/NoCoalition/).
In the latter article you'll find him declaring how he's no friend of
Stephen Harper but has firm respect for his having "just won the
most number of seats in Parliament in a free and fair democratic
vote." The people want the Olympics -- he clearly wants to believe --
and deserve respect. The people want Harper, and their wishes need
to be respected. Those who get in the way are wrong and worthy of
(and receive) his ridicule. Since the opposition he now loathes seems
more and more to be, if not of the weak and fragile, then of the
sensitive (don't miss his revolting dismissal of Suzuki for his unmanly
hypersensitivity), and his friends seem to be of the marching militant,
he is clearly much more drawn to muscle and inclined to disparage
the vulnerable, than otherwise.
-----
If anti-olympicers have to
If anti-olympicers have to demonstrate there's not a marble-thrower
amongst them, the public clearly WANTS to see them as urban
delinquents, and their efforts will count against them. How can there
not be marble throwers, how can there not be some, or even many,
involved, that are drawn to mayhem and humiliation, when they've all
suffered through 30 years of corporate rule, public disintegration,
family discord? Corporations can't lose: they've helped create society
so ruthless and unnuturing, that those who protest against them can
be shown up as "unbalanced" cause they've ensured that at least some
involved surely are that, and thus set-up for further discrimination /
abuse, if the public is in the mood to cooperate.
Save the Rivers has managed to avoid being set up as lumber-jack
injuring anarchists, owing its success to being understood as backed
by concerned, good-hearted wilderness appreciaters. Why the
difference? My guess it has something to do with how the public
PREFERS to imagine the two. The public wants them to seem pure --
1333
and therefore skims over the anarchists amongst them, and estimates
them mostly composed of small town, clean-air breathing and
humble, middle-aged lovers of God's green earth -- and wants the
anti-olympicers to seem viral --and thus focuses on "irresponsible,"
self-dramatizing youth and terrorist-like tactics, and resists
acknowledging that most anti-olympicers are save-the-river types as
well. (But are most save-the-river types also anti-olympicers? Not
sure, myself.)
Anti-urban sentiment? Fascist favoring of mountain hikes and clean
lakes -- the simple and grandscale --over complex city dynamics and
strange philosophies? What do you think?
Link: "Dissent and BC's Media"
Rootless Cosmopolitan
Too suave for Bush, who fit so well with Husseins cartoonish
pomposity, Bin Laden is just right for 8 years of Afghan chess, with
classy Obama.
Link: Real men dont need D.C. pundits (Joan Walsh, Salon)
@ Patrick McEvoy-Halston
You posted:
There is something in Obama's patience which does strike
one as near deliberate withholding, as wiser-than-thou,
empowered demonstration of maturity and wisdom ...
Withholding is sadistic, but can be a demonstration of one's
strength, many of the bullied will recognize and end up
respecting.
Obama's "patience" is his reticence to make a further
decision until he sees how the wind is blowing in the polls.
It's indecision and he is sacrificing America's treasure while
he "dithers" - period! You describe it as sadistic.
Obama is not demonstrating strength - he belongs on
1336
not about the NFL, it's not about the St. Louis Rams, it's not
about me. This is about the ongoing effort by the left in this
country, wherever you find them, in the media, the
Democrat Party, or wherever, to destroy conservatism, to
prevent the mainstreaming of anyone who is prominent as a
conservative." (Joan Walsh, First they came for Rush
Limbaugh, Salon, Oct. 15 2009)
Rush is being "discontinued" precisely because he so well embodies a
child's anger, mistreatment, alarm. We project all our anger at
ourselves having been left alone, into him; we dispatch him; and we
feel absent agitations -- more at peace. He feels/ expresses so we
don't have to. Process will continue, on the right AND the left.
Remember what you've had to say here about Limbaugh, because you
are something of the passionate crusader yourself. You might suit.
Those who will do well as we go on are those who appreciate AND are
well able to mimic Obama's composure, his controlled, near
dispassionate manner, all the while hordes (40, 60, 80 thousand!) of
young men and women are sent into the maw of Afghanistan. That is,
zombies -- or better, nazi-types: that is, people who are in some ways
dead to themselves, who can spend their days humiliating / torturing
people, disown what they do, and return home for staid dinner with
the wife and kids.
Link: First they came for Rush Limbaugh (Salon)
This is a good link to get a sense of just what's going on right now
with itunes u. Right now, people are both stunned at just how many
courses from top universities are available at itunes u, and just how
many downloads they're getting. Millions of them.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6
869552.ece?print=yes&randnum=1151003209000
There is an article out there written in the last week or two about
professors discussing grading, or acknowledgements, and itunes u,
but can't find it just now. Some universities are already playing
defence, though: Oxford is arguing that its education is tutorial,
mostly about advisors, not lectures, and thereby distinguishing itself
from universities which are mostly about lectures -- and which are
therefore now competing rather inadequately against the very best
lectures available out there for free. Inertia can keep things going for
awhile, but soon enough we'll get some big names endorsing just
downloading Princeton, Oxford, MIT lectures, and completing their
coursework (MIT has made their coursework available, I believe),
rather than taking undergrad at any old. Smarter universities are
going hybrid, loadly proclaiming how their students can attend
classes physically, or just use their ipods and download. Helps them
seem with it. But in sum, itunes U is gradually making most mid-level
universities seem rather PC redundant. Old style university
attendance could end up seeming fit for fobs, slow-moving sloths.
Mightn't you already see the (devestating) commercial?
Steward Brand did Whole Earth Review as an alternative to
university. He, Rheingold, Jobs, all very non-placative attitudes
towards university, but were huge on learning. Itunes U fits with that
attitude, at a time when the talk at universities is all about raising
tuition fees and closing doors. University's public image is not that
much better than wall-street right now, really. All parents want their
kids to do "Harvard," though, and in face of being told that while they
can't do/afford UBC, hey, there's always Yukon U, they'll want,
THEY'LL PUSH someone like Steve Jobs to make Itunes Princeton a
1340
legitimate way for their kid to participate in the ivy-league and seem
of the now. As more savy, in fact, than the next door who thinks it's all
"so" that their kids attending UBC.
The very best, wherever they're to be found, and all for free -- that's
itunes U.
Karla 1960
re: Anyone who considers Tucker Carlson a free-thinker also
considers High School Musical fine American theater.
From Wik article on Tucker Carlson:
Carlson initially supported the U.S. war with Iraq during its
first year. After a year, he began criticizing the war, telling
the New York Observer: "I think its a total nightmare and
disaster, and Im ashamed that I went against my own
instincts in supporting it. Its something Ill never do again.
Never. I got convinced by a friend of mine whos smarter
than I am, and I shouldnt have done that. No. I want things
to work out, but Im enraged by it, actually."[18]
In 1999, during the 2000 Republican Presidential primary
race, Carlson interviewed George W. Bush, then Governor of
Texas, for Talk magazine. Carlson reported that Bush
mocked soon-to-be-executed Texas Death Row inmate Karla
Faye Tucker and "cursed like a sailor." Bush's
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Karla 1960
My read on Tucker is that he's about the same as a Joan Walsh or
Conason. He has the capacity to remain independent, remain wholy
sane and good, but can be drawn to occupy himself with the
outrageous claims, advancements made by the other side. Nothing to
do with party bidding with any of these good people, though. All of
them need our support, most especially when they buck the tide,
make themselves vulnerable to taking huge hits, something they are
each capable of doing more than just every now and then.
As far as Brooks goes. I like the way Mark Shields speaks / thinks of
him. Shields sees when Brooks is slipping, but also understands he
sits across from a decent human being who often has relevant, very
helpful things to say. He can do damage, but he's a good person we
can't allow to see crushed.
Link: Tucker Carlsons perpetual self-victimhood (Salon)
So long as our opponents look the part of clowns (but what's more
clownish -- fake lords, or "real" ones in the 21st century?), we're okay.
The left will know its opponent, and be able to unite against it. More
worrying will be when the emotive clowns are dispatched (this always
happens at some point -- McCarthy and Gingrich were everywhere
one day, and nowhere the next), and sober respectables (read:
Ignatieffs) carry the day. Respectables, that is, who are no nonsense,
into self-sacrifice, environmentalism, localism, and who will claim the
support of at least half the current left AND the right. If
environmentalism goes hand-in-hand with militarism, youth blood
sacrifice (oh, the spoiled youth of today!), punishment, and loses all
connection with peace, love, ease and happiness, the right will
embrace it in a way which will astonish. Watch for it. Here and in the
States.
They (i.e., the right) primarily are interested in seeing people suffer.
They'll use whatever at hand for righteous cover -- God or Nature, will
do equally well. Jesus and flower-power, not so well.
Link: "Why are the oddballs winning?"
Just a measure?
re: Its a brutal, heartbreaking, unflinching litany of more pain than
any child should ever endure.
How much pain should a child be expected to endure?
re: Though accurate data is hard to come by, the Lucy Faithfull
Foundation estimates approximately 15 percent of sex abusers are
women.
One of those 15 percent women bad / 85 percent men beyond awful
stats women are using to justify their upcoming hegemonic dominion
over mankind? Or is this a "maybe a little bit" that might blossom
into "actually quite a lot," once we're ready for ready to engage
something rather more wasting than the drunken dad with lust in his
eyes for little boy "Tom"?
Maternal incest occurs earlier, is more ongoing, and leaves a vastly
larger imprint. In most abusive families, children spend way more
time with mom than they do with daddy. They learn very well,
though, never to speak a bad word--mom made sure there'd be none
of that. So we go after dad. It's an avenue we know; it's one we're
allowed, even encouraged, to go down; and it makes dad present --
even if brutally -- when for the most part he never really was.
so unloved they could not help but use their boys as anti-
depressants). That's where the anger originates. Feminism want to try
taking on that "angle" again, so that we can stop essentializing young
men as evil
item.
[. . .]
I would mention my boyfriend to a girl in my biology lab,
and she would inexplicably plop down next to me in class for
the rest of the semester. Strange drunken girls at college keg
parties would tell me that they're really "a gay man in a
woman's body," and ask me to take them to the local gay
bar. At a recent birthday party, a female friend of mine (who
later described herself as a proud "fag hag") forced me into
conversation with another gay friend of hers before telling
us, "I thought my two fags should meet -- maybe you can
date?" as we both stared at each other uncomfortably.
(Thomas Rogers, Ladies: Im not your gay boyfriend,
Salon, 18 August 2009)
----
Re: PMH
Sexual attraction for either gender, by either gender is not
the result of dysfunctional parenting nor childhood trauma.
It's hard wired into your system the way Apple or IBM
compatible is hard-wired into the systemboard of a PC.
The need to distance yourself from it by explaining it away
with theories that have, long since, been discounted and/or
disproven likely is, however. As the old saying goes...
"denial" is not just a river in Egypt. (gkrevvv, response to
post, Ladies: Im not your gay boyfriend)
Everything is DNA related these days. There was a huge turn away
from childhood/psychoanalytic explanations for behavior, at the end
of 70s/early 80s. Some of us think this is not owing to greater
accuracy, but to collective aversion/cowardliness--distancing, if you
will. Few anxieties are raised, reprisals invited, if one speaks of
genes--doesn't say much for science as objective, but in my judgment,
that is the why of it. If it was/is early incestual use by mothers, the
slur (of women) as "fish" seems about what you'd expect.
Saying it's all about incestual handling--something most of us, to a
less or greater extent, have experienced--puts me in denial, makes me
gay--how's that again?
----
@digitbig; @MerelyMortalMale:
@digitbit:
I'm glad you're aware of the effect your mother's "relentless
neediness" had on you. Being geered to respond to everyone else's
needs, means not sufficiently attending to your own.
@MerelyMortalMale:
Is gayness innate or a reaction to deprivation/abuse? Has anyone
studied the commonalities of gay backgrounds?
There surely must be studies, but this is one of those areas where
certain results would be preferred; others, rather not so much. I don't
think gayness is innate.
Is male fondness for lavender and snap-snark more innate than
NASCAR mania?
I'm with those who say NASCAR prowess is born out of early-on
feeling all too vulnerable and weak. There's a lot to be said for guys
who like lavender. Many of whom get to like and know snap-snark, to
fend off those who see in you the friendly lather.
Is Oscar Wild more healthy a paradigm than John Wayne?
As popularly understood/processed, neither is particularly good. Both
are strong; both tend--however differently. But they're also both the
lone man (note: escape from female/motherly enmeshment through
1352
----
He plucked heartstrings?
RE: "He was a master of that very rare talent so lacking in modern
life: plucking the heartstrings. No, he is not a Scorcese or Woody
1358
----
@k trout
Pointing out that identifying Hughes as a heartstring-plucker is not
the best of ways to redeem/defend him, is hardly an asshole post, k
trout. Sounds to me about the worst of diminishments, actually.
----
@dust1969
I wonder if your girl friends at the time were approached by (the
equivalent of a) Jake, if they'd have dropped their duckies for the
buck, in an instant. Duckie only shows self-respect at the very end--a
bit when he dresses so towardly, magnificently, for the prom, but
mostly when he encourages Andie to go for Blane. This--what?--
grace?, true goodwill?, makes it seem appropriate and even believable
that some lovely (other) self-possessed Pinkie suddenly appears to
take special note of him. Even with more of that from him, I still say
Andie and Blane work best. Ringwald was right to push.
The sneering, the leveling, succeed in "Heathers." The world is so full
of shit, so truly indecent, it makes looking to the nature of your own
behavior seem a bit optional. You "see," and that kinda makes you
way beyond good enough. Hughes--perhaps most evidently
with/through Duckie, but also with Bender and others--saw this
means, a strategy, to keep yourself from taking risks and growing, and
asked for more out of people than just that.
----
re: As an aside
John Hughes has been portrayed as a champion of the
1360
sawmonkey
The geek in Breakfast Club writes the essay, but what he manages
there is a one-on-one fuck-you to the principal, something he
wouldn't have dared do before the BC experience. Since it is what he
wrote and his voice which "plays" as we see the various pairings go
their way, there is a sense he stands a bit above and beyond at the
end. He is removed; but more self-determined (more broadly-
aware?), more author than geek. And he gets more than an indulgent
glance at the end from Bender, who for the most part had previously
just managed him about. When the conversation turned to
trigonometry, the geek's knowledge base/abilities is made to seem
somewhat akin in "potency" to Claire's social status and the jock's
athleticism, and crowds out (the formidable, savy) Bender some.
More than some.
About Sixteen Candles--it doesn't finish with the geek more enabling
himself amongst his dweeb friends: it ends with him having a fairly
mature conversation with the girl/woman he (very likely) slept with.
Again and again through the film, the geek puts himself in potentially
dangerous situations, and is shown with capacity for empathy and
(even) bearing (his encounter with Samantha in the shop car is not
played as a joke [on him], but with respect [for both of them]).
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Arguably, what develops with him seems more open that what lands
with Samantha. Who knows where he'll be the following year? Not so
much the geek, the film suggests.
Ferris Bueller: You're absolutely right.
----
re: Patrick
I stand by my prior assertation. JH was all about the elite.
Striving, laughing at and ultimately becoming part and
parcel of the same. Maybe he had the finest joke in the end,
after all, he who laughs last, laughs best. Did you go to one
of those hilarious "state" schools or does your sense of
humour only include the jokes of the Ivy variety...
(sawmonkey, response to post, Champion of mere mortals)
sawmonkey
For me what stands out is his recognition of and tribute to, people
with personality, with some considerable capacity for self-realization
and the give-and-take. Blane/Jake see something in Samatha/Andie,
and, in my judgment, it is to their considerable credit that they do.
The pairing of Samantha and Blane works at the end because they've
both got class--real class, of a type not exclusive to any one particular
social class. The WASP/Ivy-Leagues, for me, amount in his films to
the "catcher in the rye": "it" cushions people from the potentially
crushing vissitudes of life--it's a giant pillow for those not entirely
sure where they'll be sleeping the night after next. But there is no real
action, no true life, to be found there--it's perimeter, not ground;
weekend escape, not day-to-day dalliance, fight, and play.
@Patrick
Fair enough. You got yer druthers and I have mine. Cheers
to you, Sir! (sawmonkey, response to post, Champion of
mere mortals)
1362
Ps.
Ferris really needed a beating! That is all... (sawmonkey,
response to post, Champion of mere mortals)
----
re: Also
I can't believe that everyone has forgotten the real message
in BREAKFAST CLUB. As long as you conform you're OK.
What. you say? Well, I give you the Ally Sheedy psycho-girl
character. Who later would have been a Goth. Once she gets
a Molly makeover, all is fine, right?
Tell me you didn't find that disgusting. I liked her better than
all the rest and in fact I liked her better before the makeover.
Life goes by pretty fast, If you're not an overprivileged white
kid from the North Shore who wears the right clothes, you
might miss it! (dust1969, response to post, Champion of
mere mortals)
@1969
Ally Sheedy's character is testing, knowing, but hidden and
inaccessible/unknowable (full of lies). For her, the change in dress is
about moving out of comfort zones, allowing herself to be vulnerable,
to show/reveal herself as undeniably interested in others' assessment
of her. Claire does the same, and pairs up with the "stoner" Bender--
note: without him donning a suit. The movement may be more about
reciprocity, finding a middle ground, than it is about a move to
normal. No?
car together later, the film is WITH both of them--not trying to break
either of them down, but rather, lift them up--wake them up to their
potential, to the possibility of moving beyond past life-roles. Blane in
"Pretty in Pink" is reserved, but not bland--he is charming.
Characters do often end up with 80s bland, though; I think because as
"objects" they possess some sense of WASP ever-
lastingness/solidness: their blandness has something to do with their
legacy spanning generations, with them not being in any special hurry
to accomplish anything. They can take your heat, if not fully
understand it, and carry on. The characters with "character" tend to
be less fixed, less oriented. Makes them strong with huge potential, in
"Breakfast Club." But perhaps elsewhere--and especially with Ducky--
makes it seem easy enough for them to spiral out of control, fall apart.
Characters need something "sure" to help settle/calm them down--
they need security. Big element in Hughes films.
Hughes wanted people to do well. The date rape bit from you does
show just how mean and off-course we've become. The truly mean,
but more deceptive, will see in many these days, ripe sport for
immediate ready agreement and inevitable glorious betrayal.
-----
re: And it wasn't Bender's sexual aggression that won
Claire over, it was his dropping his mask and revealing a
softer side. (EdwardDunne, response to post, Amy Benfer,
The Sixteen Candles date rape scene)
I think it fair to say, though, that Claire did at some level appreciate
Bender's sensitivity, even when used aggressively. He had a good
sense of bullshit, of how people work (so did the others, mind you),
and was fascinating--to Claire too, me thinks--in how he could make
use of his understanding of people, of the situation he was in, to draw
people out, to make something--even if it just turned out to be
discord--out of what would otherwise have been silent, constrained
students, waiting through the hours. Claire was both fascinated and
horrified at Bender's willingness to draw upon himself the whole of
the principal's anger, vengeance. Her plea that he cut it out!
1365
Kill. Sacrifice. Virgin. Die. Eat baby. Troll. Salon talk (6 August 2009)
It's not going to matter. This is period where the press assist Obama
in demonstrating just what will happen to you if you raise a stir,
where we get a sense of the kind of muscle that backs Obama, and I
think Americans will get an erotic thrill from the devastating
ruthlessness. It may in fact be what they "were looking for." The
birthers, the doubters, the annoying pests will be eviscerated, and
Obama's agenda will get back on track. And then when some
complainers start taking on this agenda in the "wrong" way, they too
can be shown refusing rides, talking to the wrong people, as having
read the wrong books, said the wrong things: they too can be derided
all Geraldine Ferraro out of the way. The truth of this is not going to
matter. The land-of-birth thing strikes me as immensely silly. But it
won't matter. Even if in our face, we won't see it--if it comes close to
that, we'll just start taking a closer look at all that "youve" been up to.
Link: Salon's handy-dandy guide to refuting the birthers (Salon)
-----
Vanessa Richmond's most recent (dour) piece at the Tyee is about (or
at least mentions) how (your typical) fashion mag's brilliance bullies.
1373
Maybe the issue you're dealing with is that your gang of 13 is in some
sense "Legally Blonde" (your reveal has made you seem kind of a
mix--never quite back to emma peel black for you!), and your
effervescence bothers those in shadows? There's a huge bunch of gush
at OS, though, that smacks of people on a dopamine thrill ride they
cannot afford to let stop. (Mind you, I find it difficult to not be at least
a bit performative right now.) There's also a lot of people with stellar
personalities, huge souls, that shine bright 'cause life has buoyed
them up, not beaten them down.
-----
-----
-----
Like BBE said, don't feel guilty about having some joy and
celebrating that joy. Those who have a problem with it,
honestly need to look at their feelings and think: "Why in
God's name am I feeling hurt and sickened if some
acquaintances on the internet had some fun". Feel that
"sickened and hurt feeling" and honestly try to divert your
feelings to things that matter, like making joy in your life.
Envy is a terminal heart condition that frankly there is little
if any cure for in this life. Envy can eat one up and increase
their misery beyond imagination. Until, people who are
sickened explore their jealousy, they will not overcome it.
vzn: Well spotted. Most popular likely means not editor's prefered.
The editor likes to talk up the OS crowd, but shows his suspicion of it
in prefering pieces with ascetic remove over stuff that draws
out/encourages our liveliness and life. Lauerman is about the
opposite of Walsh, who unapologetically will gush, gush, gush over
puppies! The Las Vegas stuff should have been cover. It's what drew
my attention and interest. The good stuff was there.
stellaa: The mode of thinking that spots and condems ENVY is also
the mode of thinking that works against ever admitting any untoward
INDULGENCE going on here, for it amounts to about an equal
sin/crime. If someone wants to ID accusers as envious, then they
MUST understand all the goings-on as simple innocent fun, even if
this assessment is not fully in accord with the truth, even if it means
making what you need to be true the only truth you're ever prone to
1376
know.
You don't need money for joy, as Stellaa so aptly points out.
Joy is manufactured from within. The only thing we need to
be happy is to make the decision to be so. I've been lucky in
life and had some big boom times. I had fun then, but not
because of money. I knew that then, and I know it now,
having very little but experiencing the happiest time in my
life. That's due in large part to the 3 years of therapy I chose
to invest in - I was harboring some unpleasant habits of
feeling and decided it was high time to get rid of them. It was
hard, but possible. An interesting side effect - it greatly
enabled my writing. (Sandra, response to post, Hurt and
sickened . . .)
Well Sandra, I understand that you enjoyed yourself, but I for one
truly wish that you could have lived it up even more. It's a meeting of
what is apparent to all of us, a very lively, interesting, pronounced
and fun group of people. For the joy you treasure, any place might
well have served, but since it was las vegas I had hoped you guys had
the means to put to play every bit of excess Vegas' gorge and glitter,
into a "thousand-miles of (summer) fun."
There may be good point to setting things straight. I think I trust your
account, but I do sense in that sacrificed cup of coffee maybe also a
quarter or two displaced into the cup of well-regard. There may have
been no flaunting; but flaunting can be a form of play--not something
to be excused or denied, but appreciated: there very much can be a
spirit in the flaunt, in the flash, that I can very much like. It can
bespeak not primarily meanness or sinful selfishness, but a kind of
therapeutic, rightful insistence on self. Step toward being generous to
yourself, to being truly motivated to give aid/love to others. The
power of GUSH as an accusation, condemnation, needs some working
against. Something I have hoped to offer here.
1378
May you find yourself better situated, sooner rather than later. It's
tough to hear of your living in conditions so evidently so very unequal
to you.
I assure you this is the ONLY time in my life I have ever been accused
of being a Heather of the in crowd. It feels weird.
Promise in high school which you are referring to here I was the geek
who went to all school assemblies and not the keg parties in the
woods, was always pictured either typing or in the corner reading a
book in the yearbook, and was upset by others' stories of the prom I
did not attend. I think I fulfill that role as well in Oceans 13 ;0) So I
get why people might have been upset but . . .
2010 will be my 30th high school reunion. I left that behind a long
time ago. I don't understand why others have not done the same. It
was not the happiest time of my life so I choose to no longer live
there.
Dorinda Fox
JULY 30, 2009 01:35 PM
Dorinda, If you can go to a 30th and have it all feel all so left behind,
that's quite an amazing accomplishment. I think, though, that we all
know that is how people are supposed to feel, supposed to be able to
effect, and if they don't there's something shameful about this. I think
whereever you are, is where you are. Accept, explore.
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 30, 2009 01:48 PM
Stellaa
JULY 30, 2009 01:55 PM
Well, I'm all for more indulgence, then. How can we be proper
Heathers if we don't well understand the whole point is to enjoy the
fun our spinning ride of color affords?
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 30, 2009 02:06 PM
Patrick, you see, this is my issue, in the search for Western people to
cover up their guilt for excess, they have created a circle of misery
that is completely artificial. In that vain, they have managed to
portray their lives as filled with misery and suffering, yet, they have
more resources and take more of the "benefits" of this planet. In that
vain, they have managed to never appreciate any of the joys in life,
instead, the cover their lives in a mythology of faux western suffering.
So, for all those who suffered because some other people of western
developed world are prettier, thinner, have more fun, are clever, I say
get over it and figure out what you have of joy. I have lived in third
world countries where the poorest of the poor find how to express joy,
yet in America and the Western world, there is a self imposed misery
that is bathed in envy of the "other". The more people envy, the more
suffering they invent.
1380
Stellaa
JULY 30, 2009 02:09 PM
You know, I have some lovely pics from Vegas. I will not be posting
them. Heaven forfend they cause somebody pain and suffering.
Likewise, I came up with the most AMAZING molten chocolate cake
recipe the other night. But I know some people are allergic to
chocolate, so I won't be posting that either. And while the funniest
thing just happened to me the other day, I know there are one-legged
Little People out there who don't have the best relationship with
alpacas, so I won't be writing about that either...
Verbal Remedy
JULY 30, 2009 02:16 PM
Verbal, what if I feel deprived because you did not post the cake? This
is becoming a Meta day.
Stellaa
JULY 30, 2009 02:22 PM
Envy can be a cover. How many people do you know of those whose
lives seem every year to be improving in obvious and real/true ways--
career rise, acquisitions, children's success, etc.--cover each step on
up with so many complaints, with so many "tellings" of all the
difficulties they have to do deal with, that one would think they
needed nothing more than for God to strike them dead, so to spare
1381
any more future suffering? I noticed it long ago in those around, and
understood that good things, happiness, make "them"
uncomfortable--they think it might afford them punishment of some
kind, and so they try and co-op "you" into helping them believe that
the truer understanding of their life is pure infliction/misery.
People who can enjoy life with (what some would consider) little, are
very capable people. But if these same people don't enjoy their life
more if they find means to go more upscale (I'm not necessarily
talking Hamptons, here--though I don't mean to dish Hampton-style
too much, either), there is something wrong with them. You do get
what you pay for. Expensive bicycles are better bicycles. You should
find yourself more happy with one, even if you find much fun with the
beater you're using now.
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 30, 2009 02:28 PM
Patrick if you had read any of my previous posts my life has not been
improving in many ways and I will not feel guilt over having some
fun. You deserve to know that I have a 33% chance of being on earth
in four years so leave me alone about enjoying my trip.
Dorinda Fox
JULY 30, 2009 02:32 PM
Verbal,
Heathers rule the school, but yet aloof Veronica still keeps her cool.
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 30, 2009 02:38 PM
1382
Dorinda, No I oughtn't. It's way out of place. Hope your ride takes you
way beyond, though. And best to you, lovely Dorinda.
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 30, 2009 02:41 PM
Patrick, let me get personal here. Since you colored a large swath of
people with the "mean girl", "Heather" cultural narrative, let me
challenge you.
You are a therapist, I don't know what kind of therapy you do. Your
job, your well being depends on people constantly being in a state of
misery and suffering. Forgive me if I think that you have a
professional interest in taking joy and converting it into some kind of
social pathology. A social pathology that has the intent of hurting
others.
What lesson are you trying to teach? Are you trying to teach people to
be temperate and prudent, or modest? Or telling people that just the
expression of having a good time is a pathology.
Stellaa
JULY 30, 2009 02:46 PM
analysis on people you have never met and who you know very little
about. When given more information you spit it back using three-
syllable words. I also have a Ph.D. and don't feel the need to use
academic terms in and non-academic environment to impress people.
I am a nice person. You should not delude yourself into thinking that
you are.
Dorinda Fox
JULY 30, 2009 03:15 PM
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 30, 2009 03:19 PM
Patrick, that is where you are wrong, prudence, temperance and other
virtues are not the property of Christian tradition. The virtues have
always been a human pursuit.
I see another layer in your pursuit of this issue, they will not say it,
but I will. The women, of course they were mostly women, were
attractive. Attractive women are typically demonized and trivialized
into indulgent beings to be scorned. So, maybe a bit of self reflections
is in order. Would you have seen this as being self indulgent and
mean, if the women were not as a group rather attractive based on
social and cultural standards?
Stellaa
JULY 30, 2009 03:34 PM
1385
I use language which is natural to me. This is the way I speak and
write, always. Coming to OS was natural to me; I have not felt out-of-
place; I presume my language is sufficient/appropriate here. Some
have said, though, that OS really ought to be thought of more as
Yahoo.chat. That would be your verdict, I guess. Not mine as of yet.
You don't use showy language, but you advertise this fact so very
showily. As you do with your use of "Dr." here. Fits in with this
particular discussion, but it is unnecessary and the opposite of
impressive: it doesn't make you seem so much someone to be heard,
as someone who wants to quit/intimidate someone else by letting
them know just who backs them--makes you seem someone who got a
PhD, in part, so that you could trump all arguments at some point,
with this sort of (what-ought-to-be-deemed) rather pathetic little
inclusion/surprise/well-as-it-turns-out.
I'm a socialist. People without too much need for titles, perhaps
without any, are the ones who impress me: they are the only who
truly see something beautiful and wonderful in everyone. They are the
only ones who can imagine equivalence meaning, everyone as
resplendent. They are the only ones who would have you know that if
you think/say/feel something brilliant, THAT is all that's important:
doesn't matter at all how here-to-fore, others have "placed" you.
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 30, 2009 03:39 PM
You have no clue why I pursued a Ph.D. and are a lousy therapist if
you think you know.
1386
You are "mean boy" using big words to intimidate the girls who
shunned you in school as is obvious by your obsession with high
school imagery.
But yeah mean little boy using big words because pretty girls might
scare him,
Dr. Fox
STFU
Dorinda Fox
JULY 30, 2009 03:46 PM
I don't what "truth" it is that you are after, but to pursue this as you
have done indicates that you have some kind of issue with a group of
people meeting up to get to know one another better. You are free to
read anything into the meet-up that you please, but I was there, my
bullshit detector was still working, and it mostly came up empty. And
1387
emma peel
JULY 30, 2009 03:52 PM
Stellaa: Fair correction, but I don't like the "virtues." All I can say is
that when you speak of them, I don't dislike them as much. That's a
compliment, but not a backdown. This said, sometimes when people
speak of modesty, or moderation, or some such, they're not in their
minds thinking of the circumscribed; they might be thinking just
being at ease, or being fair to "your" current situation, pleasure,
whatever: that is, I've heard these terms used where to me they speak
of virtue, but the terms, the generally history of their use, do not go
the way I would want them to. There's something wrong if we need to
school at Dopamine High, show a huge need of other's desire (I know
there is that in a Heather; but in Heather Chandler, specifically, there
is considerable Reese Witherspoon-inner sunshine, too!), but our love
of ourselves, our self-radiance, should be such that's it is obvious to
one and all, even if that's not the point.
Huge issue right now, you know. What happened to Tom Cruise,
even. The guy was just happy about his marriage! Goes off to Paris,
gets married--wonderful show! It's not everyone's fun, but it's great
Las Vegas fun--playful fun!, and so we go at him the best we can.
Apparently, he needed to do his best to minimize the show, minimize
the Tom Cruise in the Tom Cruise, for heaven's-sakes!, to have had
1388
If you got it, flaunt it! If you flaunt it over me, I'll see in this a way to
doing it so that it's really not the least bit at my expense--it can be a
way of showing how worthy someone finds you--too. There's love of
life in that!; real fun in that!
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 30, 2009 04:00 PM
I'm confused. Does Patrick hate the folks who went ot Vegas or love
them? Whatever...Vegas is so "yesterday'. I'll have my eye on the
Boulder trip. And then the New Orleans trip...
spotted_mind
JULY 30, 2009 04:04 PM
emma peel
JULY 30, 2009 04:08 PM
Ok, I join the confused. Because I do not understand the criticism and
the need to evoke the negative imagery from Hollywood etc, to actual
people and put them into that light. Particularly, since the people
involved, we all know many things about their lives, their ideas and
feelings.
Stellaa
JULY 30, 2009 04:28 PM
1389
Hi emma.
The praire girl in you still finds rampant fun (okay, okay--there wasn't
any of that) suspect, off-putting. It's not just about good taste; it's
about fearing what happens when everything you really want is pro-
offered to you on a plate. You could have been nickel-and-dining it.
You could have imagined a more evocative place, and (in truth) more
dazzling/engaging people (though I am not suggesting this the case).
It was still a meeting of the OS stars, our OS Summit, if you will, no
1390
little get-together for biscuits and tea, and you knew it. BTW, that's
cool you know. I LIKE that that was part of your guys' event. It's just
part of the good fun here. It's okay to have a popular crowd.
I'm glad to know you had as much fun as you did with Dorinda,
Emma. Good on you guys. I know that along with the favoring for the
duly modest she efforts to claim for herself here, she must have a lot
of life, to have drawn your attention and friendship.
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 30, 2009 04:40 PM
spotted_mind:
I like the folks/stars who went to las vegas, a lot. Dorinda reminds me
of all the girls in highschool who used to make fun of me, so I'm not
so inclined to think much of her, though.
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 30, 2009 04:57 PM
Signed,
Got my ass kicked a-plenty by the pretty, popular mean girls and
1391
Verbal Remedy
JULY 30, 2009 05:15 PM
I was kidding about the least popular in high school, btw. (Just
playing off the "just said" with Dorinda's further efforts to level.) I
didn't like my home life, so I got my revenge, some feeling of turn-
about, by making people at school feel as inadequate as possible. I
probably ruined a few lives, actually. Not especially proud of that, but
at the time the demonstration of prowess was, admittedly, at-some-
much-needed-level, quite satisfying.
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 30, 2009 05:33 PM
I wasn't close "friends" with all the people who went, and I'm still not
close to some of them. I think you are reading far more into this than
it merits. Perhaps there are some who feel that they are stars and
going to Vegas was a "star turn" but I don't know who they are.
emma peel
JULY 30, 2009 05:44 PM
Oh, and I've had plenty of "rampant fun" in my life. I spent most of
1392
my 30s and 40s in pursuit of it. It was interesting that some in Vegas
noted that I was one of the "quieter" ones. I attribute it to the heat,
fatigue and having had so much fun in the past that I don't see it as a
competitive sport any more.
emma peel
JULY 30, 2009 05:46 PM
"I have never thought of myself as a "star" here. I don't get EPs, I
don't even write that often and I take a lot of heat from various
people. This isn't false modesty, or offensive "peasant" modesty as
you assume."
emma: I believe you. But with the 170 comments, I presume you have
full proof that you count amongst the OS renown (or is just further
proof that you're not best understood as popular, but as someone
whose controversial presence draws the attention and ire of countless
lots of people?), even without EPs, even if this is not at all what you
want, is of no particular interest to you. That is, when you next take
account of who you amount to here, you won't now just be drawing
attention to your lack of EPs to suggest your presence is a modest
one, or simply just a controversial one. That you have had more posts
written about/concerning you than anyone else here, didn't tip you
off, surprises me, though. (Popular people are often the most hated--
thus my Heather reference.) Maybe your view count is low, or
something. Maybe your posts gather few comments, and even fewer
rates. But evidence that you weren't simply one of the crowd, based
on evidence, not to be evident to you? Surprising.
Still, I hear you that you count yourself one amongst many. No
interest in being a star. There is a lot to be said for that, truly--it can
be said from someone who knows the way to ease, right comfort,
peace, but not much for a reluctance to faithfully be true to your
understanding of how others see you.
1393
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 30, 2009 06:08 PM
You were born into a country that deems the well-lived life, very
suspect--very American. If you really lived it, you accomplished
something the protagonist of Bell Jar essentially died for fear of.
emma peel is smart as a whip, and kick's ass. but she is unknowable.
you know this, right?
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 30, 2009 06:30 PM
I'm with the confused pack. I'm an OS Star. I'm the Star-iest. I didn't
get to go to Vegas. I couldn't afford to, and there were some other dire
circumstances that wouldn't have allowed me to go even if I had the
1394
means.
FreakyTroll
JULY 30, 2009 09:19 PM
Freaky Troll Supermodel: When you don't speak purple, we're too
caught by surprise to understand.
re: "If you can't separate from your ego enough to realize that people
exist and have nice experiences apart from you for their own sakes
and not to somehow punish you, or promote themselves beyond you,
then hon' you got more problems than can be hashed out in the
comments section of a blog."
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 30, 2009 10:40 PM
ah... huh?
And no, I'm wasn't speaking about *you*. You stated both in your
post and in your comments that you wrote about this to promote
discussion of the topic. I discussed.
I'm guessing that last bit was you trying to tell me that I would get all
bitter if I become not the flavor of the week. Eh, if you check my
ratings and comments and EPs, it's not like I'm slaying them in the
aisles. I do my own little thing in my own little corner of this place.
But you know, I do find interesting that you assume that I would
come all pouty about things... hmmmmm.... 'cause really that's not
the case.
And gee, if people don't agree with your "Mean Girl" premise, you get
kind of personally aggressive.
FreakyTroll
JULY 30, 2009 11:19 PM
So Freaky Troll Superstar is, with her "little place" and "little things,"
near bachelor-place invisible on OS. Yes, this speaks to a noticeable
characteristic, a notable problem here, and is an apt and worthy
addition to this post. Success encourages so much anxiety it makes us
just have to imagine ourselves the smallest of selves, our conscious
mind can give credence to. If you ever become more popular, I expect
we'll hear you speak of yourself in third person--it's some other you
people are referring to, not really you. They may do book things here
1396
at OS. I expect it. You really think you haven't a chance (along with
others, of course) at the cover?
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 30, 2009 11:43 PM
aim
JULY 31, 2009 12:13 AM
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 31, 2009 12:20 AM
emma peel
1397
So if the battle is long and intense, but Obama ultimately takes these
unfortunate white-wingers out, and the left cheers!, and the left
cheers!, and the left cheers! Then when this Wall-Street approved
proceeds along his Wall-Street approved way, will the left need to find
some other foul variant of the right to focus on, so they aren't left
thinking, wait a sec, did we just help entrench this guy?
and certainty stands and stays: we no longer need these guys. And so
to help excuse our quick dumping of them, make it a bit less guilt-
arousing, we start hearing/encouraging stories that make these
figures seem a bit too embarrassing to justify having in our presence--
sordid personal stories, of the dumped his wife while on the
deathbed, kind; and they're more-or-less not to be found, forever or
for quite the time (until we have the notion their kind of service might
again prove useful). They're our tools, prompts--even true for many of
us lefties.
Note: Ignore the picture of the guy on the right. Pretend he's (Joseph)
McCarthy.
Link: Right-Wing Racism on the Rise (Joan Walsh)
By Patrick McEvoy-Halston
July 2009
unaccountable, inexcusable.
Frodo doesn't do all that much that strikes us as so leaderly,
independent, notable through the rest of the series. Yes, he gets to
Mordor, but along with perseverance he demonstrates that wear-and-
tear really does mean being worn down, becoming dependent on
others for spirit and sanity, amounts to shrinking not expansion of
self. Just like the broken sword of Anduril, like a valued relic, though
he slips away from best/most lively form, our sense of him, his
notable greatness, is never lessened: the nature of the Fellowship's
portrayal of him means we find it, if still a surprise, still a matter of
due course that Aragorn "bows" to him at his own moment of high
ascension. The drama had shifted to high kings, regal manner,
physical stature and good looks, but never so far away that Frodo's
special and noteworthy singularity could fall too far from mind. This
is not the case with Merry and Pippen, however. And it is with them,
with how they are "treated" in Two Towers and Return of the King,
that I will largely focus my concerns as to the series'
manipulativeness, its great act of bad faith to the ostensible principle
argument moving the film.
At the finish, Merry and Pippen are given huge due, but with
them, unlike as was the case with Frodo, this may well seem both
surprising andespecially with so many other great personages about
over-done, inappropriate. It was their right due, too, however; it's
just that this fact was made clear but then subsequently and very
determinedly obfuscated so as to make the moment of high acclaim
even more a surprise, something even more worthy of being held dear
to those viewers who could/would readily imagine themselves akin to
the uncertain of place. For there were two towers of pressing threat,
one was taken out in dogged toward fashion by Frodo and Sam, but
the other too was taken out by hobbits, only in a more sly, subtle
fashion: the Two Towers may start off with Merry and Pippen in dire
need of rescue, but it develops to show how it is to Merry's inspired
management/trickery of Treebeard that Saruman's tower (and in
truth, the bulk of Saruman's army) owes its fall. The film makes this
1403
Works Cited
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Dir. Peter Jackson.
Perf. Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen. 2001. DVD.
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Dir. Peter Jackson. Perf.
Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen. 2002. DVD.
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Dir. Peter Jackson. Perf. Elijah
1407
people, not in any such prowess some think incubates away in Pat.
In any case, even though his name is coming up quite a bit lately, no
ones going to put a pitchfork in Pats hands for a good while. May it
be possible for people in the nation to evolve so, that few ever find
themselves in mood to cue Pat to pick any such up again. Be unfair to
us; be hugely unfair to Pat--someone who has clearly grown to like
resting more idly as our somewhat odd uncle, someone who is in fact
best served if he deigns himself just one more welcome dinner guest,
as he dines querously but happily away amongst a numbered many at
our generously sized, dining room table of a nation.
dozen humans will get the opportunity, and the farther they go, the
more physically and psychologically miserable will be their ride.
And the taxpayers will get nothing but news reports and some cool
video.
Space exploration should certainly continue, but putting people in
space only runs up costs while yielding no scientific benefits -- unless
you want to include scientific studies on how humans deteriorate in
an environment they were never designed for. (Crawford Kilian,
Lunar Loony Tunes, The Tyee, July 20 2009)
-----
Okay, we've got a lot of people writing how "the Germans deserved
it" because of what "they" did to the Russians. Suppose this is the
case.
Then WHY do acts performed by the German military, ordered by
the German civilian leadership, need to be revenged upon the
German WOMEN back home? Who didn't participate in the war
effort (unlike American women)? Who were not armed? Who were,
in fact, disturbingly vulnerable at the end of the war, once the
civilian law enforcement authority was gone?
Why should "revenge" be carried out on those who were neither
culpable nor able to defend themselves? Why is it always okay to
rape and abuse the WOMEN of the conquered?
That's the real question. (Zandru, response to post, Andrew OHehir,
Rape in Berlin)
6stringer:
So if the depressions worsens, worsens, and we all go through a lot.
Not what soldiers go through, mind you, but a lot--a hell of a lot. Then
if we rape: screw all who "sit at home," who judge but cannot
understand?
You romance the warrior's lot, rather have us understand it. All men
are drawn to bear warriors' scars.
----
@Patrick McEvoy-Halston
In which way did I ever say rape was justified or something we
should aspire to?
You want to argue a point, then pick one I actually made, not one
1417
@6stringer
I like empathy for, real reach to, understand/assess psychological
effects of constant war. I love it when people attend, with respect and
love, to those we are directed to simply hate and quickly
discard/disregard. But, to me, that wasn't what you were JUST up to.
I admit that what I mostly felt from your piece, is the WHY we get so
many Hollywood films which feature battered, stressed, drawn-out,
scar-bearing warriors: it's an empowered "position." Brought to
"your" knees, humiliated, stressed and tested to the extent of human
forbearance, you NOW can go all righteous against the "clean" and
judgmental, with the expectation that they ought to, that they can
bloody well be made to!, back down. All that wearing down seems to
me to lend considerable over-all swagger, which enables all kinds of
things "you" might actually really want, but in normal circumstances
are too readily shut down, through judgment.
I never feel when I read pieces like the like of what you wrote (not
that I just blended in your response with a whole pile of others), that
"you" REALLY believe that war is something we ought to avoid--I
always smell opportunity, reason for its continuance. I'm not sure if
that's a kind thing to say, but it's how I feel.
-----
@ Patrick
1418
I'm glad thats how you "feel". After all how you "feel" about what I
wrote, and how you get to interpret whatever you want onto what I
write says more about you, than it does about me. Doesn't it?
As well as your need to see this theory of yours in everything you
read. Its easy to feel right, and self righteous when you get to just go
by what you "feel" people mean, than by what they are actually
saying.
Or is that unkind to write?
Or maybe, its your, as well as others, need to feel superior that lends
you to think you would have behaved any differently, or that you
would have been any better had you lived the same circumstances as
these people did. And maybe that need to feel superior to others
comes more from your fears? Of what you WOULD do under that
kind of duress, of what you ARE capable of.
Or maybe we should just throw out every verbose theory we can,
just as long as we continue to reduce people to abstractions, and not
actual real, living, human beings put in a situation that drove many
people mad, insane, and crazy.
Let me make my point easy for you.
These men and boys, conscripted to fight, weren't playing war
games to be heros. They were FORCED into it, as most men are. And
that draft is just as much, if not more, of a rape of a mans mind,
body and soul as the actual rapes of these women were.
That is what you, and many of the posters here cannot begin to
understand, so busy are you all standing on your pedestals. Just as
every man in America today is RAPED at the age of 18 when he
signs a draft- or better said, he is informed of the intent to rape if
ever society deems it is time to use his body as a gear for the war
machine. And he has about as much choice in the matter as the
women who are raped.
There is no big mystery of the Terrible Mother here. There is no deep
psychology of Purity cleansing. Or even romancing the Warrior.. It
is simple, men are violently conscripted by society (men and
women) to fight. Where their bodies and existence are used up. So
1419
when they get to the people who they feel caused their trauma, they
inflict the same anger onto them.. rape, murder, degradation.
But to see this, you must see men as human beings, capable of being
traumatized, raped, used... and who wants to do that when we can
use the occasion to paint men as war/rape loving animals.. right?
(6stringer, response to post, Rape in Berlin)
6stringer
I'm not judging them. I'm all for the empathy and interest, you
advocate for. My concern in regard to your responses is about men
who USE abuse/disregard to justify, to muscularly legitimize, that
which would otherwise be estimated (at the very, very best) "bad
behavior," to what normally is readily shut down by "polite" society.
Again in your response, you evidence the same. You set me up as
uppity, someone unattentful, someone on a pedestal with little regard
for those beneath him, and fire away. This is to your regret, not to
your preference? The writing doesn't show as much.
In fact I would say it works toward making my "point" that rape is
revenge and a delight to worn-out "soldiers," who've simply had
enough of "betters" uninterested in showing any regard for "soldier's"
needs, their plight, their sacrifice, their pains, their personhood.
Every war X-box game, every Hollywood action movie, features some
slighted warrior who effects some kind of huge humiliation on those
uninterested in feeling his pain. This fact deserves attention; deserves
to be explored with the interest you rightly argue is owed to those
whose monstrosity is wholly owed to trauma.
That is, if it's respect for the soldier, genuine interest/concern as to
what war-experience brings (though, again, to me experiences that
most greatly affect us occur way, way earlier in life--war is cover), I'm
with you. If it's respect for a narrative that can help lend momentum
to a turn against women, better-than-thous, the girly-seeming, I'm
not.
Michael Lerner
Photo by sduffy
If progressives, whether in unions, activist groups or political
parties, don't soon begin doing politics differently -- radically
differently -- they will fail to show that "a better world is possible."
And the price of failure will be catastrophic.
We have known for years that our consumer culture is out of control
and our obsession with having more and more stuff has reached the
status of a virus. Our consumer-driven global economy is a lethal
threat to the planet and every one of its eco-systems.
The lock that consumerism has on Western so-called civilization is
formidable -- a virtual death-grip on our culture and our future as a
species. It is a kind of madness but one which we can apparently
adapt to. This manufactured addiction to more and more stuff
undermines community, threatens the planet and doesn't even make
us happy. Consumerism, driven by the most sophisticated and
manipulative psychology the advertising industry can buy, has had
the effect of atomizing us. We are defined more and more by what
we have, less and less by our relationships to family, friends,
colleagues and community. (Murray Dobbin, Left Needs Soul
Searching, The Tyee, 9 July 2009)
much too greedy (oh how the Nazis hated those free swinging swing-
dancers!), that it had a virus in its bloodstream, that it needed to
become pure again, in touch with primal Germanic, masculine,
simple and communal purity (does this have anyone thinking of
another recent Tyee article?), and this required people enjoining
together and organizing some kind of very substantial purge.
So who was it in Germany that was prospering most, that engaged
most successfully in professional, commercial affairs, that tended to
treat their children in a more liberal, permissive fashion? And guess
who got purged so the nation could feel all stoic manly again?
Commercialism isn't the problem. Rather, it's many people's tendency
to feel dislocated, out of touch, when society moves ahead too much;
it's people's intrinsic discomfort with abundance, with getting what
they want and deserve to possess. (For those interested in the sort of
language that presaged Hitler Germany, check out the
link:http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/eln06_war.html)
If some other someone wants to put forward a vision of a society that
suggests that life is about accumulating, realizing growth, love,
friendliness, playfulness, but that it just isn't well
represented/encouraged by the kind of culture we're "in," I'll very
much be listening, by the way. For what we got now, certainly ain't all
that much of what I really want. I just trust about no one who rails
talks "viruses" and rails against greed, even from someone as worth
attending to as lovely Lerner most certainly is. And getting together in
most any group can make you feel a sense of belonging, purpose,
vitality; but group-think can make a lot of what later is understood as
hugely abhorrent, look in the moment all too very "hit-the-right-spot"
right, virtuous, refreshing--meaningful.
Is the Tyee going to prove a vehicle for some to reclaim their lost
manliness, their solid heritage of once-upon-a-time simplicity? If it
does, some may stop thinking of it so much as a friend to the Left,
who have historically been seen as a bit feminine and foreign, a bit
luxurious in their tastes, by their more "prosaic" peers. Please don't
go there. It may be that all good left-wing communal efforts talk in
1422
ways akin to how Lerner manages here. But I think it would do good
to have someone write something delineating/detailing how
historically, it is always the Right that most loudly rages/riots against
things like commercial excess, about the ill-offerings of ostensible
societal progress'. Offer some History.
Useful, perhaps, will be some offerings from the British 18th-century,
when the isles got really wicked commercial, when it became a nation
of shopkeepers, where everyone pretended to be gentry, in no small
part owing to their possession/accumulation of all the right
assemblage of fashionable goods. The Right, then--the conservatives,
then--all said society was becoming soft, loosing all sense of real
purpose and meaning, and that as consequence it would prove
militarily weak and earn collapse owing to invasion, or some other
widespread and total calamity. Turns out they didn't know what the
hell they were talking about, with Britain fairing not so bad, overall,
in subsequent centuries--even without them giving up their taste for
domestic, pretty, niceties.
Of course, as mentioned, my taste for shopping excess would never,
ever involve West Edmonton Mall--that elephantine pleasure-house
for taste-crippled proles.
Nighty, night.
photo by Zach_ManchesterUK
Fighting has broken out in Siena's Piazza del Campo. Girly fighting
too, by the look of it. From across the piazza all you can see are
flailing arms at the point where two crowds of young people have
met, a wild flurry of slapping and punching. I can't see the colour of
the scarves each group is wearing, but someone says it looks like
Tartuca versus Chiocciola, or possibly Aquila against their old
enemies Pantera. The enmity is long-standing although actual fights
in the public square are not generally done. The kids can't help it
though -- it is Palio time again. (Steve Burgess, At the Worlds
Wildest Horse Race, 10 July 2009)
re: "Girly fighting too, by the look of it. From across the piazza all you
can see are flailing arms at the point where two crowds of young
1424
outlets pretend to: even [or even especially] the likes of FOX news).
You may not intend, but you play in a way to taught appreciations of
the media and readers, here, to shut certain readers/commenters
down and buoy journalists up, which requires some challenge.
Most times, again, I really go at the entirety of the piece, because
most articles are alive enough that you may not most fairly go at them
(though this doesn't necessarily follow), that you cannot resist not
engaging with them, by taking on two lines. If this the case with this
piece? I had too many other articles also (reverberating) in mind
when I read/addressed this one. But SicPreFix didn't--was focused
solely on this one. And looks to be one who feels the whole of it is to
be found in the smaller part.
It is no good when people are afraid to say things, however. And it is
good when writers operate with a certain, with a considerable,
disregard for what others might say--how else to integrity? how else
to productivity?, how else to, even, sunshine!, pirates!, sundae
sweetness!, and a better world? And it is true that people are very
quick to shut people down when they say anything un-pc, as many
who contribute to discussions here, have learned from past
experience.
Perhaps almost as quick as they are to jump on those who can be set
up to seem implusive, flippant, indulgent--"girlie": i.e., those whose
obsession over the trivial, makes them sadly inferior to those able to
hold to proper account.
-----
Since people seem to feel strongly about this, I'll respond.
"Girly fighting"--It's a joke. Pick your battles, folks. Save the outrage
for the real issues. Or can one of you explain to me the underlying
lack of respect, the clear disdain for gender equality, represented by
an old-fashioned term for slap fighting? Am I failing to acknowledge
the very real hopes and aspirations of 21st century women to haul
off and break noses with solid pile-driving punches?
SicPreFix wrote: "... the whole story reeks of outmoded, sexist, pro-
violence, tribal warfare...."
1427
Bruno amounts to a rather large penis in the face (13 July 2009)
everyman pictures
1428
"Brno" is not good for gays, but not for the reason you may suspect.
Brno is, ostensibly--is seemingly incontrovertibly--Sasha Baron
Cohen as a ber-feminine, frilly, flashy, fashion-obsessed, "girly-man"
homosexual. But he is in fact more accurately understood as a hyper-
masculine, phallic aggressor, phallic male, whose aim is to not so
much to show up others prejudices, cruelty, ridiculousness, but
rather to ridicule people in a way he can readily get away with, tear
away at any self-dignity they claim for themselves, to, in effect, come
as close to making him his "bitches," as he can.
This bad for gay men? You betcha. Because while to the American
public, gay men can be understood as the aggressors--"vampires,"
whose approach, whose near touch and breath, can leave you forever
after affected/infected, what comes most readily to mind when they
think of homosexuals is of themselves being made to seem
ridiculously "girly"--"bottom-bitches," as they say. That is,
humiliated, powerless, disarmed and in full surrender. And what
Brno most effectively communicates, in my judgment, is that there is
no better remedy for feeling at risk of being made to feel akin to
Brnos "bottom-bitch" (in the hotel scene, be sure that Cohen made
1429
sure he was the one caught with his penis up someone elses rear end,
not the reverse), note--not to Brno, than to strut about swishing
your dick in everyone else's face.
Patrick,
We can't gamble the Tyee's existence on creating a forum for 'near
libelous' statements. Nor do we wish to create a forum for racist and
sexist comments, or personal insults directed at our writers or other
commenters. We wish to create a forum where many feel
comfortable and welcome to comment. And we acknowledge that
personal vitriole, and racist and sexist comments do cause harm.
(David Beers, On Monday, a New Tyee, July 8 2009)
Of course get rid of the libelous, rascist, sexist. Let's pretend that's not
so much what constitutes the Wild West (which I know is what it is, of
course), and say that's Cess Pool stuff, that no one ought to redeem (I
won't). (By libelous, I really didn't mean libelous--I was thinking
lurid, but "libelous" now embodies more the sense/feel of the lurid, of
the sinful, than even "lurid" now does, so I went with libelous.)
And, yeah, I didn't make any effort to redeem good reasons for your
(i.e., the editorial staff at the Tyee's) care and scrutiny. It is indeed a
very good thing to play a part in making sure people don't walk away
from their encounter with the Tyee, feeling like they don't matter,
feeling like a victim, feelin' like they've just eaten shit.
1430
Still, overall I do think that despite some talk now of redeeming free-
range play, that the overall societal trend (I know that sounds very
ranging and grand, but still) is toward keeping things in control--
something that ensures we get far fewer ranging, all-over-the-place,
risk-taking Christopher Laschs, or William Irwin Thompsons (a leftie
who would, for example, call the theory of evolution into question--
something you'd never see someone on the left--even if they shared
his concerns--dare give voice to right now). Makes things more
boring, if more tanquil, settled, and predictable, than I'd like it to be.
I haven't experienced a Salon discussion with anonymous comments,
that's before my turn there, but I was told that once you could post
anonymously (that is, under the actual name "anonymous," which
means no one can readily differentiate you from all the others who
post under the "anonymous" moniker, which means you really could
just yell stuff anonymously from 'mongst the crowd), and so I checked
way earlier Stephanie Z. stuff, and saw them there. About a month
and a half ago, Joan wrote about the changes--You could now flag
comments; the best comment featured was being discontinued;
couple other things. In that post's comment section is where I found
some of the talk redeeming (let's call it) fully anonymous posting,
along with warnings about the climate created where every post very
visibly is at risk of being flagged by others on the site.
It's a worthy discussion, you know. I think we're used now to thinking
of editors too much as superego, when they might now prove most
useful as id enablers. Editors could weigh in, maybe, and address
posters who are playing it too safe. I've seen John McLaughlin do
this; same too, Chris Matthews. That is, really hammer away at those
who won't say what's really on their mind, for fear it'll offend
someone, for fear it would get them in hot water, operating under the
assumption that the whole point of living in a free society is that
people should much more feel the impetus to let it out, than to keep it
all so very guardedly, hemmed in. Feisty fish.
-----
photo by arimoore
On today's Hardball, Joan Walsh scorned Palin for acting like a
Starbuck's barrista, saying, specifically, "to up and quit with 2 weeks'
1433
ocularnervosa
JULY 08, 2009 08:38 PM
That doesn't help, ocularnervosa. Can you say something nice about
them?
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 08, 2009 08:52 PM
ocularnervosa
JULY 08, 2009 09:16 PM
Cocoalfresco
JULY 08, 2009 09:17 PM
Thanks Cocoalfresco.
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 08, 2009 09:20 PM
emma peel
JULY 08, 2009 09:21 PM
mr e
JULY 08, 2009 09:39 PM
I know what she was up to, but kind-hearted Joan kinda meant to
disparage Starbucks' employees there. I felt it. That's what bothered
me. She's most certainly a very good, warm person--but she needs
this kind of feedback. Many good people in "Washington" need it--
Coming to mind also is Hillary Clinton--who I like--arguing that
today's youth need to start working harder, to stop being slackers,
which had me thinking, hey, the youth of today grew up in an age of
diminishing expectations, of accumulating societal cruelty--they were
fucking abandoned: ease off!
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 08, 2009 09:40 PM
jane smithie
JULY 08, 2009 11:18 PM
I've always thought that jobs like barista and fast food employee were,
for the most part, transitional - something we do while we're
attending college, or waiting to be hired into something we'd rather
do. Thanks for the reminder that for some people, it's a career and/or
1436
I suspect that Joan was just thinking on her feet - those interviews
provide little opportunity for word-searching and that was probably
the first thing that popped into her mind. She's not a mean person -
I'm sure she didn't mean it in a derogatory way.
Umbrellakinesis
JULY 08, 2009 11:26 PM
Hi jane smithie.
If she referred to a mcdonald's employee--synonymous with "as low
as you can go"--it would have called attention to the fact that her
reference was, to a certain degree, participating in/exacerbating a
cultural trend to set-up the minimum waged as near-untouchables.
She didn't because she doesn't go to mcdonalds--she goes to
starbucks, and, you know, probably hasn't the highest of regard for
the people who work there. I most certainly am not saying Joan isn't
mostly warm and kind, though. She is that.
Thanks for the challenge.
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 08, 2009 11:29 PM
Joan Walsh
JULY 08, 2009 11:32 PM
1437
I think that was what emma peel was getting at, umbrellakinesis. And
I think what you both say is mostly true. But she belongs
amongst/associates with those who would be very uncomfortable if
their children ended up at Starbucks, unless "it" was clearly
delineated as NO more than just a summer job/experience (which
would be democratic and fine--very nicely part of the
accepted/socially acceptable life storyline). Her immediate company
(though not for the very most part, Joan herself) is still that who
profess/and most often display sympathy with the "downtrodden,"
but who also spend a great deal of time making sure that every life
step they take evidences their genteel and clean constitution,
evidences how they in no way can be counted amongst the horrors,
the disposables, who've strayed from the defined path in such a way,
to such a marked extent, that forever after they no longer count. If she
spends more time following along/participating in OS, this will help
her--it's a more ranged sort, here. Most of us don't have book deals
lined up, and likely never will, which is why some reputables prefer to
keep their distance from us, whatever they say to the contrary.
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 08, 2009 11:54 PM
bstrangely
1438
Seriously, Patrick, you doth protest too much. I mean come on. I
think you can acknowledge that quitting a job as governor might be
just a bit more of a career statement that leaving a job as a barista.
Most people I know have nothing against Starbucks' baristas one way
or another. This idea that there is a some kind of bourgeois
movement against working at jobs that aren't necessarily life-long
careers -- not that there are many these days anyway -- is stretching
it.
emma peel
JULY 09, 2009 12:16 AM
Hi Joan. Good people here like emma peel and umbrellakinesis are
pointing that out, are coming to your defence. And that's great. It
would certainly be nice if the reputation of those working at service
jobs which involve a lot of human contact, were all very well regarded.
Seems like they ought to be. Their jobs are near moment-to-moment
human touch--which is just amazing! If they got their appropriate
right regard, then there would be nothing more to say about your
reference than that is was wonderfully apropos: people at Starbucks
are probably, for the most part, transitionary, which is NOT what we
expect from elected officials. It just so happens right now, that a lot of
people in work like that are held in pretty low regard--and this really
pisses me off.
You didn't liken them to whores, but Palin plus low wage service
sector jobs, brings certain connotations to mind. I may have
encouraged some to think you suggested as much. I'll think about
that. Feedback affects.
Best to you.
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 09, 2009 12:17 AM
1439
Myriad
JULY 09, 2009 12:21 AM
Let's not forget that Starbucks does offer health insurance to their
employees, something I am fairly certain McDonalds does not.
Personally I have a lot of respect for Baristas. I wouldn't last one day
trying to keep all the various beverages straight. I would be the Lucille
Ball of baristas!
Ablonde
JULY 09, 2009 12:36 AM
emma peel: It may not be worth a gigantic protest, but, you know, it's
just the kind of thing that too many have passed over, for it now never
to seem, simply just an incident. If you've got a job with a uniform,
and you're not with the government, with the military, you're suited
up for service to the genteel, and all that that entails--that's what
came in with Reagan, and has been accumulating ever since. Joan
regreted her reference, immediately afterward, you note. The last
time society divided so markedly into the haves-and-have-nots, being
a clerk meant being a likely prostitute--or at least a "would-be" one. I
wonder if in that moment afterward, some sense of this other
association, slipped into mind.
around in people's minds so that the next time they heep praise on a
well delivered Obama "note," for instance, it's in reference to the great
"vibe" procured by that terrific americano barrista, two weeks' last.
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 09, 2009 12:45 AM
bstrangely
JULY 09, 2009 11:13 PM
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
JULY 09, 2009 11:25 PM
----
re: PATRICK
I really can't believe I am answering you...talk about putting stupid
words in my mouth and presenting a redherry you might want to
look it up...but then again that would require being familiar with
how language works.
1442
----
Sorry I meant to type red herring...You make less sense than I do. I
checked out your page..are you really a redneck..not that I don't like
rednecks
[. . .]
I looked at some of you posts...but damn dude. If you think Fox is a
shill for Obama or could ever...you are a wingnut and moonbat.
Sorry to call names but damn dude once you get around to posting a
logical post...
[. . .]
Wow...I had nutin better to do and I went to your site..making up a
lame bog site and shooting your mouth off with a couple of
friends......well it doesn't matter. No problem you are incredibly
jealous of Rebbeca. No problem with that
Link: "I do not eat rice cakes and salad" (Rebecca Traister)
1443
my reply:
Emily speaks from her large heart, and her actually fairly
trim, even spritely, gut
Emily is large in spirt (but not so much in body)
She contains multitudes, but composed (lets be clear now)
rather not of bulkitudes
All of you who rage at her surely suck
--but maybe not of cocktails
(I mean, look at you!: mix in some water!)
thank you, thank you very much.
I do not eat rice cakes and salad: an ode to joys of not eating
chick food
I do not eat things bland and pallid
I will not eat yogurt parfait
Life's not about how much I weigh
I don't like crap in place of lunch
When what I crave are taste and crunch (but not rice cakes)
I'll have good pizza, I'll have some sushi
I'll eat a cheeseburger with John Belushi
I'm a chick, there's no doubt of it
But take your Diet Coke and shove it
(Rebecca Traister, Salon, July 7 2009)
My reply:
photo by BrownHead
RE: Whenever a society finds itself in the midst of great change, as
we do now, it is important to take stock of the institutions that form
its bedrock, giving it the solid foundation that has allowed it to build
itself to great heights.
I would like to draw attention to a certain tradition that is at risk of
being lost in today's dynamic environment since it is one of those
customs that belongs only to men, and thus, its value has diminished
over recent decades.
This practice has allowed men to realize their place within the larger
society, to preserve the stories of the tribe and to achieve a level of
consciousness not able to be attained during their hectic day-to-day
lives.
What I am referring to here has gone by many names over the
years, including boys' weekend, hunting trip and lately, "The
Mancation." But I prefer the simpler and more inclusive moniker
"the guys trip."
This institution was borne of the need that men have to recharge
their masculinity by getting away from the lady folk for a few days.
I am not talking any Robert Bly stuff that involves reciting epic
poetry to the thump of frame drums, but an experience more primal
that chimes with a louder ring of truth -- namely quaffing copious
quantities of beer while chucking wood on the fire and insulting one
another. (Nick Smith, In Praise of Mancation, The Tyee, July 7
2009)
Re: "This practice has allowed men to realize their place within the
larger society, to preserve the stories of the tribe and to achieve a level
of consciousness not able to be attained during their hectic day-to-day
lives."
Reach a level of consciousness? Ambitious and, if achievable, surely
commendable, but how does this claim "chime" with your
1446
-----
little less focus on the drinking or noise creation, but that does not
seem to be the issue with you guys.
Besides the celebration of masculinity does not imply the rejection of
femininity or family. There is very little reference to these concepts
in the article.
There are lots of men who secretly want to out and build a treehouse
or fort somewhere... if they want to get together and talk about it, let
them have their fun. I think that author recognizes and celebrates
the absurdity of it.
It not like they were getting together and watching that boxing or
UFC together this weekend. ;) (Moat, Response to post, In Praise of
Mancation )
try, to write more ballsy stuff! Channel Margaret Atwood; get inside
what she would do if she were a man and in your soul-drained
situation. Do you really think she would ever finish her ostensible
man/manna restoring expedition, by CONCLUDING--as this fellow
did--how wonderful it is to find yourself properly LOWERED back
into place? Egads!--If that's what you discover when you've
uncovered Real Masculinity, then maybe it ought to be asked if men
are all that necessary, anyway?
----
So happy, we're supposed to be like Nick and not make too much of it.
That is, we're supposed to be like the good sporting mate who offered
us this:
"Whenever a society finds itself in the midst of great change, as we do
now, it is important to take stock of the institutions that form its
bedrock, giving it the solid foundation that has allowed it to build
itself to great heights.
I would like to draw attention to a certain tradition that is at risk of
being lost in today's dynamic environment since it is one of those
customs that belongs only to men, and thus, its value has diminished
1449
----
And a very well written one. I had a smile on my face through the
whole article, when I wasn't laughing outright.
Why? Because its true! Every word. I've even done the "supply boat"
thing. Note to Author: Don't ever tow an aluminum cartopper
behind a power boat at speed. If they get outside the wake they can
roll - real fast. That sucks. Beer doesn't float.
Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of (ahem) older men.
Or so I've beem told... (happy, Response to post)
It's hard to read how one is supposed to take it, 'cause, yeah, it looks
to be mock-epic switching to domestic-comedy--a la a, don't take this
seriously, beer commercial. But it can't resist closing on a pretty
angry note ("And that is a place from which no one can chuck us
out"), making the whole piece feel like it was almost purposely
moving from broad expanse to tiny, closed space, as means to show
up what society has made of men--but without wanting to be exposed
as having any such "high ambition," such serious social critique, in
mind, without being in a position where it isn't well defended against
those fools who would read into the piece. This is why, I think, it felt
cowardly to me; why it felt sad, not funny. Why it made me implore
that either those who think this way find way to be more forthright
and ballsy in their complaint, or allow someone to test to see if they
1450
might just all be made to fit into even tighter confines, just so we
could be as much rid of such depressing silliness, as possible.
I wonder, How many ridiculous, near worthless Mancationers could
you fit in a coffin, if you took out some of that draft beer . . . If amidst
campfire tale-telling, I said I packed in twenty, I think my friends
would look to me with considerable horror and awe. This is no doubt
sick, but mightn't it be in some way preferable, to pathetic, mutual,
low self-regard?
-----
Moat: Good to hear from you. (But the correction I needed was
"shake loose and disCARD," not "shake loose and disREGARD.") To
me it felt like the author was well aware that if he wasn't careful about
how he wrote the piece, he would very quickly be accused of Robert
Bly ridiculousness (something we are all so sensitive to, that he was
anyway), of being so unmanly, uncomposed, immoderate enough, to
"take the whole thing way too seriously." But it's cover. You could feel
real lament, pain, even--or at least I could. But he's hemmed in; can't
say what he seems like he wants to say, without feeling even smaller
than he now (admittedly) does. That's the situation guys are in, these
days, I guess. And it's pretty sad. Genuinely. I feel for these guys.
They deserve way better.
I guess somewhere here I could have made it clear that what I like
about Robert Bly, is that he took the need to be a man very
straighforwardly, very seriously. He wasn't concerned that his sober if
not reverential references to myth, would make him look ridiculous,
embarrassing to many of his own generation, and evidently to
subsequent ones. He was, I guess, the Tom Cruise of a different
generation'.
-----
Re: Some good points from you Patrick but I dont get your
comment, They deserve way better. How so? Only those with
freedom and privilege can take the time to travel somewhere
consuming valued resources at their leisure. While they are on there
trip, I think many of them are thinking I dont want to be anywhere
else right now. It does not mean that they want the mancation to
go on. At no point does the author imply that the mancation is a
substitute for family or real life working relationships. There are far
more obvious themes here that can be discussed. (Moat, response to
1452
post)
The end does suggest something about what lies elsewhere. Two
things: 1) without Mancations you become more serious and less fun;
2) and you'd never feel like you'd established at least some place
where people couldn't feel so free to toss you about so readily/facily,
so disregardedly about the place (terminus: "And that is a place from
which no one can chuck us out"). So while it doesn't itself argue that a
Mancation is a substitute, a possible replacement, it certainly lends
one to conclude that, you know, maybe it really ought to be.
There is my mind a sense that it is styled so that the writer can point
to the piece to defend himself against those (including, even himself)
who would accuse him of taking the whole thing too seriously, which
would of course make him seem ridiculously unmanly, in some
circles. But to me at least, this is a piece written from someone who
finds everyday life quite belittling. We have managed in society to
make the man who suffers through job and wife, but gets together
with his mates for some well earned respite, every once in a while, a
way of showing that you are amongst the true blue, true-grit, regular
joe, real men. So I think the article itself, not just the Mancations, is
part of reassuring yourself you're a man. But shit, guys who feel this
way, deserve better than to occupy their time compensating for an
everyday life which doesn't satisfy in not-so-modest way.
Leisure: He's got leisure, but does that really say much. Some might
call it an outlet, or liken it to bread-and-circuses, that is, to the kind of
things a particularly nasty, denying society offers those it treats with
insufficient well attendance and respect, just to make sure they aren't
reduced to the point that they'd risk cat-calling about, for More.
I'm a bit tired right now. But right now this is my best response to
you, Moat. Thanks for the encouragement to really think it through,
and for your own intelligent, sensitive reaction to the piece.
Also, I think it would serve us well to talk/think about the Mancation
article, in reference to all the campfire stuff in Bruno. (A thought
provoked by having just seen the film, and by fred-gherkin's
1453
comment.) Might also want to see how this article shapes up with
other Mancation-equivalent stuff, here at the Tyee. A Tyee' tribute to
the famous snow boarder who recently died, comes to mind.)
-----
re: And thank you too for the thoughtful responses, Patrick After
rereading your posts, I definitely see a change in tone, but not in
opinion from your first post. I now believe that you are questioning
the motivation for the mancation, and that you are not necessarily
opposed to the activity of a mancation. You are right in saying that
the mancation should not be a substitute for something lacking
from day to day living. Now pinning down what day to day
experiences may be deficient is a more difficult task. So this article is
not a question of authenticity as, but maybe a question of the
feelings of a quality of life experience.
The themes I think that we sort of danced around a bit here is the
ritualized connection through the use of substances. These guys here
first connected in a smoke pit, and much of the article is a discussion
of beer. We should not judge these fellows for their love of beer, but
there is a question to be asked here. Would these guys participate in
this trip if it were an alcohol free event? Why or why not?
The second issue here is the need to laugh at each other, and in
doing so, put each man in his place. The whole cross-cultural
tendency of men find pleasure in making other men insecure has
been discussed at length other forums, but the pleasure derived from
the giving and receiving of the abuse appears to be an integral part
of the mancation, or whenever large groups of males are together.
In a related line of thought, however, I do think fred-gherkins
comment is unfair at best and makes too big of an assumption.
Where does the author even imply someone would be excluded from
the mancation based on sexual orientation?
From reading the Globe and Mail this morning, it is obvious that
many males are going to gather together tonight and watch an
1454
discriminate based on gender. They all know a friend who's gay, who
is just one of the guys. They well may have a gay bud who joins them.
But eventually, though they know it not, they will experience an
irresistable drive to help "nurture" a social climate, where it suddenly
seems allowable to start preying upon the urban(e), "femmy" guys,
the feminine-seeming, gays. Early warning signal: watch for articles
that start talking about how our current problems arose from things
like, too much shopping. Excessive neediness. Luxury. Inconstancy.
Flirtiveness (i think that's a word, if not, well, now is).
Selfishness/self-centredness.
Haven't gotten at why they tear each other down, but it a lot to do
with the fact that guys who grow up with mothers like these, whose
existence seemed all about pleasing mother, and whose greatest fear
was displeasing her, always feel their OWN NEEDS, their own
presumptions to lead enabled, self-satisfying lives, are the stuff that
could lead to abandonment--are sinful. That is probably not
sufficient, but I'll go with that for now. If you ever want a link or two.
I could send them to you.
but just blogging means never really being assessed by adults as more
than just the nerd in the parent's basement. (I could even see GG
make a move to write a book at some point, to--in part--make him
more comfortable to a crowd wanting to include him as one of them,
to imagine himself as reputable beyond contention.)
[Update: checked--he does have a book.]
There is quite the conversation at OS concerning concerns you might
at heart be akin to the veteran comedian who professes his ongoing
love for comedy, but who is noticeably making sure he is more-and-
more associated with the established, the long reputable, and away
from the fluff.
Link to OS discussion here.
There are truths that cannot bear the light of day, for liberals to
consider. Hope they brave doing so, before a conservative-turning
nation makes opportune use of their soft spot, the weakness in their
defense.
-----
The right can make the left seem primarily interested in using native
indians to make Christian conservatives look bad. They can show the
left as actually being rather uncomfortable with native american way
of life, when it isn't "massaged," domesticated, into a preferred
"storyline." And the left can/will be left thinking that it defended
native indians assuming them constitutionally/communally in tune
with harmonious rhythms (or some such) -- the antithesis of
everything right-wing, closed-minded, oppressive/overbearing, foul;
when they cannot but sense they've glossed over so much (what they
truly will assess/react to as) "stink," they'll grimace, if not turn away,
and they'll (i.e., they and their steadfast concern to/interest in
defend[ing] native indians against further oppression) be done for.
The left is not beyond blaming the victim, unfortunately. One should
sense this in its over inflation/estimation of native indian history, way
1458
of life. The left is healthy, way healthier than the right, but it is not
THAT healthy. I'm doing what I can to get it there.
I am curious, though, if there is any dynamic in a culture
oppressed/traumatized/bullied by Europeans that would get you to
turn away from them. I hope there isn't any. I can't imagine you
turning away, but I could imagine a moment of recoil, self-doubt--and
the gasp of horror! this would produce amongst those depending on
YOU to be the one who never fails in the defense. For their sake, make
sure you can read accounts of native indian life that don't make them
seem Earth's noble warriors; pretend for a moment that all such is
true; and not experience a moment of doubt as to their worthiness of
ongoing, expanding societal support, respect, and love.
----
About the ad stuff: What some of us didn't like was how it was
presented. You don't see ads on the page one day, and then turn to
Kerry's post about how we can make money here too!, and not think
he suspects we lack a wee bit of integrity. If he was talking to Salon
regulars, he wouldn't spoken to us as if we're the infomercial crowd.
My disappointment with Kerry there was akin to yours with Scott,
here. Also, I like that some would still fight to keep OS as ad free as
possible: I would respect a site, where just to keep the ad pollution
down as much as possible, to keep up its communal, wholesome feel,
good numbers who could be making money of ads, chose not to do so.
Ads were coming; but they came after we had a sense of what it was to
be in an ad-free environment: it was a good thing that many here
genuinely were concerned that ad money would encourage a different
crowd, cheapen the current crowd, weaken the communal feel. Again,
the sense provided was that ultimately, Kerry couldn't care less about
the sort of community dynamics that were developing, because he too
is Salon independent, not OS bowed ("this is a business, after all" --
something he would never dare say about Salon [hey guys, we're not
ultimately in this to fashion a better country, to beat back rightwing
advance -- it's about the sweet green . . .])
-----
Sandra, I said that it would be assessed as maternal, even though,
after considering for a bit, I knew that it might well even be 50/50
here. It's domestic here. People will show one another their cat/dog
pictures, sometimes their boobs -- or some semblance of them --
quite readily. I like that. But, in an old-fashioned sense, that makes
OS not serious. It makes it gossipy -- for the "women." Personally,
none of my friends who publish only with the "well regarded," who
would feel cheapened, dirty, if they associated with OS, strike me as
all that mature -- they're reporters, writers, in part, for defensive
purposes. (Even wonderful people like Joe Conason, who would
never, ever consider posting on a social site like this, regardless of
how reputable - -are a bit immature, me thinks.) I maintain that the
best writers, best people -- friends -- could well emerge out of OS, if
1462
the friendlier, better adjusted, continue to find their way here. I think
we should, for the post part, forget about what WIRED knows, what
the NYT thinks. Let's go for it -- have fun, take chances, be a bit
clueless: be the "free range" kind of community that everyone's now
looking to cultivate but fear have lost all sense as to how one goes
about creating it.
-----
Hey Liz, lets hope that those "notable" writers, the ones who "at best
[see] OS [as] [. . .] an outlet or an incubator or an experiment," aren't
paraded too often on the cover. For how can you take a "magazine"
seriously that would praise most those "sober enough to not take it
too seriously"? Visit OS! -- here you'll find a bunch of scrambling
would-be EPers, and a few who can write, who stop by for a piss and a
drink, and to try out a few one-liners before heading back to the
show.
Personally, I'm with all the "kids" up for some Looney Tune, Alice in
Wonderland, kid's table redemption, here at OS. Should draw in a
few, thanks maybe in small part to the "sanguine," "mature,"
"monetizing," "marketeering," "adult" space you've helped summon-
up as counterpoint.
-----
Kerry's comment on gender is disappointing. Yeah, you made use of a
situation here to demonstrate your PC nature, and to denigrate those
of us (i.e., me -- Patrick McEvoy-Halston -- RonP01, and
mishimma666) who were trying to provide an honest assessment of
our feel of OS at this point (perhaps we weren't, as you insultingly and
too hurriedly/eagerly assessed it, so much "immediately trying to
denigrate it, " as we were -- from our experience posting here -- fairly
trying to assess it), and help stifle a worthwhile discussion through
invocations of the PC police. (A person apparently denigrates Oprah,
if, after watching many episodes, decides that it has the feel of a show
that would appeal largely to women: THIS, is Reason?) For the
record, again, I like this site -- a lot -- and feel very comfortable here.
1463
Rouge around the nipples helps. But if after all this time her
"competition's" still possessed of a "pulsing latina XXXX," you might
as well indulge in some more icecream and enjoy the allowing fit your
own "bermuda" comfort affords . . .
----------
Did you know that you can get flavoured rouge specifically for that
purpose?
Natalie Not Pedantic
Awesome. I'll get you to try it on for me, sometime.
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
I have no nipples. Its a common trait among Australian women and
the reason why Australian men seem to always look so grumpy.
Natalie Not Pedantic
Yeah, I wondered as much. But answer me this, without primed
perks, without sweet succulants, what's to suck on? Don't tell me all
the men down there go at it gaping mouthed -- trying, stupidly, to
take in the whole damn thing? Such, surely, would be beastial --
beyond poetic redemption, even by any so skilled in lending favor
they could tease romance out of a pound of crap, out of a grandiose
dollop of virulent piss.
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Holy Crap[-stick.......
Gary Justis
Earlobes, tips of tongues and bottom lips. They don't do too badly at
it either, from what I've heard.
1464
Re: "I'm a bit dazed and of course very proud The Tyee has gained
this recognition," said editor David Beers. "We have an incredible
team -- creative, dedicated, out to prove that good journalism,
rather than fading, is in a time of exciting reinvention.
"Credit for our win goes to every web designer, photographer,
illustrator, flash animator, videographer, podcaster, reporter,
essayist, editor and advisor who have contributed to the Tyee's flow
of offerings since we launched this experiment in November of 2003.
"Huge appreciation, as well, to our business team, our financial
backers, and the donors -- including hundreds of readers -- who
have given us the resources to do what we love.
"And, all credit, of course, to our readers, who alert us to news we
should report, share our stories with others, and reward our efforts
with their visits. Without the Tyee community, there's no Tyee."
(Tyee Wins Edward R. Murrow Award, July 2 2009)
Re: "And, all credit, of course, to our readers, who alert us to news we
should report, share our stories with others, and reward our efforts
with their visits. Without the Tyee community, there's no Tyee."
Surely unintentional, but you make your readers sound a bit like girly
flounces here. We shrill; you respond to our call. You report; we share
your stories with our friends. You sweat, make, effort; we drop by for
visits. You flatter; we make you gift baskets -- You'd almost think
1467
Re: There is a way. It will be painful and you have already suffered
much for the cause.
It is possible if we can get a movement going, to retake the BC
Liberal party back from the fascista and send them packing off to
the welcoming arms of Wilf Hurd over at BC's Neocon central. The
party itself is very weak with almost no attendance at constituency
meetings and almost no grassroots fund raising. It is ripe for a
progressive counterattack. Tell your Green friends that now is the
time to rally and gain control of the ruling political machine.
1468
I can give you context, doggone. Seth's not exactly been a trustworthy
friend of Greenies (his word, not mine) as of late. He set them up as
RESPONSIBLE for fascist success, in grim terms -- Ralph Nader, he
says, has the blood of millions of dead iraqis on his hands, for
instance, and he said something similar in regards to the effect of
Greens voting Green, here in B.C. Now he's their "best friend,"
encouraging them to cozy-up with corpses, sell their souls, and
perhaps other fates you wouldn't wish upon your worst enemy.
Reason for caution, me thinks.
The liberal party will be revitalized, but not by progressives. It's going
fascist too, and in my judgment will well succeed with head ghoul
Ignatieff at the helm. Progressive Greens were not co-opted by the
NDP. Right now they seem to have integrity, which draws some of us
to want to know more. Switching to Liberal would amount to
lounging about with even darker hellions, would amount to
dissipating strength rather than accruing it, might amount to falling
for quite the con.
that "Green" label that they routinely invoke to destroy rather than
heal. Their performance in the 2000 election with Ralph Nader in
the US so horrified Americans that the Green's moved en mass to the
Democrats. Without them Obama would have lost. Certainly Harpo
and the Gordo depend on the Green party for significant help in
winning elections for their Neocon hordes.
The Greens we are looking for here make up the vast majority of the
movement - the ones like Alexandra here who believe in protecting
the environment sometimes at the cost of compromising some of
their ideals in an effort to try to form a power base with other
progressives.
I for example, am a pronuke greenie which puts me beside James
Lovelock and Steward Brand but at odds with most other Greens. Be
happy to debate the issue at any time. I vote strategically for the
most progressive ticket that I hope can win putting aside differences
until after an election when a consensus might be achieved.
Yes the Liberal party in Canada has a horrible track record but that
is mostly because progressives tended to bow out of political life. It
was easier and we couldn't stand the stink I suppose.
But the ball is in our court. We can rise up and overpower the weak
ineffective neocon infiltrators, then seize and hold power. We know
all about backroom boys and how to send them packin' off to a
revitalized BC Con party.
Its the only chance we have. (Seth, Reply to post, Good luck BC)
I very much doubt you're right about the move away from Nader
being the principle reason Obama got in, Seth. But if that is what they
did, perhaps seduced by their own projections, perhaps by his fine
manners, perhaps by the prospect of finally having a person of color
in office, they would NOW then be responsible for electing someone
in who is continuing the war in Afghanistan, Iraq, who can spin it so
that it seems less about oil, so that it might, with apparent legitimacy,
be expanded, and certainly prove harder to stop; is causing the
gay/lesbian community to suspect he might at heart actually be
1471
homophobic; and is keeping the have/have not world afloat. They are
beginning to look like easy dupes, who have turned away those like
Nader who well understood the true nature of someone like Obama.
They will probably continue to feel dirty, foolish, girlishly infatuated
(sorry girls), and this self-doubt might cause them to believe they now
DESERVE what's coming to them (you're hearing some of this self-
loathing from some members of the gay/lesbian community that
voted for him, right now--a trend that will surely increase), making
them seem like they might end up seeming more a France to a WW2
Germany, than I'd like.
The Progressive Conservative party was taken over by regressives
because their primitive mental states were a match for a populace
increasingly inclined to scapegoat, to prefer thinking in polarized
terms. Maybe it is Seth's own tendency to do the same, to identify
Progressives he doesn't agree with as blood-on-their-hands
murderers, that has him now sensing out a way someone who had
preferred to identify as Green could join up with a "strong" war party
like the Liberals, helmed by its own sexy, upright "Obama," without
this move inducing too much guilt.
Link:
Are you saying that people who condone this barbaric behaviour
somehow care for children?
Twisted logic at it's best. (jimorsheryl, reply to post)
jimorsheryl: Most pro-lifers tend to pretty "conservative," that is, they
vote for parties which actually take pride and pleasure in creating a
world that is viscously mean and abusive. As pro-choicers have long
and rightly noted, pro-lifers don't actually evidence much interest in
human life -- their anger is loud, but its source isn't from where they
believe it is. In my judgment, they're not actually thinking of the child
but are using the situation to recall early abuse they themselves
suffered and want revenge for. It's an unwilling act of projection, that
can't be helped, but still ultimately amounts to a lack of interest in,
sympathy with, the unbirthed child.
A fair retort to your account must be in documenting the cruelty,
human suffering, conservative governance brings with it. Blow by
blow.
-----
Re:"Abolition of a woman's right to abortion, when and if she wants
it, amounts to compulsory maternity: a form of rape by the State."
~Edward Abbey
Otherwise, as the Planned Parenthood ad reads, 77% percent of
anti-abortion leaders are men. 100% of them will never be
pregnant.
My personal view is a bit more radical. The essence of 'human being'
is not defined on the basis of potentiality, but on actuality - that
is, its independence from the womb; its structure and function in
that independent world of fellow humans. An unborn (potential)
human has no ability to function independently in the world. As
such, an independent woman's rights to control her body
unequivocally take precedence over any potential human growing
inside of her.
quod erat demonstrandum (wayfarer, reply to post)
wayfarer: That argument doesn't strike all of us as all that strong. A
two-year-old is very unlikely to be able to support herself for long,
1474
Re: PatrickMcEvoyHalston,
You misrepresent the premises in my argument and draw a false
conclusion.
A 2-yr-old child, a disabled person requiring assistance are all
distinct entities from a fetus or unborn potential human, which is
necessarily connected to its mother for feeding, breathing, indeed
life. Under my definition, this potentiality does not equal the
actuality of a 2-yr-old or any other being that has been given the
privilege by its mother to enjoy an independent, autonomous life.
The general debate over this right is over, except for a minority of
religious zealots who draw their moral outlook and conclusions
from mysticism and religious texts.
It's not even worth my time to debate this fundamental right of all
women, except that I have a few minutes to kill and it's never a bad
idea to review one's philosophical positions on rights and freedoms.
I don't want Sandborn's point in the above article to be lost in a
1475
wayfarer: You're right that the debate has been settled. In a way.
Certainly the left seems to operate now with enough confidence-
evidence routine, that it is genuinely startled when old arguments are
presented as if they actually should be addressed, and not just quickly
picked up and put back in the junk bin (how did you get loose?). This
has made the left a bit vulnerable -- lacking of vigilance (as the LOTR
narrator would say), off-guard. The argument you present is not that
good -- it won the day because the other side is represented by the
scowling, patriarchal Right, by a generation the baby-boomers
delighted in and quite rightly needed to individuate themselves from.
Being pro-life means being unclean, to a lot of people -- it means
being counted amongst "one of them." That's the very enabled stage
the left has won for itself in respectable quarters.But my sense is that
there are a lot of people out there who are looking for a politician, for
means, to make pro-life/anti-choice clean again. It could come from
someone like (old school feminist defeating -- i.e., Hillary and
Ferraro) Obama; it could come from someone like Ignatifieff: both
politicians whose leanness and greenness, whose claim to a clean,
virtuous, (traditionally masculine) higher-purpose could, and in my
1476
lot), than they are with happiness. Personally, I admit to being sorry
they can vote at all.
-----
They are human beings. But. In an environment where conceding this
would mean no possibility of abortion, more than this, would mean
advancement of pro-life ambitions against progressive
thinking/progressive mothers, I would never concede this fact. It
would just be tissue, until the way is clear.
Pro-choice is doing what it needs to do, what it ought to do. The way
is not clear.
-----
Re: The problem with that argument is that it still doesn't deal with
the physical 'reality' which is very different for women than it is for
men.
Personally, I'm prepared to turn the matter over to women for their
sole adjudication.
Whatever the majority (of adult females) decides is fine with me
(GWest, reply to post).
G West: Women have just emerged from tribal council and decided
that children are adjuncts, until they are able to feed and cloth
themselves. They appreciate your respect for and defense of their sole
adjudication, but would appreciate if you'd now just hold the door,
while they indulge in some late afternoon poppy-seed and baby cake.
-----
Re: My coven paused in the midst of thealogical
debate and mooncakes, and G West kindly, without condescension,
held open the door, as I was requested to convey our sincere offer of
an honourary membership. (VivianLea, reply to post)
I gather that now that you're done with your bequeathing, you'll be
gettingthat coven started up again. But G West, word to the wise--you
might might to pause to reconsider, before partaking in their pro-
1478
I know I'm taking liberties, but if you don't mind, Emma:Atwood lives
downtown Toronto -- I don't even think you can see "geography" from
downtown Toronto. And I'm not sure where exactly her loyalties lie:
in "Surfacing" -- her supposed most nationalist and anti-American
work -- other than the main protagonist (a literate, isolated Atwood-
type), the Cdns in it come out seeming worse (or at least more
pathetic) than the boarish Americans do. And I remember in her
earlier work, at least, rural-types seemed oppressive morons. And if
you don't like primitive rural-types, shaped by whatever river or
mountain or prairie that happens to be nearby, I didn't think you
were allowed to be Cdn. (Emma Peel hardly seems blue-grass. You
sure you weren't shaped more by British wit than by prairie gophers?)
Also, all you people readily favoring literate Cdns, check out book-
writing Rick Mercer's show-biz history: had a show where all he was
concerned to do was show stupid you all are. We're assassins, you
Yankies (I'm dual -- favoring my American side). Be careful when you
open your arms to us (as you fools are want to do) -- we'll be tempted
by your exposed vitals. Falling at our feet with praise on your lips,
might placate us for awhile, though.
Link: Oh Canada, my Canada (Emma Peel)
Expedia left me for a latin lover, and then dry humped my (27 June
2009)
1479
carpet dog.
She did, the bitch!
"This sticker is dangerous and inconvenient, but . . ." (25 June 2009)
If OS ended up having 300 000 members, revenues that were off the
charts, but had come to seem loud and obnoxious, even if still liberal,
would the editors at OS care? My guess is they'd be toasting the times,
congradulating one another on their entrepreneurial acumen and
evidenced democratic sentiment, excusing/assessing all the noise as
democracy in action. EPs would bring in some bucks, feel more like
published authors, and show how all -- if you look at it the right way
-- has actually matured and progressed over time ("Sure, we'd all like
to live in Utopia, but it's really about time you came to appreciate that
with adulthood comes compromise, kids"). You'll lose a lot of the
truly decent, the inspiringly hopeful and ethical; hopefully they'll be
off to start up a non-profit, and keep us in the know about it.
One of the things Micheael Bay does well in both Transformer films is
1480
convince you that the battle would go on, even if you weren't there to
observe/experience it. This differs from LOTR, where too often you
sensed that the battles were conceived with you in mind--are the
halflings going to "get it"?! No, for just as you begin to wince in
anticipation of the falling sword, comes whomever to save the day.
The feeling you get is as if Bay asked the CGI dudes/lasses to forget
about the viewer and concentrate on what whatever particular robot
would do in the situation he found himself in. The result of this
immersion, interest in something other than making you feel a
certain way, integrity of the art form, even, is that the battles (for the
most part--there is a bit of the nick-of-time stuff here) feel
uncontrived, unpredictable, outside (not the projection of someone's
inner world) -- really happening, and incredibly immersive and
exciting. These films are not just loud and bombastic. And thank God.
For Stephanie (Zacharek, at Salon) isn't just making a comment about
Michael Bay, here; she's saying something about the American
populace that would like this "crap." To her, the bulk of humanity
finds satisfaction in naught but loud noises (though are these the
same people she sensed were trying to convince themselves they were
having fun while watching Phantom Menace?). Fortunately, it
appears that the current rabble do have some of the same sense for
art their equivalent had way back when, when Shakespeare's make of
the razzle-dazzle dominated the stage. The popularity of
Independence Day scares me way more than does the popularity of
this series. (And there is stuff in this film I really don't like -- I don't
like what it does with the Washington-type [but I didn't like what
Incredibles did with the boy-genius, either], which feels pre-requisite,
and doesn't help us any, for example.)
About the editing: this is one film I'd certainly like to see circulated to
fans to fiddle around with. One too many dizzy mommy moments, for
example. And maybe also choose between the fem-bot and the
humping dog-bot. (Dump the chick and keep the dog, is my sense.)
Unlike the first film, there are a bunch of other robots that never
really "gel" into enjoyable, apprehensible entities/identites. It's a
1481
We'll see
No, but I'd prefer if you'd do more with the summer's major movie
release than just quickly pee on it. If the first Transformers had
uninspired action sequences, people would not have liked the film.
(One thing the bulk of X-box humanity has got down, is when there is
and when there isn't LIFE, in action sequences.) I liked that the
action felt sort of unstaged, adhoc, unpredictable. I felt there was was
both aggression and genius in it, and preferred it to the pin-point,
neat dancing you get in X-Men, or the right angles and geometry, you
get in Dark Knight. That you get "pussy" and "bitch," seems only
1482
-----
Mikaela
fox news
environment where the very fact that he works to advance the idea of
false memory syndrome and thereby disenfranchise the abused, can
work to shut him down. The way it is, if the Right is smart, they'll
work with universities supported by corporate interests (that is, every
university) to ensure "their own" are the ones who tend to get tenure.
Turn all the lefties into indepedent scholars or travelling TAs, and you
won't have to listen to them.
Re: An important new study has just been published giving good
evidence
that states that
have higher gender equality and female security are more peaceful.
So the way to
have safer states is to give women rights.
Psychohistorians have also of course shown how violent patriarchy
and violence againstwomen in earlier societies lead to more
violent wars.
The study is: 'The Heart of the Matter" by Valerie M. Hudson et al,
International Security 33(2008): 7-45.
Lloyd deMause
20th-century fox
We seem to be living at a time where the compromising male gets in a
way, to play it alpha -- to be society's most fit. Marley and Me
featured this new man, someone who relucantly agrees to focus on
the family, domestic issues, rather than pursue the traditional male
reporter's pursuits, but who -- seemingly as a result of his masochistic
surrender -- finds all further life's riches readily come his way. His
buddy -- the traditional man's man -- is made to seem almost out of
step with the times -- the loser, in a way.
My guess is we're going to see an awful lot more of this new man
around -- more praise for him than criticism. Lots of talk about men
needing to accept the new times, their changing roles. And it will
eventually be followed by a period where these very same men start
seeing something they like in battle-ready patriarchs.
Link: Dude, man up and start acting like a mom (Aaron Traister,
Salon)
paramount pictures
Its not exactly what Star Trek offers, but the film is perhaps most
easilyif not most fairlyassessed as belonging to the bread and
circuses school of societal extension. It offers a plot, a delineation
of the way ahead, people can readily imagine themselves participating
in, readily imagine themselves wanting to participate in, which if
followed by a similar national narrative could at least help pave the
way for a neat and orderlyif totalitarianway of finishing all things
off. The pro-offered life of adventure, appeals. The sense of purpose,
also very much so. But the best drug it offers comes out of allowing
you room to readily imagine yourself playing a part in something like
this, and thereby partaking in the dopamine-high of specialness
counting yourself amongst the few select geniuses good enough for
the Enterprise affords one. To be a member of the Enterprise means
you are the best at your positionit means that though for the most
part you will sit alertly but still somewhat placidly in place, every once
in a while, when visited upon by, ostensibly, some miracle of
realization / inspiration, all eyes will be drawn to you as you act up
and save the day, and perhaps your species, and maybe the universe,
as the prize rises so that the high doesnt ever have to flag. To be a
genius is never suggested to be anything other than a rare and special
thing in Star Trekit is always noteworthy, but is made to seem
something most anyone with sufficient desire could imagine
themselves being in possession of: you need to 1) be able to be brash,
and in a way in which your brashness ultimately and for the most part
1486
otherwise, but in truth the core of you would throw one hell of a
tantrum if they didnt end up serving youyour self-assessments
needs (again), something they could in fact best do by being
dispatched or humiliated rather than saved. For demonstrating your
own prowess would have to go into exhausting, stressful overdrive if it
wasnt for the fact that everyone beyond your immediate crew is made
to seem somewhat deficient, if not well retarded. For Kirk to seem the
potent fighting cock, chock full of potential, five trained soldiers have
to end-up seeming, in sum, just beyond him in a bar fight; for Uhura
to seem more the translation wizard (Wow! You know four hundred
esoteric languages! Amazing! Our computers only know a handful
plus a billion of them.), some other has to be efficiently but ruthlessly
dispatched as not up to snuff; for Captain Pike and his prodigy, Kirk,
to seem especially able captains, another captain has to be shown as
thank you sir, may I have another? eager ready to obey/satisfy the
sadistic needs of terrorists (Come into my dungeon; stand still before
me; and give me satisfaction by letting me stab my handy-dandy,
ready-side, space-spear into you); for the crew of the enterprise to
seem Luke Skywalker-able, and the ship itself, oh so fleet-of-feet, they
have to survive when a whole slew of other ships are scattered about,
a calamity and a pity, but also their just deserts, for so easily being
drawn into the enemys trap.
So if this is the sort of narrative that grabs the publics imagination,
that suggests some sense of how the future could afford all a life that
feels purposeful and well laid-out, surely would-be totalitarians out
there will soon realize the public will be soon be in the mood to
respond ever more enthusiastically to their call. Totalitarians would
deliver: they would suit-up and militarize the nation; offer everyone
some role to play against whatever pressing villain; organize them
into community groups, where every resident best Americano,
pizza, sushi, whatever maker in town, could imagine themselves as
being part ofreallythe most distinctive, able group of freedom-
fighters around; ensure they get a lot of praise, and, lest they forget!,
give them room to every now and then voice some kind of rebel yell
1488
person kept around; and Star Trek, while making him seem a bit
slow-paced to well function on what the Enterprise has become
primarily, that is, a response-ready battleship (i.e., he's not a
"wartime consigliere")allows old Spock a distant but still accessible
place in the new universe. Perhaps, just as the film makes it seem
right that new "latch-key" Kirk, sparked on by the nature of his
abandonment, who seems fated to become akin to trigger happy,
action-figure, Captain Pike, and more naturally suited to eventually
deem McCoy, not Spock, his best "fratboy" bud, captains the ship over
a Spock fueled on by well-attendance, by maternal love, who can
second guess himself, disengage from friends, step back, alone, in
contemplation, reflection, consideration, but at the same time suggest
that his being in the "shadows" will help him be more nurturing and
less brutal (notice how careful he is to not humiliate Sulu, to ease the
bridge, when he functions as first officer, but how markedly blunt and
even brutal he is to Uhura's replacement and to Kirk, when he
functions as captain), facilitate the kind of slow growth, soul growth
requires, develop into the kind of leader we will eventually turn to,
and that this will be how it could go for us as well. That is, maybe our
need to play it rigid, safe but violent, routine, and brutally sacrificial,
is such that it's going to take awhile for the well-rounded, well-
attended, easeful Spocks of the world to introduce us to something
more satisfying, variant and human, and we should be well enough
pleased to learn that people are attracted to films like Star Trek (and
Wall-E, which communicates the same message), which suggest, at
least, we seek a more desirable future than rigid mobility and ray
guns, but need plenty of time to ready and steady ourselves, to once
again venture about so bravely.
Work Cited
Star Trek. Dir. J.J. Abrams. Perf. Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto.
Paramount. 2009. Film.
1493
"But you -- the UBC Arts graduates of 2009 -- are well-equipped for
challenges. You've learned to think critically, communicate well, and
cooperate with others to achieve common goals. You've acquired a
respect for the insights and accomplishment of past generations, so
that you stand on the shoulders of giants -- rather than starting at
ground level again." (Michael Byers, Dear Grads, Help Save Us!,
The Tyee, May 27 2009)
Last time I checked, this whole standing on the shoulders of giants
thing was under about 50 years of non-stop challenge by people in the
Arts, who pretty loudly assessed these giants as amounting to, well,
giants -- that is, monsters. Faculty of Arts a bit on the conservative
side at UBC? Or is it just tactically smart to feed students' parents
what they want to hear (and can be expected to handle), that is, that
will gloss their brood in genteel shine?
The speech you delivered was no doubt truthful to your experience
and sense of things, but seems dumb and inadequate. The link
between Shakespeare, Keats, and Nietzsche, and over-all well-
preparedness to handle things like global warming and economic
fracturing, requires some extrapolation, some fleshing out. Or at least
it ought to require as much: There is some chance that, as Barbara
Ehrenreich suggests, the Arts programs can keep on advertising the
study of Shakespeare as miraculously ideal for attending to the
student's soul AND his/her career needs (who'd a thunk, eh?) AND
now our collective need to save society from itself (this is a bit of a
new one -- allowing you some room to de-emphasize the ideal career
prep bit), and actually serve employers rather well -- they want and
need intelligent enough, tractable recruits, in loads of debt and
desperately in need of reassurance, to reliably be counted on to think
themselves the world's saviors, while dutifully towing the party line.
Once you've read this informed review, you will remain crazy (20 May
2009)
But no Tyee reader is going to count amongst those who think the
Japanese in Canada were up to something sneaky in WW2. I don't
mean to disparage your article, but if you want to challenge the Tyee
reader in what I believe to be a way more useful way, why not tackle
the implications of the tendency amongst many Tyee contributers to
set up the Greens this election period, as the nefarious, sneaky group
(ring any WW2 bells?), that need to be kept under watch, for the good
of one and all?
Make Tyee readers see, what is hard for them to see.
Link: http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/eln06_war.html
Also, I agree that kids, women, the unemployed, the poor, the
"foreign," will be set up as "the problem." But for most Tyee readers,
this will not be something to be pointed out -- most of us will
recognize and abhore when this is done. In the Tyee' forums -- that is,
amongst those in B.C. who most readily can "be reached" -- during
the election, the Greens were the ones most vilified. I just moved
here, and I need to get a better sense of who the Greens are in this
province, but it is possible to me right now that the Greens could be
set up -- by some middle class NDPers, even--akin to the way the
educated German middle class set up literate, artistic, Jews for target,
before and during WW2.
-----
Forgot to mention, G West, that the part that's hard to shake off about
deMause's articulation of the causes of the Holocaust, is where he
points out how all the various things that were said to and acted upon
by the Nazis upon the Jews (and homeless, weak, etc.), were things
the Nazis and their supporters had to endure when they were
children. DeMause goes into the details, about what exactly German
children had to endure, and how they exactly replicated what they
experienced in their abuse of the Jews (but this time with them as
perpetrators rather than victims). It's really powerful, and I wish
you'd take a look at it.
Regarding your complaint against the use of the term "concentration
camp," in regards to what happened to the Japanese in Canada
during WW2: if the motives were the same--that is to stigmatize,
humiliate, punish--and I think they were, then even if the sadism was
less, if the abuse, less harsh--which it evidently was--than what
happened to the Jews, I don't think I'm too off-put by the use of the
term. Born of the same source, it's hyperbole, but not misdirection.
Using the term is a tactic used to make it more difficult for those who
really would want to "manage" that part of our history, so that our
own arising desire to prejudice others feels more buttressed,
substantiated -- less guilt arousing. Of course, there's another reason
1497
Help Wanted
Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt)
By Patrick McEvoy-Halston
1498
May 2009
With Wendy and Lucy involving one proud woman traveling
through rugged or decrepit surroundings, hoping to work her way to
the one place available which might just hold promise of a secure life,
and perhaps fulfillment (i.e., Alaska), the film could be deemed post-
apocalyptic. But in films of this genre, where civilization wears and
wolves encroach, setting serves to highlight and facilitate/necessitate
heroic action from the main protagonist, and overall register a strong
sense that this is the only appropriate backdrop for manly,
independent livingthe one gigantic thing civilization cannot offer
because it ostensibly comes at the expense of. The film works the
other way around, where adults born when American society felt
assured, prove still worth seeking out, for they may be, if not the only
certainly the best source available to help orient you to take on a
more substantive, human, way of relating with the world.
It certainly isnt fair to say that Wendy simply reacts to the world. She
is shown throughout the film making something of the environment
she finds herself in. She steals; parks her car where-ever-where;
transforms a gas station bathroom into her own personal safehouse;
and, when she is more comfortable therein, less braced against all its
first-encounter newness, ranges wide across (her) town, bulletining
images of her dog everywhere appropriate, in an act which reads as
much of personal territorial possession/demarcation as it does of
fervent canine rescue. She is in fact quite aggressivewith even her
relative or absolute stillness in certain situations, reading not so much
of forced paralysis but as a wily-enough-a-way to ride things through.
But though her aggressiveness may in fact be born out of a fear of
paralysis, of being or feeling susceptible to being used, its not as
much a triumph to witness as one might expect: one can imagine a
whole life of such willful demonstrations ahead; and though its better
than just giving up, you wonder how far a life of sharp survival
instinct is from one infused with soulful intenthow distanced all
such is from the animalistic? Again, to be fair to the film, the loners
libertarianism is not exactly disparaged here, but there is a sense that
1499
while it argues that it is much, much better to be the lone wolf than
the pack animal, that the loner who survives through canniness, a
willingness to act, alone, for better or worse, is vastly more dignified
than those who mongrelize away into groups, its stillso very sadly
so many worlds away from where humans need to, and should, be.
This, then, is not your 70s post-apocalyptic, where being alone but
with your dog was essentially shorthand for experiencing the height
of human freedom and existential grandeur. With apologies to the
Cold War, oil shortages, and Americans all-drunk-on-narcissism-
funk, this is a film made 30 years past the 70s hysteria30 years past
the period where even Republicans voted for increases in social
welfare spendingand those 30 years of brutal withdrawal of social
concern and common purpose has made a future of large-scale
dissolution seem possible enough for us now to believe, believe,
believe in Obama because he just has to be the answer. So in an era
where the decomposition 70s style anti-heroes loved because it drew
all to their own certain will, feels like it is really could be just ahead,
the big draw is not so much libertarian range but securityAlaska
draws Wendy because it may offer a job, in a cannery, which should
sound horrible, last resort, but may in fact appeal because it suggests
a life without too much adjusting to experience amidst the uncertain,
insecure now.
When an aging, middle class manthe one who ends up taking care
of Lucywho in more sure times would have laughed at by anyone on
the outside for his inane, life-abnegating, bourgeois staidness, is set
up in the end primarily to represent stability, predictability, good care
and kindnessthe good homeyou know a society has weathered to
the point where simple security can seem golden. Wendy knows its
lure, and is reminded of it the very moment she loses Lucy. Before the
loss, while Wendy was with Lucy, Wendy had some composure: she
could listen to a group of train riders respectfully if inertlybut
dust them off as so much wtf and head on along on her way. Set,
content, with a dog of considerable well-being and joyfulness, it is
even fair to say of her that she seemed someone with the capacity, at
1500
least, to make Alaska more than just a place to get a jobto make it a
place where a better life might just be realized if not found. But when
she looses Lucy, the search for her has some of the urgent feel of the
loss of a security blanket to an easily panicked child. Her self-
composure is uncertain enough that she needs the external
environment to aid in propping it up. This is natural enough for the
child but undeveloped for the adult (however many true adults there
are out there), and what Wendy needs she cant in fact get to any
sufficient degree from any pet, however radiant, beautiful and
responsive that pet might be. For what Wendy needs is what only
parents can, potentially, offer their children: namely, a clear (to the
child) ability to weather their various mood inconsistencies, their
reaching-outs (for individualization) and coming-backs (for comfort).
But not because they are dependent on themwhich is why a pet can
offer the samebut because they sense the child's need for a secure
foundation to ground their efforts to reach out and explore their
world.
Another way of saying all this is that Wendy has grown up without a
nest. Its evident in her impulse to cling and in her impulse to register
the least amount of responsiveness possiblethe default response of
the abandoned chick, lest an inopportune squack strike the interest of
a nearby hawkand we particularly feel it when, at a moment when
she is evidently in need of reassurance / orientation, she calls her
brother and his girlfriend, and they respond so defensively she ends
up having to reassure them. It is possible, however, that when Wendy
made this call, she was enjoying the comfort-food available in just
participating in the shared social convention/expectation of turning
to immediate family when occasion dictates, and also, perhaps, to
confirm what she was already coming to know: namely, that the kind
of support she is in need of is to be found in her contacts with
strangers, not family, in her developing friendship with the aged
parking-lot security-guard, in particular.
(A few more paragraphs. The end.)
1501
Work Cited
Wendy and Lucy. Dir. Kelly Reichardt. Perf. Michelle Williams. Field
Guide. 2008. Film.
Seth Rogan: "Kids like me but when they meet me they're horrified by
me... These guys bring their kids (to screenings) and I kind of resent
them. To me it's kind of a sacrilegious thing and the kid would cry. It
was horrible..."
"Now that the movie's out and I don't have to promote it anymore, I
can say that I hate children. It's out; it's made $60 million. I can say
it: I hate kids. If no kid ever came up to me, I would be more than
happy." (World Entertainment News Network)
----------
Update #1:
VivianLea: What sociologists get right is that there is something really
off about certain men's need to feel like real men. This phenomena
shouldn't be naturalized, or just readily accepted -- ideally, and very
possibly, no human being will feel the need to buttress their self-
assessment in this fashion, or at all, period. What they get wrong is
their unwillingness to credit that men's fears of women, of being
entrapped and rendered pussies, are born out of actual experiences of
feeling dehumanized in their interactions with women. More
pointedly, they would never credit what I believe to be the case:
namely, that men who were used as boy-toys for the entertainment of
their lonely mothers, who were traumatized/abused by their mothers,
will always by hyper-ready to expect entrapment and shameful
surrender of self, in their relations with women. They can't go there,
because this would involve exploring their own past with an intimacy,
with a degree of self-introspection, their very training has worked to
establish as wholy suspect, as in the path of scientific neutrality --
objective truth. Plus, it would mean inviting abuse from the parental
alters (super-ego) they've established in their heads, to stop them
from asking, "why did you do that to me, mommy?" Some poets go
there --there's that famous line from Philip Larkin ("they fuck you up,
mom and dad"), for instance, but about zero, give or take zero,
sociologists. Kimmel would blame culture, but never seriously
consider DeMause's contention that "culture is explanandum, not
explanans," that is, that saying that "'culture determines social
behavior' is simply a tautology."
http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/eln05_psychogenic.ht
ml
----------
1504
----------
You can sense a bit of masochism -- if I suffer or sacrifice, I'll be
worthy of appreciation -- in some responses here, that probably ought
1505
to be pointed out, but it's really awful to see someone once again go
after men, and I'm glad to see people defending themselves from
Vanessa's mean-spirited, gutless attack. She sets people (single men
-- the easiest of targets to ensure hate-speech is lauded rather than
blasted) up so that they seem worthy of derision. It's crappy when this
happens to anyone in the gay and lesbian community, and it's crappy
here.
I don't want to see people projecting forward and imagining no
dramatic change in who they are. I hear a lot of people doing that in
my own social circle (I'll never get married; I'll never have children),
and it frightens and saddens me. You do hear people saying they are
proud of what they've accomplished, and no doubt they have
managed to effect a life well worthy of their and our respectful
consideration/appreciation. But if we're going to probe at some
aspects which could well reflect an unhealthy rigidity, which prevents
them from FURTHER elaborating, nurturing, their sense of
themselves and what they might offer to the community at large, we
need to begin by respecting the pleasure they take in their lives and
the legitimacy of their fears in broaching anything substantially new.
Vanessa goes after the easiest of targets with real meanness and lack
of respect. At some level she must know that what and how she writes
ensures she does not get criticized by those she can't easily blow off
and handle, that she gets (or that she can imagine herself getting)
praise from the empowered, who help legitimize their
enfranchisement by thinking correct thought, by hating incorrect
people. This is not life, forward progress --it's appeasement, that itself
speaks of a termination in self-growth that may never be coaxed into
evolving into something more beautiful.
---------
someone else's food without no one giving a shit, sayin' it's all
evolutionary goodness and shit: cavalry's comin.' And what we did to
the abominable snowman in Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and
shit, makin' him go veg. and shit, we'll be invitin' pon all dem African
pussies. No doubt. Word to your mother. No doubt. Word to your
mother. Word.
Link: "Earth" (Salon)
Interacting with your mother, once outside the nest (21 April 2009)
@imnobody:
Good on you for having the strength to move 9000 kms away. Says
that you got enough nurturance from her to surrect sufficient self-
respect, self-will, to do what you had to do to become independent.
My mom had/has all kinds of psychosomatic stuff she tries to use as a
tool to manage the rest of us, extend her control OVER us -- a change
in tactics, now that adulthood has brought with it a change in terms.
It means she feels empowered and in control, but also kind of lonely:
it gives birth to passive-aggressive but very real anger, in those that
end up tending to her. I saw what was happening, and have none of it.
I let her know that, one, I won't be bullied, and two, that the kind of
relationship she most wants -- one of real respect, substantial love, is
available to her, but only if we interact on wholly different terms than
we did during my teen years. It kind of works. This said, I'm moving
across the country, possibly in part, because I sense that, like you, I
will feel more independent, empowered, to pursue my own interests
(I got my first girlfriend, after-all, only when I first moved cities,
when I went to college) when a continent divides us. Saw her last
week. It was a good meet-up, a lot of mutual tending to and respect.
But she still ended by directing me as to how I could attend to her
better. I told her I would listen to her requests, but also that the bulk
of my adolescence seemed all about attending to and appeasing her
moods, adjusting to her career needs, so I wouldn't be right-ready to
1508
re: "If you can't compromise your lofty ideals every so often, you
will most likely end up living in a cave or a bachelor apartment,
lecturing the silent walls about the coming environmental collapse."
(Dorothy Woodend, "Recipes for Disaster," The Tyee, April 10,
2009)
But this isn't true to your experience. You describe your isolation as
that of empowered bike-ride -- a life with no regrets (and the social
bus-ride as all powerlessness and compromise).
You fluctuate, but over-all you seem to WANT to believe that life must
inevitably contain portions of deceit and compromise (by which I
think you really mean, submission). I suspect that that much of what
you say here is born from the fact that you have not yet learned that
the UNCOMPROMISED, UNCOWED pleasure you now take from
bike-riding, can be ably applied to other parts of your life as well --
yes, even to your dealings with other people. How did you once
narrate your bus-riding experience? Was it always all venom? Or was
it about a time to journal, watch people, reflect on life experience, all
while avoiding the affront to public civicness that is the single-driver
cocooned within her own private space? I bet that once you start
extending your ambition and reach, we'll start seeing articles from
you arguing that you can't expect to milk life-wisdom from those
dumbly cowed.
patrick mcevoy-halston
P.S. I'm in mind to read Barbara Kingsolver's _Animal, Vegetable,
Miracle: A Year of Food Life_, and see if it too amounts to a recipe for
disaster. My guess is that good-natured, smiling, forever-growing
Barbara, shares with us a differently fated family story.
Link: Recipes for Disaster (The Tyee)
-----
1510
How much do you value your penis, young man? (11 April 2009)
Giving "Observe and Report" its fair due (10 April 2009)
De Line Pictures
The movie largely presents drunk women as grotesque and offensive,
and pedestals ideal sex as that between couples who give a damn
about one another (and where everything is comparatively low-key
and tame). The sex with Brandi is presented as him still living the
schmoe's life - -a life without any dignity: it is no score, but a
collective embarrassment. All this said, the movie is to some extent
moved out of a hatred of the rejecting woman. But the revenge is
nowhere in the sex, but rather in how the film terminates -- with her
1513
was graphic literature, and Andrew O'Hehir, so it was an easy one for
the psychic pass.
-----
Re: He is not a hero but rather an ANTI-HERO. You would not
want to be like him or do what he is doing. (Josef Gancz, Response
to post, "Observe and Report," Stephanie Zachareck, Salon, April 10,
2009)
***Spoiler Warning***
Appreciated your response to the movie, but personally I think this is
a mis-read. Hard to not think that quite possibly ANYONE who
currently feels somewhat circumscribed, bullied, a victim of
circumstances (recession related?), wont at some level be cheering
him along as in face of brazen intimidation and potential brutal
defeat, he single-handedly takes on a gang of street thugs and (at
another time) a gang of police offers, and handles himself more ably
than the barbarian chief managed in similarly unfair circumstances at
the beginning of Gladiator. The movie just doesnt make him
someone with DELUSIONS of grandeur: it gives him juice to display a
considerable amount of it, and not too far into the film.
And we must be fair to the movie and not suggest that what he is
doing amounts to non-stop thuggery or fratboy boarishness.
Stephanie notes his gentleness, which is on display when he tends to
his mother. But also of note is his receptivity: he listens with
consideration to what his mother says, and hopes the best for her.
Stephanie Z. suggests that his relationship with Nell, the young lady
he visits every morning for coffee, is one-sided, with her offering
much and him, little. But personally, even if perhaps its only because
Rogen is playing the part, I sensed receptivity, reciprocity, fair
consideration (though yes, he could also be ignorant of how she was
responding to what he had to say, which did lead to hurt feelings) in
how he interacted with her. Unconscious of it, for sure, but his
manner of attending to her overall communicated that he thought her
someone of value -- she was PRIMARILY a person to him, not a
coffee-girl. This might be made to seem of little consequence, but
1515
the sex-scene.
Older but nicer--Having babies when you've sorted things out (8 April
2009)
A lot of people I know become not just mellower but nicer as they age.
(I sense this, perhaps, most especially in novelists -- where main
protagonists are obviously more patient, sweeter, to other characters
in later books than they were in the novelists' very vibrant but more
charged and angry earliest works.) I have some suspicion that what
happens with those who have self-esteem-enriching experiences of
validation and attendance when they were young, but also hampering
experiences of abandonment and sadistic treatment, is that they still
have it in them to acquire more of what they were lacking and deal
with some of what has tended to haunt and stop them, while they go
through life. This may in fact be -- without them being consciously
aware of it -- what a great deal of their life endeavors are mostly
about. And if they end up getting some of the attention they were
needing, learn not to denigrate but work to satisfy their own needs,
they no doubt end up being better able to attend to their children
when they have them than they would have been if they had had them
when they were younger. That is, even if the seed is worse, the DNA
somewhat hampered, the story of the unfolding and development into
its final psychogenetic form may be a better one with older parents.
My mom is a nicer, more giving person than she was when I was a
teen: she listens better, more generously, than she once did, and
conversations with her leave me feeling warmer and more optimistic.
She has largely satisfied her need to be the career woman, a pursuit
which left us feeling like our own ambitions were of secondary import
when we were teens. I wonder, given how important the quality and
quantity of attendance is to the emotional/intellectual development
of children of our species, if we should be looking more to the best
PSYCHOLOGICAL age and less to the best biological age, for having
1517
children?
In any case, this is vein to be mined. Not just because real rightness
will be discovered there, but much needed fairness too: as Vanessa
argues, if you're in your 30s, without kids, and not obviously on a
professional path, you will be looked at as if you are the runt of the
pack. Conversely, if you are professional, late 20s, and have a child or
two, you are being everywhere "told" you shine golden -- whatever the
actual degree of dullness of your story.
Link: No Baby For Old Men (The Tyee)
re: "For systematic change, I also suggest honoring those who get
up everyday and go to work, even if they don't like it. It takes
toughness to do that. The thugs on street corners and the killers in
schools aren't tough enough to go to work everyday." (bigguns,
response to article, "What you never knew about Columbine." Salon.
April 6, 2009)
Would need some work, but it could draw them in - -especially if the
working world regresses to Organization Man manliness (and maybe
that's where business is headed -- certainly Revolutionary Road
understood the draw of such for men; so too Apatow and Ferrel; so
too Mad Men) and away from JPod effeminacy. But it would come at
the cost of empathy towards, and understanding of, delinquents,
which would not be so okay.
Personally, it was when I understood that much audacious behavior
that can strike one as brave or even heroic, is accomplished by bullied
people who have switched into a different brain state -- an alter, not
so susceptible to disabling emotions like fear (and empathy) -- that
I learned not to be impressed by the audacity and accomplishments of
righteous loners. People who are bullied when they are young,
dependent, so very impressionable, know the awesome power of
angry terror -- threats of abandonment, strong displays of aggression,
1518
are writ large and become nothing less than threats of absolute
annihilation to the self. They integrate this voice, this personality,
and it essentially becomes Freud's punitive super-ego, a voice which
normally functions to school one away from doing presumptuous
things, but which can readily accomplish the horrifying but also
audacious and imposing, when it fully takes over in pursuit of
righteous punishment of "guilty" others.
Link: What you never knew about Columbine (Salon)
re: It frustrates me that so many are quick to judge those who are
killed doing dangerous outdoor sports. I sometimes wonder if they
would be happier if the youth only got their inspiration from mass-
murder video games, ultimate fighting, and crystal meth. (Armor
1520
Lately in threads were hearing from soldiers who are saying that the
infantry is primarily about helping people and promoting peace, and
from extreme skiers, that their sport is all about brotherly strolls,
ease, peace and love. Hmm . . . Might it be fair to conclude that the
most accurate take might actually come from those who see things
from a distance (like, on T.V.), rather than from within?
An extreme-skier advocate isn't one to "shy away" from anything. I
get it, and perhaps regret my use of the term. Still, I think to present a
more plausible case you should explained exactly why the sport got to
be called "extreme" in the first place? Isn't the extreme label used
'cause the sport wants to see itself as well-beyond ordinary limits,
beyond what the rest of sport offers and the rest of us can handle?
And isn't this charged, aggressive -- macho -- stuff? And isn't this
what the military advertises itself as offering?
Extreme sports, and pussies who don't do the dew (30 March 2009)
It's too easy see his death and to moralize. For those of us
outside his tribe, it's easy to call him crazy and dismiss him
because, in some way, it affirms our safe choices. (If letting
your body whither behind a desk, eating fast-food, driving in
rush-hour, road-rage traffic every day a safe choice... or
even living). And, yes, for those inside his tribe or on the
fringe of it, it's probably too easy to put him on a pedestal.
But the fact is Shane McConkey was one crazy motherfucker
who reminded us all that if we have the audacity follow our
dreams, well, we just might be able to fly. (Geoff DAuria,
Vancouver Ski Legend Dies, _The Tyee, March 30, 2009)
Why write a piece where anyone who questions whether it is maybe a
little romantic and inaccurate to identify Shane as someone who
"befriends rather than fights his demons and then rides them to
1522
shy aversion; 3) it makes you sound like all the heroines we encounter
in British/Cdn lit. who move into small towns and have to deal with
their always disapproving and moralizing "Cranford" matriarchy; 4) it
pretends to (being about) compromise, but cat-walking past
disturbance on way to the neat and green is the sexiest walk to walk
these days, baby! Morally in-step, failing but trying, and maybe you'll
be allowed to stay on your present course: it's worked to keep many
successfully ever upward and aloof for the last twenty-plus years --
why not try and stretch it for another comfortable twenty?
Link: Unplugged and Unglued (The Tyee)
Two more letters in defense of David Brooks and his aversion to guns:
@ G West:
G West, I said he's Republican, but also that if you haven't seen him,
you'll imagine him best if you picture him as a genteel, soft-mannered
democrat. I think this is right. Mark Shields (a democrat--and one of
the greatest!) at the Newshour, has said much the same.
God speed to Michelle. I like her, and am rooting for her and her
husband. But THERE IS RIGHTNESS in David's wariness of her
"guns," and WRONGNESS in many people's praise/defense of them.
Some sense of why the latter might be the case is in how it (i.e.,
people's praise/defense of them) moved nightbloom to mock and set
up for vitriole, "hissy" and "tizzy," North East pussies. A nation in
step will march right over their tender little feelings, and perhaps of
others similarly in possession of a more -- to use nightbloom's terms
-- "feminine persuasion." I'll leave it to your imagination to picture
who they might possibly be. But if you hear of anyone described so
they seem anything other than manly and spartan, know that they too
might be being shaped so they seem unworthy of sympathy, and hope
that they deserve no more than that.
@nightbloom:
The history of such goes a long way back (my first sense of it in
American history is when the men-of-letters first greeted the ascent of
the first non-gentry President, General Andrew Jackson), and there is
an awful lot that isn't good about it. There is a lot there that is just
about class, and I understand when people then go out of their way to
defend the up-and-comer from snide, belittling comments, as you
have done. Still, sometimes, and maybe all the time, the resistance
isn't fairly dismissed as just about keeping "proper" heirarchies in
place: newcomers often get in when the country is more in the mood
for a no-nonsense, general's leadership. It happened with Jackson, it
1529
But mightn't my Harvard crimson trump your Yale blue (12 March
2009)
earned it, and, yes, where to lay some blame. Rather than
shallow, I find Michael's take to be unencumbered by a
bunch of economic and academic gobbledygook. He calls it
as he sees it -- and he sees it as a noted professor of US
history. (David Beers, "Tbarnston, another view," _The
Tyee_. March 12, 2009)
Folks, don't dare object to the piece, for it's written from a "learned
observer," " a "noted professor" -- that is, from someone from within
an establishment David Beers evidently has great respect for.
Considering that this journal (i.e., The Tyee) evidences some signs of
being a guerrilla, alternative, "mouthpiece," some of us might now be
confused as to when we're supposed to defer and when we're allowed
to object. If the editor doesn't want to have to chime in again to tell
the unsavy why this particular piece is one they should just just try
and learn from, or if compelled to comment, just offer up a Jeffrey J.
and be done with it, he should find some way of marking the piece so
we're all in the know. He kind of did -- he told us this particular
author is being published by YaleUP, but again, all that stuff about
feisty fish confuses -- so we're NOT supposed to pour scorn on those
who know what the little spoon is for? We're supposed to revere well-
positioned plain-speaking academics, even though they tend to be
conservative, and dump on those who talk in academic
gobbledygoody, even though they tend to come from the postcolonial,
feminist/gender studies, new historical, marxist schools, that tend to
lean strongly progressive? Okay. Oh dear.
Link: Rescuing the Wealthy Idiots (The Tyee)
Why, I've always preferred plain rocks to jewels--and you? (12 March
2009)
@ Michael Fellman and Tyee readers (and you guys too, at Open
1531
Salon!):
Anybody else beginning to worry that if you spoil yourself and buy
something real nice to wear, you risk it being "lost" in a tarred and
feathered ruin of an evening? (In this climate, God help you if you
have a taste for anything fine in anything other than organic
coffee/food.) And is anybody else wondering how right this writer is
in thinking that the wealthy are safe from pitchfork prodding? But
what if someone offers to serve them up to satisfy (if only
temporarily) the bottomless hunger of those who hate, hate, hate the
greedy rich -- how long do you think they'll last, then? And when
they're gone, who might we turn to next? -- Why how 'bout the
Americans, even if Obama's still at the helm, who have surely made
greedy, presumptive use of our generous, neighborly will for far too
long! Mightnt indeed the short term bathos be such that it'll become
difficult to keep the long-term, long-wave, long-view in sight, even if
you're the historian well practiced in calming her/himself by doing
so?
This historian (i.e., our author) likes the idea of greed as a primary
mover of history. Most do, as it means you don't have to explore
psychology much, nor, more to the point, do much messy
introspection of your own unruly mind, to understand the ways of
people and their times. But, worth noting, is that some
psychohistorians actually look to those who, in a sense, desire LESS,
not more masochists -- to the sheep rather than to the wolves --
when searching for those who keep the narrative of haves, then haves
and have-nots, a seemingly neverending one.
It's certainly been ongoing, but there is an achievable end, though.
That is, Attend to the masochists, cure them of their love of being the
righteous impoverished, and the narrative wall WILL fall, thank God.
That is, Historians be damned: In these dampened times, please
know that an ahistorical utopia is still well within the possible! It's not
only true, it's just gotta be a better beacon to keep our eyes on than
the one our "history is and forever will be, a dispiriting tale" author
offers us.
1532
If you be gentle, fret, fret, the coming of the might (11 March 2009)
think, will not so long from now stop fretting over being courted,
acknowledge their true desires, and join the Obamas in their steel and
track, tanking of America) but from sensitives, the genteel, who are
mostly to be found amongst the left. (I am thinking now of the elegant
[but not captured] progressive, Geraldine Ferrara, and her horror at
the flaggrantness of Obama operatives as they tried to destroy her
reputation in a single minded effort to 'surrect their King.)
If you have a hankering for the gym/an athletic nation, populist pop-
culture, seeing preppy better-than-thous wallow (and maybe worse
than wallow: _Salon's_ article on this topic was, "Put away the guns,
Michelle [you're scaring David Brooks!]"), you'll never tire of what
Obamanation offers. But if like David you prefer quiet talks, an
easeful atmosphere, letting your "opponent" have her/his say, and
aren't averse to reading some Mrs. Dalloway, don't let populist elation
quiet your disquiet. Like Brooks, at the very least, say something -- if
not revered, you might at least be remembered for having done so
before the advance of "Thunder" and "Lightning" pounded you 'to
pulp.
Link: The Right to Bare Arms (The Tyee)
strong one at that, then, maybe, the Beltway could take this
brilliant and accomplished woman semi-seriously. (Tracy
Clark-Flory, "Put away the guns, Michelle!," Salon, 9 March
2009)
@Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Welcome to our regular stable of "wimpy upper-crust
liberal" trolls. Enjoy your stay. A couple of questions for
you:
(1) Have you ever noticed that your name sounds exactly like
a stereotype of an effete preppy?
(2) Why is it that right-wingers tend to be so out of shape?
Not only could Michelle Obama kick all of your asses without
even trying, most of you look like my 89-year-old
grandmother could take you with one hand tied behind her
osteoporotic back.
Also ... the Spartans lost, you know. (Dvorkin, Daniel, Reply
to post, "Put away the guns, Michelle," 9 March, 2009, 5: 21
1536
PM PDT)
@Daniel Dvorkin
Hey Daniel. Fun questions. Answers:
1) No, I haven't. Looks, with it's peaks and valleys, kind of like a
mountain range, though. Looking at it again, maybe more a roller-
coaster.
2) Not a right-winger. Mark Shields likes David for the same reasons I
do -- he can listen well, with full respect. My guess is that most in the
army/navy/marines vote Republican, or at the very least, have
conservative tendencies. So, too, most everyone in professional
sports. I'm not interested in warriors in the White House -- I want
nurturers. As much love and as little blood as possible, thank you.
@Patrick
Okay, I'm going to zero in on one of my favorites here:
My guess is that most in the army/navy/marines
vote Republican, or at the very least, have
conservative tendencies. So too most everyone in
professional sports.
I can't speak for the pro jocks, although I'll note that
endowing them with some kind of warrior mystique is a
mistake common to those who don't have any idea what real
violence looks like. As for the service ...
I am a liberal. I am a veteran. Most of my family and friends
are also liberals, and many of them are also veterans. Those
of us who are veterans are proud of our service, and those
who aren't are proud of us for having served.
I am a Democrat, and among my fellow Democrats what I
encounter is respect for my service and -- frequently -- the
bond of meeting a fellow vet, who is also proud of having
served, as well as a committment to cleaning up the mess
that conservative chickenhawks have made of the country
over the last eight years. You know, the people who "support
1537
the troops," but God forbid they or their kids should ever
actually serve a day in uniform or hear a shot fired in anger.
See, one of the great things about the military is that it's
pretty much a cross-section of the country. Liberal and
conservative and libertarian, black and white and Asian and
Hispanic, Christian and Jew and Muslim and atheist and
Hindu and every other religion you can think of -- you will
find all of these, in every possible combination, serving
America. Which is, when you come right down to it, a pretty
liberal phenomenon in itself.
You, I expect, have lived your entire life surrounded by
people pretty much just like you, and you're perfectly happy
in your little comfort bubble where "the troops" are heroic
abstractions doing heroic things far, far away. I.e., a
conservative chickenhawk, just like your heroes Bush and
Cheney. Don't worry, you can keep doing that. People like
me, and people unlike me, who can put their differences
aside to agree on a common goal, will keep on defending
your right to be a self-righteous asshole, however little you
deserve it. (Dvorkin, Daniel, Reply to post, "Put away the
guns, Michelle!," 9 March 2009, 7:10 PM PDT)
that, but it's been awhile. Since the Obamas might not just stop once
they've kicked 'publican ass, but move on and push the whole country
further into militarism, all the pretty, peaceful, cardigan-wearing
Salon readers should take note of the current preference for meaness,
leanness, and musculature.
@Patrick
Not an even cross-section: few progressives will
sign up for something which strips you of your
individuality and personality, out of a desire to lose
yourself amidst something "greater."
Except that many do, whether you want to admit it or not.
Joining up automatically makes you "one who
serves"--a hero. I really regret that. Maybe you do
too.
No, I don't. I'm very glad of my service, and again, whether
you're willing to believe it or not, what it did for me was to
make me more fully who I am, not strip away my identity.
Many other people have had the same experience.
Also? Be very careful with the h-word. "Hero" has a very
specific definition in the miltary, and it's wildly overused
outside it. During my two years as an infantryman and
eight years as a medic, I knew many brave soldiers and
airmen who served with courage and distinction, but I knew
all of two who could genuinely be described as heroes. The
idea that anyone who puts on a uniform automatically
qualifies for that status is an insidious kind of
dehumanization, and as such is a favorite of the 101st
Fighting Keyboarders crowd.
Surely you would agree that those who would "keep
on defending your right to be a self-righteous
asshole, however little you deserve it," could readily
be imagined as turning on said righteous assholes,
1539
@Daniel Dvorkin
Okay, so soldiers understand that there are only so many heroes, but
signing up still has about it some some sense that, apparently
instantly, you've shown you are no longer selfish and suspect but
rather someone who has chosen to undertake the noble cause of
serving others -- if not a hero, certainly a worthy citizen, someone to
be proud of. Since some of us see the military as still largely about
self-righteous bullying of people, many of us regret this, and wish
more was done to redeem the "panty waist" jobs recruiters must so
easily pluck young men and women from, with but a pluck of their
poorly strung self-esteem.
Everyone who signs up must want to come to talk like you do. Earned
the right to sneer so readily at self-righteous "pretty people" like me,
and scaredy cats too afraid to join up. To be able to say though all
their years of service, they've known many, many who were brave and
courageous, but only a few who would leap on a grenade, or what-not.
Maybe you're right and it's not so much about heroes, as about
becoming a true "Man." And since this evolution at the very least
seems to involve a ready and cruel dismissiveness to those deemed
"feminine," toward a selfish elevation of oneself above the less-than-
deserving crowd, I hope more challenge the worthiness of the end-
product of "being all you can be." The learned demeanor smacks me
of that of a righteous rapist, actually. Akin to the tone/stance of the
article's title: "Put away the guns, Michelle! You're scaring David
Brooks." (Oh David, you little hus, stop fretting and open yourself up
1540
Because, in part, it lets you know that all interactions between family
members are well worth noting and thinking about. Because it shows
1541
the types of reactions that can cause you to doubt yourself. Because it
shows people fighting back, standing up for themselves, and the kinds
of reactions you get for doing this. Because it shows people trying to
break-through, and showing that this is actually possible, but that it
can happen without you even knowing at the moment that that was
what just happened, but still at some level knowing: Kym didn't just
not vear left or right, she headed through the bush, just as she went
right at her mother -- repeat, emphasis, exclamation point,
imprinting -- fuck you bitch, I AM! I AM! I AM!
With knights like this, maybe you could get used to trolls (5 March
2009)
Fab over flab: The Limbaugh romance may not last the night (4
March 2009)
inherently part of -- the doing, but as something you get after many
years, and only after much pain and frustration. Personally, I find
your attitude toward rewards a bit calvinist: where creativity MUST
be seen as emerging from toil because any other kind of life MUST be
judged as about instant gratification, lazyness-- as about bad stuff, for
bad people, heading nowhere at all good.
I think to show me up as unimaginative (and not just as someone que
n'est pas au current), rather than argue that my turning to the P.C. vs.
Mac trope by itself showed I couldn't have much of a mind, you would
have done better (or at least have reached me more effectively) if you
had shown how I used the Mac vs. P.C. trope with little imagination.
Poets/rhetoriticans can show great creativity when they fashion new
tropes or other poetic forms/devices, but they can show their stuff
just as well when they make effective, imaginative use of the materials
already at hand. The tropes in pastoral poetry are familiar to all who
use them, for example: the fun is in seeing how they tease and twist
their shepherds, lovers, flowers, and nymphs, in novel ways that
delight, surprise, and convince.
For me, turning kids on to the possibilities of itunesU isn't about
instant gratification. It's about getting kids to know that THEY can be
the ones in charge of their own education, about not being so ready to
bow their heads to the powers that be. It's about empowerment, the
nurturance of self-belief and self-esteem: for me, the kinds of things
that engender creative exploration. I think that if they nurture this
attitude toward their world, their development will become worth our
demarcation and study -- that is, I think my cotton-candy talk can
lead to the enterprises you would like to see more of in society, and
when table-talk turns to the post-secondary.
Link: After the Meltdown, Back to Post-Secondary?
Mac: "Change comes from those who eagerly anticipate the future,
the what might be!"
---
PC: "Intellectual tradition comes out of old monastics."
Mac: "Spiritual evolution comes from long-haired hippies, holding
hands, in sunshine circles, who dare to dream."
---
PC: "I want to see solutions, demonstrable best practices."
Mac: "I want to see purple ponies . . ."
---
PC: "Not the latest home cooked theories elucidated by a smattering
of buzzwords gleaned from the glowing phospors of iTunes and the
Onion."
Mac: "'Gleaned from glowing phosphors!'--What pretty words! What
inspiration! (Are you sure you're not like Milton, and in the 'devil's'
camp, not knowing?)
What else might we gleam in glowing phosphor' light?"- - -
Only cooperate as long as you have to. Right now, ItunesU modestly
sustains. But it'll soon give flight to those with wings.
Link: After Meltdown, Back to Post-Secondary?
It's true, as Mr. McAvoy says, that big changes will always
be driven from without, but unless they also resonate within
the structure, such changes will be much harder to bring to
be. (Bailey)
ViveanLea:
So ViveanLea, do you want to be one of those who "drive big
changes," or one of those who "resonate within the structure"? Wanna
go big, or small fry? Be the Titan, or the web-caught fly?: How well
Bailey does articulate the choices available to you now.
1550
VivianLea:
Please ignore Bailey's advice. Ignore anyone who tells you that "the
degree is your ticket of admission." Those who say so these days, are,
after all, the ones who laughed at and rebelled against the pro-offered
future in "plastics," a al The Graduate. They clearly are ones who
don't really want the status-quo to change all that much.
For the last while, the cool kids respected those who got into
Berkeley/Harvard. That day is ending. The emerging breed are going
1551
VivianLea:
The old tradition of scholarship is of asocial monasticism. Being in
the office of someone who values the old ways, and looks at the new
era of professionals expected to justify and share, to be out there,
rather than all holed up, made you feel like you were in the company
of a pederast -- and you may well have been. (Harold Bloom is old
school, and you may have heard that Naomi Wolf accused the old
sage of trying to feel her up while in his office for a chat.) It's about
true nerdyness and fiddling, more than it is about leaving the genius
alone to do his/her work.
I'm all for finding ways to stop spending on all the big lectures
(they're just a different version of a textbook) -- let's get all those from
itunes U, and from preferred universities/professors from all over the
world. (If all you're going to do is lecture, you'd best be good, because
I'll otherwise turn to so-and-so from MIT and hear what s/he has to
say, instead. Actually, I think I'll do that anyway.) Lots of
teacher/student contact/interaction (and lots of student/student
interaction, which is just as important), I'm all for. Some say that the
ideal of scholarship gets in the way of furthering this end, though.
Lots and lots of people going to university hasn't just meant free
training for business. It's also meant a lot of people coming from the
rough getting to know people/ideas of a different sort. It has been
about rising a huge mass of people, making them better -- about
1552
@cd4928
That was me! No "guy" here--I'm Patrick. Hello there.
About your argument that you can wear the same sweater for ten
years and undergo many internal changes. You know, if I twist your
true intent some, I kind of believe you. Sometimes we might need for
something to be sort of unchanging, stable, dependable, before we
make the leap to some other more appropriate "place." Saying this, I
know you're saying that internal changes can readily occur,
independent of our external surroundings.
But yes, I do think we identify ourselves through our objects. Objects
are powerful stuff, they can move us closer to where we need to go --
they can co-operate, synergize, with the kind of internal growth you
1554
@GYfort: I sense we're all just grasping to the staid and (therefore)
True right now, but not too far on many of us will wholeheartedly
embrace those who stirred us while we lurched for steady ground.
That is, be in good humor, for though the Obama honeymoon has just
kicked in, time is ticking on our collective attachment to the familiar
and re-assuring, our shared dreams for the posthumanous.
P.S. You checked out Completely Novel yet?
@skybird: The idea that something great must be monumental, a
giant block of the-impossible-to-ignore, is interesting. I think,
though, tastes have changed, and that the soft, ephemeral, modest
attracts its due these days. Obama isn't the bombast, is not just cool,
but modest, and carries himself as if he knows he's got our eye and is
here for the longterm -- no need to shout! And he's our President, not
stormcloud Hillary.
Link: Why Can't a woman write the Great American Novel (Salon)
Judith Levine:
If you're at all Freudian, you'll certainly explore the psyche of
1555
Rocket999:
There's something about Dark Knight which leaves one thinking it's
about getting the best from every particular scene rather than from
the whole plot, which would seem to give real credence to your
argument that there is little or no character development in the film.
But there are many developments within conversations WITHIN
these scenes, notably between Batman and the Joker, but with other
characters as well, which has me thinking that the film, rather, is
actually ALL ABOUT psychological movement and development. You
experienced the movie as primarily about chasing, but the Joker isn't
so much a dog chasing cars as he is the
rhetoritician/politician/therapist set to make artful use of language
and his subject's sensibilities, to draw them to see "just how pathetic
they really are." He seeks to change people, and how, by appearances,
such an outlandish, merciless, crazy, clown, set against the
impossible, will actually manage (or come surprisingly close to
managing) to win people (and you) over, is the question you get to ask
in every scene he's in as you move along. And you watch, in
fascination, as the Joker persuasively moves people who have set
their will against him, through interesting back-and-forths, to ask
questions of themselves, to doubt, to consider his point of view, to
begin to think that maybe he isn't so crazy, after all.
Your characterization of the "love affair" between Wall-E and Eve as
really that of a crush between 8 year olds, is bang-on enough to have
me asking myself if it's the all of it. I would say no, because right now
I find most relationships I see on T.V. and film rather guarded, and I
would love it they could display the sort of vulnerable, enthusiastic,
full commitment that Wall-E displays -- it would amount to a
considerable evolution. This said, Wall-E immediately falls for
someone who is all guarded up, who is ready to destroy anything
which comes close to touching her. It's not necessarily typical of an 8
1557
@bigguns:
I thought Stiller's bit was mean, too, but not effectively so. He enjoyed
being Joaquin too much, and who wouldn't?--while Joaquin plays
with/feels out dropping out, being impromptu, in a way which
suggests he might just get real about it, Stiller and others can go mean
at Hollywood "scripting" in films like Tropic Thunder, but will remain
Zoolander dancing monkeys.
Link: Are the Oscars recession-proof (Salon)
Yeah, Dark Knight -- thanks for that. Dark Knight was an exploitive
film, but it did bring back some of the 9/11 chill. Wall-E did
something of the same, too, and perhaps for this reason they both
struck me as vital. Neither so bleak, though. Both are as much
romances as they are anything else: wall-e and the joker made good
use of their barren (unpeopled, with the former; peopled but with
boring, predictable people, with the latter) landscapes, but really
come to life when the love of their lives comes into their lives (with
both batman and eve being reserved, muscled, bad-asses,
interestingly enough). The batman and joker romance as part of the
Romance montage, then? I would like to have seen that. Would have
shown the Oscars got the point.
Link: Are the Oscars Recession-Proof (Salon)
1558
Been all around, but still the Truman Show (22 February 2009)
Yeah, if there was a nation out there where parents and kids had it
figured out, or which showed how differently parents and kids can
relate to one another, it'd make it more difficult for us just to throw
up our hands and accept, that that's just the way it is.
When you say, "But who among us has not wanted to tell our mothers
to 'f*** off' occasionally?," I'm guessing it means you haven't yet. Hey,
even if none of us have felt that urge, if you've felt it, if you feel it, still
validate it, and maybe also give it an airing here and there. That is,
Let it out. Your mother might appreciate the honest feedback, your
not holding back. Or maybe she'll emotionally abandon you for
awhile, and give you good reason not to do the same again. But with
this misery would come the helpful clue as to how we could endure
endless hours in perplexing, confounding, less than ideal
relationships, and yet still be so ready to find reasons to settle.
There is better out there. There really is. But the way there involves
considering that what these disparate films might all have in
common, is the shared need to romance the mistruth that all families
are, and MUST BE, psychotic.
Obama is going to keep the camps going, because he's going to need
them to place all the Nation's best and brightest. When the Germans
went crazy awhile back, they sent Jews to camps because they thought
they were too uppity, thought they were symbols of liberty, freedom,
prosperity. Obama and the broken, smoking/ex-smoker crowd, will
1559
be blaming wall streeters for now, but who they truly hate, who they
are going to long to go after, are not those who could cheer and relate
with Santelli, but rather the pretty people in their cardigans, who are
temperamentally sweet, and believe they can help create a better,
warmer world.
So the Joan Walshs, Robert Reichs, Paul Krugmans, Alexandra
Pelosis, et al. -- those whose first instinct is not to war, but to warm --
will hopefully soon realize that what they need to be doing is finding a
way out -- create their own Israel, or better, their own Green World,
and away from court as fast as possible!
Link: Bagram Prisoners Have No Rights
dorothy: Well, I like both yours and Sarah's style. Part cowboy-coffee
camper, part caf-coffee dilettante -- why not?
gerard: Your comment about wishing for the low-key is interesting,
worth thinking about. But perhaps making something a movement
gives it momentum, strength, a protective shell, even: it helps makes
something good really happen. Plus, there can be something fun
about this -- it makes it more tangible, more something you can play
with. (I also have a sneaking suspicion it's about helping a generation
muscle it's way in to the forefront, like the baby-boomers eventually
did with whatever cultural movements to push aside the "Greatest
Generation." Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, are what the young "White
people like," [for good reason], after all.)
But everyone: please just say no to Tim Hortons. It's not just the
coffee -- it's what happens to you when you veer near, not the cowboy
cool, but the beastially coarse! Best to go to the places Sarah directs
us to, but settle for a Starbucks if you must: Tim Hortons, willy-nilly,
will tar your spirit to the Harper side. No (truly) good company is to
be found, there -- just bats and bat droppings.
1560
Maybe they're all hanging out in the same cave? Chillin,' figuring out
who's worth chilling? Won't be Hillary, 'cause though she's almost a
different breed, and came near to being a firebrand!, she's now-all-
there-with-a-pack-of-chips herself. So of Obama and Hillary: Peace to
both, but how can we toast the terror she'll roast and the cool chill
he'll will?
Link: Salon
Articles like this one do continue to prop up the idea that if only the
1563
most part they're not in the same head-space as the rest who populate
Canada. The Canadian Tire/Tim Horton Canadians, that is, those
who prefer to imagine themselves as non-descript and monotone, see
in progressives an Apple-like inclination toward a colorful, rich,
beautiful life, and it makes them furious (I wasn't allowed to be like
that! You're not allowed to be like that!).
Again, if I'm wrong -- good. It means, so to speak, that were moving
beyond PC moguls towards mountainous Apple glory.
patrickmh
quarry bay:
If Harper destroys everything of value, then he is doing exactly what
the populace who voted for him, wants. Accumulated wealth makes
people who received insufficient love from, who were treated
sadistically by, their parents (with the nature of their relationship to
the mother being of primary importance), feel extremely anxious: the
reason for this is that unloved parents (mothers) need their children
to give them the love they themselves did not receive from their own
parents (mothers), and communicate in unforgettable ways to their
children (through threats of violence, abandonment) that they are
being very very bad children when they turn from their parents and
start focusing on their own particular needs and wants (which begins
to happen in a big way with adolescence, which is why there is often
so much strain in child/parent relationships during this period).
Accumulated societal wealth, for a society with a large number of
insufficiently unloved constituents, makes people fear the visitation of
some kind of horrific, catastrophic visitation, and this fear is in part
abated when a leader arrives who helps find ways to get rid of all that
anxiety-producing wealth. Spending on the military is usually the way
1565
Alda, here you (in effect) equate pleasure with sin [and also sort of
suggest to me that you might find a return to living in these old times,
a bit overwhelming]:
"You couldn't be more wrong. Who wouldn't love like to return to our
childhood era of the 50's and 60's and 70's when most of us, blissfully
unaware of environmental damage, enjoyed living in one big, happy,
mindless, Disneyesque golden years patry expansion - new vehicles,
appliances, industries, styles, architecture, etc? But we can't do that
now, and sane, realistic people know that in their hearts."
Here you (in effect) equate presumption with sin:
"It's the PLANET itself -- the natural resources and fresh water supply
that will ultimately determine its limits. The phenomenon of Peak oil
should tell you that. Spend a year in India or Japan and come back to
1566
I'm far more concerned that our youngest remain playful than if they
if they know how to do "practical" things (which sounds vaguely
Thatcherite -- didn't she want Brits, owing to the ostensible demands
made by contemporary necessities, to stop studying English and the
like, and learn how to make things?).
For sure, fear might inspire Spartan survivalist vigilance, but it won't
do much to inspire Athenian play.
Maybe rather than look to Jane Jacobs, who with her depressing and
conservative last book showed exactly why she ought to be left
behind, we might look at other books to light the way forward. We
might, for example, look to 1) Douglas Rushkoff's Playing the
Future, 'cause he actually can say good things about what kids are
doing on the net and with their Xboxs; and for sure to 2) Stanley
Greenspan's Secure Child, 'cause here he really reminds us what
happens to kids when they grow up forever worrying about wolves
and scarcity.
patrickmh
1567
I still know some people who read almost a book a day! In addition to
getting them to think more about why they over-consume, I'm also
trying to get them to be more environmentally-friendly and go Kindle.
(Actually, over-consumption is for me all about trying to make up for
lack of love and attendance, and it is incredibly cruel to go after
ANYONE who over-consumes in the spirit of an avenging angel.
Times when they tend to do this usually get summed-up as times of
"purity crusades," that is, times where people are on the lookout,
where-ever-where, for the unfit, for "witches" to burn.)
James, While it is true that I do one day hope to find myself sucking
on Lloyd's titties in an effort to secure for myself some delicious
DeMausian milk, I know for certain that I cannot have, as you
suggest, a cult-like interest in DeMause and his work. It's impossible.
Iknow because I've been a life-long user of apple products, and no one
who uses macs regularly can be anything but a buoyantly happy and
healthy human being.Let me relate a story. A couple months ago I
had a party where a whole bunch of us were sitting in a circle talking
this and that. Someone asked me about my interest in psychohistory,
and, afterexplaining why I don't actually like the term, and after
emphatically DIScouraging them from studying history and
emphatically ENcouraging them to read books by people who are
alive now, I explained the idea of psychoclasses and suggested that
one would probably find that those people who are of the helping
(advanced) psychoclass used macintosh computers, while those who
were of the socializing class (or worse) used windows machines. My
friendsuddenly grabbed everyone's attention, and asked everyone to
indicate the kind of computer they used -- Mac or PC. Turned out that
all the people who used Mac were seated on one side, and all the
others, on the other. What had happened, of course, is that without
knowing it, members of the same psychoclass had sought each other
out. It was like Loyalist vs. Patriot, all over again (Mac users being the
Patriots, and PC users being the dumpy Loyalists,of course.)But while
I don't want to dump on my PC using friends, it is true that most of
them wear more drab clothing, are more inclined to smoke, and are
more likely to be personality-challenged than my mac using friends. If
you go into an Apple store, you'll get a good sense of what we're like.
We tend to wear bright, extravagant, "fun," clothing. We tend to smile
a lot, and hang out with other people who wear bright clothing and
smile a lot. We're always the life of the party -- even when we're trying
1569
not to be. We like taking pictures of one another smiling, and delight
in sending these pictures of our smiling selves to one other. One
might make the mistake of thinking we're narcissistic -- like the
barbaric greeks were, according to our darling DeMause -- but really
we just like being in one another's sunshine -- it's such a great way to
live!You know if I was to have a party where I invited only my mac
using friends, I'd might think to invite over that James Dale Davidson
of yours. You know, he's no Paul Krugman, and he does seem to enjoy
theidea of being a survivor amidst financial societal ruin -- which isn't
the best of fantasies -- a little too much, but he is fun and
adventurous, and I bet some more time amongst those healthier than
himself might bring him a little further toward the sunnier side.Oh! --
that's another thing we mac people like to do!!!: We mac people enjoy
helping others!!!Makes us smile : ) in fact.
maccultenthusiastsincebirth,psycholiteraturely,patrickmh
Link: RealPsychohistory
I'm thinking about your reply. I admit I'm surprised: I would have
figured the numbers had increased. Mustn't have felt very good totake
risks and have the numbers dwindle like that; being "punished"with
relative obscurity for doing right -- Hmmm. Maybe, though, this
development could serve as a spur to encourage you to let those who
are interested in psychohistory but are not those who would push the
discipline where it really ought to and could go, go. (I wonder ifsome
of your interpretations of America's current situation could be
presented so that mags like McSweeney would draw their readers'
attention to it. I think your Reagan's America one of the most
interesting and fun works I've ever read. Something like that donefor
the current four year cycle, maybe . . . )
1570
Link: RealPsychohistory
Link: RealPsychohistory
No, not a fantasy, James. The most advanced psychoclass would be all
about peace, of course. However, they would have within their ranks
1572
Link: RealPsychohistory
1573
She's healthier than her mother, but I'm afraid people like her will
run away when paradigms of thought start becoming more evidently
-- paradigms, ones perhaps rather untethered to reality.
Link: Salon
There are theories which argue that people who come out of more
controlling and less loving families, tend to vote Republican. They
fear Socialism, are repulsed by the idea of hippie-togetherness, and
like to grand-stand Independence, because as children, being part of a
family meant experiencing life as if they were mere extensions of their
parents' (not just wishes and needs but) BODIES. They fear real
economic and social growth, and are willing to vote for those who
would destroy such, because as children they also understood that
when they attended to their own needs rather than those of their
parents, they were acting up as selfish, spoiled, egocentric--bad: and
they are forever hoping to demonstrate themselves good boys and
girls by voting for those who see life as about hardships, and by hating
those they can construe as believing otherwise (i.e. democrats).
Other point: Pelosi suggests that the democrats are honeymooning
right now. Their euphoria seems a bit forced, to me. And they seem
more angry than island-sunners should be. How sure are we that the
pains the Right is experiencing right now, aren't fundamentally
related to those that are causing democrats to be somewhat less than
ebulliently happy? I'm not suggesting that it's 'cause we're all
suffering from the economy. Instead, I'm wondering if BOTH
repubicans and democrats feel abandoned right now -- that they're
both waiting for Obama to emerge as an empowered, assertive daddy.
Perhaps Pelusi is happy because Obama right now still is somewhat
like her mother to her, like her and her friends, in that he is the elite,
polished/mannered, person-in-power, who is not yet charged-up with
a nation's passion. He is the salmon-eating, ivy-leaguer, who looks
1575
No, you're not, but please soon develop the stuff to declare it such: if
you have more than a few kids, no matter your best, there's no way
you'll be able to well attend to them. They become lonely, lost -- they
become what we're trying to get the hell away from: neurotic,
unconscious -- animals.
You're always stepping away. We notice. Please stop; find out what
watches overhead and beat it into mulch; and become the more
interesting person we all sense you to be.
The age for co-ops is coming. I think it will happen at about the same
time as when Generation Ys gain the strength to break free of the
tyranny of their parents' dreams for/expectations of them, and
become dropouts, a la Joaquin Pheonix, respectable society finds
hard to love and is getting in the mood to want see jetisoned. (It
might be too late for many GenXers, who may have decided to accept
the self-hate, while sticking with their diet-pepsis.) When they stop
wanting to couch and undermine their independence with a clear
1576
Yes ME2, but one doesn't cause the other (12 February 2009)
Probably right to ease off of Britney and Lindsay, but your impluse to
go after Angelina is sound.
I agree with you that though Angelina could readily be characterized
as monster-superior, the press has wanted to imagine her more as
MOTHER-superior. The reason for this, I think, is that the many of us
who were born of mothers who used us as little playthings to ward off
depression, and who interpreted our emerging desire to attend to our
own needs rather than their own, as treachery, see in Angelina some
version of the mother who must be praised and placated -- or else!
Did you know that there are cultures which encourage their kids to
play with knives. Not for their own good -- Angelina's purported
1578
motivation -- but because kids aren't valued all that much once they
focus on their own independence. Take New Guinea parenting, for
instance:
"There are many ways New Guinea parents demonstrate that when
the child cannot be used erotically, it is useless. One is that as soon as
infants are not being nursed, they are paid no attention, and even
when in danger are ignored. Anthropologists regularly notice that
little children play with knives or fire and adults ignore them.
Edgerton comments on the practice: 'Parents allowed their small
children to play with very sharp knives, sometimes cutting
themselves, and they permitted them to sleep unattended next to the
fire. As a result, a number of children burned themselves seriously...it
was not uncommon to see children who had lost a toe to burns, and
some were crippled by even more severe burns.' Langness says in the
Bena Bena 'it was not at all unusual to see even very small toddlers
playing with sharp bush knives with no intervention on the part of
caretakers.' But this is good, say the anthropologists, since when
'children as young as two or three are permitted to play with objects
that Westerners consider dangerous, such as sharp knives or burning
brands from the fire, [it] tends to produce assertive, confident, and
competent children.' Children, they explain, are allowed to 'learn by
observations...e.g., the pain of cutting oneself when playing carelessly
with a knife.' As Whiting says, when he once saw a Kwoma baby 'with
the blade of a twelve-inch bush knife in his mouth and the adults
present paid no attention to him,' this was good for the infant, since
in this way 'the child learns to discriminate between the edible and
inedible.' Margaret Mead is particularly ecstatic about the wisdom of
mothers making infants learn to swim early by allowing them to fall
into the water under the hut when crawling and slipping through gaps
in the floor or falling overboard into the sea because they were 'set in
the bow of the canoe while the mother punts in the stern some ten
feet away.'
(Lloyd DeMause, "Childhood and Cultural Evolution," Emotional Life
of Nations
1579
http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/eln07_evolution.html)
You're on the mark, ballspot. Pretty much every cartoon I've seen of
Obama right now has him matched against something hideously large
and bloated, and -- owing to how Rebublican's have greeted his
"birth" -- it's as often a obscurantist, confident elephant as it is a giant
"economy" pig, or "multiple hotspot/demand" octopus, or big pile of
wobbling, tobbling, "everything's about to crash!" pile of dishes. It's
knight against beast, and the elephantine will soon be tamed, just as
you predict. (Again, for what it's worth, I believe the bulk of Obama's
reign will involve a surprising number of republicans as his chief and
most loyal servants. Obama will only for a short time be all linear,
lithe, and/but alone: the future is in Obamanation.)
Link: Salon
car manufacturing (or who think they should be), for instance--are
intrinsically lazy, they'll get in trouble for it. But if they target those
working at McJobs, who refuse to work for less than twenty bucks an
hour, as dolphin paints them, as "shifty" youth, will-never-grow-
uppers, or those who look like they lack the stuff to ever find a way
"back," the voting public might be more than okay with it: they might
already be prone to see these people as irresponsible and dispensible:
people we should be happy to be rid of, for their loss makes the nation
feel pure, virus-free.
Note: If the Tyee would like me to write a fictional piece on the
midnight adventures of a mob of MacChine-Gunning McJobbers, lead
by a baby-boom house burning, Vanessa Richmond, styled a la
Thomas Pynchon, I might be up for it. Could do the pubic good to see
in clerks the potential to be a bit more than prickly.
Link: The Tyee
And so, too, did Hillary call her daughter's generation lazy (which got
her an earful -- way to go, Chelsea!).
Folks, when politicians start calling people lazy, they're entering into
a trance-state they won't soon be exiting. The parts of their brain
which we're all active when *their own parents* called them "lazy,"
"no good," and "worthless," are all reved-up again. It's not "you"
they're really thinking of -- it's themselves, but nevertheless, owing to
a little psychic defence mechanism called "projection," you'll be the
one who gets met out all the punishment.
If talk/thought like this interests you, please do check out (and maybe
even consider thoroughly exploring) Lloyd DeMause's Psychohistory
website (and particulary the book he posted there -- The Emotional
Life of Nations):http://www.psychohistory.com/
Link: The Tyee
that go on and on and on, in all their tittery, glittery, gossipy, glory:
I'll be more apt to listen to you in a way which might encourage me to
change, if you speak to me in my own language.
Link: The Tyee
There's a lot of talk about rage/anger in the press right now. If we're
feeling immersed, trapped, in a rage "miasma," I wonder if we'll
actually soon be in the mood to go easy on the man-hate and even
surrect the idea of man as knight, so that we have something
strong/certain/singular in place to pull us on out? (Not that feminists
don't uphold the idea that men are strong -- however anxious they
depict men, I've seen many a male professor declare themselves
feminist because they liked how women scholars made men seem
such potent hegemons [Freud does much the same for the castrating
father, too, which is why so many 20s moderns went for his
theories.])
Link: Salon
The recession related levity seems to have lasted all of two weeks, eh?
It may be that we are rageful because we are feeling abandoned -- we
still imagine our leaders as neglectful parents -- parents who won't
attend to us even though we're enduring all this carnage earning the
masochistic wage of only ten bucks an hour! The benefit of working
10 bucks an hour (something you've referred to a few times in your
last articles), btw, is that "your" rage is unquestionably righteous --
"you" work the "front lines" for peanuts while "armchair" managers
coast on 10 mill a year?! Guillotines, indeed!
And what about the Americans? They've been sucking out our
lifeblood on the cheap for ages! Even if it further sinks our economy
(which is what we want anyway, to get rid of all the anxiety economic
growth brings with it), it's about time someone stood up to those
brutes! Time for (our version of) Pitchfork Pat (Buchanan)!? Why,
perhaps -- yes: watch the transformation former neo-con Harper
joyously makes to court our favor and direct our rage!
Link: Salon
PETA knew they weren't going to get NBC play. It actually is about
mocking/shaming the average football fan -- it pretends at first, with
aggressive guitar chords and shapely, disrobing women, to be about
arousing male interest, to be "in the men's corner," then switches to
be about women confidently self-pleasuring themselves. That is, male
pretence to be in control is what is being laughed at here.
Better not wait for your next life, Jeffrey J., for the time to participate
in the dopamine rush of equal rep. while all else rots (in anguish) or
wilts (in boredom?), is now. The generation Vanessa talked about
earlier Generationwillneverownahome -- would have known
instantly, if Hillary had won the presidency, that she'd have continued
sending young people to their deaths in Afghanistan, and talked a lot
more about how young people need "to work harder" (read: suffer
more). And some of them will soon get over their Obama worship --
which promised the near irresistible vision of pacified parents (end of
discord), generations uniting -- and understand too that he'll
primarily be about making sure baby-boomers are taken care of while
they spend out their remaining years thinking themselves all Green,
tolerant (did you know there were no black people in the major
1587
Watch over the next several months just how readily the Right
(including, soon enough, Rush Limbaugh [but perhaps not Ann
Coulter]) identifies themselves Obamanites/Obamaknights. Within a
year, watch FOX News declare itself in full support of Obama. (More
than this, watch FOX declare itself the Obama station -- though this
might take a couple.) And watch progressives, anyone on the left, who
finds problems with his militant approach and policies, increasingly
declared racist and threatened with the worst. Obama is the right face
to make the intolerable more than tolerable, and impossible to
protest, and the time to stop romancing the new messiah, is now.
Incidently, I've been called a few names above, myself -- two of them,
harmless, but one of them, in this climate, especially dangerous. I
look forward to seeing a protective, EDITED FOR PERSONAL
INSULT.
1588
Did you know, kids, that the Depression-era also marked the return to
ascendence of the disapproving Maternal scold (banished for awhile,
as women repeatedly did one horrible un-Victorian thing or another),
who saw little but scandal and perversity in the seditious, go-go 20s.
Today's version will further circumspect your freedom (and it's felt
pretty friggin' tight for some time now too, hasn't it? -- turn off your
x-box! stop listening to your ipod [. . . and listen to me]! what kind of
comics are you reading?! -- how disgusting!, let's introduce you to
more wholesome fair, like the great outdoors! (but I liked reading
them, mommy.).
When she comes at you, so righteously affirmed, please feel free, in
whichever way you wish, to sc&* the bi*&%h, royally. She can't help
herself, it's true, but she aims to do nothing less, to you.
-----
glaring street army that truly can buttress predators' attention and
march its way on into adulthood.
Yes, this is no ideal. I don't much like the uniform, "socialist," style.
But many kids feel power in the "black" mass, the collective,
aggressive sexuality, the sparseness and sureness of style, and this
should be respected.
As for porn. If the 80s and on had amounted to a continuation and
expansion of Jim Henson, the Bee Gees, Jimmy Carter, of innocent
fun, porn these days wouldn't be so much about "feel the
shame/pain!" We talk about 9/11, and about what this age of
uncertainty is doing to our kids. But the turn-around occurred much
earlier. And so we have a large populace -- at the very least, one whole
generation -- that turns to the Dark Knight, or dark porn, or dark
comics, cause they see reflected there-in a recognizable world they
find relevance in. (Maybe they hope to find answers there . . .)
If turning (our attention) to our kids amounts to what is has been, a
further turning *on* them, what might they do when they intuit there
no longer is any escape? The usual answer is that they throw
themselves onto one sacrificial battlefield or another. (Afghanistan is
looming . . . Or maybe they'll just start shooting each other again?
Make it even more a part of their daily routine.)
Finally, I genuinely like that the discussed author enjoyed watching
amateur couples do "the nasty" so affectionately and funly. It would
be nice if there was a lot more of that on the web -- something
adolescents interested in sexuality/sex could find easy access to. (I
imagine there are a more than a few lesbian writers who find this
author's preferred tastes, more than a bit staid and oppressive,
though.)
cheers,patrick mcevoy-halston
-----
instincts don't lead them into harm. I don't believe that kids are
naturally drawn to dark things; rather, I believe they come to know of
darkness, of dark things, from their family's complicated attitudes
towards them, and turn to "art" that replicates that experience in an
effort to deal with their fears. At this point, if you simply take away
that "art," you may have taken something away that actually
empowers them. You risk becoming [once again] the predator. [And
by "you," I'm not really thinking of you, G West.])
I don't think that Charney is best understood as an exploiter (the
article says the reporter in question kind of enjoyed it when Charney
did his masturbation bit. You find this difficult to believe. I don't.)
You do. Maybe we're the same age, but when you sense such a gap
between how the same thing is apprehended -- especially in regards
to a sexual theme, especially in regards to the sexual activities of a
relatively young guy--the normal way (the way that most readily
comes to mind) to typify it is as arising out of a generational divide.
Age-wise, it might well be wrong, but sense-wise, it strikes me as
possibly right. (So I went with it.)
(You wonder what his uncle thinks of his behavior?)
As for the whole Beers thing [editors note: for explanation of
what this thing is, please see below]. I see Shannon Rupp as a
righteous predator. I suspect she and those who support her efforts
are going to encourage, not deflate, suffering in children. I think she'll
find some way of characterizing a lot of things that kids these days go
for in terms of sexual practice and general activities, as perverse.
She'll go after the suppliers, justify her efforts in terms of "not
abandoning the young," but she'll make anyone who does anything
she doesn't like feel like cowering -- most especially the kids. I hope
the Tyee understands the dangers this kind of predator presents. And
appreciates when people speak up loudly -- against them.
----
Denouement (aka: the David Beers thing)
----------------------------------------------
1593
-----
Moderator
EDITED FOR SEXIST COMMENT ?????? I can't believe I
just read that!! NO EFFING WAY, MR BEERS- - - I will not
contribute to any GD PC outfit.
Censoring in an attempt to maintain decorum - perhaps. But
you can put censoring to prevent hurt feelings where the sun
don't shine. (ME2, Response to post, Porn Glut)
-----
ME2 and Patrick McEvoy
McEvoy's words encouraged this course of action for a
person subjected to a "maternal scold": "F**K the *B*TCH"
any way you choose"... or words virtually the same, with
clearly the same meaning (I didn't keep them).
That's playing very loosely with encouraging rape. I
censored the prescription for that action. Not the swear
words. And if you say it was a joke, that will not change my
decision in the least. It was a terribly sexist joke.
Our commenter guidelines say sexist remarks are not
allowed on our threads. If you choose not to abide by the
rules, please feel free to comment on other sites that consider
exhortations to rape, and other sexist comments, perfectly
fine. We don't. (David Beers, Response to post, Porn Glut)
*Patrick McEvoy-Halston's* words, that is, David Beers. And if you
truly would encourage others to comment freely on other sites that
consider exhortations to rape perfectly fine, then you, indeed, by your
own standards, should censor yourself. For encouraging rape is never
okay, on your own site or anyone else's. Mr. Beers.
1594
problem, exactly? I have every right to point out that your phrasing
could easily be construed as encouraging hate-speech. You should
have acknowledged that.
SPOILER ALERT!
Saw it this afternoon. Here's what I think:
First off, the climax is just as I expected -- Eastwood's character does
finish things off with a macho display of violence. Yes, he pulls out a
lighter rather than a gun, but the delivery is violent, and essentially
alone, he meats out his (evidently evil) opponents' destruction. (What
would have been unexpected is if Walt listened to his priest's advice,
contacted the police, and *they* figured out a way to inhibit the
gangs' predations; instead, we get a priest who comes to learn that
Walt was right all along).
Also, I wish the film was more aware of an interesting equivalence it
sets up: namely, that Walt and the evil gang-bangers share violent
reactions to trespasses into their territory. But as Dorothy notes, the
film is not interested in drawing connections between Walt and gang-
bangers. They are set up so we have no empathy for them, so that we
can hate them. (Those who want to war against druggies, will shape
their fantasies in the same way.)
Also, Thau is not set up to take things over. He ends the good boy that
really, at heart, nobody takes too seriously -- the fate Michael avoided
in the Godfather by taking violence into his hands. Walt is to be taken
seriously. And so too -- to some extent --the priest, who confronts
things head-on himself.
Also, this is a grandparent's film. Right now I live in Toronto's annex
-- a place populated by liberal 60-year-olds who are forever hoping
they might take in as renters those who are quiet, deferent,
1596
Colbert et. al aren't just clever parasites--they care more than that.
But as Alda rightly senses, they aren't types to expose themselves to
any risk in pursuit of something they believe in (both have had it way
too easy these last number of years).
Also, I don't think I've ever encountered a satirist who isn't somewhat
(or very) conservative. Like the conservative (well, at least he was
interested in psychoanalysis) Christopher Lasch was prone to do,
1597
through ridicule, they attack and in part hope to help demolish, many
progressive ideas, better things.
(And Rick Mercer is the worst. He is a bully--he picks on things [like
Americans] that win him easy praise and no strong push-back, and
he'll do as told by anyone who clearly owns the throne. Once the
cultural sphere shifts more obviously to the right, he'll be Harper's
dog, before you know it.)
Link: RealPsychohistory
The drama you are drawing attention to and reinforcing is the very
attractive one of "good christian soldier," learning/finding ways to
ward of "Satan's" various temptations/lies. We do this through
vigilant attention to, and management of, our desires.
I like your encouragement of introspection, but I amproposing that
you too are offering something -- in your case, a strategy -- framed so
that it will appeal to many at a very deep level, so that it draws one in
before ample consideration. (Who doesn't want these days to imagine
1599
It's too bad that growth now seems to have become a neo-con term.
(One would hope progressives would see something in it they might
like. Stasis -- homeo or otherwise -- just sounds so conservative.) So
the story of evolutionary biology is that we start off with lots and lots
of stuff, and end up with the same amount of lots and lots of stuff?
We never did just have a couple fish, and end up with a bounty of
them?
Atwood -- being somewhat typically Canadian -- finds growth,
anxious (so do I, some), and so all this activity has her thinking of
resting and quiet talks. Periods of manic economic growth (what
we've been living through) make most people anxious. Industrial
England made the Cranford ladies extremely uncomfortable -- to the
delight of Elizabeth Gaskell! The 1920s were another such period, and
its termination was ultimately greeted with a sense of relief (in the
1601
I said this:
Shannon,
Things are changing. People are declining paper bags, asking about
where this or that particular item was made, and other such, much
more than they used to. Part of this is owing to them being better
informed; part of this is owing to their desire to help out; and part of
this is owing to their desire to "shape" themselves so they seem less
worthy of punishment from a culture that seems extremely impatient
for the "privileged," "sexist," consumerist," "glutonous" (etc.), clearly
bad lot to get familiar with the real Hurt.
I also said this:
I very much do agree that if Canadians don't want there to be a
depression, there won't be one (wonderful insight, by the way).
Accepting this thesis as true of course demands assessing human
beings in a different way than as simply homo economicus, that is, as
beings who are ruled primarily by a desire to make a buck. It would
demand accepting that human beings can actually desire the world to
turn bad, for people to lose their jobs and most of their money, for
people to be hurt, in mass -- even if means that they themselves will
suffer. It is theory that would be laughed at by many, but I think,
though, that the alert Tyee reader -- perhaps even by looking at how
many Tyee contributers tend to assess our contemporary civilization
and unfold their visions of the future -- already intuits the truth in all
1602
this.
I would also like to add that, for fear of the efficacy of others' efforts
to make their depression fantasies come true, I really do fear that the
next number of years could quite possibly be quite terrifying for a lot
of us. My sense is that I am not alone in suspecting this; that this
suspicion might be widely held; and that consumers (hate that word,
by the way, but that's a conversation for another day) are quite right
to sort of continue-on with their old ways (if that really is what they
are doing) until they are provided a more surer sense that we will get
through all this. (I would hardly be pleased if people started holing-
up in preparation of a Cormac McCarthy-like vision of the future--I
survived Great Depression 2 'cause I knew how to organic farm and
you didn't, friend.)
alda: I believe you when you say you believe the power hungry are not
monsters but rather the sick who deserve our sympathy (which is how
I believe you characterized them). But, from reading above, you tend
to characterize them, government leaders, and the sheeple, in ways
that make them primarily seem blameworthy. People who "abuse
their power," who "buy this pablum, of course, hook, line, and
sinker," don't seem so much those who deserve sympathy and therapy
but rather those who deserve what's coming to them.
I would never have anyone stand straight in line for Christian,
masochistic sacrifice. I'm all for the fight. But we'll win sooner, I
think, if we find a way to like those we're fighting. Some of them will
come onto our side.
And btw: My focus is primarily on those who vote in the politicians
who essentially work to abuse them. The reason I attend to them
more than I do power-brokers or members of parliament, is because I
think they are the ones in charge, and right now they're getting what
1603
they want -- namely, abuse. I believe that if you really want to know
the true answer behind why the people "are so gullible?," not find
yourself so exasperated and angered when you listen to tales told by
grieving parents, wives and husbands of dead soldiers, you should
please spend more time thinking about the pathology in the people,
about what happens to a populace who for the most part received
insufficient love for them to believe they deserve to be happy, to
believe that progressive societal gains need not be followed by some
kind of punishment/sacrifice, to believe and so readily accept that
they don't deserve the hard-lot in life.
Realisticman: Hello. Glad you like my sic mammilian (poetic license)
hamsters and poetic manners. I like them too!
Link: The Tyee
"show," by our anger, by our desire for revenge, that we at some level
kind of need villains? -- that they might just be, our puppets?
Three, anyone who is a war profiteer would love the way the left
currently narrates them: that is, as evil but cunning master
manipulators, who require a Herculean populist effort to bring down
-- it makes them feel powerful; it's a reward and a reminder to
continue on. What they truly hate, is to be made to feel weak and
irrelevant. And, to a certain extent, they are weak to those who see the
way forward as focussing on those who promote and encourage love
in the world.
Margot: You're aware, I gather, that you rather seem to prefer
imagining yourself a caged hamster who dreams of soaring hawks and
roaring dinosaurs. I like to imagine you as the big-brained
mammilian hamster, who can also see in hawks and dinosaurs, great
shells and gaped vacuity. That is, as someone "greater than," herself.
Link: The Tyee
Hi SharingIsGood,
The way to communicate with those who vote conservative, who
believe the whole environment-thing is overdone, who think those
who would oppose the war in Afghanistan are essentially traitors, etc.,
is to find a way to like them, to respect them.
How is this possible? The old way of thinking of them as primarily in
need of our cavalier attacks on the media that manipulates, uses
them, allowed us to mostly focus our attention of their/our collective
enemies -- we didn't really have to face up to the fact that we likely
thought their tastes, their company-- *them* -- kind of disgusting, we
really didn't have to look at them. And so now as some on the left
begin to acknowledge that the problem is somehow in the "sheeple"
as much as in the "shephards," the left is left with only the knee-jerk
response -- "What the fuck is wrong with you people!" --and so we
1605
think of national collapse, and hope that the beasts who voted in
Harper "enjoy" the hell on earth he will surely provide them with.
If we take a longer, less self-deceptive look at the broad populace, if
we allow ourselves to understand ourselves as democratic, with
democratic sympathies, while still overtly assessing them in what
might easily be made to seem an aristocratic way (i.e., that they are by
constituion not as healthy as we are), we can move toward loving and
respecting those who would still support Harper, regardless of how
often the "Tyee" found its way onto their porches. You'll see in their
eyes and their demeanor--they have not known the love we have
known. They are the results of childhoods involving a considerable
amount of fear and sadism. AND, almost no matter how damaged,
how limited their ability to love is, we'll see that they likely still
possess the ability to read in other peoples' eyes, true respect. They're
not much used to such a response; they'll likely think they probably
don't deserve it; but they'll love us for it. And, eventually, as we listen
to them with more true respect than we hereto have managed, they'll
better listen and attend to our stories, too.
That, in my judgment, is the way to get to them, SharingIsGood. But
the truth is, if your childhood was garbage, there's only so much
growth possible. Tactically, as always, you've got to get to the
children. May every well tempered, progressive person, go into
education.
And have kids (though not too many, lest they experience
abandonment issues -- one or two will do, nicely).
Reponse to post, "Panic press sweepts the nation" (25 Dec. 2008)
Articles like this one do continue to prop-up the idea that if only the
centre-left would get a fair hearing, the Canadian populace would
receive them well. Most of the left, it seems, still believe that the only
way you could have an economic/political system exist which
1606
"People are reviled for refusing to do the Santa dance with their
children.
Santa is about training children to pretend to believe the
preposterous in order to get a material reward, however destructive
and brain-sucking the 'reward' may be."
Vanessa,
Anyone who spends so many hours exploring popular culture
1608
stop all that needless suffering. " Who'd hear talk of the beauty of
ecosystems and the horrors of human intervention, and still find
themselves thinking, "you know, I'd still prefer it if those starving
lions stopped munching on those baby antelopes . . . Maybe we could
encourage them to garden . . ."
X-box
Alda says: "Living the simple, good life - healthy gardening practices,
close community, supported by local, renewable crafts and industry -
doesn't have to be mediocre - but could be beautiful, inherently
workable, and yes, small."
Sounds excellent, but can I bring my Xbox? I don't want to spend ALL
my time knitting.
downplay their own life's gains, to characterize the life they *prefer*
to live, as mediocre.
Link: The Tyee
Sickening and sad. I'm all for Terminator instead. Bring on the
sequel, baby.
Dec. 25 2008
RecommendthisonGoogle
1613
and passion.
[]
The masochistic relationship is what von Trier films with an
almost palpable sense of excitement. Whats notable about
those scenes is the way that they define the sadist (a man,
called K, played by Jamie Bell) and leave his motives
undefined. He, not Joe (now the adult, maternal Joe, played by
Gainsbourg), is the focus of these scenes, and the meticulous
practicality of his ministrations, as well as his overt, robust,
nearly gleeful vigor in inflicting pain, is the sole focus of von
Triers visual pleasure.
[]
The core fantasy is of a woman who is mans random source of
pleasure and who, when she withholds herself from manhood
at large because of her emotional bonds (or would take other
action resulting from those bonds), von Trier sees fit to punish
her for it, brutally. And the woman finds that punishment just
and apt, not requiring redress of any sort.
[]
(Lars Von Triers joylesssexual tantrum, Newyorker.com)
-----
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
She comes across mostly as a rebel -- I'm not sure how well
male viewers are avoiding situating themselves inside her,
experiencing her as their avatar. Going through the train might
have brought to the fore our own memories of having done
something generically akin to that -- the specifics concerning
the man who had to be sucked off to win the candy might not
be that important if we were conceptualizing him mostly as the
tough-get we were once obligated to chase down to make up
for previous losses. In regards to the man with the blubbery
gut, this was the part of the film where after shucking off
1616
societal norms she was figuring out what actually would meet
her needs -- I'm wondering if even this male viewer was too
much indulging in this "Groundhog Day," what if there are no
rules? possibility to be stepping outside her much, even when
his likeness in physique and affect is draped into view as a
draw.
specialtramp @AyeEye
If interviews are anything to go by the depression you refer to
is the director's own. Why, then, make a trilogy of movies
about depressed women whose sexuality goes off the rails? In
Antichrist Gainsbourg's character's sexual desires lead
indirectly to the death of her child (punishment) and then
1617
Patrick McEvoy-Halston@specialtramp
I'm glad he did so, though. A mother's willingly torturing her
child -- the big reveal in Antichrist -- is pretty much beyond
what any of us can tackle right now. The limits of therapy were
helpfully revealed, when her husband realizes why he was
having so much trouble dissuading her she was evil -- "You did
... what?!"
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This film teased at an explanation, beyond evil. The child's
abandoned because it's seen as something which mocks and
laughs at you when you so desperately are in need of the
opposite. And the reason why you need so much, and why
you'd spend your life throwing yourself at the rescuing-knight
male sex, is because you had a "cold bitch" mother who turned
her back on you. Isn't that why the final scene in Antichrist --
men had thus far proved irrelevant to the fates passed on
through the mother-daughter dyad? Willem Dafoe was
beginning to get it; Seligman was a step back.
Posted by Patrick McEvoy-Halston at 3:19 PM No comments: Links to this post
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1619
[]
For some people, the possibility that the laws of physics might
illuminate even the creation of our own universe, without the
need for supernatural intervention or any demonstration of
purpose, is truly terrifying. But Mondays announcement
heralds the possible beginning of a new era, where even such
cosmic existential questions are becoming accessible to
experiment. (A scientific breakthrough lets us see to the very
beginning of time,Newyorker.com)
-----
PatrickMcEvoyHalston
For some people, the possibility that the laws of physics might
illuminate even the creation of our own universe, without the
need for supernatural intervention or any demonstration of
1620