A couple of my workshop buddies want to start a comic strip called Fudd Meridian. Elmer Fudd is the Kid, Bugs Bunny is the Judge.
Personally I'd have done it the other way around, but it's still the funniest idea I've heard in a long time.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
"A Forest Of Woods"
I just finished James Wood's brilliant How Fiction Works last night--so how funny to stumble across this brilliant, but flawed piece today.
He begins: In recent elections, the Republican hate word has been “liberal,” or “Massachusetts,” or “Gore.” In this election, it has increasingly been “words.” Barack Obama has been denounced again and again as a privileged wordsmith, a man of mere words who has “authored” two books (to use Sarah Palin’s verb), and done little else. ... John McCain’s threatened cancellation of the first Presidential debate was the ultimate defiance, by action, of words; sure enough, afterward conservatives manfully disdained Barack Obama’s “book knowledge.” To have seen the mountains of Waziristan with one’s own eyes—that is everything. Doesn’t this reflect a deep suspicion of language itself? It’s as if Republican practitioners saw words the way Captain Ahab saw “all visible objects”—as “pasteboard masks,” concealing acts and deeds and things—and, like Ahab, were bent on striking through those masks.
Beautifully said--and true. A persistent Republican strategy for most of my lifetime has been to denigrate knowledge: you see this in the dismissal, typically without evidence, of inconvenient facts as the inventions of "elitist liberals" (I never get over the ridiculousness of this trope, when it comes from people as rich as Phyllis Schlafly or Bill O'Reilly). You see it in what can only be called President Bush's hostility to research (well-documented by Ron Suskind, among many other reporters, and admitted to by the president himself), and in the complacent acceptance of this totally inappropriate trait by Republican operatives and wordsmiths. You can see it in the whole Bush-O'Reilly-Fox News embrace of "the gut," so well satirized by Stephen Colbert.
I'll leave aside the Orwellian idiocy of the GOP use of "elitist" for now. (It's like a sore tooth I can't stop waggling.) I'll just say this: I'm an English teacher, among other things, and the Republican denigration of reading and writing just pisses me right off. Conservatives whine more than any other group of people about how Young people these days just don't know how to spell, and Back in my day we had to learn the proper use of a comma, and It's all the fault of these black kids who say "mouf" and "femily" and can't pull up their pants. And it's these same conservatives who always blame our beleaguered public school system for this state of affairs--and they blame ethnic minorities--and they blame TV (well, even conservatives are right sometimes!)--and I've even seen them blame things like the advance of democracy, widespread literacy, etc. But then they'll turn around and praise the President and his top advisers for being too manly and decisive to bother reading newspapers or forming coherent thoughts. The hypocrisy really galls me. Either language matters or it doesn't. How the fuck am I supposed to teach my students that words matter in this atmosphere? The President obviously thinks they don't.
So, I read this much of Wood's article and I just feel all kinds of love for James Wood. And this is not an uncommon condition for me--he's only gotten better since he left The New Republic for The New Yorker. But then he commits this: The Melvillean atmosphere may not be accidental, since, beyond the familiar American anti-intellectualism—to work with words is not to work at all—there’s a residual Puritanism. The letter killeth, as St. Paul has it, but the spirit giveth life. (In that first debate, McCain twice charged his opponent with the misdeed of “parsing words.”) In this vision, there is something Pharisaical about words. They confuse, they corrupt; they get in the way of Jesus.
No pun intended, but, Oh, God. The Puritans were the wordiest people ever. (Maybe that's why they're so misrepresented: they left so many long books that it's scary to even think about reading one. Easier to just remember how mean they were when you read The Crucible in 11th grade.) They replaced the medieval we-won't-let-you-read-the-Bible, but-just-check-out-our-beautiful-murals! tradition with a culture of lectures and commentaries and preaching and printed Bibles, of educational institutions where Greek and Latin and (thanks in part to Calvin) Hebrew were taught, sometimes even to women. When he wasn't busy drinking the blood of kittens and shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die, bad old Calvin himself praised the sciences and generally evinced all the intellectualism of a vastly learned Renaissance humanist. And as for Jesus and Paul--well, the latter wrote like a maniac. The closest he ever got to anti-intellectualism was to remind the smart to stay humble. (Which isn't anti-intellectual at all. It's the first thing that all the really smart people I've met will tell you.) The former called himself the Word. 'Nuff said.
About American anti-intellectualism. I'm not sure that I believe there is such a thing. There are people who are prejudiced against the conspicuously smart; there always have been such people. (A servant girl mocked Thales because he studied the heavens so much that he tripped on a root or something, I can't remember the details.) British pop culture seems to almost celebrate this kind of person--the proud blowhard. (Archie Bunker was based on a character in a Britcom, or so I read once.) Then there are, as well, people who self-consciously adopt the position that it's bad to think, for one reason or another. Sometimes this is a species of opportunism--as in, I think, Edmund Burke, who found in it a way to dismiss the content of ideas he didn't like. (Human rights? That's the kind of thing that comes from thinking too much--and being French. Better to let custom and habit be your guide.) This kind of thinking would seem to be inherent in Nietzsche. It's totally self-contradictory, and it creeps me out in any form, but there's nothing distinctively American about it (Burke and Nietzsche weren't exactly from Skokie). Some Americans have bought into it (Normal Mailer, the Beats, the hippies), but that's a different thing entirely. Then there's religious anti-intellectualism in its several flavors: the condescending Buddhist who patiently reminds you that logic is an illusion; the cult member who tells you that asking questions is a sign of Satanic influence; and, yes, certain fundamentalists and Pentacostals I've met who operate the same way cult leaders do, telling you that questions are, essentially, evil. I can't speak for other religious traditions, but this kind of bullshit has no place in Christianity. God didn't give us minds so that we could deface and insult them, any more than he gave us bodies so that we could coke them up. Gifts are to be used, not rejected, still less credited to Satan. But, again, I don't know that this is particularly American; and where it exists, it sure as hell ain't Calvinist in any but the most desiccated way.
He begins: In recent elections, the Republican hate word has been “liberal,” or “Massachusetts,” or “Gore.” In this election, it has increasingly been “words.” Barack Obama has been denounced again and again as a privileged wordsmith, a man of mere words who has “authored” two books (to use Sarah Palin’s verb), and done little else. ... John McCain’s threatened cancellation of the first Presidential debate was the ultimate defiance, by action, of words; sure enough, afterward conservatives manfully disdained Barack Obama’s “book knowledge.” To have seen the mountains of Waziristan with one’s own eyes—that is everything. Doesn’t this reflect a deep suspicion of language itself? It’s as if Republican practitioners saw words the way Captain Ahab saw “all visible objects”—as “pasteboard masks,” concealing acts and deeds and things—and, like Ahab, were bent on striking through those masks.
Beautifully said--and true. A persistent Republican strategy for most of my lifetime has been to denigrate knowledge: you see this in the dismissal, typically without evidence, of inconvenient facts as the inventions of "elitist liberals" (I never get over the ridiculousness of this trope, when it comes from people as rich as Phyllis Schlafly or Bill O'Reilly). You see it in what can only be called President Bush's hostility to research (well-documented by Ron Suskind, among many other reporters, and admitted to by the president himself), and in the complacent acceptance of this totally inappropriate trait by Republican operatives and wordsmiths. You can see it in the whole Bush-O'Reilly-Fox News embrace of "the gut," so well satirized by Stephen Colbert.
I'll leave aside the Orwellian idiocy of the GOP use of "elitist" for now. (It's like a sore tooth I can't stop waggling.) I'll just say this: I'm an English teacher, among other things, and the Republican denigration of reading and writing just pisses me right off. Conservatives whine more than any other group of people about how Young people these days just don't know how to spell, and Back in my day we had to learn the proper use of a comma, and It's all the fault of these black kids who say "mouf" and "femily" and can't pull up their pants. And it's these same conservatives who always blame our beleaguered public school system for this state of affairs--and they blame ethnic minorities--and they blame TV (well, even conservatives are right sometimes!)--and I've even seen them blame things like the advance of democracy, widespread literacy, etc. But then they'll turn around and praise the President and his top advisers for being too manly and decisive to bother reading newspapers or forming coherent thoughts. The hypocrisy really galls me. Either language matters or it doesn't. How the fuck am I supposed to teach my students that words matter in this atmosphere? The President obviously thinks they don't.
So, I read this much of Wood's article and I just feel all kinds of love for James Wood. And this is not an uncommon condition for me--he's only gotten better since he left The New Republic for The New Yorker. But then he commits this: The Melvillean atmosphere may not be accidental, since, beyond the familiar American anti-intellectualism—to work with words is not to work at all—there’s a residual Puritanism. The letter killeth, as St. Paul has it, but the spirit giveth life. (In that first debate, McCain twice charged his opponent with the misdeed of “parsing words.”) In this vision, there is something Pharisaical about words. They confuse, they corrupt; they get in the way of Jesus.
No pun intended, but, Oh, God. The Puritans were the wordiest people ever. (Maybe that's why they're so misrepresented: they left so many long books that it's scary to even think about reading one. Easier to just remember how mean they were when you read The Crucible in 11th grade.) They replaced the medieval we-won't-let-you-read-the-Bible, but-just-check-out-our-beautiful-murals! tradition with a culture of lectures and commentaries and preaching and printed Bibles, of educational institutions where Greek and Latin and (thanks in part to Calvin) Hebrew were taught, sometimes even to women. When he wasn't busy drinking the blood of kittens and shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die, bad old Calvin himself praised the sciences and generally evinced all the intellectualism of a vastly learned Renaissance humanist. And as for Jesus and Paul--well, the latter wrote like a maniac. The closest he ever got to anti-intellectualism was to remind the smart to stay humble. (Which isn't anti-intellectual at all. It's the first thing that all the really smart people I've met will tell you.) The former called himself the Word. 'Nuff said.
About American anti-intellectualism. I'm not sure that I believe there is such a thing. There are people who are prejudiced against the conspicuously smart; there always have been such people. (A servant girl mocked Thales because he studied the heavens so much that he tripped on a root or something, I can't remember the details.) British pop culture seems to almost celebrate this kind of person--the proud blowhard. (Archie Bunker was based on a character in a Britcom, or so I read once.) Then there are, as well, people who self-consciously adopt the position that it's bad to think, for one reason or another. Sometimes this is a species of opportunism--as in, I think, Edmund Burke, who found in it a way to dismiss the content of ideas he didn't like. (Human rights? That's the kind of thing that comes from thinking too much--and being French. Better to let custom and habit be your guide.) This kind of thinking would seem to be inherent in Nietzsche. It's totally self-contradictory, and it creeps me out in any form, but there's nothing distinctively American about it (Burke and Nietzsche weren't exactly from Skokie). Some Americans have bought into it (Normal Mailer, the Beats, the hippies), but that's a different thing entirely. Then there's religious anti-intellectualism in its several flavors: the condescending Buddhist who patiently reminds you that logic is an illusion; the cult member who tells you that asking questions is a sign of Satanic influence; and, yes, certain fundamentalists and Pentacostals I've met who operate the same way cult leaders do, telling you that questions are, essentially, evil. I can't speak for other religious traditions, but this kind of bullshit has no place in Christianity. God didn't give us minds so that we could deface and insult them, any more than he gave us bodies so that we could coke them up. Gifts are to be used, not rejected, still less credited to Satan. But, again, I don't know that this is particularly American; and where it exists, it sure as hell ain't Calvinist in any but the most desiccated way.
Friday, October 10, 2008
The War on Phone Sex
Every conservative I know keeps insisting that the Bush administration only uses its magically supra-Constitutional eavesdropping powers to keep tabs on terrorists. A certain dearly loved relative keeps telling me that, for example, the NSA only starts tapping your calls if you've been intercepted talking to a known bad guy. (This same loved one reads Dostoevsky for fun and can have conversations with you about string theory; yet he once told me that the education budget is bigger than the military budget, and that Indians should be grateful for colonialism. This is what Fox News does to even the noblest minds.)
Just in case any non-conservative believed this line of bullshit, two whistleblowers at the NSA have now admitted what anybody with any common sense could have foreseen: that the NSA mostly listens in on private conversations, between ordinary US citizens, that they know have nothing to do with terrorism. Among many abuses of power, the NSA whistleblowers describe people gathering around to listen to a US soldier have phone sex with his girlfriend.
You may assume that, as a liberal, I'm appalled by this senseless and unnecessary invasion of privacy, but you'd be wrong. I think phone sex needs to be suppressed by every legal and illegal means possible. It's total aesthetic terrorism. Nothing in the universe sounds dorkier than two otherwise-intelligent people carrying on like Henry Miller writing an instruction manual: "Now I'm stroking your left breast, making sure to trace multiple concentric circles around your nipple. Now your mouth has moved to my neck. Oh, baby." Forget it, man. Phone sex is literalism run amuck--the only thing it has in common with creationism. It leaves all subtlety and imagination aside and ignores the power of indirection and metaphor.
I hope this is only the first step in a Republican war on aesthetically offensive things, but somehow I doubt it. After all, look at John McCain's grin ... and that Foo Fighters song ... and Sarah Palin's sentences ...
On a more serious note, will Pres. Obama give up all these magic powers that W. won for him at the expense of our constitutional order? I really want to say yes, but in reality, we'll need to watch him like a hawk. Power's hard to give up. That's something conservatives used to claim to believe, at least when it gave them a pretext for attacking welfare programs.
Just in case any non-conservative believed this line of bullshit, two whistleblowers at the NSA have now admitted what anybody with any common sense could have foreseen: that the NSA mostly listens in on private conversations, between ordinary US citizens, that they know have nothing to do with terrorism. Among many abuses of power, the NSA whistleblowers describe people gathering around to listen to a US soldier have phone sex with his girlfriend.
You may assume that, as a liberal, I'm appalled by this senseless and unnecessary invasion of privacy, but you'd be wrong. I think phone sex needs to be suppressed by every legal and illegal means possible. It's total aesthetic terrorism. Nothing in the universe sounds dorkier than two otherwise-intelligent people carrying on like Henry Miller writing an instruction manual: "Now I'm stroking your left breast, making sure to trace multiple concentric circles around your nipple. Now your mouth has moved to my neck. Oh, baby." Forget it, man. Phone sex is literalism run amuck--the only thing it has in common with creationism. It leaves all subtlety and imagination aside and ignores the power of indirection and metaphor.
I hope this is only the first step in a Republican war on aesthetically offensive things, but somehow I doubt it. After all, look at John McCain's grin ... and that Foo Fighters song ... and Sarah Palin's sentences ...
On a more serious note, will Pres. Obama give up all these magic powers that W. won for him at the expense of our constitutional order? I really want to say yes, but in reality, we'll need to watch him like a hawk. Power's hard to give up. That's something conservatives used to claim to believe, at least when it gave them a pretext for attacking welfare programs.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
You've Got To Be Kidding Me
Republicans in the 1990s: You know who's ugly? Chelsea Clinton! Did you know the White House has its own official dog? Yeah, it's Chelsea Clinton! You know why Chelsea Clinton's so ugly? 'Cause Janet Reno's her father! You know what Bill really wishes? That Chelsea wasn't so ugly! (Ad nauseam ...)
Liberals in the last couple weeks, on hearing that Bristol Palin is pregnant: Huh.
Mike Huckabee, a couple days ago: I just can't believe how these Democrats are attacking Sarah Palin's family! We never did that to Hillary and Chelsea!
Liberals in the last couple weeks, on hearing that Bristol Palin is pregnant: Huh.
Mike Huckabee, a couple days ago: I just can't believe how these Democrats are attacking Sarah Palin's family! We never did that to Hillary and Chelsea!
Monday, September 15, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
Go Dave!
Now that David Rhodes is back in print, I'm finding that all these other people have read him over the years and wondered what happened to him. (Several comments below, including one from a nice lady with the same name as the hero of The Easter House; also, the Wall Street Journal reporter I talked to last week about the books said the same thing.) It's gratifying to find Ben adn I weren't the only ones. Belated thanks to everyone who has left comments. Go Dave!
Lies Make Baby Jesus Cry
I've tried to keep an open mind, but it really depressed me to read what some charismatic Christians are saying about Sarah Palin. They're calling her "anointed", as in by the Holy Spirit, because of her bold and confident speaking style.
What about the content of the message, though? Sarah Palin is lying, just plain openly lying, about her credentials as a reformer. She opposed the Bridge to Nowhere after Congress had already killed it; up till then she pursued it as actively as, after its cancellation, she continued to pursue other forms of pork. She was the head of corrupt senator Ted Stevens's 527 organization. She asked for almost two hundred million in earmarks (a lot more than the "none" she is claiming). Now that "change" is cool, she's presenting herself as an early adopter (recall George Bush Sr.'s ill-fated 1992 attempt to recast himself, the incumbent, as the candidate of change). It's kinda like that guy in O Brother Where Art Thou: "Re-form? I got plenty of re-form!"
Of course politicians lie. I'm just saying that it's not something someone can do through the power of the Holy Spirit. And when Pentacostals, et. al., let themselves be so carried away by their liking for her that they claim things like this, it's kind of an insult to God. I would never ever make similar claims for Barack Obama, though I like him as much as I've ever liked a politician. I want him to be President, but I don't think that makes him God's prophet. He's just a guy.
(And this sort of puts a new spin on this insulting GOP myth that Obama's fans all view him as a messiah.)
I also have nothing but contempt for people who attack community organizers. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a community organizer, for heaven's sake.
What's more irritating is that, when the media subjects Palin to just the tiny bit of scrutiny any candidate deserves, it seems to inflame these same conservative Christians, who then accuse the media of "going after her daughter," attacking her religion, etc. Maybe the gossip mags have gone after her family--I wouldn't know because, being interested in actual information, I don't read gossip mags. What I do read is most of the major liberal journals of opinion--Washington Monthly, The Nation, American Prospect, MoJo--as well as most of the major liberal blogs (Atrios, TAPPED, Talking Points Memo, Matt Yglesias). In all these places people have mostly been restrained in criticizing her religion, reporting on it only as it may affect policy, and peoples' responses to her daughter's situation is: "Poor kid. Hope the media leaves her alone." (That is my response too, of course, having been through something similar when I was her age.)
Finally, while I'm ranting, there's this McCain ad that claims Obama backed a bill requiring sex ed for kindergarteners. Except he didn't. He backed a bill requiring that, where sex ed is already being taught at any level, K-12, it include information about protecting yourself against pedophiles. Mitt Romney supported a similar bill when he was governor of Massachusetts. A lot of communities have 'em, because they don't want kids to get molested. Certainly when I was in kindergarten I got taught about "appropriate" and "inappropriate" touching, not letting an adult touch your private parts, etc. So McCain, honorable POW McCain, is just plain lying too. Obama would almost be justified in running a response ad: "John McCain wants to leave your kids vulnerable to sex predators," or something. They shouldn't, and they probably won't, but ... geez, this is scummy and ridiculous.
McCain/Palin have gotten so dishonest this week that even their ally, Mike Huckabee, is wishing they'd get back to talking about issues. (Another reason why I have a little more respect for Huckabee than for many of his ilk.) It's causing aches and pains in my head.
What about the content of the message, though? Sarah Palin is lying, just plain openly lying, about her credentials as a reformer. She opposed the Bridge to Nowhere after Congress had already killed it; up till then she pursued it as actively as, after its cancellation, she continued to pursue other forms of pork. She was the head of corrupt senator Ted Stevens's 527 organization. She asked for almost two hundred million in earmarks (a lot more than the "none" she is claiming). Now that "change" is cool, she's presenting herself as an early adopter (recall George Bush Sr.'s ill-fated 1992 attempt to recast himself, the incumbent, as the candidate of change). It's kinda like that guy in O Brother Where Art Thou: "Re-form? I got plenty of re-form!"
Of course politicians lie. I'm just saying that it's not something someone can do through the power of the Holy Spirit. And when Pentacostals, et. al., let themselves be so carried away by their liking for her that they claim things like this, it's kind of an insult to God. I would never ever make similar claims for Barack Obama, though I like him as much as I've ever liked a politician. I want him to be President, but I don't think that makes him God's prophet. He's just a guy.
(And this sort of puts a new spin on this insulting GOP myth that Obama's fans all view him as a messiah.)
I also have nothing but contempt for people who attack community organizers. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a community organizer, for heaven's sake.
What's more irritating is that, when the media subjects Palin to just the tiny bit of scrutiny any candidate deserves, it seems to inflame these same conservative Christians, who then accuse the media of "going after her daughter," attacking her religion, etc. Maybe the gossip mags have gone after her family--I wouldn't know because, being interested in actual information, I don't read gossip mags. What I do read is most of the major liberal journals of opinion--Washington Monthly, The Nation, American Prospect, MoJo--as well as most of the major liberal blogs (Atrios, TAPPED, Talking Points Memo, Matt Yglesias). In all these places people have mostly been restrained in criticizing her religion, reporting on it only as it may affect policy, and peoples' responses to her daughter's situation is: "Poor kid. Hope the media leaves her alone." (That is my response too, of course, having been through something similar when I was her age.)
Finally, while I'm ranting, there's this McCain ad that claims Obama backed a bill requiring sex ed for kindergarteners. Except he didn't. He backed a bill requiring that, where sex ed is already being taught at any level, K-12, it include information about protecting yourself against pedophiles. Mitt Romney supported a similar bill when he was governor of Massachusetts. A lot of communities have 'em, because they don't want kids to get molested. Certainly when I was in kindergarten I got taught about "appropriate" and "inappropriate" touching, not letting an adult touch your private parts, etc. So McCain, honorable POW McCain, is just plain lying too. Obama would almost be justified in running a response ad: "John McCain wants to leave your kids vulnerable to sex predators," or something. They shouldn't, and they probably won't, but ... geez, this is scummy and ridiculous.
McCain/Palin have gotten so dishonest this week that even their ally, Mike Huckabee, is wishing they'd get back to talking about issues. (Another reason why I have a little more respect for Huckabee than for many of his ilk.) It's causing aches and pains in my head.
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