Friday, December 09, 2005
SPANNING THE GLOBE. Whoops! At PowerLine:Our friend Mac Owens writes:I don't know if you saw this. I think it's a pretty good analysis of the president's Iraq strategy document. [Note] my last paragraph in which I refer to the Copperhead faction of the Dem Party (most of them, led by Murtha-Pelosi) and the Copperhead-lite alternative (Kerry and Hilary). I thought of the link when I read [Paul's] reference to "defeatocrat-lite"..." No, no, Big Trunk or Trunkrocket or whatever you're calling yourself this month! Owens' note was obviously meant to be private! He was just explaining how you should frame his story because you're a little dense and need that sort of prompting. When you show a guy talking so lovingly about his own column, it makes him look like an idiot.
Which Owens is. So nevermind.
Here's a bonus citizen soldier! Nine-Star General Ralph "Blood 'n' Guts" Peters, one of my favoritest cartoon characters, sounds off about Howard Dean's claim that we can't win in Iraq. The General mocks Dean not only because he "encourage[s] our enemies to kill American troops" (all in a day's work for us traitorous Dems!), but also because Dean "never bothered to serve in uniform" and for "his ignorance of military history." One imagines Jonah Goldberg standing behind the General, shaking his GI Joe at Dean and yelling "Burn! Wicked burn!"
As always with the General, lots of entertaining froth, such as this:Consider this: Not one of us would consider looking over a neurosurgeon's shoulder and directing an operation. Yet a colonel in our military has more years of formal education — and far more varied hands-on experience — than any surgeon. Fucking pussy surgeons. I can cut good's they can. (Drunkenly unsheathes his Ka-Bar.) Hold nice 'n' still.
Great fun, but the General grows tedious by pretending to wish fervently for a non-treasonous "responsible and strong Democratic Party." I direct him, yet again (does his adjutant not relay my communiques?), to my Perublican Party Manifesto.
Oh, I mentioned Jonah Goldberg, didn't I? Then I guess I have to mention his latest. It is, as usual, the stupidest thing ever written, and will remain so until he writes something else. Sample quote:In "Patriot Games," Harrison Ford shot a man in the kneecap to get the information he needed in a timely manner. In "Rules of Engagement," Samuel L. Jackson shot a POW in the head to get another man to talk.
And the audience is expected to cheer, or at least sympathize with, all of it. Now, I know many will say, "It's only a movie" or "It's only a TV show." But that will not do. Hollywood plays a role in shaping culture, but it also reflects it. It both affirms and reflects our basic moral sense (which is one reason why it dismays some of us from time to time). No person, not even Goldberg, could speak those lines aloud and believe that they made any sense.
To end on a unreasonably high note, here's Free Republic's Friday Toons, made by people who are as crazy as our other subjects but so much more fun, bless them. In fairness, I must point out that some of the cartoons are actually funny, and a few diverge from the Freeper party line. But for the most part it's the usual:
I note with interest that "State of the Union" now features Jeff Jacoby.
This fellow hates newspaper publishers so much, he makes them turn black! (BTW, this isn't racist, why would you think that? You must be racist yourself.)
I'll let this guy wrap things up -- he sure can write a punchline!
12:35 PM by roy edroso
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Thursday, December 08, 2005
SORRY, OLD CHAP. I really hate to say this, but Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize speech was not well played.
In a way I admire it. He had a world stage, and gave from it (or from a TV set perched on it) the explicitly political lecture he wished to give. There is a touch in this of Brando sending out Sacheen Littlefeather, which I also admire. Fuck 'em if they can't take a rant. What makes their party more sacrosanct than the Oscars? It's his party this year, after all.
My quarrel is that he did not explicitly tie his gift to literature -- the occasion for the speech -- to his political argument. This judgement may be based on ignorance of his more recent work, which I have seen mostly on right-wing websites, by which torn pieces covered in wolves' spittle no sensible person could judge it.
That notwithstanding, I do see a break in Pinter's speech that cut his authority as a great writer away from his reasoning as a world citizen. And without that authority his argument, again given the occasion, loses the force it might have had.
All the early stuff about his working method is, or should be, nectar to writers:In the play that became The Homecoming I saw a man enter a stark room and ask his question of a younger man sitting on an ugly sofa reading a racing paper. I somehow suspected that A was a father and that B was his son, but I had no proof. This was however confirmed a short time later when B (later to become Lenny) says to A (later to become Max), 'Dad, do you mind if I change the subject? I want to ask you something. The dinner we had before, what was the name of it? What do you call it? Why don't you buy a dog? You're a dog cook. Honest. You think you're cooking for a lot of dogs.' So since B calls A 'Dad' it seemed to me reasonable to assume that they were father and son. A was also clearly the cook and his cooking did not seem to be held in high regard. Did this mean that there was no mother? I didn't know. But, as I told myself at the time, our beginnings never know our ends. This is excellent, largely because it approaches the universal by way of the particular. Not everyone starts as Pinter does, but the conclusion at which he arrives is both philosophically astute and common knowledge – it’s also funny, which demonstrates that the mystery Pinter pursued is one we all can acknowledge, and gives evidence of his lasting gift.
Pinter remains on the right track with his first relating of language to politics:But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot.
Political theatre presents an entirely different set of problems. Sermonising has to be avoided at all cost. Objectivity is essential. The characters must be allowed to breathe their own air. The author cannot confine and constrict them to satisfy his own taste or disposition or prejudice. He must be prepared to approach them from a variety of angles, from a full and uninhibited range of perspectives, take them by surprise, perhaps, occasionally, but nevertheless give them the freedom to go which way they will. This does not always work. And political satire, of course, adheres to none of these precepts, in fact does precisely the opposite, which is its proper function. This is inarguable. Shortly thereafter:Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed. Well... okay... but...As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.
The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.
Here you get the feeling that only the thinnest reed connects Pinter’s argument with its target: he has begun to compare the quest of earnest travellers toward truth, such as himself, with that of professional liars. It isn’t that the argument is too big for the target – though I think it is – but that one has nothing really to do with the other.
By the time we get to the painful descriptions of Reagan’s Nicaragua policy, Pinter’s argument is as far off the mark as a bird’s argument with a cat. It is beyond the province of literature, and, I fear, there is nothing in it that can wrest the argument back toward terms more favorable to literature. That may be Pinter’s assessment, too, and while I appreciate his dire conclusion – I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.
If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man. -- the speech, meant to accent the "crucial obligation," because it plays on the enemy's field is forced to leave its weight on the "enormous odds."
It may be that Toni Morrison’s Nobel Speech has as little relevance to the real, bleeding, scheming world as Pinter’s, and Lord knows I prefer his work to hers. But her Speech hinged on a metaphor – a blind woman trying to discern the fate of a bird in hand – and tightly connected her gift, such as it is, to the enemy it faced in the State: The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek - it must be rejected, altered and exposed. I would be remiss not to mention the Speech by the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky: "How can one write music after Auschwitz?" inquired Adorno; and one familiar with Russian history can repeat the same question by merely changing the name of the camp - and repeat it perhaps with even greater justification, since the number of people who perished in Stalin's camps far surpasses the number of German prisoncamp victims. "And how can you eat lunch?" the American poet Mark Strand once retorted. In any case, the generation to which I belong has proven capable of writing that music. This is not to play Dueling Oppressions, but to recognize that oppression remains what it has always been, as art has, and though the former tries like hell it has not in all these centuries been able to eradicate the latter. Pinter might have spoken of the particularly seductive language oppression, Western-style, has learned to deceive its subjects; what a speech that might have been!
But we already ask too much of our artists when we ask them to tell us how they do what they do. And I note with displeasure that the Nobel Speeches get longer each decade – look at Knut Hamsen’s! If Pinter’s speech disappoints you, read the plays. They contain everything you need to know.
9:05 PM by roy edroso
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TIGHT-LIPPED, CONDESCENDING, MAMA'S LITTLE CHAUVINISTS. The right wing observes the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death:- New York Post wishes Lennon could have gotten to know and love Rudy Giuliani (then, at least, he'd merely be in jail instead of dead);
- Washington Times hopes Yoko Ono, having been "mugged by reality," has become more conservative (maybe they should send her a card);
- NRO crackpot tries to convince himself that he and John Lennon shared some of the same politics, because he rilly, rilly likes John Lennon's music. Which, come to think of it, explains a lot of that "Top 10 Conservative Movie Trailers/House Music Records/Book Jacket Designs etc." type of horseshit that they do over there.
1:57 PM by roy edroso
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SHORTER PEGGY NOONAN.
(to the tune of "Who Put The Overalls in Mrs. Murphy's Chowder")
Now me Grandma came from Ireland a hundred years ago
And she had things so much tougher than them boys from Mexico
True, Mexicans risk life and limb to get into th' States
But Grandma briefly wore a card all marked with names an' dates
One night me Grandma had to sleep out in th' open air
(I guess th' campesinos, bein' campers, wouldn't care!)
Now Mexicans are runnin' wild -- Lou Dobbs showed me th' tapes --
And they laugh at dear old Grandma as they come to pick our grapes!
Chorus
Who let th' Mexicans in Peggy Noonan's country?
Soon we will racially be naught but gallimaufry
Grandma slept upon a bench
Now I'm grand as Judi Dench
No Mexicans in Peggy Noonan's country!
10:08 AM by roy edroso
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Wednesday, December 07, 2005
PUTZ COUNTER PUTZ. Finally saw one of those "blogjams" at PJOSM Whatchamacallit. It went something like this:
 Like my colleague, I was against the war in Iraq. I wanted instead to invade Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, and kill everyone in them and replace them with our own illegal Mexican immigrants. Still, the Iraq thing is going great.
 I must disrespectfully disagree that the Iraq war is going well. Just look at the evidence...
Why isn't President Bush sending AmeriCorps volunteers to plant trees in Iraq? I eagerly await your response.
What? I don't see what that has to do with...
Why do you keep dodging my questions? This is typical of the Left. Don't you agree that the left threw poisoned kittens over my fence in an attempt to make my Rottweilers sick?
That's terrible, Michael. I guess some Leftists are pretty crazy, sure. It didn't used to be this way. I have fond memories of when they had that I Ain't Gonna Play Sun City thing and the Boss sang along. I guess things have changed...
Why do Leftists fart in elevators and then say I did it? Why do Lefists make me look bad by wearing certain fabrics, like gabardine and flannel, with a flair I cannot achieve? Your evasions do nothing for your case. Again, I keep agreeing with you that Bush erred in not biting open the throats of the illegal detainees and marching into the World Court, hauling their corpses in with one hand and giving the judges the finger with the other! We are not so very different, you and I.
Actually I am very much against the mistreatment of our detainees. But, hey, that's a discussion for another time
1:07 PM by roy edroso
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MARK TWAIN VS. MAX BOOT. At OpinionJournal Max Boot sings -- as Homerically as such as Boot can manage -- the praises of Leonard Wood, a doctor-soldier who assisted greatly in the subjugation of the Philippines and Cuba during America's earlier age of empire. "Never has Wood's example been more timely," says Boot. Here's part of that example as described by Boot himself:...[Wood] dealt ruthlessly with all opposition. The primary threat [in the Moro district of the Philippines] came from juramentados, knife-wielding assassins who thought that they could win a place in paradise if they died fighting Christian infidels. To defeat them, Wood shelled numerous cottas (forts) containing not only enemy fighters but also women and children. His scorched-earth policy sparked controversy but achieved results. Moroland had been temporarily pacified by the time Wood left for Manila to take over as military commander of the entire Philippines in 1905. Let us pause briefly to think what America's new bestest friends, the Iraqi People, would think to hear such activities described as exemplary behavior of conquerors toward the conquered. Then let us hear the same incident as reported by a very different sort of journalist from Boot -- Mark Twain: A tribe of Moros, dark-skinned savages, had fortified themselves in the bowl of an extinct crater not many miles from Jolo; and as they were hostiles, and bitter against us because we have been trying for eight years to take their liberties away from them, their presence in that position was a menace. Our commander, Gen. Leonard Wood, ordered a reconnaissance...
Our soldiers numbered five hundred and forty. They were assisted by auxiliaries consisting of a detachment of native constabulary in our pay -- their numbers not given -- and by a naval detachment, whose numbers are not stated. But apparently the contending parties were about equal as to number -- six hundred men on our side, on the edge of the bowl; six hundred men, women and children in the bottom of the bowl. Depth of the bowl, 50 feet.
Gen. Wood's order was, "Kill or capture the six hundred."
The battle began-it is officially called by that name-our forces firing down into the crater with their artillery and their deadly small arms of precision; the savages furiously returning the fire, probably with brickbats-though this is merely a surmise of mine, as the weapons used by the savages are not nominated in the cablegram. Heretofore the Moros have used knives and clubs mainly; also ineffectual trade-muskets when they had any...
General Wood was present and looking on. His order had been. "Kill or capture those savages." Apparently our little army considered that the "or" left them authorized to kill or capture according to taste, and that their taste had remained what it has been for eight years, in our army out there - the taste of Christian butchers. One hates to use the phrase, tainted as it is by the touch of the Ole Perfesser, but: read the whole thing.
In any contest between a propagandist and a genius, you may be sure the early returns will favor the former; but thereafter the tide may turn. Boot regrets history's neglect of Wood, though I would say in this case history is actually maintaining an embarrassed silence on him. I suspect Clio's treatment of Boot will be less kind.
10:59 AM by roy edroso
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Tuesday, December 06, 2005
I OUGHTA GO TO WORK, BUT I AIN'T GONNA DO IT/BECAUSE I'M REALLY JUST NOT QUITE UP TO IT. It’s low-hanging fruit day. I mean, who really wants to follow the "You take back what you said about Uncle Irving" thread at The Corner? It’s like Long Day’s Journey Into Night as performed by the Willowbrook ’72 Dramatic Society. Today I just don't have that much jam.
So let’s indulge in some really dumb shit. Tbogg points to this charmer’s “Rock Songs Conservatives Can Love.” Now, you all know by now how I feel about the relationship of art to politics – if the former is not master of the latter, bullshit ensues. And many if not most overtly political rock songs, whether you like the politics or not, are terrible – for every “London Calling” there are a dozen or more like “Gun Control” or “Do They Know It’s Christmas” or that horrible thing your sister’s boyfriend sang about apartheid at the 1983 talent show.
But when I read trenchant analysis like this --Camper Van Beethoven - Might Makes Right (anti-Iraq war but with only in one line. Ignore the line and the song plays like “Team America”) -- what can I say except, hey, buddy, let me help you out with some real conservative rock songs:
“No Feelings” – Sex Pistols
“White Minority” -- Black Flag
“I Live, You Die” – Flotsam & Jetsam
“Pray I Don’t Kill You, Faggot” -- Run Nigger Run (Steve Albini project!)
“Nigger Loves His Possum” -- Collins and Harlan
And anything by the Allendale Melodians! Here’s me bus! Bye!
UPDATE. Oh, for Christ's sake, the madness is not limited to the margins -- one of the numbskulls at The Corner is now compiling his own "conservative rock song" list! Feel free to send him my suggestions.
UPDATE 2. Lotsa good suggestions -- "I Don't Care About You," Fear -- "Suit & Tie Guy," DRI -- "Killing an Arab," the Cure -- and, meta as always, Jeremy Osner suggests "Psychotic Reaction" by the Count Five.
Let me say this in response to commenter Kyle -- because he contends honorably, and because it has to do with what we always talk about when we talk about culturewar here: I don't see evidence for the subtler argument you attribute to SMB. His language is as knuckleheaded as that found at The Corner, where conversion of otherwise poli-sci-neutral artworks into rightwing rah-rah is a thriving business. The difference between "songs that conservatives would find especially agreeable" and "songs that were written to cheerlead for conservatism" is as real as you suggest. But the words you put in front of these phrases -- "looking for" -- changes everything. That's what our nemeses do, because they can't imagine any art that isn't -- oh that phrase -- politically correct by their lights, and by making such lists encourage a false understanding of what art is for. If we get to the point -- a point these guys are working toward -- where a person can't enjoy a song or a story or a poem without first being assured that it reflects his reified world view, then we are lost, not just politically but as human beings.
I mean, "Okie From Muskogee" and Leonard Cohen's "The Future" and Graham Parker's "You Can't Be Too Strong" are great songs. If I worried about where they fell on some bean-counter's notion of a political spectrum, I'd be deprived of their pleasure. And some poor kid sucked into the blogosphere's sorting machine may never get the chance to enjoy them as I did.
Even Rod Dreher could enjoy the Clash. Jesus Christ. If that clueless Flanders can enjoy music without a political imprimatur, why can't everyone else?
UPDATE 3. They just keep getting worse. Highlight of this particular "Everyone I like must be exactly like me" fantasy: "I feel [Lennon] would have become a card-carrying Republican and voted for President Bush in the 2004 election. Perhaps his latest song would have even been a cover of 'G-d Bless The USA.'" J-s-s Chr-st, what an -ssh-le.
12:22 PM by roy edroso
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Monday, December 05, 2005
SHORTER MOE LANE, OR CONSERVATIVE ARTS APPRECIATION DEFINED: Here is a long, derogatory review of a film I have not seen.
UPDATE: A commenter points to a related post by Doctor Mrs. Professor Reynolds, in the comments section of which DMPR vomits contempt upon artists in general, then complains that they don't want to hang out with her. Somebody ought to check the Instahouse for stupid gas.
10:35 AM by roy edroso
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