Thursday, October 21, 2010

Look It Can Give Us Hope Against the Very Winds that We Batter Against It

For your consideration. I've admitted I'm a bigot, but as a dear friend tells me constantly, told me just last night as a matter of fact, "the fuckers would criminalize, literally criminalize, my sexuality, and I'm the intolerant pig for calling them dumbass rednecks?" They are pigs. We're all fools.


Of course it's class, of course it's power, of course it's power exhorting the powerless to engage in battles of status within their powerlessness. Most humans are small that way, it's why it works. Look at the motherfucking blogosphere. In a grad class, Performance and Ethics, some guy proclaimed he wanted the democracy of the bath house as model for the public sphere, and he was devastatingly savaged by students who laughed that democracy is indeed measured in inches.

I've just finished my second reading of Mantel's Wolf Hall, the wisest novel about power I've ever read, whose animating spirit isn't Thomas More or Henry or even Thomas Cromwell but "dear Niccolo" as Cromwell calls him, who's Cromwell's model and hero, Machiavelli, who is just as direly correct today that the world is your senior year in high school whenever and forever we're human. As for me, Thomas Cromwell advises, "Niccolo tells us unarmed prophets always fail."

UPDATE! No one ever claimed my free copy of Wolf Hall, and now I've got my read paperback, so I've two. Anyone? Email me.



FOR DICK


Jack Spicer

Innocence is a drug to be protected against strangers
Not to be sold to police agents or rather
Not to be sold.
When you protect it in a sudden chill
Comes in the window
When you proclaim it it becomes a wet marijuana cigarette
Which cannot be lit by matches.
Hear the wind outside
The bloody shell of your life.
Hear the wind rumble
Like a sabre-toothed ape.
Look
Innocence is important
It has meaning
Look
It can give us
Hope against the very winds that we batter against it.

8 comments:

  1. I suspect that Moe Tucker herself isn't interested in criminalizing anyone's sexuality, but point taken. This pretty-much-gay man isn't all that concerned about it, but, again, point taken.

    I'll make sure my co-blogger sees this and see if she has anything to say about it. Thanks for sending the link our way.

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  2. re Niccolo --

    I suggest The 48 Laws of Power to any who cling to naive beliefs about how people seek and wield power. I submit that partisans of all types --Dem, Repub, Green, Commie, Libertarian, Constitution Party-- are all terribly naive about how people seek and. wield power. Thus I recommend the book to most everyone.

    For the lazy, simply following Hugh Laurie's character on House M.D. suffices: EVERYBODY LIES

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  3. Ethan, please send the Baronette my compliments. This certainly was not meant as a criticism of her post but as another wrestling match with myself over my own contradictions. It's what I do here.

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  4. I have that concern to. While I haven't run across any Tea Party signs saying "Sic Semper Trannies", I'm sure it isn't an uncommon thought among those involved. Like Ethan said, seems rather unlikely that Moe Tucker is opposed to social liberties.

    My personal philosophy that it is best not to apply subhuman status to anyone - even those who consider you as such. No doubt people wish to do some ugly shit, but I think it's easy to set up barriers in yourself as to who you can relate to (in a genuine, unassuming way). It's a very rational method of protection against all things foreign and imposing. To me, that relation, that exchange, is where true change can form. It's damn hard though.

    I think I also put more emphasis on the Tea Party then I intended to in. I don't think I have it in me to tackle the whole of the Tea Party. (And there isn't a need for me too.) My interest was primarily in her most recent interview. Of course, that wouldn't have happened if it weren't for her involvement with the TP.

    Thanks for the link, by the way. Glad you felt like it was something worth responding to.

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  5. Near misses! Don't worry, I didn't take it as criticism. Even if it was, I would've appreciated it.

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  6. I'm all for envelope pushing, but I'm not sure what "lawn jockey" brought to the table. It seems like an unnecessary distraction in the context of the post. If the context of the post was a broad satire on the nature of the relationship between Fox and non white people, I could see it fitting in.

    Imagine a New Yorker cartoon cover, and on the Fox News Lawn is Juan Williams as a lawn jockey and Bill O'Reilly as a garden gnome, and they're doing the "terrorist fist bump", and Deepak Chopra and Rick Sanchez look on, posed as Grant Wood's American Gothic.

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  7. Hmm, I thought 'lawn jockey' was the perfect observation.

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  8. I'll take a Wolf Hall, if it's still available. And you can save postage. I just got back from my weekend frolic. I'll get up with you soon to discuss details.

    Jim H.

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