Read this by terminal professional liberal and hard-wired fool Garry Wills. Tell me, other than the third sentence of the first paragraph in which he is named and portrayed as heroic, whose name goes unmentioned in Wills diagnosis of the clusterfuck, Wills' naming the problem's vectors. Hint! Here's Will on the hero's party:
Democratic candidates are forced to mimic the obsessive need to raise funds, in a contest where they are heavily outgunned.
Forced! the brave but tortured lambs against their noble and natural liberal instincts towards good! The above and below videos came immediately to mind, they are Co-Theme Songs for When I C/Ped the Code for These YouTube into Fucking Blooger's (Old, Fuck the New Blogger!) Create Post Page at 20:37 EDT June 9, 2012:
- The contradictions of capitalism.
- Corporate socialism.
- On Silber's three pieces from last week.
- Drone propaganda.
- When watchdog meets lapdog.
- The boy stands on the burning deck.
- Did he jump or was he pushed?
- Did she jump or was she pushed?
- Stories and anecdotes are not policy.
- No. At least according to someone I know who knows her.
- Metro's Rush Plus.
- Mission Impossible's tape recorder destructions.
- Corrupted science, or Serendipity: There's a Flaming Lips v Somebody I've Never Heard Of fracas?
- Jefferson Airplane live 1968.
- Yes, I know one bud doesn't get The Lips, but he likes Led Zeppelin.
HOMAGE TO SHARON STONE
Lynn Emanuel
It's early morning. This is the "before,"
the world hanging around in its wrapper,
blowzy, frumpy, doing nothing: my
neighbors, hitching themselves to the roles
of the unhappily married, trundle their three
mastiffs down the street. I am writing this
book of poems. My name is Lynn Emanuel.
I am wearing a bathrobe and curlers; from
my lips, a Marlboro drips ash on the text.
It is the third of September nineteen**.
And as I am writing this in my trifocals
and slippers, across the street, Sharon Stone,
her head swollen with curlers, her mouth
red and narrow as a dancing slipper,
is rushed into a black limo. And because
these limos snake up and down my street,
this book will be full of sleek cars nosing
through the shadowy ocean of these words.
Every morning, Sharon Stone, her head
in a helmet of hairdo, wearing a visor
of sunglasses, is engulfed by a limo
the size of a Pullman, and whole fleets
of these wind their way up and down
the street, day after day, giving to the street
(Liberty Avenue in Pittsburgh, PA)
and the book I am writing, an aspect
that is both glamorous and funereal.
My name is Lynn Emanuel, and in this
book I play the part of someone writing
a book, and I take the role seriously,
just as Sharon Stone takes seriously
the role of the diva. I watch the dark
cars disappear her and in my poem
another Pontiac erupts like a big animal
at the cool trough of a shady curb. So,
when you see this black car, do not think
it is a Symbol For Something. It is just
Sharon Stone driving past the house
of Lynn Emanuel who is, at the time,
trying to write a book of poems.
Or you could think of the black car as
Lynn Emanuel, because, really, as an author,
I have always wanted to be a car, even
though most of the time I have to be
the "I," or the woman hanging wash;
I am a woman, one minute, then I am a man,
I am a carnival of Lynn Emanuels:
Lynn in the red dress; Lynn sulking
behind the big nose of my erection;
then I am the train pulling into the station
when what I would really love to be is
Gertrude Stein spying on Sharon Stone
at six in the morning. But enough about
that, back to the interior decorating:
On the page, the town looks bald
and dim so I turn up the amps on
the radioactive glances of bad boys.
In a kitchen, I stack pans sleek with
grease, and on a counter there is a roast
beef red as a face in a tantrum. Amid all
this bland strangeness is Sharon Stone,
who, like an engraved invitation, is asking
me, Won't you, too, play a role? I do not
choose the black limo rolling down the street
with the golden stare of my limo headlights
bringing with me the sun, the moon, and
Sharon Stone. It is nearly dawn; the sun
is a fox chewing her foot from the trap;
every bite is a wound and every wound
is a red window, a red door, a red road.
My name is Lynn Emanuel. I am the writer
trying to unwrite the world that is all around her.
Jesus H. Tittyfucking Christ on a Wobbly Motherfucking Crutch, could you get any more intellectually lazy? Could you possibly hand Sasha more live ammo belts for her machine gun of contention that you're indistinguishable from a fucking neocon faux intellectual?
ReplyDeleteTo wit, Jonah DogRed, the facts. I'll pass on the carelessness of citing the third sentence of Wills' first graf, versus the fifth; the error is irrelevant. It's the outright fucking lie in your sorry attempt at a payoff that pisses me off. Here's the sentence in which Wills mentions Obama:
They tell Republican voters that President Obama, in a second term where he does not have to face re-election, will reveal and follow the full socialist agenda he has been trying to hide.
Exactly what the fuck about that sentence portrays Obama as "heroic?" Further, exactly what the fuck about that sentence is inaccurate? It's exactly what Republicans are doing. If it doesn't make you like Obama, okay, fine, but I'm not talking about whether or not you like Obama, I'm talking about how the quality of your argument is shite. Highlighting the objective truth that Republicans falsely portray Obama as a closet Socialist is portraying him as heroic? What the fuck, BFF? I'm at a loss as to how this doesn't paint you as a Pantload-quality inept propagandist.
Don't dance or try to remake your argument, either--I'm not attacking your mockery of campaign finance, and I'm not going to argue about your increasingly childish attacks on liberalism. "Heroic?" What the fuck? More childish attacks on liberals? This shit is seriously beneath you. As always, your blog is your blog and you write what you write, but really. Way the fuck beneath you.
It's not even that I entirely agree with (or give a shit about) Wills, though I agree that there are key differences between one part and the other (you don't, you reject the system, all fine, I pray Ba'al I won't ever have cause to say I told you so, I fear otherwise, and the part of Wills to rightly attack is that he's attempting to justify plutocracy here--pretty bad mojumbo by both your lights as a wannabe black-clad Gauloise-snorting sophomore anarchist, and by mine as an alleged iddle biddle warhawk pwoggie*). It's that your argument is so blindingly lazy and patently contrived. If you're gonna reject the system, fucking do it competently.
* I contend that your entire argument reduces positions on the Supremes, the environment, the safety net, and sexuality into support for war. You've said as much (the issues important to you), though maybe that was in a less public exchange, rather than here. I do subscribe to Randal's contention that labels suck, though I'm too much of a hypocrite to match my behavior to it.
Thank you so much Landru for saving me from myself. I agree with every word (although I must admit I had a moment of regret that you didn't mention Lucianne). I might even be able to comprehend the POV if there weren't a child who will continue to live in this world.
ReplyDeleteLove, Rosa ...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI concede *heroic* was the wrong word - I should have said Wills' portrayed Obama as a victim. So the GOP is calling Obama a socialist when in fact Obama is far from a socialist, oh, the bastards, it's so unfair when everyone knows Obama is a Corporate tool. Vote for him!
ReplyDeleteThe point of the shorthand-weekend post was the Wills is engaging in precisely the emotional blackmailing tactic partisan Democrats (partisan tribalists everywhere) *always* use - hold your nose and vote for the Democrat no matter the shit sandwich or you're responsible for anything and all that happens should that shitty Democrat lose. Fuck that. It's extortion, it's blackmail. It's - what was the word you used? - lazy. I did that shit to a Naderite friend in 2000 and never again. Double fuck that. (It's a shame Roberts never got hit by that bus - that? would have been awesome - and saved us arguments like this, perhaps.)
It is a two party system. So one has two choices. Not voting for one means a vote for the other. If you don't like that you might support a better system. But blaming the candidates for the system makes no sense at all.
ReplyDeleteHow incredibly dishonest you've become in your single-minded pursuit of blaming your disillusionment with a system on Obama alone. As if the emotional blackmail happens in a vacuum, as if the past 50 years of history haven't happened, as if the previous President didn't wield terrorism like a club to get us where we are, as if we're not literally on the eve of the 40th anniversary of Watergate, and as if a false accusation is precisely equivalent to a true one. You want to talk about emotional blackmail? Here's what it looks like: Is the best you can do, intellectually, for your child, "Fuck authority, but beyond that, I don't really have a plan?"
ReplyDeleteI'd feel incredibly shitty about framing it that way if you hadn't gone so very far out of your way to earn it.
Also: It's a shame Roberts didn't get hit by a bus so that I wouldn't be pissed off at your airy and adolescent rhetoric, so that you could pretend that whoever Obama appointed wasn't good enough, wasn't better than someone McCain would've appointed? You'll literally say anything, won't you? Because style is so much more important than substance, because it's all so fucking black and white, because war and presidential power so absolutely outweigh every other issue on the table, except when they don't. Jeebus. You really have gone over the fucking edge.
Vamos United.
I've never blamed anybody for my disillusionment but me. I'm the rube.
ReplyDeleteIn the four things Obama set his mind to accomplish - diminishing civil liberties, expanding the security state, defending empire, protecting capital, he excelled. He will certainly sell-out the environment re: Keystone if reelected, plus the Gulf of Mexico, off-shore Atlantic, fracking, Arctic drilling after. We fundamentally disagree on his can't/won't ratio. He seems to me remarkably accomplished.
These are my hobby horses. Everybody has their own. Of course I argue that mine are most important, that before dismantling the safety nets a more secure and routinized police state needs exist, for instance. Eventually, as the Dems inexorably move further right, some thresholds will be crossed that will finally infuriate people to fuck-them. Will it get shittier slower if Dems are in power, isn't that better than nothing? Maybe. I understand the argument even if I can't make it anymore myself.
Thanks for the kind words on my honesty. I'd just note, both you and Sasha made variations on (a) either change the world or shut up and (b) the system, love it or leave it. You're absolutely correct, history doesn't happen in a vacuum, since these are ancient tribal taunts.
Equally kind of you to put words in my mouth. Where's shut up? Where's leave? I note--unkindly, I admit, because kindness has produced a remarkable lack of willingness to expound on anything, just an unremittingly nihilistic drumbeat that, in cases such as today's, defies logic--that you might extend your thought process. To you, that's shut up, that's love it or leave it.
ReplyDeleteOkies. Vamos United.
You two are hilarious. Zeppelin rules.
ReplyDeleteRandal Graves is correct. Also Flaming Lips suck and are very very wrong in the current fracas with a big star you've never heard of (who I'm not a fan of either, but that's neither here nor there: she's been making music for like 15 years).
ReplyDeletealso:
"It is a two party system. So one has two choices. Not voting for one means a vote for the other. If you don't like that you might support a better system. But blaming the candidates for the system makes no sense at all."
I realize you guys are having your internecine battle here, but stepping outside of what has actually been said in this exchange, other than what I've quoted: at what point do we recognize that only ever being allowed to choose a genuinely shitty option because the other option is arguably (but not necessarily) marginally more shitty.. at what point do we see that this is no way to proceed, and to attempt to proceed otherwise?
Carter enabled/prefigured Reagan enabled/prefigured Bush enabled/prefigured Clinton enabled/prefigured Bush enabled/prefigured Obama. They've all been excellent representatives of the capitalist class, war criminals par excellence, and in general motherfucking pieces of shit.