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25 May 2005 HIATUS: So folks, I'll be in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Amsterdam and Rome until the middle of the summer. Email will be intermittent, but I promise some pictures when I get back. Let's all hope this summer brings a Jackson acquittal and Bolton to the U.N. 21 May 2005 SOME DISPARATE THOUGHTS: Never one to shy away from supporting the war in Iraq, I certainly felt at least a little odd hearing the Bush administration rap Newsweek on the knuckles for spreading a false story that caused many people to die. There is such a growing gap between this administration's rhetoric and its behavior that it's suprising that Bush's Republican coalition remains largely intact. The torture scandals present yet another instance of Bush publicly standing for accountability but otherwise shirking his administration's own responsibility. Such textbook demagoguery as the Republicans have been engaging in would, one might think, stir up some decent criticism from the press corps. But the liberal mainstream media seems yet again blinkered and uninspiring. Kaus had a great bit the other day on a NYT's reference to Sen. Harry Reid's "flashes of candor" and the trouble this tendency causes him. Not to entirely restate Kaus, but how is calling the president a "loser" much of a flash of candor? Candor implies being straightforward about a subject people tend to privately understand but would publicly rather not acknowledge. Such a petty insult doesn't really qualify as such. Instead Kaus hypothesizes that Reid's remarks were calculated ones, calculated, perhaps, to dish out a little red meat to a constituency he will eventually have to sell out when the legislative scaps with the Republicans kick into full gear. Kaus is right on the money, of course. But caricaturing Reid as a candid westerner seems to be the package the NYT thinks its readership is most interested in buying. And they're probably right. However, this kind of media sleepwalking is as much to blame for the current depressing political scene as the current depressing group of politicians are. Apropos of nothing, conversations with an old friend have made me work a little harder to pinpoint just what my disagreement with cultural liberalism (PCness, etc) is. Whenever I discuss racism, I am guided by an instinct that repells me from special treatment or consideration for minority groups and willful ignorance of empirical fact (i.e. pretending that everyone is just as capable as everyone else). Let me excerpt a bit of my email to her to illustrate the gist: "just as an example, i've always felt that part of the problem between white and black people is white people's refusal to acknowledge the dumbness, but also logic, of racism. let's say that white people in the south think that black people resemble ghosts with only their eyes and teeth being able to be made out at night. it's a totally foolish sentiment, but also one that is in many ways true. many black people are pretty dark and their eyes and teeth are more visible than most other things about them at night. the leap to them being strange mystical beings is silly, but it has some logical basis. modern liberalism wants to deny racism that logical basis and just pretend it is maniacal and wrong. liberalism can't reckon with the fact that there is ample reason to believe that black people look like ghosts, are lazy, only want to collect welfare, etc (any number of gross generalizations). the double edged problem with this is that statistically many of these assumptions are true. black people are typically darker than white people, making their eyes look more phosphorescent at night, and many blacks are unemployed or involved in the illicit drug trade. the problem with racism is that is assigns the wrong CAUSE to these problems. these things aren't true BECAUSE the people are black, they're true due to certain factors associated with the way people who are black have been treated in this country. however, to deny that many black people are afflicted with these problems, like many liberals would like to do, is to deny reality. that causes a disjuncture wherein racism breeds. any black person worth his salt understands that black people face many problems that can't be solved by pretending they don't exists, and a liberal's condescending "compassion" is very unappealing for those kind of people." I go on to say that my solution to the problem of racism is to match it until it collapses under its own weight. And by match it, I mean say racist things until their absurdity is self-evident. For instance, let's say I was talking to someone who didn't like hispanic people and I wanted to disabuse her of this prejudice. I might say, "I hope my new gardener is a spic because they are really good at landscaping," and consider it a direct assault on her racist tendencies. Such a statement might detonate some assumptions she makes by confronting them on their face, such as the acceptability of using ethnic slurs in casual conversation and the lazy assumption that hispanic = good at landscaping. This might denature a bit of the vitriol in her prejudice. I might then continue to pile on statements like, "But you have to watch those wetbacks because they'll get into the beer if you don't monitor them closely" and perhaps close with "maybe, with all the new genetic manipulation that going on, someone can find a way to alter the hispanic gene so they all don't end up like such drunks." The final statement would be a stretch, but not an illogical one if you happen to be prejudiced towards hispanics. After all, the qualities in them you find universal and unpleasant have to come from somewhere. Why not a gene? I might say all this in public at a volume that could easily be overheard. Might she begin to feel a little uncomfortable about her assumptions about hispanics? Perhaps. Certainly she'd be more disposed towards reconsideration than if I had sat her down and given her a lecture about how everyone is the same and she is a bad person. Now imagine this process happening on a grand scale. Imagine people being pushed to their limits and beyond by others matching their unthought assumptions tit for tat. Most of racism comes from unpacked ideas that accumulate in people's heads based on anecdotal evidence. Factor in the need many people have to feel superior to and/or pure from people who are different and you'll understand that the racist mindset has little to do with preternatural hatred and more to do with a large group of people for whom Gladwell's Blink hypothesis has malfuctioned. I've begun work on an essay along these lines, which will hopefully flow a little more logically than what I've written here. Just wanted to send a trial balloon up for a little online reconnaissance. 02 May 2005 LOW-BROW LIVING: Drudge reports on yet another instance of a member of Congress (Norm Dicks D-Wash) taking gifts from a lobbyist. This time it turns out that a 5 day junket down to Miami is enough to get the attention of a House representative. Not quite as classy as Tom Delay stepping out in London, on Jack Abramoff's dollar, for a gala perfomance of The Lion King. One hopes for many things in life, among them perhaps that elected officials not take bribes from special interests. However, knowing the inevitable hollowness such hope carries, would it be too much to care that these officials get something enviable for their votes? Imagine yourself as Tom Delay the exterminator, alternating between boogeyman and sychophant on the orders of party bosses just to ascend that system and be one of those bosses. Yet perhaps after you get there, wouldn't it be nice to enjoy some of the privileges of power? To treat your lawmaking position as a kind of home base from which to explore art, travel, fine dining, to read widely and pass an affable afternoon smoking a pipe and chatting with a few diplomats. Is it too much to hope then that these people not remain the same kind of yahoos who get off on ringing up a big room service bill. Mr. Dicks might have spared himself the trouble of getting elected and just signed up to see a few timeshares if all he wanted was a free trip to Florida. 16 March 2005 ECCENTRICITY ON TRIAL: I’ve been a bit lonely these days, and I’m afraid it’s mostly Michael Jackson’s fault. As friends gather at dinner parties or talk after a show, people inevitably ask me what’s been on my mind. When I answer Thomas Mesereau’s cross-examination, a hollow laugh usually awaits, or worse, a look of polite confusion. My friends seem to act as if talking about the case in earnest is the uncultured equivalent of accidentally leaving your Paris Hilton video out on the coffee table. If I do coax them into a conversation on the subject, it quickly devolves into ironic posturing and baseless assurance that Jackson must be guilty. I sense their reactions are just a cover-up for knowing very little about the facts of the case, and putting on the pose to know even less than that. Then again, reading 1900 pages of grand jury testimony isn’t always a sure fire way to impress your friends and make new ones. But in truth Michael Jackson’s fate does weigh heavily for me, and, I’m certain, it weighs heavily for America as well. Having just been involved as a witness in criminal proceedings, I’m well aware how arbitrary the application of justice can sometimes seem. In a celebrity case like Jackson’s particularly when the accusations are so salacious, the half-life of someone’s innocence can be rapidly shortened. Recently in the New York Post, two days into the trial, Andrea Peyser declares, “He is a full grown freak. And he must pay.” And that really goes to the heart of it for me. Michael Jackson’s odd life is under cross-examination. Eccentricity is on trial in America. Even those who are fully prepared to believe every last charge against Jackson must admit, upon inspection, that the prosecution’s case is nowhere near hermetic. At its core is a family known to fabricate charges to win lawsuits, two siblings who have admitted to lying under oath, and an accuser who went to two lawyers and the psychologist used in the 1993 case before going to the police. On top of this is the bizarre timeline alleged by the District Attorney that Jackson only started molesting the accuser after the Bashir documentary came out, and Team Jackson was in damage control responding to the attention cast on his questionable relationship with children. Yet in the media, it’s difficult to find anyone who pegs Jackson’s prospects at anything less than dire. Most of the legal analysts are not being irresponsible in these assertions, they are simple providing a look into how the jury might be receiving the proceeding of the court room, and my guess is that their grim predictions are likely true. The jury’s inclination to convict, of course, tells us little about the guilt of Michael Jackson, and much about a paradigm shift in justice that has occurred in the wake of common sense conservatism. As a fan of talk radio and the blogosphere, I listened as Dean’s scream purportedly provided a complete psychological profile of a moderate governor. I watched as Arnold was dismissed as an unserious joke. And now I fulminate as across the media, new and old, Michael Jackson’s presumed innocence is not only quashed but has almost become taboo to mention with any earnestness. In Malcolm Gladwell’s new book Blink, he cautions us to pay more attention to what our split-second decision making instinct tells us. However, he may need to do less cheerleading for that cause than he expects. Already, Michael Jackson has been convicted in the minds of so many. He’s weird. He went from looking like a black man to passing for a white woman. He tucks in children that aren’t his own with a bedtime story and milk and cookies, and dangles the ones that are his own over balconies. But the question of whether he molested a young boy is not answered by these circumstances. These scenarios certainly don’t help Jackson, but so far, the most pernicious force this trial has elicited has been the wave of smug assurance of Jackson’s guilt before it’s been proved in a court of law. Not to tarnish an old saying, but, first they came for the freaks, then…well, you figure it out. 27 February 2005 A NEW STORY: I'm mostly done with this story, but am still making some changes. In any event, I wanted to put it up here to get some feedback. It's called "The Man Who Wouldn't Let it Go". 01 February 2005 MIDDLE EASTERN MODERNITY: I read an article a little while back about how the most popular show on Al-Jazeera is one where the host takes his Arab guests to task for Muslim governments' crimes against their Muslim subjects. While he's no shiv for America, he believes that Muslim governments cast the West as the source of Arab misfortune all the while soaking their population for virtually free labor and tax revenues while subjecting them to strictly enforced codes of personal conduct. A bit like being an indentured servant, I'd imagine, except your seven years never comes. The popularity of his show, called The Opposite Direction, dovetails well with a question the book The Modern Mind poses but doesn't explicitly answer. The book aims to tell the intellectual history of the twentieth century and ends up attributing all the major intellectual advancements of the last century to Western innovation (not in a polemical kind of way). The book finds near consensus about this conclusion even as it surveys thinkers from across six continents. It touches deliberately on the question of how this sense of intellectual/cultural inferiority affects places like the Arab world, namely that it often manifests itself as hatred towards the success of the West with the idea being that the world is a zero sum game. The show on Al-Jazeera, however, demonstrates that there is at least the will to entertain another point of view on the subject. I deliberately shied away from saying much about Iraq this past month, mostly because I believe such short term predictions about whether the elections would "work" or not seemed only to detract from the proper attention to the long view of the Middle East (something I think both the MSM and the blogosphere haven't paid much mind to recently). I think Bush's objectives in Iraq are 1) to provide a buoy against Saudi fickleness on oil prices and 2) to create a safe space for some form of democracy to take root, both because this stablizes oil prices and quells terrorism. Yet the dominant theme at many of the sneering liberal outfits seems to be that these aims are mutually exclusive, or that Bush really doesn't care whether Iraq is democratic or not, so long as it operates under the thumb of the U.S. Those who believe this haven't learned well from the lesson of the Saudis. Those dictators may be welcome at Crawford ranch, but they are certainly no puppets of Bush's, and neither will be the people who control an oil supply like Iraq's. These arguments also glance blithely off the religious (messianic, perhaps) determination that compells Bush. While Paul Wolfowitz may see Iraq as an epicenter of democracy that ripples outward to neighboring countries and thereby neutralizes the forces that conspire to breed terrorism (in his view and mine, forces like the nihilism of living under totalitarianism), Bush shows the attitude of a man "called to serve." His is a liberator. Free market capitalism and civil liberties don't cancel each other out. These Iraqi elections portend well, but I remain committed to the view that the question of Iraqi freedom is something that is settled not over the course of a year, but of a decade. One can criticize government contracts to Halliburton, a poor, understaffed strategy of occupation, but I think that in impugning the desire of the Bush administration to see Iraq as a free country, you cripple your ability to draw insightful conclusions both about what's happening there and what the administration has planned next. When you're at home with the sanctimony of Clinton, who advised Kerry that coming out against gay marriage would be a smart political move, it's easy to see how Bush can be viewed with such cynicism. What's not easy to see, however, when you take that tack, is what a freer Middle East means both for human rights and for terrorism. It's not a question that the republicans should monopolize, nor is it a reason on its own to have a crusading Christian in the White House, but it is a question. If you're dissatisfied with Bush's answer, perhaps it's time you found your own. 13 December 2004 WORKING CLASS STRIFE: A reader writes, in response to the post below, to say that I deal little with the kids who actually do grow up in circumstances like those Eminem raps about. First let me say this: Eberstadt is so selective in her use of quotes from artists like Snopp Dogg and Blink 182 that it might be said that she is suggesting the main project of rap and postpunk music has been to lambaste our broken home society. If any theme is to be culled from rap it's how great it is to be a rapper so one can enjoy illegal drugs and promiscuous sex, while postpunk's emphasis tends to lie on screwing authority and making fun of boring teenage existence. I say this first because I think the sampling of lyrics Eberstadt is pulling from is not the dominant theme of either of these musical styles and thus has even less credibility in trying to be offered out as evidence of a widespread cultural phenomenon. I think the rise of victimhood as a catchall for any struggle one faces in life has more to do with why this music is popular among working class youth. To do this I must minimize a bit the problems faced, as a rule it would seem, by those people growing up in broken homes. Alcoholism, domestic violence, unhappy marriages, selfish parental escapism, these are all real problems that plague not just working class America, but certainly plague it more heavily than other sectors of society. However, they do not afflict all homes with equal vengeance. For every case of physical domestic abuse, there are probably ten cases in decreasing orders of magnitude of verbal abuse. Out of those ten, three might be manifestations of a deep dysfunction in the family, while the other seven might be what was called in earlier generations "just life." Please don't email to say I am excusing verbal abuse (though the question of whether words can be illegal is an interesting one for another interesting time). What I am saying is that nothing short of the complete sanitization of the household of all familial maladies is enough to declare that household functional (which, if you happen to achieve such familial cleanliness is yet another form of the dysfunctional family found mainly in the suburbs!). Divorced, dysfunctional, mom drinks, dysfunctional, father yells, dysfunctional. Find just one trait and you too can be part of the aggrieved. The ascendancy of the victim mentality coupled with the desire for people to "analogize up" from their own circumstances make people latch on to Eminem as a "speaker of truth." Yes, I'm saying that many working class people like Eminem because it makes their lives take on the glory of melodrama. Their struggle in life is no longer unsung. Indeed, it's the struggle of the moment. Anger, in this sense, gives them an elevated way to look at their own lives, as a monumental battle against the damaging effects of poor parenting. This mythology, no doubt more viscerally true for some people in the audience than others, is a potent drug to take in the face of dim prospects in life. It may not solve their problems at home, but at least it assures them their struggle is tough and it isn't their fault. P.S. I think it is seriously embarrassing when academics proclaim some moron like Eminem "right" about something 1) in the effort to seem hip, current, and observant and 2) because they take seriously what should not be taken seriously, i.e. that people like Eminem and Snopp Dogg are anything less than people cashing in street poses. THE RAGE OF YOUTH: Mary Eberstadt argues in a new essay that the rage displayed by today's rap and postpunk artists appeals to teenagers and young adults for reasons that are the precise carbon copy of those of the rock 'n roll era; early rockers rebelled against their parents for being too parental, while today's teens rebel against the fact that parents aren't parental enough. In making her case she cites Kurt Cobain as the progenitor of a movement which has blossomed in its own vulgar way into Eminem. It's a very interesting argument, and worth reading not only for its content but also as a great example of how the distance academics keep from the culture at large is often the wrong focal length at which to analyze that culture. I'd like to say, for no other reason than hearing it said in public, that I regard Nirvana as one of the best bands of the 90s and Eminem as a bunch of tripe. I think Eberstadt makes a radical misdiagnosis of why today's hateful lyrics appeal to the youth and with what, in fact, this music actually provides them. It may be that I am so decidedly unhip by mainstream standards, but the entire rap industry with few exceptions (Jeru da damaja, perhaps) appears to me just as perfectly executed a ruse as that of Britney Spears or the Backstreet Boys. Since the author focuses on the appeal of this music to white suburban youth, I'd like to begin there as well. Eminem hates parents because they got divorced. Everclear yearns for the innocent trappings of their childhood toys. Snoop Dogg blames dad for all his vice. These artists were probably not studio concepts at the beginning of their careers, though they certainly are at this point. Do the massive sales of their records to white kids in the suburbs alert us to the growing anger and sadness in this population towards broken homes? I tend to think not. The people who pushing these records into gold and platinum status are middle and upper-middle class kids who enjoy pretending they are more 'real world' and grownup than they are. Their parents may be no model for 50s style nuclear parenting, but take out from Whole Foods, DSL in every room, and $20,000 first car as a birthright aren't exactly war on poverty issues either. What I describe may be the upper end of the Eminem fan base, but move a few notches down and you're still not really in doublewide territory yet. Can anyone seriously believe that the people sustaining the careers of Eminem and Snoop Dogg are trailer trash and criminals, or even more modestly the children of broken homes or alcohol saddled parents? So why are they buying this stuff in the suburbs? It would be wrong to suggest that Eberstadt is completely off the trail. Many are attracted to these albums because of the anger and the violence. Yet, the anger these kids feel is not one so much born of strife but born out of lack of strife. They may be alienated from their parents, but not because these parents are addicted to drugs or sleeping around. Take a drive through the suburbs if you lack the good fortune of living in one and witness the anonymity. While the external uniformity might strike you at first, what goes on inside these homes turns on the same principle. With refrigerators stocked with self-service snacks, cell phones in every pocket, parental shuttle service offered between extracurricular events, the emphasis of the suburbs is clearly on safe and efficient living. Even in the poorer neighborhoods, where the particulars may not be as high end, the suburbs represent a retreat from the mishegoss and danger of urban life. In other words, these kids are too protected, perhaps not in a personal way like the 50s father who stares down each teenage boy who comes to date his daughter, but in a procedural way. Yes, there is certainly real resentment imbued by parents who buy their kids products as stand-ins for love, or parents who treat their children as products themselves to be developed and marketed and properly accessorized. But those are certainly not the concerns which dominate the world of rap. They are, however, factors that lead us toward a child who has little in his life that is his own, that he has struggled for and achieved. He is violent and angry because his life is so impersonal and inauthentic. Shams from the rap world who seem to lead lives of risk and reward appeal because not only are they angry at society, but because society seems to feel their anger. When they are angry they kill someone, or rape someone, or belittle their parents on the public record. The world feels their effects, but for the suburban youth attended to by family cell phone plans and weekly visits to the psychologist, there is no one to feel their rebellion. Eminem's trailer park life is perversely a fantasy because he both faces and annihilates obstacles in life, much like one would in a first person shooter video game. His anger is vindicated. For the suburban youth, material concerns are typically minimal, yet for the anger and alienation they feel towards their parents there is no receptacle. I don't doubt that there are many out there who relate to the experiences of Eminem, many kids of working class parents who suffer as satellites of unhappy marriages. I simply doubt that white suburban youth and working class children of any race can be so easily joined with Eberstadt's broken home theory. These groups represent two different cultures, one who relates to these vulgar exploits, and one who watches and wishes it had something to relate to.
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