Ashcroft + tar + feathers.
You want to know why I passed a leisure hour with Eisenhower’s apocryphal bags of rice?
Because I’ve been trying not to think about this for the past six hours, that’s why. —Bill Moyers has been, though.
“In Georgia, New Jersey, and Connecticut,” notes this history of tarring and feathering in revolutionary America, “villagers were quick to feather any perceived ‘enemy to the rights of America.’”
Ladies and gentlemen Georgian, Jerseyite, Connecticutian, or otherwise, start your pots a-bubblin’. There’s a number of people in the Justice Department deserve the brush.
Eisenhower + bags + rice.
For those of you breezing through from a Google search which contains one or more of the words Eisenhower, bags, rice, Quemoy, Matsu, Joint Chiefs, nuclear, David Albert, People Power, or nonviolence: another source purporting to verify what might or might not be the urban legend about Eisenhower deciding not to use nuclear weapons in a stand-off with China over the Taiwan Strait. (Not up to speed? Here, follow the links, don’t skip the comments. Catch up with us when you’re ready.) —The folks behind the current Rice for Peace—No War on Iraq campaign point us to a couple of interviews with Alfred Hassler, a conscientious objector during World War II who helped found the Fellowship of Reconciliation, who organized the original grain—not rice—campaign in 1954 – 55. In a 1974 interview, Hassler told this story:
There was a famine in China, extremely grave. We urged people to send President Eisenhower small sacks of grain with the message, “If thine enemy hunger, feed him. Send surplus food to China.” The surplus food, in fact, was never sent. On the surface, the project was an utter failure.
But then—quite by accident—we learned from someone on Eisenhower’s press staff that our campaign was discussed at three separate cabinet meetings. Also discussed at each of these meetings was a recommendation from the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the United States bomb mainland China in response to the Quemoy-Matsu crisis.
At the third meeting the president turned to a cabinet member responsible for the Food for Peace program and asked, “How many of those grain bags have come in?” The answer was 45,000, plus tens of thousands of letters.
Eisenhower’s response was that if that many Americans were trying to find a conciliatory solution with China, it wasn’t the time to bomb China. The proposal was vetoed.
In a 1975 interview, he repeated the story in a different context:
No food was offered to China, of course, although a year later Eisenhower did give surplus grain to some East European countries. Except for one of the accidents of history, the Food-for-China campaign would have appeared to be an imaginative, colorful failure, like many another. But the “accident” was in the information, provided confidentially years later by a former colleague of Eisenhower’s, that the campaign had been discussed in cabinet meetings simultaneously with proposals from the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the bombing of mainland China. The President, said our informant, asked how many of the grain bags had been received. When he heard that there had been over 45,000 plus thousands of additional letters, he ruled against bombing—on the grounds that if so many Americans wanted reconciliation with China, it was hardly the time to start bombing it!
On the one hand, of course, we have that figure pervasive in what passes for modern journalism, the unnamed source. And in one account, he’s on Eisenhower’s press staff; in the other, he’s a former colleague. —Not necessarily a contradiction, mind, but it doesn’t fill one with confidence.
On the other hand, this is a much more creditable scenario than the sketchier (if more urgent, gripping, colorful) anecdote as written up by David Albert. No General Jack D. Rippers snarl and slaver at the situation room table in this one, determined to drop the A-bomb on those slant-eyed Chinks, while that steely-eyed un-Wolfowitz, Eisenhower, sagely gauges the American Zeitgeist by half-cup bags of grain, narrowly averting nuclear crisis twice in the Taiwan Strait. —Instead, we have a political weighing of options at one cabinet meeting; we have a course of action recommended by the Joint Chiefs perhaps contemplated (“In any combat where these things can be used on strictly military targets and for strictly military purposes,” said Eisenhower, “I see no reason why they shouldn’t be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else”) but ultimately set aside—much as one might a bullet—due to the political ramifications. —Judged by the half-cup, yes, but.
Does this increased creditability make the story true?
Snopes doesn’t think so (vastly updated, so if you haven’t read it in the past couple of days, go, do so).
But! Snopes is hung up a little too much, methinks, on the idea that the original Food for China campaign was never intended by its participants to protest the possibility of war (no one ever said it did; as Jeanne d’Arc points out, the humanitarian concern is rather easily inferred and transferrable); that the original campaign was grain, not rice (which Hassler’s accounts make quite clear [despite Snopes’s protestations of their being “garbled”]—as they should, Hassler helped launch the campaign, after all; it’s only later, as the details of this progressive corner of the past have been forgotten, that the switch was rather tellingly made by those who too-enthusiastically rushed in: China, rice, get it?); and that Eisenhower was never forced to the crisis point of deciding whether or not to use the bomb, so bags of grain he’d never have seen could not have affected said decision (Hassler’s second-hand accounts are muddled, yes, but again they’re clearly about political ramifications discussed at a cabinet meeting. One can argue the nitty and the gritty of what was and was not discussed at cabinet meetings as regards the possibility of bombing mainland China in 1955, but what we manifestly have in Hassler’s accounts is not a crisis point defused, but a policy option publicly removed from play [if privately left in the chamber, under the hammer, just in case]).
In other words: because the statement “Bags of rice sent to President Eisenhower helped dissuade him from launching an attack against China” has been found false does not mean that what Hassler said isn’t true. —It’s also a somewhat less compelling and uplifting example of the discourses of the mighty shaken by the likes of thee and me, but there you are.
And whether you believe it or not—and honestly, I’m still on the side of not, albeit much more reluctantly—it has no bearing at all on your taking a half cup of rice, pouring it into a ziploc bag, squeezing all the air out of it and sealing it shut, writing “If your enemies are hungry, feed them. —Romans 12:20” on a slip of paper, putting the paper and the bag into a padded envelope and sealing it up, addressing it to President George Bush, White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC, 20500, pasting $1.29 in postage on the upper right corner, dropping the package into the mail, and emailing the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center to tell them you’ve done so.
—Heck, you might even make it into the papers.
Projection.
Yeah, I know. Cheap indeed to begin a piece with a definition; it’s usually a sign of desperately padding one’s word count. Just humor me, okay, as I crib this précis of various definitions of Freudian projection culled from, I am assured, orthodox psychology texts:
- A defense mechanism in which the individual attributes to other people impulses and traits that he himself has but cannot accept. It is especially likely to occur when the person lacks insight into his own impulses and traits.
- The externalisation of internal unconscious wishes, desires or emotions on to other people. So, for example, someone who feels subconsciously that they have a powerful latent homosexual drive may not acknowledge this consciously, but it may show in their readiness to suspect others of being homosexual.
- Attributing one’s own undesirable traits to other people or agencies, e.g., an aggressive man accuses other people of being hostile.
- The individual perceives in others the motive he denies having himself. Thus the cheat is sure that everyone else is dishonest. The would-be adulterer accuses his wife of infidelity.
- People attribute their own undesirable traits onto others. An individual who unconsciously recognises his or her aggressive tendencies may then see other people acting in an excessively aggressive way.
- Projection is the opposite defence mechanism to identification. We project our own unpleasant feelings onto someone else and blame them for having thoughts that we really have.
Clear enough, right?
David Brock, of course, is famous enough for asserting that the peculiar vituperation of the current incarnation of the American right (and even, perhaps, their insistence on a vast, left-wing media conspiracy?) is due to projection:
But then there was something deeper that went beyond just partisanship. It went beyond disagreement on the issues. You could only find it in the emotional life of the actual Clinton haters, their own frustration, their own projection of their own flaws onto the Clintons. There’s hardly anyone in the book who wasn’t living in a glass house while they were making all these accusations against the Clintons. I’m not a psychologist, but you have some kind of psychological phenomenon going on where that deep level of emotion and hatred has to do with themselves more than it has to do with anything the Clintons said or did.
Of course, we don’t need to rely on what might or might not be rank psychobabble from a man who admits he isn’t a psychologist to explain what’s going on. There’s a far more prosaic form of projection demonstrably at work, as Nicholas Confessore explains:
When right-wing journalists don’t fall into line, they’re considered traitors, not professionals. In the late 1990s, The Weekly Standard’s Tucker Carlson was nearly banished from the conservative movement for being too critical of strategist Grover Norquist. Meanwhile, The New Yorker’s Sid Blumenthal was banished from journalism for being too close to Bill Clinton. To generalize, conservative pundits assume that establishment media such as the Times are partisan because that’s how their own journalists are expected to operate. They believe Howell Raines runs The New York Times the way they know Wes Pruden runs The Washington Times.
Now, Ann Coulter—
I’ll wait till you stop laughing.
Okay?
Good.
Ann Coulter—stop it!—is, of course, the classic example whenever one brings up the American right wing and projection. Whether it’s the starkly simple example of her assertion that Jesse Jackson presided over riots in Florida streets in 2000, when the only riots in Florida streets were engineered by the genteel, decorous GOP, or multipage analyses of her factually challenged bestseller, Slander, that litter the internet, she is the nonpareil, ne plus ultra; she is the sine qua non for anyone making this argument. Cheekily or not. —Heck, don’t listen to me, open her book to find any of a number of petards:
In the rush to provide the public with yet more liberal bilge, editors apparently dispense with fact-checking…Books that become publishing scandals by virtue of phony research, invented facts, or apocryphal stories invariably grind political axes for the left. There may be publishing frauds that are apolitical, but it’s hard to think of a single hoax book written by a conservative.
But let’s leave behind for a moment the question of what some on the American right are saying and what it might say about them. Instead, consider these points culled from recent news:
- It is easier to demonstrate a link between the Bush administration and Al Qaeda than it is to demonstrate a link between the Iraqi government and Al Qaeda.
- The Bush administration continues to persecute by any means necessary a war that’s been planned since 1997, instead of acting against the very real and present threat. (Extra credit: John O’Neill and Marion Bowman.)
- And, because I like a trifecta as much as the next guy, there’s the baffling drive to cripple the very government whose stewardship was gifted to the Bush administration by the Supreme Court.
Given that. Given that projection is the attribution of one’s own undesirable traits onto others. Given that a marked propensity for projection can be demonstrated on the part of the right-wing punditocracy in general and Ann Coulter in specific. Give me all of this just for a moment so that I in turn can ask you, an impish smile on my face:
What can we then infer from the title of Coulter’s summer release?
Intellectually superior psychology always trumps defensive emotionality.
Couldn’t have quoted it out of context any better myself, dearie.
Be thou an honest pro-war cartoon?
Dirk “Diogenes” Deppey over at ¡Journalista! is combing the marketplace, raising his lantern high: he’s looking for a single recent pro-war editorial cartoon, and can’t think of a one. —Myself, I figured this was a gimme: I cunningly expanded the definition of “editorial cartoon” to include that bulwark of the underdog conservative, Mallard Fillmore, held my nose, and went trawling through the past month or so of strips. Figuring, you know, what with a January full of aluminum tubes and material breaches and troops standing tall to defend the American Way and Dr. Blix’ report to the UN chastising Saddam, surely the duck would have something to say.
Well, I found a lot of Trent Lott jokes. (Apparently, Mr. Tinsley is still bitter over the whole affair.)
I did find two strips that could be construed as pro-war, in that one asserts Saddam is merrily working away at nuclear weaponry (even as it tags Bush for pronouncing “nuclear” as “newkewlar,” and can I just stop a moment and roll my eyes at this, whether it comes from the left or the right? I mean, say “comfortable,” so I can more likely than not razz you for saying “comfterbul”), while the other is anti- those who are anti-war, which, I suppose, makes it pro-war. Objectively speaking.
But this is weak fodder, especially since arguing that Mallard Fillmore is an editorial cartoon is strictly speaking a bit of a stretch. —Anyway. Rack your brains and comb your papers and email whatever you find to Dirk. There must be some out there. Right?
Filibuster baby.
Ampersand, quoting Ruminate This, tells you how to stiffen your Senator’s spine:
- Pick up the phone—right now—and dial the toll-free congressional switchboard at 800.839.5276. Urge your Senator to filibuster the Estrada nomination. That’s it. You’ll be asked your name, address and phone. Simple and to the point.
- Follow up that call with a visit to True Majority and send off their fax which calls for an Estrada filibuster. The fax is already written. If you agree with the verbage, just sign your name and move on. If you’d like to craft your own personal message, take the opportunity to do so.
Sam Heldman tells you why. In no uncertain terms.
Do True Majority tonight. Call bright and early tomorrow morning. Keep the pressure on.
Romans 12:20.
(I’ve returned from APE. More on which later.)
Prentiss Riddle has found the original text of Ullman and Wade’s Shock and Awe on—where else?—line. From the introduction, the bit dealing with OOTW:
Given this reality that our military dominance can and will extend for some considerable time to come, provided we are prepared to use it, why then is a re-examination of American defense posture and doctrine important? The answers to this question involve
- the changing nature of the domestic and international environments;
- the complex nature of resolving inter and intra-state conflict that falls outside conventional war, including peacekeeping, and countering terrorism, crime, and the use of weapons of mass destruction;
- resource constraints;
- defense infrastructure and technical industrial bases raised on a large, continuous infusion of funding now facing a future of austerity; and
- the vast uncertainties of the so-called social, economic, and information revolutions that could check or counter many of the nation’s assumptions as well as public support currently underwriting defense.
Let’s give ’em a taste of the ol’ Number 5, eh? From Body and Soul:
- Find a bag of rice.
- Measure out 1/2 cup.
- Pour it into a ziploc bag.
- Squeeze all the air out and seal it.
- Write the following on a piece of paper:
“If your enemies are hungry, feed them.” —Romans 12:20
Please send this rice to the people of Iraq; do not attack them.
- Put the note and the bag of rice in a padded envelope or a small box and write on the outside of the package:
Rice for Peace—No War on Iraq
- Address it to:
President George Bush
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington DC 20500
- Put $1.29 in postage on the outside.
- Drop it in the mail.
- Write about it and link it on your blog or journal or email list and spread the word.
“So-called” revolutions my ass.
Oh, and if, like Jeanne, you tend to suspect that our President’s compassionate, Christian conservatism is little more than a cynical vote-dredging scam, you might want to quote the entirety of Romans 12:20. He might like the bit about the coals.
Though I don’t mention the Eisenhower connection in this post, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center does. Patrick Nielsen Hayden notes rather pungently in the comments section that said Eisenhower connection is “all nonsense”; Jeanne d’Arc has a rather interesting take on why it isn’t. —In the interests of strict factuality, it should probably be noted that the original source of the anecdote (which I should probably summarize, for those who don’t follow links: supposedly, when the Joint Chiefs twice recommended the use of nukes against China in conflicts over the islands of Quemoy and Matsu [the First and Second Taiwan Strait Crises], President Eisenhower turned to an aide both times and asked, “How many little bags of rice came in?” referring to little bags of rice sent to the White House to urge the Eisenhower administration to act to alleviate famine on mainland China), David H. Albert’s People Power: Applying Non-violence Theory, includes no indication of how, exactly, he or anyone else learned that Eisenhower’s thinking was in any way influenced by that earlier “Feed thy Enemy” campaign.
That said.
The Instapundits of the world may try to belittle the movement because it’s been inspired by an urban legend. Let ’em—the war in question, after all, is itself based on distortions, dissemblings, and outright lies. Their Fiskings and self-satisfied chortlings amount to nothing more than a hill of hot air (much as do ours, to deflate my ugly moment of us-and-them), and will look rather foolish when you and me and everyone else sends a hill of rice like hot coals to the White House, one half-cup at a time.
There but for the grace of God.
Thirty to forty days out—
The conversations turn quickly, from the health of friends, to the state of Jordanian politics to the impending war against Iraq. It is a race to catch up for lost time. A race everyone runs because no one know when the bombs will start falling and people won’t have time to talk. Mr. Mozen believes it will be soon, right after the New Year. Nassim agrees but thinks it will be thirty to forty days after the New Year. He doesn’t give a reason. Everyone has predictions, which I confuse with premonitions.
Celine and Jackie—
After a visit to an Iraqi family’s home, which usually lasts four to five hours, with the obligatory meal made from the food rations given out by the government and several rounds of sweet tea, they no longer look like the wretched of the earth. They are the eleven-year-old twins, He’be and Du’a, who loves Jackie Chan (Baghdad television broadcasts a movie every night at 11:30PM). And Shouruk, the twenty-two-year-old student who believes sadness is the primary value in music, and thinks Celine Dion is the pinnacle of this value.
My tax dollars at work—
The US government doesn’t help either. They have fined Voices in the Wilderness over $163,000 and have threatened members with twelve years of prison and fines of up to one million dollars for bringing toys and medicines into the country.
Here on the ground, Wolf—
I remember now the party last night at Farouk’s house. Members of the Iraq Peace Team were invited to a private party of musicians, journalists, and poets. Farouk dressed in casual black. He had sleepy eyes. He was gracious and demanding, ordering drinks to be constantly filled, especially for the women. The Socialist Baath Party banned public drinking in 1995. Ever since, Iraqis have taken their drink underground and at each other’s homes. Farouk’s second daughter is named Reem, which means one who is as graceful as a deer running. She doesn’t have her father’s eyes.
A droll pianist and a veteran of the Iran/Iraq war in the early ’80s played Bach and a jazzy funeral march. Earlier in the evening the pianist told me he killed six men in the war and that the men and women of Iraq are all trained in combat, and will take to arms and stones if need be to stop the Americans from entering Baghdad. I ask him if his experience in killing shaped in any way his piano playing. No response.
Upstairs, downstairs—
Most of the upper echelons of Iraqi society think that Baghdad will be ablaze with street fighters beating back the Americans. The middle class (if you can call it that) have largely left it to the fates, having had little to no history of political self-determination. The poor of Iraq wants to see the invasion over with. The sanctions have made their life already impossible, why not a war to shake things up a bit: what’s there to lose? A young poor Iraqi teenage girl summed it up nicely when she said that she can’t wait for the invasion so she can marry an American soldier.
There but for the grace of God—
The wild dogs of Baghdad have more dignity and sense than you. You travel in packs and think the same way. You mistake quotes with facts and facts with meaning. You lack historical imagination and intellectual empathy. Your sentences are short and puritanical. In Baghdad you step over children and knock over speakers, reduce subtleties and ignore contexts. An American newspaper journalist in Baghdad told me with a gleeful sense of pride that journalists are lazy and under pressure to write, so issues and ideas have to be reduced into sound bites in order to function as media. Pathetic.
History rarely reads like a press release. And history is being made right now by those who have no time to issue statements. Get complex and get curious or get out of the way.
I think we are going to stop this one without you.
There is more; there is so much more. And yet—
Perhaps we ought not invade; perhaps we ought to. But to badmouth America and imply that Saddam and his cronies are just plain nice folks and innocent is at best silly.
—MetaFilter comments on National Philistine
You’re sitting in Baghdad and, all of a sudden, you’re the general and 30 of your division headquarters have been wiped out. You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power and water. In two, three, four, five days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted.
—Harlan Ullman, architect of Shock and Awe
There but for the grace of God.
Despite the differences on how one will survive a war and how a war will be waged in the country, they all agree that if there is a war, it won’t begin until after the invasion. It is incandescently clear that Iraq does not have the capabilities to fight the American military juggernaut. The real story of Iraq’s survival will begin after the Americans come (if they come, yes there is still time and the means to stop the war, there is always time because tomorrow is today) and set up their puppet regime. A media escort and veteran of the Iran/Iraq war said, “They will have an occupation in hell.”
Jackdowry.
Dwight Meredith on real class war:
“We are finally in a position we’ve fought more than a decade to reach—a position where we can deal a death blow to the single most important source of income for radical legal groups all across the country,” wrote WLF Chairman Daniel Popeo. Among the foundation’s adversaries in the litigation, Popeo continues, are “groups dedicated to the homeless, to minorities, to gay and lesbian causes, and any other group that has drawn money from hard-working Americans like you and me to support its radical cause!”
—Also, Ignatz.
Barry on the Absent Fatso:
The Absent Fatso reflects a desire to avoid cruelty—the fat character who is there without really being there exists because mocking real people would seem too mean. But in fact, the cruelty is still there, and so are the real-life fat people; they’re just in the audience, rather than on screen. The Absent Fatso strategy doesn’t avoid cruelty so much as it makes it palatable.
—Also, on origami.
Trish Wilson on how, exactly, our family courts are stacked in favor of mothers over fathers:
Debra Schmidt is one such mother. Since Christmas time, 2001, Schmidt has been sitting in a California jail because she refuses to disclose the location of her two daughters, aged 7 and 9 at the time. She is protecting them from their father, Manuel Saavedra, who is a registered sex offender, an illegal alien who has been ordered deported, and an alcoholic. According to a press-release by Stephanie Dallam, research associate for The Leadership Council, the conviction came in the seven-year custody battle “after the judge refused to allow the jury to hear about Saavedra’s sex offense, his status as a registered sex offender, allegations of domestic abuse, or testimony by another ex-wife.”
George Washington on the Bush administration:
All obstructions to the execution of the Laws, all combinations and Associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, controul counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the Constituted authorities are distructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency. They serve to Organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force—to put in the place of the delegated will of the Nation, the will of a party; often a small but artful and enterprizing minority of the Community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public Administration the Mirror of the ill concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the Organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils and modefied by mutual interests. However combinations or Associations of the above description may now & then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the Power of the People, & to usurp for themselves the reins of Government; destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
Boing Boing points us to this Business 2.0 article on our free market at work, yup:
Borders Group used to pride itself on stocking its bookstores with the widest selection possible in a brick-and-mortar establishment. In its cooking section, for instance, there were always more than 10 titles about sushi, including Sushi for Parties, the more supportive Squeamish About Sushi, and The Encyclopedia of Sushi Rolls, a definitive tome that explains, among other things, how to spell your name in makimono.
Now, Borders is planning to yank half of those sushi how-tos from its shelves. Why? In part because HarperCollins, the nation’s third-largest publishing house, told it to.
Welcome to the world of “category management,” a bizarre and controversial place in which the nation’s biggest retailers ask one supplier in a category to figure out how best to stock their shelves. You’d expect HarperCollins to tell Borders which of its own books are hot, of course. But that’s not what’s going on here. Borders has essentially tapped Harper to advise it on what cookbooks to carry from all other publishers as well.
John held up this study for some richly deserved ridicule:
She says the toys preferred by boys—the ball and the car—are described as objects with the ability to be used actively and be propelled through space. Though the specific reasons behind the monkeys’ preferences have yet to be determined, she says, the preferences for these objects might exist because they afford greater opportunities for rough and active play—something characteristic of male play. Also, the motion capabilities of the object could be related to the navigating abilities that are useful for hunting, locating food or finding a mate.
Males, she says, may therefore have evolved preferences for objects that invite movement.
On the other hand, females may have evolved preferences for object color, relating to their roles as nurturers, Alexander notes. A preference for red or pink—the color of the doll and pot—has been proposed to elicit female behaviors toward infants that enhance infant survival, such as contact.
And then there’s Gail Armstrong’s take on the color pink:
I’m sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use English.
A bit of whimsy, with coffee.
Parking spots, via Anita Rowland. (Coffee? I meant my coffee. You’ll have to get your own, I’m afraid.)
Pith and pathos.
The Buffalo Beast has a wrap-up of the 18 January march on Washington, DC (and when someone from Buffalo says it’s cold, it’s cold), and in and amongst the wonderfully snarky gonzo metamedia coverage, we get this piercing insight:
The second thing that was striking about this crowd was that, despite the fact that it was comprised of largely middle- to upper-middle class whites, there was no name politician from either major party there to address it. Given that a Pew survey taken this week showed that a majority of Americans (52%) felt that President Bush had not yet made a convincing case that war was necessary, one would have thought that at least some opportunistic politician from the Democratic party would have decided to attach his name to the anti-war effort. But the only politician of any stature at the event was the Reverend Al Sharpton, a doomed candidate for president with too much political baggage to really be an effective champion for anything.
Put two and two together and what you get is the amazing realization that this crowd, perhaps the largest to gather in Washington in the last thirty years, has no political representation whatsoever in today’s America. Almost certainly representing a vastly larger number of people in the general population, the anti-war crowd has simply been excluded from the process. The 80 nitwits at the MOVE-OUT event could reasonably claim one sympathetic US Senator per demonstrator: the 200,000+ at the ANSWER event couldn’t claim even one between them. The only real clout it could claim was its own physical presence at that particular moment.
If you still demand to know why the anti-war folks don’t seem to you to be quibbling overly (but they do, you know, quibble) about marching in a protest organized in at least some small part by what might or might not be a WWP front, well. There you go.
(The rest of you might also want to remember this pith, when 2004 rolls around and you’re scratching your head trying to figure out how the Democrats could have fucked it up again. —I’m just sayin.’)
In other news: Oregon is officially gung ho about the brave new world of massively overmandated states with pathetically underfunded budgets. We are so screwed.
Twenty-first century schizoid man.
Blogging is a fragmentary, contradictory enterprise. (Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.) Even the most laser-like focus can’t help but skip trippingly from this to that to yonder, over there—hold tight, the world spins on a dime and everything’s different tomorrow. (I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.) A blog that’s little more than spontaneous eruptions of verbiage, linchinography on the fly, seems even more addlepated. (Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper?) Morsels of meaning, concatenations of confidences strung like chronological pearls—before swine? Perhaps, but think of Hen Wen—there’s a pretense to or at least an expectation of coherence, of a logical, integral flow, neatly parceled stone to stone from here to there. We may not step in the same river twice, but we at least expect the temperature to be consistent, the bottom to feel much the same, the current just about as strong as it was when last we wet our toes. (Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?)
Last night I howled in outrage; today, I’m looking forward to APE.
If you’re going to be in San Francisco this weekend and you’re at all curious about the current state of comics-as-art (and how comics-as-industry is slowly coming to realize its potential even as it shoots itself in the foot with mad abandon), I humbly suggest you take some time Saturday or Sunday for a trip down to the Concourse Exhibition Center at Showplace Square, 620 7th Street. (I’d be a bit more effusive, but it’s going to be my first trip. But Howard Cruse will be there. How can you pass up the opportunity to meet Howard Cruse? And buy his books?) —Jenn is there to promote Dicebox, and is sharing a table with Bruno’s own Chris Baldwin: Table No. 297, or so I’m told. Back near the restrooms. Look for “Baldwin and Lee” on the exhibitor-list-booklet-map thingie. If she’s busy sketching for fans and he’s busy schlepping his books, I’ll be the guy with the Vandyke and the closely cropped hair telling you in no uncertain terms why reading Dicebox (and Bruno) whenever possible will clear up your complexion, increase the size of your secondary sexual characteristics, and guarantee a crushing defeat for the Bush/Cheney junta in 2004.
—Also: a double handful of Mostly Acquisitions available for sale and, if you’re lucky, personal appearances at the table by Erika Moen and Jen Wang, two of the six of Pants Press.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
Hell.
War is. Is for children. In a handbasket. Freezing over. Fire and damnation. Damn you all to. Fuck it. Maybe it’s the bourbon and maybe it’s my hot head, the one that yells at the television set, and maybe it’s my snarky anti-authoritarian nature and maybe it’s just that I’m a self-hating anti-American objectively Ba’athist Stalinist stooge whose good intentions are greasing the skids down the slippery slope straight to.
I don’t care.
Forget the shameless politicization of an unprecedented terrorist attack. Forget that every informed opinion says that an invasion will trigger reprisals here at home that we are not ready for. Forget the broken promises to firefighters and cops, forget the unnecessary, clumsy, and disruptive invasion of civil rights by the largest and most expensive government ever, forget the staggering arrogance and sobering ineptitude on the international stage. Wipe it all off the table and send it smashing to the floor. I don’t care. Sit down across the now-empty table from me and tell me how on earth I can live with an administration that proposes to do this in my name—
The US intends to shatter Iraq “physically, emotionally and psychologically” by raining down on its people as many as 800 cruise missiles in two days.
The Pentagon battle plan aims not only to crush Iraqi troops, but also wipe out power and water supplies in the capital, Baghdad.
It is based on a strategy known as “Shock and Awe,” conceived at the National Defense University in Washington, in which between 300 and 400 cruise missiles would fall on Iraq each day for two consecutive days. It would be more than twice the number of missiles launched during the entire 40 days of the 1991 Gulf War. [...]
“You’re sitting in Baghdad and, all of a sudden, you’re the general and 30 of your division headquarters have been wiped out,” [architect of “Shock and Awe”, military strategist Harlan Ullman,] said. “You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power and water. In two, three, four, five days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted.”
Even as they reach out with their other hand to do this—
Weeks before a prospective invasion of Iraq, the oil-rich state has doubled its exports of oil to America, helping US refineries cope with a debilitating strike in Venezuela.
If you use the word “realpolitik” in your explanation, I will hit you.
This doesn’t come as a shock. I almost wish it did. Shock (even awe) would be better than this feeling like I hit a funny bone in the back of my head. I am not surprised by this; and that is almost what I’m angriest about right now.
Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied.
Roast in. Burn in. Rot in. See you in.
Irony’s failing, Captain. Satire’s offline.
You ever read Frank Miller?
Skip DK2. (I did.) Forget all of Sin City (aside from the first, before it was obvious he didn’t get the wickedly bleak joke). Go back to Dark Knight, if you ever liked Batman comics; go dig up some old Martha Washington—not really worth the time and trouble, but it had its moments; go strike the motherload and pick up the bound collection of Elektra: Assassin, which is for my money the best he’s ever done. (Writing-wise. Ronin’s another kettle of fish, and anyway, has no bearing on what we’re about to bring up.)
But if you haven’t read any Frank Miller, then a certain rich load of let’s be charitable and say unintentional humor will—well, it’ll still waft off the upcoming passage, but it won’t pack the same redolent stomach-dropping funhouse what-the-fuck deja vu wollop as it does for those of us who remember all the tough-talkin’ sound-bitten politicos from those ’80s (and early ’90s) comics, back when what Frank was writing was satire, was black comedy, was over-the-friggin’ top, a top which was still a ways up yonder, out of reach. I mean, if you don’t remember his take on the Surgeon General, then this—
Frist: I don’t know how good of a majority leader I’ll be. I just don’t. It would be presumptuous for me to say that. About being tough enough? What I did before coming to the United States Senate was to split people’s chests open, to open the chest, to reach in, operate on the heart, and if that wasn’t the right operation, actually cut that heart out. And go to another individual and open them up and take a heart out and put it in. And that’s not being aggressive, but it basically shows that I want results, I’ll do what it takes to have it done, and at end of the day, somebody is going to have a better quality of life because of it.
Well, you just won’t be able to appreciate it in quite the same way. —Shame, really.
It rather speaks for itself, don’t it?
Folks: the National Geographic swimsuit edition. (Thanks to the Daze Reader.)
You can even select which cover you would have chosen, had you been the art director—and offered only three shots, of women in swimsuits, five minutes before deadline.
(Fret not overly, o androphiles: there’s a bit of beefcake in there, too. —Wasn’t that magnanimous of them?)
Over there.
First a clean line passed; now, a grittily muddy one. Damn. —Bill Mauldin, ladies and gentlemen.
Mixed messages,
or, The incoherent text.
They’re not showing those Hallie Kate Eisenberg commercials before the movies anymore, but seeing a flick in a Portland theater hasn’t gotten any better. You pay your $5.25 (because honestly, who pays full price these days?) and then you sit down for a good six to ten minutes of commercials. Before the previews. And after that interminable waiting period where the screen is filled with slides from local low-budget advertisers (and those inane movie trivia squibs from Pepsi [if you live in a Pepsi town] or Coke [if you live in a Coke town]) and an audio feed is run of recently released pop hits, with the names of the artists, albums, and labels carefully enunciated, should you be moved to swing by the Sam Goody on the way to the parking lot.
And the last couple of times I’ve gone, they haven’t shown those Foundation for a Better Life PSAs, either. Which is kind of a shame; they’re slick and smarmy, yes, but still, it’s better to see a big bald biker shamed (a little, and genially) into being nice to a couple of little old ladies than it is to see the long-form brilliance of that ad for the new Volvo SUV.
Of course, even a simple PSA celebrating gratitude (pass it on!) can be more complex than it first appears:
Accompanying the opening strains of “Born to Be Wild” (a countercultural anthem of the late 1960s, prominently featured in 1969’s “Easy Rider”), the video opens with typical MTV-style of quick, staccato cuts. We see first a longhaired biker, and then a series of bikers, from various angles, hopping on their motorcycles, in front of a 60s-style diner, to the opening lyrics of the song (“Head out on the highway, looking for adventure,” etc.) A large, muscular biker, a skinhead who bears more than a passing resemblance to the wrestler “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, finds that his bike has stalled. Frustrated, he hops off the bike, gestures angrily at it, and galumphs to a pay phone, aggressively digging in his jeans for some non-existent change. Concurrently, on the left side of the screen, two small and elderly black women exit the diner and wobble on down the street. They approach the payphone as the lyrics tell the listener to “take the world in a love embrace.” Just then, the biker turns to them, and peevishly announces that the “phone’s taken,” evidently fearing that these elderly black women are in the habit of using public phones. One of the elderly, bespectacled black women looks at him with obvious concern, and diagnosing the situation, offers up some coins, as her voice creaks out the question, “Will this help you?” To the strains of “we were born, born to be wild,” the biker, a bit startled, examines the coins, and takes off his sunglasses. We see his face slope downward and soften. Softly he says “Hey, thanks.” The two women smile, and as they wobble away, he says, “I appreciate it.” As this biker puts the coins into the payphone, the graphics “Gratitude,” and “Pass It On” appear on the screen with the Foundation’s ID, just as the voiceover reiterates the words on the screen, and the name of the sponsor (The Foundation for a Better Life). Apart from the simplistic moral tale, a number of iconic reinscriptions have occurred here. First, both the denotations and connotations of the song, “Born to Be Wild,” and its most famous setting (in Easy Rider) have been flipped on their “heads.” “Easy Rider” chronicles the life and death of two “long-haired” bikers who take LSD with hookers while in a New Orleans graveyard. They also smoke a bit of marijuana, and as drug couriers, are essentially assassinated by rednecks in the segregationist U.S. southland. The main characters played by Peter Fonda (Wyatt “Captain America” Earp) and Dennis Hopper (Billy) function as iconic magnets for overt conflict over the implicit boundaries of “the American Dream” throughout the film, as they ride from Los Angeles to New Orleans, on their way to Mardi Gras. They are not symbols of unity and social harmony.
Likewise, the “biker’s” skinhead appearance in the FBL’s video gives him an “Aryan Nation” patina. As iconic skinhead, it seems very unlikely that elderly black ladies would approach such a figure. Given the decades of hostility between white supremacists and the black population of the US, a more realistic response would have been to quickly pass by the pay phone, saying nothing. Obviously, that’s not what happens in the video. What occurs is a recoding of these icons and histories into a structural-functionalist consensus (over gratitude and all the other common and desirable virtues). In doing so, they well illustrate Gomez-Pena’s claim about the shape of a corporatist multiculturalism that “artificially softens the otherwise sharp edges of cultural difference.” But why? And, why now?
(Of course, the Volvo commercial is in its own way fun to dissect: note the sexual subtexts in each “sighting”: the young son dreams of escape on the Loch Ness monster; the adolescent daughter dreams of a unicorn; the mother dreams of seeing Elvis driving a convertible down a desert highway [which—tangent—makes me think a) of James Dean, not so much Elvis and b) raises (tangentially, yes; those Harley Earl Buick commercials do it much more directly) the perennial question of why on earth car manufacturers try to sell modern cars by hearkening back to older models that were pretty much without exception better looking]; and the father’s dream is rather notably absent—are his dreams not worth commenting on? [Has he been stiffed?] Are we supposed to make the inference that this new Volvo SUV is his dream—thus, on the one hand, backhandedly remarking on the paucity of his imagination [an impractical thing, suited only for impractical people] while suggesting that only his [practical] dreams are deserving of reification? Are the dreams of the presumed norm, those white, middle-class, family-headin’-up men, to be kept private, hidden, safe, unknown? And whether that’s empowering or disempowering depends on context and strategy, of course [and the commercial rather wisely leaves both entirely in the reader’s hands]. —See the fun you can have before they show the trailer for the latest Jim Carrey vehicle?)
But! It’s the context of Regal Cinemas as digital pipeline snarfed up by predatory Native-American-heritage-drillin’ Qwest-ownin’ Bob-Dole’s-hand-shakin’ evil-white-capitalist guy, to be used to pump heavily coded crypto-fascist feel-good agitprop into the eyeballs of millions of captive moviegoers—it’s that context that makes it so terribly funny (to me, at least) that, when we went to go see The Two Towers last month, before the previews, before the ads and the PSAs, while we were finding our seats and they were showing those slides of local advertisers and inane movie trivia, and playing over the speakers snippets of new releases (artists and labels and album titles carefully enunciated, so you can remember them when browsing the aisles at the Barnes & Noble after the show), and right after the latest smooth smooth R&B sensation, they announce their next song is from a Russian pop duo: “All the Things She Said,” by t.A.T.u. (The generic announcer spelled it out: Tee. Ay. Tee. You. Clearly. Carefully. Although I imagine most people will end up calling them “Tatu.”)
And I’m all mixed up
feeling cornered and rushed
They say it’s my fault but I want her so much
Wanna fly her away where the sun and rain
Come in over my face
wash away all the shame
When they stop and stare—don’t worry me
’Cause I’m feeling for her
what she’s feeling for me
I can try to pretend, I can try to forget
But it’s driving me mad, going out of my head!
Russian lolitapop lesbians in their panties. Pass it on.
—I should maybe provide some context.
Volkova Julia Olegovna and Katina Elena Sergeevna were low-level toilers in the Russian youthpop industry, a sort of second-string mirror of the Disney-Orlando nexus that gave us the boy bands and Brtineys of the late ’90s (like those third-world knock-offs of Guess jeans and Star Wars action figures ) when they were plucked from a cattle-call audition to star in the latest creation of former psychiatrist and advertising executive Ivan Shapovalov (a sort of second-string knock-off of Lou Pearlman ): t.A.T.u. (Also: Tatu, Tattoo, t.A.T.y., and Taty. Since the “oo” sound is figured by “y” in Cyrillic. Comes from tattoos, which are hip. Or an abbreviation of “Ta liubit etu,” a rough transliteration of a phrase meaning “She loves her” or “This girl loves that girl” [I’m assuming some sort of slang or dialect; this doesn’t sound much like what little I remember of my Russian would suggest. “Liubit,” yes (“Ya liubliyu tie,” while it looks awful in Romaji, is one of the more beautiful ways in the world to say “I love you.”—With a good dark rich accent, of course), but “ta”? “Etu”? (Brute?)].)
The basic shtick: Yulia and Lena perform in schoolgirl outfits—kilts, blouses, ties; also, incongruous electric blue kneepads—singing emphatically of freedom and escape and not taking it any more and, well, their love for each other. They usually strip off each other’s kilt and blouse and perform some of the more energetic numbers in matching white T-shirts and underwear. (Also, kneepads.) The highlight of each concert is a kiss, which has started riots. (Also: riots when the kiss has been banned.) They started the band when Yulia was 15 and Lena 16. Lena’s now 18; Yulia’s going to turn 17 in February. They’re the biggest pop act ever to come out of Eastern Europe. They’re angling to hit the American market bigtime. Their video is already in rotation at TRL. And music critics are lining up to lament the fall of Western civilization. (The music? Chirpy Europop. Better in Russian than English, but all cheap pop music is vastly improved by not understanding the lyrics, and singing in phonetic English flattens their voices, which are a bit better than not. Also: they “do” a Smiths cover on the American release. “How Soon is Now.” Just so’s you know.) —My God, they’ve even cropped up in blogtopia.
So I think it’s too late to stop them. If you were so inclined.
And you might well be so inclined: there’s a lot not to like here. This is rank exploitation, by any definition of the word. Should you doubt it: take a gander at the photos they’ve shot for Maxim and Jane, for a neat-enough bracketing of the current scope of the newsstand. —Or go for broke with the stuff done for the Russian Maxim. Go: read the reactions that first popped up on MetaFilter back last summer. They aren’t even “real” lesbians, after all. (Though the epistemological implications of that sentence are staggering, to say the least; one could have a field day writing papers on the warring meanings of the word “lesbian” as used within lifestyle squibs written about t.A.T.u.) —The kisses and cuddles are all an act, put on for the stage and the cameras; some denizens of the bulletin boards insist the two girls really hate each other. (Some denizens insist Elton John wants to adopt the girls. Grain of salt and all that.) The thing is, they’re cheerfully, maddeningly upfront about how it’s a put-on. Sort of. “Everybody thinks we are lesbians,” says Lena. “But we just love each other.” (Keeping in mind that this is translated from the Russian, of course, and that leering Ivan Shapovalov, that cigar-smoking svengali, is hovering in the background, controlling everything they say.) There’s also the boyfriends the tabloids write about and the husbands they want to have one of these days.
So: exploitation; objectification; a manufactured pop phenomenon taking on the trappings of marginalized sexuality for edgy thrills; frat boys giggling over photos of schoolgirl lesbians; nymphettes cavorting on stage in their underwear; a synthesized Europop cover of a Smiths song. Ivan Shapovalov is out to make a buck by any means necessary, and Interscope is more than willing to aid and abet him, and Matthew Yglesias should be ashamed for having been taken in.
But a funny thing happens with pop culture, betwixt cup and lip.
Robin Wood is a film critic who talks about the “incoherent text,” a text that says several conflicting things all at once—his seminal example being Taxi Driver, which at once condemns and celebrates Travis “You talkin’ to me?” Bickle, though he did extend the idea, asserting that the incoherent text was the dominant storytelling mode of ’70s cinema, “full of ideological contradictions and conflicts that reproduce existing social confusion and turmoil.” (And now that I’ve set all my pieces on the table, and am about to try to make a pretty shape out of them, can I just digress a moment to point out that I know about Robin Wood because of Buffy? That he’s a Freudian [and anti-American self-hating leftist socialist, to boot] critic with an abiding interest in themes of repression? That Buffy’s tagline this [it is to be hoped final] season is “From beneath you, it devours”? That the principal’s name [wait for it] is Robin Wood? And you remember how Jonathan was killed? And the principal was the guy who, all as-yet unexplained, dragged his body out of the basement of the school around back and buried it? So tell me, you smart people: why the fuck is a character named for a Freudian critic of horror films repressing the evidence of a horrific sacrifice by burying it? Hmm?) —Ahem.
Where was I?
Oh.
Okay: I don’t want to suggest that crypto-fascist PSAs or faux-lesbian lolitapop stars are deliberately, consciously incoherent texts; the good stuff, the art that is more than one thing, that embodies and takes up on all sides the struggles it’s about. But any time there’s a dissonance between what’s said and what’s read, you have incoherence. (Don’t take that too far; given that no one ever reads even the most didactic piece in the manner in which it was intended, one could then state that every text is incoherent. While this might prove a useful point in a cocktail party donnybrook, it renders the term itself useless, critically speaking.)
The dissonance between what the “Pass It On” PSA says on its surface and how its subtext works, and what we can infer of the intent behind it from the circumstances behind its creation and distribution, sets up an interesting enough incoherence that makes for a diverting field of critical play. (Some might call it hypocrisy and move on, but they’re no fun to play with.)
t.A.T.u. is set up by a leering svengali who cynically pulls every last trick out of the books, and outraged critics (who really ought to know better) are all too eager to fall into line and into their scripted roles, damning the whole concept to the horrible fate of selling millions of records. But to insist that the only way to read t.A.T.u. is as exploitation, as a man’s debased idea of teenaged lesbian love, as Europop tarted up with a tawdry underaged striptease, is to deny the readings of hundreds of thousands of online fans who have found something of value—whether it’s an expression of something they feel themselves (faked or not), or of something they know is in the world and want to see reflected in their music and pop culture, or something more basic, more primal (oh, hush): after all, teenagers directly and unapologetically expressing their sexuality (cleanly, simply, shorn of the cartoonish excesses of Britney and Christina—which are, after all, rather clearly not sex, not as we know it)—that’s a gloriously satisfying fuck you in an age which thinks calling students “sluts” is acceptable sex education. (Certainly, it’s the closest thing to genuine rock ’n’ roll rebellion I’ve seen these past few benighted years.)
“And if the young women of Tatu are genuine teen lesbians, their willingness to delve into matters of homosexuality on a public stage could very well be a source of some inspiration to the many other teenage lesbians out there.” Which is what The Star’s critic had to say. “If they’re merely fanciful eye candy for men who dream of a world where women never wear outerwear and routinely drop giggling to the ground for tickle fights, the high-stakes pop market has hit yet another new low.” —And that’s the rub, isn’t it? After all, why on earth can’t they be both? More or less. Here and there. At one and the same time.
It all depends on who’s reading it, and when, and how, and where. Also, why.
Incoherency.
(Yes, but what about how that rebellion is commodified, packaged, and sold? And how faux lesbianism aside, Shapovalov is trafficking in the images and ideas of girls in emotional distress, marginalized; defiant, yes, but unsure, uncertain, confused; above all, girls who need to be protected? —Oh, shut up. It’s getting late.)
Anyway. That’s why I laughed, when t.A.T.u. started chirping about “All the Things She Said,” before a Mormon PSA designed to gently nudge us all back into a kinder, gentler, less confusing, more coherent Golden Age. Mixed messages. Futility is sometimes terribly funny. (And then, of course, we saw part two of The Lord of the Rings: a story of the importance of mercy and the power of redemption set in a world profoundly and irrevocably split between good and evil.)
—At least, that’s part of why I laughed.
