I haven't had time to contribute as much as I'd like, and I'd ideally like to be posting something everyday. But in keeping with a theme running through my May 19 and May 27 posts, it's worth noting that Tupac Shakur would be forty years old were he alive today.
Tupac! Would be forty!
Time does fly, doesn't it?
I can't help but wonder what the cultural and even political landscape would be like had he survived the stupidity that got him killed. Maybe had he lived the world wouldn't have learned its lesson, so it was inevitable that he had to be sacrificed, Jesus-like, for the rest of us to grow up. I personally hate the everything-happens-for-a-reason, let's-reduce-a-person's-death-to-our-own-life-lesson approach, but I suppose it's one way to make sense of senselessness.
It's hard not to dreamily guess at what a Tupac would have to say about these times in which we live. The man was so full of contradictions. For every Hit 'em Up there was a Keep Ya Head Up. For every spittle-hurling vitriolic battle interview a thoughtful expression of compassion and complexity.
I guess those of a mind to believe that there's a point to all this say things like "Everything happens for a reason" to avoid joining the rest of us who can do nothing but shake our heads and sigh.
Gil Scott-Heron died today. I don't know yet what was the cause of death, but that's another truth-teller in the grave too soon. At sixty-two years of age, forty-one years after the release of Small Talk at 125th and Lenox and forty after the groundbreaking Pieces of a Man, his words are still all too relevant and--as a nation in general--we have yet to listen. The Godfather of Rap, an unflinchingly prophetic critic of national entropy and persistent injustice, tragicomic to the bitter end. Listen to Gil Scott-Heron. I mean, listen to Gil Scott-Heron. May he rest in peace.
"We have shown earlier how in this environment which lies closest to us, the public 'environment' already is ready-to-hand and is also a matter of concern. In utilizing public means of transport and in making use of information services such as the newspaper, every Other is like the next. This Being-with-one-another dissolves one's own Dasein completely into the kind of Being of 'the Others', in such a way, indeed, that the Others, as distinguishable and explicit, vanish more and more. In this inconspicuousness and unascertainability, the real dictatorship of the 'they' is unfolded. We take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as they take pleasure; we read, see, and judge about literature and art as they see and judge; likewise we shrink back from the 'great mass' as they shrink back; we find 'shocking' what they find shocking. The 'they', which is nothing definite, and which all are, though not as the sum, prescribes the kind of Being of everydayness."
So it's not new--it's from 2006, to be exact--but as I just saw it I have to recommend Byron Hurt's short documentary about hyper-masculinity in hip-hop, Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes (links to the entire film online).
Highlights include Jadakiss's annoyingly stubborn but shrewdly pragmatic defense of all that the film examines, Fat Joe's candid and somewhat touching self-critique, some incisive commentary from Michael Eric Dyson and Chuck D., and an interview in which--when challenged--a bunch of aspiring rappers pull a complete about-face from talking about killing and raping to reveal tragically repressed social consciousness.
I hope to post some blogs on related matters soon--a reading of Nas lyrics, some words on de-facto segregation and urban decay, polemics against the right's assault on Planned Parenthood, passive aggressive neighbors--but of course that will all depend on how this quarter pans out.
So...stay tuned?
For now I just wanted to post something on here before the weekend's end.
"Maybe the collapse of academia will be good for us in the long run. No, seriously! Right now we're generally acknowledged to be pretty smart. Think of how smart we'll look thirty years from now. We'll be, like, geniuses--prophets!"
A haunting and playful daydream of a fadoon one of the genre's seemingly (some would say annoyingly) inexhaustible themes--unrequited love--A Rosinha dos Limões has always reminded me of childhood. This, for me, is comfort music.
The title literally translates to "Rosie of the Lemons," but when I was a teenager in a traditional Portuguese guitar group we used to jokingly call it "Rosie and the Lemons," thus seemingly transforming the song's eponymous protagonist from a lemon-selling peasant girl to the lead vocalist of an arena rock band. I got in the habit of calling the song by its wrong name, and still catch myself doing so from time to time.
It's been in my head lately, so I thought I'd share.
This is the original recording by Max. Below the video I've copied the lyrics in Portuguese and then attempted an English translation, which doesn't quite do justice to the clever simplicity of Max's lyrics. There's almost no attempt at proper versification, and only the slightest hint at puns subtly analogizing the coquettish Rosie with the Virgin Mary. Well, that's how I read them anyway.
2. People are are really mean in Sevilla. They're disproportionately gorgeous, and their city is phenomenal, but Lord almighty are they hostile.
Granada, however, is nearly perfect. That's all I have time for now. I hope to update this soon, with pictures and all, but we're basically homeless and only have internet access in tea houses. Good times so far, though. Lots of seafood, nice people (except for the aforementioned snobs), etc.
"America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash–and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumerable editions of the ‘Lamplighter,’ and other books neither better nor worse?–worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by the 100,000."
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, whining.
And that's why nobody's ever heard of this Hawthorne guy. Say what you will about sentimental fiction, these "damned...scribbling women" knew how to start a novel with flair. Do you need a sick ass visual aid to let you know just how wicked sentimental this story's gonna be? No, seriously. Are you ready for this shit? . . . Bam!
I don't know about you, but I'm ready for the second coming. It's getting didactic as fuck up in here.
image from Susan Warner's 1850 novel, The Wide, Wide World
"Among the islands of Polynesia, no sooner are the images overturned, the temples demolished, and the idolators converted into nominal Christians, than disease, vice, and premature death make their appearance. The depopulated land is then recruited from the rapacious hordes of enlightened individuals who settle themselves within its borders, and clamorously announce the progress of the Truth." (Herman Melville, Typee)
"We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people — the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world." (Herman Melville, White Jacket)
* * * * * * * * *
A group of American missionaries goes to Haiti in search of orphans to save (with every connotation that little verb can muster). They pick up thirty-three children and head to the Dominican Republic, but are arrested at the border for having taken the children without documentation or without verifying that the children were even orphans. Are these folks kidnappers? (see story here)
Well, to put it plainly, to evaluate the situation based on the act itself rather than on the internal world of these missionaries' thoughts, yes. Yes, they are kidnappers. But what of the world in which they fancy themselves God's elves? What of their belief that they were on a mission ordained by Christ, that they never had any intentions of trafficking children, that they were actually doing good? Must this be taken into account? Again, I say yes; but maybe not in the way Idaho's Central Valley Baptist Church would like.
For the record, I fully buy the story of the missionaries. I do believe that they acted with the best of intentions, and that their enthusiasm and naivete blinded them rather than that their Christian mission is a cover-up for some nefarious plot. And maybe the children had a darker future awaiting them in Haiti than they did in a Baptist-run orphanage in the Dominican Republic or in the custody of adoptive parents in the U.S. This viewpoint was partially validated when it emerged that some of the kids actually were not orphans, but were handed over to the missionaries by their own parents, who were promised that their children would be educated in America and placed in loving homes with swimming pools. So this will not be a commentary on if or how these people should be punished, because frankly I don't have an opinion. What they did was illegal, but was done with the best of intentions. You can't take children out of a country without proper documentation, but some of them were handed over by their own parents. So it's all criminal and beneficent and bad and good and on and on and on...we have courts to address those questions.
What bothers me is not the difficulty of finding an answer to these legal and ethical questions, but the mindset that would justify such actions in the first place. What bothers me is that the real problem resides in the very term thrown around in an attempt to exonerate these do-gooders for their do-gooding: Faith.
Understand, when I criticize faith I don't mean to criticize people of faith (though I think that label is unfortunate for reasons I'll soon disclose) or religion per se, but rather a particular brand of faith that subordinates ethical coexistence to unethical but well-intentioned behavior, and opens the door to a form of imperialism that can always revert back to an ethical standard derived from a plane unavailable for assessment by non-believers.
It's a deficient version of the paradoxical faith of Abraham as conceived by Kierkegaard. In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard describes the faith paradox as being predicated on the "strength of the absurd." After decades of barrenness, God has not only granted Abraham a son, but promised that this seed shall give rise to a great nation. Since Abraham has absolute faith in the word of God, he doesn't question the order to kill his son, but, on the strength of the absurd, believes that he can both obey the order and get his son back in some undisclosed way. Furthermore, in obeying the word of God, Abraham here must disregard the ethical--he must reject the social world and exist only to obey God. He can't explain his actions, since they are justifiable only on the strength of the absurd and are simply unjustifiable to the world at large. To the earthly world beyond himself, Abraham is, at the moment he reaches the top of Mount Moriah, no more than a premeditated murderer. That God stops him at the last second does not justify the silent preparation and intended execution (for it had to be intended, otherwise it wouldn't constitute an act of faith and then Abraham would just be some guy).
Kierkegaard calls this rejection of ethics in the service of the absolute the "teleological suspension of the ethical," and if you don't have God whispering in your ear or thundering down at you from the mountaintops you can still teleologically suspend the ethical if you really think you're working toward a godly end. And therein lies the problem with those religious factions who value blind faith over less nihilistic versions of religious observance, like piety, for example. Any post-biblical version of blind faith must be deficient for two reasons: first, Abraham is an example that can't be emulated--otherwise, again, he wouldn't matter. Second, the "knight of faith" (as Kierkegaard refers to Abraham) is not viewed as such by his contemporaries, because of his suspension of the ethical--the very thing that makes him an exemplar of godly action would render him a criminal in his own age. To commend or excuse unethical behavior based on the faith of the transgressor makes no sense, since we don't have access to his revelation, and if we did, his actions wouldn't be exceptional.
So what does this have to do with these missionaries in Haiti? The problem is not that these individuals conceived of themselves as having received orders directly from God (although some have made statements eerily close to such a claim), but that the U.S. as a whole operates with this City on a Hill mentality that always justifies itself based on some hazy endpoint by which we consider ourselves essentially better than others. How is it even debatable that taking thirty-three children from their home country without documentation, without verifying whether they're all actually orphans, without getting permission from anyof the three nations involved, would be a case of child trafficking? It's really only debatable if there's some essential difference between these kidnappers and real kidnappers. So when they say "we are not kidnappers," they can't possibly mean that they didn't take children without permission; what they can mean is that they aren't Ukrainian pornographers, Thai pimps, Mauritanian slave drivers, etc. What they mean is "we are Americans," and that's supposed to be a valid defense. Still, no one in their right mind would deny that such actions--even if committed with the best of intentions--have massive potential for now giving the green light to "real" traffickers. And yet every day on every channel defenders of these people's actions are taken seriously when they defend them not on the grounds that their violation of the law was a mistake, an idiotic and arrogant move that they regret, but that they didn't violate the law because they acted in good faith.
By this absurd logic a surgeon could retroactively excuse operating with blunt instruments if he just claimed belief that those instruments were somehow better than whatever else was available. And that's exactly the mentality with which we so often excuse our actions*. Take the horrors of Blackwater (whose CEO, by the way, saw himself as a Christian crusader) in Iraq and how they're so often handled by defenders of the Bush administration. They're not murderers, they just made some mistakes. That those mistakes actually include murder doesn't make them murderers. Why? Because they had the right idea, and so did we when we hired them. So although I'll reiterate that I believe the Central Valley Baptists acted with the best of intentions, I'd also add that those intentions are only any good within an all-too-prevalent ideology which dictates that the job of charitable Americans is not just to help the less fortunate survive and get back on their feet, but to save them from themselves and to do so by converting them to our clearly superior ways.
*Of course, this situation in Haiti is an isolated and highly unique incident; this kidnapping isn't part of American policy in that region, nor is it the modus operandi of the vast majority of Christian missionaries. However, it is indicative of an underlying sense of entitlement drawn from the popular (and almost exclusively Christian) notion of American exceptionalism. Would the conversation about this issue be so polite and receptive to their defenders if the missionaries had been Venezuelan? What if they represented a mosque instead of a church? I don't think it would.
Following up on the previous entry's postscript, I'd like to submit for your perusal a list of things experienced in the past week that make me want to punch Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor in the face*. Let me know if I've neglected to mention anything important.
- the Republican Party.
- the Democratic Party.
- mealy apples.
- my loud neighbors and their weird schedules.
- the shoddy construction of my building, which makes my neighbors seem louder than they actually are (I can hear them pissing).
- Julia Roberts.
- The Castaway, starring Tom Hanks.
- students who want to talk about Ayn Rand.
- the Portuguese national soccer team's inability to win a major tournament despite consistently having some of the best players in the world.
- Ed Hardy clothing and the people who wear it.
- Newport Beach bars and clubs.
- Irvine. The whole thing.
- Pat Robertson.
- Rush Limbaugh.
- broken traffic lights.
- Che Guevara t-shirts.
- Che Guevara t-shirt parodies.
- people who get visibly offended by Che Guevara t-shirts or Che Guevara t-shirt parodies.
- Glenn Beck.
- Keith Olbermann.
- Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
- the fact that my iPod is broken.
- stomach issues.
- sleep issues.
- car issues.
- money (or lack thereof).
- health insurance deductibles.
- John Boehner's "tan".
- Eric Cantor's smug, stupid face.
*disclaimer: I don't actually want to punch this clown in the face. He just happens to be a perfect distillation of everything I hate about our species.
My parents (neither one a native English speaker) don't like saying "you're welcome" because to them it sounds arrogant. That's not to say that they pass such a judgment on anyone who uses the expression, or even to say that they never use it themselves; they just can't bring themselves to say it without some level of discomfort.
Quirky as I initially found this fact, I realized that I don't say it much either. It feels cumbersome compared to "my pleasure" or the entirely informal "no problem," and I always find myself stumbling over the syllables like a shy little boy. Maybe I inherited a dislike of the phrase from my parents. Maybe I just inherited the set of values--or quirks--that make it so awkward for them.
My dad's explanation for his dislike of the phrase in question has to do with humility: by saying "You're welcome," the person receiving thanks acknowledges his/her entitlement to recognition for an act of kindness, and in so doing creates a two-tiered system with the obliged at bottom.
As opposed to the Portuguese/Spanish version my parents are used to ("de nada," which translates roughly into "it's nothing" or "think nothing of it"), "you're welcome" implies a commitment. If one is to "think nothing of it," the transaction is terminated almost as quickly as it began; but to what does the giver "welcome" the recipient? More charity? Whereas "think nothing of it" humbly rejects accolades, the acceptance expressed by "you're welcome" seems self-aggrandizing.
Maybe it's far-fetched to extrapolate from this the notion that a polite idiom would have a sinister effect on the way English speakers give and get thanks, but there's something a little creepy about the self-congratulation involved in some of the louder American efforts to help Haitians, isn't there? In the weeks following the earthquake, every hour on CNN was filled with reports on Haiti that shared time with the network's anchors and correspondents lauding themselves for doing such a great job.
Understand, I don't mean to denigrate the good that people have done, only to comment on what I think is a disturbing undercurrent of charity in general and American charity in particular. CNN's sentimental, self-congratulatory drama annoyed me a bit, but it's a superficial sort of annoyance. Much more disturbing and telling in this regard (as Naomi Klein of course has already pointed out) is that amid all the good deeds and goodwill, the harbingers of disaster capitalism have been licking their chops since day one. And that's not just my opinion. So, you're welcome, Haiti.
Horace Miner's 1956 essay, "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema," satirizes western anthropologists' othering characterizations of "primitive" cultures by painting Americans (the "Nacirema"--sorry, I guess that's a spoiler) as a superstitious people whose cultural practices are based on the belief"that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease." I remember reading this essay in an anthropology course early in my undergraduate studies and finding it wildly amusing.
Recently I returned to Miner's essay and was reminded that it has this to say about health care among the Nacirema:
The latipso ceremonies are so harsh that it is phenomenal that a fair proportion of the really sick natives who enter the temple ever recover. Small children whose indoctrination is still incomplete have been known to resist attempts to take them to the temple because "that is where you go to die." Despite this fact, sick adults are not only willing but eager to undergo the protracted ritual purification, if they can afford to do so. No matter how ill the supplicant or how grave the emergency, the guardians of many temples will not admit a client if he cannot give a rich gift to the custodian. Even after one has gained and survived the ceremonies, the guardians will not permit the neophyte to leave until he makes still another gift.
"I am a young woman, twenty-one years old, and am called bright and intelligent. I fear I have seriously impaired my mind by novel reading. Do you think I can restore it to a sound and vigorous condition by eschewing novels and reading only solid works?"
I am now in full list-reading mode, and my list is about 2/3 novels. Maybe I should scatter the "solid works" around in such a way as to remain "bright and intelligent."
illustration: La Liseuse, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1772
Just when I thought the church would stop and leave me to practice passive heresy in peace, the pope goes and opens his mouth. Condoms contribute to the spread of AIDS now. I, as a white middle class American male, never felt the urgency of the church's disdain for prophylactics. I knew it was frowned upon (having never been married and all), but we were never talked at about birth control, and especially not about condoms. Abortion, yes, but condoms and birth control pills were simply an accessory to sex. That is, sex is wrong, but if you're ok with that you should probably use a condom.
Now, I think it's safe to surmise that the pope doesn't actually oppose the policy I just stated: if you're not worried about eternal damnation he probably prefers that you at least have some consideration for others and try not to spread sexually transmitted diseases. The problem, of course, is that he did not say this. He said that the distribution of condoms actually hurts attempts to fight the spread of AIDS. Meanwhile the Vatican's talking heads gushed about recent increases in membership.
Hooray for increases in membership! It's like the old days, but without the galleons and heavy artillery.
A seventeen year-old boy was shot and killed last week in north Artesia (also known by its gang territory eponym, "Chivas") riding his bike at 1 am under the 91 freeway overpass, a spot I've drunkenly stumbled through countless times on my way home from hotel parties. There's plenty of unsavory activity going on around there much of the time, but I've never actually had problems. Of course, it's rather obvious that I'm not in a gang. By all indications, this poor kid unfortunately had some gang associations even though he wasn't a member. He "looked like" a gangster, which is to say that he dressed the part. It seems he would probably have eventually outgrown that madness if he'd survived, but he rode his bike at the wrong time and was caught up in a rough spot when someone from somewhere else was on the prowl.
Just like that. Candles, crosses, flowers and metallic balloons in a morbid little bunch under the overpass, right under the spot where homeless people piss. A boy died there.
When we moved to Artesia (1988) a fifteen year-old was murdered in gang violence right around the corner from our house. Things like that happened pretty often for a few years, then it calmed down. Apparently it's picking up again (economic patterns neatly parallel the ebb and flow). Still, for the most part, Artesia's a really nice place to live. Even back when that fifteen year-old was shot, most parts of Artesia were perfectly safe to walk around in at night. They wouldn't usually bug you unless you were from another gang.
Yet to watch local news coverage right now is to think that Artesia is crawling with murderous thugs. North Artesia especially is a bloodbath. There's a subtext to every local TV station report that paints the people under and around the freeway as savages. This image really bothered a relative of mine, not for the sake of the north side but for the city's reputation as a whole. "They're making Artesia sound like some crazy, dangerous place," he complained. "Like it's Watts or something." I asked if it had ever occurred to him that maybe he only thinks of Watts that way because the news coverage of Watts has always been just like it is right now for Artesia. "Oh, well, yeah maybe," he replied, "but you know what I mean."
I hate Ed Hardy clothing. Tattoos belong on bodies, not on t-shirts. Ninety-dollar price tags don’t belong on t-shirts either, especially ugly ones. And rhinestones don’t belong anywhere. I don’t care what a pioneer Don Ed Hardy is in the tattooing world, the designs that grace Christian Audigier’s Ed Hardy clothing line are co-opted counterculture clichés swallowed and regurgitated in a gaudy attempt to cash in on the fantastically hypothetical intersection of hipsters and ‘roid monkeys. How such a strategy can possibly work is way beyond me; but then again, of late overwhelming confusion has become my standard reaction to the shopping mall anyway.
I had not set foot in an indoor shopping mall in a while, and on my last two or three visits I made a beeline for a specific shop, bought what I needed and got the hell out. I don’t like those places. It just turns out that I had to shop a bit this time around, so I got to take it in and I must admit that—much to my dismay—I had a reaction akin to old men whining about the world going to hell in a handbasket.
Since the last time I spent a significant amount of time in the Cerritos Mall, a shop has sprung up dedicated to rhinestone and sequin-encrusted clothing of the Ed Hardy variety. Along with outlandishly expensive distressed v-necks and ridiculous belt buckles, the place must turn a hefty profit if it sells anything, since there is no way that any product in the store costs more than five bucks to make, despite their astronomical price tags. A few doors down, there is a shop apparently (based on a quick look at the front at least) dedicated solely to Hannah Montana merchandise. There’s a place that sells body creams that reek of hard candy melted onto vinyl car seats and incubated in 110 degree heat. “Young lady” sections at the tops of department store escalators where the “women” sections used to be, kiosks selling belt buckles and enormous sunglasses run by young teenage girls in translucent white shorts so that you can see exactly what their underwear look like, obese kids with obese parents waddling to and from five or six different ice cream shops (mind you, this is not a huge mall), bad music blasting from every glaringly-lit and brightly-colored corner, and suddenly the realization that I’ve done a lap around the entire mall without finding what I want because if it’s there it’s hidden. The mall isn’t mine. Nobody above the age of eighteen appears to even have buying power in this place—I’m in a playground, a cafeteria, a…well, a shopping mall. Of course, the mall has always been for teenagers, and even as a teenager I disliked it. This realization at least serves to disabuse me of the idea that I’ve completely morphed into more of a curmudgeon than I’ve ever been.
Still, there is something different about the mall I saw on this trip. Kids don’t use cash. Very young kids dress as though they’re much older and act as though they’re much younger than they are. They don’t loiter in the public areas of the mall like they used to either—they shop, or at least hang out inside the stores, while adults linger on the benches outside sipping on mocha frappuccinos. And there’s so much more useless shit. The kiosks—my God, the kiosks! Do we need an entire cart dedicated to selling different colored glasses like the ones Kanye West used in the “Stronger” video? Do we really? Lingerie and hair-waxing establishments burst with pre-pubescent girls while video game shops cater almost exclusively to grown men. Where did all these kids get the money and where did all these adults get the time?
At one end of the mall there’s a skylight, under which people lounge on benches encircling some plants. The skylight used to be open, and people used to smoke underneath it. I remember when I was a little kid, there was a distinct mall smell that seemed to come from this very spot. It was a mix of fast food, floor cleaner and cigarette smoke—that was the smell of the mall.
The cigarette smoke disappeared when the California smoking ban took effect in the late eighties or early nineties, right around the time that our school district’s test scores made real estate prices explode in the area formerly known as Dairy Valley, which led to an influx of upper middle-class folks with more expendable income, resulting in the building of more shopping centers that then took over the role of providing places like Ross and Target, allowing the mall to focus on cornering more trendy markets for people with money to spend—money that they’re no longer spending on cigarettes.
Hm…
I guess we’ve got to let our kids get addicted to something, but I wonder if all this crap is any less hazardous than Joe Camel's wares.
Oh, and speaking of expensive trends: don't blame the kids...click.
Saturday night checked out the Orange County Fair and, while standing in line, saw a woman that went to my high school. She was a few years older than me, although I think she had a brother my age. If memory serves me correctly, she used to dance at a "gentleman's club." She's stunningly attractive.
It's difficult to overstate how crazy the fair is, with its deep-fried everything (avocadoes, Twinkies, Snickers, Oreos, broccoli, tomatoes, mushrooms, zucchini, battered potatoes, etc.), its enormous livestock (worth the $1, believe it or not--they're really big), and its orgy of gaudy lighting in every rusted corner. I love it. The highlight for me is always seeing people make their way through crowds wielding outlandish prizes. One guy had a five-foot tall blue plaid Scooby Doo doll, another deftly balanced two mountain bikes while giving directions to his kids, who led the way excitedly. Both men had the same look on their faces, a sheepish mix of accomplishment and practical dilemma: does a giant stuffed dog fit in the car?
Sunday was still more interesting: the Chariot Festival of Venice Beach, which celebrates Lord Krishna's return to Vrindaban. Having grown up a couple of blocks from the stretch known as "Little India," I can't say that I've ever felt like my life has any lacunae in need of being filled by experiencing Hindu festivals, but this one definitely looked like something new: basically, two flatbed trucks are decked out lavishly in colorful, florid patterns and adorned with statues, pictures, etc. Then a ceremony is held around the floats, and an entire festival--food vendors, ethnic performances and the like--takes place in the general vicinity.
Had I thought more about the thing, I may have factored in the location. I'm glad I didn't, as the surprise provided for half the fun of the experience.
Upon arriving, the people we met told us right away that the Indian food served at the festival was terrible and we'd better get something to eat at another place. So I had a gyro. It wasn't very good, but not terrible. Then we proceeded to the site of the festival, which was literally only what I've described: two decorated flatbed trucks (I should note, they were very well-decorated), a stage where a group of young girls performed a very impressive traditional dance, and lots of shops selling everything from authentic Indian fare to New Age-y trinkets to Bob Marley t-shirts. For the first twenty minutes I saw many Hare Krishnas, countless women in saris, but not one person of Indian descent. It was essentially a gathering of old hippies and Phish-heads.
We did finally run across a contingent of “real” Indians, all gathered together sitting on a little knoll, apparently as bemused by the spectacle as we were. In front of them, somewhere in between Govinda’s International Imports and the Hawaiian Shaved Ice stand, a tall Caucasian man painted blue calmly explained Vishnu’s virtues to an apparent skeptic. Back near the boardwalk, stationed in front of another float under the watchful eye of the police, three men held signs high in the air condemning us all to hell for defying God and Jesus, while their associate yelled through a bullhorn that “You should be eating cows, not worshipping them!” While I was clicking a photo of him, he picked on a Hare Krishna adherent standing next to me and bellowed, “Does grass have a soul?” Then without letting the guy answer, continued, “The tents you’ve erected today are sitting on grass! You’re hurting the grass, you hypocrites!” As we left the scene I could hear him work up to a fever pitch and yell, “God hates you all and will send you all to hell, because you’re a nation of homo lovers. That’s right! You’re all nothing but a bunch of homo lovers!” This was met with uproarious laughter and even some applause from the crowd.
We proceeded down the boardwalk to find a spot on the beach. A guy in a turban with a visor pulled over it rode rollerblades and played the electric guitar. Aspiring rappers attempted to sell their CDs to passersby. Booths along the way sold a rendition of Shepard Fairey’s iconic Obama poster that substituted the Rasta color scheme for the red, white and blue. Caricature artists, tattooists, calligraphers, blown glass, tongue whistles, fortune tellers, body builders, well-trained pit bulls, the "Venice Beach Freak Show."
Following some time spent soaking up UV rays on the sand, and after two or three beers at a nearby bar, we headed back through it all one more time on the way out. Close to the scene of the festival, an Indian family—mother, father, one child, one set of grandparents—sat bewildered on a bench in front of a head shop watching people shop for bongs as a woman stood out front distributing cards and yelling, “Medical marijuana, upstairs! Come see the doctor!” In the spot where we had all been condemned to hell’s eternal flames, three men still stood with signs, but they had no vociferous spokesman and their signs read “SURFING! SKATES! BIKES!” and “SUNGLASSES! $5!”
The Portuguese community in Artesia has for many years circulated a statue of Our Lady of Fatima to homes of community members for increments of a week at a time. The idea is that during that week families are to pray the rosary together. Despite its nod to devotion, such an affirmation of faith seems to me an unintended yet rather obvious acknowledgment of the failure of the very thing it aims to safeguard. That is, if we really believe, why don't we pray the rosary more often? Putting a statue in one's living room (although voluntary) practically makes devotion obligatory. That is probably the point to many, but forced devotion can't be called faith anymore than forced obedience (playing with Machiavelli here) can be called love.
The fact that I can even still pray the rosary in Portuguese is something of a source of pride despite the fact that I haven't been a practicing Catholic or praying Christian in quite some time. I was raised Catholic and served as an altar boy when I was younger; even now I must admit that I've remained more than a little enamored with the pageantry and imagery of Catholicism. Furthermore, deaths in the community (and, in a tightly-knit community such as ours, one stays updated on plenty) are always observed with a rosary, resulting in frequent opportunities to practice over the years. For me the rosary, prayed in Portuguese, has always been more of a way of remaining connected with my culture and community. Sometimes I wonder if that's disingenuous, but I do not think it's particularly unique.
It has always seemed to me that the apparition at Fatima has more significance to Portuguese people as a national event than a religious one. The Catholic Church does not mandate belief in it, and I've known people whose avid faith results in unquestioning adherence to the story of the shepherd children as told by Lucia dos Santos even as they give rational explanations for their disbelief in the apparitions at Guadalupe or Lourdes. From any skeptic's perspective, the only substantive difference between the three stories is the nation in which each takes place. So we venerate Nossa Senhora de Fatima as a matter of Portuguese pride rather than Catholic faith and, in doing so, pray the same rosary that the French pray in honor of the Lourdes sighting and Mexicans pray in honor of the Guadalupe sighting.
If I'm right about this, I suppose in a way it matters more that you remember the words than that you believe in their efficacy. There's something tragic about that realization which is not blunted for someone like myself who--even as a faithful, credulous altar boy--had severe doubts about why the hell Mary would concern herself with Soviet politics.
Getting to the point, I'm visiting my parents this weekend and they have the statue. On my way to the shower, I hear my father ask, "You want to pray the rosary with us?" Now, he can tell I don't want to; I can tell he really wants me to. "It's only ten minutes," he says. And he's right. If anything, it isn't inconvenience that bugs me but rather the creeping sense of my own disingenuousness. I sit down with them in front of the statue and my dad, almost apologetically, remarks, "Might as well. It's been here all week and we haven't even been praying." Then he proceeds to lead the rosary, occasionally stumbling over certain parts and laughing at his own mistakes.
Having personally witnessed my father's crises of faith over the years, the first thing I noted at that moment was that when I was a kid there's no way he would have chuckled in this way. He would not have likely made the little mistakes in the first place. Here again, prayer as such seemed to take the backseat: if to me it's a way of staying Portuguese, to my parents it's a way of gathering the family peacefully in one place.
Oddly enough, realizing this was a bit scandalous to me. If my parents don't fully believe, where does that leave me and my polished Portuguese-ness? For an instant I found myself the returning tourist angered that the quaint village he'd once loved had moved on and, catching myself in that sentiment, I felt ashamed. How dare I exoticize my own parents in this way? And my own culture? Shame! Yet that is (again, assuming I'm right about what really matters here) precisely what we do to ourselves with this statue, with our traditions. Exoticize our past, our culture, our ethnicity, our little blip in space and time. We Portuguese-Americans go to visit our relatives in the old country and lament the fact that nobody goes to church anymore, but it has more to do with our romanticizing of a "quaint" past than with lamenting a loss of faith.
It's patronizing and embarrassing, and yet I genuinely love my culture and its traditions. Maybe I'm a hypocrite or an impostor, but if that's so then I'm not alone. Not within the Portuguese community or any other that I may be a part of. I don't suppose any overt affirmation of a movement or belief can help but serve as a marker for its eventual downfall. Nor do I think that any tradition can help being both bastardized and sentimentalized--otherwise it would fail as a tradition. It would simply die. Then what?
Well, then you wake up in the morning and see if you still agree with what you typed after midnight the night before without giving the thing much thought. That's what.
When I was fifteen years old, I volunteered at a public access television station in Artesia that catered mostly to the city’s Portuguese community. The most popular show (which still runs to this day) was a three hour-long Portuguese language program hosted by a middle-aged blind man with a seductive baritone voice and a bottomless store of mother-in-law jokes. One day Manuel Ivo, sitting bolt upright with his shade-covered gaze fixed just above my head as always, told me that his neighbor was moving out and had given him a stack of records that he didn’t want to store. “I don’t want them either,” he told me. “Come over and see if there’s anything you’d like.” Long story short: there was plenty that I liked. This vinyl collection ranged from the absurd (“Nilsson Schmillson” and the soundtrack to that appallingly bad Sergeant Pepper’s movie with the Bee Gees) to the eyebrow-raising (a Danish release of Jimi Hendrix’s greatest hits) to the downright exciting (original pressings of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” and Led Zeppelin’s “II”). Among the exciting was George Carlin’s “Class Clown” EP. I knew who Carlin was, of course, but I can't say I really knew who he was, why he mattered. All I really knew was that the cover of this album had a picture of the old guy from "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" on it, but he was young. He wore blue jeans and a tight-fitting blue denim jacket with no shirt on underneath, and he sat on a stool with his back turned to a chalkboard. He faced the non-existent classroom with his eyes wide open, middle finger bent to look as if he'd shoved it knuckle-deep into his right nostril.
George Carlin was the perfect anti-hero for a mindset that I don’t think I’ve ever really outgrown: he was the dunce who could outwit his entire class, the erudite underachiever, the intelligent stoner with a "fuck you" always on reserve and bubbling just beneath the surface. I loved George Carlin before hearing so much as a word from that album, but of course the record (which includes the notorious "Seven Words" bit) fully delivered on its sleeve's promise and—angry little shit that I was—I instantly became a devotee of St. George's Church. I don't know if I can say that I absolutely "got it" back then, but I don't think that my angsty teenage understanding of Carlin's humor was so far from getting at the crux of his impressive career.
So, what was to be gotten? Why did George Carlin matter? He was certainly a titan of comedy and a cultural force to be reckoned with, but it isn’t so simple to define what it was that he actually did beyond making us laugh (not to downplay the importance of laughter). The institutions that he habitually punctured remain intact, the injustices and absurdities that he so acutely pointed out have not become less prevalent—so what did George Carlin do? In a popular landscape where everybody has something to say (didn’t Pink write a song about Dubya?), why did Carlin stand out as someone to whom we should all be listening?
George Carlin was an eiron to all the bluster and puffed-up stupidity of an unjust, wasteful and shallow society. He was a trickster character, subverting norms and violating taboos at every turn, whose only concrete agenda was exactly that: to violate every absurd rule that he could, thus chipping away at the ridiculous system that propped up such oppression. Carlin filled the role of ironic sidekick that Kierkegaard assigns to John the Baptist in The Concept of Irony: not the positive force of the Messiah establishing a new world order, but the negative force of one who picks apart the established order from the inside by demanding that it deliver on the promise of its own ideals.
John the Baptist—the disheveled, belligerent, insane prophet—is not the revolutionary hero per se, but lays the groundwork for revolution by rejecting that which is established and accepted as given: “For just like the law, irony is a demand, an enormous demand, because it rejects reality and demands ideality.” (CI 213) Kierkegaard makes this observation in a comparison of John the Baptist with Socrates, in which he notes that—as Robert Perkins writes—both the Pharisees and the sophists failed to grasp “the discrepancy between the phenomenon and the essence and…the seriousness of this discrepancy.” (CI 376) I can’t think of a better way to describe Carlin’s importance as a commentator on American society. The phenomena of American life do not live up to—and in fact all too often shamelessly contradict—the essence of its ideals. The honest, just observer cannot then merely beg for change within the everyday operations of that system, but rather must demand that the system recognize itself as undeniably corrupt—and if the system will not recognize itself as such, it must be dismantled from within. This dismantling must be gradual, and must be propagated through a changing of the minds that operate daily within the very machine that oppresses them. Irony is, like John the Baptist, a presence that wags its finger at a broken world and demands that it fix itself:
Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it but loved by those who do. Anyone who does not understand irony at all…lacks what momentarily is indispensable for personal life; he lacks the bath of regeneration and rejuvenation, irony’s baptism of purification that rescues the soul from having its life in finitude even though it is living energetically and robustly in it. (CI 326)
This passage—especially the phrase “feared only by those who do not know it”—brings to mind Jon Stewart’s infamous appearance on CNN’s “Crossfire,” the interview that allegedly led to the show’s cancellation and resulted in the station’s refusal to renew pundit Tucker Carlson’s contract. Throughout this interview—a YouTube favorite—a progression is visible in the faces and demeanor of hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala. At first, they’re apparently thrilled to have Stewart on. This changes rather quickly when it becomes clear that the comedian does not intend to put on a comedy routine, but rather to censure them about their show “h-h-hurting America.” He berates the shallowness of their coverage, the cynicism of their approach, the worthlessness of their discourse, and the “Crossfire” audience applauds his every statement.
Bewildered, Carlson tells Stewart that he’s not funny. “No, but I’ll go back to being funny tomorrow," Stewart answers, “and your show will still blow.” Laughter, applause. Later, in response to demands that he be funny and not sententious, Stewart sneers at Carlson and mutters, “No. I’m not going to be your monkey.” They trade insults back and forth until even the “liberal” Begala can hardly conceal his disdain behind that creepy grin that’s been painted on since Bill Clinton ran for president. What strikes one while watching this is how desperately lost Carlson and Begala are—they just don’t get it. One gets the sense that their staff handed out tickets outside the studio and deliberately sought out Stewart’s fans, wanting to fill the seats but oblivious to the fact that Stewart’s whole shtick is skewering the very type of show he’s about to be on. To them Stewart is just a “liberal,” like all the other castrated liberals and conservatives they’re used to having, he’s supposed to show up and voice his disapproval of the Bush administration, tell a couple of jokes, side with Begala against Carlson, shake hands, good day. When Stewart doesn’t follow the script, vertigo hits and nobody knows where they are anymore.
Jon Stewart was invited to “Crossfire” for the same reason that big name politicians scramble to get on his show: they hope some of his credibility will rub off on them. And for the most part, it’s rather obvious that they can’t stand how much credibility he has. You can see this in the “Crossfire” incident, when towards the end there’s a hint of hateful frustration in the way Carlson addresses Stewart, who refuses to let up even for a second. For a person whose life has been dedicated to powerful brown-nosing in order to get the hottest scoop, Stewart’s legitimacy as a commentator is the worst kind of usurpation—but that’s precisely why he has that legitimacy in the first place. Americans are perfectly aware of the fact that we’re being lied to daily, hourly, constantly—to the extent that being an insider is no longer a sign of journalistic credibility but rather evidence of the most abject collusion. And since those giving us the story can’t be trusted, and those with access to information continue to distort it, we can only trust those who pick it apart and denounce its corruption.
That is how irony works negatively, and it’s why Stewart’s “fake news” and Colbert’s “truthiness” have eclipsed so much (to be clear, though, not all) “legitimate” political analysis. That negativity is what people like Tucker Carlson seem to struggle to understand: who the hell is this guy, and what exactly does he do? Why is he so important? Of course, when these questions are put to Stewart, the answers are, respectively, “Nobody. Nothing. I’m not.” But a man as well-read as Jon Stewart, as admiring of Twain and Swift, knows exactly who he is, what he does, why he matters—denying his power is simply what makes him effective. It's negation all around.
The sort of romantic irony of a satirist like Stewart is that the strength of his punch comes largely from his charade of weakness. Aware of his own limitations, he loses no opportunity to remind interviewers that he is only a comedian and his is only a comedy show, that nothing he says matters, that his own interviews are notoriously soft-hitting, etc. And with each denial, the aura of respectability strengthens, the immunity of the jester is reinforced, John the Baptist converts another sinner while the Pharisees and Romans alike scratch their heads, unaware of their own impending oblivion.
It is precisely because the satirist denies his own importance that he matters. Should even the sharpest ironist ever proclaim his own positive revolutionary potential, he would instantly become subject to the same scrutiny as his targets. Thrust into an arena with beasts, the adept penman would find himself desperately wanting a sword. But so long as he stands outside and gently harangues the spectators, drawing them in with laughter only to expand their minds with truth, the subversive eiron might slowly set in motion the downfall of the whole corrupted coliseum.
We’ve lost one of those with the death of George Carlin, but we’ve also gained several of them through the influence of his life’s work. One can only hope that, in this age of sound bites and embedded reportage, American discourse does not forget the importance of listening to the ferocious humor of those angry jesters, bitter eirons, mischievous tricksters and insane prophets.
