eye of the storm

the last few weeks have left me flummoxed. i don't know who the greatest person is who ever lived, michael jackson or ted kennedy. but imagine a person who combined their talents: a moonwalking, plastic-clad legislative juggernaut with famous brothers. now imagine a person who combined their vices...

today michael jackson would have been 51, and would have caught up with me. but he didn't. i kicked that little bitch's ass! thank god for doctors. we can give the poor and uninsured access to propofol. the dream will never die, though it might lapse into unconsciousness and then, like our great nation, indetectibly expire.

i might have been skeptical of obama's healthcare/deficit-increase program. but after seeing the all-star tribute to ted kennedy, all my reservations have been put to rest with the corpus delicti. the performances by brooke shields and usher were shatteringly emotional. only a monster could oppose a healthcare bill now. (of course, only monsters ever opposed it, or even asked any questions about it.)

it'd be nice actually to have a societal discussion of end-of-life issues. useless expense - or worse than useless, only extending pain, degradation, or unconsciousness - is one issue, and legit to raise in the context of the costs of health care. but really, it'd be nice to face up and really think about how and when we want to die, given that we can't not, about who should make decisions and how. it would be nice even to be able to talk about it. but i don't think we can, really.

the blackness of the memorial, and the response of black people in general, is a mite puzzling. don't they understand that he hated and rejected his own blackness, thought of it as a disease to be treated?  he was an emblem of assimilation, "mainstream" success, etc.: a legitimate black aspiration, but a profoundly problematic one as well: a self-transcendence grounded in self-loathing. i want you, in all seriousness, to imagine what marcus garvey or malcolm x would say about michael jackson. malcolm wasn't above hanging out with celebs and dropping their names - billie holiday, redd foxx, ali (whom he converted to islam). but for god's sake.

i feel that we're gonna see his corpse get up and moonwalk.

i heard that at least one of the infinite number of posthumous albums is going to consist of michael's classical compositions. i'll listen, but i'm going to need an iv of morphine, zoloft, lunesta, and dexedrine.

like y'all, i plan to have a day of quiet dignity today, devoted to contemplation of the meaning of the life of billy mays, who meant so much to so many.

i'll tell you what, though. i do not understand the approach of people like michael eric dyson or even jesse jackson. do you really want to make michael jackson an index or emblem of the black experience in america? don't you want tupac or someone in that role? or, you know, absolutely anyone? unless you want to narrate the the story of black america as a story of tastelessness, self-loathing, incomprehensibility, sexual illness, and self-destruction, i'd hop on another bandwagon. eminem is a better representative of the black experience in america than is michael jackson. or for that matter, vanilla ice. where in the world is the commitment and loyalty coming from?

i'll leave you with this. a world without michael jackson is better than a world with michael jackson. he was bad for species morale.

could better cpr have saved michael jackson? nothing could have saved michael jackson. he'd already had far too many comebacks. like britney, he was too good, too pure, for this world.

truly the class of 1958 seems to be checking out en masse. kind of disconcerting. say so long to iz the wiz.

 

iz was famous for a couple of things. first off: quantity over quality. he was no dondi or zephyr or futura artistically, but he was everywhere. that was central to the graff idea circa 1980. he "went over" people, taking special pleasure in ruining your masterpiece: he wanted graff to be a crime, not an art. he was the definition of kinging lines and going all-city. he's important in representing in pure form a particular idea about what graff is and what it means. he was the darth vader of the classic documentary style wars.

no way! billy mays is dead? geez, i loved billy mays. should have been on my list of artists better than michael. i'm never going to buy anything, ever again.

here's a piece on michael jackson, prince, and madonna from say 2005.

and here's an assessment of the career of michael jackson.
ok most of this will be obvious, more or less. jackson was an excellent singer and a great dancer. he was not an independent artist, in the sense that everything depended on the writing and production of others. the jackson five were delightful; he was good in the disco era; he was good circa thriller, with a great stage act; but in no case was he original or innovative. his talent was quite the opposite of that: he combined existing elements and crafted the product extremely well: the first j5 album (a sweet synthesis of motown and bubblegum which completely dominated my mostly-black junior high circa 1971) and thriller were the only moments he really sounded extremely fresh, but surely the motown folk and quincy jones get a lot of the credit. thriller was important in establishing a new basic pop: post-disco/funk, and an alternative to "new wave." partly it was a return to pop-soul; partly it was an incorporation of the mainstream rock of the time.

the overwhelming moment came because you couldn't sell enough funk or hip hop to white people; thriller embodied a racial synthesis, even a kind of reconciliation. (eventually he became some kind of racial monster, an argument for the wholesomeness of existing racial identities.) michael jackson made good or at least elaborate and memorable videos (they're unwatchable now), which right at that moment became the key.

it was paradigm pop because it didn't instantiate any other particular genre: it was syncretic, masterfully so. and it was the occasion of a great coalescing of audiences or stampede of lemmings, depending on your mood. one reason to mourn jackson's passing is that thriller was a moment of cultural solidarity: one of the last times the whole culture was listening to the same thing, more or less. if jackson had not made thriller, his death would have been merely a lead obit, like bo diddley's, say. but i have to say that the decentralization or balkanization of pop music is a good thing, overall, and that mass art necessarily is fundamentally uninteresting.

the visuals were...idiotic: plastic sequined militariana and processed hair, race change surgery, a crust or bark of make-up, masks, etc. his tastelessness in every dimension was extreme. extraordinary. pitiful. cf. "neverland." it would be surprising if someone whose taste was that appalling could make really good music; on what principles is he going to select repertoire etc? and he made a lot of extremely boring or ridiculous music: essentially a lot of thriller and everything thereafter, more or less. but also before: play "ben." now play it again. now frisbee the thing into the ether. there wasn't a single really good moment after the early 80s, and there was a lot of incredibly cliched or self-indulgent horseshit.

he was a study in human misery for decades: continuously disintegrating into mental illness, addiction,  sexual strangeness, conspicuous continual tastelessness, extreme embarrassing stupidity, a world of delusion: the worst case of celebrity implosion since elvis. or, really, the worst of all times. it seemed to last forever. you kept waiting for some kind of redemptive moment or a moment of perspective or self-reflection, waiting for him to talk to the man in the mirror. or at any rate to make a decent album. even if he had, i wouldn't have bought it (well i never bought any of his albums; no need to; the question was how to avoid his music). to be honest, i don't think it was about to happen, as everyone seems to be asserting; i don't think it was going to ever happen. but i guess we don't know. it's not hard to predict the toxicology: opiates, anti-depressants, ambien, and three things you didn't know existed.

the king of pop, artist of the century, etc.: in my view he compares unfavorably to dozens of actually important musicians: louis armstrong, or jimi hendrix, or janis joplin, or muddy waters, or sonny boy williamson, or john coltrane, or miles davis, or bessie smith, or blind lemon jefferson, or blind willie mctell, or robert johnson, or hank williams, or tammy wynette, or merle haggard, or johnny cash, or patsy cline, or george jones, or the rolling stones, or professor longhair, or john prine, or the pretenders, or blondie, or bob marley, or lee perry, or king tubby, or augustus pablo, or toots and the maytals, or fats domino, or prince, or smokey robinson, or martha reeves and the vandellas, or aretha franklin, or otis redding, or wilson pickett, or al green, or the dixie hummingbirds, or james cleveland, or james brown, or thomas dorsey, or parliament-funkadelic, or the allman brothers, or the louvin brothers, or lotte lenya, or sarah vaughn, or bonnie raitt, or the bar-kays, or dave brubek, or the grateful dead, or led zep, or ac/dc, or jerry lee lewis, or the temptations, or the four tops, or jimmie rogers, or bob wills and the texas playboys, or sam cooke, or billie holiday, or howlin wolf, or little richard, or chuck berry, or bo diddley, or mahalia jackson, or shirley ceasar, or snoop dogg, or grandmaster flash, or public enemy, or dre, or wu-tang clan, or biggie, or eminem, or buck owens, or bill monroe, or ella fitzgerald, or benny goodman, or duke ellington, or b.b. king, or albert king, or freddy king, or otis rush, or magic sam, or loretta lynn, or waylon jennings, or the skatalites, or fela kuti, or creedence, or van morrison, or elvis costello, or count basie, or ornette coleman, or django reinhardt, or charlie christian, or charlie parker, or ma rainey, or elmore james, or lucinda williams, or bobby bland, or little walter, or brian wilson, or the ramones, or the dead kennedys, or minor threat, or nirvana, or the white stripes, or chet atkins, or dwight yoakam, or the seldom scene, or flatt and scruggs, or the stanley brothers, or les paul, or the clash, or jelly roll morton, or immortal technique, or woody guthrie, etc. leaving aside composition, production, or instrumental vituosity, all of these are, like mj,  recording artists, and even on that basis, with regard to many of them (such as hendrix, armstrong, hank williams, marley, coltrane, monroe, ellington, waters) mentioning jackson in the same breath would be madness. i think of him more like...aly and aj. nothing wrong with that - aly and aj are excellent pop artists - but the 48 hours of continuous programming is just a misunderstanding.

hoothe bad?

when i was an undergraduate, though it's kind of mortifying to admit it, i was a poet. perhaps my favorite poem was the following, by w.d. snodgrass, who just died. it juxtaposes a quotation from spinoza's "on the improvement of the understanding" with...something else. the teacher who showed me this was reed whittemore.
 
"After Experience Taught Me"
by W.D. Snograss

After experience taught me that all the ordinary

Surroundings of social life are futile and vain;

         I’m going to show you something very

         Ugly: someday, it might save your life.

Seeing that none of the things I feared contain

In themselves anything either good or bad

         What if you get caught without a knife;

         Nothing—even a loop of piano wire;

Excepting only in the effect they had

Upon my mind, I resolved to inquire

         Take the first two fingers of this hand;

         Fork them out—kind of a “V for Victory”—

Whether there might be something whose discovery

Would grant me supreme, unending happiness.

         And jam them into the eyes of your enemy.

         You have to do this hard. Very hard. Then press

No virtue can be thought to have priority

Over this endeavor to preserve one’s being.

         Both fingers down around the cheekbone

         And setting your foot high into the chest

No man can desire to act rightly, to be blessed,

To live rightly, without simultaneously

         You must call up every strength you own

         And you can rip off the whole facial mask.

Wishing to be, to act, to live. He must ask

First, in other words, to actually exist.

                           And you, whiner, who wastes your time

                              Dawdling over the remorseless earth,

                           What evil, what unspeakable crime

                              Have you made your life worth?

the amazing drew williams on patrick mcgoohan. i, too, had this experience of the prisoner.

THE PRISONER…HAS…ESCAPED
Patrick McGoohan (1928-2009)

            Patrick McGoohan taught me how to think. He taught me how to question. He taught me there are no easy answers. He taught me that defiance married to intelligence, while it might not always win out, was far, far better than conformity married to ignorance. And the most amazing thing is that he did it through a TV show.

            When The Prisoner debuted on American television in 1968, as a summer replacement for The Jackie Gleason Show, I can only imagine the stunned reactions of viewers, especially when confronted with the two-part series finale, which offered no pat answers and no wrap-ups of any loose threads. It was a Chinese puzzle-box, complete with pop culture images and Beatles music, whose depths--soaked in allegory and metaphor--could never be fully plumbed.

            One of my earliest memories is of this show: a vague, shadowy image of the menacing, spherical watchdog of The Village, known as Rover, as it corners and smothers a victim. I remember having nightmares afterwards and, many years later, seeing the show as an adult, having a chill run down my spin every time Rover appeared on screen. It was the embodiment of George Washington’s famous quote about government: “(It) is not reason, it is not eloquence — it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”

            As with my other TV hero, Bugs Bunny, I pepper my thoughts and essays with quotes from this most wonderful and influential show: “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered!” “My life is my own.” And, of course, the most famous one from the show’s opening credits: “I AM NOT A NUMBER! I AM A FREE MAN!”

            As far back as the 1960’s, McGoohan saw how multi-dimensional man was becoming, in Herbert Marcuse’s apt title, one-dimensional man. A point on a graph. A datum on a spreadsheet. A face in the crowd. No more important or meaningful than a grain of sand, and perhaps less. In creating The Prisoner, McGoohan, to quote a famous World War II general, said “Nuts!” to that.  God love him for it. And yes, God love Sir Lew Grade for putting up the money even though he didn’t understand the show’s premise. Would that more studio heads had such faith in creators.

            So, we say Goodbye to Patrick McGoohan. I personally will raise a glass to him and wish, in the words of the old Irish blessing, that he be in Heaven half-an-hour before the Devil knows he’s dead. God rest ye, sir.

so teenage white supremacists planned to decapitate black people, and then assassinate obama. that's not good. but what is truly, deeply disturbing - indeed, monstrous - is that they planned to do these things in white tuxedoes and top hats.

Rorty: In Memoriam
By Crispin Sartwell

    Richard Rorty, who died last week, became the best-known philosopher writing in English by becoming the most hated.
    Once I saw him give a lecture to an auditorium full of eminent thinkers at the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. After he was done giving them his thoughts on pragmatism and truth, they fired away at him for the better part of an hour. Some asked questions. Most simply reviled him and everything he stood for, so hostile that they could barely express themselves coherently.
    Later at the banquet I asked him whether the experience had been difficult. He just gave the celebrated Rorty shrug and shy grin. "I've seen it before," he said. "They seem to enjoy it."
    Rorty had encyclopedic knowledge and an accessible public voice rare in academic philosophy. But above all else, he was a provocateur.
    It's hard for non-philosophers to believe how seriously philosophers take their questions, from the nature of truth to the correct interpretation of the texts of Friedrich Nietzsche. An air of hushed solemnity reigns over the procedures.
     Rorty angered people as much by his insouciance as by his positions. Philosophers have spent millennia trying to formulate a good theory of truth. Rorty's approach? "Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with saying." The formulation was almost a mockery: apparently casual, it gave rise to a thousand counter-examples, since one's contemporaries believe all sorts of jive. It was perfectly Rortyan in that without apparent effort it constituted a maximal provocation and it made people think of Rorty as an arch post-modernist, relativist, or even nihilist. He came to symbolize an intellectual epoch.
     He called himself a pragmatist and thought we'd better get busy trying to live with no god, no hard truths, even no world apart from our conventions.
     He had an astonishing combination of cynicism and idealism, a quality he called "irony." One of his articles from the 1990s was called, with typical bold paradox, "Ethics Without Principles." He argued in favor of "liberal democracy," even as he declared that liberal democracy itself was a mere cultural prejudice. And he argued that we must all try to alleviate human suffering, relieve poverty, fight for peace, even though we cannot in some foundational way show that we ought to do so.
     These positions irritated many people. But what absolutely killed philosophy professors was Rorty's interpretation of the great figures of the Western tradition.
    The average philosophy professor may spend a decade or a career trying to elucidate the works of Martin Heidegger or W.V.O. Quine. Rorty lined up such figures in support of his own positions in a fundamentally careless way. He quoted them out of context and ignored everything about them he couldn't use.
     This fact truly enraged people. The Dewey scholars hated him, the Wittgenstein scholars, the Davidson scholars, the Nietzsche scholars, the Derrida scholars, and so on. And every one of them thought they could prove that Rorty was wrong about their particular boy, and that he'd have to listen and take back all the things he had said. In this, they didn't understand him at all.
     Richard Rorty was my teacher and dissertation supervisor at the University of Virginia in the 1980s. One semester he taught a course that was focused around the classic book Truth and Method by Hans-Georg Gadamer. Rorty and Gadamer were friends, though Gadamer was a very old man at that point. At any rate, late in the semester Gadamer appeared in our seminar. Rorty introduced him by recapitulating the interpretation of Truth and Method that had been mounted in the previous weeks.
      As Rorty spoke, Gadamer just shook his big, eminent, bereted head. When the introduction was over,  Gadamer said, in German-accented English, "But Dick, you've got me all wrong." Rorty gave the grin and shrug and said "yes, Hans. But that's what you should have said." Gadamer was still chuckling when I went up to him afterward and got him to sign my copy of his book.
     In other words, Rorty had little intrinsic interest in the responsible interpretation even of the philosophers that he most admired. What was puzzling to me about that wasn't the irresponsibility, which I thought was a good antidote to the solemnity of the professoriate, but the strange appeal to authority that ran underneath it.
     Rorty almost pathologically attributed his every thought to other people. The names "Heidegger" or "Sellars" he wielded like talismans: short-hand for whole swathes of argumentation. It was important to Rorty to connect his radical conclusions to an existing tradition or even to the direction of philosophy as a whole.
     Every time I turned to his writings - which I must say are far more accessible and well-written than most academic philosophy - I wanted to grab him by the lapels and tell him that, next time out, he was prohibited from using any of these names, but would have to speak merely on his own behalf. Rorty had plenty to say, and why he needed to claim that Dewey had already said it - when, as fifty Dewey scholars had shown, he hadn't  - was a mystery.
     At any rate, though I disagreed with almost every position he ever took, Richard Rorty was for me an inspiration. He showed me and generations of students and readers how to think and speak boldly, how to transcend the constraining conventions of academia, and, most important and fun of all, how to piss professors off.

hey i've been in the backwoods of the adirondacks for a few days and just heard that richard rorty - probably the best-known living philosopher writing in english and my dissertation supervisor - died friday. i'll be getting some thoughts up when i get settled back in.

many of you have asked. indeed i admired and will miss molly ivins, formerly a colleague at creators, and a sortof drinking buddy of my wife in the deeply decadent journalistic circles of austin, tx. there is a severe lack of creative liberal voices, or of liberal voices with flair or a light touch. this is because liberalism is an extremely solemn and dogmatic unanimity among the highly, indeed insufferably, educated. at any rate, molly rocked a couple of times a week for decades.

douglas harding - the astonishing no-bullshit mystic, author among other things of the zen masterpiece "on having no head" - died the other day, age 991 years (or something like that).

Hunt has been inducted into eight halls of fame, including ones for soccer and tennis as well as the Texas Business Hall of Fame and the Kansas City Business Hall of Fame.

damn, dude. and here i didn't even know there was a KCBHF. how many halls of fame have you been inducted into? me, i'm in the assmonkey hof, the dumbfuck hof, the rocknroll hof, and the dc teenagers who sucked hof, etc.