22 January 2008
more mlk day fun
epilogue 1: gil-scott heron, 1972
epilogue 2: twelve myths about direct action
A rat done bit my sister Nell with Whitey on the moon.
Her face and arms began to swell and Whitey's on the moon.
I can't pay no doctor bills but Whitey's on the moon.
Ten years from now I'll be payin' still while Whitey's on the moon.
The man just upped my rent last night cause Whitey's on the moon.
No hot water, no toilets, no lights but Whitey's on the moon.
I wonder why he's uppin' me. Cause Whitey's on the moon?
I was already givin' him fifty a week but now Whitey's on the moon.
Taxes takin' my whole damn check,
The junkies makin' me a nervous wreck,
The price of food is goin' up,
And as if all that shit wasn't enough:
A rat done bit my sister Nell with Whitey on the moon.
Her face and arms began to swell but Whitey's on the moon.
Was all that money I made last year for Whitey on the moon?
How come there ain't no money here? Hmm! Whitey's on the moon.
Ya know, I just about had my fill of Whitey on the moon.
I think I'll send these doctor bills
airmail special
to Whitey on the moon.
epilogue 2: twelve myths about direct action
Labels: copy/pasting, do something, racism, what is political?
what was that dream about?
have you noticed this? to believe politicians and pundits and our educational system, martin luther king, jr., only ever wrote one speech, and it was only a few lines long, something about little black boys and girls holding hands with little white boys and girls, and today his dream is a reality. i'd like to draw attention to the many other things he actually wrote and said, things that aren't mentioned when our leaders are trying hard to de-fang and co-opt his leadership.
these leaders would have us forget that king's legitimacy came from the grassroots, not the government -- some in hopes of absorbing that legitimacy for themselves (cf., in chronological order: romney, mitt; obama, barack; and clinton, hillary); some trying to erase the real, revolutionary liberation he spoke of, to reduce the risk that the oppressed masses might try to envision it and get ideas in their heads; and some to paint him as a polite friend to the status quo, praising his strategy of nonviolence and implicitly, by contrast, condemning the "bad" black leaders like malcolm x or huey newton. at least this year that asshat dinesh d'souza (i link reluctantly) was more honest, admitting he preferred booker t. washington to w.e.b. dubois -- the same exhausting narrative, from a hundred years earlier.
but these people all are simultaneously missing king's point and making it for him. he spent a lot of energy calling out unfulfilled promises and empty talk. i think that's worth remembering when people want to tell us about so-called colorblindness (or its more contemporary versions, "we're all just people"/"i'm a humanist"/etc and disparagement of "identity politics"), assert that "equality" has long been achieved, or promise that the Man will make things better as long as you are patient, play nice, and don't "alienate" any "potential allies". so here's some of the rest of that speech, for starters:
and here's some from another:
general thanks for bearing with me, and sorry if i repeated stuff you already know. i just think this stuff is worth keeping around and reading from time to time, lest the de-fangers and co-opters start to regain ground.
these leaders would have us forget that king's legitimacy came from the grassroots, not the government -- some in hopes of absorbing that legitimacy for themselves (cf., in chronological order: romney, mitt; obama, barack; and clinton, hillary); some trying to erase the real, revolutionary liberation he spoke of, to reduce the risk that the oppressed masses might try to envision it and get ideas in their heads; and some to paint him as a polite friend to the status quo, praising his strategy of nonviolence and implicitly, by contrast, condemning the "bad" black leaders like malcolm x or huey newton. at least this year that asshat dinesh d'souza (i link reluctantly) was more honest, admitting he preferred booker t. washington to w.e.b. dubois -- the same exhausting narrative, from a hundred years earlier.
but these people all are simultaneously missing king's point and making it for him. he spent a lot of energy calling out unfulfilled promises and empty talk. i think that's worth remembering when people want to tell us about so-called colorblindness (or its more contemporary versions, "we're all just people"/"i'm a humanist"/etc and disparagement of "identity politics"), assert that "equality" has long been achieved, or promise that the Man will make things better as long as you are patient, play nice, and don't "alienate" any "potential allies". so here's some of the rest of that speech, for starters:
America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.
"i have a dream", 28 august 1963
and here's some from another:
Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never."
and here's some more -- you start to notice he says a lot of things that today's agenda-setters don't like to bring up:
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
"beyond vietnam", 4 april 1967
...
In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear.
Let me say finally that I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism."why i am opposed to the war in vietnam", 30 april 1967
Don't let anybody make you think God chose America as his divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with justice and it seems I can hear God saying to America "you are too arrogant, and if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name."
...
We must develop a program that will drive the nation to a guaranteed annual income. Early in this century this proposal would have been greeted with ridicule and denunciation, as destructive of initiative and responsibility. At that time economic status was considered the measure of the individual's ability and talents. ... Now we realize that dislocations in the market operations of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will.
...
The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts among husbands, wives and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on the scale of dollars is eliminated.
Now our country can do this. John Kenneth Galbraith said that a guaranteed annual income could be done for about twenty billion dollars a year. And I say to you today, that if our nation can spend thirty-five billion dollars a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam, and twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God's children on their own two feet right here on earth.
...
And one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's market place. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
...
A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will "thingify" them -- make them things. Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. What I am saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, "America, you must be born again!"
"where do we go from here", 16 august 1967
general thanks for bearing with me, and sorry if i repeated stuff you already know. i just think this stuff is worth keeping around and reading from time to time, lest the de-fangers and co-opters start to regain ground.
Labels: anti-feminist, copy/pasting, economics, history lessons, inequality, racism, what is political?
24 December 2007
oh comedians, you silly things
also, from a while ago: "See, we're lucky here in America. We live in a free society. Think of it as a ladder. No matter what rung you're on, you have the exact same opportunity to get to the top. Sure, you might say that some folks have less distance to climb than others, or that many of the lower rungs are slippery because they're covered with garbage and your high school didn't have an AP Ladder Climbing Class and the rung right above you is out of order and your landlord keeps saying he's going to fix it but he never does and all the while the guy who hangs out on the corner of your rung is constantly trying to get you high, and you're wondering if maybe you could get a little help up this ladder? Well, Mister, all the help you need is at your fingertips, if your fingertips are touching your ankles. I'm talking about bootstraps."
to be selfish about it, the up-side to the writers' strike is that i'm not missing any colbert report while we don't have cable. (the downside is, of course, the creation of new and ever-stupider "reality" shows and that horrid lie detector gameshow.) (just kidding. mostly.)
in a related vein, that quote and a recent post at pandagon (whence the sarah silverman video) has me wondering again whether comedy is a "legitimate" way to put anger (!) to action or whether sitting around shooting the shit with other privileged people about things that are a shame is only a way to feel that you're "doing something", i guess by speaking up and stuff, but isn't really doing anything. of course there's also the possibility that comedians don't really seek to be "doing something", or maybe even don't especially care about the issues they harp on in a given performance, that the only point is to find funny things to say. but i don't really buy that, at least not for the ones i've watched lately -- colbert and jon stewart, silverman, margaret cho, wanda sykes, tina fey, david cross, eddie izzard, dave chappelle certainly; it would be a pretty far-fetched argument. i think a lot of comedy, sometimes great comedy, is born of anger or frustration or incredulity -- it's a way to connect with kindred souls out there over the absurdity of things. some absurdist stuff, like maybe monty python or kids in the hall sketches, seem not to have a particular "target" they're taking the piss out of; on the other hand i'd argue that even some of the sillier bits in "holy grail" do take shots at various conventions and myths. not sure, have to think about this part more.
i don't think i'm just saying that "the comedy i like makes a political/social statement". even really terrible attempts at comedy are not typically apolitical (i'm thinking right now of "the half-hour newshour", which is funny in its unfunniness -- entertaining, in a sort of painful way, precisely because you can see how the jokes are trying to be funny but they just don't get there, e.g. do they really think liberals defend pedophilia*?, or whatever -- but i don't think that was the kind of humor they were trying for). and that can also be true even if they don't bill themselves as political per se -- jimmy kimmel**, larry the cable guy ::shudder:: -- you can make violent jokes about trannies and that's political, you can ridicule the working class and that's political. humor can also fail even if i share its political bent, of course: "lil bush" pretty much sucks, for example.
and then there's carlos mencia, for example, and i don't get why he's so fucking unfunny. i've been told it's a multiply-ironic thing, and i guess i see how it could be a sort of play-the-jester-to-mock-the-court sort of thing, in the vein of "bamboozled" or other takedowns of black minstrelsy and white expectations of black entertainment, but if it's that then maybe it's just poorly done. feels too much like an actual do-the-colored-fool-dance in honor of racist conventions, even though i get the vibe that he's pretty angry himself, and i guess it weirds me out when his (largely white) audience doesn't seem to know the difference either. kinda like when chris rock's "i like black people but i hate niggers" bit was embraced by conservative white people far and wide as some sort of admission of what they knew all along (that there's good black people and bad black people, and good black people are "articulate" or "clean" or any number of other backhanded compliments), and further as permission to go around using a racial slur and invoking chris rock's name when challenged.
there's also sascha baron cohen, who is sort of a whole nother can of worms; i think where both he and sarah silverman anger people is in firing the "satire" gun indiscriminately and in the process sometimes burying/reinforcing ugly conventional tropes instead of unearthing/subverting them -- silverman really turned me off with the my-homeless-friend episode of her show, baron cohen with the pointless antisemite-vamping in between candids in "borat" (ostensibly to further the movie's "plot" and borat's characterization as an anti-semite, but i think most people were more interested in his interactions with others and his solo interludes were mostly uncomfortable or flat or annoying). all of this is to say that in general political or angry or aggressive humor can be really effective and dead-on funny, but comedians like sascha baron cohen or sarah silverman are like bulls in a china shop and occasionally overplay their "making fun of racists" schtick to the point that it's not distinguishable from uncritically making fun of race -- they sort of stop being snipers and start shooting at flies with a bazooka, or something. my metaphors are mixing.
all of this is why i think comedians are both brave and reckless. it's often said that humor can't be cautious of stepping on toes, humor is transgressive, humor is about taboo. but mocking that's funny is made at the expense of the Man; mocking at the expense of those worse off than you is usually not only wrong but unfunny. maybe it's very difficult to know where the line is when you're onstage, which would be scary because i think most of us day-to-day know where the line is and don't want to be in a position to cross it against our own values, say something terrible and hurt a lot of people. but how is it a "line" that you cross, when the two territories to me seem to be kind of opposed and not actually adjacent? i'm really just not sure. surely it's not the intentions that are adjacent, but maybe the jokes that come out of them -- the phenotype, if you want. my first impulse is to think that your intentions about a joke should be enough to contextualize the joke, but of course i know that frequently intentions aren't that apparent and that anyway intentions aren't really what matters when people are hurt or oppression is reinforced.
so this has turned out to be a really rambly list of paragraphs that may or may not have a point to it. i guess between various conversations and thoughts of the last day or two i've had a couple of ideas bubble up about all this. maybe if i come back to them later i'll be able to make a little more linear sense out of them. ok, out.
*the funny thing is that i doubt most pedophiles are liberals, either. if i had to wager, i'd put money on most closet fuckups being republicans, for the same reason that a lot of fuckups join the priesthood -- instead of seeking treatment, run away, hide, deny. actually what's sad is i think the priesthood is also a soul-eating sort of refuge for closeted gay men, in that it's an "excuse" for not getting married and producing grandchildren. social conservatives tend to erase the difference between non-straight sexual orientation and sexual disease/abuse, which i think is why they lump together out-and-proud lgb people (who are much more likely than those in the closet to have progressive politics) with sick individuals who harm themselves or others (who i've just posited are more likely to hide from themselves by being conservativer-than-thou). whee, long rambly footnotes!
**HOW is this guy dating sarah silverman? he's so much more of a douchebag than she is, even comparing his better moments with her worse ones. eugh.
to be selfish about it, the up-side to the writers' strike is that i'm not missing any colbert report while we don't have cable. (the downside is, of course, the creation of new and ever-stupider "reality" shows and that horrid lie detector gameshow.) (just kidding. mostly.)
in a related vein, that quote and a recent post at pandagon (whence the sarah silverman video) has me wondering again whether comedy is a "legitimate" way to put anger (!) to action or whether sitting around shooting the shit with other privileged people about things that are a shame is only a way to feel that you're "doing something", i guess by speaking up and stuff, but isn't really doing anything. of course there's also the possibility that comedians don't really seek to be "doing something", or maybe even don't especially care about the issues they harp on in a given performance, that the only point is to find funny things to say. but i don't really buy that, at least not for the ones i've watched lately -- colbert and jon stewart, silverman, margaret cho, wanda sykes, tina fey, david cross, eddie izzard, dave chappelle certainly; it would be a pretty far-fetched argument. i think a lot of comedy, sometimes great comedy, is born of anger or frustration or incredulity -- it's a way to connect with kindred souls out there over the absurdity of things. some absurdist stuff, like maybe monty python or kids in the hall sketches, seem not to have a particular "target" they're taking the piss out of; on the other hand i'd argue that even some of the sillier bits in "holy grail" do take shots at various conventions and myths. not sure, have to think about this part more.
i don't think i'm just saying that "the comedy i like makes a political/social statement". even really terrible attempts at comedy are not typically apolitical (i'm thinking right now of "the half-hour newshour", which is funny in its unfunniness -- entertaining, in a sort of painful way, precisely because you can see how the jokes are trying to be funny but they just don't get there, e.g. do they really think liberals defend pedophilia*?, or whatever -- but i don't think that was the kind of humor they were trying for). and that can also be true even if they don't bill themselves as political per se -- jimmy kimmel**, larry the cable guy ::shudder:: -- you can make violent jokes about trannies and that's political, you can ridicule the working class and that's political. humor can also fail even if i share its political bent, of course: "lil bush" pretty much sucks, for example.
and then there's carlos mencia, for example, and i don't get why he's so fucking unfunny. i've been told it's a multiply-ironic thing, and i guess i see how it could be a sort of play-the-jester-to-mock-the-court sort of thing, in the vein of "bamboozled" or other takedowns of black minstrelsy and white expectations of black entertainment, but if it's that then maybe it's just poorly done. feels too much like an actual do-the-colored-fool-dance in honor of racist conventions, even though i get the vibe that he's pretty angry himself, and i guess it weirds me out when his (largely white) audience doesn't seem to know the difference either. kinda like when chris rock's "i like black people but i hate niggers" bit was embraced by conservative white people far and wide as some sort of admission of what they knew all along (that there's good black people and bad black people, and good black people are "articulate" or "clean" or any number of other backhanded compliments), and further as permission to go around using a racial slur and invoking chris rock's name when challenged.
there's also sascha baron cohen, who is sort of a whole nother can of worms; i think where both he and sarah silverman anger people is in firing the "satire" gun indiscriminately and in the process sometimes burying/reinforcing ugly conventional tropes instead of unearthing/subverting them -- silverman really turned me off with the my-homeless-friend episode of her show, baron cohen with the pointless antisemite-vamping in between candids in "borat" (ostensibly to further the movie's "plot" and borat's characterization as an anti-semite, but i think most people were more interested in his interactions with others and his solo interludes were mostly uncomfortable or flat or annoying). all of this is to say that in general political or angry or aggressive humor can be really effective and dead-on funny, but comedians like sascha baron cohen or sarah silverman are like bulls in a china shop and occasionally overplay their "making fun of racists" schtick to the point that it's not distinguishable from uncritically making fun of race -- they sort of stop being snipers and start shooting at flies with a bazooka, or something. my metaphors are mixing.
all of this is why i think comedians are both brave and reckless. it's often said that humor can't be cautious of stepping on toes, humor is transgressive, humor is about taboo. but mocking that's funny is made at the expense of the Man; mocking at the expense of those worse off than you is usually not only wrong but unfunny. maybe it's very difficult to know where the line is when you're onstage, which would be scary because i think most of us day-to-day know where the line is and don't want to be in a position to cross it against our own values, say something terrible and hurt a lot of people. but how is it a "line" that you cross, when the two territories to me seem to be kind of opposed and not actually adjacent? i'm really just not sure. surely it's not the intentions that are adjacent, but maybe the jokes that come out of them -- the phenotype, if you want. my first impulse is to think that your intentions about a joke should be enough to contextualize the joke, but of course i know that frequently intentions aren't that apparent and that anyway intentions aren't really what matters when people are hurt or oppression is reinforced.
so this has turned out to be a really rambly list of paragraphs that may or may not have a point to it. i guess between various conversations and thoughts of the last day or two i've had a couple of ideas bubble up about all this. maybe if i come back to them later i'll be able to make a little more linear sense out of them. ok, out.
*the funny thing is that i doubt most pedophiles are liberals, either. if i had to wager, i'd put money on most closet fuckups being republicans, for the same reason that a lot of fuckups join the priesthood -- instead of seeking treatment, run away, hide, deny. actually what's sad is i think the priesthood is also a soul-eating sort of refuge for closeted gay men, in that it's an "excuse" for not getting married and producing grandchildren. social conservatives tend to erase the difference between non-straight sexual orientation and sexual disease/abuse, which i think is why they lump together out-and-proud lgb people (who are much more likely than those in the closet to have progressive politics) with sick individuals who harm themselves or others (who i've just posited are more likely to hide from themselves by being conservativer-than-thou). whee, long rambly footnotes!
**HOW is this guy dating sarah silverman? he's so much more of a douchebag than she is, even comparing his better moments with her worse ones. eugh.
Labels: making with the funny, philosophizing, racism, what is political?
