Name:Tyler Country:United States State:Ohio Metro:Columbus Birthday:9/2/1984 Gender:Male
Interests:Acting. Besting myself. Reading. Sleeping, oh yes, sleeping. Modern European Intellectual and Cultural History. Expanding my paltry talents. Playing piano. Attempting to piece together some sort of life for myself. French. German. Expertise:Experts write books, not online journals. Occupation:Student
I remember the days when this roadstop on the Information Superhighway seemed to have all the answers. Frustrated? Write about it! Angsty? Write about it! Delirious? Write about it! Anything at all that you want the rest of the world to know because your inner monologue just isn't quite good enough? Write, damn you, write! Someone, SOMEWHERE, must care and must be reading these very words, RIGHT NOW.
It got old. And it still seems that way. Occasionally, I feel the tug of the needy, self-indulgent writer -- the one who crafted some fairly brilliant pen-strokes, it would seem -- but I hate that writer and I can never read what he wrote without a pang of regret, without a nudge from the specter of "not-a-good-idea." There aren't any answers in writing, and thank God. Writing creates questions and dilemma, questions create dilemma and action, dilemma creates action and questions, action creates more questions and more dilemma. And writing captures it all over again. We write to question, to pause before action, to act in ways that are otherwise impossible, but we don't write to get answers. We don't read to get answers either, a fallacy I wish they would stop teaching in school.
I wish they would stop teaching a lot of things in school, but my wholesale reform of education is still some decades away.
We read and write to question and posit and lay foundations and crumble empires and undermine hegemonies and act in the realm of ideas, intangibles, but we never write or read or analyze or explicate because we get answers. Sure, we want answers, but we don't get them. Our capering little words cut a figure around the wormhole that threatens to suck us into our own souls if we dare jump headlong, all the while those same words emanate from the other end of that wormhole in some distant corner of the unknown Universe.
We love to write and read, and words are our playthings, our souls, our foils, our enemies. But writing isn't action and writing isn't result.
So this blog seems so petty until it spurs an esoteric outpouring like the one above. It'll stick around, as process, as potential, but, hey, it never had any answers. And I'm glad I see that now. I wonder why it happened today -- and, you know, it doesn't make any difference
Life goes well. I was reminded today -- yet again -- to be grateful for all that I have. I am grateful for that reminder. I am trying to finish A Jesuit Off-Broadway today, so I can return it to Jim and add more dollops of wisdom to my mental meringue.
I have no idea what happens next or where I've been. And that's okay. I choose the path and may stop as frequently as I wish for tea and cucumber sandwiches.
I soon commence work on Measure for Measure, for which I am terribly excited.
I had a good deal of Glenlivet 12 last night, and I feel great today.
I should go to the gym, sign in, and perhaps take a quick jog. After the coffee settles, that is.
Life is a beautiful thing. I have the luxury, time, resources, and education to make that bold, possibly class-biased declaration, for which I am grateful and of which I do not recant one iota.
Goodness gracious. Oh, my paws and whiskers. Some of the meanest, most
ornery hombres around are suddenly feeling faint. Notorious tough guys are
swooning with the vapors. The biggest beasts in the barnyard are all aflutter
over something they read in the New York Times. It's that ad from MoveOn.org —
the one that calls General David Petraeus, the head of U.S. forces in Iraq, general betray us. All across
the radio spectrum, right-wing shock jocks are themselves shocked. How could
anybody say such a thing? It's horrifying. It's outrageous. It's disgraceful.
It's just beyond the pale ... It's ... oh, my heavens ... say, is it a bit
stuffy in here? ... I think I'm going to ... Could I have a glass of ... oh,
dear [thud].
Welcome to the wonderful world of umbrage, the new language of American
politics. You would not have thought that the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Bill
O'Reilly would be so sensitive. Sticks and stones and so on. Yet they all seem
to have taken one look at that ad and fainted dead away. And when they came
round, they demanded — as if with one voice (or at least as if with one list of
talking points) — that every Democratic presidential candidate must "condemn"
this shocking, shocking document.
The ad is pretty tough, and the pun on the general's name is pretty witless.
You could argue that since the verb betray and the noun traitor have the same
root, the ad is accusing the head of American forces in Iraq of
treason. The ad can also be interpreted — more plausibly if you consider the
rest of the text — merely as questioning the general's honesty, not his
patriotism. But whatever your interpretation of the ad, all the gasping for air
and waving of scented handkerchiefs among the war's most enthusiastic
supporters is pretty comical.
It's all phony, of course. The war's backers are obviously delighted to have
this ad from which they can make an issue. They wouldn't trade it for a week in
Anbar province (a formerly troubled area of Iraq
that is now, thanks to us, an Eden
of peace and tranquility where barely a car bomb disturbs the perfumed silence
— or so they say). These days, mock outrage is used by every side of every
dispute. It's fair enough to criticize something your opponent said while
secretly thanking your lucky stars that he said it. The fuss over this
MoveOn.org ad is something else: it is the result of a desperate scavenging for
umbrage material. When so many people are clamoring for a chance to swoon that
they each have to take a number and when the landscape is so littered with
folks lying prostrate and pretending to be dead that it starts to look like the
end of a Civil War battle re-enactment, this isn't spontaneous mass outrage.
This is choreography.
The constant calls for political candidates to prove their bona fides by
condemning or denouncing something somebody else said or to renounce a person's
support or to return her tainted money are a tiresome new tic in American
politics. They're turning politics into a game of "Mother, May I?"
Did you say "Here is my plan for health-care reform"? Uh-oh, you were
supposed to say "I condemn MoveOn.org's comments on General Petraeus, and
here is my plan for health-care reform."
All this drawing of uncrossable lines and issuing of fatuous fatwas is
supposed to be a bad habit of the left. When right-wingers are attacking this
habit rather than practicing it, they call it political correctness. The
problem with political correctness is that it turns discussions of substance
into arguments over etiquette. The last thing that supporters of the war want
to talk about at this point is the war. They'd far rather talk about this
insult to General Petraeus. It just isn't done in polite society, it seems, to
criticize a general in the middle of a war. (Although, when else?)
The Republican front runner, Rudy Giuliani, is another tough guy who has
seized the opportunity to reveal his easily bruised soft side. He is running TV
commercials saying Hillary Clinton "stood by silently" while
MoveOn.org ran its despicable ad. Another way of saying this would be that she
had nothing to do with the ad. But Rudy accuses her of "joining with"
MoveOn.org and "attacking" General Petraeus, although the only
evidence he can muster for this accusation is a clip from Clinton telling the general at a hearing that
his reports of progress in the war "really require the willing suspension
of disbelief." For this, Giuliani demands an "apology," not just
to the general but to all American troops in Iraq. He accuses her of
"turning her back" on America's
brave soldiers "just when our troops need all our support to finish the
job."
When we try to untangle this web of accusation and innuendo, Giuliani
appears to be suggesting that it is unacceptable for a Senator to express
skepticism about anything said by a general in uniform. If he believes that, he
does not understand democracy. I am shocked by this. In fact, if Giuliani
doesn't apologize, and if the other Republican candidates don't condemn this
commercial, I think I'm going to faint.
