Do What I Say, Not What I Do

Double Standards


There is a serious case of hypocrisy running round the right wing at the moment.  Not that that isn't a perpetual illness, but there are two egregious instances in the news at the moment.  Case number one: Hank Williams Jr., case two: Occupy Wall Street.


First Hank Williams Jr.  Why is it that when Natalie Mains of the Dixie Chicks made a joke to a London audience that she was ashamed the both she and George Bush came from Texas, the right erupted.  There were CD crushing parties, most particularly, a Texas radio station rented a steamroller to crush a giant pile of Dixie Chick merchandise.  Natalie Mains was literally subjected to death threats.  It is no exaggeration to say she had to go into hiding.


At the time, the talking heads on Fox (and even CNN) said that she was out of line with that comment.  People said that you are not allowed to criticize the President of the United States, period.  Even if you disagree with his actions, you MUST respect the office.  She was told to "Shut up and sing."  People said that artists and musicians should not comment on politics, as if the entire purpose of the arts was not to comment on the world.  They basically tried to reenact the Sedition Laws.


The result of this was that the career of the Dixie Chicks, for all intents and purposes was ended.  They released one album after the incident, that no country music station would play.  The video for "Not Ready to Make Nice," did get a lot of airplay on VH1, but since their fan base tends to tune into CMT, the video didn't spur a lot of record sales.


Hank Williams Jr. made a much worse comment, comparing Obama to Hitler and calling him the "Enemy."  Very vicious stuff, far worse that expressing shame in sharing a birth state with someone.  The result, Hank Williams' record sales have gone through the roof.  He is being praised by such luminaries as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.  He has been ordained as the high priest of the Right.  

Admittedly, he did lose his gig at ESPN, but even that is being spun on the right as evidence of their suppression in the media.  The right is outraged that anyone would criticize Hank Williams Jr. for making a comment that was protected by the first amendment.  (By the way, the First Amendment only protects you from the government stopping your speech, it doesn't protect you from a private employer firing you over it.  That is not protected.)


Can you say hypocrisy?  The left cannot criticize a Republican president, but the right can.  


Seriously?


On to the other issue du jour.  Why is it that Occupy Wall Street protesters are "un-American and a danger to Democracy," as Peter King stated, when the Tea Party protesters are true patriots?  The right is begging the media not to cover them.  Literally.  They have called and asked news stations to please stop reporting on the Occupy Wall Street Movement.  They have said that giving airtime to these "criminals" is validating their movement.  


And as proof of their success on this request, even the MSNBC website currently (Monday morning) has nothing on their main page about the protests. 


These are the same people who stage media events to celebrate the "Grass Roots, spontaneous movement" that is the Tea Party.  the Tea Party is a spontaneous movement only if it arose as a reaction to the Koch brothers having dysentery on the Constitution.  (Sorry for the poop reference.)


The right would create manufactured events, and get press coverage, and somehow get them to shoot those events so that it looked like the crowds were huge, even if there were only a handful of people in attendance.  Independent crowd counters always came up with far smaller numbers for the events that the Tea Party people did.   The Occupy Wall Street protests are undercounted, and the spread of the movement is being minimized, to make it seem like a fringe event.


So the actual fringe movement is lauded and stated to represent the vast majority of America, and the movement that ACTUALLY has vast support nationwide is minimized and disenfrachised.


Join with me now, HYPOCRISY, what a beautiful thing.


Never underestimate the ability of the human mind to hold two diametrically opposed ideas simultaneously.

The Age of Personal Responsibility?

Blame Game

According to Herman Cain, if you are poor or unemployed, you only have yourself to blame.  He said, “Don’t blame Wall Street.  Don’t blame the big banks.  If you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself.”

That reminds me of a recent incident where Kathleen Passidomo, a Florida GOP lawmaker said, “There was an article about an 11 year old girl who was gangraped in Texas by 18 young men because she was dressed up like a 21-year-old prostitute.”

Is this America of the 21^st Century, blame the UNEMPLOYED for their unemployment, and blame an ELEVEN YEAR OLD GIRL for her own gang rape by EIGHTEEN MEN?  (Sorry about the all caps, I can’t actually scream in a blog post.)

Are we now at the point where everything bad that happens to you is your own fault?  (And yet, these same people say that if you have anything good happen to you it all comes from God, and you should thank Him for all the blessings in your life.  I guess consistency really is the hobgoblin of small minds.)

First, let’s examine the implication of one part of Herman Cain’s statement.  “If you’re not rich, blame yourself.”  He’s implying that the only reason you aren’t rich is that you’re lazy.  This shows an appalling lack of understanding of basic economic theory.  If you aren’t rich, it’s because the delimiter of wealth is not actual money, but relative positioning compared to others. 

If everyone had at least million dollars, which is moderately wealthy, then having a million dollars would not have a lot of value.  Inflation would take the cost of goods and services to the point where a million dollars became poverty.  A hundred years ago, a salary of $20,000.00 per year was an incredible amount of money; today, it is below the poverty line.  Monetary value equalizes with the base standard of living.  The more people who have a million dollars, the less a million dollars is worth in actual value and purchasing power.

The idea that everyone can be rich is a never ending treadmill, because there will never be more than a small segment of society that is rich.  Rich is a relative, not absolute, position.

Now let’s look at the other part of his statement, “Don’t blame Wall Street.  Don’t blame the big banks.  If you don’t have a job, blame yourself.”

Really? 

So all of the unemployed in America are at fault for their own unemployment?  It is their fault that the factory they worked for closed up and moved to China?  I guess in Republican-land it is.  The factory moved because the American workers were unwilling to work in extremely dangerous jobs with ridiculous hours for almost no money.  Since the workers were unwilling to submit to virtual slavery, the company had no choice but to relocate to a place where people would.

I guess that people are also to blame for their own unemployment because, since they have no money coming in, they chose not to go out and spend.  Since they chose to be responsible, and not spend money they don’t have, they drive down demand, which reduces the work force.  And this attitude is coming from the very people who demand that the Federal Government stop spending?  (Really, never underestimate the power of the human mind to hold two completely contradictory ideas simultaneously.)

Apparently, the fact that the big banks and Wall Street are currently sitting on more capital than they have ever had is not a factor.  The refusal of the Masters of the Universe to invest in America is not responsible for this mess. 

Really? (I know I say that a lot, but when dealing with this type of ideology, all I seem to be able to do lately is smack myself on the forehead and groan.)

I guess we all need to kneel before the throne of the Masters and give thanks for the few crumbs they throw our way.

Occupy Wall Street is a legitimate movement filled with young people who see their future being stolen from them by greedy old men.  They are not people who are lazy, they are people who have few, if any, opportunities to improve their position.  (The protesters are demanding some things that I don’t agree with, such as ending the Federal Reserve, but I understand their rage.  And to a great extent, I agree with it.)

I want to end this with an observation.  When you have an entitled UPPER class, that shows the lower classes wonders that those people will never be able to possess, you set the stage for revolution.  When the poor and middle class see their leaders spending millions at Tiffany’s, and they can’t even pay the electricity or the medical bills, they WILL rise up.  That is basic social theory at work.  The only question at that point is, will the revolution occur at the ballot box or in the streets?

You have been warned.

Police break up an "Occupy Wall Street" protest in Seattle.   

Quench my thirst - Fill my heart
Feed my mind - Don't leave me starving
Hold my hand - stay close by
Talk to me - Don't leave me crying here

Standing in water, yet dying of thirst
This is my thanks and this is my curse
Empty forgiveness for old indiscretions
And such condemnation for just one transgression

Find me now - set me free
Find me now - set me free

Waiting for time to pass me by
Waiting for freedom, waiting to die
Why do you smile at my timeless ordeal here
And why do you laugh at my hopeless appeal for your mercy?


Tantalus by Arena

The Pursuit of Happiness

Happiness.

In modern America, happiness is something to be suspicious of, as if trying to be happy is somehow wrong, maybe even slightly sinful.  I was talking to my friend Patrick, and he made a comment that makes me sad every time I think about it.  He said, “Where I come from, if your job doesn’t make you miserable, it’s not a job, it’s a hobby.”  The underlying meaning of his statement was you need to find a job that makes you miserable.  He fled the South to escape this idea and find pleasure in life.

Another friend of my told me, “Work sucks, get over it.  It’s never going to be fun.”

This rejection of enjoyment in life I think is the foundation of all of the awful things going on in this country and in the world.  We as a race have lost our capacity to be happy.

I want to point out, I’m not talking about the “better dead than sad” mentality that Joe Juhasz details in his writings.  I’m not talking about sadness an evil that has to be medicated away; we will all feel sad at various points in our lives.  Medicated happiness is just a chemical mask.  Rather than actually change circumstances to be happier, people just take Prozac to cope and not go out and kill themselves.

What I am talking about is basic, genuine pursuit of happiness, as stated in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The pursuit of happiness is an unalienable right, and yet, like so many other rights, it seems like it is being stripped from us, not by the government, but by social pressure.  There is no force on earth more potent that social sanctions and stigmas.  Social pressure will force us to do almost anything.  It is the Third Dimension of Power, and the most insidious of them all.

Churches are against happiness.  They may claim to want you to be happy, but only if your happiness falls within their boundaries.  If your happiness conflicts with their teachings, it’s a sin, and you’re going to hell.  Even love, the most powerful emotion of happiness, is evil if it is with the wrong person, the wrong race, the wrong gender.  (And yes, there are still churches that preach against mixed race marriage, let alone gay marriage)

Governments, for the most part are against happiness.  This is a far less direct connection, but if your happiness conflicts with the moneyed interests who run the governments of the world, your happiness loses.  The ability to be healthy, secure in your old age, be educated without debt, those are all happinesses that conflict with what the special interests want.   Their happiness of the pursuit of wealth trumps all other forms of happiness.

But the worst one is the people in your life who don’t want you to be happy.  They encourage you to stay in a crappy job, a loveless marriage, a place you hate, because in today’s world, somehow wanting to be happy is equated with being immature.  They have succumbed to the notion that happiness is somehow something you only get to have as a child. 

I’m not talking about self indulgent, spoiled happiness.  I’m not talking about buying a sports car and getting a tarty blonde on your arm.  I’m talking about fundamental enjoyment of life.  I’m talking about eliminating the things in your life that make you miserable.

If you hate your job, quit, find something to do that gives you pleasure, even if the money isn’t as good.  If you have a rotten marriage, and all the efforts of marriage counseling and trying to fix it have not changed the equation, leave.  If you hate the place you live, move.  Chase your bliss.  You may be poorer or a little lonelier, but you will be happier.  You can make your own joy.

You can give yourself permission.

Saint Mary's Glacier

The Weighing of Worth

Sacred

When is life sacred, when is it profane?  Is all life valuable, or are some lives worth more than others?

Apparently in the America of the New Century, the answer is yes.

Some examples of the worth of lives:

A fetus is more valuable than a baby and definitely more valuable than a woman.

A zygote is worth more than an adult.

A senior citizen is worth more than a school age child.

A wealthy person is worth more than a poor person.

Any white middle age person is worth more than any minority, regardless of the achievements of said minority.

Examples of this in the news of the last few days:

In Florida there was an anti-abortion protest where the demonstrators were holding up signs saying “Kill women, not babies” (Does this mean that we should kill all women prophylacticly to prevent them from getting an abortion?  By the way, thanks to Patrick for this suggestion.  Read his blog post here:Would Bringing Back Post-Natal Abortions Fit with Your Ideology? )

Alabama is attempting to pass a law that would ban most forms of birth control (Just go ahead and actually criminalize all sex that is not for procreation, since that wastes the potential life of the sperm, and while you’re at it ban menstruation since that unfertilized egg could be a life.)

In order to win Tea Party support (Mostly older Americans) Mitt Romney, in the Republican debates, He said large class sizes are not a problem and that Pell Grants should be eliminated.  (Meanwhile, in Oregon, a rural school district superintendent now is responsible for cleaning the restrooms because the school budget is slashed so completely.  Why not just close the schools entirely; what kind of education do you need to be a fry cook?)

JP Morgan Chase donated 4.6 million dollars to the New York Police Department immediately after the Occupy Wall Street Protests began.  This donation is the largest in NYPD history, and very interesting considering the destination of the Brooklyn Bridge March was the Chase Manhattan Plaza.  (And sometime after the brutal police assault on the protesters, Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said that they hope the donation shows how much they value the police department’s “hard work.”  Beating innocent protesters is so difficult, and takes so much out of a person.)

Dick Cheney demands that the Obama administration apologize for criticizing their use of torture.  (I guess that Obama, who banned torture, yet somehow got BinLaden, Al-Awlaki and so many other senior Al Qaeda operatives, and has repeatedly stopped significant terrorist plots, gets no credit for this.  If Cheney hadn’t ordered the torture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed all those years ago, Obama would not have been able to dismantle most of the leadership of Al Qaeda.  Apparently, Obama’s leadership and intelligence operations had nothing to with any of it.)

And while we’re at it, stop comparing people to Hitler, like Hank Williams Jr. did recently when he said  “That would be like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu… They're the enemy... Obama! And Biden! Are you kidding? The Three Stooges.” 

Until you have incinerated something on the order of six million people, you don’t even come close to the horror that was Hitler.  It doesn’t matter what your political affiliation, or who you are trying to demonize, calling someone Hitler belittles the Holocaust, and minimizes the horrors inflicted at that time.  Comparisons to Hitler must be reserved for the most evil despots, if even then.  That monster represents the worst evil of the last two centuries.  (With Stalin a very close second.)  

It seems that our priorities are not just screwed up in this country, they have been completely upended.  The New York Times is engaging in revisionism only previously imagined in the book 1984.  The government is robbing the poor to give money to the rich, and then when the poor complain, they condemn the “class warfare.”  The police are setting up protesters to entrap them and arrest them for engaging in their first amendment rights.

Its time for us to demand our rights again.  We can no longer stand by idly and watch our country be dismantled.  The time has come to take back the dialog and call out the behavior of our leaders and those who would wreck our country.  We can no longer allow them to control the dialog.  It’s our country too.

The strange historical revisionism that the New York Times committed.  It is worthy of Minitrue.

Is the Tea Party an Art Project?

Performance Art

I’ve always wondered if the Tea Party and some of the members of the far right were actually creating a piece of performance art.  Are they like Spinal Tap where the verisimilitude of their performance so blurs the lines of reality that people begin to believe that it isn’t parody, but reality.

I find that attitude actually exists on the right.  I have had conversations with some conservatives who believe that Stephan Colbert is actually a Republican.  Their argument goes something like this: “He’s a conservative playing a liberal playing a conservative, because if he just came out and told jokes about liberals directly he wouldn’t be able to be on television.  The only way that he can have a TV show is to play like he’s a liberal.  He’s actually a Republican, but can’t let people know.”

So now we have Victor/Victoria as political theatre?  An actual conservative acting like a liberal so that he can get a conservative view out to young people without censorship.  And the frightening thing is, a lot of the people I’ve talked to believe this statement.

On a side note, when will the right realize that Fox news controls all the political discussion in this country?  Even the “Liberal Media” talks about what Fox wants them to discuss, because they feel that they have to cover the lunacy.  When you control the dialog, you cannot also claim to be the oppressed minority.  Also, when you claim, as they do, that most of the country agrees with you, you cannot claim to be a subjugated people.  You cannot have it both ways.

But back to my main point, is the Tea Party movement art?

I just read a quote by Martin Heidegger that seems to prove my point.  He stated “a work of art is that which not only creates something new, but creates the new world in which that thing can exist.”

By this definition, I would state that the Tea Party is art.  They are creating something new, a different version of the constitution than the founding fathers intended or that I read in school, and they have created the world where that new version of the constitution can exist, a far right America where sick people dying is cheered and a gay soldier is booed.

The Tea Party is creating a new version of this country, where their extreme right ideals can live.  They are creating a place where the center has moved so far to the right that what used to be the center is now far left, and what was authentically liberal thought is now communistic and evil.

In Heidegger’s definition of art, to be art it has to be original, which the Tea Party certainly is, and it has to create a place for that new work to exist, which is also happening.  By this definition, the Tea Party is art.

The only question left is: is the artist Pawel Kuczynski or Gustave Doré?

Maybe it’s time to buy a new painting.

 For more paintings by Pawel Kuczynski go to this website.  The work is incredible.

http://englishrussia.com/2011/03/02/pawel-kuczynskis-satirical-art/

A Plague of Festivals

Uniformity

New York City, the last bastion of uniqueness, is falling victim to the blandness of Generica.  Go to Times Square and try to find something not corporately branded.  If Giuliani had allowed the hookers to remain, I’m sure that nowadays they would have corporate sponsorship and credit card readers.  (I can imagine Sephoria and Chloe investing in a line of perfectly groomed, elegantly dressed escorts walking 42^nd Street.)

But that isn’t what concerns me.  Times Square sold out a decade ago, and most New Yorkers avoid the place unless they have out of town guests who insist on seeing it, and are too afraid to go unescorted. 

What concerns me is a new phenomenon that I have not noticed in my previous visits or when I lived there.  Generic street festivals have sprung up all over Manhattan.  Last weekend, Madison Avenue was shut literally from Madison Square to 83^rd St.  (It may have been closed further, but that was the distance I experienced.)  Also, Broadway was shut throughout  NoHo and Mulberry Street in Little Italy was almost impassible from the booths set up on both sides of the street.

I say the street fairs were generic because they had the same collection of funnel cake vendors, hot dog stands, bead and scarf booths, and crappy art.  There was no soul and no character to them.  All of them were virtually identical.  At the time I wondered why.

Unfortunately, now I know.

I found this information on Quora today.  This was posted by Jay Gurewitsch the owner of Arcadia (www.arcadianyc.com):

“These pestilential plagues that are visited upon our streets far too often are almost entirely run by one company; Clearview Festivals. They contract with various "non-profit groups" who officially get the permits from the city in exchange for a tiny percentage of the take from the vendors.

These vendors, by the way, are overwhelmingly based outside of NY for tax purposes - so they charge and collect no sales tax, pay no real estate tax, no NY corporate tax, no payroll tax, no commuter tax, nothing that could possibly reimburse the city for all the lost revenue the businesses on those streets suffer whenever the fairs are set up.

My tens of thousands of taxes paid as a business owner in Chelsea ($50K+ in real estate tax alone) go to subsidize a street fair and street vendors who steal thousands of dollars PER FAIR from me and all my neighbors - and there is seemingly NOTHING we can do about it.”

In our lust to corporatize everything, we erase all character and individuality.  Everything is a brand, or more frighteningly, a uniform identity.  The City is becoming a copy of a copy of a copy, blurred to indistinguishiblilty and lacking any semblance of originality.

Is there any hope for authenticity?  When will we as a nation again demand it?  When will we stop giving our souls away for profit?

  

Setting up for the "Street Festival" on Sunday Morning.

The Ecology of Fear, New York Edition

Fear

I just returned from a trip to New York City.  I spent the weekend there, showing a group of my architecture students the city.  We saw some of the greatest architecture in the world.

We also saw a city gripped by paranoia.

I lived in New York in the months immediately following 9/11, and while the city was far from normal at that time, people were moving forward with the indomitable strength of character that only a New Yorker can have.  While the rest of America was still convulsing, New Yorkers were quietly going about rebuilding their lives.  They were looking at rebuilding what was literally a smoking hole in the ground.  (I remember it still smoking as late as February.)  They did not cower in a corner; they faced the nightmare head on.

The one thing I will always remember from my time in New York was that strength, that refusal to be bowed by horror.  Strangely, I did not see that on this weekend, a bare week after the 10^th anniversary.  I saw police everywhere, barricades, and ultimately an intimation of fear that I never saw in 2001.

After September 11, there were barricades all around Lower Manhattan, but the barricades served the purpose of keeping people from falling into the holes in the torn up streets or out of the buildings that hadn’t been checked for structural integrity.  They were there to keep people safe in the most literal sense of the word.

Now the barricades are back, but not to keep people from falling into gaping wounds in the earth, they now keep people from the statue of the Bull on the north end of Bowling Green, keep them from the steps of Federal Hall, keep them from walking freely, instead of like cattle on the way to the slaughter.

I know there were protesters all over Lower Manhattan, and the U.N. Opening Session in Midtown, but those are normal September events.  I have been taking students to New York City during September for the last several years, and I’ve never seen this before.

The police are beating people in the streets, there are guards on every floor of the hotel, black motorcades moving through the city, security forces with guns visibly at the ready. 

Are we so afraid of protest and dissent in this city that we block all expression of it?  Are the Masters of the Universe so frightened that they cannot allow anyone to express their American right of protest?

The fear that I saw was not a fear in the general population, it was a fear OF the general population.  As citizens we are de Facto terrorists, guilty until proven innocent.  The very ideals which are the birthright of every one of us is under threat. 

I saw the protesters first hand, and if they are an existential threat to America, then so is the Tea Party.  I say this, not out of any snarkiness, but as an actual point of fact.  The signs I saw the protesters carrying could have been carried by either end of the political spectrum.  In fact, the ends have bent discourse in this country so far around that the far left and the far right have become indistinguishable.

I saw a sign saying, “End the Fed.”  Very left, very right.  Since I have not been watching the news lately, the only way that I could even determine the end of the spectrum protesting was from their appearance.  I assume from the amount of dreadlocks, Rasta hats and Patchouli that the protesters were advocating from the left.  Swap them out for a group of old white men, and you’d have a Tea Party Rally, you wouldn’t even have to change the signs.  Apparently, on the ends, the only reference you have is context.

That said, there was nothing frightening about the protesters, unless you are a billionaire oil tycoon, then perhaps visions of Paris circa 1793 or Moscow of 1918 might be running though your head.  If you don’t believe in the freedom of speech, in the right to assemble, to ability to petition the government for redress, then what occurred this weekend in New York was a Fuselian scene of deepest nightmare.  The flag no longer hangs from the New York Stock Exchange, and barricades don’t allow you to get within a couple of hundred feet of the place.  In that one act, the financial barons that run the city showed their rejection of all that makes this country great.

The fear that gripped the city this weekend was fear by the powerful of the powerless, which is a recipe for actual revolution.

It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

I took this photograph in September 2008.