A perfect example of the reflexive cringe some people feel when they see a rather straight-forward unmoderated example of Western Culture – from Britain, of course:
“Dorothy Glenn decorates her home in South Shields, Tyne and Wear, with hundreds of festive lights every year, including a giant tree and a 4ft Santa Claus.
“But this year she was astonished when an employee of South Tyneside Homes called at her house and informed her that the decorations she was displaying might be offending her neighbours.”
The neighbors weren’t offended, which must make Constable Killjoy all the more annoyed; they’re not helping matters at all. We’re not going to get to the perfect world unless the right people are as irritated as their civil shepherds, and pitch in. No one felt excluded? Not one of you felt like an outsider? How stupid are you, really? There it is! Someone else’s culture – the old dominant culture presented without apologies or footnotes, and all you can do is say “how pretty.” The damned ingratitude of it all.
If it were left up to the official who made the complaint, the ideal holiday decoration would consist of white lights – well, no, that privileges one color over the others. If you had all colors in equal numbers it would suggest that there was an equality in society where no such thing exists, so perhaps colors could be assigned by the first letter of people’s names, arbitrarily chosen, and then presented in the appropriate proportion. The lights could be displayed with a snowflake, and individual expressions could be achieved by varying the size and design of the snowflake. This avoids the religious connotations of a star or a tree, the offensive presentation of human form inherent in the snowman – no Muslims have complained about that, but we’re working on reminding them – and the other iconography that suggests a particular historical genesis, sorry, origin for this season.
Bully for Mr. Khan:
“Independent councillor Ahmed Khan, who represents Mrs Glenn’s ward, condemned the employee’s actions.
“He said: ‘Every year this woman puts her Christmas lights up and I know how popular they are. It’s great when people make an effort to decorate their houses.
“‘It’s this kind of nonsense that sets race relations back 20 years. That woman did nothing more than decorate her house to celebrate Christmas.’”
It would, if it were Muslims who were complaining. But since it’s the government, it should set government relations back 20 years. But it won’t.The housing association apologized, and “started an investigation,” as if there’s some strange shadowy secret group in their midst that can only be uncovered by a legion of pipe-smoking men in deerstalker caps. I expect to hear nothing more on the story, least of all the identity of the pinch-souled miscreant who upbraided the lady for an inflatable snowman and an excess of reindeer. In a way, it’s a heartening story, because the lady got to keep her snowman, and the neighbors who turned out for the supportive photograph were reassuringly diverse; it would have been different if they’d all been yobbos from the local staring at the lens with defiance. That would have sent a chill up some spines, perhaps. Get some lagered-up lads in front of a snowman, and the next thing you know they’ve formed a chapter of the BNP.
The most telling aspect of the story, though, is that the display appears to be entirely secular, but it’s still presumed offensive. The very act of asserting the symbols of your particular culture and history – however denatured they’ve become – strikes the Eurocrat as exclusionary, unless it has the requisite apologetic footnotes.The historical cultures have no place in the great grey continental smear of egalitarian glory, no matter how much they mean to the citizens. The future may be the undiscovered country, but the past is the inconvenient one.
Where were the Bachs and Beethovens of my own time? The Europe of the past was poorer and less populated. It was supposed to be more backward. And yet it produced a wealth of great composers - a whole tradition of high art - which fell away during the 1900s.
Why hasn’t liberal modernity produced high culture? One reason, perhaps, is that if we only recognise man and his desires, with no higher order toward which man aspires, then there is nothing for a high culture to successfully orient itself to.
Not necessarily. One of the greatest 20th century art forms was the skyscraper, which is pure Mammon from the caissons to the tip of the spotlit spire. Renaissance art may be religious in subject matter, but it was often commissioned as a status symbol, complete with the patron in the corner pointing to the Scourging of St. Screamus with a grave expression. This didn’t make the painting irreligious – belief saturated everything – but I’m not sure how many of these painters were devout guys who cut off the legs of their easels so they could paint on their knees. But I know what he means. It’s not the humanism that ruined art, it was humanism that divorced itself from the possibility of transcendence. Which would be bad enough if it hadn’t decided to splash around in the gutters as well.
Ah, but why was it influential? It recontextualized the commonplace and made us see it as Art, a process that continues to this day every time you see a book with a title like “The Art of Bread” or “The Art of Toad Sexing” or whatever else has to be elevated to the status of marble sculpture to make the user feel they’re living a rarified life. It played a joke on the Stuffy Academics, which is something the adolescent temperament never tires of doing. This is not encouraged any more, since the Academics are on the side of Truth and Modernity, however defined today. Although I once knew an architecture student who took perverse and boundless glee in shocking his teacher by putting a pointy roof on the house each student had to design. A pointed roof. In other words, a useful roof, a functional roof that didn’t collect rain water. Everyone else had a flat roof, of course. Machine for Living and all that. This was just around the time Post-Modernism made it okay to quote history, as long as everyone saw you wink, or could understand that your overscaled grotesque excretions were meant ironically.
An instructor might not know what to make of a house with a point roof, but if you called it “House In The Time of Reagan” he’d understand.
Finally, Duchamp redefined the act of creation. You were no longer required to take materials and form them into pleasing shapes. (He lacked the skills to make something as graceful as an industrial urinal, probably.) Art now consisted of the act of calling something Art, of finding art where others had just seen pissoir equipment. Again, a reaction to Stuffy, Tradition-Bound Authority. It wasn’t enough that the visual arts had undergone the Great Unravelling; what was necessary was removing Art from the hands of the Artists entirely. Or rather taking it from the old guard and putting it in the hands of you and all your friends, who are just a marvelously clever bunch of lads and having a grand old time.
Painting didn’t lose its relevance because of secularism – the 19th century was a tremendously vital era, and the great art was almost entirely secular. But they revitalized painting by tugging on the loose, frayed strand of representationalism, and that unraveled everything. You can only invent a new school if you’re more unrepresentational than the previous guy, which is why you start with gauzy Turner landscapes and end up with Motherwell, or any other guy who puts an enormous black mark on a canvas the size a garage door, calls it ELEGY or AMERICA #6 and watches the commissions roll in.
Music: same thing, more or less. German Romanticism unraveled around the end of Mahler’s tenure; French music, well, Raveled; the Italians soldiered on in the old tradition, but it sounded thin and showy. The Brits did their best as well, but eventually their orchestra music got odd and grumpy around the edges before expiring in a burst of showy golden glory in Walton’s Coronation March. In short: I think serious composers lost faith in the ability of the symphonic and tonal traditions to ever equal Beethoven or Mozart or the rest, so what’s the bloody point? Or they lost faith in their own ability to rise to the challenge. Jazz was the new thing anyway; the Americans were showing that. Maybe the world had enough oboe concertos composed to accompany the morning bowel-movements of Count Schnaggellpussen of Upper-lower Saxony; it didn’t have enough Louis Armstrong. In any case, orchestra composition isn’t dead – it’s doing very well in movie scores, thank you. (The rise of the movie as an art form is another Good Thing about the 20th century, but that’s another post.)
but that’s beside the point, really. Liberal culture, if you want to use the author’s broad term, or modern culture, if you want a term less charged, hasn’t produced any high art because it doesn’t want to, doesn’t know how to, and doesn’t believe in it. What started out as an individual revolt against exhausted traditions – something whose origins you could probably trace to 19th century political trends, if you wanted to spend the time – became enshrined as a Permanent Revolution against the crusty old bothersome past, the same big hunk of history that summed up the innumerable failures of the West, at least as the grave penseurs defined them. If we are the enlightened ones, then it stands to reason that the culture of the Dark Ages must reflect the sexism, imperialism, fascism, classism, and other myriad isms that stained the globe. But they’ll still go see a traveling exhibit of old Masters, and they’ll still pile in the halls to hear Beethoven, because those are still the gold standards for Taste, and Taste has long been their favorite, and most self-flattering, virtue.
High art has been replaced by mass art, which can be low or high or middle; whatever it is, it’s characterized by wide availability, momentary ubiquity, instant access, and its perishable nature. (The worst side effect of the rise of mass art was the death of the pop song, as it was defined before rock.)But the old traditions are still around – painting still has its realists, emerging now from the catacombs where they hid with Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post covers for decades; sculpture might yet be liberated from the hands of people who drag rusty steel walls into empty plazas and regard themselves as the heirs to Bernini; music, well composed and properly orchestrated, still has its old power intact, if dormant. Nearly everyone on the planet can hum the “Star Wars” theme, after all.
(Some note that William’s theme bears a strong resemblance to theme from a Ronald Reagan movie, “King’s Row.” Perhaps. That piece was written by Erich Korngold – a European expat who was called a genius as a young man by none other than Mahler himself.)
Then again, maybe we’re just dining on the last of the seed corn. It doesn’t take a belief in the divine to appreciate Bach. Does it take such a belief to be Bach? Or does a rational, secular society have no answer to Bach but the empty crystal kaleidoscopes of Phillip Glass?
Or if their answer is P Diddy, what comes after that?
There’s a pattern here, but it would take a lifetime of work at State or the CIA, sifting through the strange, oblique clues that waft from Norkland, to figure it out.
Our motto for the next few years: nothing should come as a surprise, even the fact that we’re surprised by whatever comes. Maybe especially the fact that we’re surprised.
Found this in the paper today. It’s from a 1947 Star editorial page piece on a local labor leader who attended a Communist rally. (He said he was just soliciting money for the strike fund.)Comrades! Strive to attend the Annual Lenin Rally and Fish Fry!
This was a bit jarring, since Nellie Stone Johnson is a local hero in these parts. I knew she was an old-line leftist – I interviewed her in 1988, I think, and she was smart, sharp, and friendly. Patterson was a full-blown Communist – I’d say “Commie” but that’s one of those terms that makes some people put you in the precious-bodily-fluids category. I don’t know if she was a Communist, but appearing at a Lenin Memorial is heavy-duty. If it’s not fellow-traveling, it’s certain showing up at the station to see them off.
So? Well, those were the bad guys. Lenin’s heirs were not exactly exporting freedom and light and powdered magic unicorn eyelashes to the people of Eastern Europe. Nellie Stone Johnson’s subsequent reputation arose from her civil rights work, and she was much beloved & lauded when she died in 2002.But it’s interesting how the culture now regards domestic Communists as either persecuted idealists or just really extra-strength liberals in a hurry who had no idea, absolutely none whatsoever, that things over there weren’t happy worker hoedowns over exceeded tractor-tire-production quotas.
If someone had appeared at a Hitler Memorial Meeting, would they get a school named after them? Lindbergh got a few airport terminals and schools named after him, of course, but there’s still discussion and agonizing over his politics. Sure, he believed in eugenics - but only voluntary eugenics! Uh huh. Still, “Nazi Symp” is one of the first things that comes to mind for a lot of people when his name comes up. “Commie Symp” has lots all its sting.
This is a graphic from a Salon piece on presidents whose tenure coincided with transformational social change. Imagine the company he’ll keep after he’s sworn in:
I suppose it’s connected to this story, which has been lavishly linked: preparations for an official Obama holiday. But a weekly meeting at a McDonald’s restaurant does not seem to rise to the level of a mass movement, even if it’s held twice a day to get both the Breakfast Burrito and the BigMac demographic. You can chalk it all up to enthusiasm and anticipation – harmless at best, a benchmark for the depths of disenchantment at worst.
Conservatives cannot help but be saddened and left out – the only possible event that could lift their spirits right now would be a headline that said REAGAN, BACK FROM THE DEAD, EATS BIN LADEN AND CRAPS TAX CUT, but pictures like this reminds the right that no one was ever this happy about Bush, even when the love was at its zenith. No one put him with George, Abe and Frank before he took office. Really, he was just The Next Guy, a caretaker in a post-history world. People forget how much “compassionate conservativism” stuck in the craw back then; the party’s own standard-bearer modified the terms in a way that managed to insult, mischaracterize, apologize, and reshape the debate all at once. It would be like a Democrat running on a program of “Logical Liberalism,” and not knowing why his own followers found the catch-phrase unhelpful.
Anyway. There are rumors of new Executive Decrees, which include magic Federal dollars for stem-cell research that uses human embryos - if you have any objections, you hate science -and a ban on domestic drilling and nat-gas exploration in public lands in Utah. (If you have any objections, you hate the environment.) The two form a nice mirror image: the former was a ban put in place to preserve a particular definition of human life; the latter is a ban lifted to preserve the environment. Again, it’s understandable: we only have one Utah, but we can always make more people. As long as they don’t live in Utah.
Will executive unilateralism remain a bad thing, a threat to our rights, or suddenly gain favor with old critics? Hmmmm. Cue the Jeopardy! theme. That’s a stumper. Then again, this is Washington we’re talking about. Heaped alongside the altar of politics are numberless goats with eyes open in shock. Principles be damned; when it comes to doing the things you want to do, there’s a knife for every throat.
Hey, remember after 2004, when the interior of the country was viewed with deep suspicion for its insufficient interest in a John Kerry presidency? Crude maps called it JESUSLAND, a place opposed to liberty and education.Well, shuck my corn and call me Orville: the red part of the country has been reduced to something that looks like a mild case of contact dermatitis.
The solid block of flyover Christiansts who spend every Sunday hopping up and down so they can get a head start on the Rapture appears to have turned into enlightened change-agent lightwalkers, and in a mere four years. Or, the people in the middle of the country weren’t all weirdoes who still harbored a grudge against the Renaissance, and viewed the coasts as they were greedy remoras fastened on the Real America. In any case, no one will make mocking maps of them now.
The lesson, as always, is that things change. Things will change again. And I expect that the GOP leadership will conclude that since things do change, they can sit back and wait for it to happen again.Which is a recipe for ensuring that the next such map has a thin red line like the one you used to use to open a Band-Aid.
I wonder if anyone would be talking about historic realignment and Change.gov and a new bright future if Hillary Clinton had kicked Fred Thompson to the curb in the same way. Probably not; even if the numbers had been the same, the results would not be described in the same techtonic terms.Would it have been the same if McCain had rolled forth soaring rhetoric, and Obama sounded like Wally Cox? Irrelevant, of course, but that map, as conclusive as it looks, owes its hues to intangibles you can’t predict, and can’t manufacture. The Romans may have had too many gods, but there was one that seemed both wise and playful, just and capricious.
I’m off to the Mall to sell razor blades so people can scrape off their “Question Authority” bumper stickers. Just remember: Dissent is still the highest form of patriotism. Except now it will be practiced by the lowest form of people.
Seriously, though: congratulations to President-elect Obama. Right or wrong - and I hope for more of the former, obviously - he’s my President now, dammit, and I’m not going to spend four years treating him with the contempt the Kos side heaped on Chimpy McPretzelchoker. He could turn out to be a horrible President. He could turn out to be a great one. History pushes people in unexpected directions.
More to come, of course, but let’s not spoil the moment.
I got an email from David Byrne. Since I signed up to get a free MP3 from his website, this means I am automatically simpatico to the portions of his worldview that do not involve moving fingers across the surfaces of strings and keys, and hence am eager to hear from him.
Pardon the bulk mailing. I Can’t Vote. I am an immigrant with a Green Card and, therefore, I am not eligible to vote in a federal election.
Pardon the bulk mauling, David, but I Can’t Care. You’re a fifty-six year old man who’s been in the country since 1960.Take the citizenship test already. It’s easy. No questions like “My God. What have I done?
FYI - I can get drafted (luckily, Daniel Berrigan burned my draft board’s records) and I pay taxes, yet I cannot vote for President.
You can get drafted if there is a draft, and they change the rules to hoover up the geezers,but otherwise, relax. As for paying your taxes yet being unable to vote for President, well, sorry, but we call that citizenship. Just because someone goes to France and buys a candy bar doesn’t mean their VAT contribution enables them to have a voice in EU policy.
On Election Day, I see my neighbors heading to the nearby elementary school to cast their ballots. The voting booth joint is a great leveler; the whole neighborhood - rich, poor, old, young, decrepit and spunky - they all turn out in one day.
True, and that’s nice.
But most of you can vote. What can I say? The Republicans have made us less safe than before 9/11
Says the man writing from a city that hasn’t been hit since. . . oh, the date slips my mind. Nine – one – something or other.
started an illegal war they can’t - and don’t intend to - finish, removed what sympathy (after 9/11) and respect the world had for the US, and have robbed US citizens of many of their basic rights. Global warming? What’s that? Science and education? Investment in our future? No, thanks - we’ll stick with a good ‘ole hockey mom. Ignorant, and f*cking proud of it, as is always the case.
(Asterisk added to keep the site from being banned for naughty language.) Since Mr. Byrne is not ignorant and f*cking proud of it, as is always the case, he surely knows that Alaska has the high total per capita spending on education, and New York is sixth. Alaska is ranked #10 in per capita higher ed spending; New York is # 46.And if he thinks John McCain says “what’s that” to Global Warming, he might not have approached this election with an overabundance of facts
He continues:
Although it looks like a shoo-in, it ain’t over ’til Florida. And there are plenty of racists in this country who will vote against their own best interests.
Persuasive gentleman, isn’t he?We need smarter, more informed racists! Mr. Byrne, I love your music and think you’re brilliant. I will be proud to call you a fellow citizen. See you at the voting booth next time! I’ll even spot you the mid-terms. Four years. Start studying! Hint: there are only 50 states. It looks like a trick question, but it’s not.
One of my favorite clichés of the pre-election coverage is the Venerated Republican Who Changes Sides. He can’t take it anymore! He can’t bear what his party’s become!It’s someone the left would smear as a senile old Bircher if he didn’t cross party lines, but if he decides to vote Obama at the age of 93, it’s a sign that the carapace of evil has finally cracked and the small, vulnerable, damaged human locked inside has crawled out and asked for forgiveness. Hyman T. Hynderbeinder has voted Republican since he cast a vote for Coolidge, but this year he’s voting for Obama. Why? “The girl at the home always talks about him when she leans over and ties my bib around my neck. I have a nice feeling about him. And his twin.”
The best this year was a lady who hadn’t cast a vote since she said Yea for Ike, but she was voting for Obama this year. Why? He was a good straight man, good family life, honest. True enough. The CBS reporter didn’t press the particulars, though, possibly out of respect for her age; she’s got a century under her belt, plus change:
If you can’t trust a 106-year-oldnun to be opposed pro-life, then all bets are off. Then again, it’s possible she doesn’t know which candidate takes a harder line on abortion, and which one would be inclined to vote “present” on a bill that allows doctors to perform third-trimester terminations “for the health, or mood, or overdue parking meter status, of the mother.”
Nuns! Explains this fellow, too: abortion is his main issue, but he can’t decide whether to vote for the guy who said life begins at conception, or the one who said the question is above his pay grade. You could blame the media for not making the distinction clear, but really, it’s not that hard to find out the deets. Some people just have a hard time figuring things out. There are people out there who have no problem with the whole Bill Ayers thing, because they heard from a friend that John McCain spent five years living with some Communists. Really! In a hotel and everything.
