Rollin' and Tumblin'

Last night my Tabloid Friend on Facebook linked to a Limbaugh clip referring to Dennis Kucinich, or rather to Kucinich's wife: "Really? She's a babe? I don't notice babes anymore, I have one."

So one of TF's friends commented: "You mean the wife-whore he bought a couple years ago, who's half his age?"

You see, this is how liberals show their moral superiority to the likes of Limbaugh: by aping his style. I commented to that effect, and the first commenter replied, "Sorry Duncan Yo-Yo, that's how I roll. Diff is, I'm telling the truth, and he lies. So if you don't like it, blow it out your ass."

The trouble is, that's how Limbaugh rolls, too: both the misogyny and the claim to be telling the truth. (Is "how I roll" a Limbaugh trope? Katha Pollitt wrote in a recent blog post that Limbaugh's apologists among "media insiders think it’s naïve and boring to complain: that’s just the way Rush rolls.")

Tabloid Friend also linked to a Kevin Drum piece which lamented the left's failure to take Limbaugh seriously. Drum quoted Bob Somerby of the Daily Howler, who wrote that "We liberals have been too lazy, too feckless, too ditto-headed to insist that big news orgs challenge Limbaugh." Why should the big news orgs challenge Limbaugh? He belongs to the same part of the political spectrum as the corporations that own the big news orgs, so it's hardly surprising that they welcomed him when he was in the ascendant: Ted Koppel invited him on Nightline, and:

But Limbaugh is taken seriously by "serious" media--in addition to Nightline, he's been an "expert" on such chat shows as Charlie Rose and Meet the Press. The New York Times (10/15/92) and Newsweek (1/24/94) have published his writings. A U.S. News & World Report piece (8/16/93) by Steven Roberts declared, "The information Mr. Limbaugh provides is generally accurate."

He's also taken seriously as a political figure. A National Review cover story (9/6/93) declared him the "Leader of the Opposition." Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who recently officiated at Limbaugh's wedding, says he tapes Limbaugh's radio show and listens to it as he works out (USA Today, 5/13/94).

... CBS News, the platform from which [Edward R.] Murrow denounced Joe McCarthy, has been seeking to hire Limbaugh as a political commentator.

There was a newsletter, the Flush Rush Quarterly, which combined reasoned rebuttals of Limbaugh with childish attacks, like the riddle: "What's the difference between Rush Limbaugh and a whale?" Answer: "Fifty pounds and a sports jacket." Haw haw haw! The newsletter's founder and editor, Brian Keliher admitted he'd "forsaken the moral high ground."

"I feel badly when we make the weight jokes. But Rush does it constantly," he says. "When people read this they think we're really putting the guy in his place."

The he-does-it-too excuse is embarrassing. What he says about his readers, unfortunately, is true: a lot of liberals think it's as hilarious and clever to make fat jokes about Limbaugh as conservatives (and not a few liberals) think it is to make fat jokes about Michael Moore. This proves liberals' moral superiority to conservatives.

Still, I have to give President Obama credit: his supportive telephone call to Sandra Fluke was a good thing to do. He should try doing the right thing more often.

Your Own Personal Jesus

I love Noam Chomsky, but even he has his blind spots. Literature and certain areas of philosophy are among them. Which is okay, I don't read him for his insights in those areas.

In one of the columns collected in Making the Future (City Lights, 2012) Chomsky cites the famous episode of Jesus and the Grand Inquisitor from Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. It is a great novel -- I read all of Dostoevsky's fiction about a decade ago, and he really was an amazing writer, but not as an advocate of social justice and mercy. (The novel translated as The Possessed or Demons, about Russian anarchists / nihilists in the Tsarist era, is the one time Dostoevsky failed to recognize the humanity of his villains.)

The Grand Inquisitor's Tale takes up most of a chapter in The Brothers Karamazov, as a "poem" or parable told to naive young Alyosha by his dissolute, cynical older brother Ivan. In context it's hard to pin down its meaning, but many people have found it fascinating and it has been reprinted separately for classroom use. I'm going to quote it from an online excerpt of the nineteenth-century translation by Constance Garnett, which looks like the same translation Chomsky quotes.

Briefly, Ivan Karamazov begins with a rhapsody to the age of faith and miracles, alas long gone alas. Then he tells how Jesus made a day trip to the Spanish city of Seville "in the most terrible time of the Inquisition". Although he's traveling incognito, everyone recognizes him, perhaps because he begins to heal the sick, raise the dead, and make the little girls go out of their heads, 'cause he's the One. The Grand Inquisitor, "an old man, almost ninety, tall and erect, with a withered face and sunken eyes, in which there is still a gleam of light," passes by, sees what's happening, and orders the guards to take Jesus into custody. He then interrogates Jesus in his cell.

"'Is it Thou? Thou?' but receiving no answer, he adds at once. 'Don't answer, be silent. What canst Thou say, indeed? I know too well what Thou wouldst say. And Thou hast no right to add anything to what Thou hadst said of old. Why, then, art Thou come to hinder us? For Thou hast come to hinder us, and Thou knowest that. But dost thou know what will be to-morrow? I know not who Thou art and care not to know whether it is Thou or only a semblance of Him, but to-morrow I shall condemn Thee and burn Thee at the stake as the worst of heretics. And the very people who have to-day kissed Thy feet, to-morrow at the faintest sign from me will rush to heap up the embers of Thy fire. Knowest Thou that? Yes, maybe Thou knowest it,' he added with thoughtful penetration, never for a moment taking his eyes off the Prisoner."

Ivan explains to the rather slow Alyosha,

He claims it as a merit for himself and his Church that at last they have vanquished freedom and have done so to make men happy. 'For now' (he is speaking of the Inquisition, of course) 'for the first time it has become possible to think of the happiness of men. Man was created a rebel; and how can rebels be happy? Thou wast warned,' he says to Him. 'Thou hast had no lack of admonitions and warnings, but Thou didst not listen to those warnings; Thou didst reject the only way by which men might be made happy. But, fortunately, departing Thou didst hand on the work to us. Thou hast promised, Thou hast established by Thy word, Thou hast given to us the right to bind and to unbind, and now, of course, Thou canst not think of taking it away. Why, then, hast Thou come to hinder us?'"

The old man then delivers a sermon on the stories of Jesus' temptation by Satan in the desert. Jesus, you'll remember, refused to turn stones into bread to ease his own hunger after forty days of fasting. Why? According to the Grand Inquisitor, "... Thou wouldst not deprive man of freedom and didst reject the offer, thinking, what is that freedom worth if obedience is bought with bread? Thou didst reply that man lives not by bread alone." This is odd, since according to the gospels Jesus did miraculously multiply loaves and fishes into meals for the multitude. (It's also not terribly logical, because while people don't live "by bread alone," they do also need food, "bread and roses" as workers put it a century ago; and having one doesn't exclude the other.)

Then he speaks of Jesus on the cross, tempted by mockers to prove his power by coming down from it.

Thou didst not come down, for again Thou wouldst not enslave man by a miracle, and didst crave faith given freely, not based on miracle. Thou didst crave for free love and not the base raptures of the slave before the might that has overawed him for ever. But Thou didst think too highly of men therein, for they are slaves, of course, though rebellious by nature.

This is odd too, because while Jesus did die on the cross, he was raised miraculously from the dead on the third day. His resurrection was proof of his divine status and of his power. The reason Jesus didn't save himself from the cross, according to the gospels' story, is that doing so would have spoiled or at least pre-empted the miracle, a miracle that was as much God's will as the crucifixion itself. Throughout the gospels, Jesus does miracles to make his disciples and the crowds "marvel," to fill them with fear, and to prove that he is the Messiah, except that he keeps telling people who figure that out to keep it secret: the more they tell on him, the more he tells them to shut up. Not too surprisingly, it doesn't work.

The sermon concludes with the Grand Inquisitor repeating his intention to burn Jesus at the stake. But:

When the Inquisitor ceased speaking he waited some time for his Prisoner to answer him. His silence weighed down upon him. He saw that the Prisoner had listened intently all the time, looking gently in his face and evidently not wishing to reply. The old man longed for him to say something, however bitter and terrible. But He suddenly approached the old man in silence and softly kissed him on his bloodless aged lips. That was all his answer. The old man shuddered. His lips moved. He went to the door, opened it, and said to Him: 'Go, and come no more... come not at all, never, never!' And he let Him out into the dark alleys of the town. The Prisoner went away.

Whenever I read this passage, I can't help picturing the Inquisitor as Elmer Fudd, and the Prisoner as Bugs Bunny, throwing back his hood at last to reveal himself, and placing a big smackeroo on Elmer's scandalized lips. But that's because I'm wicked; the fires of Hell await me. Still, that vision adds something to the characters' motivation, don't you think? Ivan begins the story by telling Alyosha that Jesus' visit to Seville is just an interlude, not the Second Coming with its attendant last judgment of all humanity; so the Prisoner might also have said, "I'll be back."

If we follow the Inquisitor's logic to its conclusion, then, Jesus did intend to "enslave man by a miracle," and had no interest in real human freedom. According to the gospel of Matthew, after all, the risen Jesus told his disciples, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth" (28.16, NASB). And remember that when Jesus made his appearance in Seville, he started doing miracles. So how does the Grand Inquisitor conclude that Jesus rejected the use of miracles because it would cause people to follow him out of slavish servility? Either he's wrong about the purpose of miracles, or he misunderstands Jesus' intentions. He never sorts that out, nor has anyone I've encountered who loved this tale. They take the Inquisitor at his word: Jesus wanted men to be free, but they prefer to be slaves, and the Church wickedly gives them what they want.

(In context, the story appears to be intended as a smear of the Roman Catholic Church, not of Christian churches generally. Dostoevsky was a devout Orthodox Christian himself; I don't know if he thought that the Russian Orthodox Church was devoted to enslaving humanity, but I doubt it.)

Chomsky uses the story as an allegory of Liberation Theology against Rome, and against US collaboration in the violent suppression of independence in Catholic Latin America. The occasion of his column was the twentieth anniversary of the massacre, on 16 November 1989, of six Jesuits, along with their housekeeper and their daughter, in by US-trained and armed goons in El Salvador, "fresh from renewed training at the JFK Special Warfare School in Fort Bragg, North Carolina" (178). That crime certainly deserves commemoration, and the US role more attention than Americans want to give it. But like everyone I've encountered who was fascinated by the tale, Chomsky seems to have misunderstood it, by making it simpler than it really is.

In particular Chomsky wants to contrast the Grand Inquisitor's "mercy" in releasing Jesus with the lack of mercy of the Jesuits' American-backed assassins; in context, I'd say that the Inquisitor's decision seems more motivated by fear than by mercy, but I admit it's ambiguous. It's revealing, though, that even a vocal atheist and critic of Biblical religion like Chomsky turns out to have his own personal Jesus who -- surprise! -- shares Chomsky's values.

Because I'm the President, That's Why

Here's the context. And some comparisons:

The United States was told, we were told, nothing that violates our obligations under the Convention Against Torture, and so by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture.

-- US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, 2009

On Fox News Sunday today, host Chris Wallace asked Vice President Cheney, “if the President, during war, decides to do something to protect the country, is it legal?” “I think as a general proposition, I’d say yes,” replied Cheney.

--December 21, 2008

Some have called such operations “assassinations.” They are not, and the use of that loaded term is misplaced. Assassinations are unlawful killings. Here, for the reasons I have given, the U.S. government’s use of lethal force in self defense against a leader of al Qaeda or an associated force who presents an imminent threat of violent attack would not be unlawful — and therefore would not violate the Executive Order banning assassination or criminal statutes.

--US Attorney General Eric Holder, May 5, 2012

First as Tragedy, Then as More Tragedy

I've begun reading Making the Future (City Lights Books), the new collection of Noam Chomsky's monthly columns for the New York Times Syndicate. They run from April 2007 to October 2011, and reading them is already an educational trip down Memory Lane.

The first one, for example, reminded me that in February 2007, five years after declaring North Korea a spoke in the Axis of Evil, the Bush regime engaged in multilateral talks that led to an agreement that Pyongyang "agreed to start dismantling its nuclear facilities and allow nuclear inspectors back in the country" (18).

The new agreement is similar to the one that Washington had scuttled in 2005. Immediately after the new agreement was reached, Washington conceded that its 2002 charges against North Korea were based on dubious evidence. The Bush administration, notorious for fitting the facts to the policy in Iraq, may also have skewed the intelligence on North Korea [20].

The agreement that was scuttled in 2005 is presumably the one that the Clinton regime negotiated in 1994, but which was a dead letter before the decade was out thanks to Washington's intransigence. As a result, North Korea concluded quite reasonably that it was no longer bound by it, which of course produced outraged American howls about the Commies' slippery refusal to live up to their obligations. I've often heard Kim Jong-il referred to as crazy, but really, compared to the solons of Washington, he seems to have been a paragon of sanity and sweet reasonableness.

The second column is about the impact of ethanol on food prices in Mexico and elsewhere.

Ethanol production is feasible thanks to substantial [American] state subsidies and very high tariffs to exclude much cheaper and more efficient Brazilian ethanol.

In March [2007], during President Bush's trip to Latin America, the one heralded achievement was a deal with Brazil on joint production of ethanol. But Bush, while spouting free-trade rhetoric for others in the conventional manner, emphasized forcefully that the high tariff to protect U.S. producers would remain, along with the many forms of government subsidy for the industry [22]. ...

Increasingly, biofuels are likely to "starve the poor" around the world ... as staples are converted to ethanol production for the privileged -- cassava in sub-Saharan Africa, to take one ominous example. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, tropical forests are cleared and burned for oil palms destined for biofuel, and there are threatening environmental effects from input-rich production of corn-rich ethanol in the United States as well [23-4].

The third column, from May 2007, deals with the U.S. campaign against Iran. Very little has changed in the past five years.

In April [2007, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice spoke about what she would say if she encountered her Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, at the international conference on Iraq at Sharm el Sheikh. "What do we need to do? It's quite obvious," Rice said. "Stop the flow of arms to foreign fighters; stop the flow of foreign fighters across the borders." She is referring, of course, to Iranian fighters and arms. U.S. fighters and arms are not "foreign" in Iraq. Or anywhere [26].

That's as far as I've read tonight. I expect similar experiences of deja-vu as I continue.

Last week I linked in passing to John Gray's deranged review of this book for the Guardian. No, "deranged" isn't the right word, though the piece exhibits only a tenuous acquaintance with reality. The Guardian has exhibited a strange (for an ostensibly progressive newspaper) tendency to attack Chomsky, using a familiar set of tropes. Gray wrote, for example,

To his credit, Chomsky opposed the [Iraq] war from the very beginning. His attitude to other critics of the war is more problematic. He has nothing but scorn for those in the American political mainstream who criticised the war on the grounds that it would likely be too risky or costly, or was simply unnecessary. Dismissing Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, Chomsky writes: "The criticism of the Iraq war is on grounds of cost and failure; what are called 'pragmatic reasons', a stance that is considered hard-headed, serious, moderate – in the case of Western crimes". For Chomsky, it seems there can be no place for error or mixed motives in American policies. The war was not a mistake that might have been avoided if its opponents had been better organised and more effective. Invading Iraq was just one more example of American imperialism, an expression of a regime that is quintessentially criminal and evil.

That's easy enough to answer: would Gray demand a similarly nuanced account of "error or mixed motives" in discussing the German invasion of Poland in 1939, or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979? Chomsky has quoted American officials brushing aside such considerations about the latter case: the Soviet intervention was wrong, they declare, and there's an end on't.

Even odder is Gray's suggestion that the invasion of Iraq was "a mistake that might have been avoided if its opponents had been better organised and more effective", which has no evident relation to the tactical, "pragmatic" reservations of a Bill Clinton or a Barack Obama: they were quite willing to support an attack on Iraq (indeed, Clinton attacked Iraq repeatedly during his presidency, and as we now know, Obama tried to extend the US occupation beyond the agreed-on withdrawal date) as long as it was well-planned. That's not opposition.

Reading these articles, published between April 2007 and October 2011, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that, for Chomsky, America is virtually the sole obstacle to peace in the world. Crimes committed by other powers are mentioned occasionally, but only in passing. Nowhere does he acknowledge the fact that many regions have intractable conflicts of their own, which will persist whatever the US does.

As Chomsky wrote in a scathing reply to Gray, his complaint "is based entirely on the fact that the collection of op-eds that he reviews (Making the Future) focuses on US and British policies and commentary, a natural and entirely appropriate concern." I'd add, by analogy, that if I break into your house and murder you and your entire family, it is no defense that you and your wife were fighting regularly -- intractable conflicts of your own, which will persist no matter what I do.

The notable thing about Gray's criticism is how familiar it is: the claim that Chomsky blames everything bad in the world on the United States and Israel is a regular talking point in respectable mainstream discourse; it has taken on a life of its own even where Chomsky isn't the direct target, as in Katha Pollitt's post-9/11 disclaimer that she's "never been one to blame the United States for every bad thing that happens in the Third World." (This ploy never works, by the way: anyone who criticizes anything the US does will be accused of some version of that thoughtcrime.) Or Peter Beaumont's 2006 review for the Guardian of Chomsky's Failed States: "I reject Chomsky's view that American misdeeds are printed through history like the lettering in a stick of rock." (Does that sentence make any sense to you?) Beaumont, the Guardian's foreign affairs editor, concluded the review with these rhetorical questions, also familiar in the anti-Chomsky armory:

Which leads to a question: is that really what you see, Mr Chomsky, from the window of your library at MIT? Is it the stench of the gulag wafting over the Charles River? Do you walk in fear of persecution and murder for expressing your dissident views? Or do you make a damn good living out of it? The faults of the Bush administration will not be changed by books such as Failed States. They will be swept away by ordinary, decent Americans in the world's greatest - if flawed and selfish - democracy going to the polls.

[P.S. April 2019: That last sentence is quite mad.  "The faults of the Bush administration" were not "swept away" by voters.  They re-elected Bush in 2004.  Bush left office because of the two-term limit on Presidents, not because the voters rejected him.  Peter Beaumont could not have known it in 2006, but Bush's successor continued his "faults" for two more terms.  But then Beaumont's remarks shouldn't be taken literally, they're just the kind of sycophantic rhetoric that toadies of great powers deploy in their apologetics.]

Chomsky has always made it clear that he knows he faces no serious penalty for 'expressing his dissident views', which is why he argues that Americans have no excuse for not criticizing their government more: it takes much less courage to do so than it did in the Soviet Union, or does in Saddam's Iraq, or Ahmadinejad's Iran. The cheap shot of "make a damn good living at it" could just as easily be turned back on Beaumont; but it may be worth pointing out that Chomsky's damn good living, and his office at MIT, came not from his political writings but from his groundbreaking work in linguistics. (Likewise, a commenter on Gray's review accused Chomsky of making "a career out of whining at all forms of power, including groups of people just standing around, whilst flogging books full of said tripe and enjoying the freedom of expression safeguarded by the 'most powerful country on earth since 1945'". It's such a standard talking point that it can be used, as it is here, as a basis for fantasias.)

John Gray has a reputation as a philosopher and a political thinker. So far I've only read one of his books, The Immortalization Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death (FSG, 2011), which had some interesting ideas and information but seemed off-kilter somehow. (Judging from the part I read of his earlier attack on Utopian thought, Black Mass, he likes to think of himself as a tough-minded realist, immune to the fantasies the rabble cling to for comfort in an uncaring, un-understanding world.) Still, it exhibited more intelligence than this review, which seems to have been written on autopilot. It's as if anti-Chomsky propaganda were a radioactive virus from outer space that causes erogenous sores, which the victims scratch obsessively until sexual delirium overtakes them.

Counting Your Blessings

I got another one of those begging e-mails from the Obama campaign, offering to put my name in a lottery for dinner with the President and two or three other lucky winners if I donate at least $3 to his coffers. Usually I just delete them, but this one was allegedly from one of my potential co-winners, one Janet from Accokeek, MD.

"What a blessing," it began. "Two days ago I learned that I'm going to have dinner with President Obama."

A blessing? I guess God -- or the President; I mean, aren't they basically the same? -- just reached down from above and chose her. And there's more. Janet's folksy 86-year-old father Milton, played by Will Geer, contributed some words of wisdom:

"Janet," my dad said, "You gotta start supporting President Obama. Support your politicians. Support the President, so that your voice can be heard."

"I do support the President," I told him.

"Prove it."

Well, here I am.

And here I am. The trouble is, I don't support President Obama. I never have. And we've learned a lot about him since 2008. That was when we heard about a campaign that was being funded by ordinary citizens like you and me, just giving what we could, instead of the big-money special interests. A campaign that won an industry award for marketing savvy. And since then, I haven't noticed the President hanging out much with the little donors. Sure, he (or rather his staff) stages these town meetings where he gives his supporters a dressing-down for their lack of faith (when the son of Barack comes, will he find faith on earth?), or evades their questions or merely doesn't hear them: they're just launching pads for the answers he's prepared. He does find time for afternoons of golf with the bigger donors, though what is said on those afternoons is not said for the benefit of TV cameras. So, how exactly will my voice be heard if I give $3, or even more? If a gift is given to a Presidential campaign where no one but the computers take notice, does it say anything?

Janet (or the Obama campaign's ghostwriters) weren't finished trying to tug my heartstrings, though.

I donated because I want a president who cares enough about his supporters to sit down for a meal, just like we do in our own families.

Can you imagine what would happen if the President sat down for a meal at a table with me? It doesn't bear thinking about. I'd just ruin it for the other nice, randomly-chosen people. My voice doesn't need to be heard. (What do you think he'd call me? "Old man", as he called someone "young woman" the other day when she called him on the carpet about Iran? No, I'm sure he wouldn't, and not just because I'm a decade older than he is. Not "sweetie" either. But I'm also sure he'd be testy about my harshing the vibe. Maybe he'd send me to bed without my supper. Maybe he'd send predator drones after me, I won't even see them coming.)

There probably are families which sit down for a meal together only once in two years, during the election season; we hear a lot about such families in our degenerate times. It's not a sign of caring, to my mind. But I can't believe there are many which decide which members will be seated at the table by a lottery, after they've given a minimal donation. I know, I'm being cynical.

And because I was anxious to support the President's campaign. It was my time to give.

Janet from Accokeek, MD, has done more than her part to support the President's campaign: not only has she given money, she's let herself be used to draw in more suckers. To have been a fly on that wall! If my name had been drawn, would they have tried to get me to put my name on the next begging e-mail?

The Real Tinsel Underneath

Earlier this week Band of Thebes quoted a piece from the Onion (which you all know is satirical, right?) on the depiction of gay people in Hollywood, or rather "mainstream" films.

Seeking to honor filmmakers for fair and inclusive portrayals of the LGBT community, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation announced Sunday the establishment of a prestigious new prize to be awarded to any mainstream motion picture that gets even one thing right about being gay. "We're not asking for a two-hour-long pitch-perfect exploration of the gay and lesbian experience—just a single accurate, believable detail that feels in any way telling or true-to-life," said GLADD spokesperson Cheryl Weingardt, who promised a major cash prize and high-profile award ceremony to any Hollywood director able to deliver a film—any film at all—that includes a brief on-screen moment in which a gay character seems even somewhat authentic. "It can be a line of convincing dialogue, an emotionally honest reaction shot. All we ask is that you have someone gay in the frame for a couple seconds without it being completely insulting to the audience's intelligence." Weingardt added that she hopes her grandchildren will one day see a popular movie in which a gay person's role isn't limited to being the main character's witticism-spewing confidante.

Who could argue with that, really? But even as I read it, I realized that it would be imposing a double standard to expect Hollywood to depict a gay character who "seems even somewhat authentic," because Hollywood doesn't depict authentic straight characters either.

But what would authentic gay characters look like? I don't believe most gay people want authenticity, they want idealized "positive" images -- fantasy figures, in other words. Which isn't a bad thing; it's only bad when people claim falsely that they want realism.

Not only we but other minorities have been squabbling for decades about what images are positive and which aren't. When William Friedkin filmed his notorious 1980 film Cruising, using the leather bars of New York City as a backdrop for the story of a serial killer, gay activists attacked it as a negative portrayal of gay male life. But I remember reading that the gay leathermen who appeared in Cruising as extras were proud that they were providing some positive images of gay men, as opposed to the sissies and drag queens who were the most visible stereotypes then (as now). It's a mistake to assume that the controversy was only a leather / non-leather conflict, since numerous gay activists were leathermen themselves. I've been reading some of the retrospectives on the film for its 2007 revival and consequent DVD release, and they tend to overcompensate by taking the leather scene's fantasy images for reality: because these guys imagined and presented themselves as tough, macho, brutal, threatening, dangerous, they therefore must have been. Probably it was possible in a large city for some men to immerse themselves totally in the scene 24/7, but most had day jobs. The first leatherman I ever met, in 1970s Bloomington, was working on his MBA; his lover, another graduate student, was an organist in the music school.

One famous Manhattan bar, The Mineshaft, had a strict dress code. This site recounts that

According to Jack Fritscher, Mick Jagger was turned away for showing up with a couple of women, who, like sneakers and business suits, were not on the list. Once in a while, some women disguised as men made it into the Mine Shaft.

Punk rock singer and poet, Camille O'Grady, was actually admitted to the Shaft one night when she showed up in full leather with a couple of very hot male slaves in tow.

On another occasion, the famous leather daddy and pornographer John Preston was refused entrance to a leather bar because he was wearing "loafers, [a] dress shirt, slacks." Sensibly, he didn't make a fuss, since he understood the mindset involved: indeed, he'd helped propagate it. (He was taken aback when he realized that many readers took his S&M classic Looking for Mr. Benson utterly seriously, not recognizing its humor -- Mr. Benson was partly a sendup of James Bond novels, transposed to the gay leather scene.)

Preston explained he'd stopped wearing "regimental leather" anyway. All the cool kids had stopped, because the losers ("sightseers" was his word) had started wearing it.

I want to "be real," all right, but not in terms of fitting in. It seems that at some point, many of the men who were really into sadomasochism dropped the costume and started to challenge the others in leather bars with their conscious lack of dress. If you really want rough sex, it's better to dress against the fashion. Many of the denizens have given up their leather and gone back underground to reclaim their place on the cutting edge.*

But I digress, though there are important points of contact here with the question of "authenticity" in GLBTQ film. (I should probably return to Preston's complaint some other time.)

Now I'm drawing a blank. What else can I say about this that I haven't said before? But maybe you haven't read those posts. Much of the discussion I see about gays in film or other arts assumes -- and sometimes says explicitly -- that people should (or can) only be interested in work that shows them people just like them, which would mean among other things that straight people don't have to watch gay films. A lot of it is simply dishonest. Let me quote again the incredibly stupid gay director Andrew Haigh, who told the New York Times:

A wide swath of so-called gay cinema “never represented how I felt about being gay, ever,” Mr. Haigh said. “I haven’t got muscles and I don’t live in West Hollywood.”

I pointed out before that very little of "so-called gay cinema" took place in West Hollywood, so someone must have cruelly prevented Haigh from seeing Querelle and Law of Desire, but on rereading that excerpt I noticed something else wrong with it. "A wide swath" doesn't even necessarily mean to a majority of so-called gay cinema. What about the other swaths? Does Haigh mean that nobody should make or release movies he doesn't like? But "a wide swath" is the interviewer's language, not Haigh's. What Haigh says is that something never represented how he felt about being gay; it sounds like he's complaining about all of so-called gay cinema. Not that it matters, he makes no sense at all.

Personally I'd be surprised if Hollywood ever made a GLBTQ film that really worked for me, but that's okay, because I don't expect authenticity or truth from Hollywood; and I don't expect authenticity or truth in art of any kind to consist of looking like me, or looking like I wish I looked. Hollywood's gay critics seem unable to make up their minds what they do want, though.

One other funny thing I noticed in those articles about Cruising, though: the gay men who said things like "If we knew that all our struggle would just lead to 'Will and Grace,' we wouldn't have bothered." What they wanted, apparently, was "edgy", dark, gritty, Crisco-smeared fuckfests (simulated) that showed what gay life really was like. Except that leather bars aren't what gay life is really like; they're part of it, of course, but they are no more its core or its essence than sweater bars or twink bars or the Metropolitan Community Church or the Log Cabin Republicans. (It should be remembered that the MCC and the Log Cabin Republicans are not incompatible with the leather scene, bathhouses, and other 'disreputable' aspects of gay male life. MCC Founder Troy Perry has been a bathhouse patron, and I remember reading somewhere that he was into leather. I'm very wary of people who indignantly denounce what they call negative images in gay art; too often such people are accurately depicted by those negative images. We've got our own wide-stance gay people, alas.)

It doesn't really matter what kind of gay people a film (or other work) depicts: there will be gay people who will object that they don't look like them. Which is true, because we are not all alike, so it's not even a valid objection. It's at best a truism. The gay films that I've liked have not been about gay people like me, but I could still see something of myself in their characters. I'm not an Anglo-Pakistani slacker or his punk boyfriend, but I liked My Beautiful Laundrette. I'm not a gravel-voiced professional female impersonator, but I liked Torch Song Trilogy. I'm not a Spanish avant-garde filmmaker who uses too much cocaine and has his pick of hot boys at screenings, but I liked Law of Desire. I'm not a Hong Kong expat in a crumbling relationship in Buenos Aires, but I loved Happy Together. In many respects I have more in common with the Chicago political dykes in Go Fish, another favorite film, than with the men in any of the films I've named; go figure. I'm not sure what is missing from gay films, but it's not "positive images."

From what other gay men say, they want more "hot" sex in films about us, and I often get the impression that they'd like to see hardcore action: erections, penetration. I still have never seen either Queer as Folk series, but I remember how excited -- and by "excited" I mean all giggly and giddy -- many gay men my age were by a famous anus-view shot of a man being rimmed. I also remember gay critics who were displeased because Philadelphia didn't include a scene of Tom Hanks with his legs in the air, begging to be fucked. (When I read this I thought: well, why should it? The lack of sex scenes was the least of the trouble with Philadelphia.) I guess it's fair enough that they were pleased to see an acknowledgment of specific gay male sexual practices in films and TV shows, but I didn't really see the point. If you want to see hardcore action, there's plenty of readily accessible porn available, which has its own problems and limitations, and a lot of the criticisms that gay men make of gay films apply. (Come to think of it, maybe Andrew Haigh was complaining about gay pornography: I don't really think he was, but it does at least fit the muscles and West Hollywood criteria.) But I don't think that non-porn actors, including gay ones, owe it to their audiences to have real sex on camera.

Griping about the failings of gay movies is too often like the complaint that gay men only think about looks: it's more of a cliche, a way of passing the time, than a serious, meaningful criticism of what has been done in GLBT cinema. (A lot of lay criticism, as I'll call it, is thoughtless and ill-informed, often tainted by wishful thinking, and mainly consists of finding gay characters in movies whether they're there or not.) Commercial cinema is, by its very nature, never going to be as uncompromising as many critics evidently want. Independent, less-commercial filmmakers have done a lot of good work, but it's unlikely that any independent will produce work in the tradition of the Hollywood Dream Machine -- and I can't say I mind that in the slightest.

I liked Will and Grace, which I thought was remarkably bold for broadcast TV; more important, it was funny and well-made. It didn't give me everything I wanted, but why should it have done so? There is a sense in which I think the oft-made call for the End of Gay Cinema has some validity: not that there should be no more films with same-sex-loving protagonists or other characters, but in the sense that we shouldn't ask whether each new offering is The Great Gay Film. Greatness will take care of itself; all I ask is for filmmakers and other artists to tell more stories, as honestly and intelligently and passionately as they can.

* from My Life as a Pornographer, and Other Indecent Acts (Richard Kasak Books, 1993), p. 127

You Can Trust the Capitalists ... to Be Capitalists

Today Democracy Now reported that North Korea has agreed to "suspend uranium enrichment and halt testing of nuclear and long-range missiles in exchange for food aid", and international nuclear inspectors will be allowed to return. This is good news, of course, but we all know how treacherous them Reds are.

Mindful of this, Secretary of State Clinton warned:

The United States, I will be quick to add, still has profound concerns. But on the occasion of Kim Jong-il’s death, I said that it is our hope that the new leadership will choose to guide their nation onto the path of peace by living up to its obligations. Today’s announcement represents a modest first step in the right direction. We, of course, will be watching closely and judging North Korea’s new leaders by their actions.

I especially appreciate that last sentence: we will be judging North Korea's new leaders by their actions, not by what they say. It's what Noam Chomsky has been saying about America's leaders for a long time, though we know that in his case he's just saying it, because he thinks that the United States is the source of all evil in the world. You can judge the United States, and especially President Obama, by his words, which express his ideals; his actions are just what the Republicans and the MICFiC make him do, and so they're of no consequence.

But then I began having this feeling of deja vu: surely I had heard this story (or one very much like it) before. Aha:

In 1994, the Clinton administration negotiated a deal by which Pyongyang suspended its nuclear weapons program in exchange for oil and the foreign-sponsored construction of two cool-water reactors. But the U.S. didn’t follow up on the agreement, and North Korea resumed its program. Having withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty last January, it now develops that program legally, arguing (sensibly) that it’s necessary for self-defense. As the U.S. once argued, followed by the USSR, Britain, France, China, Pakistan and India. Nuclear Israel would argue similarly if it talked about its program, which it doesn’t as a matter of policy. (The U.S. currently conveys the impression that any nuclear newcomer commits a fundamentally evil act in acquiring this technology. But putting things in perspective, one must observe that each new nuclear state merely follows in the footsteps of those who first developed nuclear weapons and used them, with unapologetic efficacy, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)

(Bold type added by me.) One detail that I'm sure is purely coincidental: 1994 was the year that Kim Jong-Il succeeded his late father as leader of North Korea. The new concession has been made at an analogous time, just after a change of leadership in the North, a difficult time for any country.

So, Secretary of State Clinton is worried that the North will not live up to its obligations? It seems to me that the real threat lies elsewhere, closer to home.

Bonus extra: According to the Guardian, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has demanded that President Obama "commit to military action if Iran sanctions fail." Well! I'm not such a fool as to believe that a US attack on Israel would be a cakewalk, but if Israel chooses to commit aggression again in the Middle East, there may be no other alternative. But it would pay for itself, and we'd certainly be welcomed as liberators.