Evangelical nutballs threatening to burn the Quran are nothing new. In fact, bookburners are nothing new and have an incendiary tradition that goes back even further than the most famous bookburners, the Nazis.
Girolamo Savanarola, an extremist monk in fifteenth century Florence, was famous for burning books. A fundamentalist enemy of the Renaissance, Savanarola organized the infamous "Bonfire of the Vanities," in which he burned humanist books, priceless Renaissance paintings, playing cards, festival masks and anything else he felt didn't soberly and seriously celebrate God. Florentines were taken under his spell for a time (including the master Botticelli, who submitted many of his paintings to the flames) but eventually grew tired of his religious extremism and burned Savanarola himself on the same spot.
The Florentines weren't the only ones sick of bookburners. The other day, according to news reports, Jacob Isom, a 23-year-old skateboarder from Amarillo, Texas, skated by a religious nut preparing to burn a copy of the Koran. In a flash, Isom snatched the holy book, which had already been doused in lighter fluid and awaited the torch.
"Dude, you have no Quran!" the skateboarder told the evangelist, before making off with the book.
Savanarola meets the flames of fifteenth century Florentine irony
Jonathan Franzen's new book is out.Like "The Corrections" (2001), the novel that won Franzen the Pulitzer Prize, "Freedom" is also asprawling satirical examination of the dysfunctional American family in the waning days of the empire. The book is garnering rave reviews. Reviewers are calling Franzen the greatest living American novelist. Not bad, eh? Now he can finally quit his day job and get down to some serious writing.
Flashback: After some initial, odd experimental works, "The Corrections" made Franzen a household word. The book was surprisingly good. It won prizes and huge sacks of money, and even earned a stamp of approval from Oprah herself--which resulted in a huge fight with Oprah, which resulted in more publicity than any recent work of literary fiction has enjoyed in years. As if the Pulitzer weren't enough.
Anyway, I read "The Corrections," and enjoyed it, and now I'm reading "Freedom." Franzen does certain things very well, and he's doing them again. He has a knack for modern detail and language, and while the novel feels very contemporary, very NOW, he's not afraid to employ the architectonics of the Victorian novel to tell his tale. In fact, that may be the conceit of the book. In this age of short attention spans this elaborate structure has fallen out of fashion, but somehow Franzen pulls it off, hearkening back to the nineteenth century classics, even alluding to War and Peace on more than one occasion. He's tipping his hand, of course, and while he may never be Tolstoy (or even our Tolstoy), he's ambitious as hell and that makes reading the novel an exhilarating experience. He's striving for greatness.
Ron Charles of the Washington Post agrees for the most part, but he's not uncritical of the book. Here is his strange video and a link to the full Post review.
For another view, and to hear Franzen interviewed, link to Studio 360.
Those greedy bastards are at it again. According to a recent report from the Institute for Policy Studies, since the economic crisis began the CEOs that laid off the most workers received the highest pay. Maybe that's not a big surprise to you, but instead of being ho-hum cynical you should be freaking outraged. Someone is getting screwed here--and unless you're a billionaire CEO it's probably you. Wake up, sporto. They call it "free enterprise" but it's corporate robbery.
"CEOs of the 50 firms that have laid off the most workers since the onsetof the economic crisis took home 42 percent more pay in 2009 than theirpeers at S&P 500 firms."
The capitalist system works--if you happen to be on that side of it. Sure, it's cheaper laying people off. Sure, if you cut wages there is more for the boss, but this is an economic crisis. It's a tough time for people and we shouldn't be allowing CEOs to reward themselves for slashing jobs.
America has always been a corny reactionary place. Don't get me wrong; Within its myriad selves there have always been edge dwellers pushing the boundaries of the arts and working for cultural and social change--movements that boggle the minds of the conventional. Some worked quietly in the margins, got "clean for Gene" and canvassed door to door, acting like good kids, while others seemed to delight in freaking out the squares. The french had a phrase for it. Épater la bourgeoisie! This was the rallying cry for the French Decadent poets of the late 19th century including bad boys Baudelaire and Rimbaud. It means to shock the middle classes.
In America, it didn't take much. We forget how--eventually--outsider cultural movements often influence the mainstream. Watching this television show ("Hullabaloo") trying to hook into the excitement youth culture was generating, which was undeniable at this point, shows the dilution of rock and roll to safe variety show standards. Meanwhile, outside the gates of Studio City, the barbarians were really rocking--the Beatles, the Stones, Bob Dylan, the Animals, the Kinks and countless others were rattling the cage. The kids loved it. This tired show enlisted Jerry Lewis and his son Gerry (who had his own terrible pop band) to sing a Beatle song. The results were predictably horrendous. Believe me, the kids could tell the difference.
You don't have to read Marcuse or Naomi Klein to see that a vast society based on commodities will co-opt radical change--absorbing and reforming and creating a product based on what was once edgy and shocking. The avant garde becomes the trend becomes the cliche. You want Utopia, you get Fruitopia.
"Help!" was written by John Lennon, and was one of the first Beatles songs to turn inward and away from the tropes of rock and pop to a more personal vision. Lennon was in agony, pure and simple, and--inspired by the strangely personal work of Dylan--decided to write a song about it. Sure, it has a bouncy rock beat, verse chorus verse, but there is also something very real about the song.
Of course, the Lewis family missed it completely. Jerry was an old school Vegas schlocker, a representative of the cheesy show biz world that openly mocked these longhaired British rockers singing "Yeah, yeah, yeah" and stirring up the teenage girls. Jerry's contempt seethes below the surface. This fad will be over soon, he seems to say, but the gods are tricksters if nothing else and love to toy with such arrogant hubris. Now, who looks silly? The revolution moves on, and even the hopelessly reactionary benefit from the artists working the cutting edge. We evolve--reluctantly, perhaps--but finally there is a loosening up of the rules. The vanguard may have moved on long ago, but we can pretend we've discovered a new path on our own.
A teenage John Lennon eyes the world he will change.
The Friends of the Nib will be appearing at Bumbershoot in Seattle, September 4, 5, and 6 from 2:30 to 4pm in the Olympic Room. The Friends will be appearing as part of a wonderful survey of Northwest cartooning, "COUNTERCULTURE COMIX: A 30-Year Survey of Seattle Alternative Cartoonists," curated by Larry Reid in association with Fantagraphics Books. The Friends will be drawing cartoons live for your pleasure and enjoyment. Stop by and say hello.
Who are the Friends of the Nib? There are many misconceptions, some fueled by jealous pantaloons, but this is the truth: The Friends are a mysterious guild of cartoonists practiced in the arcane arts of dip pens, crow-quills and black pots of India Ink. They are practically medieval in their methods and exhibit a virtuosity rarely found in this modern age of computer-corrected artwork. Like the Magnificent Seven or the Seven Samurai, each of the Friends has a unique specialty. Collectively, they are fingers that form a powerful fist. Come see them work their magic.
Although they generally refuse to be photographed, here is a rare picture of the Friends:
The Friends of the Nib (left to right): Jim Woodring, mystical cartoonist, winner of this year's Stranger Genius Award and celebrated author of "Weathercraft." Ellen Forney, author of "Lust,""I Love Led Zeppelin," and illustrator of Sherman Alexie's New York Times' bestseller, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian." Bruce Bickford, animating pioneer artist and creator of "Baby Snakes" for Frank Zappa, "Prometheus' Garden," and subject of the documentary "Monster Road." Max Clotfelter, a roughed-up sneaky sketch shanty who boggles the mind with his amazing comics; the hobo behind Snake Meat. Max Badger Woodring, pound for pound the fiercest animal in the wild and a damn fine cartoonist who sometimes travels under the pseudonym "Wax Moodring." Heidi Estey, a pip with a pen who produces pretty scary and wondrous work to haunt your dreams and nightmares. Jason T. Miles, a carnival barker, gandy dancer, the surprisingly fresh artist behind "Profanity Hill" and "Bitter Fruit." Bob Rini, writer, painter, and cartoonist behind "Fear of Art" and "The Nine Pound Hammer," as well as this blog.
Come and meet us all, and try your luck with the quills.
From the muddy banks of the Wishkah in flat broke Aberdeen it came crawling like a swamp creature through Olympia and up the Interstate--what was this rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouching toward Seattle to be born? Heavy, uncompromising and despising corporate rock with a defiantly punk spirit, Nirvana bum-rushed the stage. Anarchy was loosed upon the world. These scraggly misfits who didn't play the game ended up changing the game. Maybe it's ancient history to you now, or maybe you missed it completely, but back in the day this band let out a roar that shattered windows, a primal scream of angst and rebellion that made the A and R men scramble for pens to sign contracts, a blast that blew away the quotation marks of an ironic age.
For a while, anyway. For a moment, it was perfect. The witch was dead and Oz was finally safe. Then--Jesus Christ!--here come the flying monkeys and the commercial dorks with their Velveeta machines, and before you knew it "Le Grunge" was draped across Paris runway models and diluted like a beautiful rainbow puddle of oil in a Pacific Northwest drizzle. Suddenly, everyone recalibrated, slapped on wigs and grabbed kazoos, and even your square brother-in-law was suddenly sporting expensive Doc Marten knock-offs and nodding his big fat head to cheesy imitations like the Stone Temple Pablum. Then Kurt blew his brains out.
Nevermind. For one brief shining moment these bastards created something genuine, something painfully real and not just another boring pop commodity, but don't read too much into it--it was only rock and roll, after all. Leave it to the critics to bandy about theories. I've still got my records. How long has it been? Why give a damn?
Currently, a high profile art show is running at the Seattle Art Museum based on Nirvana. All the artists got to come out and play rockstars. A little late, I guess. There is plenty of wall-text rhapsodizing, mini-dissertations written in cool hindsight contextualizing this howling punk aesthetic within the boundaries of society and subculture, missing the point entirely since it was really all about personal risk-taking and refusing to cooperate with the bullshit, about liberating yourself from the conditioning of a bankrupt culture that eats its young. Did you love it? Did you hate it? Buy the T-shirt. Now go home.
Timothy Egan just wrote an interesting piece in the New York Times ("Building a Nation of Know-Nothings," August 25, 2010) about the deliberate misinformation campaign led by the right wing punditocracy and the tea party crowd regarding President Obama's birth certificate, and the surprising amount of ill-informed yokels who actually believe Obama is a Muslim. The sub-text, of course, is that Muslims are evil and Obama is working for them to sabotage America (meaning, we must assume, white Christian America). It's simply not true, of course, but that doesn't stop these cretins. The lie has already done its job. That's how propaganda works.
Rush Limbaugh, chortling like a sewage-fed hog, gleefully spreads the lies. “Tomorrow is Obama’s birthday," he said on August 3, "not that we’ve seen any proof of that. They tell us Aug. 4 is the birthday; we haven’t seen any proof of that.” Limbaugh, looking more like Hermann Goering every time we see him, uses innuendos and outright lies that are painfully obvious and insulting to anyone who values truth and intelligence, but that doesn't weed out his constituency of "ditto-heads." Truth? Not a value for these corn-fed Machiavellians. The end justifies the means, and they're on a righteous crusade. Intelligence? A trick performed by crafty intellectuals, eggheads, perhaps even Jews. Not good Germans, er, I mean Americans!
Dumb (note the Minutemen tag--a good old-fashioned right-wing hate group)
The woefully and willfully ignorant, a seemingly inexhaustible American resource, jump on such misinformation without daring to think critically (they make no bones about choosing "faith" over fact-checking), ever eager to play the classic role of the mark on the carnival midway. Gullible, wide-eyed and dumb as mud-fences, they walk right into every con game ever invented. The savvy snake-oil salesmen play with their fears and promise them the world--frighten them with outsiders and city slickers and colored (gulp!) people--and the yokels step all over themselves to pay the well-fed charlatans.
Ditto!
A quick glance at propaganda through the ages (such as the above clip from Nazi Germany) shows that this set-up is nothing new, but the victims of the con--who proudly shun history books--will always be the last to know. (Of course, the real victims are the targets of the propaganda, the outsiders and scapegoats who will pay dearly). The dupes are easy to stir up with fear and threat, with half-baked, unchecked theories, with faith. Always have been. (To hear author Chris Hedges equate the Christian Right with fascism, click HERE)
The modern world hasn't changed much. Hustlers no longer need to set up tents on the edge of town--hell, we pay for the privilege of having them speak in our living rooms! What are your fears, America? We'll play 'em for ya! Muslims want to build a shrine at Ground Zero? The Mexicans are running over the borders like vermin? The blacks are welfare cheaters and lazy shiftless bums? The socialists want to give us socialized medicine? The Italians, the Irish, the dirty rotten Poles, the Serbs? The Jews...Ah, the Jews control Hollywood, the newspapers, the college campuses--anything intellectual whatsoever. For our own safety let's round them all up, right? Let's protect our lilywhite skin privilege and our right to hurl "non-PC" insults and let's burn some books while we're at it! Books are bad! Books encourage thinking! Jesus--not the Jew Jesus, but the blond Jesus on suburban wall calenders--Jesus is backing us up a hundred percent. It's a damn crusade!
Dumb and Dumber
Sadly, understanding the modern world requires homework. You can't just get your info from biased radio talk show hosts or pundits with a political axe to grind--Limbaugh, Beck, O'Reilly, Palin and Company. Sure, it's easier when things are simple, and prejudice and stereotypes are simple as can be, but truth--dare I say the word?--truth isn't simple. Read a book. Expand your consciousness. Challenge your beliefs. No matter what the hustlers may say, it's really not patriotic to be stupid.
Think.
Obersturmführer Beck says he also has a dream
Timothy Egan says, "It would be nice to dismiss the stupid things that Americans believe as harmless, the price of having such a large, messy democracy. Plenty of hate-filled partisans swore that Abraham Lincoln was a Catholic and Franklin Roosevelt was a Jew. So what if one-in-five believe the sun revolves around the earth, or aren’t sure from which country the United States gained its independence?
"But false belief in weapons of mass-destruction led the United States to a trillion-dollar war. And trust in rising home value as a truism as reliable as a sunrise was a major contributor to the catastrophic collapse of the economy. At its worst extreme, a culture of misinformation can produce something like Iran, which is run by a Holocaust denier.
"It’s one thing to forget the past, with predictable consequences, as the favorite aphorism goes. But what about those who refuse to comprehend the present?"
Savanarola meets the flames of fifteenth century Florentine irony
