Thursday, January 13, 2005One Cannot be Faulted
no one shouldn't read this
it's not real and may seem somewhat silly but it's more or less an articulation of what i believe w/r/t symbols, connection, transit and reality. don't worry about understanding it. we can talk about that
posted by Lars @ 10:30 AM
30 comments
30 Comments:
sometimes i can't believe your comments are written by the same person who makes your art
use your imagination luke, not everything needs to be spelled out for you. if it were, it wouldn't be interesting and that's precisely the point. if you don't understand something feel consumed by the curiosity to create an understanding in yourself. whatever it means, in the end, no matter how much research or a priori learning you infuse, is created inside you by you (with the art as the tool).
not to condemn research. i don't know exactly what the author of that piece meant by using the giant squid as an apostrophe. but the giant squid means quite a bit to me and it worked wonderfully.
anyway i'm not trying to be a dick. forget everything and once you've stewed about it lets talk about it.
I wouldn't have to post anonymously if this blog's sign-in procedures worked.
Y'know, Luke P, despite a bunch of stupid comments you've previously made on this blog, you actually started out in your first post in a rational manner. I too would have preferred that Lars just told us what he thinks about this stuff, rather than link us over to this bloated,overly-obtuse, indigestible, jargon-filled piece of squidliness.
And Lar's riposte was indeed condescending. Or, without getting into a bunch of squiddiness about why we think what we think about what others think about how others' thinking has manipulated our thinking, let me put it this way: if his comments had been directed at me--without knowing anything about your art, or why Lars apparently thinks that it may be one of your few "redeeming" features--then I might well have replied much as you did.
It didn't even bother me when you invited Lars to suck a big one. Crude, but hey, let it all out. But you lose me bigtime when you throw in the gratuitous "nigger/turd-colored" remarks. I think I grok that you think Lars has some kind of an unjustified and affected urban-black culture fetish (I'm not saying that I agree with you, or that Lars doesn't have just as much right to define and own any "culture" he wants to as anyone else does), but there has got to be a way for you to take Lars down around that--with as much emotion as you want to expend--without backflipping off the same fricking cliff just to prove that you didn't like the way Lars launched himself headfirst.
If he doesn't have the right to own his urban black thing, it's not clear why you think you have any right to dis-own it. And it hands him fuel with which to burn you that you didn't need to give him, undermining the strong position you were in the process of building. Or to put it in the terms you apparently choose to use, my name is Henry, I live outside of Chicago, I enjoy a certain heft and ethnicity, well-reputed in my neighborhood, and just as soon as I find out where YOU live, we'll see how wide you can get YOUR little fragile little jawbones...
You couldn't rape and murder your little sister if she tied herself up first and begged you with tear-streaked cheeks. And I have commented previously about your peurile immature intemperate drivel. And that's Mr. Anonymous to you, chump.
The point is, anybody can read and respond to anything on the net. I could be your mother, little boy. I could be walking behind you right now.
But you couldn't see the point if it was a 12-inch spike I had just driven through the back of your skull and out between your eyes. You are "ethnic" too--oh how cute! What, you think white people ain't "ethnic"? They don't have funny-colored skin and freckles and accents and get looked at funny when they out they home hoods? Everybody ethnic, little chump, BFD and get over it.
People can scream and threaten and behave like little babies all they want, but the only thing that actually means anything to anybody else beside yo bitch self is when you start to make some sense.
The only reason I bother telling you this is that you have started off a couple a times as if you were trying to make sense, but then you go off your into hurt little baby have a tantrum wanta cry routine, using the bad words like they ain't a dime a zillion, and like in the Nam, after that, it don't mean nothing.
We told you this once, but you're right, your mouth to full of shit for your mind to open, so we won't bother telling you again, because that little thing stickin out the front of your body aint ya little baby-prick. It's the point you'll keep on missing till the second I catch up to your fast-fleeing punk ass.
i didn't read the above posts and i don't care. i didn't want to be condescending, which is why i threw in the line about not being a dick and giving the time to meditate about the whole thing. despite your confusion you treated the link thoughtfully and respectfully so i probably overreacted.
but every one of my posts ends up this way, with an angry discussion stemming from luke's disapproval. when i see a luke p drawing, i rarely see a direct connection to a reality i'm familiar with or an ordinary mode of communicating it. i almost certainly have no idea what luke himself meant when he created it or posted it. but i can still eye it and see that it looks interesting and invites me to wonder about it. that moment births my response to it.
or i could just post "i don't get it" every time.
well now i notice you've just eliminated commentary from your site. i think it's a shame. by the time i finished reading your thoughts on chicago and your upcoming projects i had something to say, only there was no medium for it.
You're right, Lars. His art actually says something to me and he may have some valid points to make about any number of things I sense welling up out of the images: all the good stuff, gender, Korporate Kulture, even race, though that seems to be less productive for him--based on his comments here. It's a shame his mind has that taint.
At some level, I suspect he knows better, witness this comment on his site about OTHER people's behavior (now he's talking about behavior in MY town, so I feel like I have a little stake in seeing him take consistent positions):
"[P]eople are either downright rude or they've never known otherwise (noble city savages?) and therefore aren't necesarily being rude--All of this stuff bothers me to no end. It's like we all don't give a shit enough about anything to go along with very basic rules that make life easier for everyone. It's all about ME FIRST, I guess."
So he doesn't want other people to be rude to him or cross the lines of civil behavior, but then he comes to your site and gets his rude on. He talks bad, but he wants to be treated nicey-nice. Go figure...
Maybe this is OK with you, as you may have some relationship with him from the past or present. And, hey, this is YOUR blog and you can let whoever you want heap on the abuse, if you're willing to put up with it.
If I have incited him and come between friends, then I feel bad about that (but not about chastising him for obscuring his occasional good points and his artistry with his crap; he brings that on himself, wherever he comes from and however much he thinks it's "real ethnic" to be like that).
So, although I have found a couple of these posts interesting, and would have more to say about the topic of constructing/deconstructing identity/culture/artistry that I sense is lingering beneath the surface here (although maybe I agree with Luke that we should just GET THERE, without all this squidding around...), I'll be happy to leave y'all alone if you'd rather entertain such as this Luke.
And what IS wrong with the blog "sign in" function. Sure, people can either be anonymous, or remind you who they "claim" to be every time, but it is a pain.
Hilary "The Hill" Henry, West Pershing, Chicago, IL
Just so everyone knows, I am not posting anonymously and haven't really read any of the comments.
Anonymous, you can just sign your name at the end of the post by hitting "enter" and typing your name at the end. Would you be any more likely to identify yourself if we had haloscan? I don't understand why, but if so we can make the switch. I'm just worried that we'll miss out on some discussion once we do.
Sorry Anonymous, I just scanned your previous posts and found that you have identified yourself. So should we go Haloscan? I can collect all of the blogger comments from recent posts and make them a post themselves so we don't lose out on anything.
Oh and Luke, I wonder what you mean by your "It's exactly what I'd expect Sam to think." It came across as a dig, so I'll take it that way. But I am interested to know why you assume you'll know what I think about a topic.
Additionally Anon, though I am fairly terrified of you (or what I've constructed as "you" out of digital communication) keep it up. Even if you think we're idiots.
And Luke, guess some people didn't understand why you used "nigger" or what the point was. It's a powerful word, not to be taken lightly. Maybe you need to explain your choice?
And really Luke, don't run away from this.
And Anonymous IS you HUH Lars? Interesting. If so, I'm not scared of you you fuck.
Goodnight socks, goodnight clocks.
Don't worry bout it, Sam, neither Luke nor Lars could get anywhere near being the Hill if they worked at it night and day and day and night.
Luke, what you seem to understand one second, but forget as soon as it's coming back your way, is that (in this interesting world in which we're living), the only operating assumption that's workable is that people intend to say what they said. And didn't intend to say what they didn't say.
Watch closely now, the Hill didn't make any assumptions about your ethnicity, just your maturity...
My take on it--not knowing either one except by how they present themselves here (which I'm forced to assume is how they WANT to present themselves)--is that Lars rather naively expects other people to approach these topics with the same combination of lightheartedness/seriousness that he does. So that when they don't immediately flow in his wake, he gets mildly exasperated, and pokes what he imagines to be fun in an effort to stir things loose from the eddy in which he imagines they have become sargassoed.
Luke, meanwhile, who (on the basis of how he started out here) might actually have redirected Lars's energies into a more rigorous and ultimately more rewarding path, immediately goes into berserker mode anytime anyone takes a lighthearted poke at him.
But too late for lessons in etiquette now, Sam, because Luke done rolled right off the big bad "Hill."
I just looked at the wikipedia article, or started to, but since its a psychoanalytic pile of crap, it wasn't as helpful as I might have hoped.
Whether the Lukester ever sees any of this or not (like I care), his first couple of comments on this thread were an invitation to some sort of rational discussion of what could have been an interesting subject (indeed, to some, it could be said to be THE subject). Unfortunately, while there are interesting things that could be said about the things this Zizek guy apparently thinks he's talking about, nothing in the linked article or in the wikipedia redaction of his "thinking" is coherent enough to serve as the springboard for any such discussion.
So while I appreciate the Luke link's attempted elucidation of the Lars link, this was never going to go anywhere from THAT start anyway. Which may make it a shame that Lukey went bye-bye, but there you go: if you can't swallow, don't dish.
Goodnight room, goodnight moon...
fuck everybody (just kidding)
just so everybody knows anonymous is not me (if the last post didn't make it clear), though be reminded as anonymous does that anonymous could be anyone and more than one because anyone who doesn't sign in the acceptable way gets to become anonymous. i "get to" if i want to by clicking below but i don't.
i even considered deleting my first response to luke before it got read, but i didn't because i'm not ashamed of my ideas as they represent me at the moment they're formed. anonymous shouldn't kick anyone off this board and luke should keep reading. i'm working on a long piece about lebron james and ike eisenhower which you probably won't like but is probably worth your reading, just for fun, and maybe the writing's good even if my ideas aren't (to you).
ashamed (i mean anonymous) you're probably right about everything. you probably have no idea what you're talking about. strangers are welcome, but we don't know what you mean by anything. so solipsism's out. sam, you oughta know who i am. i write you things behind the scenes. and i write for you, mostly. and few others.
i wish i could do more. i wish everything were clear. i'm not right, but i do want to be understood. understand? if not, reread the beginning of this message and ask me what i mean before you miss...
No Luke, I'm not scared of Hill because he may or may not be black. In fact it didn't really cross my mind. I was afraid of the skill and articulation with which he/she rips others down.
And I've been looking at some of the syntax and I'm more and more convinced it's Lars, especially as you said in light of the link. If it makes you angry, fine, don't participate.
And sorry I'm still not quite understanding your use of the word "nigger". So you don't hate black people, you hate niggers? Is that correct?
You hate the behaviors associated with black culture? What about jazz? What about blues? How is all black culture hip-hop culture?
And answer that question rather than tell me about my case of white guilt or the worthlessness of my liberal education.
And I thought we all wanted to use halsoscan comments! There on there, let's start.
luke when i said forget everything i meant forget what i had said. as in "i'm not trying to be a dick so forget i even said it and when you've finished thinking about it we can discuss it"
i've never been afraid to speak under my own name. what the fuck is wrong with you guys?
for me, i don't think there's anything wrong with the word nigger, in the senses that it oughtn't be stricken from huck finn and the like, and its use as a subject (as i've just used it), and its use as a kind of reclaimed identity (the way gay people proudly embrace queer/fag/etc mostly these days) (see tcq's "sucka nigga"). and even if somebody's talking in the pure earnest "i hate niggers" sense it's not the use of the word that arouses my discontent so much as the ideas the person holds. so fuck it. use nigga/nigger all you want. the guys at our work call each other "calia" (or some similar phonetization) which means nigger in bengali.
however, i think luke has been a sincere advocate of the-words-we-use-have-agreed-upon-meanings and when we listen we expect certain meanings out of general words (and images). i do not think most people assume the word nigga/er specifies a particular kind of drug-crime-and-laziness-glofying bling blinger and womanizer-rapist supposedly represented by rap or bombastic athletes, in contrast to a "better" more in-line black person. it may be within the realm of familiarity, but i don't think the supposed distinctiveness comes through. still, i'm more concerned about luke's image of that "kind" of black person than about his use of the word.
Right. I'm not saying "nigger" should be stricken from the record. Forbidding a word only gives it more power. I think it's a positive thing that MCs and others have turned the word into a term of endearment. But we can't just throughout the history behind the word. Especially if we aren't the group that was previously oppressed or degraded by it. Fine use it, but it's a big choice and you NEED to have a sound argument for it. As of yet, I haven't seen one.
And I discussed this with Ben (and don't want to take credit for his statement) and here's a quick summary of his point. It takes at least SOME gall to use the word when you are not black. And it takes even more gall to be shocked or angry that others challenge your use of it. Are you truly shocked Luke that we would take any issue with your usage? Come on.
And by "throughout" I mean "throw out" or "ignore".
i don't agree with the black/white allowance about saying nigger. first of all, who's black and who's not? there was a time when certain whites would have considered indians, hispanics, asians, etc kinds of "niggers" (and those folks experienced accompanying discrimination or exploitation). therefore those historically potentially agrieved by the use is not necessarily limited to black people. the southeast asian "calia" actually refers to darker, curly haired "black" southeast asian people (peoples without as much "aryan" blood), not african blacks, but has been assumed as a term now in the global exchange for african immigrants/exiles. many black people i know call me nigga, and not because of my long-gone cornrows but because its just a habit, the way my college roommate called everyone a bitch. in this case it seems clear between us that nigga does not mean anything untoward about black people because it's an article whose subject is me. yet in these cases i do not, out of a similar habit, proudly return the "nigga" greating, nor do i always sing the word aloud when i'm listening to a song around black people i don't know (often i'll just mouth the word or say something equally syllabic like "playa" or "killa"). does it make me a cowardly hypocrite? perhaps. but it's really just to avoid confusion or confrontation, not because i think i'm actually wrong to use the word or that the word is universally offensive. to say a "non-black" person needs gall, however, grants a kind of universal license to certain kinds of people, at the same time making meaningless divisions between those people along the same lines as those who originally corrupted the word, independent of the performance of the word.
Fine. You may disagree with me, but are you understanding me? "Nigger" isn't just a word. Slavery happened, lynchings happened and discrimination happened. And the word "nigger" was used by the people that did these things. There is a history to the word. You said yourself that you don't use it around your black friends. And you say something like, "it's only to avoid confrontation". Of course! What do you mean "only"?
I don't think it should be illegal for anyone besides a black person to say it. (And I know, "who IS a black person?" It's whoever chooses it I say. And I'd have a hard time believing you would call yourself "black". I don't think you should be shot for saying it. But it is a bit tactless and bordering on ignorance of what came before. It's akin to the display of the confederate flag. People coyly say, "It stands for states' rights!" "It stands for the south! It honors our ancestors." But look at the history of that flag. What does it really mean? The history of the flag gives it its meaning.
I mean, after all, KKK members wear white hood-masks. But their just white hood-masks (it's just a flag, it's just a word). But you probably don't wear a white hood-mask. Why not white hood-masks as the next hip-hop fashion? The next skullcap or pen behind the ear or straw in the mouth or ADIDAS or baggy pants or cornrows or bandage under the eye or hood-ornament around the neck or lollipop or gold teeth or tattoo or...
Fuck I hate this feeling that I continually need to correct myself here in the comments. But I guess it's better in the long run. However, with a more formal piece of writing I'd be more likely to go back through and edit. And I think of these comments as a discussion BLAH BLAH BLAH!>!>!>!>!>!>!>!>!>!
Anyway, among other mistakes that I'm sure will come to my attention in time, I used "their" when I meant "they're".
The following sentence is also muddled, "I don't think it should be illegal for anyone besides a black person to say it."
What I mean is that I don't think it should be illegal for a person to say it if they are not black. Or in another way, I don't think it should be legal to say it if and only if a person is black.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
why is there such difficulty reading the words i have written down, and neither mumbled nor mispronounced? i am not afraid to speak or say nigga in front of my friends. it is in the presence of strangers i hesitate, specifically because a debate like this one would have to ensue -- CRIPPLING any meaning behind the spoken word -- before i am understood, perhaps. i have said nigga in front of black strangers accidentally, or more accurately without thinking anything of it, without trouble. i actually presume that's the norm, but the danger (and i don't mean physical danger to me, but the danger of wasteful misunderstanding) of the odd confusion devalues flippant use of the word.
and it is a word. history? etymologically, nigger is a variant of negro, which means black, which is used as a generalizing extreme in place of "dark" w/r/t skin. the history of slavery, lynching, abuse, brutality, rape, patronization, exploitation, murder, categorical cultural and economic sabotage ... hatefulness can be symbolized by the use of the word nigger. words are symbols (so are flags, see below). symbols, however, have the power of ambivalence or rather multivalence. to speak of the history of a word having given IT ITS meaning robs the word of its power to assume other meanings AND destroys the power the word has to employ meanings in PERFORMANCE. to speak ironically is to make use of meanings others have invested in word(s) but communicating a different performance of word(s). whoa whoa. didn't mean to sound like a ta. how bout like this: words are like giant squids. they are elusive, none has ever been captured alive. they are mysterious, existing almost in a foreign realm we have no access to, and can only really be studied in depth as fossils, meaning we can understand more about what they are made of than how they live and behave. there is evidence that they possess intense intelligence and sensibility, but again this capacity is more mythic than empirical. and most importantly, possibly, they have tentacles, many of them, extending in various directions at once. these tentacles are simultaneously manipulators and transportation devices. words have tentacles: they reach in all directions; they don't stand still.
it may seem as if society would gain by capturing -- containing -- a word like nigger. cage it in its hated meaning so it can be extinguished. but you restrict those who would ride it to new strata, who would open up new worlds. now i realize you say you aren't trying to prosecute nigger-sayers, but your claim of protecting people from their own ignorance sounds a bit like censorship to protect people from vices they might not be responsible enough to wield. henry miller wasn't published in america till forty years after tropic of cancer appeared in france -- in english.
the confederate flag symbolizes, primarily, southern independence. southern states attempted to secede because they felt the so-called united states oppressed them. now, it's not meaningful to ignore the hypocrisy of fighting for the freedom to hold slaves (and especially to expand that enterprise). the civil war was about a bit more than that, but i believe we can safely apostrophize here. rightly or wrongly, southerners objected to their territory being conquered, occupied and forced to assimilate (often under the direction of carpetbagging northern leaders) into a more economically-powerful and morally-uppity union. among other expressions of this frustration, including wrongful subjugation of blacks (some scholars argue that "racism" peaked in the hundred or so years between emancipation and "civil rights" because it was a kind of southern white rebellion against northern political instruction -- few go so far as to suggest slavery as an institution was doomed anyway and black-white relations would have improved more swiftly if the south wasn't made into unwilling colonies of the north, outletting their economical and political anger at the north on their local blacks; it's interesting to observe that while much segregationist rhetoric from the 1950s-60s is founded in black-hate, most of its LOGIC is of the "we-southerners-deserve-to-do-things-our-way" variety), waving the confederate flag and claiming the south would rise again became a favorite response to a dominance of "unity". the flag survives as this emblem of southern pride, so often associated with a racist and even violently oppressive southern identity. but is that its MEANING? for some blacks, especially northerners or westerners accustomed to economic exploitation in urban ghettos, the "american" flag is invested with as much a legacy of oppression. only that flag stands not for defeated or occupied rebels but the dominating force in the world today. which is more fearsome? if outkast, from the southern capital atlanta (derivative of "atlantis", the submerged city) poses in front of a field designed of bars and stars just like that american flag except in place of red and blue there is black -- what does that mean? who "gets" to use that symbol? if history really "gives it its meaning", and history is so awful, why not reject the gift? let it take another meaning.
funny you should bring up white hoods. as you know i have long sought out white hooded sweatshirts ("hoodies" in the nigger parlance now dominating our nation's marketing, right luke?). even to the point where after noticing ben with a similar habit, i ordered a custom sweatshirt with the phrase "swetland" on it. remember? well often i wear a hood loosely so that it partially covers my face. sometimes, because of the stitchwork, the top of the hood tapers into a kind of a point if it's not filled. sometimes walking around my brooklyn neighborhood (another kind of 'hood, this type of course embraced by black men) with a white pointed hood i wonder if i'm not interpreted as a kind of neo-klansman. or maybe those eyes are savvy enough to see that if that were the symbol my wearing of it would be an ironic performance -- a sample, a real hip hop posturing like you suggest. but in my mind it means none of it. in this case the symbol is so belabored, and perhaps even its referent so ubiquitous, fragmented, scattered, that it seems to entirely decohere.
according to alex haley, the only time malcolm x ever used the word nigger except when quoting the white man was after jealous, greedy and usurous members of the nation of islam wrested control of his mosque no. 7 in new york away from him. he said: "we had the best organization the black man's ever had -- niggers ruined it!" in that way he seems to be using the word an awful lot like luke uses it here. of course, according to ben, malcolm's black so he can do that.
I'm not going to edit this comment nor post a comment afterwards apologizing for mistakes. I am going to say this though. I don't think I'm a dipshit who can't spell or write right.
I really wish sometimes you'd boil your comments down a bit. Since they're comments I don't give them as much consideration as an essay. And of course that's my own fault. So I guess, don't. But I can still air my grievance.
And I know there are other factors involved in the Civil War. But can we please not overthink and be honest here for a second? Slavery was the main, major issue. Because you do see the contradiction in "we-southerners-deserve-to-do-things-our-way", right? The slaves "deserved-to-do-things-their-way" as well. Anything can be infinitely analyzed, but at some point it seems to me that it's important to step back. Look at the big picture for just a second and think about what the meaning is to our current culture. oop, wait...just give it one second without going into deconstruction and post-modern (I know the hyphen is controversial) analysis.
It really is a bit confusing (exasperating?) to me that I have to defend the "be careful when you're using the word 'nigger'" position. And obviously I'm not going to convince anyone if they're not already convinced.
What is truth?Anyway, I feel that your still not getting my meaning.
You write, "it may seem as if society would gain by capturing -- containing -- a word like nigger. cage it in its hated meaning so it can be extinguished." As I said before, I don't think people should not be able to say it. Though I think if it's merely thrown out their for shock value that's bullshit. If you're going to use it, have a good reason for it.
I may not be right and I may not be wrong.
But I'm going to continue being careful about it. Why would you ever need to use it? (I know, I know, I know...what is need? who decides?)
And please do not throw in coy attacks on Ben's comments when you've only heard them through my filter. I'm sure he said it at least a bit different. Plus it's unfair because he doesn't read this and won't have a chance to defend himself.
I've forgotten what we're arguing about. So let's try to keep this next round real concise, clear and mathematical even. Just our next couple comments. We're trying to communicate with someone else. The end goal is that they will understand what we mean by only reading our words. Those words will be used so efficiently that really their questions are answered.
No attempts to be clever or artistic. It'll be a little exercise for both of us.
i don't try to be clever or artistic. just honest
in the manner of luke:
"Slavery was the main, major issue. Because you do see the contradiction in 'we-southerners-deserve-to-do-things-our-way', right? -- of course. i'm talking about people who use the confederate flag, trying to illustrate that the flag does not stand exclusively for a racist agenda, just as the word nigger does not stand exclusively for hate
"just give it one second without going into deconstruction and post-modern [...] analysis" -- why this constant fear of postmodernism? i try to make myself clear. if vocabulary's a problem, i try to simplify it. but employing a mode of thinking is not a cop out. i don't think it's possible for me to think anything without "going into postmodernism". you might as well have a conversation about astonomy without resorting to copernicanism
"I don't think people should not be able to say it [...] If you're going to use it, have a good reason for it." -- i described a caged meaning because you're not letting the word mean anything else. it's the meaning you're restricting, even if you're not restricting the usage. and even if you're just opposed to "shock-value" usage, fuck that. shock is a useful tool for disintegrating people's preconceptions
"Why would you ever need to use it?" -- this discussion would have been pretty difficult without using the word nigger
"please do not throw in coy attacks on Ben" -- i'm not attacking ben, i'm attacking the idea that black men reserve the right to use the word nigger
and for the record, saying that slavery was the main reason for the civil war is like saying weapons of mass destruction were the main reason for the war in iraq. it may have been the media-savvy reasoning given by the invading force, but the reason for the fighting was that people resisted an alien attacker intent on imposing its political ideology, and the effect of the war yields resentment harbored by the occupied peoples no matter the justification of the invaders. or look at it this way, you don't have to be a baathist to be an iraqi wishing he could still fly the flag of independent iraq.
I see that my challenge has not been accepted.
"'please do not throw in coy attacks on Ben' -- i'm not attacking ben, i'm attacking the idea that black men reserve the right to use the word nigger"
Fine. As long as you realize he didn't say that. As long as you don't associate the idea with him. That was all me. He may agree with me, though he may disagree. I don't know. You don't know.
"and even if you're just opposed to "shock-value" usage, fuck that. shock is a useful tool for disintegrating people's preconceptions"
shock for shock is Howard Stern. Obscenity is Richard Pryor. Obscenity is Henry Miller. Obscenity is not Howard Stern. Shock is not Obscenity.
"'Why would you ever need to use it?' -- this discussion would have been pretty difficult without using the word nigger"
Fine. Give me some other example. When it is necessary or serves humanity when it is used by you. Right now. Use it, but be absolutely convinced that it says everything you mean, means everything you say, and could not be better or more effectively said with another word. And why wouldn't "n-word" have sufficed?
"'just give it one second without going into deconstruction and post-modern [...] analysis' -- why this constant fear of postmodernism? i try to make myself clear. if vocabulary's a problem, i try to simplify it. but employing a mode of thinking is not a cop out. i don't think it's possible for me to think anything without "going into postmodernism". you might as well have a conversation about astonomy without resorting to copernicanism"
I'm not afraid of those things. I just want people to realize they are not the end all be all. You CAN look at the BIG picture. You DO need to look at the BIG picture. Of course employing a mode of thinking is not a cop out. As long as you except other modes of thinking as possibly accurate. Sitting in one mode of thinking makes you lazy, closed minded. Employ many modes. Sit in many abodes. Sing in many tones.
I'm not quite as cynical as you, I think G-Dubs truly does believe that "weapons of mass destruction were the main reason for the war in iraq."
"fly the flag of independent iraq."
I realize that I need to mention here that I was completely against the war in Iraq (as I am against any war)
Uhm...was Iraq independent before? Did Saddam Hussein=Iraq? What is independence? Constantly fearing for your life? Being afraid to speak out against the ruling party? Hardly.
Hill here. Out of town over the weekend while y'all just went tippety-tappety all over the place. Whew!
I've been re-reading some of the Luke-Hill exchange. Sam, my intent wasn't to be scary, but simply to hold a mirror up to Luke, to see if he liked his own verbal behavior quite as well when it was coming back at him. I had initially thought Lars's post was off to a good start--because silly as most of it is, at least the deconstructionist, post-whatever folks are trying to grapple with some fairly deep and innarestin stuff. I admit to being frustrated: as I have now said several times, IMHO Luke was APPROPRIATELY taking Lars to task for condescension and for NOT usefully advancing the discussion that Lars had seemingly intended to start. Luke was making his points perfectly well when, for no good "intellectual" reason, he blew off the road into his Nigger dick-sucking thing.
Again, in retrospect, he was only inviting Lars to "imagine" biting the big one. Not necessary to the discussion, but no skin offa my butt. And apparently this is a blog mostly among friends of a certain acquaintance, sounds like mostly just out of college from some of the side remarks about T.A.'s and roommates and all. (Nothing wrong with that, could even mean your brains haven't calcified quite yet...) But--my own ethnic background aside--why exactly does Luke "imagine" that a turd-covered syphilitic BLACK pussy-pleaser would taste any worse to Lars than any other color?
So that honked me off a little bit. I did NOT call Luke a racist, and don't particularly care one way or another whether he is or he just wants to be able to sound like one for the sheer style of it, but it's a little difficult to ascribe any other point to that SPECIFIC use of the word nigger. Anybody can use any word they want, far's I'm concerned, but Lars is right in so far as (a) words are slippery little fellows with a life of their own, meaning that (b), once they roll out of your mouth or off your fingertips, they can have real-life consequences.
So I decided to model my verbal behavior into a "consequence." My response to Luke wasn't intended to be TOO hard-ass, just mildy (for me) wondering why (when, as far as I was concerned, he had already seized the upper debating ground) he felt it necessary to surrender his "intellectual" advantage by reaching down into the turd bin?
And, again, I was admitedly frustrated because, first, I was at least slightly innarrested in the original post and, second, Luke was starting out like he was actually going to run Lars to ground (something that appears more and more like a fairly rare occurrence).
So I took Luke to task, mostly in the hope he would look past his fragile ego and get back to what (for me) had been the this-promises-to-be-fun part: bracing Lars on the issues.
Again, your friends, your blog, I guess you can run it however you want and put up with whatever kind of intellectual rigor or etiquette (or lack of same) as you like, but rather than getting back to the ISSUE, Luke felt he then had to go and talk not only DIRTY but all violent-like. So then I reflected THAT back at him too, and we all saw how well he handled that.
If y'all can get all that smoothed back over, fine. In the meantime, nigger on as much as you like. It's "just" a word, it is a "free" country, and you can say it, sing it, shout about it as much you like, until you say it to the wrong person in what they feel like is the wrong way, and then that ringing sound in your head WON'T be the sounds of freedom flashin'...
FWIW, the rebel battle flags did and do arguably stand for more than racist, slave-owning lardbelly rednecks. I suspect some of them white boys who survived the fuss and the fighting--racist or not--actually connected the flags back to the blood and glory, the gallantry of the Lost Cause (which for at least some of them probably was States' Rights), their fallen comrades, and tear-jerking stuff like that.
The state flag hoorah isn't really about whether everybody who fought under that flag later pulled on a white hood. It's about whether the GUV'MINT oughta be in the nostalgia-laced-with-a-little-racism bidness. Far as I'm concerned, any private individual redneck OR civil war buff can fly the stars'n'bars all they want. Get it right out there, paint it or decal it on all the busted down pickups in the front yards of the trailer trash homes along the two-lane highways. But it ain't right for the GUV-MINT to be makin' citizens of all colors pay their taxes and lowtow to those flags.
Which brings us to another Civil War point which Lars might be trying to make in his own roundabout way: if the CW had flashed off over some OTHER issue--let's go back to the Whiskey Rebellion, for example--it might indeed be innarestin to see how we would look back on the contestants from our current vantage point: the Jeffersonian rural/agrarian interests vs. the forerunners of our current robber baron/Corporate American culture. Some of the same underlying tensions that later erupted in the Populist/Wobbly causes were also involved in the CW shindig, but got subsumed by the overarching slavery issue.
Much as I hate to admit it, Lars may be doing his usual dance around a valid point: just because slavery could not be allowed to stand, doesn't mean that the North followed through in the post-War period in the manner best calculated to advance the cause of the "free" black man. Likewise, just because the South was wrong about slavery and lost, doesn't mean they might not have been entirely wrong about some of the other issues.
That's it from up here on the hill. Gotta go make some money, get them ho's to work, stead of sitting around on they lazy behinds smoking up alla my best crack.
Wow. And Luke thinks he's not quite ready for metafilter?
Two or three thoughts.
Not sure we need to connect the leader-mythos thing all the way back to the formation of individual identity, separation from the cosmos. Not that that's not a potentially deserving topic.
The comparison advertaised by the title of the post is immediately intriguing: the reader wants to know, huh, what do these two have in common, other than both rattling around somewhere in the grand grab-bag of "celebrity/famous person."
If you focus on answering that question, whether the answer is completely satisfactory or not, I think the reader is going to feel rewarded.
It might be worthwhile to lay out the "model" of the mythic hero a little bit more, once the reader is hooked into things a couple of paragraphs deep. Not with the deep identity-doubt stuff, but with the more standard, "I'm sure you remember the structural elements of the myth-leader's life history from Bill Moyer and Joseph Campbell on PBS?" Or whatever, then launch into a brief refreshe
steviepinhead | 01.19.05 - 3:42 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, so much for haloscan, sorry sam. Not only does it not allow an edit/preview, i.e., allowing me to catch my mis-type of "advertised." But it cuts the comments off at a certain number of words, which won't work for some of us longwinded sorts. Meaning if you want to blather on, you need to break one comment in to different sections, correctly estimate tne number of words per section, blah blah. Too much of a pain.
steviepinhead | 01.19.05 - 3:46 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Exactly. We'll just keep both available.
SamB | 01.19.05 - 4:51 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sorry. i cut off the regular comments to encourage haloscan. in the past, on other people's sites, i've been frustrated by the word limit. but enough concern over typos dad. like sam says, this is the comments, not the essay portion of the work. no one is crying over misspelt milk. i think it's enough of a benefit to let all critics speak. i always hated the forced anonymity of the regular "blogger" comments.
also, i welcome the criticism of these theories. i do want to emphasize the summary contained in this submission is not my essay itself. the ideas would have been worked out more thoroughly and while certainly not flawlessly, definitely more supported than now. i just felt the premise a bit too silly, without the stronger connection i imagined, to complete an artful and eloquent essay.
lars | 01.20.05 - 1:22 am | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part of your theory also needs to address that--like the Dalai Lama--many leaders are raised from birth to be completely separate from the common man.
They are given the idea from the day they're born that they're different, better, and so on. Just look at George Bush Jr.'s reactions during the first presidential debate. The guy had clearly never been contradicted in his entire life.
With Eisenhower and James, is this the case? Were they given a sort of regal solipsism from birth? Probably not.
Otherwise, I'd like to read this essay.
interrobang | Homepage | 01.20.05 - 1:27 am | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
from birth? probably not in the same way lamas are (there are actually two lamas, the dalai and the panchen). but given the young age lebron was "anointed" (and obviously he was beyond his peers prior to national recognition) his experience of singularity and in some senses alienation-isolation obviously was hightened. eisenhower's early life was different, and as i said, not as exceptional as might befit the model for the essay.
but my point is not so much about the "leader"'s solipsism as about the process of mass elevation of "leaders" as a sort of strategy to defeat solipsistic perception among masses.
lars | 01.20.05 - 2:04 am | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One thing: I don't think of Lebron as a leader. He clearly is a performer and an idol, but he has no practical power over anyone else.
another thing:
The obvious greatness of an extraordinary person and the lionization of that person by the masses seems to encourage solipsism among the mass. How many average joes/janes spend a huge chuck of thier inner-life fantasizing about being an extraordinary person, thinking about what part of thier 'self' might be special?
We love these people.We want to be them. We know that to be like them we need to concern ourselves with our selves more than ever.
Luke P | 01.20.05 - 4:46 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HAve you ever read Steppenwolf By Hesse?
Luke P | 01.20.05 - 4:47 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"lionized individual" is a better way of communicating what i meant than leader. however, i think stars are elevated with an expectation of being looked up to, "followed" and therefor while not leaders in the senses of initiators they are exalted, figureheads
i don't, however, want to confuse what i'm talking about with mere celebrity culture, which is something newer and probably does produce the kind of solipsistic individual jealousy luke's talking about. it's more about the search for savior-prophet figures, which i do believe serves the function of giving people something to belong to.
and obviously lebron's meaning is different to someone who doesn't care about basketball. but again i'm talking about the culture within which he rose, not necessarily the history of human societies.
lars | 01.20.05 - 6:38 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i'm more comfortable talking about the conclusions having to do with that "something in the way" (cobain) of my communicating the lebron-eisenhower idea, not its thesis since i wasn't able to present it here.
lars | 01.20.05 - 6:40 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Are you sure your thesis exists?
Mars | 01.21.05 - 12:25 am | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OKAY. I can't respond to every point. I didn't read every comment, but I picked up a few things I can respond to.
- Yes, I expect that some people will be shocked by my use of the word nigger.
-I do not use it solely to shock Dave.
-In its initial usage herein I used the inherent vulgarity of the word to express just how much
I loathed what Lars had to say.
-Lars, you are right- I do undestand the words common meaning and the baggage it carries.Had I honestly believed that my only use for the word was congruent with the definition I presented, it would not have had the desired effect mentioned above. The definition does have some bearing on
my use of the word.
Luke P | 01.21.05 - 12:39 am | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More later.
Luke P | 01.21.05 - 12:51 am | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i believe sam was the one complaining about your use of the word nigger
my disagreement was with sam
i have other complaints
lars | 01.21.05 - 2:48 am | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I meant to post these comments in the appropriate 'thread' below. sorry. Sam, if you want to erase these, go ahead.
Luke P | 01.21.05 - 1:16 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
where's the latest from terebro
lars | 01.21.05 - 1:39 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i'm not the kind who usually freaks out from these kinds of stories but 22.8 percent?
lars | 01.21.05 - 4:03 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's the dark side.
On the brighter side, don't you think it's kind of spooky that right after you post your LeBron blog, he pulls the youngest triple-double?
Should something weird now happen to Ike, THAT will indeed be twilight zone material. Doon-doon doon-doon
steviepinhead | 01.21.05 - 7:27 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Somebody needs to change this template.It's fuckin ugly.
Luke P | 01.22.05 - 7:36 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also, the double comments thing is going to get to be a bitch. Once you get used to copying excess verbage off the too-long comments and pasting it in a new one, it's no biggie.I say get rid of blogger comments.Everybody should do what I say.
Luke P | 01.23.05 - 7:56 am | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i agree but while there are still worthwhile threads on the comments it'd be a shame to eliminate it.
Anonymous | 01.23.05 - 12:36 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
my parents don't always like it but i seem to have a knack for getting myself into the newspaper
lars | 01.23.05 - 1:08 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Holy shit! You're that cheesy fucking New York guy. You should be on an episode of Sex In The City. And it looks like the guy in the second picture is you as well. Is the caption wrong?
SamB | 01.23.05 - 1:24 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Where are the rows?!
Luke P | 01.23.05 - 7:37 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
yeah that guy looks like me right? weird. but i'm not that guy. not that cheezy guy. i told you luke the rows are long gone
lars | 01.23.05 - 11:27 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When? I don't remember that. You'll forever be rowed in my book, Lars.(jk)
I think the newspaper thing might have made a nice post. You could have segued into talking about your job and what the scene is like at your bar. That kind of stuff is sometimes boring to write about, cause you do it everyday, but I really like reading about peoples everyday lives..
Luke P | 01.24.05 - 2:09 am | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
here's an article that takes a different stance on leadership and basketball celebrity, with some of the same critiques i would have made. a different take on jordan as moneymaker was put out by Larry Platt in his book New Jack Jocks. is it subversive to resist an expectation to be subversive? how can anything expected be subversive anyway?
lars | 01.26.05 - 3:07 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
cp pierce, by the way, was the one who wrote the article on tiger woods way back when that questioned tiger's presumed role as unifying icon and quoted tiger telling dirty jokes -- tiger's backlash has been to carefully guard himself in interviews ever since, thus become the most mundane non personality even in golf
lars | 01.26.05 - 3:09 pm | #
Post a Comment
<< Home