[2005.05.27 - 06:50 P.M.] THE POLITICS AND MORALITY OF ABORTION
There is a new meme afoot in the ever-simmering abortion debate. Perhaps you've heard it. It goes like this: "Yes, abortion is troubling, it's an uncomfortable subject, it is something to be avoided, it is morally -- hmmmm, how shall we say it? -- problematic, but really now, you don't want some government busy-bodies dictating your choices for you, do you?"
Howard Dean began aggressively pushing this new meme -- or "frame" if you prefer -- in an interview with Tim Russert last week:
I believe that a woman has a right to make up her own mind about what kind of health care she gets, and I think Democrats believe that in general. Here's the problem–and we were outmanipulated by the Republicans; there's no question about it. We have been forced into the idea of "We're going to defend abortion." I don't know anybody who thinks abortion is a good thing. I don't know anybody in either party who is pro-abortion. The issue is not whether we think abortion is a good thing. The issue is whether a woman has a right to make up her own mind about her health care, or a family has a right to make up their own mind about how their loved ones leave this world. I think the Republicans are intrusive and they invade people's personal privacy, and they don't have a right to do that.
Kevin Drum, commenting on Dean's interview, promptly gave his stamp of approval:
Dean is right: if we make abortion and related cultural hot buttons into "anti-busybody" issues, they're a lot more appealing to a lot more people. He's on the right track.
Now, given the stagnant nature of the abortion debate -- both sides have been more-or-less dug in for decades -- I can see the appeal of a new angle that might shake things up. But count me among those who are not terribly enthusiastic about this particular gambit.
There are two components here:
Concede that abortion is morally problematic.
Posit that, nonetheless, the matter shouldn't be decided by meddling politicians.
Judging from the buzz around this idea, I gather that many pro-choice progressives out there are convinced that the latter part of the equation will prove to be the key that magically unlocks the mind of Red America on this issue. Extrapolating from the overwhelming public response to the Schiavo matter, which ran 4-to-1 against the GOP's intrusion, they think people might change their mind on abortion policy if they can be made to see it in the same light. After all, no one's ever suggested that abortion is a personal matter that the government shouldn't intrude into. That's novel thinking right there.
HELLO? Ever been to a pro-choice rally? Does "Keep Your Laws Off Of My Body!" ring a bell? How about "Hey George: Stay Out Of My Bush!"
Abortion rights advocates have been arguing forever that abortion is a decision that should be between a woman and her doctor. I don't recall anyone on the other side ever saying "Well, yes, now that you put it that way I see your point" and going home. The fact is, Red America is not at all averse to casting the government in the role of Values Police, as long as it's their values that are being enforced. Hence gun-control legislation and helmet/seatbelt laws are examples of intrusive government busy-bodies, but anti-abortion laws (wimmin), anti-gay-marriage laws (homos), and anti-drug laws (blacks and hippies) are fair game. (See a pattern?)
So, bottom line, I don't see the "anti-busy-body" angle as the big innovation in framing that others appear to believe it is.
Now, back to point one: The concession that abortion presents moral difficulties. I am deeply uncomfortable ceding that particular piece of moral high-ground in exchange for a tactical political advantage which, as I've outlined above, I find dubious at best. This is ground that many of us in the pro-choice camp have fought very hard over the years to defend, and I fear that once we cede that, no matter the short-term advantage, it will, at some point, come back to bite us in the ass. Some self-proclaimed abortion rights advocates, however, seem almost eager to profess their moral unease with abortion, as if it's a burden they want to get off their chest.
Consider, for example, Jack O'Toole. Reacting to Dean's interview, O'Toole had this to say (emphasis added):
There's a huge difference between taking the principled position that this difficult, often painful choice should ultimately rest with the woman involved, and trying to make the utterly fatuous argument that giving birth and getting an abortion are, in the main, morally equivalent actions that demand equal respect from the public at large. They aren't and they don't.
Now, based on my own conception of morality, I not only do not consider the moral equivalence of abortion versus carrying to term "fatuous", I consider it self-evident. I hardly think I'm alone in that position within the pro-choice camp. In fact, Kevin Drum (who might want to re-think his embrace of this strategy given the sort of reaction O'Toole evinces) sums up my position perfectly (emphasis added):
It's simple: I think pre-viability abortion should be entirely unregulated except to the extent that similar medical procedures are regulated. Fetuses are not human life in any meaningful sense, and aborting them is morally neutral. Legally, the decision to get an abortion should be completely up to the woman seeking it. No one else gets to tell her whether she should or shouldn't be allowed to have one.
The belief that abortion is morally neutral is commonplace among those of us with a rationalist orientation. Yet note how quickly O'Toole throws us under the bus, and consider what fault-lines might be exposed within the pro-choice coalition if our political leaders explicitly endorse the notion that abortion is immoral.
Who stands ready to exploit this splintering, should we pro-choicers publicly fall out? Why, the Life Begins At Conception crowd, who else? In fact, they are already growing more brazen by the day as they drag their intellectually indefensible position into the stem-cell debate. Consider Herr DeLay's recent words:
"An embryo is a person, a distinct, internally directed, self-integrating human organism. We were all at one time embryos ourselves. So was Abraham. So was Muhammad. So was Jesus of Nazareth."
Meanwhile, we have George Bush out there pimping the notion that embryos are people too. Courtesy of Ed Kilgore:
[I]n this morning's Washington Post was a photo of George W. Bush performing that most hackneyed ritual of the politician: kissing a baby. The baby in question, it transpires, is what certain life-begins-at-conception advocates call a "Snowflake"--a child that develops from an embryo "rescued" through adoption from a fertility clinic.
As I hope you can see, now is no time to be giving ground on the morality of abortion. Now is no time to start making simpering weasel noises about how, yes, it's too bad that "unborn children" -- an oxymoron if ever there was one -- need to suffer. Now is no time to offer up to the religious right their dream come true: Public recognition of embryos, zygotes, blastocysts, and fetuses as being "people" with "rights". And yet I feel dreadfully certain that this is the inevitable conclusion to which the Dean strategy outlined at the top of this post will lead us.
I, for one, will be sticking to my guns: Fetuses are not people, abortion is not immoral, and that is why it should remain legal. Period.
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[2005.05.21 - 10:30 P.M.] THE INSURANCE PARTY?
Some friends and I have an e-mail distro for discussing politics (or wasting time, depending on how you look at it), and on more than one occasion, while trying to divine the philosophical underpinnings of our various ideological and policy points of view, we have stumbled onto this question: How much of what happens to us in life is luck, and how much is determined by deliberate action? I was pleased, therefore, to see Matt Miller -- filling in admirably for Maureen Dowd at the Times -- pose this same question:
Test your political philosophy with one simple question: which matters most in determining where people end up in life?
You've got two choices. The first is "luck" - by which I mean the pre-birth lottery, that inherited package of wealth, health, genes, looks, brains, talents and family. "Luck" is all those gifts or curses for which we can neither take credit nor be blamed.
Choice No. 2 is individual effort, hard work and personal character.
Obviously this is a false choice; every life is a blend of both. We're born with certain endowments, and make the most of them (or don't) based on personal traits. But if you had to say which one matters most in shaping where people end up, how many of you would join me in answering "luck"?
In a poll I commissioned a few years ago, people who call themselves liberals or Democrats overwhelmingly said luck; most conservatives or Republicans said individual effort.
Unsurprising result, but it's nice to see my own prejudice broadly confirmed among my ideological peers.
It was some years ago, having been challenged to provide a rationale for my support of liberal "social safety net" policies, that I arrived at the "luck" formulation. See, I'm what most people would consider a reasonably successful guy. I have an IT job that pays me way above the median income. I have a wicked cool car. My wife and I are about to move to a nice house in a well-to-do Connecticut town. We've got all the goodies and accessories that typical middle-class folks chase after. (Well, except for the hot tub, but give us a few years.) We are not rich by any means, but we are comfortable, happy, and want for nothing.
When I look at this life, however, my first reaction is not to say "Wow, look at me. Look what I've accomplished. I kick ass!" Instead, I think "Man, I am one lucky guy."
Why? Let me count the ways. I was born white and male in the United States. I was born into a solidly middle class family. My parents, both of whom worked their way out of poverty in the 40's and 50's -- an era when our economic landscape and corporate culture made that far more commonplace -- emphasized the importance of education from my earliest years onward. I grew up in a town where crime was virtually non-existent and the school system was top-notch. Get the picture? None of this had anything to do with choices I made. Moving forward, my mother paid a substantial chunk of my college expenses. At the school I went to, I managed to fit in enough class work around my many drinking expeditions to make decent, if unspectacular, grades in a fringe field at the intersection of the hard sciences and the humanities (long story, I won't bore you). This provided me with an all-but-useless degree, and so after graduating I, um, wandered the employment landscape for a while. A few years later, however, luck paid me another visit as a friend of mine from college got me a foot in the door with an entry-level programming job. I fell in with a good crew at this company and networked my way to a better gig there, relying heavily on the same friend who got me in the door in the first place. A few years on, with the help of another friend who I'd met at this company, I found my way into a much more highly-paid job at a better, more stable business, where I remain to this day.
Could I have accomplished this on my own? Maybe. Am I downplaying my own efforts and my job skills? A little bit. I do have a gift for coding and analysis -- mostly the analysis part -- and it's served me well in the so-called information economy. But I'm hardly a super computer genius, and, character-wise, I am light-years away from anything that smacks of ambition and hard-work. So, like I said, I'm a lucky guy to have wound up where I am.
This is how I see my life. I know -- and I mean know -- that there are people out there trying way harder than I am and, through no fault of their own, not succeeding. There's no one thing we can do to change that. It's not just the nature of the market, it's the nature of life. Most of life is one big, long series of contingencies, of lucky and unlucky breaks. Right or wrong place, right or wrong time. Recognizing that, I believe it's our moral duty to provide a safety net for the less fortunate -- for the poor, the jobless, and even for the just plain fuck-ups among us.
If Miller's study is right, a majority of Americans -- including liberals and most independents -- also see their lives in this light. Luck, chance, and randomness in life, it appears, is something most people easily grasp. What we have here, then, is a great "branding" opportunity. We have a hook to hang our policies on. Why not pitch the Democrats as the "Insurance Party"? It's not sexy, but it's easily understood. And while no one's thrilled about paying for insurance, just about everyone does because they recognize it's the prudent move.
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[2005.05.09 - 06:30 P.M.] KEILLOR
I have never found Garrison Keillor particularly funny. As a frequent NPR listener, I have stumbled across his radio show "A Prairie Home Companion" on occasion. The first few times I heard it, I gave it a listen, simply because I had heard Keillor's name bandied about as some sort of progressive commentator-slash-comedian. Well, nuh-uh. Not funny. Not even borderline amusing. His cute little stories about his Lake Wobegone characters just leave me cold. Nevertheless, I always extended the guy a certain grudging respect in my mind because, hey, at least he was a progressive voice, and so maybe, in the process of putting his un-funny show out there, he was also getting airplay for liberal ideas.
That residual credibility took a huge hit last year when he made some remarks in an article he had written which compared Northeasterners unfavorably to Mid-Westerners in terms of the depth of our community values. I don't have a link at my fingertips, but he was trotting out some crap about how New York and New England weren't welcoming places, and how people there could never understand the neighborly urge to help out that is apparently a congenital trait of Middle America. Reading this nonsense, I flashed back in my mind to images of New Yorkers responding to the aftermath of 9-11. Yeah, Garrison. That was quite the cold and heartless display. I'm sure Duluth would have handled things better.
Anyhow, my ire cooled after a while, and I wrote this off as just another media personality buying into the myth of Middle-American Authenticity. I had forgotten all about it, actually, until today.
Keillor has a piece in this week's Nation discussing his eclectic radio-listening habits, and his thoughts on the importance (or lack thereof) of getting liberal voices on the air. Seemed interesting enough, so I popped it open. I got two paragraphs in before coming to a screeching halt:
I love the mavericks and freethinkers and obsessives who inhabit the low-power FM stations--the feminist bluegrass show, the all-Sinatra show, the Yiddish vaudeville show. Once, on the Merritt Parkway heading for New York, I came upon The American Atheist Hour, the sheer tedium of which was wildly entertaining--there's nobody so humorless as a devout atheist.
Whoa. Here I was -- certainly an atheist, probably what he'd consider "devout" -- being taken to task for my lack of a sense of humor by a self-styled comic who suffers from a chronic funny deficit.
Hey Garrison, let me clear something up: I am one funny fucking atheist. I can't go five minutes without cracking my shit up. My wife suffers from permanently sore abdominal muscles brought on by the ceaseless gut-busting laughs I provide. Friends are reticent to invite me to parties for fear that I'll upstage them. At meetings in the workplace, they have to duct-tape my mouth shut just so everybody else can stay focused. I make people laugh all the time. (These days I've even got my W/A% (With/At Average) up to a respectable .600.) Everywhere I go, they say "Toast, you are the funniest goddamned non-believer on the planet."
So fuck you, Garrison, OK?
On a serious note, though -- and you knew "serious" was coming, since we atheists have no sense of humor -- what the hell is a supposed progressive doing taking a random pot-shot at atheists, of all people? What, we're not already reviled enough? Atheists are the only group left in this country that it's still 100% socially acceptable to be prejudiced against. Joe Lieberman doesn't think we're capable of morality. George Bush senior isn't quite sure we're citizens. We're the Religious Right's poster children for everything that's wrong with secular society. And now, as if that's not bad enough, supposed "lefty" Garrison Keillor is giving us shit for not having an appropriately robust sense of humor.
That's it. I officially don't like this guy. First he puts down the Northeast, then he takes a gratuitious swipe at atheists. I think this gasbag needs to head on back Lake Blowmejob and find a short pier to go hiking on. Punk-ass bitch.
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[2005.05.06 - 06:00 P.M.] RED DOES NOT EQUAL "REAL"
Two times in as many months now I've had to suffer through the indignity of listening to John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy". First time, back in March, was at a friend's wedding on the south shore of the metro Boston area. No idea what that was all about. Second time was in April at Camden Yards, where Tracy and I had travelled to endure a pair of Yankee losses. That at least made some kind of sense, Maryland bordering Virginia and all. Still, it was more than I could take. And so as the crowd around me enthusiastically sang and clapped along through:
Well I got me a fine wife I got me a fiddle
When the sun's comin' up I got cakes on the griddle
Life ain't nothin' but a funny funny riddle...
I reached way back, deep down into my diaphram, filled my lungs, and shouted:
Thank God I'm a CITY boy!
A few necks craned around to see who the rebellious interloper was, but I was too lost in appreciation of the multiple ironies of my outburst to care.
First, of course, you gotta love hearing a semi-militant atheist shouting "Thank God" he's an anything.
Second, I'm not really a city boy. In fact, growing up, when my cousins from Somerville, MA -- an authentic urban environment if ever there was one -- would come to visit our family out in the suburban bedroom community of Melrose, they invariably taunted me for living in "the sticks".
That small liberty in self definition aside, however, there is certainly a sense in which I am a city boy: In our culture's predictably black-and-white "let's choose up sides" values war between urban and rural sensibilities, I side resolutely with the former.
Always, as far back as I can remember, I've been baffled at that strain of American thinking which glamorizes and
romanticizes small-town country living. John Cougar Mellencamp's "Small Town" elicited a grimace of extreme distaste the first time I heard it on MTV, and it still does today. As for Denver's paean to country livin', about the only point of agreement between us is the "got me a fine wife" part. The rest just strikes me as plain dumb. Life ain't nothin' but a funny funny riddle? Maybe you just lack the intelligence and wit to decrypt that riddle, you yokel.
(Yes, it's true: I am the arrogant, northeastern, liberal elitist the GOP keeps warning you about.)
What is it about the whole Small Town, USA thing that bugs me? Well, for starters, I don't like small. I prefer my surroundings to be a little more developed. I feel more comfortable with stuff going on around me. I get a serious glow on when Tracy and I drive down to NYC. I love walking in Manhattan, where the storefronts, restaurants, offices and whatnot stretch into infinity and the city towers above you. Not being able to live in that singular example of urban splendor for a number of practical reasons, I'll still take any old urban or suburban area over Tiny Town seven days a week and twice on Sunday. Preferably something close to a commercial center or two (or three). I've done "small" a couple of times here in Connecticut. Small sucks.
I don't like slow. I don't like people who drive slow. I don't like people who walk slow. I don't like people who talk slow. Slow annoys me.
I do not like "old fashioned". I don't care how they did it in Grandpa's day. Or, I care, from a historical-interest point of view, but I don't want to re-enact it in real life. Nor do I wish to be told how much better it was, you know, back "then".
I don't like simple. Or, rather, I don't like the pretense that everything is, or should be, necessarily simple. Small and simple and slow is going to solve all our problems? If we all just adopted the pose of small-town America things would be just swell? I don't think so. I like complexity. I enjoy a little static now and then. Sure it makes me cranky at times, but, believe it or not, I enjoy my own crankiness too. (Now that is my New England talking.)
I don't much care for tight-knit communities where outsiders are viewed with suspicion. In fact, I view such places with suspicion themselves. I don't like the defensive "We don't need no big city folk tellin' us how to do things" pose that small-town America reflexively adopts. Particularly since, at this moment in history, it is small-town America, aided by their legion of media champions, that seems to want to tell us Urban Archipelago dwellers how to run our lives, not the other way around.
And in fact, it is that very last item that got me started on this whole rant.
(Admit it: You were wondering.)
See, I don't do "country", but I've got no real beef with people who prefer that lifestyle. Some people like coffee, some like tea. Some like red, some prefer white. Have fun at your Mom & Pop corner store and your church fundraiser. I'm going to swing by Stop & Shop, then I'm going to head out to the Mega Sports Bar for the afternoon. Maybe I'll get stuck in a traffic jam. Maybe you'll get stuck behind a tractor. Those are the risks we have to take.
But the media, see -- specifically the political punditocracy -- they can't let this be a matter of taste, a "lifestyle choice". No, no, no. In the mythology they try to foist on us with increasing frequency, only small-town Americans are real Americans. Those of us with more metropolitan sensibilities are freaks. We're an aberration. A failed mutation of the American Dream.
Think I exaggerate?
Consider the latest atrocity in this vein, "Turning Red" by New Republic senior editor Lawrence Kaplan. Let's walk through this thing, and maybe you'll see why it had me spitting nails.
Provinciality cuts both ways. I know this because, twice a week, I commute from western Virginia, in the heart of red America, to Washington, D.C., one of the bluest spots on the map. The trip takes three hours in both directions, brief as far as interplanetary travel goes. But the drive home illuminates plenty of cultural terrain. It usually begins at The New Republic, where I regale my soft-handed colleagues with tales of pastoral life -- the sumptuousness of chicken-fried steak; the hand-dug well that pumps the occasional tadpole into my sink; the subcontractors whom I routinely discover drinking beer in my bathtub. Their mirror image, most of us at TNR attended the same schools, respond to the same cultural cues, incline toward the same brand of liberal politics, eat the same ethnic foods. Most of us hail from Minsk, a few from Pinsk. If you wanted to paint TNR's staff, the Benjamin Moore chart would recommend a cobalt blue.
Yeah, right. Cobalt blue. Except for that whole foaming-at-the-mouth zeal for invading Iraq bit. I guess having "soft hands" is evidence enough for Kaplan of liberal, blue-state decadence. Continuing...
Driving down 21st Street NW en route to the highway reveals more evidence of blue-stateness -- a George Washington University student protesting something or other; World Bank types mumbling into their cell phone headsets; a shiny BMW with doctor's tags. After about 15 miles on Route 66, the Metro line by the side of the highway ends and things get more purple. Once you get past the exit to Middleburg -- Jackie O horse country -- faded john kerry bumper stickers become support our troops bumper stickers, and the landscape quickly turns red. About 70 miles out, I follow a two-lane road for five miles, and then a one-lane road through the woods for another 25. The forest gives way to cleared pasture land bordered by lush, blue-green mountains. Then come the billboards -- GOD BLESS AMERICA, JESUS LOVES YOU, and a sign that I'd only read about in history books but long dreamt of: LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT. I am home.
Well, you know what they say, Lawrence: Home is where the fake patriotism and religious extremism is.
I have gone native, yet the country whose folkways and allure have seduced me is not Yemen or Nicaragua, but America--or, for those who still quibble that we are all Americans, red America...
(That "quibble that we are all Americans" bit made this reader want to put his "soft hands" around Kaplan's neck.)
No Tanglewood here, not even summer stock. Just pristine expanses, crystal streams, and deep Southern accents. Whereas a year ago the locals regarded me as an anthropological curiosity, today I'm part of the landscape. No one pinches my fiancée anymore; no one charges me $500 to change the oil in my car; cops no longer pull me over for fun. At the country diner, where convertible-driving visitors from blue America occasionally wander in, I even join in the chorus of "goddamn tourists," when, invariably, the weekenders flee the cigarette smoke and iceberg lettuce.
Ah, good for you, man. Sit down at the counter with the rest of the townsfolk and help yourself to a big, steaming bowl of Resentment Towards Outsiders. It does a body good, I'm sure.
The idealization of rural life, although no less pernicious than the Marxist indictment of the idiocy of rural life, is a well-chronicled malady. And the urban exiles that preceded my own exit to Eden make up a pretty sorry bunch. The German Romantics certainly made a hash of things. Closer to home, the legions of students who returned to the land in the 1960s made a hash of things, too--or, more exactly, rural life made a hash of them. As Eleanor Agnew recounts in her memoir, Back From the Land, holistic health care and poverty added up to a big bummer, dooming the bucolic counterculture. As for the latest demographic to make the pilgrimage, consisting mostly of retirees from the exurbs, they're considerably saner than their predecessors. But no less invasive.
Let me make sure I've got your message straight here, Lawrence. You love country living, but you're no dirty hippie. You've abandoned the city for perfectly "sane" and mature reasons. Sure, you idealize the hell out of rural life, but your self-awareness regarding that fact defuses any notion that this weird conversion experience is some sort of psychological/intellectual hand-job that you're giving yourself. Please, go on.
Being conservative to begin with, the "implants," as locals call them, haven't inflicted on western Virginia the sort of cultural depredations to which, say, New Yorkers bearing pottery wheels subjected Vermont.
Yeah, New Yorkers turned Vermont into a real hell-hole. It's not like it's one of the coolest states in the Union -- a state that features a fascinating mix of Bohemian culture, liberal political idealism and classic New England old-school libertarian personality. Vermont really blows. I'm sure an influx of, say, West Virginians could resuscitate their flagging cultural landscape though. Oh, go on...
Nonetheless, their wealth has brought friction to this very poor town. Land is a farmer's 401(k), and farmers in the area have been cashing in, selling their farms to developers who erect McMansions in their place. The trend frightens me, because I'm following in the footsteps of an uncle who left the city for a nineteenth-century farmhouse on a gorgeous piece of land. He and it now sit squarely in the middle of a commercial parking lot. Here, too, the planning commission has become embroiled in a fight over zoning ordinances, and my neighbors whisper about "outside interests" and men from the "city" influencing the town's power brokers. It's like living in Deadwood.
Oh, that was good for a belly laugh. I watch Deadwood, dude. Poser like you would last five seconds in Deadwood before Swearengen had you shoved off of a cliff.
Why would nearly all of the residents of a town where the battle lines have been drawn around economic issues--in addition to the wealth gap between locals and implants, the county has endured several plant closings and a nearby Wal-Mart that shuttered much of Main Street--favor Republican politicians who represent these same outside forces? The paradox frustrates the organization Retro vs. Metro America, whose advertising campaign, funded by a billionaire who tried to clone his dog, bought up so much newspaper space during the run-up to last year's presidential election. "In voting for George Bush," the group revealed, "religious Americans were duped into voting against their best interests." The complaint amounts to a coarse echo of Thomas Frank's book What's the Matter With Kansas? Nothing that isn't the matter with Kalorama.
Well, yes, we Metro types do wonder what the hell your neighbors were thinking when they put a warmongering, economy-gutting liar back in office for four more years. Why don't you explain it to us?
Is it really necessary to point out to residents of that and other wealthy, urban enclaves that casting a vote that transcends selfish interests is one of the hallmarks of a mature democracy? In voting so overwhelmingly Democratic, aren't they doing the same? Not everything, after all, boils down to economics.
Oh, please. Your red-blooded American Bush voters weren't casting a vote that transcended selfish interests, you clueless hack. They were merely trading off one set of selfish interests, economic, in favor of another: cultural. Herr Rove stoked their passion for God, Guns, and Gay-Bashing, and they responded by flooding the polls. You think that was some sort of principled self-sacrifice?
In my hometown, a once-thriving capital of bluegrass, the same cultural pollution that hangs over even the smallest U.S. towns clogs airwaves, movie theaters, and magazine stands alike. The drug trade has become ubiquitous, much of it sponsored by the same Central American gangs that dumped the body of a young woman under a wooden covered bridge on the bank of the nearby Shenandoah River.
Wait: "cultural pollution that.. clogs airwaves, movie theaters, and magazine stands"? Cultural pollution? What the fuck is that, besides an alarmingly fascist label for "Stuff Lawrence Kaplan doesn't like"? And how the hell does that relate to drug dealers? Oh, never mind. Just finish up.
Most of all, my neighbors cling to a conception of the public good that threatens not only their piggy banks but their very lives. Dozens of them are serving, willingly and proudly, in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Well there it is. Now I get it. Dozens of people from the small town you've adopted are fighting in Bush's War of Choice in Iraq. They do this, I'm sure you imagine, without question or regret. Ergo, their values are superior. Forget that the war was an illegal sham, based on endless deceptions and outright lies, which has resulted in tens of thousands of needless deaths and has not in any way made the United States safer. Forget all that because I'm sure none of it has managed to penetrate the Reality Shield you had installed around the editorial offices at TNR. Let's pretend the war was a splendid idea. Are you telling me that every one of our men and women over there is from Red America? Are you seriously fucking telling me that? Are you telling me that nobody has died over there who hails from any of the wonderful cities this nation is so lucky to have? Are you telling me that no blue-state moms have lost their sons in Iraq? That no Democratic-voting families have watched the news under a cloud of anxiety, wondering if the latest in the never-ending series of insurgent attacks -- never-ending because the arrogant imbecile your neighbors put back in the White House didn't feel the need for post-war planning -- took the lives of one of their loved ones? Because if that's what you're telling me, then you truly are a stupid, callous ass.
In the breadth of their civic attachments, it seems to me that they, more than most of their critics, most faithfully embody the American ideal. That, and the meadow outside my window, is enough to justify six hours on the highway--at least until the highway runs through my living room.
So because they have Jesus billboards, hate tourists, and have family members in Iraq, these are real Americans. I get it. No, wait, I don't. Tell me how any thinking person, let alone the editor of a "liberal" magazine, could commit such a monumental pile of condescending, self-deluded bullshit to print.
I'm glad Kaplan's happy in his new home. More power to him. Honestly, it sounds like my idea of hell, but no one's forcing me to move there, so it's all good. I'd guess if Kaplan asked around his hometown, he'd probably find at least one story of somebody who grew up there, couldn't stand it, and escaped to the city. Probably more than one. Hell, it's one of the Great American Clichés, after all. Everyone should be so lucky as Kaplan, to find an environment that makes them feel at peace, to find someplace where they're comfortable and happy. Some people find that in the city, some in the 'burbs, and some in the country. And, hey, it's cool to poke a little fun at those people whose cultural choices you might find odd.
Do not, however, point your country-fried chicken finger at me and tell me I'm not a "real" American because of where I choose to live and what slice of Americana I find most appealing. That, Mr. Kaplan, is crossing the fucking line, and you and the rest of your pals in the Red-State-infatuated media need to get that through your thick heads.
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[2005.05.01 - 06:30 P.M.] Green Day
One of my favorite songs on Green Day's American Idiot is the anthem "Are We The Waiting?". The first time I heard it, I was actually shocked. "Wow!" thought I, "Who would have imagined that Green Day could do 'Epic'?"
The song manages to capture hope, desperation, and despair all at the same time. In many ways, it's a perfect rallying cry for all of us alienated progressives wandering in the political wilderness.
It was also a perfect rallying cry for the several thousand of us stuck in a half-mile-long line (not an exaggeration) outside UMass Amherst's Mullin Center last night in a torrential downpour (slight exaggeration), as we waited for over an hour (probably an understatement) hoping that the security personnel would get their heads out of their asses and speed things up a bit. Yes, the organizational abilities of Green Day's host venue left something to be desired. By the time we finally got in the door, Tracy and I were soaked all the way through and shivering. Granted, it was a sell-out, but there has to be a better way than that to handle things.
We missed the opening band, a speed metal outfit whose name escapes me at the moment. (Note: Tracy just informed me that they are called 'My Chemical Romance'.) From the buzz, it was no great loss on our part.
Interesting mix of older and younger people at this show. Lots of college kids, obviously, with the show being on UMass' gargantuan campus. Fair number of parents taking their young children, too. (I always wonder how the parent of an eleven year old reacts the first time the lead singer invariably screams "How you motherfuckers doing out there??!!") And, of course, the band's older fans like ourselves.
They opened with "American Idiot", which immediately got everyone on their feet, and proceeded through the first three songs on the album, including the nine-minute-long, five-part "Jesus of Suburbia" and then my personal favorite, "Holiday" ("I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies..."). The latter is Green Day's most openly political song ever. It is an angry, heartfelt, spit-in-their-faces objection to the war-mongering ways of our current leadership. The studio version is powerful enough, and in concert it is augmented to great effect with a graphic light-show montage of bombs falling and flames exploding skyward that only got my blood pumping harder.
We're 16 minutes in. I'm soaked, but I'm stoked.
Let me just stop and say right here that American Idiot is one of the best albums of the last decade. I've loved every album Green Day has put out, but on this one they took things to a completely different level. The band that has spent fifteen years lampooning the stupidity of suburban American culture, capturing its pointlessness and alienation but inevitably dropping trou and saying "Yeah, it's all a big fucking joke, right?" finally got serious. Idiot still sports that trademark flippancy in spots, but it also dares to go deeper. There's an impatience to it. There's an indignant frustration that says "Hey, this shit isn't so funny anymore." It's a gem, and it really is perfectly attuned to our cultural and political moment.
It's also a "concept" album, in that it has a (somewhat) linear structure, and the songs tell the story of a particular set of characters. So for one brief, shining moment, I thought they might do the whole album straight through.
Alas, it was not to be.
I have seen Green Day live twice now, and both times I have left feeling ambivalent about the experience. I realize that everyone goes to live shows with different expectations. Here's what I like: I like seeing my favorite songs performed live. I don't mind the occasional digression or reinterpretation, but don't overdo it. I love a kick-ass stage production -- floating drum risers, explosions, video and laser stuff -- as much as any guy who was weaned on heavy metal as a teenager. But, oddly enough perhaps, I find the whole audience chant-along/screaming competition thing trite and annoying.
Unfortunately, Billy Joe Armstrong feels differently on this last score.
He really, really, really likes to engage the audience in chanting competitions.
"Hey! All you on this side shout 'Ohhhhhhh'! OK, now all you on this side shout 'Heyyyyyyy!' OK, now let's do this ten more fucking times right in the middle of this song! OK, now let's start the next song, and I'm gonna give you a verse, and then I'm gonna do the same annoying fucking thing! And there's nothin' you can do about it, because I'm in charge here!"
At least that's what it feels like to me. Seriously, though, he engages in this hackneyed rock-show silliness so often that if you took all the time he wastes doing it, pooled it together and eliminated it, they could easily fit in a half-dozen more songs in any given show. That just fucking aggravates me.
Look, I'll give them this: The bit where they take kids out of the audience and have them replace the band members is pretty fun. And props to the guys/girls who go up onstage. That takes big brass ones. For the most part, though, here's my advice to Billy Joe, Tre, and Mike: Play your fucking songs, and let your audience decide for themselves how they want to chip in.
The bitch of it is this: These guys sound awesome live. I mean it. They are tight, they are sharp, and they are brimming with energy. When they actually settle in and decide to play a song straight-up, the result is sheer brilliance. The music reaches out and throttles you. Armstrong's guitar is clean and aggressive. His lyrics are clear and snarlful. Dirnt's bass plucks and thrums at your cortex. Cools' drums are, quite frankly, the best in the business, as crisp and attention-grabbing live as they are on CD. And yet, while there's absolutely no sloppiness in Green Day's concert production, it's not a lifeless technical exercise either. The songs are just like they are on the recorded versions, only louder, livelier, and somehow better.
It's a goddamned shame they don't spend more time performing them.
Anyhow, the rest of the show was decent. They did a smattering of hits from their earlier albums, threw in a Korn cover (!) and an admittedly bitchin' punk-esque reinterpretation of "Shout", which they insert seamlessly into "King For A Day". On the whole, we were satisfied.
So here's a question: How do you know you're really hitting middle age? When you duck out before the encore at a rock concert to beat the traffic so you can get your tired ass home at a reasonable hour. As I mentioned before, the logistics at Mullin were terrible. Part of that was the sprawling parking lot at the end of the dead-end street the venue sits on. As we left the car down in the deep bowels of this abyss, Tracy and I had both shared our nightmare imaginings of sitting in traffic until 3:00 AM waiting to get out of the place. So, as the band kicked through the closer, "Minority", Tracy leaned over and said "If we leave now, we can be home in an hour." And, instead of scoffing indignantly as the 20-something Toast would have done, I mulled it over for about 20 seconds, grimaced, and said "Yep. Let's roll." We literally jogged back to the car, anticipating the onslaught that was about to flow from the doors of the concert hall, fired up the WRX, and got the hell out of Dodge.
Yes. Lame. I know. Bite me.
So there's your show. Would I recommend Green Day in concert? To that I give a hearty "Yes, But..."
Temper your expectations. Accept that you're going to spend a lot of time Waiting For The Next Song. But, by all means, if you like their music, go and experience the show, at least once.
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