we all dance to things we disagree with
A Salon writer, Kate Haulman, just works herself into an absolute tizzy about the Willie Nelson / Toby Keith song "Beer For My Horses":

Still, catchy tune and pseudo-feminist video aside, the song offends my lefty sensibilities on virtually every level. But what do you do when you like something -- be it a painting, song, film or fashion -- but reject all that the thing signifies? Can music or art or dress speak to a person or be appreciated in a contentless manner?...Can you embrace something without endorsing its intended meaning? Culture is politics and vice versa, but what does that mean on a case-by-case basis?

Until I divine the specific relationship between the two I must be content to A) enjoy the song as guilty pleasure when it crosses my path; B) refuse to financially support the enterprise by purchasing the CD or patronizing advertisers on stations that play the song; and C) appropriate it.

That last, I think, is crucial if one hopes to drain powerful cultural forms of their totalizing political punch. It's an age-old American strategy, dating from the days when Continental soldiers lifted "Yankee Doodle" from the mouths of mocking British troops, stealing some of their cultural, and perhaps military, thunder. Appropriation was also at work when slaves made the heaven in Methodist hymns into a specific vision of freedom from bondage. Republicans attempted a watered-down version of it when they chose Sting's "Brand New Day" as the theme song for their 2000 convention. They even got to play it once or twice before he pulled the plug.

Well, there's at least two big red flags here: "guilty pleasure" and "appropriate." (I am seriously getting pissed off just typing the words, and yes, I know this is not a good sign.) The idea of guilty pleasure is a stupid, Catholic, one, but so, I often feel, is loudly declaring that you don't have guilty pleasures. Because, let's face it, you probably do. Mine include Tori Amos and Eurovision-y europop, mainly because I don't know anyone else with decent musical taste who non-guiltily likes these things. (I still listen to 'em, though.) The problem with the concept of the guilty pleasure is less the "guilty" part and more what's defined as a guilty pleasure. The term is used by people with "good taste" to describe anything mainstream which they, horror of horrors, like. But this presumes that anything mainstream is bad, or falls within "bad taste," and I think that's just not true. Just because something is liked by a lot of other people, or not liked by the Wire, doesn't make it a guilty pleasure. The point of guilty pleasures is that you just like them, they're pure pleasure, and you don't think about it too much (viz. the above strategy of listening to the song without thinking about the horrendously politically incorrect lyrics). But there's lots of pop stuff that you should think about, that is well-crafted and interesting and wonderful.

So what should we call a guilty pleasure? ("GP" for short.) Well, GPs are fun in their own special way--aside from the "no thinking" part, you enjoy GPs alone. There's no one else you know and respect who will admit to liking it, so you have to do it "in secret," and this has a certain adulterous excitement that makes it, well, pleasurable. That's why "guilty" pleasure--because guilt can be pleasurable, too. All the lapsed Catholics (or the male submissives wearing panties and garters) will tell you that. But it's different from a regular pleasure, and that's why I don't think this song should be (or is) a guilty pleasure--it's not being enjoyed alone. With a GP, you enjoy it by keeping it to yourself, your own little discovery among the trash; with a regular pleasure, you want to share it with everyone else (i.e. pop's inclusivity), and that's clearly what the author's doing here, despite the hissy fit.

Let's get down to the object at hand, then. The author asks of the song: "Can you embrace something without endorsing its intended meaning?" Well good Lord, Kate, what school of critical discourse was your ass into at college? Because most of the ones I dug my paws into didn't give two shits about intentionality, and if it didn't matter for fugging Twain then it doesn't matter for fugging Toby Keith. Who cares if he meant it as a call to kill Iraqi children or not? If it's catchy, it's catchy, and you can use it. Moreover, don't be so quick to dismiss Willie: I can easily imagine him smoking a bowl and giggling his ass off about the way this is probably being taken. This is, after all, the man who sent a case of whiskey to the Texas Democrats who broke a quorum by going to Oklahoma, so maybe--just maybe--by justice he's talking about something different than Keith is, and by "Somebody stole a car / Somebody got away / Somebody didn't get too far yeah" he's not thinking about criminals, but Republicans.

The song mainly "offends my lefty sensibilities on virtually every level" not because it's a vigilante revenge fantasy, but because it's a vigilante revenge fantasy set in Texas. If this was a samurai vigilante, or Shaft, or Robin Hood, or anything else, would we have such a problem? Nope. So set it in feudal Japan if you'd like, and if it'll make you feel better. But don't let your leftist squeamishness about horses and gunsmoke and all that bullshit prevent you from enjoying the song, OK? Christ--I mean, look at what she's going on about here:

In message, the song amounts to masculinist, parochial-cum-nationalist, evangelical eye-for-an-eye, pro-death penalty drivel devoid of social context, lacking any awareness of the systems and structures that induce people to commit crimes on a local level or that make the world look as it does today. It's nauseating.

Oh, please, Kate. If you don't see it there, you're just not looking. And besides, it is, as she says, "catchy"--and that line about "Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses" is a really lovely turn of phrase.

What's really interesting to me about the Keith song that I think gets Kate in a particular tizzy, the real one she's writing about here--Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue (The Angry American), which seems to equate war in Iraq with retribution for 9/11, erroneously--is not that people like it, since, after all, Bush does still have a pretty good approval rating. No, it's interesting to me that no one's written and released a response song. Because that is the difference between sarcasm and sincerity, between true discourse and masturbatory "appropriation." It would be an actual political act instead of one that's funny, but not comedy.

What's the point of appropriation, of doing that instead of responding? Why would you need to appropriate something when you can ignore the intention and interpret it however you want? I think we do it to preserve another guilty pleasure, a far more dangerous one: the left's desire to wrap itself in a blanket of presumed powerlessness. So much of our moral authority springs from this position of being oppressed that we don't know how to deal with power, avoid it, and pretend as if we're helpless even when we're not, and lionizing appropriation / subversion is one of the horrible results of this.

The theory would go, I guess, that no one wrote a response song because no one would hear it because the media and mainstream is dominated by the conservatives, etc. But that's stupid. Just as country music is reflexively conservative, so is rock pretty liberal, by and large, and the ideas you could express in such a response song have become fairly mainstream now. Remember that 50% of the country still is Democrat. So why no response song? Because it would have to be, like the Keith song, catchy, and I don't think anyone who could write a coherant response song would also be willing to make this "sacrafice" to catchiness. But pop is no sin; sure, patriotism may be the last refuge of the scoundrel, but a good melody is a seldom-used way to convey an idea. But no luck, and now we're locked into a horrible cycle: the left embraces subversion because it thinks it can't break into the mainstream, but it can't break into the mainstream because it thinks doing so would be a sell-out, a betrayal of their subversive position. Wouldn't it be better for us to be active participants there, though? Why be subversive when you can actually engage in dialogue? Wasn't that what was so cool about "Sweet Home Alabama"? (The song, not the movie.)

That's the problem with conflating culture and politics, as Kate does: one is a thing, and one is a process. So there can be politics in art just as there can be politics in government. (Don't forget that a lot of government isn't politics; paving roads and transporting mail and like that isn't political at all.) And politics is, at its heart, discourse--a discourse between presumed equals, even if the participants are not, in fact, equal, and that is the beauty of politics, its equality of word. So you want to be political? Great. Respond. Reply. Reinterpret. But don't subvert unless you think it would actually do some good--and most of the time, it doesn't.
posted by Mike B. at 1:43 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, July 16, 2003

Not to toot my own horn or nothin', but hey lookie: I convinced Eschaton that trying to impeach Bush is not a good idea. They didn't quite use my reasoning, but it'll do.

Woulda been nice to have a cite there though, Lambert, after getting hammered for making the suggestion.

posted by Mike B. at 3:32 PM 0 comments

Haven't seen this anywhere, but maybe I just missed it...

Rove Spends the Fourth Rousing Support for Dean

Talk about lining up the competition. President Bush's chief political adviser has seen the possible presidential candidates among the Democrats and has found one he apparently thinks his man can beat: former Vermont governor Howard Dean.

Karl Rove tried to stir up enthusiasm for Dean marchers yesterday at the 37th annual Palisades Citizens' Association Fourth of July parade along the District's MacArthur Boulevard, which always attracts plenty of politicians.

As a dozen people marched toward Dana Place wearing Dean for President T-shirts and carrying Dean for America signs, Rove told a companion, " 'Heh, heh, heh. Yeah, that's the one we want,' " according to Daniel J. Weiss, an environmental consultant, who was standing nearby. " 'How come no one is cheering for Dean?' "

Then, Weiss said, Rove exhorted the marchers and the parade audience: " 'Come on, everybody! Go, Howard Dean!' "

Weird that it's not on any of the usual suspects; it was posted but ignored at Dean's blog, and of course the freepers like it. (They also inform us: "As long as Bush supports 'the roadmap to war' against the Jews he cannot possibly win another term. It is a sin against The Only True God, the author of the Bible, to support any leader that betrays the Chosen people." Well shit!) I first read about it Newsweek, and thought, as Demwatch does, that either Rove sincerely thought Dean is the easiest to beat, or he's trying to get that meme out there (Rove seemingly being aware of campaign politics at all times) that Dean is unelectable, because he's actually very electable.

But then I read the actual article, and since the quote comes from "an environmental consultant" and not Rove himself, presumably the quote was not meant for public consumption, and we can assume that it was meant genuinely. For what it's worth.

posted by Mike B. at 3:04 PM 0 comments

Thanks, New York Times, for reminding us how fucked up things are in Iraq:

In her loose black dress, gold hairband and purple flip-flops, Sanariya hops from seat to seat in her living room like any lively 9-year-old. She likes to read. She wants to be a teacher when she grows up, and she says Michael, her white teddy bear, will be her assistant.

But at night, the memory of being raped by a stranger seven weeks ago pulls her into its undertow. She grows feverish and has nightmares, her 28-year-old sister, Fatin, said. She cries, "Let me go!"

(snip)

For most Iraqi victims of abduction and rape, getting medical and police assistance is a humiliating process. Deeply traditional notions of honor foster a sense of shame so strong that many families offer no consolation or support for victims, only blame.

Sanariya's four brothers and parents beat her daily, Fatin said, picking up a bamboo slat her father uses. The city morgue gets corpses of women who were murdered by their relatives in so-called honor killings after they returned from an abduction — even, in some cases, when they had not been raped, said Nidal Hussein, a morgue nurse.

"For a woman's family, all this is worse than death," said Dr. Khulud Younis, a gynecologist at the Alwiyah Women's Hospital. "They will face shame. If a woman has a sister, her future will be gone. These women don't deserve to be treated like this."

It is not uncommon in Baghdad to see lines of cars outside girls' schools. So fearful are parents that their daughters will be taken away that they refuse to simply drop them off; they or a relative will stay outside all day to make sure nothing happens.

(snip)

If an Iraqi woman wants to report a rape, she has to travel a bureaucratic odyssey. She first has to go to the police for documents that permit her to get a forensic test. That test is performed only at the city morgue. The police take a picture of the victim and stamp it, and then stamp her arm. "That is so no one else goes in her place and says that she was raped, that she lost her virginity," said Ms. Hussein, the nurse.

At the morgue, a committee of three male doctors performs a gynecological examination on the victim to determine if there was sexual abuse. The doctors are available only from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. If a victim arrives at any other time, she has to return the next day, without washing away any physical evidence.

(snip)

Yet even when women come to the hospital with injuries that are consistent with rape, they often insist something else happened. A 60-year-old woman asserted that she had been hit by a car. The mother of a 6-year-old girl begged the doctor to write a report saying that her daughter's hymen had been ruptured because she fell on a sharp object, a common lie families tell in the case of rape, Dr. Younis said.

Shame and fear compel the lies, Dr. Younis said. "A woman's father or brother, they feel it is their duty to kill her" if she has been raped, Dr. Younis said. "It is the tribal law. They will get only six months in prison and then they are out."

The article sort of half-heartedly tries to pin this increase on the war and looting and the defunding of the Iraqi infrastructure, but I think that's unclear. The police patrolled more, sure, but the reporting problem was still there. It's mostly just a reminder of the problems facing us as we try and install a republic in a place where nine year olds will be killed by their fathers because they were raped, and the father will only get 6 months of jail time; where reporting such rape involves letting the (let's be blunt) semen and sweat and blood sit on your body and in your vagina overnight while waiting for a doctor, and after you get examined they give you a stamp that says, "RAPED." In this situation there are, as they say, some cultural hurdles to overcome.

posted by Mike B. at 1:55 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, July 15, 2003

Speaking of annoying...let me quote this Atrios post:

I think for once Joe Klein basically gets it right here. For years the media hasn´t been confronted with angry Democrats, to our shame, and so when they find one they think that they are "leftists" or "extreme liberals."

I´always a bit amused when people accuse sites like Media Whores Online , or Move On, or this one as being "leftist." MWO have always been unabashed Clinton Democrats. Move On began to support a censure resolution to get the country past impeachment, hardly the agenda of radical leftists.

Clinton Democrats are not and have never been "leftists," unless you´ve redefined leftist, as Howie "I am not a whore shut up Shut Up SHUT UP SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP" Kurtz has, as anything to the left of Jonah Goldberg.

Sorry Atrios, I respect the power of blogs as much as you do, but Joe's column is about Howard Dean, not Calpundit, and by "angry Democrats" I think he primarily means candidates and policymakers, not pundits and the hoi polloi. So he may or may not be right about Dean, but he's not really concerned about you.

The question here, though, is--as it seems to have been in some of my other posts today--about rhetoric, language, and what power it can or should have. The damage Zacarias Moussaoui would do would be with words, not with weapons; Ari uses rhetoric as a weapon against understanding, weilding language as an offensive and defensive tool instead of as a conduit for communication. What Atrios is saying here is that, although the rhetoric of these writers may seem extremist (and yeah, folks, it kinda is), their actual policies are moderate, and that we should--what--see through all that and realize that they're (grr!) moderates.

But Klein seems to be saying that the leftist rhetoric, instead of being a liability or a shield to see through, is actually a boon for Dean:

The crowd seemed not to notice his shopworn moderation, though. Dean had been bold on the war—and so freshness was assumed on every other issue.

So here we have two models of the power of language. One (Klein's of Dean) says that you can use it as a shifting thing while your actual policies stay constant; presumably Dean will then tone done the rhetoric and focus on the fiscal conserative stuff during the GE, thus winning the primaries by appealing to hardcore Dems and the election by appealing to moderates / independents (or so goes the strategy). The other (Atrios') says that...well, I'm having a hard time parsing it. It says that either the interpreters (media) should look through their language to the actual policies they're pursuing--a hard proposition seeing as how the blogs under discussion are so strongly (and annoyingly) reactive and critical--or that using such rhetoric while pursuing more moderate goals is a good way to let off steam at the evils of the other side and rile up the base and like that.

Obviously I'm not a big fan of the latter model. In politics, after all, presentation is reality--it's all words--and so to judge MWO et al by their words, politics is simplistic, stupid, and debased. They may be moderates underneath, but they sound like Rush on top, and that's what matters. I mean, since when are "Clinton Democrats" all not leftists? I know a lot of Clinton Democrats who were pretty pissed off at some of the more moderate moves he made. Don't be afraid of the leftist tag, guys--just reclaim it.

As for the former model, I guess if it's true, I'm beginning to warm to Dean. Still, he's off-putting in the same way Atrios and krew are, and the gay marriage thing just doesn't sound like a good thing for a Presidential candidate to be embracing right now, to say nothing of his decidedly non-Clintonesque campaigning style. He'd be a good VP, though.

posted by Mike B. at 6:10 PM 0 comments

Hotmail sends me to a list of "Famous Mensa Members" with the intro:

Think Mensa members are all super-nerdy bookworms? Guess again.

It then goes on to list such non-nerds as Scott Adams, author of Dilbert, Joyce Carol Oates, "word expert" Richard Lederer, Buckminster Fuller, and Isaac fucking Asimov. Yeah, no nerds there, huh? Definitely no "bookworms."

Christ in heaven.

posted by Mike B. at 4:42 PM 0 comments

Eschaton, in its annoying way, points us to a Bush quote in which...well, just read:

Q Mr. President, thank you. On Iraq, what steps are being taken to ensure that questionable information, like the Africa uranium material, doesn't come to your desk and wind up in your speeches?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me first say that -- I think the intelligence I get is darn good intelligence. And the speeches I have given were backed by good intelligence. And I am absolutely convinced today, like I was convinced when I gave the speeches, that Saddam Hussein developed a program of weapons of mass destruction, and that our country made the right decision.

We worked with the United Nations -- as Kofi mentioned, not all nations agreed with the decision, but we worked with the United Nations. And Saddam Hussein did not comply. And it's the same intelligence, by the way, that my predecessor used to make the decision he made in 1998.

Yeah, 1998. Yeah, "my predecessor." He's actually trying to bring Clinton into this! Which is weird, because, you know, Clinton bad. It's also weird because he's saying the info they were acting on is at least five years old.

Incidentally, Mr. President, a lot of the people who are pissed off about the WMD thing now weren't particularly happy about Clinton's Iraq strike, either.

posted by Mike B. at 12:23 PM 0 comments

"To my good friend the neo-con rapper, isn't this something you could rap?"

Questioner: But in his statement he says that not once, but, in his words, several times, the White House was alerted to concerns about the quality of the intelligence. He meets with the President every day, he's meeting with him now. Did that subject never come up in any of these meetings?

Fleischer: The fact that it's fragmentary is what means that it should not have been -- risen to the Presidential level. There's all kinds of information that is available that may -- may not be true. And I've always talked about intelligence being mosaic. Some parts of the mosaic are very clear. Those parts that are the most clear are absolutely concrete is what should rise up to the Presidential level. There's many other pieces of intelligence in the mosaic that certainly may be true, they may be fragmentary, but they should not necessarily rise to the President's level. We're the ones who acknowledge that.

It would be cruel to say that questioning Ari Fleischer is like trying to figure out what a retarded seven-year-old wants for lunch, so I won't say that.

posted by Mike B. at 12:08 PM 0 comments

"No, we don't really feel like respecting the justice system, now that it comes down to it."

The Justice Department said today that it would defy a court order and refuse to make a captured member of Al Qaeda available for testimony in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui.

The department acknowledged that its decision could force a federal judge to dismiss the indictment against Mr. Moussaoui, the only person facing trial in the United States in connection with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

(snip)

Bush administration officials have said for months that if Mr. Moussaoui's indictment were dismissed, his prosecution would almost certainly be moved to a military tribunal, where Mr. Moussaoui would be expected to have fewer rights to gather testimony from witnesses like Mr. bin al-Shibh.

(snip)

"The government has established the damage to national security that such a deposition would cause," the department said. "The deposition, which would involve an admitted and unrepentant terrorist (the defendant) questioning one of his Al Qaeda confederates, would necessarily result in the unauthorized disclosure of classified information."

(snip)

The government has said Mr. bin al-Shibh is being interrogated at a secret place overseas.

So there's a few things I don't get about this.

First: uh, is this legal? It was my impression, perhaps misguided, that since military tribunals were a part of PATRIOT II, which hasn't been passed, that particular justice-hack wasn't an available option yet. Are they just going to go ahead with it anyway? What judge would be able to stop it? (And yeah, the fact that Z. decided to act as his own lawyer here ain't helping matters a bit.)

Second: call me crazy, but I don't see the danger. We have suspect X, under constant guard, and suspect Y, under constant guard, neither of whom have, y'know, lawyers. So even if they do get together and trade info about how they're planning on blowing up the Dairy Queen in Elkhart under the guise of an innocent discussion about taco stands in the Mission, how are they going to get the info out? Is Z. going to spill it in court in such a way that the, uh, al Qaeda operatives in the courtroom (?) act on it? Let's give all that the benefit of the doubt. Let's assume that al-Shibh gives Z. info and that Z. manages to communicate that in such a way that it can get to the ears of a sleeper cell. Even if that were possible, which seems, at best, highly unlikely, these guys haven't had any new information since they've been captured, and whatever info they had before capture was presumably already communicated. So what's the fucking point? Sure, there's a small, unlikely risk, but there's always a risk (the criminal could grab the baliff's gun and shoot up the courtroom, etc.), and in this case, that risk just ain't big enough to bypass the entire American judicial system. These people aren't masterminds--they're operatives, and I doubt anything they could say would be more or less likely to trigger a terrorist attack that anything coming from someone not in custody of the US government.

Give the nutcase his trial. It's way better for the health of the Republic. Secret, military trials would be much more efficient and better for security; the fact that we have, instead, an open judicial system is one of the sacrafices we make in a democracy.

posted by Mike B. at 11:03 AM 0 comments