Speaking of culture, as neoconservative nation-builders would be well-advised to avoid doing
President Bush was answering a reporter's question about Canada's role in Iraq when suddenly he swerved into this extraneous thought: "There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily—are a different color than white can self-govern."
What does such careless talk say about the mind of this administration? Note that the clearly implied antecedent of the pronoun "ours" is "Americans." So the president seemed to be saying that white is, and brown is not, the color of Americans' skin. He does not mean that. But that is the sort of swamp one wanders into when trying to deflect doubts about policy by caricaturing and discrediting the doubters ...
This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts. Thinking is not the reiteration of bromides about how "all people yearn to live in freedom" (McClellan). And about how it is "cultural condescension" to doubt that some cultures have the requisite aptitudes for democracy (Bush). And about how it is a "myth" that "our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture" because "ours are not Western values; they are the universal values of the human spirit" (Tony Blair).
Speaking of culture, as neoconservative nation-builders would be well-advised to avoid doing, Pat Moynihan said: "The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself" ...
Being steadfast in defense of carefully considered convictions is a virtue. Being blankly incapable of distinguishing cherished hopes from disappointing facts, or of reassessing comforting doctrines in face of contrary evidence, is a crippling political vice.
- George F. Will, "Time for Bush to See The Realities of Iraq," washington post May 4, 2004
posted May 05, 2004 in politics, printand pinkeye
if anyone wants to do a documentary on the many variations of loud, crass Northeastern accents, the train is the perfect research site. The woman in front of me consoled her friend all the way from New Haven to Penn Station about a probable case of pinkeye. Her "a's" were so harsh I could feel my neck rattle every time she said the word "overreacting," which happened approximately 12,000 times.
Upon my return I saw my therapist and filled him in on a dream I'd had about my father. He persuaded me to try to talk to an empty sofa as though my dad were sitting there. I only came up with a stiff sentence or two. I really couldn't make it feel natural since I didn't have the right prop—i.e., a concealed weapon.
I guess it's clear I'm in a bad mood. I'm back in the city and it smells like hell. Last week a woman urinated on the floor next to me in a bodega near West Fourth Street while I was using the ATM.
The cashier ran around the counter. "Which one of you just peed on the floor?" she said.
Process of elimination is a bitch sometimes.
- maud newton, "Muumuu = muse?," maud newton: blog april 28, 2004
posted May 05, 2004 in printxanth
Mr. Maud's shelves are filled with sci-fi books. Occasionally I try them out, but I rarely finish. Ditto fantasy, save the likes of A.S. Byatt and Roald Dahl and Stephany Aulenback. Someone gave me a copy of The Anubis Gates back in college and after reading fifty pages I was so turned off by the prose (and, believe me, I use that word loosely) that I nearly set fire to it.* (Instead I walked up a flight of stairs to the honors boys' commons area and left it there. It was gone within 10 minutes.)
* Okay, it's true that I read Piers Anthony's Xanth novels when I was twelve. But I read them purely for the sex scenes.
- maud newton, "a word on politics and art," maud newton: blog april 14, 2004
posted May 05, 2004 in printi'll start right now by eliminating you
late, in aqua and ermine, gardenias
scaling her left sleeve in a spasm of scent,
her gloves white, her smile chastened, purse giddy
with stars and rhinestones clipped to her brilliantined hair,
on her free arm that fine Negro
Mr. Wonderful Smith.
It's the day that isn't, February 29th,
at the end of the shortest month of the year—
and the shittiest, too, everywhere
except Hollywood, California,
where the maid can wear mink and still be a maid,
bobbing her bandaged head and cursing
the white folks under her breath as she smiles
and shoos their silly daughters
in from the night dew ... What can she be
thinking of, striding into the ballroom
where no black face has ever showed itself
except above a serving tray?
- rita dove, "hattie mcdaniel arrives at the coconut grove"
posted May 05, 2004 in print