Category: Media

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Cry Me a River

I just watched Bill Clinton’s State of the Union Address. Coming as it does, in the middle of impeachment hearings, it was extraordinary. It may well be the best political speech I have seen in the past ten years. You could not have guessed that the man delivering it was living his life under a cloud.

The Republicans are playing a peculiar game. The State of the Union Address was a no-win situation for them. Sit and growl and you look like sore losers. Stand and applaud, and you have to answer the question: why are you trying to impeach him? Conservatives say that the Republicans are showing a lot of principle here– they are willing to buck a year’s worth of polls that show, with uncanny consistency, that the voters utterly reject impeachment.

Is this really “principle”? I don’t believe it. Remember, we’re talking about politicians here who routinely accept large donations from big corporations in exchange for altering or creating legislation that favours their interests. Remember, we’re talking about politicians who want to rely on chemical companies to tell us if they think some of their products might be doing harm to the environment. Remember, we’re talking about politicians who not only give away our forests to the lumber companies, but also charge the taxpayers for the cost of building logging roads, and who think that “global warming” is a left-wing hoax. Remember, we’re talking Jesse Helms, and Bob Barr, and Henry Hyde here. They ask us to believe that nothing matters more to them than “principle”.

I suspect that many of the hardcore conservatives in the Republican Party have come to believe that polls reflect the effects of some kind of magical spell woven by the Clinton administration and the media, which will evaporate like moon-dust the minute Clinton is actually removed from office. They firmly believe that in two years, the voters will not care who impeached whom, and will once again vote for the “righteous” party, the party of self-interest, the party of guns, the party of big military bands, the party of Star Wars, the party of Kenneth Starr.

* * *

If anyone needed any further convincing that Kenneth Starr is a modern day Grand Inquisitor, consider the case of Julie Hiatt Steele. (If you haven’t already been convinced by his treatment–harassment, rather– of Webster Hubbell and Susan McDougall).

Julie Hiatt Steele got a phone call from Kathleen Wiley one day. Kathleen Wiley was going to tell the media that President Clinton had groped her on a visit to the Oval Office. She didn’t want anyone to think she had made up this story after hearing about all the other scandals involving Bill Clinton so she asked Julie Hiatt Steele to tell a reporter that Wiley had told her about the groping long before the headlines about Monica Lewinsky. Long before the book deal.

Julie Hiatt Steele agreed to do so. She called a reporter and confirmed the story.

A few days later, she called the reporter for whom she had confirmed Wiley’s story and told him that she had lied, and that Wiley had asked her to lie. The story wasn’t true.

I don’t think any of us will ever know why exactly.

Julie Hiatt Steele has now been charged, by Grand Inquisitor Kenneth Starr, with perjury and obstruction of justice. Her tax, bank and telephone records have been seized by Starr’s office. Her brother, accountant, and former attorney have been called in to testify. She could receive up to 54 years in jail. Julie Hiatt Steele has no other involvement in this case. She has never been to the White House. She has never had any contact with any person from the White House. She has recently adopted a Romanian orphan. She is a single mother. Her sin was to dispute Kathleen Wiley’s account of what happened after her meeting with President Clinton, testimony that Starr wanted very badly in order to persuade the Senate to impeach Clinton.

Kenneth Starr, beneath that smug, pious exterior, is a fanatic with unlimited power who is out of control. If the Republicans really believe that he has been impartial, they should sign a pledge that they will renew the Independent Prosecutor’s position when it comes up again even if there is a Republican President.

Kenneth Starr believes that Julie Hiatt Steele conspired with the Clinton White House to sabotage Kathleen Wiley’s allegations. This is kind of a strange idea, because, until the reporter called on Ms. Steele, nobody even knew who she was. It’s hard to imagine how the White House could have gotten to her before anybody in the media knew her name.

It is also hard to imagine an act more cynical, unscrupulous, and devious, than to indict this woman for perjury on the day of the State of the Union Address.

If you get a chance, watch Julie Steele in interviews. She seems like a very bright, articulate, decent person. She answers questions directly, quickly, with apparent candor. She is frightened and astounded that this indictment could happen to her in the United States of America, under the statute that gives Kenneth Starr almost unlimited power. We’re talking about a single mother here who has never committed a crime in her life being threatened with 54 years in prison. Even Marlin Fitzwater, the press secretary for George Bush, said he was appalled.

It appears that Kenneth Starr is punishing Ms. Steele for failing to collaborate his increasingly hysterical views of the Clinton White House.

Remember we all laughed when Hillary Clinton alleged a right wing conspiracy. Well, I sort of laughed. I thought it was a cheap shot, a political statement, not meant to be taken seriously. It’s smart to be skeptical of both sides on this issue.

Now I’m beginning to wonder. You have to keep in mind that the Jones case itself only survived judicial scorn through the efforts of wealthy Clinton foe Richard Scaife.

I suppose it is possible that Ms. Steele is an amazing liar. Either that, or Kenneth Starr is one amazing little fascist.

* * *

If the Senate does call witnesses, as everyone says they will, it becomes increasingly difficult to comprehend the Republican “strategy”. It is said that they favour calling Monica Lewinsky, Vernon Jordan, and Betty Currie.

I can’t imagine what they expect to gain. Monica is likely to repeat her statement that nobody promised her a job in exchange for her silence, or asked her to lie. If the managers from the House hope to intimidate her or shake her testimony, they will have to resort to some rather ham-fisted tactics, which don’t play very well on tv. I would expect the Republicans will try to have these hearings closed to the public, but, like I said, Republican strategy here is baffling.

How will it look on TV, to have frisky little Monica Lewinsky testify in front of 91 white men who are all old enough to be her father, and 9 women?

Betty Currie is another dangerous witness for the Republicans. Picture the svelte, sensitive Bob Barr, or Henry Hyde questioning this middle-age black secretary about who really arranged for the gifts to Monica Lewinsky to be returned. If she says, “I don’t really remember”, will one of the Inquisitors really go, “Come now, Mrs. Currie!” In front of the nation? Will William McCollum crack his whip or his wit? Will Trent Lott offer her a smoke, courtesy of the Tobacco Industry he has served so well in exchange for generous contributions, or invite her to a meeting of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a racist group to which he has given fawning keynote addresses?

How many people, besides myself, will glance around the Senate at that moment to determine who many black members are sitting? Take a guess.

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Trent Lott (2nd from left) with CCC members.

Then there is Vernon Jordan, the real bogey-man for the Falwell-inspired conspiracy buffs. Who is this mysterious man, operating in the shadows, elusive and silent in the face of all this cacophony? Well, by all accounts, he is a very shrewd, very intelligent man, who might just slice the Republican inquisitors to ribbons with his replies. The Republicans want to play with this witness?

And what if the Democrats call Linda Tripp? What if they call that slime-ball book agent from New York who first advised Linda to tape her conversations with Monica Lewinsky– Lucianne Goldberg? One could not imagine more appealing witnesses favourable to the prosecution other than Dracula and Frankenstein. What if they highlight Linda Tripps’ perjury, when she declared that she had no interest in writing a book on the subject to a Grand Jury— while tapes show that she was discussing with Ms. Goldberg how much information to hold back from Newsweek so she would still be able to command big bucks for an exclusive book contract?

* * *

Perhaps one of the most hysterically absurd myths about the Clinton scandal is that the media is in cahoots with the Democrats. I am in cahoots with the Democrats, and I have never been as infuriated with the media as I have been for the past year. I have watched endless hours of CNN– the 24-hour impeachment channel– and ABC and NBC and CBS. I’ve seen Dan Rather summoned back from Cuba to analyze the profound social and political implications of a semen-stained dress. I’ve seen reporters stare into a camera with a straight face and tell the world about the gravity of a situation which I found utterly hysterical and ridiculous. I’ve seen Larry King–divorced and re-married five times himself– solemnly pronounce that the entire nation was disgraced by Clinton’s sexual behavior.

And these are Clinton’s allies?

Well, lately, maybe they are. CNN has taken a more sober perspective. Jeff Greenfield now finds the impeachment somewhat bizarre. Greta Vansusteran now concedes that no reputable prosecutor would have proceeded with the case. Larry King arches his eyebrows and frowns while interviewing the indicted Julie Hiatt Steele. Bernard Shaw appears to grimace just a little while interviewing Bob Barr.

But Sam Donaldson still looks pretty solemn as he interviews Larry Flynt.

For the record, I would defy these people to name a single commentator in a major American television news department or news magazine who has given a “liberal” view of things, which is, that this has never been and never will be anything else but a desperate attempt by the Republicans to sabotage and destroy a Democratic administration. Yes, some of them may genuinely believe that Clinton’s offenses were serious. Most of them have simply been absorbed into the hysteria. They have no idea of what is up or down, left or right, rational or hysterical. They are simply in the middle of a political vortex that continues to spin out of control.

The real truth was accidentally revealed by Henry Hyde on Saturday. He said, “you may disagree with us, but at least we believe in something”. In other words, we arch-conservatives can’t believe that we are wrong. We refuse to accept. We can not admit it. We can’t tolerate those who disagree with us because their values are not real. We are the only arbiters of truth and justice. If we only had an army….

* * *

What made Clinton’s “State of the Union” speech so good? He struck a tone of non-partisanship. He showed no sour grapes. He touched upon all of the current hot-button issues for voters and took the “correct” position. He pre-empted the Republicans on every issue except tax cuts. He laid out a clear, specific agenda, with realistic goals and achievable results. He reminded America that times are very good, indeed, knowing that most Americans will identify the current levels of prosperity and growth with his administration.

The Republicans keep parroting that history will remember Clinton as the first President, since Andrew Johnson, to be tried for impeachment. To the contrary, I believe history will remember this era as “the good old days”, and exciting period of change and innovation–and prosperity– and it may well become known as the Clinton era.

On the other hand, some politicians may be remembered for voting to impeach the most popular president of the past fifty years. Or they may be forgotten as voters cast them aside.

When people look back today to assess presidents, what do they remember? Who is currently the most popular?

John F. Kennedy, who really accomplished very little, but looked like he had a lot of potential. And Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who carried on an affair for many years. Why is Roosevelt remembered so fondly? Because he communicated very well. He led the country through a decade of prosperity and continued growth. He made sane, rational decisions that seem, in retrospect, to have been the right ones to make.

Ronald Reagan? He was liked on a personal basis, but a lot of people have not forgotten that, thanks to his fantastical “trickle down” economic theory, he took the budget from a $45 billion deficit to a $540 billion deficit. I’m not kidding. You can look it up. How is it that the Republicans continue to pass themselves off as the “fiscally responsible” party?

Clinton has taken the budget from hundreds of billions in the red to about $80 billion in the black. The Republicans like to say they did it, all by themselves. But they also want you to believe that Ronald Reagan was a great president. But he couldn’t have done without the Democratic Congress. I guess we remember what we want to remember.

Think about it. This is a fact, confirmed by the most extensive scientific polling ever conducted– and the November elections: Bill Clinton is the most popular president in forty years.

The bottom line, for many Americans, is really quite intuitive. Two ships are in the harbour. Both are going to the same destination. One of them is captained by Kenneth Starr, and he introduces his officers to you: Bob Barr, Lindsey Graham, Asa Hutchinson, Newt Gingrich (hey– he got this ball rolling), and the rest of the gang. They explain that there is going to be lots of rules and they will be enforced strictly. Homosexuals are not allowed on board. No smoking or drinking, or rock’n’roll. Rich people get all the big cabins. They have to pay more for them, but only rich people get to dine with captain or use the pool. Religious services are held every Sunday and attendance is obligatory. Let’s pray first. And you’all be sure and have lots of fun.

The other ship is captained by Bill Clinton. He introduces his officers. Vernon Jordan, Betty Currie, William Cohen, Al Gore, and Hillary. You notice there are lots of buxom maids with big teeth. Can’t afford a ticket? You can work your way across the ocean in the kitchen.

Which ship will you choose?

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The Forbidden Lion King

In 1995 the Virginia-based American Life League urged a recall of “The Lion King,” arguing that in one scene rising clouds of dust spelled the word “sex.” – New York Times, January 7, 1999

Whoa! Baby! Quick, children, cover your eyes!

American Life League? Who are these people? Where are the little holes in the ground that they hide in whenever someone talks seriously about art and life and bodily functions? American Life League? Let me guess: they want a return to “traditional” values, emphasizing nation, God, and family, and hard work.

Just to feel better about myself, I think I will take a piece of cardboard and write the word “sex” on it and show it to my children tonight, just to see what happens.

Look out!

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Telephobia

Can’t resist revisiting this for my usual annoying ideas– what’s so great about the blasted telephone? It hangs on your wall. It sits there. It makes an annoying noise. You run to answer it. You don’t know who it is. You can’t see the person you’re talking to. It’s probably a salesman or a wrong number or an annoying neighbor– but, it’s too late! You picked it up. You said “hello”.

I think we should change the rules. When you pick up the phone, you should just listen. The other person should say, “Hi, it’s Bill– is anybody there?” Then you can decide. You can say, “You again? Go away” or you could say, “Bill? I’m moving this weekend and I have 45 boxes of books and need help– you have to come over.”

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Home Taping is Now Legal!

I don’t have a CD player in my truck so in order to listen to my favourite CDs, I have to copy them onto cassette tapes. Is that legal? We don’t really know for sure, do we? Music publishers used to try to tell us that it was not legal, but I think they’ve given up. Everybody does it.

It’s not just that everybody does it, though. Music publishers, like software publishers, have been trying to convince us for years that when you buy their products, you are not buying the physical disk on which the product is shipped, and which you would then be free to copy. You are buying the right to use their intellectual property (if you could call the Spice Girls “intellectual property”). If you were only buying the disk, you could make as many copies as you want. But if not, then you certainly have the right to use their intellectual property in your car or wherever you want. Nobody says, “you can buy this new Spice Girls CD– but you can only listen to it when you’re in your house.”

Think of all the people you know with stereos and cassette decks. How many of them, that you know of, are serving hard time right now? “Wha’dya in for, son?” “Err… home taping.”

Well, as of January 1, 1999, the music publishers, apparently, are going to agree with reality. That’s right. And you heard it here first.

You see, as of January 1, 1999, you will pay an extra 50 cents for every blank cassette tape that you buy in Canada, depending on length. That 50 cents will go to the legal body representing the music publishers and will be distributed to them, and, supposedly, to their composers and artists, as compensation.

Compensation for what? For home taping, you dummy!

Wait a minute– if I’m paying them for home-taping, then… gasp! That’s right. They are entering into an agreement with you, an implied contract, an exchange of money for services. And the service is none other than the right to copy music onto that cassette. No more guilt feelings! No more self-imposed restraint! Buy all the tape decks you want. Make as many copies as you want— after all, it’s not illegal anymore! You’re paying for it! It’s as simple as that. If you aren’t going to copy your CD’s, then what are you paying for? Nothing? You’re handing over your hard-earned dollars to the music publishing industry… just because you want to???

I want to thank the government and the recording industry for finally displaying some common sense. And for finally making good music available at a price we can all afford. For only about $.50 a cassette, plus the cost of the tape, we can now make all the copies we want.

I’m not positive, but it looks to me like you might even be able to sell those copies. Why not? You paid for it. The government and the music publishing industry have agreed on a “fair price”. They have agreed that 50 cents represents what it costs them when you copy one of their CDs onto your own tape. Okay. Fair enough. And the more tapes you buy, the more you pay. Since you’re paying for every tape, you should be able to make as many copies as you want! And since you’ve already paid for the music, you should be able to sell your copies to other people. I know it sounds naughty, but don’t worry: you’re paying for it!

There is a similar “tax” on CD’s used to record music in the U.S. and Canada. I find it really interesting that the same country that passes laws that allow handguns to be purchased by almost anybody, had decided that it should apply a special tax to every recordable CD sold just in case some people decide to make an illegal copy of something.

The NRA has an annual budget of $80,000,000.00. That’s almost as much as Mike Piazza makes in seven years. Don’t you wish you had $80,000,000.00?

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Dr. Laura’s Indescretion

You’ve probably heard the news, right? Self-righteous, simplistic-minded Dr. Laura, who tells her listeners what God says they should do, once posed naked for pictures by a former boyfriend, and now those pictures are all over the internet. They are even being posted in the Dr. Laura newsgroup.

Well, you can see worse things on the Internet, I suppose.

Dr. Laura first denied that the pictures existed. They were composites! Just like Bill Clinton! Then she admitted they existed, but they were stolen. Then she said she had the copyright on those pictures, so, they can’t be shown without her permission and she doesn’t give you her permission.

Copyright? Well, what do you know? If you take a picture of a bum on the street–except in Quebec–you don’t need any permission to publish this picture. By being in the street, you see, where everybody could see him, he was making himself “public”. So, he has no right to prevent you from taking his picture or showing what you saw to somebody else.

It’s a little different for a model. Models have to sign a release, to give you permission to use the pictures you take of them. That’s because they are not posing in the middle of the street– they are posing in a studio. You are paying them to pose. You have to get their permission.

Was Dr. Laura once a model? I don’t think so. Looks like she was just being nice to her former boyfriend. He wanted some dirty pictures he could keep as souvenirs.

The point is, I guess, that it doesn’t matter. Dr. Laura could get a hundred lawyers working on this full-time and they wouldn’t be able to stop the pictures. They are all over the world, on servers, in news groups, in web sites… everywhere. One little mistake, and kablooie! The whole world knows. People who have never heard Dr. Laura’s radio show can now see her naked by simply dialing into DejaNews.

Tell me– at this moment– are you trying to remember if you ever posed naked for anyone? Hmmm. You might be smart to post the pictures yourself. That way, at least you don’t look like you’re hiding anything from anybody.

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Mickey Rat

We were about to see the “Mickey’s Day Care Centre”. With a big picture of Mickey Mouse on the sign in the front yard. Yes, the day was coming.

But not yet. Right now, if you own a daycare, you can’t call it the Mickey Mouse Day Care, and you can’t put a picture of Pluto or Goofy on the sign. Mickey and his friends were copyrighted by Walt Disney way back when, and the copyright stays in force for fifty years. And The Disney Corporation has generally been quite ruthless about enforcing it’s copyright, taking day cares, schools, and other institutions to court to force them to remove Donald and Mickey and Goofy from their advertisements or classroom walls and pay up.  That’s because Disney loves children.  That’s Disney’s “family values”.

Well, in 2003, Mickey is “Public Domain”, which means anyone can use him.

Unless….

Let’s say for a moment you’re the Disney Corporation. The law says your copyright is going to expire because the first legislatures who created copyright law decided that you should not be able to cash in forever on your creative work, to sit on your assets, indolent, dependent on a legislative teat. After a reasonable period of time, you should have to do more work to continue to make money.

But you make a lot of money off this copyright.  It’s had work coming up with new ideas and new products.  So you go to the government, like any other citizen in this great country of ours, and say, “Please, can I keep my copyright?” The government says, “No, of course not. Ideas belong to everyone. Copyright, you see, is not about protecting your rights as an owner. It is merely designed to encourage innovation and creativity by giving a temporary period of protection. Your Mickey Mouse did not come from nowhere. Mr. Disney benefited from all the artists and innovators and creative persons who all contributed techniques and language and styles to our culture before him. Now, Mr. Mouse goes back where he belongs: to the greater body of culture.”  (And, of course, we discover that Mr. Disney did not, as it were, actually invent Mickey.  Someone else did and Mr. Disney took credit.)

“Well,” says Disney, “would you change the law if I pay you some money?” And Congress says, “Money! You have Money! Why didn’t you say so! Of course we can. We are a group of utterly corrupt and gutless wimps who always pass laws that favour the people who keep us in office by providing us with an endless supply of money to spend on election campaigns. Ask Archer, Daniels, Midland! Ask Jack Valenti! Ask anybody with money! It’s true! And since you have a lot more money than all of the day care owners in the world, you win!”

And so it was.

Disney’s Political Action Committee (PAC’s are created to bypass election laws that restrict the amount of money corporations can give a candidate, just so this sort of thing can’t happen, ha ha) gave election money to 10 of the 13 sponsors of the new copyright bill.

Now you might naively think, “that’s bribery!  That’s corruption!”  Well yes, but those same congressman wear flag pins in their lapels and promise to stop protestors from burning the U.S. flag and illegal immigrants from taking your job.

The new copyright bill extends legal protection for an additional 20 years, from 50 (after the death of the creator) to 70.

Now in 2023, do you think, by any chance, we will see another extension of the copyright law? Why don’t they just go for the gold: “in perpetuity”?

Maybe that would be too expensive for them.

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Clinton Clinton Clinton!

Two events signaled a decisive change in the course of the Clinton Scandal and the impeachment proceedings. Firstly, CNN ran a little piece by a reporter who is actually OUT THERE covering congressional elections. He gently chided people who think that the Clinton scandal matters. He reported that the people are interested in Education, Health Care, and the minimum wage. Nobody is asking candidates where they stand on the impeachment, and Republican candidates are not advertising the fact that they are in favour of it. Could it be they have SOME shame? That CNN aired this report indicates the passing of a fantasy. CNN is not exactly known for their bold, independent analysis of facts. They tried to play up the scandal big time and now appear to have accepted the fact that most Americans just don’t see it as that big a deal, and regard the entire impeachment stuff as nothing more than partisan politics. In the latest poll, less than 11% think Congress should proceed with impeachment. That’s less than the percentage of people who think the Earth is flat.

Newsweek ran an article on the scandal this week that compared it to Watergate. It was a light, irreverent piece, that made it clear that there was no comparison. Watergate was about a lot of very serious criminal acts by the President and his top advisors.

Both magazines are playing to a very subtle thing: the winds of perception. What they are saying is that there is now a widespread consensus that the Lewinsky scandal won’t wash as justification for impeachment.

Something I’ve been saying since January.

* * *

Conservatives like to rant and rave about the Presidency sinking to a new “low”, as if letting tens of thousands of people die in Rwanda or Bosnia wasn’t a “low”.

* * *

Have you bought a magazine lately? Have you ever gone to a really good magazine store, where they stock everything? I walk down the display case, boggled. There are magazines on every conceivable interest, including “Feminist Lesbian Natural Healing Cyber Music Guide” and “Mollusk Interpretations for Franciscan Feminist Social Worker Anthropoid Researchers”. Is there too much information in the world? Is there such a thing as too much information? There is probably a magazine on “Information Overload”. I think there is: “Adbusters”.

You can’t keep up with everything anymore. You just hope that Time or Newsweek picks up the important stuff, and that TV movies give you the basic issue information that you need to make intelligent conversation at parties.

The Internet is like one of these magazine stores, except a hundred times bigger. A million times bigger. I think what will happen is that, after spending hundreds of years making new information, we will spend the next hundred years sorting information into useful categories and subsets.

***

They are everywhere now: cameras. Web-cams. Video-conferencing.

Some day-cares are now installing T-1 connections and “KinderCams”. Parents can check on their little ones through the internet, at any time during the day. Some people find this scary. They’re right. It is scary. We’ll deal with the scary aspects of it. It’s also great. As long as the workers know they’re being watched, I think it’s great. On the one hand, yes, we are being suspicious and cynical about people. On the other hand, we will know more. It is always better to know more than to know less. We may learn that we have been hysterically paranoid for all of our lives for no reason. Or we may learn that life is full of little complexities that are best left alone. Or we may learn that generally day-care workers do a good job. Who knows? We just learn. We have this voracious appetite to know and see and hear everything.

***

Shift Magazine printed a Q&A between some hackers and Senator Fred Thompson. It was pointed out that when the Volkswagen Company found a defect that would affect only three cars out of 8,500, they sent letters to every owner and recalled all of the cars in order to fix it.

Are you still waiting for your letter from Microsoft? Me too. Did you realize that the entire Internet can be brought down by hackers breaking into Windows NT computers? Is that a defect?

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Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend

DeBeer’s runs these ads– you’ve seen them. A lovely woman and a lovely man frolicking on a beach. The woman is lithe and lithesome, dancing… the man takes her hand and leads her up to the cottage. We understand this immediately. We know what he is going to give her: a diamond.

“How else can two month’s salary last a life-time?”

So says DeBeer’s.

“There’s a sucker born every minute.”

So says P.T. Barnum.

You’ve got this young couple. They are both just starting their careers. They have no money. They rent a small apartment. They drive a seven-year-old car that needs a lot of fixin’. They borrowed from mom and dad to buy a fridge and a stove and still do their laundry at the Laundromat. They are thinking of having a baby. They decide to get married. Yeah, that’s the order it happens in nowadays. So some stranger in a very slick suit, looking oh-so-much better off than they are, driving a leased Buick, wearing a Rolex watch, impeccably coiffured, as they say, comes up to them and says: “You should give me two months of your salary for a worthless piece of spackle.” And the girl looks into her lover’s eyes and becomes a little dewy and smiles and touches his hand and says, “Wow? You’d do that for me?”

He says, are you nuts? I’m going to give that money to an orphanage.

No, of course he doesn’t. Because the man in the leased Buick has convinced his girlfriend that he is not worth it, if he doesn’t turn over two months of his salary and accept the spackle.

Why doesn’t he just throw himself in front of a car? It makes as much sense. I’ll bet the hospital bill would also be about two months salary. And, really, she should be even more impressed– that hurt!

I’d like to see those ads on tv. A couple frolicking on the road– you only see their shadows. She goes up on her tippy toes to kiss him, then mischievously runs away across the road, while Vivaldi whines on the sound track. He runs after her but before he can get across the road, you see the shadow of a Mack Truck, and hear the screeching of brakes.

Then you see a shadow of a hospital bed, the leg up in the air, and she’s holding his hand and bending down. “St. Michael’s Hospital– where else would two month’s salary last a life-time?”

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Crumbs

Crumbs

Robert Crumb is famous for a number of cartoons he created in the 1960’s and 70’s, the most celebrated of which was the Keep on Truckin’ schematic, which became a trademark of sorts to the Grateful Dead. He is also the originator of the Fritz the Cat character, which became the subject of a full-length x-rated movie by Ralph Bakshi. Crumb disapproved of the movie.

In 1994, Terry Zwigoff, a friend of Robert’s, made a disturbing, brilliant documentary called Crumb, about Robert, and his two brothers, Charles and Maxon. (Crumb’s sisters declined to take part in the film. You may wonder about that by the end of the film.)

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I say “disturbing”. Searing might be more like it. The Crumb brothers pull no punches. At times, you almost can’t believe they are saying the things they say on camera. Don’t they realize how shocking they are? Yet this is no television talk show. The brothers are never coy or evasive, and don’t really shift blame away from themselves, or try to cast themselves as unwitting victims. If there is one attractive quality about these brothers, it’s their honesty and their sense of personal responsibility.

Crumb’s father was brutally strict, and his mother over-compensated, and the three boys had some kind of weird chemistry going. From the time they were little, they became obsessively fascinated with comic books. They were extremely gifted at drawing and Robert even organized the three brothers into a production company and they created their own variations on Treasure Island.

All three were also severely socially dysfunctional. Charles, though in his forties, lives at home with his mother, almost never leaves the apartment, rarely bathes, and uses prescription drugs to keep from becoming “homicidally disturbed”. According to Robert and Maxon, he has never had a sexual relationship with anyone but himself. He had made several suicide attempts before the documentary was made, and, a year afterwards, finally succeeded, providing the film with a poignant postscript.

[Update 2022: read that paragraph now, it occurs to me that a big part of Charles’ troubles may have been the side-effect of the prescription drugs.  If he stopped taking them at any time, the effects of withdrawal would have produced “symptoms” that would like be attributed to his personality, instead of to the drugs themselves and the effects of withdrawal.]

Maxon lives alone in an apartment and has been arrested several times for sexual assault. He swallows a long length of cotton cloth every three weeks to cleanse his bowels, feeding it like string slowly into his mouth, and likes to sit on a bed of nails and meditate. Like Charles, he is, frankly, a slob. He describes, with helpless amusement, how he followed a girl wearing tight shorts into a drug store and could not resist the urge to pull them down while she was waiting in line at the checkout. Unlike Clinton, there is no evasion, no excuses, no hypocrisy. He confesses to a repugnant act, but you almost like him.

Robert, who at first appears to be seriously maladjusted, eventually emerges as the sanest of the three. He manages to make a living from his drawings, develops relationships with women, marries, divorces, marries again. He has two children, years apart, one by each wife. Yet you can see that he’s not too far removed from Maxon and Charles. The difference may be that Robert succeeded in transferring his anti-social impulses into his art.

Crumb is one of the most brutally honest documentaries you are likely to ever see. The three brothers talk openly about their father’s abusive discipline, their sexual preferences and fetishes, their own hopeless perspectives on themselves and each other. Robert’s comics have always been controversial, and the film includes interviews with editors and fellow cartoonists who express their own misgivings about some of his more controversial stories. In one, for example, two characters enjoy the sexual favours of a woman with no head. They consider her perfect, since they don’t have to make conversation with her afterwards. In another, an outwardly normal, All-American family, is actually rife with incest. An editor allows that she is not sure that Crumb actually disapproves of the incest. A third example is a parody of consumerism, describing a new canned meat product called “Niggerhearts”.

When challenged, Robert Crumb, like his brothers, is not very evasive, arrogant, or apologetic. Who knows, he seems to say. Maybe I should be locked up. I don’t know why I have to draw those things but I do. They’re in me. Implied, of course, is the idea that many of these ideas are in us as well. Considering the number of awards this documentary has garnered, you would have to admit that many critics and film-goers acknowledge this. How else could you stomach such a man, or a film about this man?

It is unclear, at times, whether Crumb is parodying himself or society in general or those who think they understand society. His stories are hardly simple parables.

Another example: a black woman is convinced by several businessmen that performing degrading acts will make her a superior human being. She doesn’t outsmart them, though she realizes she’s being put on. Some readers interpret this to mean that Crumb thinks she is as foolish as the white businessmen think she is. Or is this a parody of the businessmen, and the way they attempt to turn even social oppression into material advantage? Or is it an assertion that materialism is itself the most oppressive force in our society? (I favour the last one).

Is it a sin to be truthful? Only if your truth is different from everyone else’s. Is our society ready to admit that otherwise “decent” people can harbour obscene fantasies or racist beliefs? Is our society ready to admit that even victims can be stupid?

I don’t think we are. It’s too difficult. We are far more comfortable believing that blacks are inferior and that women suffocate men or that blacks are innocent victims of racism and that women are morally better than men. We don’t like being thrown a curve. But remember that the most powerful abolitionist tract of the 19th century was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Today, even black activists are mostly contemptuous of its simple-minded moralism’s. Why? Because someone like James Baldwin had the nerve to attack one of the most sacred icons of progressive and religious humanism in existence. And you know what? He was right.

So is Crumb merely ahead of his time?

Well, what really is outrageous nowadays? I think it is obvious that some of our values are completely screwed up. We find the Clinton-Lewinsky affair outrageous, but not the deaths of tens of thousands of Moslem Serbs. We are outraged by a school boy killing his class-mates with a high-powered rifle, but not by an organization that spends $80 million a year to promote unrestricted access to every kind of weapon imaginable. We are outraged by a school teacher who has sex with a Grade 6 student, but not by a talk show host (Larry King) who has been married five times. We are outraged by someone who clubs a gas station attendant over the head to steal $15, but not by a securities seller who rips his clients off for a billion dollars. We are outraged at a seventeen-year-old kid who breaks into houses to steal money to feed his drug habit, but not a pharmaceutical industry that is doing its level best to make us all dependent on drugs. We are outraged at Mexicans crossing the border to seek a better life in the U.S., but not at the economic imperialism that turns self-sufficient Central American economies into impoverished coffee growers for Starbucks. We are outraged when the United Nations wants to include the U.S. among the nations accountable for war crimes to a new World Court, but not when Congress continues to subsidize an Israeli government that denies the most fundamental human rights to its own Palestinian population. We are outraged when a protester burns a U.S. flag, but not when U.S. negotiators refuse to believe that fish stocks on the west coast are in danger of extinction if over-fishing continues. We are outraged when an artist puts a crucifix into a jar full of urine, but not when the record companies routinely cheat artists out of the royalties they are due by jiggering their accounting records. We are outraged by a doctor who helps terminally ill patients die without pain and in dignity, but not by doctors that routinely recommend expensive and useless surgeries to elderly patients who are likely to die within months anyway. We are outraged by cloned sheep, but not by attempts by corporations to patent human DNA sequences. We are outraged by homosexuals seeking benefit coverage for their partners, but not by the fact that we are denying AIDS treatments to impoverished African nations to protect our own patent rights.

What exactly determines our outrage? What is it that most excites us about someone else’s sin? Isn’t it probable that when we proclaim our outrage, especially when we do it in the strongest possible words, we thereby hope to impress others with our own purity, and deflect suspicion away from ourselves? Since no one suspects us of murdering children in Rwanda or robbing old women of their lives’ savings, we don’t get too excited about those crimes. But if someone were to suspect us of sexually harassing an attractive secretary…. well, we’ve probably had a thought or two about it, haven’t we?

What is most telling about this analysis is not that we seem to be so defensive about certain human failings. It’s that the human race, in general, doesn’t really care all that much about starving children or ethnic cleansing or torture or exploitation. We really don’t. But we badly need to pretend that we are virtuous, so, by common consent, we identify certain transgressions as worthy of our hysteria. We draw lines in the sand, and then go ballistic when someone crosses one of them.

I don’t really like Robert Crumb. At best, he is a maladjusted misogynistic misanthrope. But he is articulate and honest, and his cartoons are the work of a genius. There is a soft underbelly to American public morality, and Crumb pokes a sharper stick at this underbelly than anyone else.

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She’s a Femme Fatale: Raging Hypocrites

It was sort of inevitable, don’t you think?

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Henry Hyde’s “indiscretion”.

It has just been revealed that the Republican Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Henry Hyde, had an affair with a woman named Cherie Snodgrass, about thirty years ago. She was married, and so was he. We have also been informed that Dan Burton, one of Clinton’s harshest critics, fessed up that he has fathered a child in an extramarital affair. And Representative Helen Chenoweth of Idaho has also confessed to an illicit liaison. Well, let’s not be disingenuous here: they didn’t voluntarily fess up– they were caught. Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole, of course, are not with their first spouses anymore. Any details, Newt? Come one, Bob, let’s get this out into the open.

Ah, you say. But isn’t the issue perjury?

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The trouble is, for the Republicans, that they have had to justify Kenneth Starr’s report on the basis of the argument that Clinton’s personal sexual behaviour is relevant. And whenever these clowns appear on TV to argue for impeachment, they don’t talk much about legalities: they talk about trust and morality and values and leadership. Besides, Clinton’s perjury occurred during testimony which was eventually ruled “immaterial” by a judge in the Paula Jones case. That’s a pretty thin case for impeachment. But you understand the two-track strategy of the Republicans. They know that the public will not be outraged by the perjury which gives them the legal pretense to impeach, but they think the public might be outraged by the sexual relationship, which, however, cannot be the basis for an impeachment. So they are trying to blur the distinction. You are supposed to be so outraged at Clinton’s personal conduct, that you will consent to impeach him on a trivial legal issue Well, that’s how they got Al Capone. The well-known gang-meister was finally indicted for…. yes, tax evasion!

There is only one solution: Henry Hyde, Dan Burton, Helen Chenoweth, Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, and whoever else comes out of hiding soon enough, should all be impeached.

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If I were Henry Hyde, who is in charge of the committee for impeaching adulterers, I’d do the honorable thing and impeach myself first, just to show the American Public that the judicial system doesn’t play politics, and that the Clinton thing is not just a partisan Republican pogrom against a Democratic President, but a reflection of the Republican Party’s earnest devotion to purity and decency in government. So long Henry. Nice knowing you Dan. May you find healing and fulfillment Helen. I hope something comes along for you Newt.

The Republicans, by the way, have demanded that the FBI investigate whether the White House had a hand in getting these stories to the public. Think about this. The Republicans, who have just insisted on publishing extremely intimate details about the President’s sexual liaison with a 21-year-old intern, are outraged, I say, outraged, that someone should expose, with no detail whatsoever, the adulteries of some of their own. Who do they think is buying this? It’s too much! It’s insane! It’s a crazy world!

One last piece of craziness: the Republicans are arguing that the public needs to know these details, and that the impeachment proceedings should hear the evidence in public, and that all the information Kenneth Starr has gathered should be released, because it is important that justice been seen to be done publicly.

All of these decisions were made in a closed session of the Judiciary Committee Meeting.

* * *

While the Republicans were busy rationalizing themselves, Lou Reed, former leader of the Velvet Underground, was putting on a performance of his own. Lou Reed’s Velvet Underground was quite possibly the most aesthetically progressive rock band of the 1960’s. Listen to their stuff: you can’t believe it was recorded thirty years ago. It has a visceral rawness to it, the kind of edgy authenticity so-called alternative bands would die for. Nico, the lead singer on some of their most haunting ballads, is now dead, destroyed by years of drug abuse… not. She died in a bicycle accident. Lou Reed has found a second career walking the border between revision and nostalgia.

So where do you think they performed? At some dark night-club in New York? No, in the White House. President Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia was Bill Clinton’s guest this weekend. I wonder if Reed performed one of his better tunes, “Femme Fatale”:

Cause everybody knows (she’s a femme fatale)
The things she does to please (she’s a femme fatale)
She’s just a little tease (she’s a femme fatale)

If you would have told me, thirty years ago, that some day the Velvet Underground would be playing the White House!

Well, … actually, that is kind of what I thought thirty years ago. After all, we knew that we were all going to be fifty some day, and none of us really believed we were going to start listening to Frank Sinatra or Perry Como after we turned 40.

Now if you would have told me that Congress, in solemn session, would be listening in rapt devotion to intimate details about the President’s affair with a young intern– I would have thought you were mad.

Anyway, it’s happened. The most anti-establishment rock artist of the 60’s has played the White House. This has cosmic significance. As soon as I can think of what that is, I’ll try to write about it.