THE EDITORS

Everyone thinks that InstaPundit guy is so smart, but get a load of this, at the end of a lengthy and otherwise unremarkable post about John Kerry:

"In the interest of nauseating full disclosure, I once served as an adviser to the Heinz Family Foundation. They didn't give me any money. Or even any free ketchup."

He worked for Heinz and didn't get paid for it? For a self-admitted Good Ol' Boy (albeit the law-professin' kind), he cain't be too bright. Why, even Miz Noonan made a pile offen Enron.

Speaking of the unbright, check out this latest clarification from Andrew Sullivan of the Administration's aim in murdalizing Saddam: "It will reassert the global hegemony of the United States and its Anglosphere allies." (September 11 is also mentioned, minus the salient, increasingly and maddeningly unmentioned fact that this is not the guy who attacked us.) We Anglo-Saxon Peoples have done pretty well with our enemies since the Second World War, thanks to the influences of our arts, commerce, and diplomacy (our Southeast Asian adventures notwithstanding). The former Soviet Union, our sworn enemy for several decades, is now a vast, pro-Western marketplace, albeit a piratical one, and we didn't have to blow them up to make them so. A phalanx of Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, and Tower Records outlets would certainly do more lasting good to our relations in the region than carpet-bombing. Besides, hegemony begins at home, and Sullivan's daily swipes at Anglo nonjoiners such as Harold Pinter ("The poison of anti-Americanism is spreading far and wide") and other poets, singers, etc., indicate that Sullivan's vaunted fifth column is, by his standards, more of a threat than Saddam and his empty missle casings. Why not bomb Islington and the East Village first?

In observance of the rule of three, I must note that I had my TV on tonight with the sound off, but could still follow the essential narrative of ABC's Primetime's feature on a porn star: purty gal from heartland America enmeshed in a life of sexual depravity and pixel-altered tit shots. Thank God I didn't have to hear these people speak! Diane Sawyer's look of matronly concern and the alternately blubbering and pseudo-orgasmic countenance of "Michelle Sinclair" said it all. There's another reason why I don't mind that I can't afford cable: our sex- and judgement-mad (or is that sex-and-judgement mad?) country is portrayed more accurately, and perhaps more charmingly, through the PG-prism of network TV.

Roy
January 23, 2003
12:00 a.m.
Happy Anniversary

"The notion that Roe vs Wade is on the brink of extinction is also, by any reasonable measure, hyperbole. It's about as settled a part of constitutional law as you can imagine."--Andrew Sullivan, Jan. 14.

"President Bush has pleased anti-abortion activists by declaring a National Sanctity of Human Life Day and pledging his administration's commitment to 'build a culture that respects life.'"--CBS News, Jan. 15.

"Sen. David Fowler (R-Signal Mountain) said Sunday he will once again try to overturn a Tennessee Supreme Court ruling providing a right to abortion when the Tennessee state legislature convenes Monday...Sen. Fowler's last resolution which attempted to overturn the court's ruling failed to get out of the state Senate when 21 out of 33 senators voted in favor of his resolution, falling one vote short of the two-thirds majority needed. Sen. Fowler said he believes the election of this past fall has put 22 pro-life votes in place in the state Senate..."--(TN) Chattanoogan, Jan. 12.

"2003 marks the first year that U.S. Catholic dioceses are obliged to observe Jan. 22 liturgically as a 'day of penance for violations to the dignity of the human person committed through acts of abortion, and of prayer for the full restoration of the legal guarantee of the right to life'...[President] Bush has signaled his own willingness to take up the pro-life cause with a Jan. 7 decision to resubmit to the Senate the nominations of Charles Pickering of Mississippi and Priscilla Owen of Texas as candidates for federal appeals court judge."--Catholic News Service, Jan. 12.

"The United Hospital Center board [Clarksburg, WV] has been forced by public outcry to back down on a bylaw amendment to clear the way for medically unjustified abortions. 'Our policy will remain the same. We will not perform abortions, even in the very rare case where a lethal fetal abnormality exists,' said a disappointed UHC President Bruce Carter. 'We respect the community's values on this issue from a philosophical and religious standpoint, and the board has voted accordingly.'"--Lifesite.net, Jan. 15.

"We have filed Friend of the Court briefs on their behalf [Norma McCorvey, the "Jane Roe" of Roe v. Wade, and Sandra Cano, the "Mary Doe" of Doe v. Bolton] in the Donna Santa Marie case in which they ask the Court to overturn their cases... We plan to file a lawsuit against the Department of Health in Texas for a declaratory judgement that the Texas Department of Health and the board of Medical Examiners have failed to adequately protect women's health by not enforcing existing abortion facility regulations."--Operation Outcry.

"You're gonna kick yourselves when I show you how he did this, it's so simple. 'Cause magic is all about...misdirection."--"The Amazing Maleeni," The X-Files.

Roy
January 22, 2003
1:30 a.m.
Random Observations

Weird outburst at the end of a Rod Dreher Corner post Monday on urban sprawl: "All it takes is riding the NYC subway daily, and having to live with fear and loathing of the violent, profane and altogether anti-social teenagers who make public spaces here their playpens, to understand why middle-class people get fed up and move the hell out of town to raise their kids." My ears perked up. Could it be that Dreher will be leaving Brooklyn? Like the blind man in Los Olvidados, I found myself crying: One less! One less! Because one of the few shreds of hope we can have for our poor City is that its increasing inhospitability will drive out those who recently came here on the promise that New York was just like their little town back home, but with cooler clubs and restaurants. Once they're gone, might we longtime residents get to revive the vital, unique City that once was? Dare to dream, true Sons of Tammany! (P.S., Rod: take your horror of dildoes and "hook-ups" back to the Bayou with you!)

What's up with the warbloggers in the current weird abeyance of hostilities? Comic-book fantasy. Steven Den Beste envisions an elaborate scenario involving the discovery, after our occupation of Iraq, of evidence that Germany and France sold munitions to Iraq during the arms embargo. This is, as they say, a pretty big "if," and one wonders why Den Beste conceived it; the answer soon comes--so that he could construct this delicious turn of events: "The only thing that would even remotely mollify American Jacksonians would be a clear indication that the people of France and Germany had themselves repudiated the leaders responsible for this. If French and German voters clearly indicate that they hate what happened, and dump all of the leaders responsible, and put a lot of them in jail, and if the new governments there clearly state that those who did it were indeed renegades, and apologize, then America's Jacksonians would then permit relations at a somewhat cooler level to continue." Warbloggers have already shown great enthusiam for taking over Iraq and running its affairs (they once felt the same way about Afghanistan though, strangely enough, once it was conquered, they seemed to lose all interest in it). Now they're really dreaming big. What's most interesting is the list of non-negotiable conditions the American Jacksonians would impress upon the Eurotraitors. Doesn't it sound like an ultimatum from Dr. Doom? (By the way, if you're unfamiliar with DB and wondering about that "American Jacksonian" thing, don't bother. You'd have to read hundreds of words and it's not worth it. If you doubt me, consider that elsewhere he calls it "Crabgrass Jacksonianism." Picture an angry suburban dad racing across his lawn on a tractor-mower, imagining himself at the helm of a helm of a hummer riding to meet Saddam.)

Finally, from Fox News (they disport, I deride), some yuks at Canucks: " Requiring prison inmates to wear a photo ID tag that lists race along with their name, date of birth, eye and hair color, weight and height is an egregious example of racial profiling that is inappropriate, illegal and another sad example of how corrupt American values are creeping into Canadian society, reports the Toronto Star." The Little Foxies mock our frostback neighbors, but given all the recent right-wing "We, Too, Have a Dream" palaver about color-blindness regarding the University of Michigan case, wouldn't it be fair to expect opponents of racial preferences to also be against racial profiling? I mean, if we're not supposed to acknowledge race as a factor in education, shouldn't we also eschew it in law enforcement? (I'm joshing, of course. Conservatives have always taken policing more seriously than education.)

Roy
January 20, 2003
12:30 a.m.
Rotten Tomatoes

"It continues to amaze me that the Left believes that the defamation of a person making an unfriendly argument constitutes a counterargument."--PejmanPundit.

"I don't hate Michael Moore, I pity him--he's going to die in 15 years of a massive coronary on a cold tiled bathroom floor, awash in the blasts of his emptied bowels, his autopsy photos posted to The Smoking Gun's new 3D holographic photo section."--James Lileks.

I could go on and on like this, but why bother? Scroll through your favorite political weblog, and any ten others, and note how much of them is devoted to zingers. Sometimes there's a link to some actual analysis, and occasionally an "Indeed," but the heart of the batting order, the money shot, the thing that resonates in the echo chamber--haw haw! He shore nailed that fat fuck!--is the zinger.

It is an observable fact that much of what passes for political and social analysis in the world of weblogs is pure invective. Now, invective is a fine rhetorical device and a legitimate means of getting an idea across. It's also more fun to write, and to read, than the dry argumentation of position papers. It's what drags me to the keyboard more often than not, certainly, to write or to read.

But it's useful to note that the medium is richer in sneers than in substantive argument, and is closer in character to Entertainment Weekly than Foreign Affairs, because it has been taken for granted that the flourishing of political weblogs is a boon to our public discourse. Recently, in PBS's celebratory coverage of the phenomenon, the proprietress of JaneGalt.net said that "What's happening between journalism and blogs is equivalent to going from a sort of very primitive brain to a very advanced, processing brain." I would expect an advanced, processing brain to turn out superior product, but while I see a lot of new vendors, their product is in the main rotten tomatoes, suitable for throwing but not for consumption.

Like most endeavors that have been digitally souped-up in recent years (music, for example), journalism has enjoyed faster and more far-reaching transmission, and shinier surfaces, without a proportionate uptick in quality. It's easier to find attributions and do research, sure, and to get your words before the public, but the important part of the gig is to put a story together in an eloquent and convincing way, which is not a craft that can be improved by computers or distribution of labor.

But why listen to an old crank like me? If you hurry, you can still post an entry in a contest for the "dumbest protest signs" from this weekend's rallies. Keep that brain processing and advancing!

Roy
January 15, 2003
12:30 a.m.
Clio's Memory

"That's the awful thing about hunger: no sooner is it satisfied than back it comes again."--Bertolt Brecht, St. Joan of the Stockyards

Tonight I watched the PBS special about Chicago as it considered the case of the Haymarket Square Riot. In 1887 a meeting of anarchists and laborites was interrupted by the explosion of a bomb, which killed three policemen, and for which several men who could not have thrown the bomb swung by their necks.

The anarchists were a scary crew, as readers of Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower know. It may be that some of the convicted had foreknowledge of the crime or its perpetrators. But the speedy and unjust handling of the case, strongly influenced by Chicago plutocrats such as Marshall Field, did nothing to soothe the tensions between the working and the ruling classes, and much effort would be expended, and blood spilled, before something like an accomodation could be reached.

We are well past the heyday of the Labor Movement. Unions are in decline, and power has largely flown the other way. God knows the 40-hour work week for which laborers once put everything on the line is dead. One of the companies for which I work has recently cut the number of sick days offered its employees from "unlimited" to five per year. The company is doing well. Why would they cut sick days? Because they can. (This does not touch me because, like an increasing number of laborers, I am not on payroll, and so get no sick days whatever.)

Now the President proposes a tax plan the signal feature of which is massive cuts in the taxation of dividends. The political logic of this is clear: it appeals to the many Americans who do not consider themselves employees at all, whatever their employment status, but investors. This is canny, as, like real businesses, an enormous number of us carry an unconscionable amount of debt, and no one likes to think of himself as part of that great loser class known as the working stiffs. (Actually one should shout hosanna to be a working stiff, given America's parlous job market.)

For now, for the chosen many, only slowly dwindling to a chosen few, who can roll their SUVs across the fruited plains without fear (or acknowledgment) of bankruptcy, I'm sure this is all well and good. Still, you have to wonder how all this indirection will ultimately work out. In tonight's TV program, the dramatized hurling of the Haymarket bomb into the Chicago sky flashed me back hard to New York's Tompkins Square Riot of 1988. The first sign I had that night, 101 years after Haymarket, that things were going to go badly was a 40-ounce bottle of beer, flung and spinning furiously into the sky. We all know how that came out, and that the East Village is now one of the prettier Potemkin villages in our declining City. But that was only fifteen years ago -- in the eye of Clio, the muse of History, merely a wink.

Our struggles are quieter now than they were at the time of Haymarket, and God grant that they will be less bloody. But we must eventually be fed on something heartier than the prospect of increased dividend payments. Everything in American life from the Revolution forward has pushed us toward a better life, and I can't believe that we can live long on the wan prospects now offered without an aggressive show of displeasure.

Shortly after the riot, Chicago erected a statue to the cops who fell in Haymarket. In 1970, someone blew it off its pedestal. Since then it has been kept within the confines of police property.

Some memories are short, some are long. But none is as long, nor as constant, as the memory of Clio.

Roy
January 14, 2003
7:30 p.m.
Pete's Case

There's real irony, not the Seinfeld kind, in Pete Townshend's arrest, and maybe, to use another discredited Greek term, real tragedy too.

I don't doubt that his interest in child porn is more than prurient. Townshend wrote "Fiddle About" and "Cousin Kevin" and "Rough Boys," and I don't think they were jokes or (in the case of the "Tommy" songs) pure plot contrivances. I also accept his seemingly confused explanation that he "suspects" he was himself abused as a child--abused children are skillful at inventing mental defenses against their situation, skillful enough to thwart their adult selves when they try to figure it out.

I don't think he's just trying to talk his way out of it. Townshend recently reviewed the Cobain diaries and noted, "There is some insider interest generated by some of the images. On page 139, there is a small cartoon of a baby swimming underwater, obviously the inspiration for the cover of Nevermind. But that art was redeemed because the face of the child was happy and free. Cobain's cartoon is captioned: 'Sell the kids for food.' No irony here. In a world plagued by the abuse of children, it is depressing, because what troubles Kurt was and is still real."

Real in the world and, I guess, in Townshend. In a Playboy interview from 1994, Townshend referred to Roger Daltrey as "the abusive thug of an older brother I never had," and said that Daltrey sometimes used physical intimidation in rehearsals to get his way. Try to imagine a state of mind in which this a normal way of collaborating with partners--and destroying hotel rooms and guitars is a normal way of addressing the world. Rock and roll is a dark and frightening place, but many of us who got there came from some nearby location that was no less dark and frightening.

Of course, the same claims could be sincerely made on behalf of any pedophile. And Pete was apparently caught with the goods, though I don't know exactly what the nature of the porn was. Maybe it was stories, maybe it was the kind of digital manipulation cleared by the Supreme Court last year. Maybe it was a patently bogus "Lolita" site. Or maybe it was pictures of real kids in sexual situations.

Am I giving him the benefit of the doubt because he's an artist who has been important to me? If, as Faulkner supposed said, a great poem is worth any number of little old ladies, does that make the work of Pete Townshend worth any number of violated children? That decision is thankfully not in my hands. There is a time to be prescriptive, and a time to just be depressed.

Martin
January 12, 2003
4:45 p.m.
Cover Letter

Staff Reporter, Financial (Manh.): Works under close supervision of editors + professionals and receives spec. instructions on req tasks + results expected. Responsible for filing mortgage tech and bus reports + articles for the Group. Report on state mortgage banker broker groups for mortgage info services and publications. Work closely monitored & reviewed for accuracy. Bachelors or equivalent in Econ, Journalism or Eng + 1 yr exp in the job including business writing/tech features for fin pub. M-F, 9-5, $42,025/yr. Send resume in duplicate to: AIM-431, PO Box 703, NY, NY 10014-0703.

http://jobs.nytimes.com/texis/js/job.html?id=3e1f991ca2

MFD-364
*** ******* Street
Brooklyn, NY 11231

January 12, 2003

AIM-431
P.O. Box 703
New York, NY 10014-0703

Dear AIM-431,

Please consider me for the job of Staff Reporter.

I am accustomed to working under the close supervision of professionals and editors, whereby I have, on a daily basis, received spec. I am a veritable genius when it comes to req tasks plus results.

My bus reports are second to none, although I will admit some unfamiliarity with mortgage tech. I should learn quickly however, as was the case when I first began filing bus reports several years ago, having no background in public transportation. I excelled simply by my eagerness to learn, and, of course, by my natural intelligence, which should be evidenced amply in all I say and do.

I have been monitored and reviewed for accuracy by the most stringent investigative bodies. You might sleep well knowing that your monitors would find only the rare error in my judgement -- such as the time when I included an inside joke in my copy, which I expected the proofreader, who was a close friend, to catch. Alas, he did not, and the phrase "who was a really big dork," slipped into a report that, only by the grace of God, did not finally make its way to print. My reprimand and embarrassment over the incident cured me of all such capriciousness.

I am not a bachelor, I must admit also, having been married to a charming young lady these two years past. Nevertheless, I can pose as one easily: It is just a matter of removing the ring and plying my conscience with a few drinks.

Furthermore, I have written for several Finn pubs, living as I did in Helsinki for a period of time, and knocking about the lively pub scene there.

You request my resume in duplicate. Nay, you shall have it in triplicate -- so great is my desire to find favor with you and secure a place on your staff, whoever you may be.

Know also that I will exhibit unwavering devotion to the Group, so long as you provide for my salary and health insurance dependably, with stock options, two weeks' vacation pay, five days' sick pay, two personal days per year, and promises for an annual Christmas bonus.

Sincerely,

MFD-364, Eng., EOE

Roy
January 10, 2003
12:30 a.m.
The Human Factor

Sometimes you have to wonder if the people you read on the web intersect with reality at any point. So often they discuss matters of life and death as if they were After-School Special scripts.

A case in point is the popular Instapundit, who makes this bizarre observation on the current Korean crisis:

"LAST NIGHT there was a Cosby show rerun on Nickelodeon. Theo defies his parents, and they leave him with nowhere to live in order to teach him that actions have consequences, and forgiveness isn't to be taken for granted...I wonder if there's a parallel to be drawn here?...long-term, there's a lot to be gained by reminding our triangulating allies that American love, and American forgiveness, are not to be taken for granted either. That's a lesson we keep ramming home to the Germans. And the Koreans need to learn it too. We live in a world where most of our allies are Theo Huxtables..."

Maybe this guy should be writing for Bush. "Good and Evil" has been getting a little old as an metaphor, but "Cliff and Theo Huxtable" might have some juice in it. Plus, they're black! Take that, Trent Lott!

Another of my betes noir, James Lileks, has also been known to play G.I. Joe with world events, but he's a real writer, and every so often takes a fuller accounting of human suffering. Though he usually scoffs at those who mourn the old urban folkways crushed by progress ("There is, for some, a romantic attachment to grime, filth, vandalism and all the other glories of urban decay that I do not quite understand"), he still was moved by the replacement of an old-fashioned coffee kiosk by a barista boite to write this:

"What happened to the previous coffee vendor? What happened to the guys he hired? Here we have an inexplicable random economic spasm that threw some guys out of work. It's probably not worth a story in the paper--this stuff happens all the time, and if any of us recall our youthful employment histories, we know that jobs come and go when you're dogpaddling through your twenties."

(For many of us, not only then, Jim, we are moved to interrupt.)

"But still. Our coffee satisfaction continues; we get our Americanos. Does it matter who supplies them? Well, yes, it does. Perhaps the new vendors made a cheaper bid--but don't expect me to click my heels in whoo-hoo gratitude. I'd rather pay an extra dime and buy my coffee from the same fellow over the years than save a few pennies and deal with an endless parade of interchangeable clerks.

"We get a brief, grim glimpse of the reality outside our comfortable castle...then we head back to work, coffee in hand."

The moment was fleeting, but it was there. This may in part explain why some of us write about Lileks more in sorrow than in anger. The stuff he's often on about you could get any epistomaniacal law professor with a thesaurus to emit. Notice of the human factor is a writer's job.

Roy
January 9, 2003
12:30 a.m.
Kubrick and Daredevil

Waiting at the bus stop this evening, I saw a poster for the new Daredevil movie: beautiful comic-book humans encased in black rubber. I was holding in my hand the Michael Herr book, Kubrick. Such little serendipities give life its savor.

If you assume that I am about to launch a high art-low crap screed, you are only partly right. I will say, though, that I have nothing pre-emptive against Daredevil. Nobody expects anything from it other than what its poster promises, and that strikes me as honest and fine. With Stanley Kubrick, of course, the case was more complicated, and to some extent less fair.

One of the best features of Herr's book is that it shows how seriously the great director took the Hollywood grosses game. He actually asked a writer once, "How can I make a movie that would gross as much as Star Wars and yet allow me to retain my reputation for social responsibility?" (He was fiddling with AI at the time.) He liked using popular movie stars, but complained when Jack Nicholson made more money out of The Shining than he did. He was a tummler and a spieler along with everything else.

Kubrick involved himself deeply with the pre-release campaign of Eyes Wide Shut, which crassly misrepresented the movie to such an astonishing degree that normally intelligent people made fools of themselves criticizing it. Worst of that lot was the wonderful writer Mary Gaitskill, who complained that it was "no fun" and offered as definitive criticism that it had failed to genitally arouse her male friend--as if the best barometer of a major artist's work was the Peter-Meter from Screw magazine. (For a great account of this hysterical blindness among Kubrick's detractors, see Lee Siegel's appreciation.)

So the old boy was not some artiste whining that the world misunderstood him (how could he, when it had made him rich, and he had willfully contributed to the misunderstanding?). But the films themselves are magnificent and singular. I can't think of one that hasn't got a better reputation now than when it was released. The exception may be "Lolita," but when you see Kubrick's take next to the more "faithful" version made years later with Jeremy Irons, you might agree that Kubrick did better to concentrate on social satire and sexual politics than on the hot parts; the later version's gaping sexualism seems more appropriate to the book's pusillanimous psychiatrist than to its knowing author.

Kubrick lacked none of the ambition of today's moviemakers, nor, it would seem, their reverence for what works at the box office. Yet he didn't make Daredevil (whose grosses he will certainly note with interest from Valhalla). He made movies that took a while to catch up with. This suggests that though he made art, he thought of it, at least when away from the set and the editing machine, as product.

I think that's wonderful. It insulates me against the cold dread I often feel, and I doubt I'm alone in this, that to make art today is necessarily a doomed mission. We may have to tummel and spiel a bit to get it over, but it can be done--it has been done.

Herr's book also notes that Kubrick was uncomfortable around his collaborator on The Killing, Jim Thompson, especially when Thompson showed up for writing sessions with a bottle of whiskey in a paper bag. Well, of course. Why play the damned artist? There need be no damnation in it. Only glory.

Roy
January 8, 2003
1:30 a.m.
A City About Nothing

The Republicans will hold their 2004 convention in New York. No one finds this suprising, nor, alas, should they. True, the last Republican presidential candidate to poll a majority here was Calvin Coolidge. But loyalties have nothing to do with this, nor, indeed, with anything.

At Newsday Ellis Henican is properly dismissive: when it comes to ethnic cred, he says, "We've got all the window dressing" the post-Lott GOP could use. But Henican is also forced to admit that, in fact, New York has become a lot more like the rest of the country than it once was. He cites the clean streets and chain stores, but we resemble our fellow-citizens in the Flyover in other ways, as well: We too are in economic free-fall--a little more advanced than our neighbors', but New York was always cutting-edge. We are as ill-served and ill-used by our government as everyone else--else why would we put up so passively with a Mayor who responds to our coming economic catastrophe with a smoking ban and a blank stare? We are as confused as any cow-towners as to what to do about it. Roiling, robustious New York once greeted the depradations of its overlords with Bronx cheers at least; now we are as pacific as Sheep Meadow in the dead of winter.

To me, this means not that we are more Republican, but that we are less anything. The homogenization of modern life has long been observed elsewhere--fading dialects, assimilationist fashions, sprawling, faceless suburbs--but New York long remained anomalous, filthy and furious to the last ditch. Well, the last ditch has been filled in, and a Starbucks built over it. We got with this safer, cleaner streets, for however long we can keep them, but what else is left that a respectable Midwestern subdivision doesn't have? Mainly the legacies: great cultural institutions, great parks, a still-vibrant nightlife. But these things take money to maintain, and the money is running out. Already a night on the town is ridiculously expensive; how long before "suggested" admission fees at the Met go the way of free subway rides on New Year's Eve? (Yes, kids, we once has those, even in bankruptcy.) The research libraries are closed on Mondays. The subway fares are going up. And the cut-price cultural alternatives that were once the silver lining of the underfinanced New Yorker are, as any gallery-hopping expedition will show, laughably unsuitable. Before long New York may become what an old bum once told me it was long ago: the best place in the world if you have money, and the worst if you don't.

But ours is only one specific, albeit noteworthy, symptom of a national illness. Andrew Sullivan applauds Florida Senator Bob Graham for "accusing Bush of being too soft on international terror and Iraq." Given Sullivan's warm feelings for W, this at first seems strange. But Sullivan is generously thinking of Bush's opponents: "Let Graham run [for President]," he concludes. "It'll be good for the Dems and good for the country." "Good for the Dems," of course, means it will make them, essentially, Republicans Lite--if they aren't already--and further marginalize all demurrers against the War of Us Against All.

This country has throughout its history vomited up any number of indigestible crackpot ideas, most of which we are well rid of. But I feel that, more than ever, we are now experiencing a general revulsion toward contrary thinking of any kind. The too-little-noted problem with most of the allegedly brave attacks against Political Correctness, for example, is that such attacks are totally mainstream and popular. Where but in a few academic redoubts can you really get into trouble for making fun of multiculti professors or other such political marginalia? Suggest that we might do with a better health care system, though, and you're sneered off the face of the earth.

When one considers that, once upon a time, this culture had both Art Linkletter and Lenny Bruce floating around in it, and now we have Bill Bennett and Bill Maher, it's enough to make one vomit up a few indigestibles oneself.

So let the Republicans come. Let their speechwriters manipulate the public utterances of their clients till they are unassailably innocuous, and let the Democrats' scribes do the same in Boston. Let drums beat, flags snap in the wind, and money roar down the drain as we wander the earth looking for politically viable enemies. There's yet some powder and some provender left, and all may end happily. As long as we all agree, how wrong can we be?

Roy
January 5, 2003
1:30 a.m.
Two Wheels and a Passion

I got drunk at Martin's place and borrowed his bike to get home. On the snowy streets I slid three times and fell over but, after finally carrying the ridiculously heavy Schwinn up five flights to my apartment, was glad I'd ridden.

Why? Well, this is hard to imagine in car country, but there is something to be said for getting around under one's own power.Walking is of course the purest course, but we are far removed from the easily gotten-around villages of our ancestors, and the bike remains our most efficient use of personal effort toward transport.

Bikes are sleek. Mechanically not much can be done to improve upon them. Different designs have been tried, more speeds have been loaded onto the gearboxes, but the basic pedal-principle is largely unaltered. In fact there has been a retro vogue in the field, and Martin's bike is pedal- rather than handle-braked, like the first bikes many of us rode back in our youth.

Iris Murdoch observed that "other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish--only the bicycle remains pure in heart." Well, yes. One not only propels one's bike, but also endeavors to keep it upright. This is at first (and after a few months' layoff, as in my case) difficult, and even frightening in city traffic, but once the thing is mastered, the bicycle's primitive design becomes a blessing: one can weave through traffic, veer quickly to avoid potholes, and, of course, when necessity or pure animal spirits dictate, stand stiff-legged on the pedals and use the lower two-thirds of one's body to accelerate, feeling pleasure at the burst of speed and pride that it is gained completely by one's own accomplishment. You don't get that from a 4-by-4 or a Segway.

My own bike was stolen just as Fall came, and I was able to muffle my sorrow with the knowledge that the sensation of wind in my face that was so pleasing in warm weather would be less pleasing in December. But having ridden through snow in January, all I can think of now is Spring, and the joy a bike will give me then. Maybe that's the best thing about cycling: it sharpens even the city-dweller's appreciation of good weather; even though the road be concrete and the surroundings no less hard and barren, the pleasure of the pedals rises with every favorable shift of wind and slant of sunlight. The world is just a better place on a bike.

Roy
January 2, 2003
12:30 a.m.
Ultrahusniks

A former bandmate of mine sent me a link to a page about Ultrahus. This was the place just outside of Stockholm where our ensemble, the Shaved Pigs, closed our first European tour back in 1988. Whether Ultrahus was (is?) a squat, a collective, or just somebody's house, I never got straight (I neither read nor speak Swedish, and our hosts on that occasion communicated with us mainly in broken English and profferings of beer and cheese.)

Here is a picture of the place as it looked then:

If the mp3s work, you can hear the Shaved Pigs in full cry, with my voice resembling that of a roadshow Lemmy after ten nights of extreme vocal abuse (explained at length here).

It was a good set and a good time. We had played bigger, more traditional venues, but the folks you see in the picture were supportive and full of feral rock energy--in a kindly, socialized republic sort of way, by which I mean that they didn't try to to rip us off or beat us up. I have played similar squats, house parties, and ragtag public events in the States, and you always had to keep an eye on your stuff and your self. One time, for instance, with another band in a basement in Northampton, MA, one of my colleagues was dancing around with a bag over his head--don't ask--and some idiot tackled him. Hereabouts, the Dionysian spirit usually spurs at least a little violence or shady dealing. But the Ultrahusniks were wildly enthusiastic and total sweethearts.

I recently ran into a fellow musician who has been at it much more assiduously than ever I have been for ever so much longer. He plays all kinds of places, some of them no more legit than Ultrahus, and he's also had some trouble, but he's had some great times, too, and he maintains a cheerful spirit and willingness to crank it up anywhere, anytime. I'm going to make that guy one of my role models for the year. And when life leads me into some ramshackle place where I don't know the lay of the land, I'm going to think of Ultrahus as well as of Northampton, and keep one eye on my shit, but also one eye on the possibility that some things can be fine even when they're covered with graffiti and no one speaks English.