• It’s not news that the corporate leviathan now has its sights firmly fixed on consciousness itself. It’s your consciousness that the monster is selling you. It “helps” direct and fix it firmly, usually with considerable emotion, to the commodity of your choice. Or should I say the ‘fantasy’ of your choice. Your attention becomes convincingly fixed on the thing that gives your mind an imagined context within which to continue to feel comfortable, entertained and, of course, wholly oblivious. Witness the house around the corner from mine: a shrine to the Buffalo Sabres. Flags, posters, signs, altars with figurines, logos, hockey sticks. And it’s all outside in the yard and on the porch. They want everyone to see it, feel it, know it and hopefully join in the fun, the passion… the oblivion. ………………….
• Mayor Bloomberg of NYC would have your “opinion” reduced to “popular sentiment.” In the recent melee over whether a Muslim mosque should be permitted to be built within spitting distance of “ground zero” Bloomberg handily dismissed the public outcry as “popular sentiment.” So in one fell swoop Bloomberg would denigrate the very foundation of democracy and dismiss it as emotionality, affected impulse or the thoughtless, biased ranting of “the people.” Although the “public sphere and space” continues to be retaken by the people over and over again throughout the country and world, plutocrats such as Bloomberg will use their ubiquity in the media to disparage and denigrate the roots and lifeblood of democracy—the people expressing their opinions and discussing the merits thereof. But for the likes of Bloomberg, the peoples’ opinions have no merit. They are mere sentiment. The people are sentimental, too emotional and not to be taken seriously. Yes, they may be humored, fooled, manipulated and used. But having no substance, no meaningful nor valuable force other than the irrational explosiveness which must be contained, sublimated and/or re-interpreted such that their historical roots and political power may be diffused if not annihilated. …………………
• Why is it that Bruce Fisher, in his otherwise excellent cover story for ARTVOICE[July 29-Aug. 4] entitled “Fishing for Salvation,” gives Ralph Wilson a pass on receiving public funds for a private enterprise. Fisher claims the Bills are a “unique public enterprise”! Does that go for the equally large number of taxpayers who could find no way to care less about the Bills, football, crazed fans and a brutal sporting event. And will it still remain so unique when the Bills inevitably leave town for more profitable parts? And did the people ever get any part of those profits in this unique public enterprise. It’s quite fascinating how objective judgment and an interest in law and justice quickly fade into shoddy thinking and effectively ideological rationalization, when our addictive dependence upon “the corporation” for our culture and “entertainment is faced with the prospect of going it alone without Big Daddy to provide us with spectacle and the monster athletes to give us an identity and sense of belonging if not purposefulness. What, pray tell, ever happened to the love of the game as the game? Why do we need professional, over grown specialists in athletic mayhem to allow us to enjoy ourselves? Wouldn’t local clubs of authentic sport enthusiasts be as interesting as multi-million dollar adolescents squeezing out every buck they can from this unnecessary business? Go Bills! Go somewhere else and let us return to genuine community! …………………….
• The proliferation of stand-up comedy over the last few decades in America—not to mention the plethora of not-funny Hollywood movies—testifies to our need for comic relief. At its best such stand-up is high art and a truth-teller of great proportions. But the misuse of laughter is another matter. I recently heard a retired woman on NPR telling her story of living on an unlivable Social Security Income. Her sad if not pathetic saga was frequently punctuated with “pleasant” laughter, accepting if not resigned laughter. It wasn’t forced and yet it wasn’t genuinely spontaneous, from the gut. It was the effete, exhausted, demoralized affective punctuations of a defeated being. Along a similar vein on “60 Minutes” I saw a story about a squad of Marines given the hopeless and thankless task of establishing an outpost in one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan. The soldiers filmed their project. The post was to be near a small village where the young men were suspected of being at least Taliban sympathizers. The Taliban militias had a documented, established presence in the area. On the video the soldiers “joked” about having to build a post—not only with insufficient materials and supplies—but in hostile territory surrounded by mountains, the high ground of which was every insurgents wet dream. The soldiers were clearly scared but “joking” about how as they spoke there were hostiles watching them waiting for their moment to strike—and it would be soon. All of the soldiers’ commentary were expressed as if there situation were “funny.” It wasn’t. Within hours of the filming the Taliban attacked and wiped out most of the squad. Not so funny. The father of one of the dead soldiers had received messages from his son regarding their “suicide mission.” He wasn’t laughing. The point of this is that the soldiers who were in a hopelessly dehumanized situation, which of course they kept themselves in, discussed it in the mode of supposed humor. They joked, laughed, found it strangely, darkly funny. What else could they do? And what else could the woman on social security do besides laugh. Her situation was as lethal as the soldiers. But all they could do was laugh and joke. There was no truth in this humor—unless of course we see it for what it is: a desperate plea for help to do it differently, to find a way to take control of our lives—in short to find a way to again be political beings. As every good comedian knows not everything is funny, not everything should be laughed off.
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