Please check out our friends websites on our LINKS page. If you have any comments our questions, please EMAIL US
© Artists I Love LP. All rights reserved.
ALL THE MUSIC AND ARTWORK ON THIS WEBSITE IS DISPLAYED UNDER A
CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE
© Artists I Love LP. All rights reserved.
ALL THE MUSIC AND ARTWORK ON THIS WEBSITE IS DISPLAYED UNDER A
CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE
The original title of this piece was “Jerome David an
Epilogue”. I felt that I had chosen
the title carefully, and rightly so, because no prose writer of
the 20th century cared more about the way words sound. No
prose writer cared more about the authenticity, if not the
honor, of what a character says, and the multiple meanings a
reader might derive from a felicitous choice of words. He
suggested at one point that a writer must be “a thesaurus of
undetached prefatory remarks” – someone who may be able to
introduce his subject a great many different ways, but can
only hope to begin to get beneath the surface. This is
especially important for the writer to remember when he
writes about what is most important to him – and about what
else should he possibly be writing?
Jerome David Salinger lived his relatively long and famously
mysterious life renouncing publicity, so he would take
exception to a eulogy. (from the Greek “eulogia” which means
“to praise”. ) The characters he created, who are as real to me
as are some of the people I know, renounced hypocrisy, and
cherished intuition as a manifestation of holiness, so he would
have cast a cold eye on a conclusion. (from the Latin
“concludere” which basically means “to come to the end
required by logic”). Now, by “epilogue”, the Greeks meant
merely the end of a speech, but in the earliest days of the
Elizabethan period, “epilogue” came to refer to the speech at
the end of a dramatic presentation. (“If we shadows have
offended/ think but this and all is mended/that you have but
slumbered here/ while these visions did appear…” says Puck
at the end of “Midsummer Night’s Dream”.) Its purpose was to
say one more thing to the audience before leaving the
audience members to speak among themselves.
The audience members have now had forty-five years to speak
among themselves, for that is what elapsed between the
beginning of the author’s silence and the end of his life. We
waited, we ardent members of Salinger’s audience, as if
Salinger was Elvis Presley, and we needed to be told that he
had indeed “left the building” before we accepted the fact
that he would not favor us with one more song. At this writing,
it is thirty-one days since he left the building for good and all –
since those of us who refused to give up hope that he might
speak to us again, finally had to accept that he meant it when
he said he would not. He meant it just as he meant it when he
said he would never let anyone make a movie out of “Catcher
in the Rye”, no matter how many millions of dollars they
offered.
I settled on “epilogue” when I still presumed that it was my
place to write an epilogue to the work of J.D. Salinger – and
before I read “Postscript: J.D. Salinger”, by Adam Gopnik in
“The New Yorker” at the beginning of this month. Mr. Gopnik’s
elegant and incisive assessment of Salinger’s art and
influence served, as Salinger’s work itself should certainly
have served, to convince me that I was way over my head if I
thought I could bring the epilogue. Now I am back in my place,
and I offer only “An Appreciation”. (Beginning with the Latin
“appretiare” – “to act in order to estimate value” , and used
often in the sense of “an expression of favorable
estimation”.) After all, I might appreciate something because
it is valuable, but nothing will become valuable – or more
valuable – just because I appreciate it. Right?
Most importantly, the title “Jerome David an Appreciation”, is
meant to evoke “Seymour an Introduction”, the next-to- last
words that Salinger published about the poet/mystic/eminence
Seymour Glass, the oldest and the most tragic of the seven
Glass children. Seymour fires a bullet into his brain in the last
paragraph of “ A Perfect Day for Banana Fish”, which is one
of “Nine Stories”, the only widely available collection of
Salinger’s shorter works. Three out of nine of “Nine Stories”,
“Banana Fish”, “Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut”, and “Down at
the Dinghy”, are stories about the Glass Family. These three
stories join “Franny and Zooey”, “Raise High The Roof Beams,
Carpenters” and the aforementioned “Seymour An
Introduction” to comprise the life and times of the seven
children of renowned Vaudevillians Les and Bessie Glass: the
child savant and radio personalities Buddy, Boo-Boo, Waker,
Walt, Zooey, Franny – and of course, Seymour. (Salinger
published one more Glass family story in The New Yorker,
entitled, “Hapworth 16, 1924”. It is something of a prequel,
since it details a summer that a very young Seymour spent at
camp. It was never re-published after it appeared in 1965.)
For most readers, the remarkable chronicles of the Glass
family are eclipsed by “The Catcher in the Rye”, Salinger’s
masterpiece, and the most iconic and enduring treatment of
both the angst and the resilience of adolescence. At the time
of Salinger’s death, “Catcher” had sold more than 65 million
copies world-wide, and had an average annual sale of 250,000
copies in the United States.
A goodly number of those copies annuals sold were purchased
at my behest, or purchased by me for others. As a teacher of
Composition and Literature for the most of the last fifteen
years of the second millennium, and the first ten years of the
third, I have squired hundreds of young men and women
through the Salinger’s account of Holden Caulfield’s lost
weekend in Manhattan. I am about to do so again, and for the
first time since Jerome David joined the Choir Invisible.
I don’t know how many readers of Salinger can say that they
met Seymour before they met Holden, but I can. I read
“Franny and Zooey” at the suggestion of a friend in the
Summer between high school, from which I somehow
managed to graduate without reading “Catcher”, and college,
where I resolved to avoid any course if I could not get the
required reading into the pockets of the dirty and misshapen
corduroy blazers I wore each day. I was about to begin
reading “Roof Beams” and “Seymour” in December of 1980,
when Mark David Chapman claimed that anyone who read
“Catcher” would understand why he shot John Lennon. It was
the maniac who killed Beatle John, and not my learned
professors, who sent me to Holden Caulfield, and it was
perhaps for that reason that, as a somewhat older young
person, I preferred the Glass Family stories.
I only warmed to the greatness of “Catcher in the Rye” when I
was required to cover it as a teacher instead of as (just a ) a
student. Many years later, and in the spirit of one who came
late to the party, I tell the world what the world already seems
to know: that about “Catcher in the Rye” one may believe the
hype. I am not talented enough to describe in a few pithy
phrases what Salinger gave to the world when he gave the
world Holden Caulfield, but I am, and I have been for some
time, in a position to affirm that “Catcher in the Rye” is still
capable of settling into the souls of young people – especially
young people roughly Holden’s age - from all walks of life, and
at all levels of ability and affliction. The value of “Catcher in
the Rye” is certainly not an original topic, but it is a topic to
which it is worth returning.
Let me now get back to Seymour Glass:
My greatest disappointment in the long silence of J.D. Salinger
was the fact that it continually confounded my hope that
sooner or later, he would reveal the cataclysm that caused
Seymour Glass to take his own life. Seymour Glass, poet,
student and teacher of the perennial philosophy, seeker after
satori, and hopeful tiller of the Divine Ground, was
everything I believed I was when I was a benighted young man,
and everything that the shaky but seasoned fellow I am still
longs to become. If he was capable of the ultimate act of
despair, it had to be because of some seismic personal crisis
that the author had yet to reveal – otherwise, what hope could
there be for me?
Let me go back to Adam Gopnik’s article in “The New Yorker”:
In the long last paragraph of his astute and even-handed
assessment, Mr. Gopnik does not so much reveal to me why
Seymour killed himself as he points out to me –to all of us –
that Salinger was not, in fact, holding out: Salinger may not
have “jumped up on our backs”, ala Buddy Glass in “Seymour
and Introduction” to steer us towards the answer,
But Salinger, for all his brevity, and for all of his silence, gave
us everything we need to know, and everything we need to
take away, from the self-destruction of Seymour Glass.
What does Gopnik reveal? I wouldn’t presume to tell you – but
I will show you what he inspired me to do – and there may be
one or two Salinger enthusiasts who might know where I’m
coming from:
A DOUBLE HAIKU FOR JEROME DAVID SALINGER
The banana fish,
On his way to knowing God,
Went for Sally Hayes –
Not Jane Gallagher.
So much for this holy ground,
My little pilgrim.
- J.R. McCarthy
J.R. McCarthy is also the author of
Ambivalid or
Staggering Towards Virtue and
Back In The Holy Bronx
Epilogue”. I felt that I had chosen
the title carefully, and rightly so, because no prose writer of
the 20th century cared more about the way words sound. No
prose writer cared more about the authenticity, if not the
honor, of what a character says, and the multiple meanings a
reader might derive from a felicitous choice of words. He
suggested at one point that a writer must be “a thesaurus of
undetached prefatory remarks” – someone who may be able to
introduce his subject a great many different ways, but can
only hope to begin to get beneath the surface. This is
especially important for the writer to remember when he
writes about what is most important to him – and about what
else should he possibly be writing?
Jerome David Salinger lived his relatively long and famously
mysterious life renouncing publicity, so he would take
exception to a eulogy. (from the Greek “eulogia” which means
“to praise”. ) The characters he created, who are as real to me
as are some of the people I know, renounced hypocrisy, and
cherished intuition as a manifestation of holiness, so he would
have cast a cold eye on a conclusion. (from the Latin
“concludere” which basically means “to come to the end
required by logic”). Now, by “epilogue”, the Greeks meant
merely the end of a speech, but in the earliest days of the
Elizabethan period, “epilogue” came to refer to the speech at
the end of a dramatic presentation. (“If we shadows have
offended/ think but this and all is mended/that you have but
slumbered here/ while these visions did appear…” says Puck
at the end of “Midsummer Night’s Dream”.) Its purpose was to
say one more thing to the audience before leaving the
audience members to speak among themselves.
The audience members have now had forty-five years to speak
among themselves, for that is what elapsed between the
beginning of the author’s silence and the end of his life. We
waited, we ardent members of Salinger’s audience, as if
Salinger was Elvis Presley, and we needed to be told that he
had indeed “left the building” before we accepted the fact
that he would not favor us with one more song. At this writing,
it is thirty-one days since he left the building for good and all –
since those of us who refused to give up hope that he might
speak to us again, finally had to accept that he meant it when
he said he would not. He meant it just as he meant it when he
said he would never let anyone make a movie out of “Catcher
in the Rye”, no matter how many millions of dollars they
offered.
I settled on “epilogue” when I still presumed that it was my
place to write an epilogue to the work of J.D. Salinger – and
before I read “Postscript: J.D. Salinger”, by Adam Gopnik in
“The New Yorker” at the beginning of this month. Mr. Gopnik’s
elegant and incisive assessment of Salinger’s art and
influence served, as Salinger’s work itself should certainly
have served, to convince me that I was way over my head if I
thought I could bring the epilogue. Now I am back in my place,
and I offer only “An Appreciation”. (Beginning with the Latin
“appretiare” – “to act in order to estimate value” , and used
often in the sense of “an expression of favorable
estimation”.) After all, I might appreciate something because
it is valuable, but nothing will become valuable – or more
valuable – just because I appreciate it. Right?
Most importantly, the title “Jerome David an Appreciation”, is
meant to evoke “Seymour an Introduction”, the next-to- last
words that Salinger published about the poet/mystic/eminence
Seymour Glass, the oldest and the most tragic of the seven
Glass children. Seymour fires a bullet into his brain in the last
paragraph of “ A Perfect Day for Banana Fish”, which is one
of “Nine Stories”, the only widely available collection of
Salinger’s shorter works. Three out of nine of “Nine Stories”,
“Banana Fish”, “Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut”, and “Down at
the Dinghy”, are stories about the Glass Family. These three
stories join “Franny and Zooey”, “Raise High The Roof Beams,
Carpenters” and the aforementioned “Seymour An
Introduction” to comprise the life and times of the seven
children of renowned Vaudevillians Les and Bessie Glass: the
child savant and radio personalities Buddy, Boo-Boo, Waker,
Walt, Zooey, Franny – and of course, Seymour. (Salinger
published one more Glass family story in The New Yorker,
entitled, “Hapworth 16, 1924”. It is something of a prequel,
since it details a summer that a very young Seymour spent at
camp. It was never re-published after it appeared in 1965.)
For most readers, the remarkable chronicles of the Glass
family are eclipsed by “The Catcher in the Rye”, Salinger’s
masterpiece, and the most iconic and enduring treatment of
both the angst and the resilience of adolescence. At the time
of Salinger’s death, “Catcher” had sold more than 65 million
copies world-wide, and had an average annual sale of 250,000
copies in the United States.
A goodly number of those copies annuals sold were purchased
at my behest, or purchased by me for others. As a teacher of
Composition and Literature for the most of the last fifteen
years of the second millennium, and the first ten years of the
third, I have squired hundreds of young men and women
through the Salinger’s account of Holden Caulfield’s lost
weekend in Manhattan. I am about to do so again, and for the
first time since Jerome David joined the Choir Invisible.
I don’t know how many readers of Salinger can say that they
met Seymour before they met Holden, but I can. I read
“Franny and Zooey” at the suggestion of a friend in the
Summer between high school, from which I somehow
managed to graduate without reading “Catcher”, and college,
where I resolved to avoid any course if I could not get the
required reading into the pockets of the dirty and misshapen
corduroy blazers I wore each day. I was about to begin
reading “Roof Beams” and “Seymour” in December of 1980,
when Mark David Chapman claimed that anyone who read
“Catcher” would understand why he shot John Lennon. It was
the maniac who killed Beatle John, and not my learned
professors, who sent me to Holden Caulfield, and it was
perhaps for that reason that, as a somewhat older young
person, I preferred the Glass Family stories.
I only warmed to the greatness of “Catcher in the Rye” when I
was required to cover it as a teacher instead of as (just a ) a
student. Many years later, and in the spirit of one who came
late to the party, I tell the world what the world already seems
to know: that about “Catcher in the Rye” one may believe the
hype. I am not talented enough to describe in a few pithy
phrases what Salinger gave to the world when he gave the
world Holden Caulfield, but I am, and I have been for some
time, in a position to affirm that “Catcher in the Rye” is still
capable of settling into the souls of young people – especially
young people roughly Holden’s age - from all walks of life, and
at all levels of ability and affliction. The value of “Catcher in
the Rye” is certainly not an original topic, but it is a topic to
which it is worth returning.
Let me now get back to Seymour Glass:
My greatest disappointment in the long silence of J.D. Salinger
was the fact that it continually confounded my hope that
sooner or later, he would reveal the cataclysm that caused
Seymour Glass to take his own life. Seymour Glass, poet,
student and teacher of the perennial philosophy, seeker after
satori, and hopeful tiller of the Divine Ground, was
everything I believed I was when I was a benighted young man,
and everything that the shaky but seasoned fellow I am still
longs to become. If he was capable of the ultimate act of
despair, it had to be because of some seismic personal crisis
that the author had yet to reveal – otherwise, what hope could
there be for me?
Let me go back to Adam Gopnik’s article in “The New Yorker”:
In the long last paragraph of his astute and even-handed
assessment, Mr. Gopnik does not so much reveal to me why
Seymour killed himself as he points out to me –to all of us –
that Salinger was not, in fact, holding out: Salinger may not
have “jumped up on our backs”, ala Buddy Glass in “Seymour
and Introduction” to steer us towards the answer,
But Salinger, for all his brevity, and for all of his silence, gave
us everything we need to know, and everything we need to
take away, from the self-destruction of Seymour Glass.
What does Gopnik reveal? I wouldn’t presume to tell you – but
I will show you what he inspired me to do – and there may be
one or two Salinger enthusiasts who might know where I’m
coming from:
A DOUBLE HAIKU FOR JEROME DAVID SALINGER
The banana fish,
On his way to knowing God,
Went for Sally Hayes –
Not Jane Gallagher.
So much for this holy ground,
My little pilgrim.
- J.R. McCarthy
J.R. McCarthy is also the author of
Ambivalid or
Staggering Towards Virtue and
Back In The Holy Bronx
Jerome David an Appreciation - Part One
J.R. McCarthy
J.R. McCarthy
"hi,i love your site . The first
thing you see is the picture.
Humorous,interesting and i am
hooked."
Pognu.com
thing you see is the picture.
Humorous,interesting and i am
hooked."
Pognu.com
Your Opinions Count
Tom's Comment :
"It seems strange to me, that a
lot of the 9/11 conspiracy
theorists are so willing to
accept the Global Warming
theory without question."
lot of the 9/11 conspiracy
theorists are so willing to
accept the Global Warming
theory without question."
C'Mon Spring!!!
OUR FAVORITE BLOG POST
Yes, we read lots of blogs. Sometimes there's posts so good,
we need to share them.
Read this months blog favorite...
Yes, we read lots of blogs. Sometimes there's posts so good,
we need to share them.
Read this months blog favorite...
What Liberals Could Learn From A Small
Nation’s Soccer Fans
Peter McDermott
In January 2008, an estimated 1.8 million people gathered in
Washington D.C. to celebrate the inauguration of the 44th
President.
It was a remarkable official end to Jim Crow America. The
union of Barack Obama’s parents would not have been legal
in large swathes of the West and South of the nation in 1961.
But the citizens on that day last year were also welcoming a
commander-in-chief who is blessed with fine rhetorical skills,
which he uses to appeal to the better angels of our nature.
And yes, the day was all about what the former Alaska
governor calls that hopey changey stuff after eight years of
criminally negligent stupidity.
Then the counterrevolution happened, involving rather
smaller groups of people -- the town hall meetings over health
care and the Tea Party protests, a phenomenon that covers
the entire “Patriot” spectrum, from the Republican base to
conservative libertarianism to the militaristic far right.
The racially insulting posters directed at the President surely
should surely have been sufficient cause for a street response
from the other side. And when a leading Republican in
Congress said his party’s aim was to use the health care issue
to “break” Obama, one might have hoped that more said:
“We’ve got your back, Mr. President”.
It seems, though, that those who were most enthusiastic about
the president have stayed rather silent, while those have been
lukewarm all along have been not so much passive as passive
aggressive, an American liberal-left inclination that reached
its nadir with Nader.
Then we have the overtly liberal media. Huffington Post, a
remarkable and admirable outlet in many respects, is
determined not to play the equivalent role that Fox News did
for Bush II. Fair enough. But, at times, it seems to want to
make life as awkward as possible for the President. Maximum
effect is achieved with screaming headlines in a type size that
more traditional outlets would reserve for assassinations and
calamities involving mass casualties. So, for instance, on
February 12 it led with: THE DEAL THAT SCARRED OBAMA'S
CREDIBILITY
I was more intrigued with the hullabaloo a couple of days
earlier when Bloomberg News issued a teaser report on what
Obama told it in an interview on the subject of Wall Street
bonuses. The President had as expected tilted a little to the
right to compensate for the populist tone of the State of the
Union address. But the Bloomberg summary had omitted all of
the qualifications and subtleties in the President’s comments.
In an instant Huff Post opinion piece headlined “Obama Still
Doesn’t Get It,” MIT Professor Simon Johnson suggested that
the White House had a “major public relations disaster on its
hands.” The publication linked to the New York Times’ Paul
Krugman -- Nobel laureate and indispensable guide in the
choppy economic waters we’re in -- who was having seizure in
his blog “The Conscience of a Liberal.” Said Krugman: “I’m
with Simon Johnson here: how is it possible, at this late date,
for Obama to be this clueless?” He then cut and pasted the
Bloomberg report, typing at the end: “Oh. My. God.”
His contribution drew 415 comments, 10 times what he might
normally get for a blog entry, but small potatoes compared to
Huff Post numbers. The man is doing his job, and doing it very
well, but the easiest way to attract attention is to go negative,
which gets folks all riled up. They’ll say things like “That’s it --
I’ve had enough!” or “I’ve been a Democrat for 40 years and I’ll
do everything in my power to ensure that this man is not
reelected!”
A 23-year-old poster to an earlier Krugman entry said: “I was a
volunteer for Mr. Obama during the first Iowa caucus back in
December 2007. I walked around risking frostbite for lack of
adequate winter clothing, and had over-drafted on my
checking account for want of gas money to take me the 6
hours northwest to Muscatine and Davenport Iowa, in a car
with no working heater.
“I have no recourse but to share Mr. Krugman's sentiments,
for a whole host of reasons. America is on a downslide. Obama
was the pressure point to reduce that trend. Nobody thought
he was a God, but MY God I never thought he'd be such an
inutil [sic].”
Much of this is implausible. That reference to frostbite might
even suggest that young guy is really a cranky 67-year-old.
And you can see a pattern developing where supposed ex-
Obama warriors are complaining about having invested time
and money during the campaign with little return – a refrain
that sounds like something a GOP operative would dream up.
Obviously, there is disaffection. My point is that with the
President of the United States being labeled a foreign-born
Islamic follower of the teachings of Mao Tse Tung, it doesn’t
help matters that some liberals act like the Muppets’ Statler
and Waldorf, those disagreeable old men with the best seats
in the house.
The Republicans waited until George W. Bush was out of
power to revolt against his profligacy. One wonders why it is
that in this most capitalistic of countries, the conservative
party benefits more from solidarity, a traditionally socialist
virtue? It has occurred to me that the left here, even that part
of it which is explicitly anti-imperialist, is infected as much as
any other part of the community with American arrogance.
It might learn a little humility and strategic good sense from
the followers of a soccer team that will never win the World
Cup and more often than not does not even qualify for the
finals tournament. That description applies to scores of
nations worldwide, but I’m mostly concerned with the team
that represents the 4.5 million citizens of the Republic of
Ireland. (Northern Ireland has its own team.) In that
jurisdiction, soccer was traditionally a Cinderella sport – a
game for urban workers in a rural-dominated country. The
national games, Gaelic football and hurling, took precedence
and rugby, nurtured mainly in fee-paying schools, had its base
in the professional middle-classes.
Those demarcations have diminished considerably as the
country has modernized. Its international soccer stars play
club football in the world’s best league, the English
Premiership. In rugby, which has gone professional and is big
business, the South unites with the Protestant North to form
one of world’s top ranked teams in international competition.
Meantime, the Gaelic Athletic Association remains the largest
sporting organization by far, organized down to level of every
hamlet in the Republic and in the Catholic areas in Northern
Ireland.
Yet in that sports-mad country, booing your own team remains
taboo, even when it’s underperforming against inferior
opposition. Of course, the fans will grumble and groan and
occasionally target the manager, but for the most part, they
pride themselves on being the 12th man (or the 16th in rugby
and Gaelic sports) to the bitter end. This is not to be the case,
they believe, with the Continental powers. In the run-up to a
big away game against, let’s say, the French, there’s usually
some discussion about the fickle nature of the opposing fans:
keep it level for long enough, or score an early goal, the
hopeful advice goes, and the home crowd will turn on their
own team.
You might feel that I’ve gone off on something of a tangent
describing an aspect of the culture of a foreign country that is
roughly the equivalent in size and population to South
Carolina. But this is the same foreign culture that played a
leading role in building the great Democratic Party in the 20th
century. The notions of party loyalty and discipline and getting
out the vote (and yes, voting early and often) were
underwritten by communal solidarity. Such communalism, as
practiced in Chicago, Boston, Kansas City, New York, Albany,
Jersey City and elsewhere provided a counterweight to
Protestant individualism and was crucial in the development
of the labor movement and also the idea that government has
a duty to help in people’s lives.
The bosses of the big- and small-city machines may not be the
most sympathetic of figures, but argues Michael Bloomberg
speechwriter Frank Barry in his recent book “The Scandal of
Reform,” they were often no worse morally than their WASP
enemies. For Barry, the cry of “reform” in New York was a
conservative reaction, one aimed at preventing the immigrant
masses from being involved in politics. It failed, and the
leaders of the political machines formed national alliances
within the Democratic Party with people who despised them
(and sometimes the feeling was mutual).
In the internet age, however, individualism is rampant. And in
this nation of attention-seekers everyone has to have his or
her own shtick. You get little sense that anyone feels that they
are part of a trend of opinion that might need to form a
coalition with other trends of opinion.
On NPR’s “On Point” – a current affairs program out of Boston
hosted by Tom Ashbrook – the day after the State of Union
address, veteran conservative Pat Buchanan was fairer to the
President and sounded more reasonable than the founder of
the liberal blog firedoglake.com, Jane Hamsher, who seemed
to suggest that Obama had thrown in his lot with the Tea
Partiers. It was left to the show’s in-house political analyst
Jack Beatty to strike the note that the liberal-left should aim
for – he excoriated the White House for its strategic mistakes
on health-care reform but also praised the President for what
was fresh and original in his approach. “I can’t believe he
punked the Supreme Court,” he said. Then a series of phone-
in callers declared themselves impressed with Obama’s
speech. The most negative voice in the entire affair was that
of the token liberal.
Somewhere along the line it’s been forgotten that Obama was
endorsed in 2008 by everybody from former Weather
Underground militant Bill Ayers to Richard Nixon’s younger
daughter. Change has never been easy and fundamental
change in modern democracies often needs rather more than
50 percent levels of support. Reaction needs somewhat less.
This is partly what Antonio Gramsci was getting at with his
maxim “optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect.”
(Somewhere down the line, I might be asked to take a loyalty
oath because I mentioned that name.) It was a warning against
adherence to schematic and fundamentalist views of the
world. In our time, lack of progress can’t simply be put down to
the temerity of any one faction of the Democrats or perfidy or
poor tactical decisions.
I am a foreign-born social democrat; indeed, some might even
label me a socialist. I believe that it would be in most people’s
interest for America to import key elements of the German and
Scandinavian models and that that process wouldn’t
necessarily undermine your constitutional right to tell
deliberate untruths about the President or to stockpile assault
weapons in your basement. But I’m realistic. It was obvious
that Obama was going to try to rule from somewhere near the
center, not least because he indicated that he would, and also
because all Democratic Presidents do to a lesser or greater
extent, even the ones that give liberals a warm glow just
thinking about them.
A progressive Republican from New Mexico, Senator Bronson
Cutting, wrote in 1934 that he looked back on March 4 of the
previous year with a “sick heart,” because “the
nationalization of banks by President Roosevelt could have
been accomplished without a word of protest.” (He’s quoted in
Adam Cohen’s excellent “Nothing to Fear: FDR’s Inner Circle
and the Hundred Days that Created Modern America.”) But
even if a majority of people don’t object to a particular policy,
it doesn’t mean that it can be passed. Most Americans don’t
have an ideological objection to the public option in health
care, but in the absence of their actively embracing it, the
lobbyists and the Republican base’s resistance to it wins out.
That could only change if progressives were more numerous,
and better organized and more adept at making alliances
inside the Democratic Party.
In the sense that Obama encourages people to get involved
(volunteerism is up since he took over) and to be more
engaged generally, and is the first President perhaps since
JFK to speak to the intellect, then he’s one of the best things
that has happened to the American left in a long while.
Kennedy’s rhetoric helped create the “Sixties,” while Barry
Goldwater’s ideas and movement led directly to Reaganism.
It’s all to play for.
-Peter McDermott
Nation’s Soccer Fans
Peter McDermott
In January 2008, an estimated 1.8 million people gathered in
Washington D.C. to celebrate the inauguration of the 44th
President.
It was a remarkable official end to Jim Crow America. The
union of Barack Obama’s parents would not have been legal
in large swathes of the West and South of the nation in 1961.
But the citizens on that day last year were also welcoming a
commander-in-chief who is blessed with fine rhetorical skills,
which he uses to appeal to the better angels of our nature.
And yes, the day was all about what the former Alaska
governor calls that hopey changey stuff after eight years of
criminally negligent stupidity.
Then the counterrevolution happened, involving rather
smaller groups of people -- the town hall meetings over health
care and the Tea Party protests, a phenomenon that covers
the entire “Patriot” spectrum, from the Republican base to
conservative libertarianism to the militaristic far right.
The racially insulting posters directed at the President surely
should surely have been sufficient cause for a street response
from the other side. And when a leading Republican in
Congress said his party’s aim was to use the health care issue
to “break” Obama, one might have hoped that more said:
“We’ve got your back, Mr. President”.
It seems, though, that those who were most enthusiastic about
the president have stayed rather silent, while those have been
lukewarm all along have been not so much passive as passive
aggressive, an American liberal-left inclination that reached
its nadir with Nader.
Then we have the overtly liberal media. Huffington Post, a
remarkable and admirable outlet in many respects, is
determined not to play the equivalent role that Fox News did
for Bush II. Fair enough. But, at times, it seems to want to
make life as awkward as possible for the President. Maximum
effect is achieved with screaming headlines in a type size that
more traditional outlets would reserve for assassinations and
calamities involving mass casualties. So, for instance, on
February 12 it led with: THE DEAL THAT SCARRED OBAMA'S
CREDIBILITY
I was more intrigued with the hullabaloo a couple of days
earlier when Bloomberg News issued a teaser report on what
Obama told it in an interview on the subject of Wall Street
bonuses. The President had as expected tilted a little to the
right to compensate for the populist tone of the State of the
Union address. But the Bloomberg summary had omitted all of
the qualifications and subtleties in the President’s comments.
In an instant Huff Post opinion piece headlined “Obama Still
Doesn’t Get It,” MIT Professor Simon Johnson suggested that
the White House had a “major public relations disaster on its
hands.” The publication linked to the New York Times’ Paul
Krugman -- Nobel laureate and indispensable guide in the
choppy economic waters we’re in -- who was having seizure in
his blog “The Conscience of a Liberal.” Said Krugman: “I’m
with Simon Johnson here: how is it possible, at this late date,
for Obama to be this clueless?” He then cut and pasted the
Bloomberg report, typing at the end: “Oh. My. God.”
His contribution drew 415 comments, 10 times what he might
normally get for a blog entry, but small potatoes compared to
Huff Post numbers. The man is doing his job, and doing it very
well, but the easiest way to attract attention is to go negative,
which gets folks all riled up. They’ll say things like “That’s it --
I’ve had enough!” or “I’ve been a Democrat for 40 years and I’ll
do everything in my power to ensure that this man is not
reelected!”
A 23-year-old poster to an earlier Krugman entry said: “I was a
volunteer for Mr. Obama during the first Iowa caucus back in
December 2007. I walked around risking frostbite for lack of
adequate winter clothing, and had over-drafted on my
checking account for want of gas money to take me the 6
hours northwest to Muscatine and Davenport Iowa, in a car
with no working heater.
“I have no recourse but to share Mr. Krugman's sentiments,
for a whole host of reasons. America is on a downslide. Obama
was the pressure point to reduce that trend. Nobody thought
he was a God, but MY God I never thought he'd be such an
inutil [sic].”
Much of this is implausible. That reference to frostbite might
even suggest that young guy is really a cranky 67-year-old.
And you can see a pattern developing where supposed ex-
Obama warriors are complaining about having invested time
and money during the campaign with little return – a refrain
that sounds like something a GOP operative would dream up.
Obviously, there is disaffection. My point is that with the
President of the United States being labeled a foreign-born
Islamic follower of the teachings of Mao Tse Tung, it doesn’t
help matters that some liberals act like the Muppets’ Statler
and Waldorf, those disagreeable old men with the best seats
in the house.
The Republicans waited until George W. Bush was out of
power to revolt against his profligacy. One wonders why it is
that in this most capitalistic of countries, the conservative
party benefits more from solidarity, a traditionally socialist
virtue? It has occurred to me that the left here, even that part
of it which is explicitly anti-imperialist, is infected as much as
any other part of the community with American arrogance.
It might learn a little humility and strategic good sense from
the followers of a soccer team that will never win the World
Cup and more often than not does not even qualify for the
finals tournament. That description applies to scores of
nations worldwide, but I’m mostly concerned with the team
that represents the 4.5 million citizens of the Republic of
Ireland. (Northern Ireland has its own team.) In that
jurisdiction, soccer was traditionally a Cinderella sport – a
game for urban workers in a rural-dominated country. The
national games, Gaelic football and hurling, took precedence
and rugby, nurtured mainly in fee-paying schools, had its base
in the professional middle-classes.
Those demarcations have diminished considerably as the
country has modernized. Its international soccer stars play
club football in the world’s best league, the English
Premiership. In rugby, which has gone professional and is big
business, the South unites with the Protestant North to form
one of world’s top ranked teams in international competition.
Meantime, the Gaelic Athletic Association remains the largest
sporting organization by far, organized down to level of every
hamlet in the Republic and in the Catholic areas in Northern
Ireland.
Yet in that sports-mad country, booing your own team remains
taboo, even when it’s underperforming against inferior
opposition. Of course, the fans will grumble and groan and
occasionally target the manager, but for the most part, they
pride themselves on being the 12th man (or the 16th in rugby
and Gaelic sports) to the bitter end. This is not to be the case,
they believe, with the Continental powers. In the run-up to a
big away game against, let’s say, the French, there’s usually
some discussion about the fickle nature of the opposing fans:
keep it level for long enough, or score an early goal, the
hopeful advice goes, and the home crowd will turn on their
own team.
You might feel that I’ve gone off on something of a tangent
describing an aspect of the culture of a foreign country that is
roughly the equivalent in size and population to South
Carolina. But this is the same foreign culture that played a
leading role in building the great Democratic Party in the 20th
century. The notions of party loyalty and discipline and getting
out the vote (and yes, voting early and often) were
underwritten by communal solidarity. Such communalism, as
practiced in Chicago, Boston, Kansas City, New York, Albany,
Jersey City and elsewhere provided a counterweight to
Protestant individualism and was crucial in the development
of the labor movement and also the idea that government has
a duty to help in people’s lives.
The bosses of the big- and small-city machines may not be the
most sympathetic of figures, but argues Michael Bloomberg
speechwriter Frank Barry in his recent book “The Scandal of
Reform,” they were often no worse morally than their WASP
enemies. For Barry, the cry of “reform” in New York was a
conservative reaction, one aimed at preventing the immigrant
masses from being involved in politics. It failed, and the
leaders of the political machines formed national alliances
within the Democratic Party with people who despised them
(and sometimes the feeling was mutual).
In the internet age, however, individualism is rampant. And in
this nation of attention-seekers everyone has to have his or
her own shtick. You get little sense that anyone feels that they
are part of a trend of opinion that might need to form a
coalition with other trends of opinion.
On NPR’s “On Point” – a current affairs program out of Boston
hosted by Tom Ashbrook – the day after the State of Union
address, veteran conservative Pat Buchanan was fairer to the
President and sounded more reasonable than the founder of
the liberal blog firedoglake.com, Jane Hamsher, who seemed
to suggest that Obama had thrown in his lot with the Tea
Partiers. It was left to the show’s in-house political analyst
Jack Beatty to strike the note that the liberal-left should aim
for – he excoriated the White House for its strategic mistakes
on health-care reform but also praised the President for what
was fresh and original in his approach. “I can’t believe he
punked the Supreme Court,” he said. Then a series of phone-
in callers declared themselves impressed with Obama’s
speech. The most negative voice in the entire affair was that
of the token liberal.
Somewhere along the line it’s been forgotten that Obama was
endorsed in 2008 by everybody from former Weather
Underground militant Bill Ayers to Richard Nixon’s younger
daughter. Change has never been easy and fundamental
change in modern democracies often needs rather more than
50 percent levels of support. Reaction needs somewhat less.
This is partly what Antonio Gramsci was getting at with his
maxim “optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect.”
(Somewhere down the line, I might be asked to take a loyalty
oath because I mentioned that name.) It was a warning against
adherence to schematic and fundamentalist views of the
world. In our time, lack of progress can’t simply be put down to
the temerity of any one faction of the Democrats or perfidy or
poor tactical decisions.
I am a foreign-born social democrat; indeed, some might even
label me a socialist. I believe that it would be in most people’s
interest for America to import key elements of the German and
Scandinavian models and that that process wouldn’t
necessarily undermine your constitutional right to tell
deliberate untruths about the President or to stockpile assault
weapons in your basement. But I’m realistic. It was obvious
that Obama was going to try to rule from somewhere near the
center, not least because he indicated that he would, and also
because all Democratic Presidents do to a lesser or greater
extent, even the ones that give liberals a warm glow just
thinking about them.
A progressive Republican from New Mexico, Senator Bronson
Cutting, wrote in 1934 that he looked back on March 4 of the
previous year with a “sick heart,” because “the
nationalization of banks by President Roosevelt could have
been accomplished without a word of protest.” (He’s quoted in
Adam Cohen’s excellent “Nothing to Fear: FDR’s Inner Circle
and the Hundred Days that Created Modern America.”) But
even if a majority of people don’t object to a particular policy,
it doesn’t mean that it can be passed. Most Americans don’t
have an ideological objection to the public option in health
care, but in the absence of their actively embracing it, the
lobbyists and the Republican base’s resistance to it wins out.
That could only change if progressives were more numerous,
and better organized and more adept at making alliances
inside the Democratic Party.
In the sense that Obama encourages people to get involved
(volunteerism is up since he took over) and to be more
engaged generally, and is the first President perhaps since
JFK to speak to the intellect, then he’s one of the best things
that has happened to the American left in a long while.
Kennedy’s rhetoric helped create the “Sixties,” while Barry
Goldwater’s ideas and movement led directly to Reaganism.
It’s all to play for.
-Peter McDermott
 | |  |
Peter McDermott is the
Associate Editor of The Irish
Echo, America's most-read Irish
newspaper.
Associate Editor of The Irish
Echo, America's most-read Irish
newspaper.
Ever wondered why your friends seem so much more popular
than you are?
There's a reason for that...
than you are?
There's a reason for that...
This is going to be awkward, but someone has to tell you, so it
may as well be me: you're kind of a loser. You know that
feeling you sometimes have that your friends have more
friends than you? You're right. They do. And you know how
almost everyone at the gym seems in better shape than you,
and how everyone at your book club seems better read? Well,
they are. If you're single, it's probably a while since you dated
– what with you being such a loser – but when you did, do you
recall thinking the other person was more romantically
experienced than you? I'm afraid it was probably true.
The only consolation in all this is that it's nothing personal: it's
a bizarre statistical fact that almost all of us have fewer
friends than our friends, more flab than our fellow gym-goers,
and so on. In other words, you're a loser, but it's not your fault:
it's just maths. (I mean, it's probably just maths. You might be
a catastrophic failure as a human being, for all I know. But
let's focus on the maths.)
To anyone not steeped in statistics, this seems crazy.
Friendship is a two-way street, so you'd assume things would
average out: any given person would be as likely to be more
popular than their friends as less. But as the sociologist Scott
Feld showed, in a 1991 paper bluntly entitled Why Your
Friends Have More Friends Than You Do, this isn't true. If you
list all your friends, and then ask them all how many friends
they have, their average is very likely to be higher than your
friend count.
The reason is bewilderingly simple: "You are more likely to be
friends with someone who has more friends than with
someone who has fewer friends," as the psychologist Satoshi
Kanazawa puts it. You're more likely to know more popular
people, and less likely to know less popular ones. Some people
may be completely friendless, but you're not friends with any
of them.
The implications of this seeming paradox cascade through
daily life. People at your gym tend to be fitter than you
because you tend not to encounter the ones who rarely go;
any given romantic partner is likely to have had more partners
than you because you're more likely to be part of a larger
group than a small one. ("If your lover only had one lover,"
Kanazawa writes, "you are probably not him.") This is also why
people think of certain beaches or museums or airports as
usually busier than they actually are: by definition, most
people aren't there when they're less crowded.
This takes some mental gymnastics to appreciate, but it's
deeply reassuring. We're often told that comparing yourself
with others is a fast track to misery – "The grass is always
greener" – but the usual explanation is that we choose to
compare ourselves with the wrong people: we pick the
happiest, wealthiest, most talented people, and ignore how
much better off we are than most.
Feld's work, though, suggests that this is only half of the
problem. When it comes to those people we know well, the
field from which we're choosing our comparisons is
statistically skewed against us to begin with.
So next time you catch yourself feeling self-pityingly inferior
to almost everyone you know, take heart: you're right, but
then, it's the same for them, too.
Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian, Saturday 30 January 2010
may as well be me: you're kind of a loser. You know that
feeling you sometimes have that your friends have more
friends than you? You're right. They do. And you know how
almost everyone at the gym seems in better shape than you,
and how everyone at your book club seems better read? Well,
they are. If you're single, it's probably a while since you dated
– what with you being such a loser – but when you did, do you
recall thinking the other person was more romantically
experienced than you? I'm afraid it was probably true.
The only consolation in all this is that it's nothing personal: it's
a bizarre statistical fact that almost all of us have fewer
friends than our friends, more flab than our fellow gym-goers,
and so on. In other words, you're a loser, but it's not your fault:
it's just maths. (I mean, it's probably just maths. You might be
a catastrophic failure as a human being, for all I know. But
let's focus on the maths.)
To anyone not steeped in statistics, this seems crazy.
Friendship is a two-way street, so you'd assume things would
average out: any given person would be as likely to be more
popular than their friends as less. But as the sociologist Scott
Feld showed, in a 1991 paper bluntly entitled Why Your
Friends Have More Friends Than You Do, this isn't true. If you
list all your friends, and then ask them all how many friends
they have, their average is very likely to be higher than your
friend count.
The reason is bewilderingly simple: "You are more likely to be
friends with someone who has more friends than with
someone who has fewer friends," as the psychologist Satoshi
Kanazawa puts it. You're more likely to know more popular
people, and less likely to know less popular ones. Some people
may be completely friendless, but you're not friends with any
of them.
The implications of this seeming paradox cascade through
daily life. People at your gym tend to be fitter than you
because you tend not to encounter the ones who rarely go;
any given romantic partner is likely to have had more partners
than you because you're more likely to be part of a larger
group than a small one. ("If your lover only had one lover,"
Kanazawa writes, "you are probably not him.") This is also why
people think of certain beaches or museums or airports as
usually busier than they actually are: by definition, most
people aren't there when they're less crowded.
This takes some mental gymnastics to appreciate, but it's
deeply reassuring. We're often told that comparing yourself
with others is a fast track to misery – "The grass is always
greener" – but the usual explanation is that we choose to
compare ourselves with the wrong people: we pick the
happiest, wealthiest, most talented people, and ignore how
much better off we are than most.
Feld's work, though, suggests that this is only half of the
problem. When it comes to those people we know well, the
field from which we're choosing our comparisons is
statistically skewed against us to begin with.
So next time you catch yourself feeling self-pityingly inferior
to almost everyone you know, take heart: you're right, but
then, it's the same for them, too.
Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian, Saturday 30 January 2010
