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Below is my detailed analysis of the latest from Michael Cieply, The New York Timesman in Hollywood. Michael Cieply is an anti-union, pro-management former producer for Sony. I have read close to 70 articles by Cieply, so far, and I feel that I know his world-view, inside and out. Michael Cieply's specialty is articulating the point-of-view of Hollywood deal-makers to other businessmen. He is a business writer who shows no interest in unions, labor history, or even the history of the Hollywood union movement. All that matters to the cynical Mr. Cieply is how Hollywood makes a deal and does business. Any group or person who gets in the way of "deal-making" Cieply considers an "outsider" and a wrecker, who does not deserve respect. This is true of all of his articles including the articles he has written on the industry in general. He hates writers and has always shown disdain for writers in his articles going back more than twenty years. Cieply is typical of a type of journalist who has been in the industry too long and once tried to get out only to find himself back at the journalist's desk. He looks at his old bosses through the yellow eyes of a jaundiced failure. He both envies the success of his old bosses, and hates those who are not successful. He defines success in the exact way that the Hollywood bosses proclaim success and failure. In short, Michael Cieply is a burnt-out case. The New York Times has once again shown its contempt for workers who organize into unions by assigning Michael Cieply to report on this strike. As with some of Michael Cieply's previous articles you have to read between the lines to get the most important point. In this article, and in the one entitled Recent Moves by Guild Leaders Rattle Writers’ Talks Cieply takes the point of view of Moonves and Chernin successfully. In his articles he "reads the minds" of Moonves and Chernin in such a way that his anonymous sources could only come from people close to Moonves and Chernin. The headline of both of these articles should have been "CEO Negotiators Break Their Own Blackout Ban." But it was obvious from the beginning of the "informal" negotiations that this is what would happen. Unfortunately in closed door negotiations the advantage is always on the side of the status quo. In the following The New York Times article by Michael Cipley is indented. I highlight the keywords and phrases that I think the reader should pay attention to. Sometimes I highlight in blue or green, instead of yellow, to emphasize special points. My commentary is in brackets and in bold. Jerry Monaco Rescuers Script a Possible Ending for a Strike By MICHAEL CIEPLY LOS ANGELES — With Hollywood writers on the brink of ending a three-month strike, they can thank this city's time-honored way of getting things done: connections.
[According to Cieply the strike came to an end because "connections" were made. It has nothing to do with the union or the unity of the WGA. It was "rescuers" who know how to "make deals" through "connections" and nothing else. As usual, Cieply shows no understanding of how strikes work, nor of how unions work. He has is deliberately ignorant of how collective action may help people fight against the odds. He is contemptuous of the very idea that solidarity bring about a settlement satisfactory to a union, so he must concentrate on the traditions of Hollywood, the tradition of back-room deals by powerful "insiders."]
Over the last two weeks, Laeta Kalogridis, a movie and TV writer and a founder of United Hollywood, a pro-union Web site, emerged as an unlikely peacemaker.
[Unlikely, why? Because she is a strike captain? Does the fact that you are a strong member of a union and that you believe in your union make you "an unlikely peacemaker"? Obviously, according to Cieply, it does. Does the fact that you might think that the business practices of the big corporations are in conflict with the interests of the workers in the industry make you "crazy" or against "peace"? Yes! According to Cieply, if you are a supporter of a union, or a founder of "a pro-union Web site" then you are not a peacemaker by definition. You are a troublemaker, and thus you are unlikely to be a constructive "deal-maker."]
Working the phones and e-mail during her forced hiatus, she operated as a conduit between David J. Young, a militant leader of the guild, and Peter A. Chernin, the News Corporation president, who was similarly protective of company interests.
[Young is a "militant leader" and Chernin is "protective" of company interests. Union bad! Company good! Union wants battle! Company is protective mother! Ask yourself why Michael Cieply and the editors of the New York Times would never reverse this kind of phrasing? They would never allow a reporter to write: "David Young, who is protective of workers' interest" and "Peter Chernin who is a militant [ravenous?] corporate president". Why? Because it is impolite to imply that a head of a corporation is out to bleed his workers as much as possible and calling Chernin "protective" is just granting him the respect due to the powerful? On the other hand, Cieply can label a union leader anything he likes because union leaders are obviously on the "other side" in the world view of the New York Times. Union leaders are always "outsiders" or enemies of peaceful industrial relations or troublemakers according to The New York Times and its anti-union hirelings. Only union leaders that don't fight for their members are regarded with condescending respect. ]
As Ms. Kalogridis joined those trying to resolve the dispute, players on both sides finally shifted ground, most importantly on the issue of new-media compensation. That cleared the way to a deal that will be reviewed by writers in meetings here and in New York on Saturday.
[The use of the word "players" is the key to Cieply's thinking. As usual he cannot conceive of a union that actually acts like a union. He can only conceive of "players" and "deal-makers." Because he himself is failed deal-maker he is a burnt-out case who can only look at the world through the sickly yellow eyes of the cynical confidence player.]
If all goes well, the boards of the Writers Guild of America West and the Writers Guild of America East could end the walkout as early as next week, allowing production of most television dramas and comedies to resume and tens of thousands of people to return to work.
[Never except during a strike do you hear so much lamenting from the business press about all the poor people out of work. When those same peopple are put out of work by layoffs and firings and "consolidation" and "redundancy, those unemployed millions are then talked about as people who should see reality for what it is. Corporations need profits and employing these people instead of firing them would just get in the way of rationalizing the economy. ]
The breakthrough occurred on what many writers regard as a make-or-break issue: Web streaming of TV shows after their initial broadcast, which they suspect will soon replace the reruns that have paid them tens of thousands of dollars an episode. [When Cieply talks of the point of view of the Corporate bosses he is he not so circumspect. Never in their regard does he use contingent and point of view language. When talking about Chernin or any of the other corporate bosses it is always what they "say" or "do" or "produce", never what they "regard" or "believe" or "think." The reason I highlight this is so that a reader of the NYT will learn to read such articles like a literary critic or a philosopher. The writers' and the union representatives in this strike are passive "subjects" and not active agents. They have a "point-of-view" that is never "true" or "false" or "objective" but is merely something they "regard". On the other hand, Cieply writes about the bosses and CEOs as if they are agents. What they say can be objectively verified according to The New York Times invention of this strike story. ]
Under a compromise proposal, in the third year of their deal, writers would be paid 2 percent of the revenue. In the tentative contract that the Directors Guild of America agreed to last month, on which much of the prospective writers' settlement has been modeled, producers agreed to pay $1,334 for a first year's use, and a percentage afterward. The arrangement offers bragging rights to writers, who can claim to have won what the entertainment conglomerates said they would never give: a residual based on their gross revenue from the Internet.
[According to Cieply also this is about -- an "arrangement" to save face; an offer that will let the writers "brag" that their strike was not in vain. The implication here is that writers didn't really win a damn thing, only a few cosmetic changes to make them feel better. The further implication is that you have to treat these workers in unions like children or else they will never do what they should do anyway. Notice also that the writers have "claims" where as when CEOs are talked about they are treated as if their claims simply are "reality" itself.]
Representatives of the production companies and the writers' guilds continued their news blackout Thursday and declined to comment for this article, as did Ms. Kalogridis. But interviews with more than a dozen people involved in the possible settlement described a process so fragile that many still think that Saturday's meetings could derail it.
[ It is Saturday's meeting of the writers that might derail. And by implication it is those writers that have to be treated as if they were fragile pieces of glass. None of this has anything to do with the actual contract, actual work conditions, and actual settlement. Zeus forbid that Cieply might actually take the issues seriously. ]
As recently as last Friday, producers were preparing a "doomsday scenario," in which they were ready to declare that the talks had failed, opening the possibility of an extended strike. That the collapse was averted owed much to Ms. Kalogridis, and diplomacy that turned an icy standoff into the kind of hot-and-bothered bargaining in which Hollywood deals are forged.
[ 1) The people who head up the AMPTP talks do not actually have the job description of "producers." The people who actually fill the job description of producers are in the Producer's Guild of America. They have remained neutral in this strike. People such as Chernin, Iger, Moonves are not producers and produce nothing at all, neither in the strange Hollywood sense of the word where producer has a certain job description, nor in the common sense meaning of this word where producers actually make things. Chernin, Iger, et. al. are corporate heads, CEOs, corporate presidents. They are executives and not producers. The main negotiators in the AMPTP call their organization an organization of producers but it is in fact an organization of business employers. We live in a time where newspaper writers can't even call things by their right names and Cieply is no exception here.
2) Notice that the corporate bosses were ready to declare that the talks had failed. There is no implication that anyone but the union would be at fault in such a case. The corporate executives are poor innocent victims of union obstinacy or amateurism.
3) The usual condescension is thrown in about "hot-and-bothered bargaining." This is Cieply's "ideal" world, the world of Hollywood deal-making. In his mind there exist two "ideal worlds"; the world of Hollywood deal making and the world of normal business. Read 50 or 60 of Cieply's articles and this is what you come up with. There is business and there is weird business that occurs in Hollywood and everything else is a deviation not worth speaking about. Thus unions and people helping each other and ideas of solidarity and sticking together are all inconceivable in the world view of Michael Cieply. ]
As is often the case in Hollywood, an agent was an important link. Rick Rosen is a partner at the Endeavor agency, which represents Ms. Kalogridis. Mr. Rosen is also a lifelong friend of Mr. Chernin, who had opened informal talks with the writers — along with Robert A. Iger, chief executive of Walt Disney, and Leslie Moonves, chief executive of CBS — immediately after the directors announced their agreement on Jan. 17.
[ The superhero is the deal-maker so enter the agent. ]
Before those informal face-to-face meetings, Mr. Chernin had advised the union representatives to hire a seasoned Hollywood lawyer. If this effort did not work, Mr. Chernin and others feared, the stalemate could easily extend into the spring, when the writers' strike might well merge with one by the Screen Actors Guild, whose contract expires June 30.
[ Fatherly, Chernin, gives advice to those little writers who need help in making a deal. Fatherly Chernin was afraid that this temper tantrum of the writers might extend the strike. And then the unexplained kicker. It would be really bad if the writers' strike was merged with an actors' strike. Why? This is not explained. It is just assumed that the more powerful unions are the worse it is for "everybody". In this case everybody only includes people who count. Writers and actors and for that matter practically everybody doesn't count. Who counts? Stockholders, owners, other executives and of course profits and compensation for the big boys. Those are the things that count. It is assumed that nothing else is worth mentioning.]
But at a meeting two weeks ago, Patric M. Verrone, the West Coast writers' guild president; the chief negotiator, John Bowman; and Mr. Young did not bring in a deal maker. Instead, they spent much of the session catching up with points in the directors' deal, to the frustration of Mr. Iger and Mr. Chernin.
[ Cieply here and in the previous paragraph is fulfilling his function as spokesman for the bosses. Cieply seems to read Chernin's mind. He has read Chernin's mind in past articles also. He might be Chernin's messenger for all I know. That at least seems to be his function. More likely somebody close to Chernin is one of Cieply's anonymous sources breaking the blackout and feeding leaks to the bosses man at The New York Times. Maybe Cieply, the burnt-out case, hopes to bounce back into the business world as a Chernin man.
Those stupid writer's. They are silly that they might not want a "deal maker" who usually sides with the bosses anyway. They are also very silly in actually taking a look at the directors' deal. Don't they know that they are just supposed to accept it as a template for their deal without asking questions? Everything else is pro-forma. Even acctually knowing what is in the directors' deal is not necessary. An explanation is due here. The DGA deal was only a sketch two weeks ago. It was not known in detail. If the deal was going to be used as a template it was necessary to know what Chernin and the CEOs thought the deal was about. If you are going to have a meeting of minds over a contract it is necessary, on an elementary level to know what the other side thinks is in the contract. Even if one side understands the deal there can be no mutual understanding on a deal unless you know what the other side thinks of the same deal.
Of course, what I have just said about the mutual meetings of the mind is only true in a deal between equals. But it seems, if Cieply's mind reading powers are correct, that Chernin was annoyed about the assumption of "bargaining between equals." There is not supposed to be a meeting of minds here. The writers' are simply supposed to accept the directors' deal without question and move on to see what face-saving deals that Cherin will deign to give the writers.]
Mr. Rosen — who, according to biographical sources, grew up in Harrison, N.Y., as did Mr. Chernin — was among several Hollywood insiders who stepped forward at that point. They lobbied executives and writers to make a deal. Mr. Young had at first resisted the push for outside help, but agreed to bring in Alan Wertheimer, a high-powered lawyer whose clients have included Ron Bass and Tom Schulman, both members of the guild's board.
[Again Cieply gives everything to pragmatic deal-makers.]As the talks resumed, the participants began to compromise. Notably, Mr. Verrone — an architect of the tough stance taken by the guild from the outset — appeared to step back somewhat after the union dropped a pet demand of his, for jurisdiction over animation and reality-television writers.
["Pet demand." This demand has nothing to do with organizing the unorganized, people who wanted to join the WGA but were fired by union busting by companies Organizing the unorganized in animation and reality television is just a pet demand of Mr. Verrone's. And after that was gone he "stepped back." Not a serious boy, obviously. ]
In the meantime, Mr. Bowman, a well-heeled television writer, became more assertive.
[ The silk-suited CEOs are never called well-healed because it is obvious that they make 45 million dollars are year and should make this much money. And the fact that Bowman is "well-heeled" makes him a potential "insider" and being an "insider" is all important to Mr. Cieply, the man who always wanted to be an insider but failed.]
Mr. Bowman's emergence as an independent voice had long been sought by company representatives, who surmised even before the strike began that he would be a more flexible bargainer than Mr. Verrone and Mr. Young. But that would happen only if he were edged away from the guild president, a friend with whom he attended Harvard in the early 1980s.
The empowerment of Mr. Bowman was rooted in a brewing rebellion on the guild negotiating committee, where a rump group feared that a longer strike could lead to a split in the union. Some committee members began asking if Mr. Young, a longtime blue-collar labor organizer who had never settled a major entertainment contract, should be ousted from his leadership role. At the same time, they privately urged growing dissident groups within the guild to sit tight.
[ All of this is largely Cieply's fantasy of how a union works. A good union is a democratic organization. Unlike corporations which have bosses good unions actually have to listen to people. What ever the relationship between Verrone, Young, and Bowman, it is not the relationship that is part of Cieply's mind reading fantasy via the corporate bosses. Even friends argue and everyone knew from the beginning that a deal including animation and reality would be the toughest nut. ]
Even as Mr. Bowman became more vocal, Mr. Young was listening closely to Ms. Kalogridis, who had become a guild confidante. Described by associates as vibrant and impassioned, Ms. Kalogridis — whose credits include the "Bionic Woman" television series — had joined with a half dozen associates to make their United Hollywood site (unitedhollywood.blogspot.com) a rallying spot for striking writers. As recently as last week, the Web site shook the continuing talks by posting a strong critique of the directors' deal by Phil Alden Robinson, the writer and director of "Field of Dreams" and a board member.
[United Hollywood is the website of the strike captains. It is the elementary duty of a reporter for a major newspaper to know what he is talking about and to report on it. Cieply fails in this area as he has often failed. Either he doesn't know or doesn't care or considers the fact irrelevant but United Hollywood is the website of the strike captains. Cieply has never once reported this elementary fact. Not once. This is significant because these are the people who are the people actually getting people out on the (very well-peopled) picket lines. These are the men and women closest to the membership and talk to them everyday and report back to the leadership. They are a conduit from the leadership to the union leadership and vice-versa. They have been very open. They have thought openly, they fought openly, disagreed openly, and debated openly. This openness is incomprehensible to an anti-union pro-deal-maker and pro-management sort such as Michael Cieply. The very idea of open debate and disagreement looks silly to him. His contempt for union democracy drips from everything he has written. But United Hollywood has been more than this. It has been exemplary of new ways for unions to get the news out to the membership, of grass roots discussion and an example of uniting the rank-and-file through debate. By the way Cieply has mentioned United Hollywood disparagingly in the past. But this is the first time he has given the websites' URL. ]
Ms. Kalogridis and her friends, in fact, had become a pipeline to the guild members holding out for sizable gains, whose support would be needed if any deal was to be reached. And she, like Mr. Bowman, had become convinced that the current round of talks must not be allowed to fail. Perhaps more important, Mr. Young came to share that conviction. On the company side, Mr. Iger and Mr. Moonves, as well as Barry Meyer, chief executive of Warner Brothers, appeared to coalesce around the same view. Meanwhile, Mr. Chernin, who left for London in the middle of the talks but was never out of touch, hung tough on the final point: the writers' demand that companies should pay a percentage, not a flat fee, for Internet streams. Officials of the directors' guild had already signaled that they would not object if the writers appeared to one-up them on that matter. They reasoned that writers would need to show some gain from their strike, and concluded that actual income from the Internet would remain so small in the next three years, that a percentage payment in 2010 was likely to yield little. Mr. Young put together the ultimate compromise — a flat fee for part of the contract's life, a percentage during the rest. Ms. Kalogridis, late last week, then found herself in the thick of a bargaining process that eventually won a handshake on the point. She stressed to Mr. Rosen and others that guild members would never approve a deal that did not have a percentage payment for Web streams. Mr. Rosen became an advocate with Mr. Chernin. Mr. Chernin, at one point, invited Ms. Kalogridis to communicate with him directly. And shortly afterward, he signed off.
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I want to bounce the ball of thought around a little. (Think of my brain as "a cooler" where Steve McQueen is locked away throwing the baseball against the opposite wall. Reference to The Great Escape, for those who don't know.) This was "written" at 4:30 on a Sunday morning with the single purpose of applying linguistic shock therapy to my brain. So forgive me for making sense where there is only non-sense. It helps to bring meaning into my life.
The truth of this mixed bag of a post is that it is only meant as a sort of bracket to mark the hold while I wait. I am waiting to see if my friends among the writers on strike have wrestled a half-decent deal from the conglomerated multinational corporations that endeavor to take control of our cultural life.
So some quotes:
It is sometimes forgotten that only thirty years earlier Georgetown had been a rundown, semi-bohemian section of town, where young cash-strapped reformers drawn to work for the New Deal took up residence in cheap flats and what are now called fixer-uppers. By the early 1960s, when the new generation ascended to power, the area had become the chief bastion of Washington social life, blending remnants of its down-to-earth (and even earthy) past with the grandeur of politics at the political capital of the Free World. To be sure, the intellectual level, except every now and then, was not exactly Augustan; Georgetown evenings during the Kennedy years had a snobbery and self-importance all their own. Still, it was a far cry from the gilded, media-mad place that Georgetown (including some of its surviving overseers from the Kennedy years) became in the 1980s.
From a Review in The New Republic(an)
By the good writer Sean Wilentz
Journals 1952-2000
by Arthur Meier Schlesinger The Vital Centrist
A Review by Sean Wilentz
Yes, if you read the literature, novels, and memoirs from D.C. in the New Deal era what can be found is young New Dealers setting up shop for themselves in Georgetown living next door to fallen gentry and collections of slumming Harvard types in Washington for fun and power in the FDR administration.
****
The Camelot Myth and Intellectual Pretentions
There is also this:
Over the years, an anti-Camelot myth has arisen that portrays the Kennedy administration as a sybaritic private men's club whose members occasionally took breaks to attend to matters like the Cuban missile crisis. Schlesinger, according to the myth, was the Kennedy family's chief courtier and propagandist, and nothing he says about the family can be trusted -- including his denials that, as he once put it, "an unending procession of bimbos" marched through the Kennedy White House. The journals from the early 1960s contain no hints about Kennedy's unruly sexual waywardness -- which Schlesinger eventually conceded, adding that it did "not constitute John Kennedy's finest hour." Later his love for and loyalty to the clan, and his desire to believe the very best until it became impossible to do so, could get the better of him. But the journals do convey the ease with which high spirits and cultivated, even serious thought once commingled in Washington -- an aspect of the Kennedy years that the prurient revisionists have buried. Hickory Hill certainly saw its share of inebriated high-jinks, but it was also the site of the so-called Hickory Hill seminars, in which Schlesinger arranged for various intellectual luminaries to rehearse their ideas before administration officials and specially invited guests in an informal atmosphere- -a freewheeling and unusual mixture of personalities as well as professions. (At one of these seminars, the philosopher A.J. Ayer gave a talk that attacked abstract propositions, only to have Ethel Kennedy, a devout Catholic, rise and challenge his rejection of "conceptions like truth and virtue and meaning.") The journals also describe a bygone world of Georgetown salons and dinner parties in which Schlesinger took constant pleasure. There are accounts of gatherings at the Alsops', the Bradlees', and the Harrimans', among others, that emanated political intelligence, elegance, and a certain moral sophistication. Parties do not have to be stupid.
Nothing in the review or the book reinvigorates the Camelot myth. Isn't the "anti-Camelot Myth" merely an unwillingness to accept Disney-like fairy tales as truth? I am not anti-fairy tale, simply opposed to systematic self-deception which is the motive behind the JFK Camelot story. The friendly fascist version of self-deception that is easily found in the Disney fairy tale is especially pernicious. The Disney-fairy tale should be contrasted with the Grimmer kind that always hints at something useful and truthful and uncomfortable. Truly, I am shocked at Sean for wanting to give back-handed support to the Myth of Camelot on the Potomac. There is no need.
As for the intellectual vigor of Camelot, it doesn't and shouldn't impress. Doesn't Sean think that the descendants of ex-Trots and rightwing vulgar Keynsians, those who make up the neo-con and neo-liberal ascendancy from the Reagan admin to the present, also have their study groups and book clubs? I am sure that in 1990 they invited Fukuyama to lecture to them on Hegel and "The End of History". The intelligentsia, whether of the type that once pranced around the Camelot on the Potomac or whether those who were a beacon on a hill in the Reagan administration always have their intellectual pretentions. I do wonder though if the Fundamentalist Christians, imported in mass by the Bush administration to run everything from Iraq to the Department of the Interior, read anything at night except for the Bible and the sci-fi weirdness of The Left Behind series. What would they have made of A. J. Ayer? What would A. J. Ayer made of them?
****
The Everyday System of Violence and Moral Insight
Intellectual pretentions aside: What is missing in all of the reviews I have read of Schlesinger 's Journals, and from the book itself when I glanced through it at the library, is any consideration of morality. It is superficially assumed that the only moral questions for those in power are those that are either personal or those that lead one to want to change or not change the system. There is no thought on a deeper moral level how a system of violence can be justified. In a system of violence decisions that create violence are made as a matter of course and as if such decisions were "natural".
Let us put aide Vietnam and Southeast Asia in this discussion, because the line of the Camelot Mythologists now is that JFK would have gotten us out of Vietnam and thus avoided a disaster. But let us conisder the normal and "uncontroversial" decisions of the Kennedy Administration, The daily decisions involving Latin America, which Schlesinger witnessed, are simply not thought about as presenting a moral quandry. These are the years when the Kennedy Administration decided that the military in Latin American countries should be reformed in order to focus on "internal security." Thus the U.S. brought Latin American military officers here to the U.S. to be trained at places like the School of the Americas. These were the same officers that would later lead the armed forces, with U.S. help, in establishing military dictatorships across Latin America, resulting in mass death and torture. What was established by the Kennedy Administration in the 1960s was a framework that created a wave of state-supported mass murder, torture and terror for the next thirty years. It is only in the last few years that Latin America has emerged from this period.
These are just "normal" decisions that must be made to maintain U.S. power and domiinance. Such decisions create the system of violence I referred to above. But it is exactly these normal decisions, the everyday decisions that we make without looking, that are the ones that must be held up to moral scrutiny. I do not expect the likes of Schlesinger to perform this duty for us. He is too caught up in the bright social whirl, the seduction of fame and beauty, the vanity of power and the lust to be close to the "Stars" (in Washington, in Hollywood) but some of our secular public intellectuals (other than Chomsky) could try to point out that there are moral issues that are ignored by Schlesinger in his journal.
Who does this? Who points these morals issues out regularly and consistently? Who focuses on the moral issues of systematic violence? Who looks at the decisions in the everyday life of the powerful (both political and economic) and puts them up to moral scrutiny? Only left religious radicals -- groups similar to the Catholic Worker, some of the Mennonite left, and Quakers. The secular left can do this. But for some reason the secular left has not been able to hold on to this function for long. It is people such as the Berrigan brothers and Dorothy Day and Miles Horton and Bob Moses, religiously and philosophcally inspired leftists who have always been best at this kind of moral prophecy. And further back it was people such as William Lloyd Garrison, Thoreau, and Tolstoy and hundreds of radical Anabaptists, who fulfilled the function of moral prophecy. It is these people that often point out that violence is a part of everyday life; that violence is a standard that is daily committed by people in power to the people who do not have power.
Many of these people learned their initial way of thinking about systematic and everyday violence from the great abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. He saw that the violence of slavery does not occur once and only once. It does not occur only when the slave is kidnapped and put into bondage or when the slave is whipped for disobeying the rule of the master. The violence of slavery is daily and it occurs whenever the slave does something in fear that the violence of his master will ensue if he does not do what he is told. The violence occurs everyday the slave hurts himself morally or physically while performing services for his master or when the slave is unable to perform services for him/herself or his/her friends and family. People such as Garrison pointed out that the decisions for this kind of systematic violence were attenuated and abstracted in such a way that the people who actually made the most important decisions did not have to see the consequences of the decisions that they make. The important people are able to sit safely and comfortably in their political palaces and bourgeois brownstones while others bloody their hands. In this way, the system of violence is standardized and institutionalized.
Reading reviews of the Schlesinger book, I ask myself: Why has the secular left so often failed to hold on to the moral criticism of systematic violence? Such criticism is a proper "utopian" function of criticism of society. It is a criticism that implicitly contrasts what we can be as individuals and a society with the current failure and success of what we are. Is it because the secular left too easily disdains the poetry of everyday and integral utopianism (of living "the moral life") as antagonist to everyday political and economic organization and infighting? I have no real answer. I am not religious. But it was the insight of the early socialist movement that some aspects of "radical religion" were to be admired. People such as Karl Kautsky once wrote about how early Christians were a revolutionary movement with many admirable attributes. He sought to incorporate the insights of the early Christians into the socialist movement.
***
A. J. Ayer and Ethel Kennedy: Logical Positivism and Catholicism The most interesting meaningless fact in the review was the bringing together of Ethel Kennedy and the great philosopher A.J. Ayer in a debate that I am sure would have shook the philosophical community to the core, if the philosophers had only found out about it. We can all be happy that Ethel Kennedy opposed A.J Ayer. She was bright enough to know that philosophical skepticism of the logical positivist variety and the recitation of the Roman Catholic catechism could not co-exist.
I don't mean to snicker. I actually think that the conflict betweent A.J. Ayer and Ethel Kennedy is the same theme as the one between being able to see systematic violence and simply accepting the world as it is without looking. Only in this instance I am not sure that there is a side to take.
Jerry Monaco
3 Feb. 2008
New York City
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work by
Jerry Monaco is licensed under a
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The lengthy quote below is from the article, Why the writers’ strike never came up in the Democrats’ Los Angeles debate by David Walsh, 2 February 2008.
One of my goals has been to get my friends on the left to recognize some of the importance of the writers' strike. Among the few left-wing outfits covering the strike are the Trotskyists at the World Socialist Web Site.
The coverage by David Walsh at this site has been very good except for a few lacunas. Perhaps I will talk about those lacunas in another context, but I will list them here: 1) There has been no analysis about the significance of the idea of industrial unionism in the writers' strike. 2) A left-wing analysis, or any pro-union analysis, of the writers' strike must deal with the significance of IATSE, the problem with its leadership, and the need for a caucus of IA-progressives to support the writers. 3) The problem of relative social-power in the industry is never discussed by David Walsh, except in the context of the notion that the strike can't be fought well unless the fighting is done from a socialist perspective. (The sermons about socialism are the price you will pay for getting Walsh's decent analysis about the writer's strike. Just think of it as WSWS's version of product placement.)
The article quoted below is mostly about why Clinton and Obama did not have the guts to mention the writers' strike during their debate in Los Angeles.
A note by contrast should be added to the observations below. One reason why it was significant that Edwards turned up for a WGA demonstration in New York is because it took guts. By unambiguously supporting the writers' union in this strike a presidential candidate gives up a significant portion of Hollywood money, which has always been important for Democratic party candidates. (As a caveat to this I must mention that I don't support Edwards or any other presidential candidate and never have.) The four big and consistent financial backers of the Democrats are (1) the big city real estate and construction interests; (2) the trial lawyers; (3) individuals in media and entertainment; and (4) unions. These four groups are rarely in agreement on goals and policies. The unions are usually the outliers, in this group, and are less significant financially than the other groups. Among the other three elite donors the only money that can be taken by Democratic presidential candidates with a clear conscience is trial lawyer money. If a Democratic presidential candidate alienates any of the first three of these financial groupings it is usually considered a disaster for their campaign. It is possible to alienate the unions and survive in the Democratic Party, but it is not possible to alienate the financial block represented by media and entertainment.
I usually don't write about the presidential beauty contest, because, frankly, I think most of what is talked about and written about in the context of this kind of pseudo-politics is irrelevant. But it is important to know where the money comes from for these people because those who give the moneys are essentially investors in a set of policies. The investment strategy of the economic elite, represented in this case by the flow of money to any particular politician, usually sets the boundaries that the candidate must work within.
The current bitter conflict pits the writers against a number of massive corporations, pillars of the US ruling elite. This Hollywood wing of the elite plays a particularly significant role in bankrolling the Democratic Party. While both Clinton and Obama released statements at the beginning of the strike expressing their support for the writers, that was merely for public relations purposes. In reality, the two Democratic hopefuls depend heavily on the largesse of film and television executives—at present stubbornly refusing the writers’ modest demands and smearing them in the media—for campaign funds. Late last February, for example, during the Presidents’ Day recess of Congress, Obama’s campaign organized a $2,300-per-ticket Beverly Hills reception, attended by film stars, studio executives and others, which raised some $1.3 million. Not to be outdone, in March 2007 the Clinton campaign raised $2.6 million at a Beverly Hills gala held at the estate of supermarket billionaire Ronald Burkle, also attended by Hollywood leading lights. Like the Democratic Party establishment as a whole, the media and entertainment elite is divided in its loyalties, or still undecided. Clinton has the support of Rupert Murdoch of News Corp (Fox Television, 20th Century Fox) and National Amusements billionaire Sumner Redstone (CBS, Viacom), former Paramount Studios chief Lansing, Barbra Streisand, Spielberg, Harvey Weinstein and Hugh Hefner. In his camp Obama has Spielberg’s DreamWorks partners Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, ex-Disney chief Michael Eisner (who denounced the writers’ strike as “stupid” n November), producer Norman Lear and Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman Michael Lynton, among others. After Thursday’s tepid debate, as one commentator noted, “it was off to even more important business, as Obama drove up the street to the Avalon nightclub and Hillary headed west toward the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, each to attend $2,300-per-ticket fundraisers.” In the 2008 election cycle so far the television, film and music industry has provided the various candidates with $15,354,208 in contributions, 77 percent of that going to the Democrats (www.opensecrets.org). Individuals or Political Action Committees involved in movie production specifically have handed over $4,175,659—91 percent to the Democratic Party. On the list of top industries contributing to the Clinton campaign, “television, music and movies” ranks 7th, having given $2.1 million. The same industry ranks 6th on Obama’s list, having contributed $2.2 million. Clinton has received $6.3 million from the Los Angeles-Long Beach, California area (with $565,525 coming from Beverly Hills), while Obama has taken in $5.1 million from the same area. Among the top 20 contributors to the Clinton campaign organized by individual firm, along with banking and investment giants Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns, one finds Redstone’s National Amusements ($193,850), Time Warner ($124,150) and Murdoch’s News Corp ($99,350). On Obama’s list, in addition to Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, one again comes across the names of National Amusements ($220,950) and Time Warner ($142,718). The prominence of Time Warner on both lists is noteworthy, so too the personal contributions of Barry Meyer, chairman and CEO of Warner Bros (a division of Time Warner), to both the Clinton and Obama campaigns. The debate Thursday was broadcast on CNN, another division of Time Warner, and moderated by the cable network’s Wolf Blitzer. Warner Bros is one of the companies currently struck by the writers and Meyer is considered to be one of their most intransigent opponents. Is it any wonder then that the writers’ situation never came up for discussion Thursday? No, it’s not.
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There has been a recent spate of books to add to the atheist's library. They all speak out against religion and the belief in God. This is not a new battle and in many ways the battle has already been won.
Why do I say that the battle against religion has been won? Because religious institutions are not the dominant institutions even in places that we think of as dominated by religion -- Iran, the United States, or Pakistan. The nation-state is the dominant institution. Multinational business entities, which nation-states serve in the great industrialized nations, follow closely behind. I current societies religious institutions are a distant third in their ability to control and dominate. The grounds on which religious bigotry could be a powerful force-of-itself have been transformed by the European powers and the creation of the nation state. If we look across the world today religious bigotry may be a motivating or aggravating factor in many areas, but religion only exists as a powerful force in relation to nationalism and the nation-state. Often religion as an institution tries to influence the nation state as a reactionary way to control the cultural side-effects of the dominance of multinational business entities in the state domanin. On the other hand, nationalist movements, whether covered by a velvet glove or masked by religious bigotry are always iron fisted and bold-faced, when seen clearly. The nation-state has been the superstition of the two of ages of reason and industrialized war, and though at times multinational corporations have attempted supplant corporate patriotism for nation-state jingoism, nationalism still remains the most dangerous ideology the world has ever known. The nationalist superstition is more dangerous than religion has ever been or ever will be, killing millions and millions of people in the great Europeans civil wars of the 20th century and motivating the European peoples to spread the nation-state form to all parts of the globe. If Richard Dawkins wishes to fight the most dangerous superstition he will entitle his next book, The Nationalist Delusion.
So we come to the death of Philip Agee. Agee was stationed in Latin America by the Central Intelligence Agency where he witnessed U.S. approved assassination, torture, and coups d'etat. He decided that he could no longer accept what he considered the secret betrayals of the U.S. government of the peoples of the Americas. He quit the CI A and instead of aiding and abetting the "official" enemies of the U.S. (Russia) he decided to give aid to the real enemy of the U.S. Government, the peoples of the Americas. He gave his information to reporters he aided in starting magazines that would expose CIA treachery, and he wrote a book in which he recorded what he saw. I was a subscriber and avid reader of Covert Action Information Bulletin through the 1980s and consider it a great contribution to exposing the institutional anti-republican forces that exist in our own government. In all of Agee's activities I think he did more to fight the most dangerous superstition than the good Richard Dawkins could ever do.
At least that was my personal experience.
When I was in high school I was the kind of kid who read spy novels, along with private eye novels, and some science fiction. I loved the tenebrous ambiguity of the best spy stuff. The labyrinth of mirrors was a place where I could wander freely in my mind. I always felt like a bit of a spy in my own house, so spy novels were the perfect metaphor for the thirteen year old boy who was asked to play the double-agent between between divorcing parents.
The spies of my imagination made me curious about the real world of spies. I already considered myself a socialist at 16, but I was still too much of a patriot to be a fully fledged anti-imperialist.
In 1975 I picked up Agee's book "Inside the Company: A CIA Diary" because it was about spying, not for its anti-imperialist content. What I read gave a face to imperial skulduggery as it was practiced in Latin America in the 1960s. Agee's book certainly did its job with me. I saw that secret intelligence agencies were not compatible with the basic principles of a (bourgeois) republic.
During the Valerie Plame affair Agee was much on my mind, since the underlying law that may or may not have been violated of exposing a CIA agent to public view could have been called "Lex Anti-Agee." (See, "The Rule of Law" and Secrecy: CIA Prisons and the Plame Affair, Chomsky on the Plame Affair and the posts here.) For me the Plame Affair provided two opportunities: exposing the hypocrisy of the Bush-Chaney clique, but more importantly exposing the anti-democratic nature of a law that essentially protects a secret society of brutal murderers and their support bureaus of intellectual clerks. As far as I am concerned the name of every CIA agent should be published and posted in the squares, markets, and forums of every town and city in the world.
Phillip Agee deserves credit for bringing light to one small part of a dark world.
Jerry Monaco
10 January 2008
New York City
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I highly recommend Class Struggle In Hollywood, 1930 – 1950: Moguls, Mobsters, Stars, Reds, & Trade Unionists by Gerald Horne for anyone who wishes to gain an historical perspective on the current situation that led to the WGA strike and in union movements in general.
This book has been on my reading list for a long time, combining as it does my interest in labor history and in the history of Hollywood. The occasion of the WGA strike has brought me to finally pick up the book. What I am most interested in is to read about the origins of disunion between the Hollywood unions, and the role of the WGA and IATSE in this history. As Gerald Horne says in the preface of his book:
This is a book about labor-management conflict in Hollywood. It concerns the attempt of the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU), a federation of craft unions led by painters and carpenters, to confront not only the major studios but also a competing union, International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE) and its allies in organized crime. CSU went on strike in 1945 and was locked out in 1946. However, it fought its antagonists to a standstill in 1945. They were routed in 1946. The vanquishing of CSU erased progressive trade unionism for generations to come in one of this nation's most significant industries. (vii)
I hope to offer a complete review of Class Struggle In Hollywood, 1930 – 1950 in a future post. For now, I would like to write about something more personal -- the circuitous route of how I came to know about the events detailed in Gerald Horne's book.
When I first moved to New York in the early 80s, I met some veterans of some of the incidents that led to one of the first post-war strikes. It was the 1945 strike by the CSU and the 1946 lockout by the moguls of the CSU in Hollywood. Vince, who was in that strike, had been a carpenter and was living in Hoboken when I met him. He and his friends were black-listed for their participation in the strike. In fact they were black-listed not for being communists – the Communist Party had actually opposed the first post-war strike – but for being militant union leaders. What is little known, and generally suppressed by all parties as an inconvenient fact, is that the blacklist was not primarily used against Communists but against union organizers and militants. Further, the blacklist was not primarily used against writers, actors, and directors, the people we usually read about, but against set-designers, carpenters, painters, lighting-designers, etc. It is convenient for us at this late date to think of Hollywood blacklisting as mainly an activity of the past, and an activity that occurred during a limited period of time during the height of the cold war. This is indeed the case when we talk about stars and other well-known creative talent. The best way to discipline "troublesome" creative talent was to accuse them of being a communist, a homosexual. or a drug addict. Essentially, this was a form of blackmail by the bosses. But carpenters like Vince were not blackmailed in this way. If they were union militants of any type they were simply blacklisted. After the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935 this kind of blacklisting of pro-unon employees was illegal, but it was still maintained, and especially advocated by extreme right-wing bosses like those who ran Disney. The blacklist of Hollywood union militants began long before the well-known Hollywood anti-Communist blacklist and lasted for a long time after. I would argue that it is still maintained to this day. For example, I think there is evidence that animation writers who try to organize with the WGA, instead of with IATSE, are still blacklisted in the industry. The current labor laws are so toothless that there is not much that can be done about this legally.
But even before Vince told me about the Hollywood strike and lockout of 1945-46, I had known about some of the incidents in this strike because of my love of film noir. The first time I heard of this strike was when researching a movie I was obsessed with since about age 13, "The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers." It is a strange title for a strange movie. It existed at the cusp of the collapse of the studio system. The movie was a very operatic film noir. In fact the fact that nobody has made an opera of it is either an indication of copyright problems or of the lack of a modern Donizetti to write the piece.
"Strange Loves" starred Barbara Stanwyck, who is also an obsession of mine, and was written by Robert Rossen, and directed by Lewis Milestone. Barbara Stanwyck, was one of those great self-trained actors, and one of the few to make her own way through the Hollywood star-system. She was also a right-winger and one of the first to jump on the anti-communist band wagon. Curiously, her politics never stopped her from working with left-wing talent. What she most desired for herself and other people was hard work, morning and night, and a little political hypocrisy went a long way in allowing her to work with people that she would otherwise want blacklisted. Milestone was a director who got around. He had been in Hollywood since the silent days. He was a good director but not someone I consider spectacular. Robert Rossen is probably best known now days for writing and directing "The Hustler," but he also directed "Body and Soul" and wrote and directed the 1949 version of "All the Kings Men." He was one of those screenwriters who got fed up with having his scripts gutted by producers and directors, and decided that he might as well trying directing his own work. The movie also has the distinction of being one of Kirk Douglas's first starring roles.
What I mainly knew about these Rosen and Milestone at the time I started my research on "Strange Loves" was that, later in their careers, they had both been called before House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to testify. Both Milestone and Rossen were members of the original Hollywood Nineteen, which later became the Hollywood Ten, when ten of the 19 were indicted. They were both suspected left-wingers but both avoided indictment each in a different way. Milestone took the 5th Amendment and somehow, I don’t know how, avoided blacklisting. Yet in the aftermath of his refusal to testify his movie-making abilities went downhill. My guess is that after his refusal to testify he did not look for controversial subjects, nor did he take chances in his movie-making. He certainly sought out controversial subjects previous to his testifying, and "The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers", was the kind of loopy movie making that no one would expect from an old-time director like Milestone. The whole thing feels like some strange combination of a modern dress western (lone gambler-gunman comes to town to confront his past) and haunted house tale, completely with dark old mansions that mysteriously carry memories of past murders.
At first, in 1951, Robert Rossen also took the 5th Amendment in front of HUAC, but in 1953 he testified. His testimony was classic self-justification and makes a wonderful read. In Victor Navasky's Naming Names one can find the following account of Rossen's testimony.
Certainly many of those who named names resisted the informer label. Consider the exchange between the Committee and the writer-director Robert Rossen (BODY AND SOUL [1947], ALL THE KINGS MEN [1949], etc.), who in 1951 refused to name names but appeared again in 1953 ready to go through the name-naming ritual. "I don't think," he told the congressmen, "after two years of thinking, that any one individual can even indulge himself in the luxury of individual morality or pit it against what I feel today very strongly is the security and safety of this nation." Congressman Clyde Doyle of California tried to paraphrase Rossen's position: "In other words, you put yourself, then, in a position as a result of your patriotism or patriotic attitude toward your nation, which you came to subsequent to January 25, 1951, where you were willing to be labeled a stool pigeon and an informer, but you felt that was perhaps the privilege rather than a disgrace?"
MR. ROSSEN: I don't feel that I'm being a stool pigeon or an informer. I refuse--I just won't accept that characterization.
CONGRESSMAN KIT CLARDY: Well, Mr. Doyle means--
MR. ROSSEN: No; no. I am not . . . disagreeing with Mr. Doyle, but I think that is a rather romantic--that is like children playing at cops and robbers. They are just kidding themselves, and I don't care what the characterizations in terms of--people can take whatever positions they want. I know what I feel like within myself. Characterization or no characterization, I don't feel that way.'
Navasky, Victor S. NAMING NAMES. New York: The Viking Press, 1980, "A Note on Vocabulary"
Rossen not only named names but gave as many details on his political life as possible. He dramatized himself in world-historical terms. He was a good writer I think, because the coil of his thought could be seen through every bit of what he said, and often what he wrote.
I am trying not to be judgmental, because even though I believe that the committee and all of the red-baiters were scoundrels, I don’t believe that we can judge every individual who named names on a predetermined moral scale. None of us know what we would do in a similar situation. I don’t believe in heroes and it seems to me that the demand that people act as heroes is a demand for a special elite of humans who sacrifice themselves for the future. I would like to get as far away from the ideology of heroism as possible. As Bertolt Brecht wrote in his play Galileo, "Pity the nation that needs heroes."
What does all of this have to do with "Class Struggle in Hollywood" or with "The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers"?
During the filming of "Strange Loves" the painters and carpenters from the Conference of Studio Unions went on strike. Milestone refused to cross the picket line and briefly filming stopped. One day in October 1945, Barbara Stanwyck and some of the other actors went up to the roof of the studio and what they saw was cops and IATSE thugs beating up the CSU pickets. There was a battle raging outside of the studio. Kirk Douglas, who was in his first big role with a starring actress, agonized over the fact that he had crossed a picket line. Milestone and Rossen both did not know whose side to take. The CSU was a truly militant union that wanted to organize everybody in the industry on an equal basis. This strike could have been a beginning of true industry-wide union solidarity in Hollywood. And there Milestone was, a sympathetic leftist sitting the battle out. And there was the cast and crew of "Strange Loves" standing on the roof watching the battle between police and strikers, watching the barricades set up in front of the studios, the burning police cars, cars tipped on their sides and dragged to the middle of the street to serve as barricades against the high-pressure fire-hoses and the club-wielding thugs. Hundreds of CSU picketers, but none of the strike-breaking thugs, were arrested. Eventually the CSU was defeated and I would argue that the Hollywood union movement never completely recovered. The reverberations of this defeat can still be felt today in the lack of solidarity between the IATSE leadership and the WGA, and IATSE's traditional pro-company stance.
One reason why Rossen and Milestone did not know what position to take in relation to the CSU strike was because the Communist Party, had opposed the strike as a break of the World War II no-strike pledge. This is ironic because the CSU was accused of being a "Communist" union. It was not a Communist union, far from it. In fact there were no communists leading this particular union. But the union was red-baited and the leadership was jailed. The studios launched a media campaign against the union. The studios also made sure that IATSE got preferential treatment. IATSE at this time was very close to the mob, and it was in fact the Los Angeles gangsters who supplied the anti-CSU IATSE goon-squad. This was the story I was told by some of the veterans of the strike.
The historical lesson here is something that every unionist should know. In the post-war period government and management all opposed the threat of militant unions. At this time there were more militant unions than corrupt unions. One way that management opposed militant unions was by red-baiting them. In many cases the unionists who were being red-baited were not communist or even "leftists". They were simply good union leaders. This was the case with the CSU. Another strategy that management used in opposing militant unions was to find unions that were friendly with management and to promote the interest of those unions over and above the militant unions. A related strategy, and one of the most important, was for management to call in the mobsters and the unions allied with the mobsters. In every case across the U.S. in the post-World War II years – among electrical workers opposing General Electric and Westinghouse, among dock-workers in the east, among Midwestern Teamsters – management and government promoted unions allied with mobsters in order to defeat unions that actually had the worker’s interest as part of their program. The story of Gerald Horne’s "Class Struggle in Hollywood" is the story of how this happened in Los Angeles.
As I read this book I will provide significant quotations. I am enjoying the book immensely, and I would highly recommend it as winter reading for all writers who are on strike, and all their supporters.
"The strife of the mid-1940s was also important for other reasons. At stake was nothing less than control over an industry that was essential in forging people’s consciousness. The titans of Hollywood had invested mightily in creating a "star system" that had captivated the imaginations of millions worldwide who followed the doings of actors – on and off the screen. Hollywood was surely a ‘dream factory.’ And these iconic actors lived lives that were the stuff of dreams as they instructed and mesmerized. But how would the multitudes respond to the sight of their favorite stars on picket lines, embroiled in a class struggle? How would the masses react when the Oz-like curtain of illusion was ripped away, revealing that the issues in Hollywood were not that different from those in Detroit, Pittsburgh, and other labor-management battlefronts? Yet there was at least one significant difference: class struggle in Hollywood could grab attention and provide lessons in ways unmatched by other labor-capital conflicts.
"Other factors help explain the ferocity of the onslaught on Hollywood labor [in the post-war years]. The screenwriters, which did include a complement of Communists, were indispensable to the production process. Though the moguls sought to show otherwise, making a decent movie without a competent screenplay based on a sound idea was tough. Even in the digital era of the twenty-first century, dispensing with writers – unlike other guilds and unions – will be difficult. Moreover, screenwriters, who were genuinely interested in intellectual exchange and foreign film were countered by moguls who were desperately interested in constructing firm protectionist walls to keep international cinema out of the U.S. market. When the screenwriters – who actively fought against tariff walls that kept foreign films from U.S. audiences – were denuded of Communist influence, it became easier for the moguls to bar foreign films while conquering markets abroad. This protectionism provided a comfortable cushion of profitability that proved critical to the industry in the post-World War II era in the face of a stiff challenge from television, independent film producers, and a successful antitrust lawsuit that disrupted the vertical integration of Hollywood. In fact, labor unrest in Hollywood erupted at an unpropitious moment for the moguls, confronted as they were by all manner of challenges – not least of which was anti-Semitism. Bulldozing CSU seemed all the more important in a context where nettlesome problems seemed to be proliferating and metastasizing."
At one point Horne comments: "By the time the unions went on strike in 1945… the studios were the ones exhibiting ‘class consciousness,’ standing shoulder-to-shoulder to confront a common foe, while the unions were busily knifing one another. The conflict in Hollywood illustrated an age-old lesson: class consciousness does exist in abundance in the United States; it is just painfully deficient among the working class."
Here I would like to point out that the owners of the multinational corporations are the most class-conscious of groups in history. They are constantly engaged in, often deadly, class struggle against those who challenge any bit of their power and dominance.
Jerry Monaco
24 December 2007
New York City
[Caveat: I am not a member of the WGA, nor do I speak for any of the officers or members of that union or any other union. I have been a member of other unions in the past and I am a supporter of a stronger union movement in the United States. J.M.]
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons License.
28 December 2007
P.S. Ms. R. Kafrissen has a wonderful post on the mechanics of the blacklist at Rootless Cosmopolitan Mechanics of the Blacklist, Part 1. I highly recommend it.
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| » Who are the Producers? Part 1 - Social Reflections on the Writers' Strike |
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At one of the first rallies of writers’ strike Writers Guild of America, West, President Patric Verrone said, "If the producers gave us everything we wanted -- everything. And they then made a deal with the DGA and matched it, which is what they would do. And then they made a deal with the Screen Actors Guild and tripled it, which is typically the pattern. If they did that, if they gave us everything, on a company by company basis, they would be giving all of us less than each of their CEOs makes in a year. And in some cases a lot less."
The primary fact to grasp about this strike is that the WGA is a small union pitted against some of the most powerful multinational corporations in the world. General Electric owner of NBC, Time Warner, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. owner of Fox, Viacom/CBS (largely owned by billionaire Sumner Redstone’s National Amusements), Disney and Sony -- these are the business entities that call themselves the "producers" in this strike. These multinationals have more power and money than most nations on earth and often act as if they are sovereign entities. Anybody who challenges their power, economically or politically, are on their enemies list and will be treated accordingly.
In fact, the people who own and run these companies "produce" nothing. As part of the usual "propaganda of the name", the organization through which these large multinationals negotiate is called "the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers" (AMPTP). But the actual "producers" in the industry have issued a statement that the multinationals of the AMPTP don’t exactly represent them. (I will have more to say on the ideology of this nomenclature in a future post.) These so called "producers" who control the AMPTP, spend most of their time fighting with other executives, "restructuring" their companies, making big financial deals with other companies. These big deals often enough lead to unemployment, reduced wages, and degradation of the common weal, while increasing the "compensation" of the big dealers.
These "executives" do not contribute to the cultural life of humanity, not even to the extent of being decent "patrons."* They are not modern Medici. The owners and "managers" of these corporations do not want to sponsor creativity, but only insure that it is within their control. The "cultural" choices that these new robber-barons make when buying the media of cultural propagation (the public air-waves, the municipal monopolies of cable, the retail outlets, the publishing companies, the internet companies, etc.) show no concern for anything but increasing the wealth and power of people like themselves and of the institutional entities that they run. There is little to deter their pursuit of wealth and power, because the social system we have created is based on the perpetuation of immortal entities called corporations that must expand or die. The matters of basic human decency, or of telling the truth about the world we live in, or even the minimal desire to provide laughter, thought, and tears, through good entertainment, are all subservient to the need for wealth and power.
Let me make this clear, this is not a matter of simple greed. Of course, we live in a social system where greed is good. But the personal preferences of the rulers and owners of these corporate entities don’t really matter that much at the end of the day. They may hate George Bush and give to charity and think of themselves as good people. Yet, if they don’t expand their profits, control, and power, then their businesses will be strangled and they themselves will fall from the top… often enough now days with a golden parachute.
In other words, there are institutional imperatives that make these people assholes.
Just as it is a mistake to think that this strike is mainly about personal greed it is also a mistake to think that this strike is mainly about money. It is important to be clear, that for the average WGA member the strike is about a better way of life and a secure future, for themselves and their families. But that is not what primarily concerns the big bosses of the multinationals. Their perspective is larger and wider. It is about power. It is about control of the future. It is about maintaining their oligopoly over popular culture.
The WGA estimates that over the next three years the extra compensation that would result if all the WGA demands were accepted would be 150 million dollars. This is truly a small amount for these companies.
Let's look at the facts.
Jeffrey R Immelt, CEO/Chairman of the Board/Director at General Electric Company, the owners of NBC, in 2006 was compensated $17,863,452 in salary and $19,778,460 in stock options, for a total of more than 37 million in one year. Over the course of three years that would out to be more than 119 million dollars. This is more than enough to cover General Electrics share of compensation to 10,000 writers.
Peter Chernin, of News Corp. owner of Fox, $33,985,578 in salary and $28,457,069 in stock-options for a compensation of more than 62 million in one year. His boss at News Corp., Rupert Murdoch, $32,135,675 and unknown amount in stock options. Over the course of three years of a WGA contract their compensation together would amount to much more than 280 million dollars.
Sumner M Redstone, owner and former CEO of Viacom/CBS made $16,436,125 as CEO of Viacom and $12,164,115 as Chairman of the Board of CBS. It seems his stock options totaled $45,621,293. Over one year this is more than 74 million dollars and the over three years of a WGA contract more than 222 million dollars.
I will not bore you with any more of these figures.
The point here is not that these "producers" are being paid an obscene amount, or that they can more than afford to compensate writers, directors, actors and all the people "below the line" from grips to make-up. My point is not the same propaganda thrust as made by WGA Pres. Patric Verrone, but rather a strategic observation. The bosses' ability to easily compensate writers is an indication that they see the primary struggle of this strike as not a struggle over money but a struggle over power and control, both in the present and in the future. I hope to write another post specifically on the world view of the bosses of these corporations, but suffice it to say here that their perspective is not limited to Hollywood and New York but to the world as a whole.
In many ways the propaganda of the AMPTP is correct but distorted, as through a glass darkly. In their propaganda everything is reversed. They claim that the strike is about "ideology." They are correct. But it is not the WGA and Patric Verrone who are adhering to an unyielding ideology, but the media moguls. They believe that if they don’t take control of their creative workforce and of new media, now, they will lose an essential part of their monopoly of media "products", in the future. And with this decline in control over new media will come a loss of power, primarily political power here in the U.S. and in the rest of the world. They say this strike is about the "future" of the industry. They are correct. But the future they envision is one where most of our cultural "product" is "owned" by a few huge multinational corporations. They wish to treat our cultural creativity as if it were mere kitchen appliances, food processors, blenders, microwaves. The creators of the "product" they wish to treat as mere "hands," who are hired to assemble the pieces, and then are laid-off when not needed.
The only way to change this situation is for ordinary people, people who actually do the work of creating and producing, to get together and try to counter the power of the multinational corporations. That in part is what this strike has come to be about. The WGA was forced to strike as a matter of simple fairness and compensation. This strike amounts to a lock-out by the media moguls. For them it is not a matter of money, the nickels and dimes that they carry in their pocket – the true matter of this strike for the multinationals is control of culture. In order to maintain that control they have decided to take the hit of a strike. They think they can afford it. But we, the rest of us, must support the WGA in every way possible. We must make sure that the multinationals come to see that they can't afford this strike. We must find ways to make them feel the pain of the loss of profits and power. In future posts I hope to speak of the strategy and tactics of this strike and the dilemmas of a small union opposing the Leviathan of multinationals.
Jerry Monaco
22 December 2007
New York City
[Caveat: I am not a member of the WGA, nor do I speak for any of the officers or members. I have been a member of other unions in the past and I am a supporter of a stronger union movement in the United States. J.M.]
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons License.
* As a matter of fairness I must mention that the CEO of Sony is one, Howard Stringer, who started his career as a writer at CBS. Sony is a Japanese corporation. The star-culture of the great CEO personality cult has not yet hit Japan. Thus of all the CEOs on the list of union busters, Stringer is the only one who actually ever got his hands inky and the one who is compensated the least.
Dec. 22nd, 2007 @ 09:17 am
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| » In defense of parodies and theme pickets: WGA Strike Against Multinational Corporations |
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The AMPTP is very upset. They walked away from the table and since that time all they have been doing is complaining that the writers and their union have been organizing picket lines and complaining that "their" writers have been writing parodies. Beyond that they refuse to negotiate. instead they write things like the following.
Then, someone from the WGA offices happily distributed the link to a hijacked parody website that even many rank-and-file WGA members felt was over-the-top. All of this is happening right along with the WGA's continuing series of concerts, rallies, mock exorcisms, pencil-drops and Star Trek-themed gatherings.
Amidst this alternating mix of personal attacks and picket line frivolity, we must not forget that this WGA strike is beginning to cause serious economic damage to many people in the entertainment business
See Deadline Hollywood, "AMPTP Hot and Bothered"
Why is the AMPTP upset by this "frivolity"? Because the CEOs and Moguls who look at their labor force as people who should take orders and be silent, are shocked that their workers are standing up for themselves. Why do they make fun of Star Trek themed picket lines? Because the bosses don't want any kind of picket lines and they certainly don't want picket lines supported by large groups of people. Why do they complain about parody websites? Because those of us who are not members of the WGA read them, and they make us laugh, and like all good satire they reveal to us a lot of the truth.
So it was a surprise to me that a weblog of a writer I occasionally read Jim Cirile at Coverage, Ink/Writers on the Storm, complained about these tactics. I read him because as a poet I am interested in the problems of creativity and how they intersect with business.
There is a feeling from people like Jim C, people who are not used to looking at their employers as bosses, that such tactics are impolitic. What I would like to show in this post and subsequent posts is that these tactics are unique extension of necessary union tactics. These tactics should be admired and imitated by other unions.
In fact I think that other unions should make a deal with the WGA that future strikes by other workers will have the aid of these writers and satirists!
I like Jim C. so I felt a needed to respond to the post. I quote my response in whole below. I was a bit heated but he told me thanks for the post, so I suppose he was not too staggered.
I quote the post in whole and then my response, with a few syntactical corrections.
WGA Management Officially on Crack
Monday Dec. 10 -- In a staggering display of poor judgment, the Writers Guild of America, currently neck-deep in a strike effort against the AMPTP (film producers), either deliberately or inadvertently sent an official WGA communique to the entire WGA West membership plugging a spoof site ridiculing the AMPTP. The site, www.amptp.com, lampoons the AMPTP's poor judgment and is entertaining satire to be sure. But at a time when thousands of people are out of work heading into the holidays, most of whom will never see any benefit from any WGA deal, only lost income, the industry is getting more and more nervous, and key industry figures like Thomas Short, president of Hollywood union IATSE, are publicly criticizing guild management for incompetence on the front page of The Hollywood Reporter, in my opinion the Guild should have exercised some sensitivity here. To be sure, this comes across as a childish move--certainly not the deft and professional negotiations many of us were hoping for.
To be clear, Coverage Ink supports the issues the WGA is going for here. But boneheaded moves like this can't possibly help the Guild or the strikers. Goof sites are fine, and I've written a few myself. But when they're officially sanctioned by one side, it makes the sanctioner look like a complete jack-ass. Brilliant tactical maneuver, WGA.
UPDATE 12/11: WGA President Patric Verrone responds thusly:
Jim,
Thanks for writing. So you know, this web site was done without Guild knowledge or input but, when we saw it, we thought members would be interested. We remain committed to resolving this contract as soon as humanly possible. Remember, the AMPTP walked away from the table on Friday, not us. We are ready and willing to bargain at a moment's notice.
Seriously.
Best,
Patric
***********
So this confirms that no less than WGA President Patric Verrone signed off on this mail. God help us all. I defer to the first post below from "anonymous" as to a few more reasons why this WGA mailing was a serious shot in the foot. --JC
*******************
My Response a bit more extended than at Jim C.'s weblog was the following:
I don't get it. The fact is that this parody was right-on. It is what we who are only fans of writers and creators expect of you, a good parody that is also true.
Listen, I am not a member of WGA, but I am a former union organizer and once a member of the USWA and at one time, as a taxi driver, a member of the Teamsters. I am a veteran of many strikes and pickets. The publicity that the writers have been producing for this strike has been fantastic. The fan supported picket lines have been amazing. The reason why the bosses are so upset about it is because they did not expect that so many people would support "elitist" writers. The bosses thought that they would win the propaganda war. And why not? They own the media. They have the money. They can hire the big P.R firms. So it is a shock to them that they are not winning the propaganda war hands down. They look at themselves as the masters of the universe. Who are these writers to stand-up to us? Who are these writers to be better at propaganda than the big media moguls?
No matter who is striking, the bosses always use the same kind of propaganda, over and over again. "We are in this together... The strike is the fault of the greedy union leaders who are only interested in their own power.... The 'real' rank and file workers are on our side... They, the rank and file, want to work with us, the bosses... We are all on the same side, but the union leaders are divisive and ideological... We have the best interest of all of 'our' workers and the industry as a whole at heart." It is always the same line.
When the your bosses complain about how upset they are about the tactics and the "antics" of your union it is because your union is getting under their skin.
Let me say, by law, by corporate by-laws, the big corporations are not allowed to have their worker's interests at heart. The so-called "non-owner stakeholders" of a corporation, the workers and the surrounding community, are supposed to be subservient to the stated goal of the corporate-entity of making money for the owners. By the corporate by-laws only profit matters and if that means screwing the workers then that is that. The CEOs are greedy because that is their job-description. It is not their fault. It has nothing to do with personalities. It is simply the system and the institutions they work for. If they tell you that they are not greedy, that they are concerned with the workers in their industry, then they are only doing so for public relations purposes. And the only thing that will change that is some kind of counter power. Unions and their ability to act collectively and to rally the public to their side offer one possibility for what John Kenneth Galbraith called a counter-veiling power.
Unfortunately, the truth is that the WGA alone is neither big enough nor powerful enough to be a counter-veiling power, alone. They need help from many others. But to slag on the union for doing something successfully, something that we non-writers that support you admire greatly, is not seeing the reality of the situation.
*****
I will write more on this subject later.
If anyone wishes to copy any part of this post, or even plagiarize it as their own and post somewhere else, please feel free.
Jerry Monaco
Dec. 20th, 2007 @ 12:27 pm
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| » New Yorkonomics: For a study of New York occupations |
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New York magazine has an amusing series on doing business in New York City
The Profit Calculator: The wild risks, unexpected niches, and day-in-day-out grind behind making a dollar in New York...for everyone from a drug dealer to Goldman Sachs.
The series is a great idea but I think it should have been extended and filled out in more detail. It should be a regular series. For instance there is a section called "The Drug Dealer", which sets out the risks and profits of the trade. A detailed parallel comparison between "the Drug Dealer" (Nick) and "The Drug Company" (Pfizer) would have been helpful.
A continuing series concentrating on niche occupations in New York would be an important cultural contribution. For instance a history of the rise and fall of the Italian-American run fruit and vegetable wagon, and how that niche occupation was replaced in the 1980s by the Korean-American run green grocer, would provide insight into New York City economics, immigrant waves, and family structures. A similar insight would be provided by an account on how Albanians came to replace Italians in ownership of small Pizza shops in Manhattan.
One could compare various levels in the same occupation. For instance, vibrant neighborhoods, such as mine in Astoria, Queens have dozens of small law offices scattered around. How do these law offices keep in business and how do these neighborhood law offices compare with the small law suites located near the courthouses in Manhattan, and the big law firms located in midtown? One can also make a comparison of street prostitution with high-level "escorts," the small neighborhood shoe store with the big manhattan shoe store, etc.
A concentration on unique New York occupations would be a helpful insight into how the city works. Why those occupations are unique to New York would help us to understand the special needs of the city. One rather unique New York occupation ( or rather an occupation unique to all cities where people walk a lot) is the shoe repair shop. There are two shoe repair shops within ten blocks of my apartment. I believe the density of these shoe repair shops has decreased dramatically in the last 25 years. The economics of shoe repair is an interesting New York subject. Of course another occupation rarely found in other U.S. towns is the street food vendor. Out on Steinway there seems to be at least one vendor sausages or shish kebobs or honey-roasted peanuts on every corner.
Soulvaki Stand In Astoria, Queens -- Why do New Yorkers need so much street meat?
Why do New Yorkers need so many street vendors and what is the economics of it all? When I first came to New York many of the street vendors sold roasted chestnuts in the Winter season. I remember I used to buy a bunch and put them in my coat pockets to warm my hands on especially cold days and then eat them with lunch later. Now there are very few roasted chestnuts vendors around. What happened to them? Why did the Winter sales of roasted chestnuts decline?
In Long Island City, not far from the Queensboro Bridge, there is a district that seems to exist just to service hotels, parties, delis etc. There are industrial "bakeries" which make the kinds of muffins and cakes that I always see in the Korean green grocers; there are laundries that seem to do nothing but wash sheets, pillow cases, table cloths, and towels for hotels, hospitals, and restaurants; and there are "rental" places that do nothing but rent folding chairs, tents, etc. for parties, gatherings, and receptions. There are still many "small factory" districts like this in New York City. They seem to service mostly "local" needs. What are the economics of these various small factory districts?
There are also many old time bakers in New York, making bread all night. There is a good one on the corner of 31st Street and Broadway here in Astoria, Parisi Bros Bakery, an old time Italian bakery, the kind I remember from growing up in Schenectady -- hot bread every morning, and Italian cookies and biscotti. This bakery is right underneath the El train Broadway exit and it does get a lot of walk in traffic. But surely it can't survive on walk-in traffic alone. I assume that this kind of bakery must sell its bread to New York restaurants, and other retail outlets in order to make ends meet. How does this work? How are the deals made between the restaurant and the bakery? What are the transportation arrangements?, etc.
In short the series at New York magazine left me wanting more information and more thought on the information given. But sometimes I was a bit annoyed for example with this quote in the section on "A Publishing Company: Random House"
"New Yorkonomics: Printing and publishing has been a big industry in the city since the early 1800s, when New York publishers were the first American printers with access to pirated English best sellers. "
I would like somebody to point out sometime an historical point that is largely forgotten: the U.S. was a nation that regularly violated intellectual property and its economy expanded greatly by such violation of intellectual property rules. More precisely all our complaints against China for stealing "our" intellectual property" used to be British complaints against the United States for stealing patents and copyrights from them. Why do we never mention this history of U.S. patent and copyright piracy when we complain about the piracy of other countries? It is just the usual hypocrisy I suppose.
Even when U.S. violation of intellectual property is alluded to as here, it is only mentioned as a rather quaint joke. But there is a real economic point to this. Up and coming economies are always and everywhere havens for pirates, free-booters, and privateers. I don't think that there is an historical exception. For some reason piracy is part of what makes for a fast-growing economy. Yet the same free-marketeers who are for "free" markets in everything else are not for free markets when it comes to certain kinds of state guaranteed monopolies in intellectual property. Even though such hypocrisy is usual, it is annoying that it is rarely noticed.
Jerry Monaco
New York City
5 June 2007
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Jun. 5th, 2007 @ 01:41 pm
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| » Perseus and the Gorgon's Head - A Poem with Commentary by Jerry Monaco |
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"Pity the monsters" ...
those we destroy without loving
those we fear without knowing
the dead gods of other epochs
now made evil... "Pity
the monsters" for soon
the slayers of vengeance
the unyielding ministers
of pain, the furies of fear, will
be monsters for us
to slay in self-righteous
joy... swinging the head of
the Medusa to show our enemies
and turn them
like our hearts
to stone
... Medusa through Athena...
to the hegemony of Zeus...
Prometheus or Lucifer... for those
Christian enough to choose
Perseus to Brutus ... or shall we take
Caesar? but who prefers tyrants
to tyrant slayers.... then
Louis or Lenin? Saint Thomas
More or Saint Just?
Marat the Monster
and Corday the modern Judith?
Or Marat the martyr
and Charlotte the Vampire?-- How many monsters turned
to saints and back again? Yes
Monster's deserve pity
and all the ironies of history should not
negate the simple request
"Don't forget to show
my head to the people. It's well
worth seeing..."
for the crowd
it's the simple confirmation of death
the satisfaction of desire
for the new tyrant
(or is he our liberator?)
or the mere after thought of the condemned
that this head of mine
separated from that body
lying at your feet
will still
retain the power to turn those people
in the square
faces turned upward
hungry to see
to stone.
Benvenuto Cellini, 1545-1554. Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence
Notice that blood gushes from the head of the Gorgon. Imagine holding up the head of Louis Capet or of Danton to the revolutionary crowd standing before the guillotine. Why did Mark Antony have the decapitated head of Cicero nailed to the Rostrum in the Roman Formum? It was proof that the man had gone, and that he had not gone to ground or to the under world. This was truly propaganda of the deed, as the old anarchist phrase used to term it. The crowd saw the decapitated head and some monster was exorcised. But Perseus is showing his head for other reasons. The decapitated head of the Gorgon, Medusa, still had power, but it was a different kind of power than the decapitated head of a Cicero or a Robespierre. The head of Medusa was put into Perseus's pouch then brought forth to turn his enemies to stone... a very useful decapitation in this case. Similarly, the statue that you see here was a very useful piece of political propaganda. It was commissioned by the Medici after they returned from brief exile. While in exile they had been excoriated as tyrants, but now they were to make sure that their dominance would last. Cellini's Perseus is holding up the head, displaying it to the potentially Republican crowd, not to confirm the death of the monster, but to turn the crowd itself into stone. The message was that all enemies of the Medici will be destroyed with the seeming ease that Perseus turned his enemies to stone. Of course the Republican's had other ideas. See Judith below...
Detail of Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus Holding up the bloody head is a political act, meant to inspire fear, a lesson well learned by both tyrants and revolutionaries! (See the note immediately above and also the last note for Donatello's Judith and Holofernes below.)
Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus Beheading Medusa (from the perspective of sight standing below the statue at Florence (Firenza) the Loggia). Notice that from this angle you can see the body of the Medusa lying at Perseus's feet. Thus you can see that Cellini conflates two actions of the Perseus story -- cutting off the Medusa's head and showing the head to Perseus's enemies to turn them to stone.
Another angle, showing the statue, oxidation and all.
Antonio Canova, 1804-1808. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. A very modest Perseus -- fig leaf and no blood and gore. Mario Praz once described the art of Canova as that of an "erotic frigidaire" I suppose the turned sword is another delicacy, which unlike Cellini's does not draw attention to the penis by paralleling it. One suspects that Canova was worried that Cellini's Perseus might reveal too much human reality -- sex and blood, revenge and rape -- for the eyes of his middle class patrons. We must dismiss our desires and designs from before our eyes when we commit our atrocities at a distance, as the fine nineteenth century folk were learning to do. The Medici and Cellini were not in favor of such delicacies.
This for your amusement is a "still living statue." Yes , it is a human actor posing as a statue. Fortunately realism is not extended to the head which this Perseus hold's in his hand.
A limestone metope from a temple at Selinas (on Sicily), 530-510 BCE.
It shows Perseus in the act of cutting off Medusa's head. Athena stands to Perseus's right, and Medusa holds Pegasus in her lap. The background shows traces of paint, as does Perseus' sword.
When looking at the composition of this relief compare it to some of the representations of Judith and Holofernes below. Ancient representations of Perseus and the Medusa, like Renaissance representations of Judith and Holofernes, often represented Perseus in the act of decapitation. It is good to think of the significance here. The ancient represented a Perseus who was in the act of slaying the monster, thus telling us that this act must be completed, must be continued. The implication is that these monsters must be killed in the present of the viewers of the work. The Renaissance representation's of Perseus do not depict Perseus in the act of slaying the monster, but in the act of displaying the monster's head to Perseus's enemies. The political significance for the use of this section of the myth was made explicit by the battle of artistic propaganda between the Medici and their enemies, between Perseus and Judith the Tyrant Slayer, in Florence at the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth century. Capturing Judith in the act of assassination shows the viewer a representative act of tyrant slaying, an act by implication that must continue in the present (see below). But if you show Perseus beyond the act of slaying the monster, and in the act of displaying the monster's head to his enemies, the artist has shifted the story from the necessity of destroying a monster to the necessity of inspiring terror in the enemies of the monster-slayer. This is the first step on the road of the monster-slayer becoming a monster.
As "realistic" representation Cellini is my favorite, and when seeing his statue in situ on the square in Florence it is impossible (for me, at least) not to feel the chill of history. But this is by far my favorite Perseus,. It shows that in its time this monster "needed" to be murdered, and that Perseus was the monster-slayer, preferred by those who lived by these myths.... The sense of ritual, the necessity to have a hero to protect the city from monsters, is inscribed in the stones of this old Greek town in Sicily.
The Head of the Medusa - Detail of a Caravaggio.
It took Caravaggio to imagine the Gorgon's decapitated head in "modern" terms. Here the decapitation is "real"; the head still alive and the eyes and mouth register shock, as if Caravaggio were anticipating all of those decapitated monsters during the French Revolution. Or perhaps the Revolution borrowed some legends from representations of renaissance painters.
The Medusa's Head - Bernini. The Medusa is still alive here, but Bernini forgot to include the rest of her body, perhaps the body is at the feet of the Perseus in the Loggia dei Lanzi.
The Gorgon at Corfu Museum
She is in her prime as a monster... but we miss her beauty, before Poseidon raped her.
Medusa by Arnold Böcklin, circa 1878 One of the few head's of the Medusa where we actually see that before she was cursed for being a wanton slut, she was a beautiful woman. Curses is what you get for being free and more beautiful than the ever-so benevolent current gods.
Danton - the great leader of the French Revolution: Perhaps his head could serve as a model for the modern Medusa. He said to his executioner as he stepped up to the scaffold to be tied to the plank and slid under the guillotine's blade, "Don't forget to show my head to the people. It's well worth seeing."
The Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat by David. A little more "fangy" than "knifefy" as Buffy Summers said... The implication that Marat was killed by a vampire is probably not out of David's ken. Nevertheless, Corday no doubt thought of herself as a modern tyrant slayer, a Judith, for our times. But this did not stop the revolutionaries from seeing her as a vampire or a monster.
Judith with the Head of Halophernes, by Christophano Allori, 1613. Judith can show the head to the viewer of the painting. Is there regret here or satisfaction? This beautiful slayer of tyrants was of course a wonderful whore also. So it is perhaps she who is reversing the role of Perseus, and finding revenge for her spiritual mother the monster or goddess Medusa, the raped and scorned, and beautiful Medusa.
Judith Beheading Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi (1612-21) Oil on canvas, 199 x 162 cm Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. When I saw this painting in the Uffizi, I thought to myself that this truly must be a self-portrait of Artemisia. If anyone can represent the revenge for the slaying of the wrong monsters surely she can.
Judith by Jan Massys, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp.
This Judith is fresh from the act of seduction which allowed her to gain entry to the tent of the General and allowed her to approach the carnal body of Holofernes. But such a portrait as provided by Massys is too intimate for the political act that the Donatello's statue represents (see below). We cannot help but see the details of desire that led to the act of bloody decapitation. Such a representation of triumph over tyranny by the personification of justice would frighten a burgher republican aristocracy more than any possible tyrant. Any woman in your bed - wife, concubine, slave - could perform such an act of decapitation-castration. This Judith is too much the sister of the Gorgon already. Her beauty is as much an aspect of the monster as the snakes in Medusa's hair. And as we know from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in order to fight the forces of darkness, it is necessary to interiorise some powers of the demon, even if such powers find their origins in a primal rape. (Is Judith a Vampire Slayer?)
Judith Beheading Holofernes by Caravaggio (c. 1598; Oil on canvas, 56 3/4 x 76 3/4 in; Galleria Nazionale dell'Arte Antica, Rome). One of my favorite paintings. The prissy-ness of Judith is not a distraction in this case. Her servant, the old witch eagerly standing by, is just letting her apprentice get used to the blood before graduating to the proper vampire status of Charlotte Corday.
Judith and Holofernes -- Donatello, 1460, Florence, Palazzo Vecchio.
This I give to continue the propaganda battle of the sculpture (see above). One monster slayer kills a tyrant and then another monster slayer kills the liberator who is now a new tyrant. The statue was commissioned by Cosimo de' Medici, but when the self-appointed monster slayer Girolamo Savonarola expelled the Medici and set up an austere republic the statue was moved to the he side of main door the Palazzo Vecchio to represent the Repubics desire to slay such monsters and tyrants that may present themselves before the wrath of the single and purest God. Savonarola was of course overthrown himself and slowly roasted alive, not simply burned at the stake as it is usually said. The Medici regained control of Florence and moved the statue of Judith and Holofernes to the courtyard inside the Palazzo Vecchio, to repress the memory of the bad years of Savonarola. But the memory of the monster slayer Savonarola did not die in the hearts of all. The Piagnoni kept his memory alive and briefly expelled the Medici again, restoring the statue once again to public view. This Republic lasted even a shorter time than Savonarola's Republic. When the Medici once again returned they had enough of the sympathetic magic of Donatello's Judith and Holofernes and decided to get some sympathetic magic of their own. They commissioned the statue of Perseus by Cellini (see above) to show that all future monsters, like Savonarola and his mob in the square will surely be turned to stone. So which monsters do you prefer?
Περσεύς
Jerry Monaco
New York City
26 May 2007
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
May. 26th, 2007 @ 10:14 pm
|
| » Nationalism and Patriotism are forms of Superstition |
|---|
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons. ~ Bertrand Russell
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. ~ George Bernard Shaw
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind. ~ Albert Einstein
Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind. We love the land of our nativity, only as we love all other lands. The interests, rights, and liberties of American citizens are no more dear to us than are those of the whole human race. Hence we can allow no appeal to patriotism, to revenge any national insult or injury. ~William Lloyd Garrison, the great abolitionist , the Declaration of Sentiments of the Boston Peace Conference, 1838
Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched. ~Guy de Maupassant
It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind. ~Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary
May. 21st, 2007 @ 02:25 pm
|
| » Atrocities, Imperialism, Hypocrisy: A Hypothetical |
|---|
In the United States the intellectual priesthood will focus on the atrocities of official enemies while ignoring or downplaying the atrocities and act of terror that are committed by the state they support. The following hypothetical was constructed in such a way as to try to imagine the moral situation of a person in an imperial country, who is deeply moved by the suffering of an oppressed minority, but at the same time cannot see the much larger suffering that her actions support. The immediate context of the hypothetical was a debate over how and when we in the U.S. might have moral authority to criticize human rights violations in Cuba.
The hypothetical:
Julius Caesar is in Gaul, slaughtering whole villages, and killing people by the thousands for his own glory and the glory of Rome.
In the course of Caesar's human hecatomb in Gaul, Vercingetorix surrounds a village and kills or expels all of the Romans in that village. Vercingetorix also suppresses Roman ecstatic mystery cults and their sexual practices in the areas of Gaul he still controls. Julius Caesar writes home to the Senate and the People of Rome about Vercingetorix atrocities. Because Caesar is particularly open minded, he includes in his report the suppression of the Roman mystery cults and its sexual practices.
Meanwhile back in Rome is a leader of the Bacchic cult. The cult and its practices has been occasionally suppressed and persecuted by the Roman patriarchal rulers, but now is continuing in relative openness, because significant members of the ruling classes and their wives belong to the cult.
Now the leader of the Bacchic cult , is outraged at reading the contents of Julius Caesar's letter. How dare Vercingetorix suppress the Bacchic cult and its sexual practices! How dare this evil and closed minded regime even exist! It is what she talks about when she talks to people who oppose Caesar's war against Gaul. It is what she talks about when she speaks to senatorial orators who support Caesar's war of slaughter and massacre in Gaul. She is for solidarity with the all of the practitioners of the feminine mystery cult. The mystery cult cuts across class lines and undermines patriarchal values everywhere, and that is why its sexual practices are being repressed by the war lord Vercingetorix. She believes that this war lord must be stopped.
Meanwhile Julius Caesar continues his slaughter and expands it. His slaughter shows a salutary equality of treatment. The people murdered by Caesar are murdered only because they resist the Roman suppression of Gaul and it doesn't matter to him if such people they have the sexual practices of the mystery cults or not. This is called bringing Roman values to benighted Gaul.
Thousands murdered in Gaul. And back in Rome our leader of the mystery cult talking to the perpetrators of these murders about the suppression of her mystery cult in Gaul. All of this is an amazing exercise in solidarity with the people of Gaul and a wonderful example of a political moral choice in how best to stop atrocity.
Why a hypothetical?
Hypotheticals often clarify moral situations. The idea is to abstract certain conditions and events from the political contentions of the time and to ask what is the proper moral choice in a particular circumstance.
Not only is the moral situation often made obvious by the use of hypothetical situations; but how the moral situation intersects with power politics can come to the fore. I set this hypothetical in ancient Rome in hope that the distance of time, place, and culture, would abstract the situation from current ideological confusions. If the "human rights intellectuals" in the United States can't answer the questions in my hypothetical, it is not because they don't understand their point it is because they don't want to reflect on themselves and their own preening and posturing about "human rights."
For instance it is reported today that National Intelligence Director John Negroponte will resign to become deputy secretary of state. The news is delivered to us by the New York Times in proper and serious tones. The only question that is considered important to address is whether Negroponte is being "redeployed" because of the Bush Clique's disappointment with his job as National Intelligence Director. In other words the main pointman in the "war on terror" is being transferred to the State Department. No where is it mentioned that Negroponte is/was himself a leading terrorist... or perhaps it is better to call him a war criminal. Let me point out here something that is rarely mentioned in the U.S. War crimes are considered more serious than acts of terrorism and for good reason. Terrorism can be massive and atrocious, but they are crimes committed against individuals. War crimes are committed against whole nations and peoples. There is a good argument that Negroponte is a war criminal.
In the 1980s Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras. As ambassador he presided over the largest CIA station in the world and the second largest U.S. embassy in Latin America. Why was this huge "ambassadorial" complex located in the small Central American country of Honduras? Because the Honduras embassy was the U.S. terrorist base for Central American operations. Negroponte, as ambassador to Honduras, condoned, covered-up, and lied to Congress and the U.S. people about massive atrocities committed by the Honduran military against its own people -- atrocities that should be compared to Saddam Hussein's atrocities against the Kurds, during the time period we were supporting Hussein. The Honduras military was funded and supported with U.S. tax dollars, so the responsibility for the Honduran government's large-scale state terror is, in some good part, our responsibility. The reasons for Negroponte's support of Honduran state terror are also interesting. They of course had to do with U.S. support for a favored regime in Honduras, a regime that was completely malleable to the U.S. government and corporations. But the main reason was because Honduran support was crucial to running a terrorist army to attack Nicaragua, an army that was instructed by the CIA to attack "soft targets" such as clinics, farm cooperatives, and undefended villages.
Not a few days ago it was reported that Saddam Hussein was executed. His war crimes and his crimes against humanity were reviewed in obituaries and editorials. Today it is reported that John Negroponte will move from his post as National Intelligence Director to the State Department. Will their be any mention in the national press, that by any objective legal standards, he is a terrorist and a war criminal? Is it even within the range of acceptable thought that such a thing is possible, that our leaders are terrorists and war criminals? Why is it so easy to "see" the war crimes, the crimes against humanity, and the terrorism of our enemies, but we can't seem to even acknowledge the possibility of those we commit, support, or fund, or those committed by our "leaders"?
In the meantime we have supported and committed massive terrorist acts against Cuba. We support and still harbor people who blew up Cuban civilian airliners; we have distributed biological agents in Cuba to destroy crops and live-stocks; we have invaded Cuba and threatened invasion several times; we have attempted to assassinate its leaders many times over. If the same acts were committed against the United States what would be considered the legitimate response by our leaders?
All of those who live in the U.S. and criticize human rights in Cuba are in the same moral and political situation as my hypothetical Roman. The inability to confront the intersection of morality with politics is the classic situation of the emergence of hypocrisy from ideological thinking. Human rights intellectuals in the U.S. who cannot even conceive that criticism of Cuba might actually perpetuate or even increase the atrocities committed by their own government in Cuba, and elsewhere, are simply playing games of hide and never seek with reality. Human rights intellectuals in the U.S. who don't even admit to themselves that their government is a major perpetrator of terrorism in the world, including terrorism in Cuba, are unable to understand that their first responsibility is to stop the terrorism that they help to perpetuate and that they fund. Unless we can understand our own responsibilities and for whom and for what we are responsible, it is no use taking on the useless and empty burden of criticizing some foreign government whose people we are attacking. It should be simple. But it is not.
Jerry Monaco
New York City
4 January 2007
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Jan. 4th, 2007 @ 11:38 am
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| » Mistakes and Responsibility - Our Good Intentions - Vietnam, Cuba, Iraq |
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Newly declassified documents and transcripts, some from White House tapes, published by the State Department in an official diplomatic history on Tuesday, show how hard it can be to talk peace with the friends of your enemies. TIM WEINER
The Oval Office, April 19, 1972: Mr. Kissinger is about to begin a secret trip to Moscow. President Nixon is intensifying the bombing of Vietnam after an Easter offensive by Hanoi.
Nixon: I’m the last president... I’m the only president... who had the guts to do what we’re doing.... Reagan never could make president to begin with, and he couldn’t handle it.... I’m going to destroy the [expletive] country, believe me, I mean destroy it if necessary.... We will bomb the living [expletive] out of North Vietnam. ... December 24, 2006 Quagmire Fatigue; Cozying Up to the Enemy’s Friend, in Hope of Ending a Frustrating War By TIM WEINER The New York Times
Well, yes it is so hard to talk peace with somebody when you swear to commit genocide against them. But nothing has really changed. It is always our enemies' fault that we are in the situation we are in. It is never because we are fundamentally wrong or immoral; it is because we made "mistakes".
Just about now, the U.S. media is blaming everyone else for "our" problems in Iraq. The Iraqi people are to blame because they are not "advanced" enough to accept our enlightened "gifts." The Syrians are to blame because they can't police their borders. The Iranians are to blame because they have alliances with their religious compatriots in Iraq. "They" are to blame but of course "we" have made "mistakes." We are not to blame for the immorality of our actions but only for our miscalculations.
We are not to blame for our "good intentions." And our intentions are never "bad", even if our actions end up killing millions of people and destroying a country.
Back when Nixon was making the above statement about our government's intentions to destroy Vietnam, most liberals had already recognized that we were losing the war in Vietnam, that we had made mistakes, and perhaps the war itself was a mistake. But always when condemning the U.S. war against Vietnam, they would add caveats about the evil and oppression that North Vietnam represented; they would talk about the blood bath that would result, if there was not an orderly withdrawal; they would talk of the crimes of the North Vietnamese.
"We" make mistakes; "they" commit crimes. This is the usual pettifoggery.
Because really, we were the victims. We were the victims of the Vietnamese, the Chinese, the Soviets, the communists, as now we are the victims of the Iraqis, the Syrians, the Iranians, the fundamentalist Muslims. And perhaps we were also the unwitting victims of our good intentions, of our love of democracy and human rights.
And those of us who were "good liberals," who opposed the war in Vietnam, we would never fail to mention the "reality" of how evil and oppressive the North Vietnamese really were, just as now we never fail to mention how evil and oppressive the fundamentalist Muslims are. We should never forget that those we attack (the "North" Vietnamese regime, the Iraqi regime, the Cuban regime) are deeply oppressive and violate our basic values of human decency. We should never forget to mention these things when we have the "courage" to attack the "mistaken" policies of our own government. To mention such things, is not in anyway to justify our "mistakes" but only to acknowledge our high regard for human decency. To not mention such things is to fall into moral depravity.
Meanwhile our war criminals and terrorists go unpunished, are lauded and rewarded. The Richard Nixons and Henry Kissingers; the Bushs, the Chaneys, the Rumsfelds, will all go unpunished, or only punished for crimes they committed against people like themselves -- rich and powerful people.
It is wrong -- hypocritical, if you will --- to even participate in these conversations of placing blame on others. The responsibility is ours and talking about the violations and atrocities of others usually only stands to make it easier not to look at ourselves. We should recognize the reality of the situation, but the prime reality is U.S. responsibility for the disasters we create, and as far as I can see, blaming others is only a way of avoiding our responsibility. It also happens to be a way of avoiding restitution. When will we pay restitution for our destruction of Vietnam, for our terrorist attacks on Cuba, for our war in Iraq? And, finally, it is a way of assuring that the system of profit and imperialism that is at the base of the acts of aggression and atrocities we commit continues until we are defeated or destroyed by "outside" forces. I am not saying that anyone reading this post is doing any of the things I describe, but I would think that it would be possible to recognize the deep hypocrisy of our intellectual culture, when this kind of thing goes on and on, without much notice.
Jerry Monaco
New York City
28 December 2006
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Dec. 28th, 2006 @ 01:27 pm
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| » Freedom and Moral Responsibility: the U.S. the free-est internally; the most violent externally |
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An anonymous reader writes in reply to my previous post:
The fact that you can express your views openly and without fear in this "terrorist" state of America is a privilege that ordinary Cubans are not allowed..The fact that you have uncensored open access to the internet to present your views and gain access to a multitude of information is a privilege that ordinary Cubans are not allowed..the fact that you're free to spread misinformation and be an apologist for a repressive tyrannical regime should be your shame..and the fact that you will delete this message should prove that you're no better than they are. Just call me an old fashioned Cuban who wants his country's freedom..and as far as I can see, an enemy to that end is you.
see Cuba, Responsibility, and the Republic of Hypocrisy
Internally the United States has a high degree of civil liberties. Externally we have the most violent government in the world. There is no contradiction in this.
It has often been the case in history that imperial states which commit terrorist acts abroad, have had a high level of internal freedom. Athens, at the height of its empire, Rome, at the height of the Republic, and Britain during imperial expansion, were more free internally than practically all other states that these countries could be compared to in their time. This does not mean that these imperial states didn't commit huge atrocities, and that the people who benefited from those atrocities were not responsible for them.
Today we are probably the best place in the world for internal free speech.
But our freedoms did not drop from the sky. They were the result of thousands of deaths over a hundred years. It was not until the 1930s that free speech began to be established in the United States, and it wasn't until the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s that freedom of speech became a national standard. Before 1965, if you were black in Mississippi or Alabama then you had no freedom of speech. In fact, speaking out often led to death. Before the 1930s in this country if you were a labor organizer you had no freedom of speech and speaking out could lead to severe beatings if not shoot outs. So yes I am proud that I live in a country with the highest level of freedom speech than probably any country ever had in history. These are gains we fought for and won and we will have to continue to fight to keep them.
But if anyone thinks that our internal freedom justifies the murder of hundreds of thousands of people in Central America, (for example) or terrorism in Cuba, or the overthrow of democratic governments around the world, then I would say that this is simply more evidence of the Republic of Hypocrisy. It is evidence that most people who think about these matters in the U.S. are unable to even see where their moral responsibility begins. Moral responsibility begins with the atrocities we commit, not with the atrocities that someone else commits. Pointing to our own internal freedoms in order to divert attention from our murderous policies abroad is simply another way to refuse to face the basic moral question.
In some sense the question is the same as it was with Saddam and Iraq. Of course in that case the atrocities were much worse and deeper. But also the atrocities were directly sponsored even encouraged by the U.S. government and its foreign policy intellectuals, among others. One way the U.S. government could have stopped atrocities in Iraq under Saddam would have been to stop committing them and supporting them, and creating the conditions in which they continued. The major atrocities of Saddam Hussein were committed with U.S. support and then our intellectual priesthood turned around and used those same atrocities to justify more U.S. atrocities in Iraq. The idea of actually putting a halt to our atrocities would of course be a novel idea for most people, since most people do not know about the atrocities we committ. Again this is in part our fault. The course never taken when discussing human rights violations is to ask, which ones do we support, and which ones can we stop simply by not perpetrating them. One way for the U.S. people, privileged intellectuals especially, could try to stop the atrocities committed in Iraq would be to organize against the government promoting those atrocities, our own government. Until that is done, in this and similar cases like Cuba, all else is hypocrisy. Not your hypocrisy or "their" hypocrisy, but our hypocrisy.
So the question on the table is where does our moral responsibility lie? Is it with our own human rights violations or are we responsible for the human rights violations of the people we oppress and violate? Are we responsible for our actions or for the actions of others? If we are responsible for both, for which actions to we bear the most responsibility? These are basic moral questions.
If you face these entry level question then other questions may be faced afterward, but not without taking into account whether your words and actions will help to increase or decrease the oppression of others. Simple questions, but hard to answer. First, you must explain your moral stance in relation to the atrocities "we" support through our government and how your opposition to the Castro regime will lessen the oppression of anybody in the world. Only then will we be getting at the nub of the matter. But most people in these United States, at times my self included, can't even "see" our own responsibilities and the atrocities we commit. They only see the atrocities of our "enemies". But as I said, in my opinion, in the current state of affairs the only enemy is at home, not in Cuba, or among fundamentalist Muslims, or anybody else.
In my opinion the high level of internal freedom increases our moral responsibility in regard to the actions of our government and its business institutions abroad.
Jerry Monaco
26 December 2006
New York City
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Related post: Cuba, Responsibility, and the Republic of Hypocrisy
Dec. 26th, 2006 @ 10:53 am
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| » Cuba, Responsibility, and the Republic of Hypocrisy |
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It seems likely that soon Fidel Castro will die. With the prospect of his death, the liberal intellectuals in the U.S. will increase their debates over human rights in Cuba. They will once again charge the Cuban regime of being the biggest human rights violator in the western hemisphere, refusing to look at the atrocities committed by their own government. There will even be those on the "radical left" who, it seems, will cheer on U.S. sponsored counter-revolution, for the sake of their own ideological purity.
Let's agree, that the issues I write about here are more important than anything I might say about philosophy or academic institutions or any other delusion of grandeur of the clerical classes.
In the first place, the problem is here in the United States and not in Cuba, and the problem is with all of us. Maybe, this is my petty bourgeois moralism coming out, and I am sorry to people I generally agree with if they think I am blaming them. I don't exclude myself.
Try to imagine the United States in the same position as Cuba. Try to imagine a super-power thousands of times more powerful than the U.S. united against the U.S.; perhaps some united coalition of Europe, the old Soviet states, Japan, China, and all of the oil countries, plus all of the countries in the Western hemisphere. Then try to imagine this ultra-super-power repeatedly invading the U.S., bombing our hotels and airplanes, repeatedly attempting to assassinate our leaders, poisoning our livestock, and trying to spread diseases that make our cash crops useless, employing biological warfare of all kinds, recruiting "exiles" from the U.S. to form secret armies to attack U.S. interests around the world. Try to imagine all of this if you can. Then what do you think would be the human rights reaction of the U.S. rulers in relation to its "dissenters"? And then if this unimaginably large imagined ultra-super power, also imposes blockades and embargoes on the U.S. so that even the most basic economic functions are made to scream, what do you think the reaction of "our" rulers would be?*
The point is almost mute because nuclear bombs would have already slaughtered a billion or so people in the countries that supported the coalition against God's chosen country.
But supposing we didn't destroy half (or all) of the world in our God ordained rage, what would have happened to civil liberties in this country?.
All one has to do is to look to the evidence of the past and the present. Not only would masses of "dissenters" be in gulags, that would dwarf the gulags of the Japanese internment**, but they would probably also dwarf the gulags of the old Soviet Union. Not only would habeus corpus be suspended for enemy combatants***, but most of us who dared to disagree with our government would already be labeled "enemy combatants." Further there would be right-wing "Christian" and KKK-like death squads in the streets, kidnapping and murdering homosexuals, union members, blacks, and other people of color, and immigrants. If evidence of the past is any indication many of these death squads will be composed of cops and police departments themselves will be purged of "dissenters".
The Cuba of the 60s, 70s, and 80s would be a human rights haven compared to the U.S. under similar circumstances. In fact compared to U.S. sponsored and created "death squad democracies" and terror regimes through-out Latin America -- Brazil, Argentina, Columbia, El Salvador, Guatemala, -- Cuba was a human rights haven. It was a human rights haven also for exiles from those terror regimes. Compared even to the totalitarian state of Mississippi during the 50s and much of the 60s, Cuba even comes out smelling like roses during its worse periods of human rights violations.
But even this comparison doesn't get at the heart of the matter. Because the point is that this country, the United States, has committed and is committing human rights violations in Cuba, And where is the resounding sound of "human rights" intellectuals standing up and protesting U.S. committed human rights violations in Cuba? Well nowhere. Because we don't even recognize our responsibility.
The amount of hypocrisy that is evidenced by U.S. intellectuals criticizing Cuba for human rights violations after the campaign of terror that our tax dollars sponsored against Cuba is more evidence of the inability of our intellectual culture to even conceive of the meaning of "responsibility". Good, go ahead, "admit" the human rights violations in Cuba, even blame Cuba for them. But there is one thing that all of us could do immediately to stop a fair amount of human rights violations in Cuba. Stop or try to stop our country from sponsoring human rights violations in Cuba. Every terrorist act, and attempt at economic destruction, sponsored by the U.S. in Cuba is a human rights violation.
So all of you who want to stop human rights violations in benighted Cuba, just remember hypocrisy begins at home. We will continue to live in the Republic of Hypocrisy in the near future until most of us realize that the country we are responsible for is the United States not Cuba. We are more responsible for the repression and murders we commit in Cuba than for what ever repression the Cuban regime commits in Cuba.
I am an old fashion "radical leftist" in that I think that "the main enemy is at home." But that is too gentle. At the moment, as far as I cans see, the only enemy is at home.
Jerry Monaco
25 December 2006
New York City
* For those who don't know, all of these actions, assassination, attempted assassination, terrorist acts, germ warfare, were acts the United States, committed against Cuba.
** For those who don't know the U.S. government put all people of Japanese descent, citizens and non-citizens alike, into concentration camps during World War II. Their property was also confiscated. If the U.S. did this under the real, though remote, threat of a Japanese invasion of California, imagine what the civil liberties response of the U.S. would be if it was threatened by my hypothetical ultra-super power.
*** There is no threat of enemy invasion of the U.S. today and yet for those designated as "enemy combatants", habeus corpus and the normal rule of law and due process of law are suspended. There is also no due process for the initial designation of "enemy combatant." It is essentially an almost unappealable administrative act of the executive branch of our government.
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Related post: Freedom and Moral Responsibility: the U.S. the free-est internally; the most violent externally
Carnival of Vanities @ Silflay Hraka
Dec. 26th, 2006 @ 05:31 am
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| » Burying the Dead: Normalizing the Extreme in the Gospels: A Hypocrisy of Homilies |
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The New Testament cannot be normalized without engaging in sophistry and, perhaps, hypocrisy.
Recently on the Left Business Observer list-serve, someone quoted the famous biblical cliche, "Let the dead bury the dead." It is a seemingly paradoxical passage, so even though the saying has been reduced to rote as a thought-stopping thing to say to a person who dwells too much on the past, it still occasionally provokes a need for explanation by those who wish to know what the words actually mean. Thus very soon another list-mate posted a homily on the passage by Father Francis Jamieson.
I quote the passage from Luke at length.
To another he said, "Come, follow me." But he said, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father." But he said, "Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God". Another said, "I will follow you, Lord, but first let me first say farewell to those at home." Jesus said to him, " No one who sets his hand to the plough and then looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God." (Luke 9:59-62)
Fr. Francis' response is to turn this passage into a "hard saying", a demand by Jesus for the extra measure of total commitment incumbent upon disciples. He begins by saying,
We have seen that Jesus points his followers beyond natural family ties to more urgent and important matters. Jesus did not denigrate family ties of affection and duty, but he placed them in a far wider context.
and concludes his homily with,
From the very beginning of Christianity - as we read in the Bible - the Christian people, that is, the Church, has recognized that working for a living and raising a family are a good and proper way of living a Christian life. Many people, however - and not just monks and nuns - have heard Christ's call to renounce normal ties of family and country, and to keep before their eyes the ideal of total discipleship. All of us should know that Christ asks nothing less than whole of our heart and life. No half measures, or when we are judged we shall hear him speak in the words of Revelation 3:16. His discipleship is not something that can be undertaken lightheartedly.
I am sorry but this will not do. What the dear Father does is finesse the issue of the radicalism of the Gospel in order to provide a way out for anyone who is not a disciple. He does so by ignoring the historical context of Luke and the other Gospels, and thus forcing them apply to views necessary in our time where the division of labor between the good minister of God and the dedicated middle class householder is the norm. It is the strained normality of the homily which provoked me. The "strain" is in how the homily elides the existence of the difference between the call of "discipleship" and everybody else. The good Father does not want to be too confrontational. He wants to sound reasonable. He wants to sound almost Aristotelian in his description of the Gospels. Aristotle desired the golden mean in all things, but the Gospels are not Aristotelian, they are extremist in their views and a reaction to extreme times. The interpretations of Fr. Francis seek to fit those Gospels into our modern world from a middle class point of view.
At base, Fr. Francis' homily provoked me in the same way that any misinterpretation of a piece of literature might provoke me. Those who wish to turn the horrors and ecstasies of the human mind into banalities; those who wish to transform the radical demands of past revolutionary thought into a way of life that can accommodate comfortable living in the present, those who wish to turn the "otherness", the specialness of ancient literature into something "civilized". The story that the character Odysseus relates in the epic that bears his name is one where the traveler across the wine-dark seas either enters a land where the "civilized" notions of reciprocal relations between hosts-guests are acknowledged (xenia), or the fiercer notions of "eat or be eaten" reign and every traveler maybe turned into a sacrificial meal. But one can only discover the depth of representation of reciprocity and ritual in Homer's Odyssey, and thus discover the meaning of the narrative repetitions by understanding the historical source. The stories told in Luke and the other Gospels have that kind of ancient strangeness to them, a strangeness that can only be appreciated in historical context.
"Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it." (Matthew 10:34-39)
The amount of disrespect for family values found in this passage, and similar ones through out the New Testament cannot be underestimated. The Jesus, who is created by Luke and Matthew and the other Gospels will not accept the traditional family values of his time because he believes that such values are obsolete for his world. He had nothing but scorn for those who accepted the cliche of "values" on their face, and without quetions. He tried to renew moral values by subverting them. Take a few other controversial passages:
"I have come to cast fire upon the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled!" ... "Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division; for from now on five members in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three."... (Luke 12:49,51-53)
"If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple." (Luke 14:26)
The traditional kinship groups were breaking down and the moral values that shored up those kinship groups were what needed to be attacked if anything was to change in the Roman World. In one sense Christianity was a solution to the breakdown of the traditional kinship relations, which premised morality itself on kinship. What gave early Christianity its energy was the very fact that it sought to establish a morality that would transcend the local Gods of home, hearth, kin, and ethnic-kind. The Roman World itself had transcended such Gods in its universalizing and often oppressive political project. The whole of the Mediterranean and much more was one social network. Moral systems based on kinship, the small city-state, or ethnic kingdoms, simply did not make sense.
The significance of Jesus of Luke and his call to a potential disciple not to bury his father is even more significant in this context. The major ritual of ancestor piety and kinship solidarity of all peoples in the Eastern Mediterranean at this time was the burial of the father. For example, all major Greek cities had, detailed funerary laws to regulate such burials. This was because the funeral rites were a dangerous time for the society as a whole. The importance of the funeral of a dead patriarch to a kinship group is what made the funeral dangerous to society. In Greece the funerary laws stretched back to the origins of independent City-States. Such laws were mainly used to regulate kinship groups who often used the times of funerals to rally fellow kin for "revenge" in cycles of reciprocal violence with rival kinship groups. The City-States regulated funerals in order to forestall such rivalries, which were destabilizing to the state. Yet, even though these regulations repressed the danger represented by funeral rites, this did not mean that such funerals lost their importance. For a son in particular to ignore the funeral of a father, was not only great impiety, but an attack on the social structure itself.
The early Christian attack on the kinship basis of the social structure reflected a reality that the old deep-kinship systems were falling apart. They were being torn asunder under pressure of the intricate social networks created by the integrated Roman social-imperium of the Mediterranean. But the ideological-religious reasoning that justified the Christian attack filial piety was the invention of the Early Christians. (Of course their had been other mystical religions that had invented similar world-views.) The good news of Luke is that the world is going to end, boys and girls, and the Kingdom of God shall reign on earth, and those who know best should break all the normal ties of kinship, community, property in land, livestock, and slaves, leave behind their old oppressive ways of relating to wife and husband, father, son, daughter, and live the Christian way of life. Now! Soon, very soon, the Kingdom will come, and all shilly-shallying is either hypocrisy or wishful thinking. Early Christians could justify their actions as great dividers of families and kinship groups because they universalized religion and at the same time proclaimed the coming end of it all.
Our little middle class world view can never be made to conform to the very strange, usually frightening, often generous and totalistic (if not totalitarian) values that actually motivated the New Testament writers in their lived-experience of eschata and their shivers of chiliastic hopes. The world hoped for, and represented in the Gospels, did not conform to current ideals of "family values." It is not only the few who are called from the family in order to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and his apostles but everyone who wants to survive the soon to come end-times. The urgency of the Gospels is precisely what is missing from Fr. Francis' homily. You must drop everything, ignoring all kinship and community ties, to work toward the coming end of time. This is the "historical" view of Luke, and Fr. Francis' explication of the passages where the gospel writer puts into Jesus' mouth words meant to divide children from filial and familial piety, only seeks to explain away such passages for the comfort and benefit of his modern followers.
But there is no "normalizing" of Luke and the Gospels. This fact is often frightening for modern society. There will always be people - for good or ill, for help or hurt, for violence or generosity - who will try to translate the radicalism of Jesus in the Gospels into a modern context, and whether we come up with St. Francis or the Grand Inquisitor, the preferential choice for the poor or genocidal Jesuits, the Catholic Worker or Opus Dei, we can be sure that the people who make such a commitment are true to at least one side of the original extremism. Homilies such as those by Father Francis Jamieson, no matter how demanding, only serve to provoke and then properly pigeon-hole the guilt of his Christian followers. They are thus soothed for wanting "normal" lives, with family and children and a middle class home. But in the world view of the early Christians, those who were not disciples had were condemned for ignoring the urgency of the times; all those who were disciples must need to break the ties of kinship and familial piety or suffer the loss of their souls. There was no in-between. In a couple of generations people woke up and discovered that the world was not going to end.... at least not very soon. This meant that real institutions needed to be established. Thus began all of the excuses and rewriting of church history. But even at this time, there was still some radicalism left in the Christian project. It was not until Christianity became an official religion of the state that the Church fathers began to systematically purge the extremes that were the dominant current of early Christianity.
Perhaps we should be grateful to the likes of Fr. Francis for normalizing Luke. After all the spirit of those early Christian writings are simply too extreme and at times extremely radical, too fundamentalist and at times deeply fundamental, and certainly little of it has anything to do with our current life-ways, the constant inflation of desires of consumer capitalism or the countervailing desire for retreat into the safety of normality through the nuclear family. All of my Jesuit teachers were good "Death of God" theologians and they taught me well that there is very little in the New Testament that can actually conform to our hopes for a "normal" life or even capitalist self-interest. So excuse this little bit of a religious tirade from this Jesuitical atheist. But I don't write my little pieces to bring comfort, yet to disturb my own complacency.
Jerry Monaco
New York City
10 November 2006
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Nov. 10th, 2006 @ 07:25 pm
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| » Unknown Knowns, the Missing Term - Rumsfeld and Self-Deception |
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Donald Rumsfeld, supporter of Saddam Hussein, war criminal, torturer, bureaucratic infighter, Chicago School shock-trooper, prevaricator, and philosopher, has lost his usefulness to George Bush the younger. And yet, I doubt that he will ever meet with his just deserts here on this earth. So be it. It is a fairy-tale that the just and gentle are rewarded and the unjust and the violent are punished. More often than not the opposite seems to be true.
So as he leaves I would like to offer some backhanded praise to the war criminal who will never face a trial. Rumsfeld is responsible for one of the more interesting quotes to emerge from the Bush years. It is a famous quote and has been often pilloried and praised, turned into poetry and used in musical compositions. It is essentially a statement of the basics of epistemology.
There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.
But what of the "unknown knowns"? These are things we don't know but we think we do know. Looking at the whole fiasco of the imperialist adventure in Iraq it seems to me that the most significant epistemological condition is not what we knew or didn't know, but what we deceived ourselves into believing that we knew. Self-deception is a significant and essential human capacity. Without it most of us would probably commit suicide or would curl up in a fetal position. But self-deception is one of those dangerous human capacities that often leads us toward the kind of hubris that we find in Greek tragic protagonists. Mr. Rumsfeld again and again convinced himself that his view of the world was the only view worth considering, in large matters and in small.
Whether it was supporting Saddam Hussein's Iraq, in the great slaughter of the Iran-Iraq war, or insisting that conquering and occupying Iraq would be an easy job, or transferring military officers who disagreed with him, or shuffling off moral responsibility onto low level soldiers for his policy of torture when the results of that policy were documented in photographs at Abu Ghraib, Rumsfeld never showed the most basic humility in the face of brute reality or high morality. He never questioned what he knew and never questioned that what he knew was necessarily the truth. He knew what he knew and what he knew was always true.
The role of self-deception in history is one of the great untold stories, because when ever revealed it is either too obvious or too close to us to see. But one only needs to read Thucydides to realize that it is the story of self-deception on the personal level, hypocrisy on the moral level, and ideology on the social level, that is the most decisive factor in any war.
Jerry Monaco
New York City
8 November 2006
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Nov. 8th, 2006 @ 05:50 pm
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| » The Utopian Mask of WIlliam O. Douglas: Law and Anticipatory Illumination |
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Is it possible to imagine an intellectual influenced by Foucault writing a parody of a United States Supreme Court opinion? Yes, but fortunately for us there is no need to write such a parody because Justice William O. Douglas got there first. This came home to me when I reread Douglas's (in)famous opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut. (GRISWOLD v. CONNECTICUT, 381 U.S. 479 (1965).)
Peter Irons in his A People's History of the Supreme Court, puts it aptly, "Douglas was a former Yale law professor, and his Griswold opinion read almost like a parody of academic jargon." (p. 429). In other words, Douglas did not only want to find a "right to privacy" in the Constitution he also wanted to send up all of those who wrote opinions as if 'the rule of law' could be derived from a set of propositions with something like deductive accuracy.
The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. See Poe v. Ullman… (dissenting opinion). Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen. The Third Amendment in its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers 'in any house' in time of peace without the consent of the owner is another facet of that privacy. The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the 'right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.' The Fifth Amendment in its Self-Incrimination Clause enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender to his detriment. The Ninth Amendment provides: 'The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.' (Griswold v. Connecticut 85 S.Ct. 1678, 1682.)
(Is it any wonder that Scalia despises Douglas?)
There is no doubt that Douglas was having fun with the idea that he could find a right to use birth control in the zones, penumbras, emanations of the constitution. The dissenting opinion that he cites as authority is of course his own. If Nabokov could have written a few opinions for the U.S. Supreme Court (and why not?) they would probably exhibit some of the self-referential humor that Douglas allowed himself.
Before I went to law school William O. Douglas was one of the few justices who was able to inspire within me some bit of hope for the legal system. It was precisely because he was able to write legal decisions that were self-critical of the exalted majesty of legal reasoning that I looked upon him with some kindness. All judges, all writers, wear a mask and the mask is as much a part of reality as the face... in fact the face is just another mask as the 'voice' of a writer is never the voice you will hear when he talks to the butcher. So I understood that Douglas when he wrote his decisions and acted on the national stage as Justice Douglas, by necessity was talking in a legally mediated voice, a voice that was never completely his. And yet, when he put on the mask of Justice Douglas, and when he decided to write opinions in the voice of William O. Douglas, I knew that we no longer simply 'receive' the 'law of masks', but rather something that felt true to the artifact of the law as well as to everyday life.
So it was a small surprise when I arrived at law school that I discovered that not only conservatives despised Douglas, but even most of my liberal professors. They despised him for the same reason that I admired him.
Peter Goodrich in his wonderful tour de force (if a little too intensely pomo) The Languages of Law: From Logics of Memory to Nomadic Masks speaks wonderfully of the masks of law. It is my contention that in many of his opinions Douglas quite self-consciously tried to show those masks as masks, tried to reveal the voice of law as a legitimation of violence and rapaciousness, while at the same time assuming that there was somewhere another mask he could wear that looked to a more realistically hopeful future and another voice that he could sound, a voice emerging from Shelley and Wordsworth, two of his favorite poets. By the time the Warren Court had ended he knew that the mask he would wish to wear on the national stage and the voice he would wish to hear in his opinions could never actually be worn or heard, yet in many of his opinions he would reflect self-consciously on what could be seen and heard by the law and what the principalities and powers have always already pre-ordained what must be seen and heard of the law.
Listen to Douglas's voice in his dissent in Sierra Club v. Morton, where he claims that inanimate objects should have standing to sue the United States Government for possible environmental damage.
Mr. Justice DOUGLAS, dissenting.
****
The critical question of 'standing' would be simplified and also put neatly in focus if we fashioned a federal rule that allowed environmental issues to be litigated before federal agencies or federal courts in the name of the inanimate object about to be despoiled, defaced, or invaded by roads and bulldozers and where injury is the subject of public outrage. Contemporary public concern for protecting nature's ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation. (My emphasis).
Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes. The corporation sole--a creature of ecclesiastical law--is an acceptable adversary and large fortunes ride on its cases. The ordinary corporation is a 'person' for purposes of the adjudicatory processes, whether it represents proprietary, spiritual, aesthetic, or charitable causes.
So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life. The river, for example, is the living symbol of all the life it sustains or nourishes--fish, aquatic insects, water ouzels, otter, fisher, deer, elk, bear, and all other animals, including man, who are dependent on it or who enjoy it for its sight, its sound, or its life. The river as plaintiff speaks for the ecological unit of life that is part of it. Those people who have a meaningful relation to that body of water--whether it be a fisherman, a canoeist, a zoologist, or a logger--must be able to speak for the values which the river represents and which are threatened with destruction. (Sierra Club v. Morton 92 S.Ct. 1361, 1370 (Douglas, dissenting.)
The stones will stand up and speak! This is the ancient wisdom of the New Testament and ur-Myths of the matricentric return to the Dike of Love and a further return to the older goddess Themis and her Furies, the old justice of primitive communism that was mother earth herself. (Or at least this was the leftist myth promoted by way of Bachoffen, Engels, Erich Fromm, radical Feminists, and New Age occultists.) Douglas was good enough to take a cue from his own experience and "discover" this return to earth. He found in the legal fictions of Maritime Law and Corporate Law, a legal reason for an "ecological unit" to find advocates against a Federal Agency which wanted to allow the Disney corporation to build a resort in a national wilderness area.
The legal issue here is the wonderfully absurd notion of standing. It is a piece of transcendental nonsense and non-lawyers will need some brief explanation of the concept. The doctrine of standing derives from Article Three of the United States Constitution and the "case or controversy" limitation that the early Supreme Court placed upon itself. If there is no case or no controversy to be judged then there is no reason to deliver a judgment. One of the ways to decide whether there is a case or controversy involved when a plaintiff comes before the court is to ask if the plaintiff has been 'injured in fact.' The plaintiff herself must be somehow injured for that plaintiff to have standing to bring the case. Standing is a jurisdictional issue and since subject matter jurisdiction cannot be waived courts will often examine whether standing in fact exists even if the parties to the case do not raise the issue. Before the Warren Court the Supreme Court had a narrower view of standing but during the 1960's the doctrine of standing almost looked as if it would become obsolete, especially in the area of administrative law. Beginning with Sierra Club v. Morton the court began to once again tighten the standards. Thus there are many administrative rules which the administrative agency can simply ignore and no one has standing to make sure they are enforced.
For an example I refer the reader to ALLEN v. WRIGHT, 468 U.S. 737 (1984). The situation in Allen was the following. According to the IRS Code the Internal Revenue Service is not supposed to grant tax exempt status to racially discriminatory private schools. The plaintiffs, who were black, claimed that the IRS was granting tax exempt status to many such schools. They claimed that as attendees of public schools in school districts that were in fact segregated, granting tax exempt status to these white flight public schools caused them harm. This sounds like a reasonable argument to me. In the real world if you believe that integrated schools are a good and granting tax exempt status to racist private schools is harmful and the agency that is supposed to monitor tax exempt status is ignoring its duty then one would think that somebody somewhere must have received a harm. But Justice O'Connor, writing for the court did not grant the parents standing, essentially saying that no harm was done to the plaintiffs. The problem here is that if the parents don't have standing then no one has standing. Thus we must conclude, and this is never stated in O'Connor's opinion, that when the IRS grants tax exempt status to racist private schools, an action which is prohibited by 'the rule of law' there is no injury done to anyone in the world.
Professor Douglas O. Linder on his website Exploring Constitutional Law has some rye comments about this aspect of the doctrine of standing.
Standing doctrine confuses both lower courts and litigants, because the Court manipulates the doctrine to serve other objectives. When the Court wants to reach the merits of a case, the standing doctrine is often relaxed. Conversely, when the Court wishes to avoid deciding the merits of a case--or perhaps, when it wants to shut a whole category of cases out of court--, the requirements for standing are tightened.
Those who believe that the rule of law is somehow derivative from principles or texts could never make such a statement. To believe the above essentially draws the curtain back and reveals the man (sometimes, but rarely, the woman - see above Justice O'Connor) who pulls the levers.
Douglas wanted to pull back the curtain. Towards the end of his career he wanted to show the hand that manipulates the judicial "opinion", as if saying that there are many occasions where the rule of law is no more than the judges opinion. In his dissent in Sierra Club v. Morton Douglas wants to show how "standing," is mostly used as an excuse for the Court to blind itself. Thus by limiting who the court can see as a party the court can also limit whole classes of cases it can hear as a court. If the court does not want to see you standing in front of it then by definition the law is unable to see you or your injury. Like magic, from a magician who is believed, a charlatan who wears the mask of the law, the case disappears from the box and there is no controversy. In Sierra Club v. Morton the Sierra Club has no standing to sue because it didn't allege in its complaint that any of its members had a relation to Mineral King, the mountain and valley where the Disney Corporation wanted to build a resort The court's own inability to see the party is displaced, through legal reasoning, onto the party who is suddenly unable to be seen, something like Ralph Ellison's invisible man. In relation to this particular suit the party is legally invisible. It then becomes the party's inability to stand for the issue in the conflict at hand that is made the excuse for the Court's inability to see the party's relation to the conflict. It was Sierra Club v. Morton that began the roll back that resulted in Allen v. Wright and thus the parents of black children do not have standing to challenge the Internal Revenue Services' refusal to enforce a law that would refuse tax breaks to segregated white flight private schools. If an administration or the IRS wants to violate the law by giving tax breaks to racist non-profits then nobody has "standing" to challenge the law.
But Douglas wanted to do something different, probably more radical than he realized. For him the earth itself could provide standing, thus the legal fiction of the corporate person that is the Disney Corporation, could be countered by the legal fiction that a forest could also be a recognizable 'entity' thereby providing a place for the stand of trees to be represented in the legal fiction that is called 'standing'. Fiction upon fiction allowed Douglas to stand trees on the earth itself thus finding some reality in all of the legal metaphors and narratives.
Douglas shows us how flexible any notion of the "rule of law" actually is and does not hide the fact that he does so… If the judge wants to make a "rule of law" then all that he has to worry about is whether someone is interested in the particular fiction he wants to tell. The fiction of giving standing to rocks and tress and rivers only has to be accepted by a critical mass of people who believe in it as a legal 'reality' and then it will become true. A little known fact is that Douglas and his good friend Justice Hugo Black were the only two modern justices to dissent from the most destructive legal fiction ever invented: i.e. that corporate business institutions should be granted constitutional rights as legal persons. (See Wheeling Steel Corp. v. Glander 337 U.S. 562, 579 (1949), (Douglas Dissenting.)) Douglas could never win that battle. (At this point, a substantial revolution would be required to take constitutional rights away from these immortal fictional persons that we call Corporations.) But as long as we are able to see corporations as legal persons why not allow rivers and forests the same fictional status to defend "themselves" against corporate exploitation. Douglas's attitude could be stated in something like the terms of Georg Lukacs' in this way: As long as we are on this path of reification let me show you how it can be done without a slight of hand. I have no need for mystification. I can create legal fictions from whatever story I choose. As long as we as a court have the power we might as well use it to tell a good story. The only thing the court has to worry about is whether anybody will be engaged enough by this fiction to accept it as a metaphor we can live by.
In some of his best opinions Justice William O. Douglas was performing what Ernst Bloch called in his book The Utopian Function of Art and Literature 'anticipatory illumination.' Anticipatory illumination is a kind of vanishing mediator between a vision of a possible "reality" and the realization of the subject within "reality." It appears through working; the way we imagine how working might be and the working we do when we create symbols and recreate them for ourselves. Anticipatory illumination is both a critical stance toward a work and a way of working through. It's original meaning for Bloch was to explain why a work of art was strong - revelatory of the past and open to anticipation of possible futures - and also a way for a critic or reader to see into the work of art, see how it provides possibilities of hope we are missing in our unimaginative drudgery of everyday life. Douglas, on occasion, showed how the law was a fiction that could be used for anticipatory illumination and showed how a 'judge-critic' of the law could create an imaginative space open to the hopeful choices of our future.
This post has been Carnivalized at Blawg Review #38 @ Legal Underground. Also take a look at previous Blawg Reviews @ http://www.blawgreview.com/
Jerry Monaco
New York City
31 December 2005
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
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Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is
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Utopia
Dec. 31st, 2005 @ 04:05 pm
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