Specially Canned Reflections on the Aughts

I'd been taking repeated inventories of all the ideas I had in my head having to do with what I was going to write in reflecting back on the past ten years, if I felt the urge to do so. Clearly the urge has been felt, but I decided against using any of those ideas. In addition to not wanting to add needless girth to the body of reptrospectives already in place, however minute it may be in comparison to other contributions, I simply don't care, nor has anyone offered me a reason for feeling otherwise. This is not to say that I have a predetermined desire to spin things bleakly, but in my reflections of all the memorable events and cultural fads of the era, I came to the general conclusion that not enough people were sufficiently disappointed in themselves and in what they did during the '00s to really warrant the decade rememberance with any real fondness. Too many opportunities went unseized; too many potentially good things were so reduced in goodness as to make urine a far more palatable substance; too many tantrums passed for eloquence; too many honors and accolades were thrown in no particular direction; too many failures were simply not allowed to shine on their own merits as failures.

Though I make no claim to authority or influence over the matter (it's boredom that compels me so more than anything else), I make the suggestion that we take to excessive drinking, perhaps even some mutually angry sex, in order to spend what remains of this decade doing things more economically sound than nostalgia and that leave us so stripped of any will to move or convey vibrancy as to leave us indifferent as to whether or not we are prepared to dread the future.

That, of course, is entirely up to you, and as I do not care too much about the '00s so too do I not care how you decided to cope. I personally am quite curious about the future, if not particularly giddy in anticipation over it. Hell, there is still the possibility that something will be cured rather than staved off. Maybe buying whores will be legal, too. Perhaps that is a better activity, let's all be this guy ...

Cheap Holiday Card

To the eight Wookies who do not presently find themselves buried in an Imperial killing field, we here at Biopsy wish you and yours a most joyous Life Day.

LIFE, Bonnie Trompeter, and the Birth of the Dumb American Magazine

So sue me if I'm one of those people who believe that the only thing about America that is exceptional is that we think America is exceptional, which in itself isn't even that exceptional. What we find ourselves experiencing is but a phase, like wearing oversized pants with zippers on them or bisexuality, though its one that has lasted for about 65 years now. Much of what constitutes this phase is boderline tolerable, I can deal with the "individualist" populism, the mythologized history, the idea that stupidity is a virtue, and the obvious propaganda aimed at them. I can deal with them just as any other random citizen of Great Britain or Spain or Japan in centuries previous has dealt with their country's bout of exceptionalism before its humiliation at the hands of history, this is standard practice for a race so obsessed with narrative. Rather it is exceptionalism's by-products that I find a challange to ignore.

With the idea of exceptionalism comes the next logical conclusion that exceptionalism infuses every aspect of American society like nuts and bolts and that any piece of pipe or paneling is deserving of thorough, in no way negative, examination. It's a notion that is patently false as it moves people to try to find beauty in the irrelevant or the uninteresting when what they really end up getting is something unintentionally amusing. This has become something of a fetish for certain media outlets who find no ethical breaches of objectivity in reporting certain "special interest" stories that implicitly tell us nothing about anything in a sacchrine, sentimental tone -- whereas it seems irony is a clear violation and hence why they live vicariously through The Daily Show. This is most true of newsweeklies those magazines that, whether in death throes or not, appeal to the nostalgia of their readers to the point that they seem indistinguishable from official propaganda while countering such notions with unconvincing bouts of contrarianism. And though modern examples are plentiful, they do little to overcome the standard set so high by LIFE magazine.

LIFE is now officially a ghost among magazines, but a most prominent one that has ingenious methods of haunting those that limp onward and downward. Though in its heyday it was far from vapor, and to their credit they printed iconic photos as well as interesting articles by people who actually wrote as if they appreciated the structure of a good sentence, that is, when they weren't filling their pages with pointless bullshit. Since Google's book feature includes full issues of LIFE, I've been able to search through America's brain in word-form and find some of its more puzzling interests. Chief among them is a story in the August 11, 1958 issue in which they present the trials and tribulations of one Bonnie Trompeter, a then-14-year-old resident of Larchmont, NY as she buds into the perfect example of the beautiful girl. Titled "The New-found Joys of Beauty," this article -- made up mostly of photos -- makes no effort to extend beyond the ambition of capturing and retelling how hot this supposed junior high school student is, and how genuine she is,

"... what has been perfectly obvious to Bonnie's family and a string of popeyed young men has finally burst upon the gay 14-year-old ... She was indeed pretty. So extraordinarily pretty, in fact, that even Bonnie ... is slowly -- and happily unconceitedly -- growing aware of the bewildering joys and problems of becoming a beautiful young woman."

Assuming they have the readers' attention by this point, LIFE proceeds to insult their intelligence by basically offering a text that reads more like the original pitch for the story than the story itself, with all the platitudes and brevity a swamped, possibly drunken editor has come to depend on in hopes of pleasing the more alcohol-tolerant advertisers. We learn her grandparents think she's special and will have dolls and other such paraphernalia baring her likeness in the future; we learn that her parents, more guarded, want her to develop "social graces" and have a "career," Bonnie has responded in kind by attending charm school and taking lessons in music and ballet; we learn that her younger sister Chickie is envious of Bonnie, and they show as much with a photo of her crying over Bonnie's teasing of her, though Bonnie insist that her sister, described in one caption as "problemless" (read: ugly), is the favorite; we learn that she is desired by more than her fair share of men, as old as 18 and as young as the ones she babysits, but that she is virtuous and in as committed a relationship as a 14-year-old in 1958 can be. In summation: she's here, she's fair, get used to it.

Any observant reader might, at this point, be asking themselves what, indeed, are her problems? Combing through the miniscule text and seeing all the glamor shots, it would seem that Bonnie's life is not unlike anyone else's -- than or now. Like her we have parents who wish the best for us, grandparents who know the best of us, siblings who see the worst in us; we, too, have ambitions for greatness, desires for simple romance, the general will to get the most out of life even if that means frolicking on the beach or making out with one's boyfriend in front of a magazine photographer and some little kid, and we are certainly no less vain and no less vulnerable. We are American. She's not so different from us, we say, while altogether missing the point.

LIFE says there are problems, and so we are moved to find them, to understand that an American girl of a notable beauty has notable troubles, more notable than we assume. After even one casual reading of the article, it is apparent that LIFE's rendering of Bonnie seems almost too ordinary, almost to the point that the very ordinariness of Bonnie is the problem. "The New-found Joys of Beauty," it becomes apparent, is a passive-agressive meditation on average America's oppressive hold on our most outstanding citizens, those very ones that make us exceptional while we reap the benefits; it is an investigative report on the tyranny of the banal against the pristine. We are Slobodan Milošević and she is our Bosniak. Taken in this light, Bonnie's interactions with family, friends and so forth are actually atrocities committed against LIFE's -- and by extension, Romantic America's -- idealization of the best possible object imaginable rather than puzzle pieces of an individual, albeit mundane, biography. Bonnie is a stunning woman imprisoned in an ugly person's life, and so we must pity the poor girl who wants nothing more than to be seen and to be on boats while also being ashamed of ourselves for preventing her from doing so for whatever reason.

That, of course, is the salacious, neurotic interpretation that may serve a far more pragmatic purpose being narrated to a psychotherapist. Not least of all it gives too much credit to LIFE. The recording of Bonnie's existence is neither cynical damnation of a literally and figuratively ugly world nor is it filler. It is a sincere attempt to portray what is culminative of the American Girl who despite being no different from other girls around the world of a certain privilege is an exemplary creature, whose contrasting characteristics -- youthful gaitey and modesty against poise and beauty -- present to the American audience and the world that perfect standard of stability, in which sculptures come to life, attend sock-hops and trade gossip over the phone out of seeming compulsion. This, again, is not to say that such stories encapsulated LIFE as a whole. It did however make all the more possible a kind of reporting and writing that exists out of the belief that if a country has everything, even nothing has value and deserves attention. We can't, of course, seek to publish "Radical Chic" all the time, if such a feat is possible, but even a mediocre special interest story that doesn't involve true crime of homespun religion can exceed the horribleness of this piece. In essence, "The New-found Joys of Beauty" is the conception of Jon Meacham on the printed page, which has the distinction of being entirely appropraite while also being entirely nauseating.

History With a Zinn[g]!

Anyone who takes an advanced history course at the university level, and is not seeking a degree in said study, will have broken through a thick wall that obscures the true scholastics of history from everything else. Though there are date memorizations imperative to studying history, the bulk of it is really a sifting through of multiple interpretations of events and what little empirical evidence remains. For example, there is little parsing over the occurrance of the Holocaust, and rightly so; however the direct causes are still subject to debate. On the one hand there is the "intentionalist" interpretation which insists that the systematic killing of Jews and other so-labelled subhumans by the Nazis was never far from Hitler's mind, whereas the "functionalist" interpretation counters with the theory that, while the obviously anti-semetic Hitler was accordingly aggressive towards the Jews, the later events of the Holocaust were as much, if not more, propelled by bureaucratic wheel-spinning on the parts of Reinhard Heydrich and Aldof Eichmann as the most pragmatic way of managing the disaster of the ghettos. I'm simplifying both sides admittedly, but that the gist of both. Clearly more people side with the former than the latter since all history that most average people are willing to learn has a slight cast of moral indoctrination for whatever reason -- and since it sounds a lot like Star Wars made real, they love it. Look, if you will, at the divide between historians on Lincoln. Whereas political scientist cum polemicist Harry Jaffa's view is dominant, there is always the work of M.E. Bradford or Thomas DiLorenzo nipping at its heels, however radically. The same is true of the left of course, which is no less dubious, but now it's simply gotten irritating.

Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States is an iconic, almost biblical text for most avowed leftists. Its history-as-written-by-the-losers point of view is not a dishonorable approach for an historian, for instance his lesson on Columbus' "discovery" of America -- the truth of which I knew since I was 10, obviously not under the guidance of a teacher -- is a much needed dose of clarification. Mostly though it is a work that seizes the heart more than the mind, especially of those who have an intense disliking of squares, corporations and conformists who like Sarah Palin; so mostly rich college kids, their first name-basis professors, certain yuppie parents, and celebrities, the final of which is the focus of this piece.

Political celebrities are not exclusively aligned with the left -- Jon Voight has spoken recently at a Tea Party gathering, while his daughter, though something of a Rand fan, remains annoyingly, even cruelly ambiguous -- their more rebellious, idealistic take on moral history is as sexy to the young as [some of] their looks. This has not been lost on the celebrities and so they give more fodder than Trey Parker and Matt Stone could ever ask for with their Zinn-inspired and -produced performances of Zinn's sources and inspirations on the History Channel. The immediate and lasting effect however weighs less on the informative and more on the masturbatory, as can be glanced at in the trailer:



I've always found pure oratory to be overrated, and this shall serve as my key piece of evidence. While many of the works performed are significant testaments of thoughtful people reacting to unpleasant circumstances forced upon them or witnessed by them, and serve as excellent documents of historical, intellectual and literary relevance, they are channeled by the actors, similar to Zinn's work, with more heart than mind, though usind primary text makes it far less tolerable. Rather than read, these documents are emoted for the sole purpose of extracting their pladitudes above all else seemingly in order to prove how conservatives and libertarians are bashing to dust America's very foundations. (Really it's the Republicans doing that but why split hairs at this point?) The manner in which the pieces are read are enough to spur nausea in any thinking person. Sandra Oh's overly enunciated rendition of a piece by Emma Goldman should discount her from acting for the remainder of her life; Kerry Washington's reading of Sojourner Truth, while maintaining the simple wit and style of "Ain't I a Women?" seems, shall we say, overly sassed. The one that's underdone seems entirely inappropraite: "Fight the Power" is a great song, but a simple reciting of it seems to hardly do it justice. Perhaps most aggravating is Matt Damon doing the Declaration with his Jason Bourne serious face in its stoney hilarity. Naturally this has been done to death by both sides of the political spectrum, being read over and over again since 1776, and this was clearly the intent. But given that its principal composer remains unmatched as both American history's worst public speaker and its best writer, when is it going to get the thoughtful literary reading rather than the self-serious dramatic one? It's also worth nothing that Zinn's views on Jefferson and the other founders are less than sympathetic.

It's quite telling that Damon, Washington and other contributors such as John Legend, Don Cheadle, Viggo Mortensen, Marissa Tomei and Mos Def endorsed Barack Obama in '08. It shows their total lack of sense when it comes to politics. Any intelligent person can plainly see that supporting Zinn's view of history while also supporting Obama's presidency, one that has never been anything short of moderate, displays a total absence of logic. Zinn is aware of this but seems not to care all that much. It should also be noted that if we're reading from the canon of the antiauthoritarian fringe, one must logically include bits and pieces from The Turner Diaries, the Unabomber's manifesto, and the columns of Westbrook Peglar. Also strangely left out are any mentions of the pro-life movement, something that should also be considered at least liberal in spirit, but strangely isn't.

Though I detest getting before a stage and reading anything, I wouldn't mind getting together my own speaking engagement, documentary, whatever, that is a little more thought out and with no more ambitious an agenda than to simply offer interesting ideas that are eloquently expressed but without shielding the complexity and sometimes amorality of America's history, intellectual and otherwise. Some of the works I'd include, but not limit to would be:

"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" by Jonathan Edwards
Thomas Jefferson's first inaugural address
The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine
Selections from The Federalist Papers (primarily Hamilton's)
"The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions" by Abraham Licoln (aka his Young Men's Lyceum address)
"The Moral Equivalent of War" by William James
"The Soldier's Faith" by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Notes on Democracy by HL Mencken
"Civil Liberties 1952 -- A Study in Confusion" by Irving Kristol
Barry Goldwater's GOP nomination acceptance speech (written with not yet anarcho-capitalist Karl Hess and afforementioned pro-Lincoln conservative Harry V. Jaffa, odd pairing indeed)
"My Dungeon Shook: A Letter to My Nephew" by James Baldwin
The SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas
"From Montgomery to Stonewall" by Bayard Rustin
"Pink Triangle and Yellow Star" by Gore Vidal
"The Myth of Natural Rights" by LA Rollins
The Redneck Manifesto by Jim Goad
"We Are All Cultural Libertarians" by Kerry Howley

This would be open to anyone, but might be better for those who find that Obama's speaking and Obama's thinking are not entirely one and the same.