First Post of 2021!

Happy 2021 to one and all. Here's the latest edition of the Opiate, with a poem by me, but also poems by others.

Part III: The Plain and the Mountain

In my last post, I discussed a tier of candidates who will pretty much do everything in their power to return the party to the 90s and keep it there. Whether it’s the 1890s or the 1990s is the main point of contention among them. None want to update the Democratic party to fit in with the values of its members, or confront a changing world. Their solutions are unworkable and their ideas are old. They believe in a return to a much-fabled normalcy, which is about as Utopian as the proposals of Fourier or Lyndon LaRouche. Putting them at the top of the ticket would be wrong and it would be a losing strategy, especially down-ballot.

Now we move on to those candidates who are slightly better than the Backset Democrats previously discussed. They at least understand the direction the party and the country are moving in (left, and towards disaster, respectively) and what to do to accommodate these changes. Some of them are fairly chameleon-like in their politics, such as Gillibrand, and that is worrying. However, this group of Democrats, are still amenable to pressure. They may not be ideologically committed to either change, nor the status quo, but they can be moved.

Call them the Progressive Centrists, although I think the term Centrist here has to be understood in relation to the party as a whole. It is not about left or right, rather the Plain and the Mountain. Students of the French Revolution will understand what I mean. Listeners of Mike Duncan’s podcast will too. The terms left and right are based on where people sat in the National Assembly in 1789. Supporters of the king sat on the right of the legislative body, those who wanted more radical changes sat on the left. Since then, we’ve come to use left-wing and right-wing to describe political beliefs. However, back in Revolutionary France, this distinction gave way in the subsequent National Convention, where delegates grouped themselves based on a different arrangement that was dictated by the particular seating of their meeting hall in the Tuileries Palace.

Here, there were seats close to the main dais, seats behind them, and then seats on an elevated platform around the room. Delegates chose to sit close together based on their beliefs, with the right-wing Girondins sitting together near the front and the left-wing Jacobins and others sitting in the gallery. In between them was the majority of the Convention, men who would vote with either faction. They became known as the Plain (or Marsh) while those radicals who occupied the galleries became known as the Mountain.

The reason for this little history lesson is that I think this arrangement shows how the factions in the current Democratic party operate. The National Convention in sense looks very much like a political convention today, with more conservative party leaders at the front and center, the party faithful representing states in the middle, and the activists and radicals in the rear and the galleries (the new Mountain). The candidates of the Plain represent those who believe in the Democratic Party, but also want it to do more. They are reformists and progressives of different stripes who are moved by the voices coming from the radical peanut gallery.

Here are the candidates of the Plain as I see them:

Kamala Harris
Kirsten Gillibrand
Andrew Yang
Bill De Blasio
Julián Castro

…and sometimes

Buttigieg (Schrodinger’s candidate)

Of course, unlike the Plain in the French Revolution, they are more willing to lead on their own terms, rather than allow others in the Democratic Party’s factions to dictate the direction of the party. They want to bring the left and right together in the spirit of common agreement on the common good in order to defeat Trump. They see the need to update the Party as well, and do things to appeal to younger voters. Hence you have Andrew Yang and his proposal for a basic income, and his internet-centric campaign. You also have Castro arguing for Reparations for African-Americans and Harris even talking about potential support for Medicare for All (though she’s walked that back recently, remember the Plain listens to both the Mountain and the donors up at the Dais).

They all have their problems, which is why I put them above the Backset Democrats and below the candidates who are either of the Mountain, or willing to come down from it. The first is that they do not go far enough to solve the problems of this country. The second, is that they are too willing to moderate themselves for the interests of the donor-class. The third is that most of them have been in office before and haven’t used it to try and advance their own agendas. Harris was a reactionary prosecutor. Castro didn’t do much about the affordable housing crisis at HUD. Gillibrand was a fairly conservative congresswoman when it came to immigration. Yang was a capitalist.

DeBlasio probably has the most progressive accomplishments of anyone running besides Warren and Sanders. However, what’s concerning about him is the lack of a structural vision for the government and the party. After all, he was hampered the most in office from a fellow Democrat: Governor Andrew Cuomo. It would be great if he could run with ideas about improving the power of cities and local government at the expense of states, and how to revolutionize the country’s transportation systems. DeBlasio’s a big guy, but he needs big ideas to stand out. Things could change. DeBlasio might start issuing one policy idea after another, making pledges left and right to the Mountain.

This primary has had an interesting effect so far, with candidates releasing all kinds of proposals in order to catch up with one another. Warren leads the pack here, with Sanders, Booker, Castro, Harris, and Yang behind. It’s an interesting contrast to the 2016 Republican Primary, where there were so many candidates running and hardly anyone felt the need to create any policy proposals. The only person with any ideas was Trump. They were all terrible, but no one was trying to meet him with ideas of their own. Consequently, it helped him dominate the discussion at the Debates. If anything, it shows just how intellectually bankrupt the Republicans are, and how “conservatism” in America has reached a complete dead end. Unfortunately, this sclerotic movement still holds sway over a major party, creating a situation I outlined in my previous post, where only one party has any real debate inside it, and then has to compromise with a party that doesn’t.

Oh well, now let us turn to our attention to the Mountain. This is where the activists, the radicals, the rabble rousers, and left-wing of the party sit. In the Convention, they are elevated, seeing all the action, but at a distance. Consequently their voices travel farthest and they are closest to the doors, making them the faction most likely to bolt if things go bad enough for them. The Mountain has its candidates, but I think it’s important to distinguish that they fall into to two groups. There are the candidates who are of the Mountain first and foremost and willing to stay there. Then there are those who have been on the Mountain, have seen the promised land, and want to lead the rest of the Democrats there. You can probably guess who I believe are in the latter group. The former includes the following:

Jay Inslee
Marianne Williamson
Tulsi Gabbard
Mike Gravel

What makes these candidates “of the Mountain?” Well I think in part its because they are identified with a particular issue. They are not generally interested, it seems, in advancing a broader set of proposals. Instead, they want to argue for a radical position in regards to a single problem facing the country. There’s nothing wrong with that, only that you can’t win the nomination this way, unless it’s 1896…the issue is bimetallism…and you’re William Jennings Bryan.

That said, I’d prefer these candidates over the Plain and the Backset Democrats. Why? Because they are willing to actually change the status quo on issues that have caused or will cause immense suffering here and abroad. One thing about the Mountain, is that it can look into the future and across national borders. That’s a strength, but the Mountain, like any political faction has its weaknesses. There’s the issue of seeing so far into the future, that they lose sight of the present. There’s also an impatience with the very mundane and boring aspects of politics and party processes. Finally, there can be a blinkered vision that focuses too much on a single issue (as vital as that issue might be).

As far as issues go, there are two main ones that define these candidates. The first is Climate Change, which is the center of Jay Inslee’s campaign. If the media really was as left-wing as conservatives say it is, and Climate Change the liberal conspiracy it’s supposed to be, he would be getting far more attention than Pete “the South Bend Mr. Bean” Buttigieg. Inslee understands there is a problem and it has to be confronted by all necessary means and at all deliberate speed. It’s a real issue, not like “radical Islamic extremism” or whatever combination of words thereof conservatives think you need to say to defeat terrorism. If I had to have a single-issue candidate in office, he’d be the one. Nothing else is as important.

Then there are two candidates who represent the Mountain’s views on foreign policy, more or less. The less is represented by Tulsi Gabbard. The more is being pushed by Mike Gravel. They want an end to interventions in other countries, though Gravel is willing to go much farther than Gabbard. It’s unclear how strenuous her opposition is. Is she against certain current engagements but fine with the overall size of the armed forces and the powers of our intelligence agencies? Mike Gravel is the only one who is clear on reducing everything, bases, invasions, incursions, and budgets. Unfortunately, he’s too old to be president and his campaign is more meme-powered than anything else. He represents the Mountain at it’s highest peak. Incredibly serious about the issues, not serious enough about the process.

Finally, there’s Marianne Williamson. I don’t know what to make of her or how to describe her policies. Again, it’s another peak Mountain campaign. She has a firm commitment on reparations. However there’s also an emphasis on New Age mysticism. In the past she’s described herself as a “bitch for God,” so there’s that too. Maybe she can help reclaim religion from the right, if nothing else.

Part II: The Lamestream of Backset Democrats

Here is where I begin my analysis of the candidates in the race and try to convince my fellow Americans, why there are only two people worthy of having their name at the top of the ticket. Maybe I don’t have a network behind me, but I think I am just as insightful as Jonathan Chait or Chris Cilliza or Cilia or Cilicia, whatever it is. I’ve examined the field of political ideologies thus far, and I’ve read the Wikipedia articles on every single American president, election, primary, and convention. That must be more than any of the so-called experts have achieved. For instance, despite their myriad analyses, few of them have mentioned the 1924 Klanbake.

The term, “at a crossroads” is often overused. It is often misused too. Sometimes people forget the origin of the phrase goes back to the play Oedipus Rex. Specifically, it describes the scene where Oedipus unknowingly kills his father Laius, at a crossroads. He then sells his soul to the devil in order to play the blues lyre so he can bring his wife back from Hades. The band Cream made a song about it. But the truth is the Democratic Party has to decide what it believes and what it wants to fight for. Opposition to Trump isn’t enough. Although Trump might be at the top of the ballot, there’s so many other races to consider. The Democrats have to get people out to vote for them. This requires a unified vision and platform people can get excited about.

The party can’t assume people will vote for their slate of candidates just because of Trump. Given our polarized state-by-state elections, there’s plenty of people who might not come out to vote for the Democratic candidate for President if they think the state they live in will go out for him or her anyway. But in doing so, they will ignore all the races down-ballot the Democrats need to win. You know, the races the Democrats used to care about winning. I’m talking State Senators. Aldermen. Comptrollers. Clerks of the Court. (and no, not dog catcher. That’s not an office that’s actually up for the ballot anywhere.)

The Democrats can’t win these without someone who gets people excited, even in blue states. The leaders of the DNC will deny it and the pundits will ignore it, but the truth about politics these days is that you don’t win by appealing to some mythical center. You win by getting your base out to vote. The Democrats, ostensibly being the party of “the people” should have more voters in this scenario. You’d think they’d understand that and push for it, but alas that seems to be beneath the current leadership. As we saw in 2016, they were more interested (as in Chuck Schumer’s analysis) to give up blue collar votes in the Rust Belt in favor of mythical Republican moderates in the suburbs of Philadelphia and Cleveland.

In this portion of my ongoing series on the candidates, I’ll look at the candidates who are…well…meh. These are the men and woman running who can’t really articulate what they will do differently in the White House and what makes their approach to the issues and the electorate more than just a repeat of Hillary’s disastrous run in 2016. They can’t even really explain what makes them unique from one another. Why so many of them are running might be the biggest mystery of the 2019-2020 primary. Here are their names, the absolute meh tier:

Seth Moulton
Eric Swalwell
Michael Bennet
Steve Bullock
Amy Klobuchar
Cory Booker
Beto O'Rourke
Wayne Messam

…and sometimes

Pete Buttigieg

Are they being goaded to run by some entity within the party? Is the DNC or some faction thereof responsible? And if so, are they failing to communicate with one another? It’s hard to explain this phenomenon. We have so many people running for such a small piece of electoral real-estate. Sure, the big donors are all there, but the voters? They’ve largely gone over to the more liberal, progressive, or outright leftist wings of the party. Yet here we have several candidates essentially trying to resurrect Clintonian triangulation and the 1990s. The trouble is, Bill could only do what he did thanks to a particular combination of demographic and economic factors three decades ago. Plus, he had charisma. None of these people running in the Neoliberal lane have anything approaching the personality Bill Clinton displayed.

They also seem to collectively forget how much of a disaster Bill was for the long-term health of the party. Sure, they won the presidency. Then they lost Congress. That consolation prize seemed to be worth it, until they lost the presidency under Al Gore anyway. As a result, America ended up with an emboldened right-wing Republican Party in control of this government, and the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. There was a brief window of opportunity to realign the country again under Obama’s first term, but what happened? More triangulation, more surrender to Wall Street, and more foreign entanglements. Instead of breaking with Clinton’s Neoliberalism, Obama sought to reinforce it with a kinder face. Now we’re reaping the proceeds of this continued failed strategy. Trump is in the White House. The Conservatives have hijacked the Supreme Court. The GOP controls the preponderance of state houses and governorships across the country.

It is true that once more, the Democrats have Congress to try and stand athwart the Republicans and yell “stop!” But the victory in the 2018 midterms had more to do with disgust and frustration over Trump and the Republicans, than any genuine enthusiasm for the Democrats or their policy.  It can’t be used as a barometer for the voters, or would-be voters in 2020. It certainly shouldn’t be seen as a desire to return to the triangulations of the 1990s and the compromises of the aughts. However this first batch of candidates are clamoring for the presidency under the assumption that what Americas want are grand bargains, entitlement cuts, endless “smart” wars, and the last full half-measure of devotion to the New Deal.

Now I’m being generous. I’m assuming they’re running because they believe in all that and believe that’s what’s best for the country. Maybe they really all want to Vice President. Maybe they are hoping to get a book deal out of their runs. Maybe it’s just pure ambition, which most politicians have, and it only seems like so many mediocre people are running because the Democratic Party has a surplus of mediocre people. It could be that an army of overpaid consultants see them as easy marks, and have goaded them to run in order to line their own pockets.

Sure they will argue they have certain advantages and offer up diversity to the field. In some cases, like Cory Booker, it’s true. Buttigieg too, we can’t forget him (because the media won’t let us). In others, they do represent regions of the country outside the usual “Blue States,” though how that will translate to victories in other states (or even just their own) is unclear. Then there are candidates running on their youth, despite not believing in anything young people want. There’s a veteran or two in there as well. They want to be John Kerry 2.0 it seems.

Collectively their problem is a lack of substance, that points to new ideas, a clear vision, and how to restructure and rebuilt America. At best, what they have are piecemeal reforms. At worse, they will put a happy face on privatization and austerity. This might be the solution to the mystery I mentioned earlier. Maybe so many of them are being encouraged to run by the party so they can put a damper on the whole race. That would explain the strangely high number of them throwing their lanyards in the ring. They are here to crowd out the debate stage and tell us we can’t have nice things. If things get too rowdy in the primary, their role is to remove the punchbowl.

To give any of them the presidency would be a disaster for the party, for the progressive movement, and for the country at large. Given the looming ramifications of Climate Change, they are also a disaster for the world. Why? Because they are the apotheosis of the two trends that have been ruining the Democrats since 1992. The first is ideological. They are proud defenders of Neoliberalism, although their version is just a rehash of an already dated revival. They want laissez faire at home and intervention abroad, open boarders to capital and gated communities for labor. The market over all, yes, and that means you. The Democratic Party not only gave free reign to “free” markets in the 1990s, it did so back in the 1890s as well. That was the heyday of the Bourbon Democrats. But these Democrats are worse than Bourbons, at least the Bourbon Democrats opposed imperialism and interventions. These are Backset Democrats.

The second tend they embody is functional. This pertains to what the role of the Democratic Party should be in our system, regardless of its ideology. Instead of being a vehicle and a catalyst for change, these Backset Democrats want a party that acts a gatekeeper to activist groups. Within the party, they want to defend the leadership up at the Dais from challenges coming up the aisles. Whether these movements are for labor, civil rights, peace, or the environment doesn’t matter. It’s a familiar story that’s happened since the 1960s. Activists and movements reach out to the party and in the end get co-opted by it. Seeking power to effect change, they find themselves blocked by the Democrats who now demand votes from them in exchange for progress. In the end, the Democrats capture these movements and hold them hostage. The threat of a Republican victory is used to keep them in line.

The Backset Democrats want to maintain this version of the Party. To a lesser extent almost all the Democrats except Sanders and Warren want to too. But the Backset types, along with Biden and his clones believe this is the only way the party can function. It is the Divine Right of the DNC. They want a party that is muddled, confused, and watered-down. They want a party constantly compromised by itself. While they may think this makes the Democrats seem reasonable, or that this will make their proposals look better, in effect, it just leaves things open for a further compromise with the Republicans to drag everything farther right. What the Backset Democrats fail to realize is that no one is impressed by how much debate occurs within the Democrats to produce a policy. It certainly has no bearing on the further dialectic with the Republicans.

In a way, it is a good thing so many of this type of Democrat are running. It might deprive Biden of some support, especially in regards with endorsements. However as I mentioned above, so many Backset Democrats on the Debate stage might just add more opportunities to prevent an actual discussion of the issues. If there has to be constant debate within the party, it should occur without their hand in it. It is true that the only serious discussion of politics in this country is happening within the Democratic Party. It’s an unfortunate situation. I’d rather have a Republican Party where all the Neoliberals could dwell, leaving a Progressive Democratic Party behind for good. But that doesn’t mean the Democratic Party should support a failed consensus in the meantime or weaken its commitments.

Some of these men and women running have tried to be dream candidates by checking off what they assume to be a list of boxes in the minds of voters. Mayor Pete is probably the most egregious example of this. It’s an unproductive exercise for candidates and the voter. What is needed are not dream candidates, but candidates who dare the voters to dream of a better world. The Backset Democrats don’t want that and we shouldn’t want them because of it.

Porkchop Sandwiches: They're Real!

My God did that smell good

Chemical or Biological Attack

New poems are up at POTLUCK and Rasasvada. Enjoy!

Is It Nothing to You, All Who Click Through?

The lovely, understanding, endlessly creative and sympathetic Quail Bell magazine has published a piece I wrote. Finally, some more prose credits to my name. Even better, it's not fiction! So if you can't stand poetry and want writing to be about "reality," here's something for you, you Bourgeois Philistine (Philatelists are cool though).

In Bed with Gore Vidal: A Book Review

In Bed with Gore Vidal: Hustlers, Hollywood, and the Private World of an American Master

296 pages

Riverdale Avenue Books

Thanks to the Simpsons, Gore Vidal is one of the first public figures I ever knew was gay. In one episode, Lisa and marge have this exchange:

Marge: Well, did you call one of your friends?

Lisa: Hah! These are my only friends: grown up nerds like Gore Vidal, and even he's kissed more boys than I ever will.

Marge: Girls, Lisa. Boys kiss girls.

            Fans of the show know that John Waters played a gay character who befriended Homer, while Jay Sherman spilled the sexual orientation beans about Harvey Fierstein in another episode. But the reference to Gore Vidal stood out more to me. Strange how such a remark can make an impact. Perhaps because Lisa’s comment touched on a physical aspect of male same-sex relations, or maybe it was the shot of Gore’s yellow cartoon face on one of his books, looking masculine, marvelous, and tough. The show’s use of Gore Vidal brought home two points to my young mind. Of course, I knew gay men existed but seeing Vidal meant that gay men could be famous authors and that his gray hair meant they had been around long before I was born.

            However, reading Tim Teeman’s book one wonders if Gore Vidal actually did kiss that many boys. In Teeman’s portrait, it seems Gore would have preferred mouths to be used for other functions, and that they do so quickly. Through this exhaustive and thorough sexual biography, we learn that Vidal often readily embraced physical intimacy, but had trouble opening himself up emotionally with anyone, including his partner of over fifty-plus years, Howard Austen.

            Yet, Gore Vidal would have approved of the way the Simpsons identified him, by the act of kissing boys rather than by an orientation towards them. One of the surprising revelations of the biography is that Vidal never identified himself as gay, despite the general public’s willingness to categorize and accept him as such. In his view, there were no homosexual people, just homosexual acts. Therefore, everyone was bisexual, perfectly capable of same-sex and opposite-sex attraction. This position, widespread before the nineteenth century, put him outside the mainstream of both American society and the Gay community. Unlike a writer such as Burroughs, Vidal did not even embrace a label such as “queer” and while rejected attempts to be labeled a “faggot.”

            But there was a downside to this self-declared independence from sexual categories, which Teeman thoroughly documents. Because Gore refused to identify as a homosexual, he did not lend his fame to the cause of gay rights. Occasionally he would donate to certain organization and fought against sexual puritanism in his essays. But he remained largely absent from the fight, which grew more noticeable once the AIDS epidemic hit America and claimed the life of one of his nephews. While Gore was attentive to his family members’ needs in private, in public he was weary to find a common case with such controversial figures as Larry Kramer and his ACT UP organization.

               There was an emotional cost to this attitude as well. Despite being out in a physical sense, when it came to his feelings, Gore was still deeply closeted.  Sex for him was about dominance and superiority (and of course orgasm) more than any expression of a deeper commitment. While he didn’t care if people knew he had sex with men, he took great pains to let everyone know he was the one doing the fucking. Gore was always a top, never a bottom, and stressed this.  As a result, he missed out on the potential for genuine emotional intimacy and this affected his relationship with Howard Austen, who the book depicts as a long suffering companion, a victim of Gore’s withholding. They were partners but had a largely sexless relationship during that time. As the book explains, Gore felt that he could live together with a friend but not a lover, only to realize how dear Austen was to him before it was too late. In heartbreaking detail, Teeman relates how Vidal broke down at his partner’s death in 2003 and subsequently never recovered from the loss.

            One aspect of Gore’s sexuality the biography investigates is his assertions of bisexuality. He did not claim it as an identity or orientation, but rather a description of his sexual life. It only made since to describe himself as such, since he did not identify as either gay or straight and wanted people to believe he was perfectly open to sex with men and women. Yet nothing in Teeman’s research suggests he was as flexible as he claims. While there may have been a sexual encounter or two with women early on in his life, after the publication of his novel The City and the Pillar, Gore seems to have only had same-sex relationships. Despite ample opportunity to sleep with women, including several Hollywood starlets, Vidal instead sought after the company of men, particularly male hustlers in Italy, whose willingness to sleep with him for money while dating women only further reinforced his views about the inherent bisexuality of all people.

            Of course, one cannot blame Gore for the position he took. As those who are interviewed in the biography stress, he was a product of his time and his class. Homosexuality was illegal when he was born and gays were viewed as weaklings in every sense of the word. Gore came from an aristocratic background and was expected to take a leading role in the country’s politics as his grandfather, a senator from Oklahoma, had done. However, Gore’s sexuality stood in the way. There were other factors as well, but he would bitterly claim to the end of his days he would have become president if it was not for the issue of who he slept with. It makes sense he would try to downplay any notion of orientation and was in full control of who he was attracted to. But his extensive experience with prostitution and his penchant for Latin male pornography reveal otherwise.

            Much of his reaction to the sexual politics of his era can also be traced to Jimmy Trimble. Jimmy was a classmate  who Gore claimed was the love of his life to the very end. According to Gore, the two of them fooled around physically and shared a deep bond which was shattered when Jimmy was killed in World War II, an event which probably shaped his anti-Imperialist stance as much as his sexuality. The first part of the biography delves into the mystique of their relationship and contrasts Gore’s claims of intimacy with denials from Trimble’s family. Gore’s continuing attachment to Jimmy is no mere speculation. He was always willing to talk about his attraction to him and  how he could never love anyone else. Unfortunately, he did so around Howard, who was both pained and annoyed by the mention of the young man’s name.  He would make a jerk off motion behind Gore’s head whenever his partner brought it up and often brought Gore’s discussions to an end with a repeated refrain “Oh Gore, basta basta with the Jimmie Trimble!”

            While depicting Gore’s struggles in a sympathetic light, Teeman’s book does not shy away from the dark side of his character and the cost his emotional denial took on him. Vidal extrapolated his own desire to be sexually flexible and saw bisexual and homosexual romances behind every relationship between two men in literature and history. At the same time, Vidal internalized certain aspects of homophobia. His family hatred against a certain kind of effeminate gay man made him enemies with anyone who embodied those traits, such as Truman Capote. Thetwo famously feuded on and off for close to thirty years.  Besides these mental gymnastics, projections, and compartmentalizing, there were also years of heavy drinking and a mounting paranoia which led Gore to reverse his will at the end of his life. Convinced his family was out to get him, he revised the terms so Harvard University, which he never attended, would get the bulk of his estate.

            There is also the issue of how old Gore’s sexual partners were. While it is certain he enjoyed encounters with males in their late teens, there were rumors he slept with adolescents who were much younger. Gore was particularly worried that his arch nemesis William F. Buckley had information related to these encounters. However, Teeman can only guess about what he knew, since Christopher Buckley found his father’s file on Gore after his death and promptly threw it away without giving the content inside even so much as a curious glance. Complicating the picture was Gore’s early involvement with a fundraiser for an organization , part of which evolved to become NAMBLA. Gore defended his presence there years later by pointing out that he was unaware of what the group would become and that at the time he was giving money to help a cause devoted to liberalizing laws between teenagers and older men, though not children. Others claim the meeting was directly responsible for founding the group, despite what Gore contested.

            This back and forth between the sources and Gore Vidal himself is one of the more frustrating aspects of the book.  Since the subject is the sex life of Vidal, a lot of outrageous claims can be made because the acts occurred in private. Some of the most notorious statements do not involve Gore at all, but rather allegedly gay actors in 1950s Hollywood. They come from Scotty Bowers, who wrote about his time supplying closeted stars young men and women in his memoir Full Service. Unfortunately the veracity of his claims is often suspect and he has a history of retracting them.  Gore Vidal approved of his writing, but I doubt Katherine Hepburn, Tyrone Power, and Charles Laughton would.

            Besides the issue of contradicting sources, the book can be confusing at times, since there are dozens of characters who come and go through the text and one forgets their relationship to Gore, particularly those in his family.  His mother remarried and through this union, he gains a set of half and step-siblings. A glossary of names might have been helpful. In addition, the chronology of the biography becomes warped in several sections since Teeman tried to order the book thematically.  A great deal of context is lost this way.  However, In Bed with Gore Vidal remains a fascinating read, in no small part because of the complex personality at the center of it, a man who had wealth and fame, and yet was never satisfied in his private life. 

Terry Gilliam Needs Money

Specifically, MY money. I guess he still hasn't recouped his losses from the Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

Celebrate the New Year with Experimental Literature

Experiential Experimental Literature to be exact.

Louis H. Berman of Annapolis, Maryland Is an Idiot

Sometimes I read a letter to the editor at the Washington Post and suffer a minor attack of apoplexy. Unfortunately since I cannot go to a doctor for a cure and the apothecaries are all closed, I must turn to the next best substitute for leeches: a blog post. Louis H. Berman's letter here, buried away in the paper like a hateful jewel, is today's culprit. In a few spare paragraphs, Mr. Berman asserts the following about what's wrong with the Millennial Generation and while he spouts nonsense, in the process he reveals what is most wrong with the United States: namely that we have become a country willing to believe the most absurd and malicious lies about our fellow Americans. In sum, this is Mr. Berman's "argument:" 

1) Millennials are spoiled and lazy 
2) This is the fault of the Baby Boomers 
3) However, the reason for high unemployment is still not their fault.  Even though they were not in charge of Wall Street when it wrecked the economy, blame falls on the Millennials instead.
4) There are plenty of jobs for Millennials but they are too spoiled to find one. 
5) Millennials are supposed to "learn something" from their parents (who spoiled them in the first place) about what being in a real workplace means. 

I think Mr. Berman needs to go back and actually read the classifieds and want-ads some time. Sure there are plenty of jobs, but many require several years of experience and a decent portion of what do not are unpaid. Try looking for entry-level work Mr. Berman as I have, for multiple companies, in several fields, in different cities. It might be better than just talking out of your ass to tell the damn kids to get off your lawn. Now, you may claim that the Millennials are just too spoiled to take minimum wage, which was supposedly good enough for the folks of your generation. Remember that minimum wage was good enough for all of you because it was higher. A minimum wage job today pays less now when adjusted for inflation. Also, you may not know this because higher education used to cost a lot less, but many Millennials have college debts and need to earn money so that they can pay them off, debts they incurred in the first place so that they might not have to work for minimum wage all their lives.

I'm going to be generous Mr. Berman and assume you are not being motivated by spite, but rather an adherence to the just-world fallacy. In your view, unemployment is high because people are lazy and spoiled, especially young people. I hate to break it to you (who am I kidding, I enjoying enlightening you), but there are not enough jobs to go around. Roughly speaking, there are 3.5 unemployed people per each of the much vaunted job postings you discussed. No matter how many skilled people apply for a position, they are not all going to get it in this economy. The same applies even if they all decide to take minimum wage jobs. Have you been following the news? 44% of minimum-wage workers have either attended or graduated from college. I think we can safely assume they are not waiting out for their dream job. Their dream job is having a job. Mr. Berman, these attacks on a generation are a red herring, especially when you consider long-term unemployment rates among the Baby Boomers. But I guess they must be lazy and spoiled too, because of how the GI Generation raised them. 

This economy sucks. Period. Blaming the unemployed does nothing except possibly make you feel like unemployment could never happen to you. You seem to view joblessness as something that only exists for other people who must have done something wrong. Mr. Berman, this is a fallacy and an insult to the millions of formerly hardworking Americans who have been laid off in the past few years, and all the Americans of all ages, races, creeds, and classes who want desperately to work. Many of us loved our jobs before we lost them. Many of us have taken what we could find in the interim, only to lose those jobs as well. Many of us are the victims of discriminatory hiring practices that make it difficult for the unemployment to get work. Many of us graduated in the middle of a terrible market and could never get a leg up. Many of us have put having families on hold. Many of us have put owning a house on hold. Many of us avoid seeing our friends and family out of poverty and shame. Many of us go to bed every night praying for either a miracle or to be allowed to die in our sleep. 

And here Mr. Berman, is where I am going to engage in the same kind of attacks that you have, employing (see what I did there?) both the ad hominem and the gross generalization. Now, I am not doing this because it helps my argument, but because it is fun. You sir, are a dumb asshole. Unfortunately, you are not alone. The audiences of the GOP debates were filled with your ilk. You do not have any facts to back your assertions up, relying instead on worn-out narratives that have been applied to every previous generation. Despite setting yourself up as some sort of expert, you offer no real solutions to the problems you decry either. You lack any long term vision and fail to grasp the structural issues we are mired in. On top of this, you are callous. You are mean. You are judgmental even though your previous ignorance shows you have no right to claim any sort of capacity for judgment. 

Now if you were smart and an asshole, you would at least have enough self-interest to be worried about the true causes behind the problem of persistent unemployment because it affects you. Instead of spouting off against the usual suspects guilty of the usual sins, you would have some intellectual curiosity about several real solutions. If you were dumb and kind you might not grasp the nuances of the situation, but you would at least have nice things to say to those who are suffering. Of course, it would be best if you were both smart and kind, but I am willing to settle for the other two options if it keeps you from writing another letter to the editor at the Washington Post ever again. 

A Toast to Glorious 2012!

A new year is here and so far it seems to be off to a good start. I started another novel today, I'm working a temp job tomorrow, and New Year's Eve was a blast. However my ankles still hurt from it. I guess it must have been quite an oedipal time for me. Anyway, here are new poems to read, one from Nostrovia and the other posted on LitKicks. Now excuse me, I have to follow the business in Iowa.

1001 Albums I’m Trying to Hear Before I Get Bored, Part 2

Well, I have finally finished my aural Odyssey (but alas, it involved no Oracle). In case you are new to the blog and missed my last post on the topic, I have been making my way through the collection 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, which was made possible due to the wonderful folks over at Radio 3 Net, probably the best thing to come out of Romania since Vampires and Nadia Comaneci. They have been kind enough to post the albums up on the Internet as streaming audio. Gentlemen and ladies, Mulţumesc! I am much obliged to you, without your disregard for copyright law, my knowledge of popular music would be seriously stunted.

This has been a project that I began seriously in the fall of 2009. Ah, how far have I come since then (from Arlington to Montclair, New Jersey), but farther still has come music. The first album on the list (the original 2005 edition) is Frank Sinatra's In the Wee Small Hours, released in 1955. The last album on the list is the White Stripes' Get Behind Me Satan, which came out in 2005. In between was the rise of rock and roll, the British Invasion, psychedelia, funk, glam rock, the coming of the Nashville Sound, heavy metal, disco, punk and post-punk, rap, hip-hop, alternative, grunge, house, nu metal, electronica, and a hundred other smaller movements in music, some lasting no longer than a single year, band, or album.

This has been a real learning experience for me, listening to not just songs, but whole albums, and doing so chronologically. It really helps to put different bands and their work in perspective. One comes to understand the why of a specific genre of music and not just the what and when. Except for a few music lovers, I don't think there are many people out there who have listened to more than a hundred or two hundred complete albums. They may know thousands of songs by heart and understand their nuances, but knowledge of albums (i.e. LPs), especially in this age of downloads, probably leaves much to be desired. Go ahead, try and make a list of every album you have listen through completely.

I was the same way. I knew plenty of songs that I had picked up through burned CDs that mixed them together, or that I had downloaded through various channels. But when it came to whole albums, there were gaps in my knowledge. I had listened to most of the Beatles' work, and I had a few of the other greats like Dark Side of the Moon and Led Zeppelin IV, along with various "best of" collections. I also had plenty of disco and old funk to listen to as well, but this was also in the form of single songs and compilations. So I had only scratched the surface of popular music, even for those acts that I claimed to love (except for the Beatles). I also had a good store of classical music, but this is not a form that lends itself to the album age particularly well. It exists beyond the limmits of all discs, tapes, cylinders, and files. It was paper and ink that constrained Mozart and Mahler.

Not only were there deficiencies in my knowledge when it came to the classical period of rock and roll, but I knew very little of music from the 1950s and the music that came out from the late 1970s to the current time. I still don't know enough about world music as a whole, but at least through this project I became a little bit better acquainted with Sinatra, Fitzgerald, Buddy Holly, Elvis, and Miles Davis and at the same time came to know the Sex Pistols, NWA, Radiohead, and the White Stripes for the first or second time. Before listening to these albums, many genres had not been explored at all by me. My knowledge of the punk era was largely limited to the Clash, rap and hip-hop were represented by Blackalicious, who I now realize probably should have been on the list, and a few scattered singles from the Sugar Hill Gang to Jay-Z. My exposure to the various forms of synthetic/electronic/mixed/remixed music was also less than I desired.

Since September, I have been listening to music that came out after 1980. Having been born in 1985, this is music that arguably I should have known better than the classic rock I had made the staple listening of my teenage years. However, this was not the case. When it comes to music made between 1980 and 2004 (roughly when the list ends) I was largely in the dark. After 2004, I went to college and was exposed directly to what was coming out. Before then, I was in a bit of a cocoon. The advantage of this isolation is that I do not have a stack of CDs that I regret purchasing or dozens of songs that I wish I had never downloaded. Nor did I waste time going to concerts for acts I find repugnant now in my more mature years. I went for quality over quantity, classic over contemporary, and I was content with what I listened to.

When I began to really start listening to music, in the later half of the 1990s, what I heard on the radio or saw on MTV (fun fact kids: the M used to stand for music!) did not appeal to me. It was either too slick or too in my face and offered nothing substantial to me. Since my parents did not have much music around the house and I had no older sibling to guide me, I had to educate myself about music, the same as I did about philosophy, eastern religions, poetry, writing, radical politics, and world history. This resulted in a knowledge that was incomplete, but nevertheless treasured because I had come to it on my own terms. So when I realized I had an opportunity to try and fill the gaps of what I had listened to, the audio autodidact in me eagerly jumped at it.

So listening to this quarter century, 1980 to 2005, of music has been educational because I came to it knowing so little. When I listened to those albums that were released between 1955 and 1980, it was less of an ear opening experience. I did find out about many new bands and artists I had never heard of, but I could place these within a familiar context of those albums I had already listened to. I could not do that with this era. Almost everything I heard was a discovery and was new to me. I supposed this puts me in a unique position to be a music critic, as I did not grow up with an immediate connection to either early rock n'roll, classic rock, old school hip-hop, punk, grunge, techno, or alternative music. Until 2004, there was nothing that I liked to listen to that I could defend by saying, "you had to be there."

It was interesting to see the same sort of peaks and valleys in music after 1980 that existed before it. What I mean by that is how a spate of really good albums would be released together in one or two years, and then nothing substantial would come out the next. For instance, the mid-1970s were bracketed by two very productive periods of music, but it produced less that was memorable. I found that the middle of the 1980s was the same way. I admit I once held the stubborn view that little good came out after 1980, or that the music somehow did not speak to me, this I realize now was a wrong opinion for me to hold. However, most of what I uncovered that I liked was not in circulation on the radio or television and without the Internet, how was I going to be exposed to any of the music?

Overall, I think the list of albums was too heavily weighted towards this period, a reaction against over-emphasizing the sixties and seventies in music history, no doubt. Older Baby Boomer critics are being replaced by younger ones who grew up in the eighties and nineties. They want to makes the case that these eras are just as glorious and revolutionary and have tried to elevate bands like Nirvana to the pantheon with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. A reaction against this reaction is probably going to be needed in the future, perhaps lead by members of the Internet generation, who have grown up with all music simultaneously streaming into their ears. The accolades given to many artists for supplying raw presence and shock value may disappear, to be replaced by more of an appreciation for craft and skill.

But, who knows which bands and musicians will see their star rise or fall? Who could have predicted Nick Drake would be rescued from near-oblivion? The Internet will only make these cases all the more common. This is why I feel the list of 1001 albums should have refrained from passing judgement on the music released in the last ten years or so. It is still too fresh and recent to be given proper critical consideration. Contemporary music rests in that odd middle ground between being new and in need of immediate comment, and being old enough to be savored because of its age. It is hard to write about music that is five or six years old. A critic can do it, of course, but the task is difficult. Debating whether or not it belongs in the canon seems premature.

Yes, I found music in this period that I liked. No, none of it was by Yes. Here were some of my favorites:

Dexys Midnight Runners – Searching for the Young Soul Rebels

Talking Heads – Remain in Light

Brian Eno & David Byrne – My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

Tom Tom Club – Tom Tom Club

Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five – The Message

Orange Juice – Rip it Up

U2 – War

Cocteau Twins – Treasure

Billy Bragg – Talking with the Taxman About Poetry

Paul Simon – Graceland

U2 – Joshua Tree

Nirvana – Nevermind

U2 – Achtung Baby

Wu Tang Clan – Enter the Wu Tang

Morrissey – Vauxhall & I

Jeff Buckley – Grace

Oasis – (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?

Wilco – Being There

Radiohead – OK Computer

Smith, Elliott – Either/Or

Manu Chao – Clandestino

Lauryn Hill – Miseducation of…

Sigur Rós – Ágætis Byrjun

Air – Virgin Suicides: Original Motion Picture Score

Le Tigre – Le Tigre

Coldplay – Parachutes

Strokes – Is This It

Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Gillian Welch – Time

Gorillaz – Gorillaz

Ugh, writing this list out and trying to find space for everything is difficult. That's how much enjoyable music came out of this era which I had previously written off, although there were a lot of albums that I sort of passed over without remembering at all. There are probably twenty or thirty more albums I could add to the list. This is just what immediately comes to me. I am a pretty eclectic guy as you can see from the artists above.

Were there any albums that I didn't think belonged? Sure. There were plenty of them. A hundred or so probably could have been cut out from this period and the spots given to music from before 1980. I still have a lingering feeling, though unsupported, that the fifties could have used more love from the critics. On the whole there were too many electronic albums on the list. Each time one came on I had a Pavlovian reaction, the taste of an overpriced martini suddenly filling my mouth. There is plenty of good electronic music out there, the genre has really evolved from just being dance music in the past couple of years, but the albums the editors chose all blend together. I also would not have put Britney Spears, Limp Bizkit, or A Grand Don’t Come for Free by Streets. Those are the only ones I can recall by name right now.

A few acts from this period could have been added and I am sure in future editions of the book (there is already a second edition with Ys by Joanna Newsom in it) they will find a way in. Besides her and the above mentioned Blackalicious, some possible inclusions are: Philip Glass (if the Virgin Suicides soundtrack can make it, why not one of the ones he wrote?), Rilo Kiley, Sufjan Stevens, Ratatat, Of Montreal, and Dr. Dog. Yes, the list is biased in favor of recent artists, but only because I know these are missing and I have listened to them. I can't think of anyone from the 1980s who deserves to be on the list or a missing album, since my knowledge of the period has largely come from the list itself.

Well, now I need a new project. Perhaps finding a job?