No Clock

For the moment, the Drudge Report leads with a story on John Edwards’ problem with the term “War on Terror.”   It isn’t breaking news by any means.  Edwards has spoken out against the phrasing and the idea for quite some time.  He says we ought to move on because “War on Terror” represents the President’s misguided ideologies and plays right to what the terrorists want.

The idea, right or wrong, is much more important than it seems.  The common adoption of the words “War on Terror” might just be President Bush’s greatest victory in office.  The phrase frames the way Americans think about our country’s role in the world and national security.  Since September 11^th, the question has not been whether we should be fighting a “War on Terror” but how we should go about it.

Are wire-tapping, military tribunals, and the war in Iraq helping us win the “War on Terror?”  Or are they weakening our standing in the world, motivating our enemies, and exposing us to further attacks? 

In polls, most Americans believe we should withdraw from Iraq.  But if we were instead asked if we should withdraw from the “War on Terror,” the answer would be a resounding no.  And if Edwards wants to change the premise of the debate, he must do so delicately.  Americans need to know that their government is actively seeking out national security threats and extinguishing them.  To many people, the phrase “War on Terror” stands for that action.

If John Edwards can convince America that it is possible to maintain that vigilance, but under a different name and a different doctrine, he will not only reshape the debate over national security, but strengthen his campaign.  Clinton and Obama continue to stand by the phrase.

Once upon a time there was a handsome, happy-go-lucky music critic. His career started, like most careers do, with enthusiasm. He played no instrument but the radio. He idolized the stars and the stragglers alike. Rock n’ roll was his life, his passion, his foundation. But years of having his fantasies shattered weakened that foundation. It cracked slowly at first, and eventually imploded into the frustrated dust of cynicism. The music critic, by now fat, greasy, and frustrated, gave up on his dream. “Rock is dead,” he wrote.

And so began the Keith Richards of music clichés. “Rock is dead” is a phrase that refuses to die. It transforms instead: “Punk is dead.” “Country is dead.” “Hip Hop is dead.”

None of these are dead. In fact, none were ever technically alive. They are genres not people. But even as genres, they were never dead. In fact, they are going on strong. Especially rock. Its purity tested by ever-escalating greed and ever-deteriorating mainstream tastes, rock has persevered.

Rock survives not in spite of the consumerism that many think killed it years ago, but because of it. Technology and nostalgia are rock’s best friends. The internet and satellite radio have lead to a whole new subcategory of band. The kind of band you don’t hear on MTV or KROQ, but still have access to without being part of a “scene,” or knowing the right people. The kind of band that sells out small to mid-sized venues worldwide without a trace of mainstream media attention. Gone are the days of exchanging vinyls and tapes. Here are the days of Myspace, YouTube, and BitTorrent.

For proof, here are some bands I discovered because of the internet. They are rock bands. They are alive. Rock is alive:

The Supersuckers.

The Supersuckers call themselves the greatest band in the world. They play sometimes cheesy, tongue-in-cheek, often country infused rock n’ roll. They play it hard and execute as well as anybody. It’s hard to find adjectives that this band has not already used to describe itself. Check out “Pretty Fucked Up,” and “Paid.”

www.myspace.com/supersuckers

Admiral James T.

Admiral James T is a one man band that consists of Admiral James T. He is Swiss and plays a brand of poppy but reckless rockabilly. He takes as much from The Beatles as he does from the Stray Cats. The Admiral is a recent discovery. He’s got a Social Distortion cover on his Myspace page that I like more than the original. Hard to believe because it’s a song I wrote a college essay about. Listen to it (“Don’t Drag Me Down”), and Ringo-inspired “55 Women” as soon as possible.

www.myspace.com/admiraljamest

The Bellrays

A friend of mine introduced me to The Bellrays a couple years ago via email. He described them as “Aretha Franklin fronting The Stooges.” That’s pretty much right. They call it “Maximum Rock and Soul,” and it is unlike anything else out there. For The Bellrays performing live is a religious experience. And they expect it to be equally powerful for their audience. Singer Lisa Kekula commands the stage and preaches rock and roll like Al Sharpton in a cocktail dress. Take in “Detroit Breakdown and the quieter “Have a Little Faith.”

www.myspace.com/thebellrays

I plan on writing more about music from now on. Perhaps not so much recommending bands, like in this entry, but talking about the art and the industry and the characters. For the record, I don’t play music. I just like to listen.

I got an email from the honors dept today with a calendar of upcoming events, scholarship opportunities, and other banalities. One of the events listed was the 2007 “Lavender Graduation,” which is sponsored by gay groups on campus. The event itself sounds totally uninteresting to me, but I got a kick out of the description.

“…celebration of the lives and accomplishments of the UW queer, bi, trans, two-spirit, gay, lesbian, intersex, same-gender-loving, questioning, and allied students!”

Are they making these categories up? What the hell are “two-spirit,” “intersex,” or “same-gender loving”? Am I that far out of touch? Did they discover three new sexual orientations since I’ve been in Europe?  I support gay rights completely, but this compartmentalized PC labeling bullshit exhausts me.  The more people try to categorize themselves the more insecure they’d be.  And sadly that’s especially true in the gay community where suicide rates amongst young people are way too high.

There has to be an easier way. Why not just say non-heterosexual people and their friends?

Time has an excerpt from Al Gore’s new book “The Assault on Reason.” I didn’t read his global warming book, but I saw the movie and this is ten times more interesting. The excerpt reads more like a rallying cry. He writes on how to preserve the dialectic spirit of American democracy in the wake of disillusion and ineffectiveness caused by television and money. The fading role of logic in politics is something I think about a lot, and Gore cuts right to the essence of the problem.

My only criticism is minor. The passage leans heavily to the left despite the relatively nonpartisan subject matter. This topic deserves a big audience, so let’s hope the rest of the book is written by moderate 2000 Al Gore, not hippie 2007 Al Gore.

Apparently it is Christopher Hitchens week here at Eric’s brain. I wrote about him yesterday in my semi-confessionary “writing process” piece, and here I go again. In Slate today, Hitchens unloads on Jerry Falwell. No surprise. Falwell is an easy target and Hitchens is an aggressive atheist who loves to condemn the god he doesn’t believe in.

Like most people who aren’t fanatical Christians, I won’t shed a tear for Falwell. He was a hateful, manipulative prick. But I don’t have the vitriol or the patience to write a scathing or ironic obituary. It took about two hours for “Jerry Falwell is going to hell” articles to turn passé. Hitch’s piece has plenty of that. He mentions the anti-Semitism and homophobia, but also dives into something more important. Falwell’s (and the whole fundamentalist movement’s) relationship with Israel.

First, Hitchens frames Falwell’s pro-Israel activities as little more than good PR work:

“Seeking to deflect the charge of anti-Jewish prejudice, Falwell adopted the cause of the most thuggish and demented Israeli settlers, proclaiming that their occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was a holy matter and hoping that they might help to bring on Armageddon and the return of the Messiah.”

I disagree on a couple of levels. First, Jerry Falwell didn’t care too much about anti-Jewish prejudices. His Moral Majority and the rest of the religious right were unlikely to hold that kind of thing against him. Their spiritual beliefs are already inherently anti-Jewish, so what’s the difference? Plus, when has prejudice ever hindered the career of a celebrity reverend? Pat Robertson gets away with it all the time. And on the other side of the coin, so do Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Falwell wouldn’t have been any different.

Second, even if Falwell really did want to look like he loved Jews, he would have done something else. Religion aside, Falwell had one of the most resourceful political minds in the country. He knew how transparent his support of Israel was. Zionists might have been willing to take his money, but they did so gritting their teeth. It was one of those “enemy of my enemy” situations.

In my mind, however, Israel and Israelis taking money from Falwell and friends is not just morally repugnant, but awful, horrible, misguided strategy. Jerry Falwell was not a Zionist. He liked the fact that Israel welcomed Christian tourists. And he probably figured the Jews were a little easier to deal with than the Muslims. But he was not a Zionist. He believed and preached that the antichrist would be a Jewish man. He believed and preached that any day now the Messiah would descend on Israel and either kill or convert every Jew bastard in the place.

Taking money from the Christian right is the equivalent of Israel selling it soul to the devil (who if he exists, probably isn’t religious). Israel is cozying up to a group whose views make them as much an enemy as Hezbollah or Hamas. The only difference is strategy. Where Jihadists try to blast their way through the front door, evangelicals are sneaking in through the back to much more success.

The pattern is bad enough in itself, but even worse when you consider that it is completely unnecessary. Israel’s government doesn’t need money or support. Consider the consequences if Israel were to tear up all the checks it got from groups like the Moral Majority. There wouldn’t be any. AIPAC is so strong that American politicians (especially conservatives) have no choice but to support Israel. Voting against Israel is voting against democracy is voting against America. No politician with any ambition is going to turn against one of America’s most fundamental foreign allies. The US foreign aid is not going anywhere.

And when you sell your soul to the devil, there are consequences. Israel hasn’t felt them yet, but it will soon. It owes a favor to somebody whose interests will sometime in the future lie directly opposite to its own. Like Vito Corleone, Falwell’s evangelicals have Israel in their pocket. And when it comes time for Falwell’s cronies to cash in, Israel has no choice but to refuse. It simply cannot let a foreign special interest with conflicting religious interests dictate policy.

The only chance Israel has is to disengage from the relationship slowly and gracefully. It can’t and should not shut the gates to Capernaum or the Mount of Beatitudes, but it can shut its bank accounts to fundamentalist Christian interests. The international Jewish and secular communities provide plenty of money as it is.

Of course, there are exceptions within the Israeli community who will continue to take money from anybody who offers it. The people who refuse to disengage from the Gaza Strip or West Bank. They are the extremist, right wing settlers, recognizable by the big kippahs and tendency to fire on Israeli troops. They act outside the system and for it Hitchens places these people in the same category as Falwell. It’s a big hyperbolic stretch on his part. The settlers are wrong. But unlike Falwell, they are fueled by political conviction, not hatred and a massive power trip.

Hitchens weakens his own position by including a veiled attack of former Israeli PM Menachem Begin that does nothing to further his argument. He notes that in 1980 Begin awarded Falwell the Jabotinsky Centennial Medal, and implies that as “bigots and frauds,” Begin and Falwell are “brothers under the skin.”

He’s right about the award. Giving something so prestigious to a man like Falwell is puzzling at best, and stupid at worst. But Begin, who founded Israel’s conservative Likud party, was far from a bigot and fraud. He negotiated Israel’s peace with Egypt in 1979, and in doing so pulled all Israeli settlements from the Sinai; a move completely uncharacteristic of the extremists Hitchens tries to group him with. Begin also did more than any Israeli politician up to that time for the rights of Yemenites and other African Jews, whose unspoken oppression is one of Israel’s darker secrets.

Yesterday I called Chris Hitchens a crazy genius. The genius lies in his dead-on bullshit meter, skill for straightforward analysis, and is in his belligerent, antagonistic writing style. The crazy lies in his personality, the content of his analysis, and his belligerent, antagonistic writing style. And while it’s easy to admire his intelligence and talent, it’s also easy to see where his ego and his crazy get in their way. But maybe that’s what makes his work so provocative. Maybe that’s why I just spent a thousand words analyzing one paragraph of a column that on the whole, I agree with.

Lately I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the “writing process.”  The “writing process” is easy to understand: It is the process of writing.  Some writers say they have a specific routine, or bring a certain frame of mind to the keyboard.  They write in favorite locations, at pre-designated times, or sitting with their bodies contorted a particular way.

I read a feature today from an old New Yorker about Christopher Hitchens.  Hitchens, in my opinion, is an insane genius.  He is an asshole, a drunk, and I disagree with most of his politics.  But the guy has one of the most powerful and polarizing voices out there.  He’s a damn good writer and prolific.  The story notes that when Hitchens writes, he does so fast and he rarely hits the delete button or bothers to edit.  It likened his writing to the delivery of a grand lecture or speech.  This pisses me off.

A friend of mine watched me write a research paper for class once.  At first I had no idea why she wanted to watch me write a research paper for class, but fifteen minutes into the first paragraph I figured it out.  She saw me pace the room, talk to myself, swing a baseball bat, swear at my computer, talk to myself in a much harsher tone, and refresh the Drudge Report three times.

On to sentence number two.

Writing for me isn’t always that difficult.  The process is inconsistent.  Inspiration comes in unexpected bursts that bring unexpected results.  And even when the gods of writing whisper in my ear, the process can be painful.  Only once or twice in my life have my ideas flowed so freely as those of Chris Hitchens.  If he writes like he’s been holding it in for three hours, I have a kidney stone.

As for where I write, there are no secrets.  What works for me one day fails the next.  My general thesis is that location doesn’t matter all that much.  Sometimes the coffee shops are the best.  Sometimes my room.  Sometimes the bus.  Sometimes in class.  It probably has something to do with my subconscious or something.

Ernest Hemingway, one of my favorite writers, had some interesting tricks.  First, he wrote in the morning, and only in the morning.  Before actually writing anything each day, he would read or skim the whole piece up to that point, and edit as he went.  He said it prepared him mentally and allowed him to perfect the work.  And every day, when he finished writing, he would leave something in the tank.  He would stop at a point in the story where he already knew what was coming next.  The strategy forced him to always hit the ground writing.

Raymond Carver, who was “heavily influenced” by Hemingway, wrote only short stories, essays, and poems.  He didn’t have the patience for anything longer.  In fact, everything he wrote, he wrote in one sitting.  For him, it was the only way to go.  It was intuitive.

For me, nothing seems intuitive.  Maybe because I lack experience.  Or maybe because I have yet to “find my voice” (a much more pressing and nebulous task that I don’t understand well enough to write about or complete).  As of now, my “writing process” is inconsistent.  When, how, and where I write always seem to come as a surprise.  All I can trust is a sense of neurotic pleasure that builds with every pressed-in key, and upon completion of a piece, settles into my gut as uneasy satisfaction.

I was introduced to quotes in eighth grade. My history teacher at the time, Ms. Dubois insisted that we include them in our essays and reports, and suggested that we buy quote books. I did this. I bought a very big quote book and I loved it very dearly.

It was full of pithy comments by smart-sounding people with important-sounding names. Ralph Waldo Emerson. What a name. That guy had like a million quotes. In fact, I still think of him as the guy with the quotes. When I look back at the writing I did for Ms. Dubois, I see it was terrible. Not by eighth grade standards I guess, but by my own.

The quotes for example, are poorly integrated. There is no intertextual analysis. Just vaguely relevant inspiration. I introduced essays about the Industrial Revolution with Chinese proverbs. It was a mess. I did a report about the Thirteen Colonies. It was called “Seeds of a Nation.” Good title. But between the table of contents and introduction, there were two pages of scattered quotes. Nine quotes. Nine. Some bordering on irrelevant. Some climbing that chain linked fence, swimming across that river, and crossing that border with desperate conviction.

But I thank Ms. Dubois. Those quotes were a foundation. The seeds of a writer, if you will. When high school came around and I had to begin quoting properly, I had a leg up on the competition. I had experience. And a quote book. Soon I was integrating quotes in ways that people like Doris Kearns Goodwin could only dream about. All thanks to Claudette Dubois, who also taught me what a thesis statement was, and how to write a five-paragraph essay.

I say this, because if Ms. Dubois were dead today, she would be rolling in her grave. Thankfully she isn’t. Ms. Dubois is alive and well and still teaching Social Studies. She is not, however, on Facebook. It’s a good thing to. Facebook is destroying the quotation.

It started innocently enough. A section on Facebook profiles for favorite quotes. A place for kids to credit their friends, offer some(body else’s) wisdom, or an insight into their soul or sense of humor. The quotes a person chooses can say a lot about their personality, or they can say nothing at all.

Where is the harm in this? The harm is multi-faceted. The power of quotes is completely contextual. There’s a saying in the Middle East that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” And quotes are kind of like that. Interpretation is everything. “One man’s inspiration is another man’s last straw.” Or something along those lines. Quotes, like religious violence, are best understood as part of a bigger picture.

That big picture can be an academic paper, a speech, a greeting card, anything. It can be meaningful, or it can be completely inane. But a Facebook profile? I think not. It isn’t fair to the quote. Ralph Waldo Emerson deserves better than to reside below a list of favorite movies that includes The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and Garfield II. And in the context of a Facebook profile, do you think anybody is actually taking the time to consider what the quote means?

No. The whole point of these things is to make yourself attractive. On social networking sites, people cultivate the images they want for themselves. They are the person that they can’t be in real life. They have the charm that eludes them in person. In this context, the quote has no value. On Facebook, the quote is not a terrorist or a freedom fighter. It’s lipstick. It’s a piece of brand-name clothing. It’s that witty comeback you just wish you could have thought up 20 minutes faster.  It’s the intellect you fail to demonstrate in person.

And besides that, quotes are like anything else. They wear out. With every person that writes “Be the change you want to see in the world” on their Facebook page, Ghandi’s words become a little less inspiring. The magic fades. The fact that most people don’t actually follow the advice is completely irrelevant.

It’s the same concept of diminishing value that applies to quoting television shows or movies. Think about the rise and very hard fall of “I’m Rick James, bitch.” Stuff get’s played out. It happens quickly. Say a word enough times in a row and you lose its meaning. In the world of quotes, Facebook provides a forum for just that. Thanks to it, Gandhi is turning into Rick James, and I might have to find out what Ralph Waldo Emerson is actually famous for.

I saw a movie with a flying crab.

They launched it in a rocket,

Some kids and their grandpa.

It leisured down to earth,

Choking on the insides of clouds,

Pinching at the strings of its parachute,

And landing square on a bald man’s head.

He wore it like a dignified toupee.