Yes Virginia, There is an Atheist Christmas...

Item: Now, what is an Atheist supposed to do on Christmas? I would imagine that I would get some work done. So, here's a xmas-y update at the Red Light District. In related news, I promised not to link to this story featuring nude women photo shopped in superhero clothes. I must show some restraint despite my cultural proclivities. Must. Not. Link. Yes, it combines comics and soft core erotica...but...Ack! I am not strong...

Around the Internets: Reason Beats Flying Spaghetti Monster! And: a fifth column?

Reason beats Flying Spaghetti Monster. Hooray. More mainstream coverage here. More from the Evolution Blog, where they are absolutely giddy with joy. Cocky even. Remember: The judge is a Republican who was nominated by President Bush, which makes it even sweeter. I'm waiting for Chris Mooney to gloat but he's on his way to New Orleans to see the ruins of his mother's flood ravaged home. But Chris got some good news: Morgan Spurlock (of Supersize Me fame) wants to turn "The Republican War Against Science" into a documentary.

More Around the Nets:

Two Interesting Porn Blogs Softr and Sexoteric. And from Sexoteric: This is hilarious. It reads like a funny SNL Skit. For the record, I agree with the girl. They probably were just peaceful farmers.

More gals I agree with. Once people find out Casey Jr. is pro life his numbers go down. Are pro war Jewish Dems selling out the party for Israel? You would do that by either backing a loser against the Republican guy who will fight the proxy war for Israel or by making sure you nominate a Democrat who will fight the proxy war for Israel...Please tell me I'm wrong about this.
List of online graphic novels.

Canadian Patricia Barber, out lesbian Jazz torch singer who's probably more interesting than her compatriot Diana krall, has a new jazz video out which sounds very very cool.

And I wrote a column for The Front but its not online yet. Actually, its an older column but very few people saw it and its still a good idea

The Art of Brendan McCarthy

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More Minor News About Your Stolen Elections

First up, election round up:

The very minor story of how your election machines have been compromised has reached the corporate media. It’s mostly in Florida but it’s a start. Just to recap: if you’re a democrat or if you’re just interested in a functioning democracy this is the most important issue, ever. All policy debates about Iraq or the Patriot Act and or the latest criminal activity by our president and how to play these issues politically means nothing if the Republicans can add 100000 of their votes and take away 100000 of your votes at will. So, we have to fix the machines and to do that you have to start about talking about fixing the machines.

Nice Sum Up by Techdirt , which I think has the best analysis of tech issues that I’ve seen on the Internet. Here’s the money shot:

Of course, if you have even the slightest respect for the integrity of our voting system, the results of the test and Diebold's response should scare you silly. It raises serious questions about why we would ever trust any Diebold machine without also hand counting a paper trail. The fact that their touchscreen machines don't include a secondary paper trail means those machines should never be used at all.

Also, within the comments section there’s this comment by Ernest Partridge to Howard Dean which sums up things pretty well.

Every week I get dozens of solicitations from the Democratic National Committee, from the Democratic Senate and Congressional Campaign Committees, or from various Democratic candidates and office-holders, each of them asking for contributions. "You can help us achieve victory next November," I am told.

If by "victory" is meant a majority vote cast at the polls, then the Democrats achieved "victory" in 2000, 2002 and 2004. And yet, the Republicans remain in control of the Congress and the White House.

Small wonder! Republicans build the voting machines, Republicans write the secret software, Republicans count and compile the totals. The Republican machines allow no auditing of the vote totals they report. So Republicans have the ability to "win" elections, regardless of the will of the voters. There is compelling evidence that they have done just that.

And so, if nothing is done to end the privatization of our elections and to introduce reliable verification, the Republicans will "win" again in November 2006 and then in 2008. Today, eleven months before the mid-term election, the outcome is fore-ordained – as certain as Soviet elections under Stalin, and Iraqi elections under Saddam. For, as Stalin said, "Those who cast the votes decide nothing, those who count the votes decide everything."

In the United States today, the GOP counts most of the votes, and there are no means to verify up to 80% of those votes.

In view of this dreadful situation, when the Democrats ask me for a contribution I must reply: "What's the point? It's already been settled! What remains is an empty charade." Admittedly, with total GOP control of the executive and congressional branches in Washington, federal investigation and legislation are, for the moment, out of the question. But elections are administered on the state and municipal levels where, in many cases, the Democrats are in control. So I ask again:

Where are the criminal investigations?

Where are the civil lawsuits, e.g., by Max Cleland in Georgia, Walter Mondale in Minnesota, Al Gore in Florida, John Kerry in Ohio?

Why is appropriate state-level legislation not proposed and enacted by Democratic majorities?

Why is the national Democratic Party not publicizing the GAO report?

I am told that some Democratic politicians are concerned that if the Party raises a ruckus about voting fraud, the Democratic base will be discouraged and will stay at home on election day.

Well, so what? If the fix is in on election day, what does it matter if the voters go to the polls? Why try to close the gate if the horse has been stolen?


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Zero 7 Tune

There's a new site that allows you to post videos on your site. I'm trying to see if it works with Blogger. I picked a zero7 tune at random. Update: It doesn't seem to work. But the links are there and you're welcome to try it.

Music Video Codes by VideoCodeWeb.com

Big News: Diebold Machines are Hackable and Yes Virginia, There Are Stolen Elections

MORE INCONSEQUENTIAL NEWS ABOUT YOUR STOLEN ELECTION PROCESS
Okay, now this is what we Roswell-like stolen election conspiracy theorists have been looking for. This is the equal to filmed footage of an Alien Gray sitting down with the President and having a smoke. Did you know that there was a county in Florida that allowed Black Box Voting to test hack the Diebold machines? Did you know that Finnish Hacker Harri Hursti and BBV were able to change the results? Did you know that no current canvassing method would have detected these changes? Did you know that those machines were thrown out? Do you understand that Diebold is run by partisan Republicans and builds most of the machines that the nation uses? By the way, this doesn’t mean just shocking presidential or referendum results, this might mean the odd inability to gain house and senate seats when an opposing party holds the presidency, or, worse yet, making sure that the worst candidates get the nomination so that the Dems would be more likely to lose…We’re officially in an Oliver Stone film now. Donald Sutherland is asking you who had the most to gain from a stolen election? He’s rattling off a number of bullet points about how those Ohio referendums couldn’t have been reversed that dramatically, about how the exit polling in Ohio couldn’t have been that far off, about how clear it is that the executive branch and the oil lobby are one and the same…You ask yourself, as you run down winding infinite black and white Hitchcock era streets, would the most corrupt administration ever steal an American election—after clearly fixing the results in Iraq, Afghanistan and encouraging a coup in Venezuela—and you know the question answers itself.
Here’s a snippet of the Black Box story and here’s a quiz: isn’t it time for the DNC to make this a national issue?

FLORIDA TEST FINDS DIEBOLD VOTE MACHINE EASY TO HACK BLACK BOX VOTING - Due to contractual non-performance and security design issues, Leon County (Florida) supervisor of elections Ion Sancho told Black Box Voting that he will never again use Diebold in an election. He has requested funds to replace the Diebold system from the county. He will issue a formal announcement to this effect shortly. A test election was run in Leon County today with a total of eight ballots - six ballots voted "no" on a ballot question as to whether Diebold voting machines can be hacked or not.


Two ballots, cast by Dr. Herbert Thompson and by Harri Hursti voted "yes" indicating a belief that the Diebold machines could be hacked. At the beginning of the test election the memory card programmed by Harri Hursti was inserted into an Optical Scan Diebold voting machine. A "zero report" was run indicating zero votes on the memory card. In fact, however, Hursti had pre-loaded the memory card with plus and minus votes. The eight ballots were run through the optical scan machine. The standard Diebold-supplied "ender card" was run through as is normal procedure ending the election. A results tape was run from the voting machine. Correct results should have been: Yes:2 No:6


However, just as Hursti had planned, the results tape read:

Yes:7 No:1 The results were then uploaded from the optical scan voting machine into the GEMS central tabulator. The central tabulator is the "mother ship" that pulls in all votes from voting machines.

The results in the central tabulator read: Yes:7 No:1

This exploit, accomplished without being given any password and with the same level of access given thousands of poll workers across the USA, showed that the votes themselves were changed in a one-step process. This hack would not be detected in any normal canvassing procedure, and it required only a single a credit-card sized memory card.

One final note: it looks like California, and that state's GOP Sec. of State, is working to avoid this same test. Black Box Voting might be able to force this issue and I hope that they do.

More Pics of Nekkid Girls (And forbidden GIF animation)

Really. I'm not kidding.

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Praise For Showtime's Transparently Anti-Bush Homecoming

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How fitting that the most pungent artistic response to a regime famed for its crass fear-mongering would be a cheap horror movie. Jaw-dropping in its sheer directness, Homecoming is a righteous blast of liberal-left fury (it was greeted with a five-minute ovation in Turin, the most vocal appreciation seeming to come from the American filmmakers and writers in attendance).
--from Village Voice review

Showtime is apparently the new HBO. First, they blew me away with Weeds—which struck me as being much more interesting than Rome. And this Showtime episode of “Homecoming” is one of the most all encompassing attacks on the right that I’ve ever seen. I’m glad that Chuck Penn’s staff (Chuck’s doing great at fundraising by the way. Perhaps people have seen Bob Casey Jr. speak and it occurs to them that someone with the principles of Gray Davis yet none of the charisma wouldn’t pose the best challenge to lil Ricky but I digress…) agrees about the quality. The Ann Coulter clone sounded a lot like Ann Coulter. Those horrible things that Cleaver says are on a par with the horrible things Coulter says all of the time. I think Sam Hamm, interviewed here, compares it to “Atrios greatest hits”, but I would disagree with one thing. As far as I know, Atrios has never brought up the possible theft of the 2004 election or even more recently the incredible turnaround on the Ohio referendum issues. The last minutes where our hack right wing host notes the wonderful turnaround in Ohio and Florida despite exit polling and when our Karen Hughes clone notes that we “count the votes” is actually closer to the Brad Blog or Free Press…but it’s the thought that counts. Of course, the horrible thing is that this isn’t fiction. And there are no patriotic zombies coming to our aid. That's our real horror show.


MORE UNIMPORTANT NEWS ON THE YOUR STOLEN ELECTIONS IN PERPETUITY FRONT
Well, there were three things that have happened over the last week on the voting rights front. Two of them were quite disturbing and one of them offered just a tiny shard of hope and light—probably to be snuffed out by the appeals process. That’s because the Big Thinkers in the Democratic Party thought it was a good tactic not to fight over court appointments in the 90s. So, every time we want to fight without resorting to blood we’ll lose.
One, when it looked like we were winning in California, it looks like the Republican secretary of state (will the DNC ever detect a pattern?) has decided to put a Diebold purchase back into play. He’s proposing what looks like a mock approval process—which I suppose would be fitting for what looks like our increasing mockery of an election process.

Two, I thought we had definitely won in North Carolina, kind of a Republican state last time I looked. But the North Carolina folks simply ignored their own law—it’s a law that states that you have to open up your source code to make sure that its valid—and approved the Diebold machines anyway. Its being called the “immaculate certification”. Well, let’s see, there’s the 2000 election, the 2004 election, and now we have Republicans in a hurry to certify these machines—that always result in fantastic victories for Republicans and Republicans only I might add. Is there an American opposition party? I mean, really now. Of course, someone decent who understands the law should appeal the decision. And that will be decided by the Republican courts—remember the Clintons never thought that was worth fighting for—and we’ll lose yet again. Thanks DLC.

Three, it looks like we might have won one in Ohio. That’s where there are a number of groups suing the state over the 2004 election. The judge ruled that the suit can go on. However, that decision will probably be appealed and we’ll lose again because the DNC/DLC thought it was just a great idea to give up the courts. Thanks fellas, again. It’s a great feeling to know that I can’t do anything within the law to change the United States.

Notable Quotes From Around the Internets

NOTABLE QUOTES FROM AROUND THE INTERNETS
First Up: Patricia Goldsmith from Dissident Voice:
When it comes to e-voting, the corporate media have put out a couple of narrative frames that have been successful in throwing even voting reform advocates off the track. The most obvious is the conspiracy frame. Stephen Pizzo, who ultimately advocates the abolition of e-voting in order to restore voter confidence, nevertheless believes “[t]he party caught fixing a major race would be out of power for a generation. Also, if I learned anything from a quarter century of unraveling real and alleged conspiracies it’s that getting caught is always in the cards.” In this, he finds himself in substantial agreement with conservative columnist and former Reagan administration official James Pinkerton. It seems to me their argument would be a lot stronger if the GOP hadn’t already been “caught” attempting to fix every single election since 2000. Hell, they do it out in the open, proudly. People like Katherine Harris, Glenda Hood, and Ken Blackwell have made whole careers out of purge lists, voter intimidation, and aggressive partisanship in the administration of elections.

That’s because what we are seeing in operation is not a conspiracy, but unchecked monopolies and corporate combinations, and there is nothing fanciful or farfetched about it. The concentration of wealth and power is the ultimate point toward which all capitalist systems tend. The last 70 years of (relatively) regulated corporations are the exception, not the rule. Privatized voting is a perfect example of how the undermining of government regulatory mechanisms leads to one-party rule and further deregulation, in a self-perpetuating cycle. We see the same thing with the highly-consolidated corporate media. Neither is a “conspiracy” required in order for the various corporate entities to act in concert. Combination is in their best interests, and successful corporations are all about finding and pursuing their own best interests, as single-mindedly as sharks. Which explains why the corporate media have virtually ignored a recent GAO report detailing serious e-voting failures in 2004.

Read the whole thing here.

Second up, my cousin Leonce (who now has permalinks for some of his links):

Open Letter to Colin Powell 01/11/05 13:14

Like you, my father was a career Army officer. Like you, he felt honored to serve in the US military. Like you, he entered the military when racism was overt. Like you, he rose to officer status (he retired a Colonel) despite the obstacles placed in his path. You receive the benefit of the doubt, General Powell. You receive it because black people admire the heights you attained in your career, and because you have never become a sock puppet for the right. You never acquiesced to the Faustian bargain that men like Clarence Thomas or Armstrong Williams seem to accept. You never agreed to forget you were black--in exchange for white handlers rewarding you as if you were white. You never felt you had to do as Thomas Sowell does and deny the existence of racism today or yesterday. You aligned yourself with causes you felt right, despite their lack of popularity in the Republican party to which you belonged. You have deserved the benefit of the doubt. However, to date, over 2000 Americans are dead, over ten thousand wounded; hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis are dead. The US standing in the world continues to plummet. Terrorist activity is on the rise. The Iraq war has caused these things, and you presented the evidence to the world that made that war happen. We now know that the evidence you presented was based on lies. You insist that you did not know that, and I, and most others, believe you. However, apologies are no longer enough. As this administration continues to damage US security, attempts to strip citizens of hard-won rights through packing the Supreme Court with extremists--as this occurs, you no longer have the luxury of remaining silent. Loyalty is valuable, but "just following orders" is a coward's excuse. When, General Powell, does the former morph into the latter? I think that time is now. It's when the blood runs so thick, that only the blind or the morally corrupt cannot see it, and only the ideologically crippled refuse to acknowledge it. That time is now.
(Scroll down and read the rest...)

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5 PM Pgh Press Conference Against PA Voter ID Proposal

Wednesday 12/7/05 at 5pm in front of the Pittsburgh State Office Building, 300 Liberty Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh!

The State Senate of Pennsylvania is preparing to vote on House Bill 1318 next week!

HOUSE BILL 1318 THREATENS TO DISENFRANCHISE THOUSANDS OF PENNSYLVANIA VOTERS WHO CURRENTLY HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE BY DENYING THOSE ON PAROLE AND PROBATION THE RIGHT TO VOTE!

It will also force Pennsylvanian's to bring a photo ID to the polls!

This bill will disproportionately hurt:

Senior voters

Young Voters

College Voters

Low-Income Voters

There will be a press conference in front of the Pittsburgh State Office Building Wednesday 12/7/05 at 5pm in front of the Pittsburgh State Office Building, 300 Liberty Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh!

Scheduled Speakers:

Laura Staniland: Freshman Student, Duquesne University

Taili Thompson: Community Coordinator, One Vision One Life

George Moses: Sothwestern PA Alliance of HUD Tenants/Housing Alliance of PA

Khari Mosley: Pittsburgh League of Young Voters

Tim Stevens: President, Black Political Empowerment Project

For more information contact the Pittsburgh League of Young Voters at pittsburgh@indyvoter.org

www.pittsburgh.indyvoter.org

Debate Between Mystery Pollster and Brad blog Plus Pandora

Nov. 24

Happy Holidays or Bah Humbug. I’m a latter kinda guy these days.

Coupla items:

The cavalier way in which Blumenthal seems to marginalize those of us "obsessing over the Dispatch poll," as he describes it, would seem to indicate that Blumenthal simply doesn't understand the problem here to even the smallest extent. Either that, or he just doesn't give much of a damn about the validity -- and/or the importance of confidence by the electorate -- in the most basic element of our American democracy: The right to vote and to have that voted counted accurately.

--from Brad Blog

Item: There’s an interesting debate between the Mystery Pollster (Champion finger wagger against us or “your elections are continuously stolen crowd”) and the Brad Blog. Read the whole thing and especially the long post by Brad. Short version: It’s not that we’re not capable of losing elections, it’s that we can’t check the results in time in order to make changes in the results. And, quite frankly, the word of the Republicans—especially at Corruption Central at either Ohio or Washington DC headquarters—telling me that everything is legit and there are wmds doesn’t carry a lot of water with me. Actually, the scary thing is that the Republicans really aren’t making that claim. They don’t give a fuck about Democracy, at least in this country.

Item: I just discovered a really interesting music site called Pandora, where you type in a particular artist and you get back similar results. Overall, it’s pretty decent. I typed in some real ringers of course. I got a pretty good response with Alan Holdsworth. I was introduced to a bass playing Hendrix called Brian Bromberg (he uses a piccolo bass to sound like an electric guitarist…oddly enough I was watching BET On Jazz’s Studio Jams today and Living Colour’s Doug Wimbush can do the same thing…it’s all in the pedals man, all in the pedals…)and this guy called Nels Cline. Both very interesting. I soon will try Kaki King. I’ll probably get a lot of Mike Hedges or Stanley Jordan back...However, my Portishead search got me back Bette Midler.Go figure.

Item: There is also a new and beautiful video featuring Cat Power and its crazy yet attractive lead singer Chan Marshall.) There is also a second Broadcast video, even though there are many songs that are better on the album—almost all of them in fact, such as America’s Boy, Corporeal and Black Cat.

Nov. 14th: Still More News About the Stolen Election

Nov. 14th

STILL MORE NEWS ABOUT THE MINOR THEFT OF US ELECTIONs

There were several big stories that "broke" over the last several days on the very minor story about how your vote is being stolen.

One, the folks at the Free Press are claiming that the initiatives to reform ohio now (whose website has seemingly gone into a catatonic shock and not commented on the bad results) were shot down because of manipulation. By the way, these arguments have left the realm of science fiction because of the recent GAO report which pointed out that these new electronic machines were and are easily compromised. Or as Bob phrases it:

But none of the on-the-ground glitches can begin to explain the impossible numbers surrounding the alleged defeat of Issues Two through Five. The Dispatch polling has long been a source of public pride for the powerful, conservative newspaper, which endorsed Bush in 2004.

The Dispatch was somehow dead accurate on Issue One, and then staggeringly wrong on Issues Two through Five. Sadly, this impossible inconsistency between Ohio's most prestigious polling operation and these final official referendum vote counts have drawn virtually no public scrutiny.

Though there were glitches, this year's voting lacked the massive irregularities and open manipulations that poisoned Ohio 2004. The only major difference would appear to be the new installation of touchscreen machines in those additional 41 counties.

And thus the possible explanations for the staggering defeats of Issues Two through Five boil down to two: either the Dispatch polling---dead accurate for Issue One---was wildly wrong beyond all possible statistical margin of error for Issues 2-5, or the electronic machines on which Ohio and much of the nation conduct their elections were hacked by someone wanting to change the vote count.

If the latter is true, it can and will be done again, and we can forget forever about the state that has been essential to the election of every Republican presidential candidate since Lincoln.

And we can also, for all intents and purposes, forget about the future of American democracy.

Now, there is a chance that the initiatives were badly written and that the Reform Now organizers blew it by flying toxic Arnold in to endorse the measure days before the vote, but, I mean, if you could hack the machines, these are the measures you would kill.

By the way, in case you're wondering what this all means, it means the Democrats will lose all the really important elections until these machines are fixed. Don't be too hopeful that you can win either the senate or the house back until we get the machines fixed. You'll lose by improbably large margins or frustratingly small ones but you'll still lose. Or until our side gets better hackers--I thought our side (libertarian/anarchist) had the best hackers in the world. I'm very disappointed by you 2600 people...

The second big story had to do with one of the lawsuits making its way through the courts. There's one in Ohio and there's another one in New Mexico. Now, if you were a real opposition party, what would you do if you had heard this:

Yesterday, VoterAction.org sent out an email about some roadblocks that the plaintiffs are suddenly facing in the discovery phase of the trial. They were supposed to have been allowed to have experts inspect -- for the first time -- the Electronic Voting Machines that were used in the '04 Election, along with the actual results that they gave.

All of a sudden, Voter Action says, the county clerks have flat-out refused to permit the inspections by the plaintiffs' experts. That, after some interesting evidence has already been found by the experts during discovery, like tests where they were able to see votes for one candidate being registered for their opponent (as has been so widely reported as happening in so many elections of late!) and ballots being confirmed with NO choice for President at all, which wasn't supposed to have been possible on at least one of the machine types being looked at.

Well, if this happened to the Republicans they would force the Democrats to defend themselves and would probably take a decidedly correct obstructionist stance until (no judges for example. They wouldn't let judges be affirmed for life by a fraudulent government...) We can't even get the Democrats to admit that there's a problem.

Story three, by the way, is Democrat John Kerry, refusing to admit there was a problem. Even though he had the money to investigate and solve this problem. Incredible. He's like the guy who probably beat Hitler but he doesn't want to raise a "ruckus". Un fuckin' believable.

Weekend Edition of Around the Internets

10-30

Down and Out in Wilkinsburg

I finally completed my move and once I unpack things and get my bookcases in order I should be back to a normal postings schedule. Meanwhile, I've found these points to be of interest or:

Weekend Edition of Around the Internets

Item: Nice update about the Reform Ohio movement. Please donate money if you can. Good ad here. Of course, I'm still holding out hope that Democrats use the V for Vendetta trailer as a campaign commercial.

(By the way, for those of you keeping score at home on the voting fraud issue, keep in mind that the Ohio reforms are fairly innocuous. It allows voting by mail, cuts down on big money giving, creates a bi partisan commission on redistricting and robs Ken Blackwell of his power to influence an election. Note that the Republicans, with the help of their Christian fundie lackeys (proud and shameless promoters of backwardness and ignorance...of course, it takes a kind of conscious stupidity for the deliberate bliss station fulfillment of religion to actually work (Santa will love me in Heaven...Bah.)...not to mention that they're itching for direct government funding. Corporate theocracy. Has a nice ring to it.) oppose these measures vigorously. You know what makes me know the fix is in? Its the Republican response to these issues. If someone says "Phil stole the election and furthermore he weighs less than 150 pounds and is less than four feet tall..." I would respond, if I was in the right, by saying "Bring on the verified voter audits, the mail ballots, the satellite GPS measuring data, the certified scales and whatnot...And then when you lose again this will show the American people that we do have a real mandate." That hasn't been the Republican response. In fact, the Republicans are acting like thieves caught in the night and seem intent on declaring that exits polls and tools of measurement be declared unconstitutional. And, of course, why can't the Democrats figures this out? They're either inept interpreters of human nature or they're on the take. Paid well to remain in minority status and they're good at it...Thus endeth the rant.)

Item: Video game that stresses nonviolent solutions to problems that I'm guessing kids will hate. Actually, if you've ever done any kind of organizing these questions sound familiar:

"You have to worry about your organization," he continued. "Do you set up a hierarchal organization, or a cell-based one? Who is the best figurehead for the media? What kind of training do people need? And if you march on the capital without proper controls, things may turn violent, which will harm your cause. These are the things people can learn."

Item: A fund that donates money to progressive causes. I just wish they would bring back ACT.

Item: Science Fiction Podcasts.

Item: Older Salon story on why US Broadband sucks. Older Free Press (the "other" Free Press run by noted press critic Robert McChesney.) backgrounder on broadband. It's actually the same old story. We don't get decent healthcare because insurance lobbyists have bought off congress. We don't get decent environmental protections because polluters have bought off congress. We don't get decent jobs because outsourcers like Walmart have bought off congress. And we don't get decent broadband because telcos have bought off congress. And so it goes. Other countries can provide their citizens with protections and benefits because they don't allow multinationals to game the system. Here, we have a system of congress that allows predatory capitalists to periodically rape us. It's not a good system.

Item: Three full length tunes from rediscovered Monk/Coltrane collaboration of the late 50s. Thelonious, my old friend, is such a distinctive composer....

Leonce Gaiter/King Was Wrong: The Jewish Model

King was Wrong: The Jewish Model

21/09/05 07:53

THE RANTING DIES DOWN. The mists fade. Storm one is dead and gone. We all had our chance post-Katrina to hope for or hail the "new conversation on race," or the revived interest in the subject. And like all else in this America, it had its 15 minutes, and now its "Exit stage left."

For whites, this doesn't matter in the least. They held bake sales, shucksed and awwwed to the images of desperate black faces on their TV screens. But their bake sales and their car washes and their donations means that they are good people, and good people are free from prejudice. It means they are fair people; Americans look after each other; Americans come together in times of crisis; United We Stand.

Tomorrow, they will look at our black skin with the same eyes with which they've looked at it for generations--tinged with an undercurrent of suspicion, with a faint whisper of shame for the hateful, bloody history about which our very skin screams.

America has had a tenuous relationship with its black citizens since its inception. We were slaves, not citizens, and then sub-citizens, and then second-class citizens. Now we hold a nebulous status. Our rights are guaranteed like those of any American, but our access to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is still often subtly denied. The landlord who won't rent to a "black accented" voice. The employer who trashes resumes with black-sounding names. The lenders who charge more for mortgages in black neighborhoods, etc., etc., etc. The doctors who ignore pain and symptoms in black patients that they actively treat in white ones.

Yet, despite this ambivalence on the part of America toward us, we have steadfastly remained believers in the American Dream--what I've referred to as "the perfectibility of whites." We have assumed that someday, they will begin to truly adhere to their high-minded words with equally high-minded actions.

We are still waiting.

Black Americans are an historically despised minority with no homeland, severed completely from indigenous cultures, and trained and educated by the majority that has heaped contempt on them for most of their history. This is unique. What has the majority taught us? That they are... well, "perfectible." That "and justice for all" is a fundamental truth, not a distant dream; that any diversion from that truth is aberration, not norm. That the Jesus handed to us to make our enslavement less troublesome for our former slave masters--that the blonde god Jesus demands that we forgive, and by inference, forget. They have told us that we are less than they--less intelligent, less worthy, less pretty.

And with no countervailing voice of our own, we have believed them.

Other groups come here with cultures intact, self-images nurtured in non-toxic atmospheres. Afro-Americans have 400 years of breathing toxic air to contend with. The cultural lung tissue that feeds our self-image has been scarred. The question for us in the coming century is: "How do we heal it?"

THE ANSWER

America has had a tenuous relationship with us since its inception. I believe it's necessary for us to return the favor. It is necessary to free ourselves from the training that tells us that justice for us is a norm to which America will undoubtedly return. In fact, full and equal justice for us is a vision that has never been realized. We must acknowledge that.

We must free ourselves from the civil rights movement idea that the majority can effortlessly, or organically achieve "colorblindness." This suggests that being an Afro-American means nothing more than skin color. This is what has allowed conservatives to use the civil rights movement rhetoric AGAINST civil rights for us. The civil rights movement insisted that we were "just like" white Americans, except black. Subtly embedded in this is the idea that there's something wrong with being "unlike."

However, we are "unlike." During the civil rights era we did not insist that to be Afro-American was to belong to a rich, distinct, glorious, tragic subculture. We had breathed toxic air too long to see and insist upon the acknowledgment of that distinction. We only acknowledged the tragedy. By the time we began to acknowledge our distinction, we were so poisoned by our American experience that we didn't look in the mirror to find our true Afro-American cultural selves, we looked back to a fantasy of African cultures from which we'd been severed for hundreds of years.

To insist on the perfectibility of Americans is to accept America's historical judgment of us. It is to deny the majority's humanity, and our own. Only it places them on the level of demigods, and us on the level of slaves.

We must free ourselves from their judgment, and stop waiting for them to achieve the perfection that they see in themselves and have taught us to see in them. We must take control of our own culture: fully identify it, codify it, and immerse ourselves in it as an antidote to the toxins to which we will undoubtedly be exposed for a long, long time.

And there is a constructive model that we can follow in doing so: the Jewish Model.

Growing up, I had a lot of Jewish friends, and "Hebrew school" was a norm for many. Once a week or so, they went to be taught the Hebrew language, and Jewish history and culture. It helped assure that young Jewish kids never forgot what had happened in the past--that they were armed with tools to see themselves clearly--and not others' distorted visions of them--to see their history through their own eyes. It gave them a sense of their great worth as Jews and the value of Jewishness.

Afro-Americans have created forms of music, dance, speech, art and worship which are ours. They are renown throughout the world. There is a reason Sunday mornings are the most segregated hours in America. It is because our view of God is distinct. Ours is decidedly fallible. You rarely hear black Christians screaming for a Creationist curriculum. We are not ones to suggest that societal norms and prejudices should be set in scriptural stone. There is a reason Afro-American music sounds like no other, and why some of this country's greatest orators have come from the Afro-American tradition. Black folk tales tell us how our own visions of magic and death evolved. Think Toni Morrison's "Beloved."

Once a week, black children should take a seat in a back room (of the local church for instance), where they would study a standardized curriculum geared toward their age group. They would hear about Frederick Douglass from black lips, read black and white narratives from this country’s slave past, hear Mahalia Jackson sing, read Gates’ “Colored People,” and learn what a saxophone means, and how jazz can stand as a central metaphor for our way of being in the world. They should read Zora Neale Hurston’s folk tales. They should learn Plessy v. Ferguson, not as dry history, but such that they feel where we come from in America, so they can openly express the rage it engenders and then channel that rage into building from the cultural wealth their forebears bequeathed.

MARTIN LUTHER KING WAS WRONG

Face it, Afro-America, the Great Man was Great, but wrong. He preached a dream. And his dream touched the hearts of white America because it flattered the American Christian notion of white American moral divinity. Americans could be made pure; America’s sins could be washed away. And we, black Americans, could do it. To many, though, it was just an offer to clean their moral toilets—much as we had cleaned their porcelain ones. King's genius and his tragedy, is that he made the civil rights movement about THEM.

30 yeas hence, are we willing to admit that "they" are just as human and prone to prejudice as any other human? Are we ready to admit, that they, being just human, will have to acknowledge that tendency toward prejudice and actively work to wean themselves from it? Can we admit that there is minimal interest among the majority of making that acknowledgment, and doing that work? As evidence of the latter, I point to books like "The Bell Curve," and the work of Stephen and Abigail Thernstrom, which denies the existence of prejudice among whites. I point to the controversy that arose over the display of photographs of lynchings that toured various museums. I point to the fact that we're accused of "living in the past" when we acknowledge America's racist legacy, when contiguous or much older historical truths (WWII, the Civil War) are treated as living history.

If we're ready to admit this, we are ready to move forward, sans illusions that the majority will "come around" any time soon. We are ready to take command of our own self-image, acknowledge ourselves as cultural beings, teach ourselves that culture, and make it the foundation on which we stand as we master the mainstream culture such that we are competitive with any Americans of any color. Only we will have that much more to hold onto--a self-defined culture of our own.

I'M BETTER; YOU'RE EQUAL

No self-respecting culture on earth seeks "equality." They all insist on their superiority. Through Afro-American cultural self-education, black children would learn that their race not as a burden to be "owed" something, nor that automatically condemns them to intellectual and cultural deprivation. Armed with a sound foundation in the riches of Afro-American history, speech, letters, glory, worship, music, hurt and triumph, they will be able to compete in any circles they choose. They can then surmount remaining obstacles with the fiercely unapologetic arrogance and self-assurance of a people who made nothing less than a world from the seconds and scraps of a majority who never dreamt so much brutal beauty could be wrung from so little.

When this happens, we will finally no longer be the last to leave, and the first to suffer.

Leonce Gaiter: Black Snakes, White Spiders

Leonce Gaiter's Blog

Black snakes, white spiders

Denying the racial aspect of the disaster is denying our history and our humanity. Acknowledging it can lead to action

By Leonce Gaiter, Leonce Gaiter is the author of "Bourbon Street," a novel about race and class in New Orleans.

KATRINA"We exhibit a similar fear response to a spider, a snake, and a person of another race."

— Arne Öhman, Science Magazine


I WAS FASCINATED to watch white reporters and commentators tip-toeing around the taboo word "black" in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath. Class, not race, they said, was the reason black people were wading in neck-high water with their belongings on their heads. Class, not race, they insisted, was why these black people had to live for days in their own feces and urine in a dank hotbox of a stadium — which is akin to insisting that your right leg carried you from point A to point B and ignoring the contribution of your left.

The reaction of whites toward blacks has been a lifelong study for me. Though black, I have spent 95% of my life around whites. White schools, white neighborhoods, white workplaces, white friends. I was raised during the '60s, and my New Orleans-bred parents insisted on living in the best neighborhoods with the best schools. They got out of the South to make that possible, and if a white Northern school or neighborhood was hostile, so be it. It was the price they, and I, would have to pay.

Some of you are ready to wag your finger in black America's face and say, "See! His family could do it. What's your excuse?"

But my mother was a brilliant woman, and my father possessed a Herculean will that allowed him to escape a poor, fatherless family of 15 children in a racist dung-hole of a Louisiana town and make a comfortable, decidedly middle-class life for himself and his family in an aggressively hostile military. And he did it without currying white favor by betraying or abandoning the black men and women with whom he served.

Do you possess the brains and will to overcome so much and go so far? If not, put that finger away.

Being raised in a sometimes hostile white world has taught me that we are all racists. Our little post-monkey brains (evolutionarily speaking) are suspicious of that which is unlike us, and to such we are more likely to assign nefarious motives and intentions.

A recent Science magazine article describes research suggesting that fear informs the attitudes between ethnic groups in part because negative associations stick more easily and relentlessly to faces that don't look like ours. When researchers paired faces with frightening images, white participants acquired more persistent conditioned fears in response to pictures of black faces than to pictures of white faces, and blacks did the same thing with white faces. This fear response leads to avoidance, which prevents us from knowing people who aren't like us and makes them a blank slate for projections that justify our fears.

To me, this seems a simple recitation of the obvious. However, many Americans have a deep national investment in our myth of unassailable moral rectitude. Our history and founding myths insist on a superior sense of justice as our birthright, our national raison d'etre.

Black Americans have more license to admit our wariness and mistrust of whites. Whites cannot admit their mistrust without summoning their forebears brutal enslavement of Africans. You can't feign moral rectitude as you simultaneously acknowledge the bestial inhumanity that lurks in our American history. Many Americans look at black men and women and see an unwelcome reminder. TVs filled with scenes of black despair call forth the holds of slave ships, and so we spend days pretending that we don't notice the race of those hungry, grieving, angry, exhausted people.

A conservative tide has worked hard to strengthen the denial of our American crime — to convince Americans that our record of race hatred is either black Americans' fault or our hysterical imaginings. Some conservatives promote the idea of colorblindness, which is akin to eyelessness as a cure for urban blight. Suggesting that you can deny what is before your eyes — insisting that you have the will and power to ignore both it and its vast historical implications — is breathtaking hubris.

To many, blacks aren't so much citizens as threats to the majority's sense of self. In the wake of Katrina, a headline in the Economist blared "America's Shame," rubbing salt in our punctured sense of righteousness. Pundits insisted that race, not class, was the source of that shame. But history is a living thing. It didn't disappear in 1964. In New Orleans, in particular, race and class have been conjoined twins for centuries. The 9th Ward is flood- and poverty-prone — low-lying and low in the city's class structure. It's no coincidence that its people are among the city's blackest. This is where they were forced to live, and this is the only place many feel they have the right to live, anchored there by a "can't-have" hopelessness implanted in generations born to shackles.

White people see these people standing on rooftops, pleading for help, and attach all sorts of ugly associations. That's natural — but acceptable only if they recognize it as an expression of our inescapably flawed history and humanity. Own the shame, America. It is as much a part of you as your triumphs and glories. Own it, and you might take action.

Leonce Gaiter: Fags and Witches

Fags and Witches

15/09/05 17:12

Vox populi vox Dei—“The voice of the people is the voice of God.” An extremely effective means of inculcating absolute loyalty to a government “of the people,” this principle also proved fatal to persons—like Jews, gay people and “witches”—whose life-styles differed from those of the majority: a voice not in harmony with that of “the people” was ipso facto out of harmony with God and hence punishable.

- “Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality”, John Boswell



In its most desperate lurch back to the 15th century, the Catholic Church is engaging in an Inquisition against gays in US seminaries, according to an article in the New York Times. This has put the lie to the fine distinction on which Christian rightists have relied to shield themselves from accusations of rabid hate. This has nothing to do with hating the “sin” of homosexuality, but loving the “sinner.” The Church will be purging those “with strong homosexual tendencies.” (One assumes these will be identified by record collections, underwear styles, and the décor of rooms.) No. This is not hating the sin and loving the sinner. This is burning the sinner because he IS the sin.

This news sent me back to an extraordinary 1980 text by the late John Boswell, a professor of history at Yale. In his book “Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality,” he examines gay people in Western Europe from the beginning of the Christian era to the 14th century. He makes clear that religious belief and piety have little to do with hatred. He writes:

If… prohibitions which restrain a disliked minority are upheld in their most literal sense as absolutely inviolable while comparable precepts affecting the majority are relaxed or reinterpreted, one must suspect something other than religious belief as the motivating cause of the oppression.

You don’t see the Church purging straight men who may lust after women, though the Church prohibits heterosexual sex among its priests. The Church is only hunting gays. This, they will insist, is due to the biblical prohibitions and condemnations of homosexuality. However, Boswell’s exhaustive research—both textual and historical—thoroughly debunks any idea of biblical imprecations against gays. He exposes those in current Biblical texts as purposeful mistranslations of the originals, or metaphorical asides only tangentially associated with homosexuality.

It is, moreover, quite clear that nothing in the Bible would have categorically precluded homosexual relations among early Christians. In spite of misleading English translations which may imply the contrary, the word “ homosexual” does not occur in the Bible: no extant text or manuscript, Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, or Aramaic, contains such a word. In fact none of these languages ever contained a word corresponding to the English “homosexual,” nor did any languages have such a term before the late nineteenth century.

For instance, discussing the famous quote from Leviticus, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. [18:22], Boswell explains that the word “toevah,” which is translated as “abomination” actually means that which is ritually unclean for Jews, like the shaving of one’s beard or having sex with a woman during menstruation. It is suggestive of a ritualistic differentiator between Jews and gentiles. No more a condemnation of homosexuality than of shaving.

He points out that the sins of Sodom were sins of “inhospitality,” not “homosexuality,” and that none of the Old Testament passages that refer to the wickedness of Sodom make any suggestion of homosexuality. Such associations were tacked on centuries later.

As for Paul’s writings that supposedly condemn gays, two refer not to gay sex, but “wonton” or “unrestrained” individuals. These, Paul says, will be denied entrance into the kingdom of heaven. As Boswell notes, “…to assume that either of these concepts necessarily applies to gay people is wholly gratuitous.”

Paul’s passage from Romans I:26-27 states “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise, also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.”

Here, Paul’s argument is about lack of fidelity, not sexuality. He is condemning those who turn their backs on their old ways. He is not condemning gays. In fact those he condemns are NOT gay. They have rejected their calling and abandoned their wives. He is not condemning their sexual acts, he is condemning their abandonment of their usual, natural order (being straight men) for one Paul finds less appealing. It is a metaphor for the Romans, who turned their backs on monotheism.

Boswell’s book will quickly convince the literate that there is no religious reasoning behind prejudice against gays. It comes back to the opening quote: “The voice of the people is the voice of God.” For a city-state determined to subordinate private rights for the public good (like the Church, or the America of right wing Christians), any voice not in concert with that of the majority is ungodly and inherently evil. Gays, Jews, Blacks, and women (as witches) have all taken our turns over the centuries.

The Church’s hatred toward gays has nothing to do with religion. The Church is seeking to squash that which it hates. The Church and those like it consider gay men, and gay sex, the ultimate expression of “untamedness.” Thus, they cannot believe that we live in stable relationships and make good parents. To them, freedom from the strictures of heterosexual marriage means chaos and licentiousness. If you’re straight, those bonds can be replaced by the bonds of the priesthood. If you’re gay, however, no bonds are strong enough. For no voice so different from theirs can be allowed to flourish.

American blacks have suffered similarly. Freedom from whiteness implied chaos and licentiousness. Black men were ravenous wolves out to devour white women—utterly lacking in self-control, and therefore evil. Black music corrupted good white teenagers; a voice so different from theirs… Black women “wanted it” from white men. As Boswell said, “a voice not in harmony with that of ‘the people’ was ipso facto out of harmony with God and hence punishable.”

Vox populi vox Dei—“The voice of the people is the voice of God.”

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the “people” have spoken.

Leonce Gaiter: Katrina's Deck Full of Race Cards

Katrina's Deck Full of Race Cards

07/09/05 07:55

The first days were the most telling. Nobody mentioned it. Tens of thousands of people trapped in increasingly filthy conditions—free-flowing feces, dead bodies lying about, grounds soaked in urine—yet nobody mentioned that they were all black. It was obvious to anyone with eyes. The images made you squirm and cringe—hordes of black faces pleading for help—life, food, water—in a major American city. Yet nobody mentioned it. What were they afraid of? Were they scared that the right-wingers would accuse them of playing the race card? Accuse them of suggesting that America had not achieved the colorblind state of utopian bliss that they insist it has; that white people and the American society over which they hold sway are not as perfectly just as they claim?

Even members of the congressional black caucus refused to “play the race card.” They focused on “class.” The fact that all the people of this particular class trapped in squalid hellholes filled with human waste happened to be black was oh, just… I don’t know… coinkydinky?

Like it or not America, hurricane Katrina blew a deck full of race cards in our faces. Let’s pick just a few of them up.

Ace of spades: Speaking on CNN, Wolf Blitzer clumsily, but correctly stated: so many of these people, almost all of them that we see, are so poor and they are so black.” So black. These are not the gichy blacks—lighter skinned, with silkier hair—that long comprised New Orleans black middle and upper classes. These were the dark-skinned folk with nappy hair. Undeniably, thoroughly, discomfitingly black. New Orleans was a slave port. This quaint city, so charming, so southern, was the scene of crimes so base, viciousness so unadorned, it takes the breath away. Human chattel came through here. Women were taken, often raped by their white masters, and their lighter skinned children were accorded privileges above the common negroes. History lives. Racial history lives longer.

Queen of hearts: It just looked different when the cameras focus on white victims in Mississippi and when they focus on black ones in New Orleans. That will tell you how vibrantly, sensuously alive the subject of race remains in America. The white ones were picking up the pieces. The black ones carried the pieces in garbage bags slung over their shoulders. The white ones thought about rebuilding. The black ones had nothing on which to build. The coverage smacked of the local investigative report that uncovers a cruel puppy mill full of starved and diseased dogs. “Oh those poor black people.” Condescension threatened at every turn. It’s the same condescension with which we “open our hearts” to the victims of third world earthquakes, tsunamis and genocides. Condescension because we know that this could never happen to lighter-skinned, well-heeled folk. Such hell is reserved for “them”—the other—whomever they may be.

King of spades: My parents got out of New Orleans decades before Katrina, but for the same reasons that begat the tragedy. I lived there only briefly, but even as a child I knew that the attitude among the city’s poor, black population was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. My parents were 60s bourgeois strivers, and they insisted on three things: excellence to thwart the race hatred that threatened them, controlled rage to keep its memories fresh because more often than not, cultures die before they change, and finally arrogance in the knowledge that while the majority with all its power did its best to belittle us—they had failed.

Instead of this sustaining triumvirate, in New Orleans I saw hopelessness and resignation. There was about the people a sense that they would never get but crumbs from someone else’s plate. And to make this bitter pill palatable, they had only the Jesus that white people had thrust upon them hundreds of years ago with the express goal of making their ancestor’s enslavement less troublesome to maintain. Enslavement, Jim Crow, reeking prejudice, and then malignant neglect. Yes, history lives; and racial history lives longer.

Ace of Diamonds: Even conservatives are bashing Bush and his government’s and his personal response to this tragedy. Andrew Sullivan wrote:

Real conservatives believe that the state should do a few things that no one else can do – defense, decent public education, police, law and order among the most obvious – and leave the rest to individuals. Funding FEMA and having a superb civil defense are very much part of conservatism’s real core. It’s when government decides to reshape society, redistribute wealth, socially engineer, and take over functions that the private sector can do just as well that conservatives draw the line. The reason I’m mad as hell over Katrina is precisely because I’m a conservative and this kind of thing is exactly what government is for.


History lives. Modern conservatism was midwifed by resistance to the civil rights movement. Conservatives believed, as Sullivan states, that the government should not “socially engineer.” To many, that meant that if Mississippi wanted “whites only” bathrooms, it should have “whites only bathrooms.” For the government to interfere was “social engineering,”—not among its duties. However, if you’re willing to let someone rot and die quietly in poverty because of your ideological creed—die early from poor nutrition, poor and non-existent health care, then you’re willing to let them die in a flood. If poor people are dispensable under sunny skies, they’re dispensable in a storm. The right’s sudden concern over these peoples’ plight has nothing to do with their current living conditions. It has everything to do with conservative image management. A government controlled by white southerners oversaw a television spectacle that looked like an update from a slave ship. Their lies were exposed. Their attempt to quietly kill all mention of their society’s history of viciousness and race hatred and their part in it has failed. Overt paeans to segregation are no longer in vogue (except at select awards dinners for die-hards like Strom Thurman and Jesse Helms) but in promoting their creed of “hands off” government, conservatives deny history. They deny their willingness see the poor suffer and die under clear skies or cloudy. They deny racial history—their own racist history. And they do this because history smears dung on their vision of themselves, and America. But they’re learning the hard way that if we refuse to acknowledge the poisons in ourselves, in the culture, and address or “engineer” them, they fester. Soon there’s a riot, or a Superdome full of black people living amongst their own excrement with the whole world watching. And that’s what gets them now. It’s not the fact of the people suffering. They were perfectly happy to let poor black New Orleanians suffer in their ghettoed silence. It’s the fact of the world watching them suffer and tarnishing the image of the Last Empire.

The Joker: There he is, ladies and gentlemen. Grinning about sitting on Trent Lott’s porch once again. Telling us that he’ll give the situation more than one days’ attention. Gee, thanks, Your Highness. How big of him to walk amongst the common people, and even touch them, though some surely smelled bad. And Laura wore such a sensible suit. His Momma assures us that those Negroes holed up in Houston stadium are better off than they were at home. Yes, and the slaves were lucky to have been brought to the land of the free.

Bush didn’t dare go to the heart of New Orleans. So meone may have had the sense to spit.

Leonce Gaiter: Last Mardi Gras in the City of New Orleans

Last Mardi Gras in the City of New Orleans

02/09/05 10:08

My mother was born and raised in New Orleans. My father was raised in Plaquemine, not far away. All of their relatives lived there, and my Frenchified name attests to the city's centrality to my history.

I lived there only for a couple of years, and never learned to like it. I didn't see the New Orleans of the spring break frat boys on Bourbon Street or the quaint old buildings that reeked of southern gentility. I saw black New Orleans, a remnant of a slave past, a ghost of hatreds so rank and rampant that to this day they make you want to vomit.

Black New Orleans was segregated from the white. It was poor. And it too often wore a plantation-style mentality like a shroud. I was an army brat, raised in D.C., Germany, Maryland, Missouri. My parents were unapologetic 60s bourgeois strivers and pert-near psychotic in their insistence on three things: excellence to thwart the race hatred they saw all around them, controlled rage to keep the memories fresh, and arrogance in the knowledge that while the majority with all its power had done its best to dehumanize and belittle us--they had failed.

In New Orleans, I saw something completely different from the attitudes with which I was raised. Too often, blacks seemed to harbor hopelessness--belief that a shotgun in the ghetto was the best they could ever do until rescued from this vale of tears by Jesus. Where was the fight, I asked my young self? Where was the rage? They seemed downright frightened of white people.

But my parents had spared me the south's pre-civil rights viciousness, and offered me tools to counter it when it reared its head. So many of these folks -- exposed to nothing but that city's and that region's unrelenting brutality for generations -- had not been so blessed.

The Washington Post today reported a black woman in New Orleans saying, "To me, it just seems like black people are marked. We have so many troubles and problems."

Such words enrage me almost as much as a government that dares to dream of empire, yet is so incompetent it can't get water from point A to point B. They anger me almost as much as people who gleefully suffers a smirking, so-called leader with the arrogance and gall to lie bald-facedly before a TV camera that no one had anticipated what everyone in America knew--that Katrina could breach levees and flood the city.

Today, Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post quoted Donald Rumsfeld saying about Iraq, "while no one condones looting, on the other hand, one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression."

I don't hear a lot of that understanding for the black people of New Orleans. They have no food, no water, but the National Guard has been given orders to shoot to kill if they see someone walking out of a store with a case of sustenance. Well, they're just nigger looters. Not people deserving of compassion. Not people with no food or water; not people with nothing but generations of nothing to lose behind them.

The novel Bourbon Street was my hate letter to that city and all it represents to me about the worst in this country and its past. Instead of a black character desperate for acceptance, or one who destroys himself due to the vagueries of trying to live in the majority's world, I wrote one who dared to learn the majority's lessons, and gain what he wanted even if he had to destroy their world to get it.

Watching thousands of poor, black people march aimlessly around that devastated city while its government all but ignores them, I say "All hail Alex Moreau."

Leonce Gaiter: People Read What They Know

27/08/05 17:09

I have read to enter other worlds. To enter other peoples' heads. The writers that most influenced me were those who most decidedly and deliciously showed me the insides of their heads--the way they viewed the world--with what dread or mirth or contempt they saw this life. They were Faulkner, Pynchon and Robertson Davies. Their worlds bore little resemblance to the one in which I lived. But that didn't matter. That was all to the good. It was what made them so thrillingly entertaining.

But it doesn't seem to work like that now. People read about others who live on blocks just like theirs, who are single like them, or have marriages or kids with problems just like theirs. They read about people who buy clothes from the same designers they do, who drink the same drinks and sup at the same restaurants.

If writers dare delve into the past or into another world, they are rewarded not for creativity, uniqueness, not for vision... but for research. I'm supposed to be impressed that the writer discovered exactly what restaurant stood on what corner in what city in 1912. Make it up, for God's sake. I don't give a rat's ass! Even in evoking other worlds, "serious" writers are now bound to this one.

It's no wonder there's an explosion in fantasy and science fiction. It's the one respite from this desperate literary solipsism that the MFA programs seem to instill these days. And no wonder. It makes writing a paint-by-numbers excercise. "Come on, y'all. Anyone can do it!" Most importantly, though, it makes writing an imminently teachable exercise. Anyone can do it, as long as they are properly instructed to follow pre-defined character arcs and do their research by the scores of writers who make their livings by teaching aspiring writers how to write.

So next time you're reading a glowingly reviewed "literary" novel with a scowl on your face because you can't believe the reviewers were engaged or entertained by the cripplingly dull piece of shit that's invading your lap, remember that too often, you're no longer reading what a writer could envision, imagine, elucidate. Instead, you're reading what a teacher could teach.

I believe that books have lost their hold on the popular imagination because they became echo chamber conversations between academics and their spawn. And in this chamber, the status quo rules. Academia hates nothing like change. The more predictable the fictions, the more ensconced is academia. From agents, to editors to writers to reviewers--we are all her stunted, crippled children.

New worlds, ladies and gentlemen. Show me people I don't know, places distorted beyond recognition by the prisms of your minds. Do not preach to me. If you're writing because, "I wanted to show how love conquers all," or "Racial prejudice is complex," then take your laptop and please beat yourself to death with it before you use it to write anything. Who are you? God? You have nothing to teach me. One of the great truisms was always "write for your best audience." Assume I know more than you do. Assume I have lived and inhabited your theme more thoroughly than you have -- now what do you have to say? If the answer is "nothing," don't write. You are not a writer.

I don't read books as chores to garner cultural merit badges. Reading is entertainment. It's Ann Miller tapping, Duke Ellington swinging, a vaudevillian selling a song. Faulkner, Pynchon and Robertson Davies--they knew this.

Entertain me.

Short Around the Internets

Fairly Wise Advice About Building Weblog Numbers

Ohmigod its true. Google is becoming a telco. What does this mean? Your broadband choice might be cable, dsl or free Wi-Fi Broadband from google in about a year...which one would you choose? What if it was 10 dollars a month? Still a good deal. This would also, despite the best efforts of the Republicans, spur the economy, raise the intellectual opportunity for the nation and create real broadband competition.

One of the best jazz concerts, ever. As its directed by Wynton it's a little old fashioned but still stellar performances. Thought Terence Blanchard, borrowing from the Pat Metheny compositional style, provided the highlight.