"Defeatist call it quits, announce final shows" and Sasha Grey goes down, I mean, gets off--um, rather, gets down on illiteracy

Couldn't resist the beauty of it--a band called Defeatist giving up the ghost--and seemed an appropriate way to "call it quits" to my own quitting, that is, my long abstinence from this blog.


In further incongruous news, Sasha Grey, who has also been abstaining from her former career as a porn star, is in the rather sticky position--not the first time, to be sure--of having to defend the authenticity, not the legitimacy, of her recent reading to elementary schoolers. Of course the two are presumably connected: because of the backlash of those troubled by a former pornster interacting with young children, school authorities are denying it ever happened, published photographs and a statement released by Grey notwithstanding. Never underestimate the bureaucratic ability to refute reality if it threatens their status quo.


As for questioning the validity of Sasha's Reading Corner, I can only play pragmatist, and say: whatever gets kids through the library doors, these days, is alright with me. Still, I think her former vocation has more allure for the student's parents, who might actually know who she is, or was, not to mention the media, whose coverage is guaranteed by such an event. So, in that case, well done to Ms. Grey's publicity team and Red Cross America's promotions department. Better to ponder might be why it is we need any "stars"--sexualized or otherwise (or are all stars sexualized?)-- to promote reading to children (because, you know, despite our celebrity-obsessed culture, getting "personalities" to encourage other things, like sex and drug abstinence, has worked out so well...). And although it feels uncomfortably weird to bring it up now, I'll reveal the shocking truth of who it was that engendered my literacy as a child: my grandmother.

Unfortunately, Norway, welcome to our/the rest of the world.

The latter part of which was one sentiment levied at the U.S. after 9-11, implying that until then we hadn't experienced a strike on our homeland from abroad by a non-state actor, meeting one of the major requisites for most definitions of "terrorism," despite the oft paired allusion to our "last" major attack on Pearl Harbor from an imperial Japan. But state-side terror was here long before the war on terror, of course. Islamic-terrorists had already attacked the WTC itself in the '90s, though to much less spectacular effect, so perhaps its oversight can be forgiven.

But also, I think, we're known much more for our home-grown terrorists and/or psychos-fucks who either go for mass casualties or political assassinations, or both--and not for nothing. In the '90s, again, we had McVeigh's bomb and student-stalking in Columbine. More recently we generated our very own Islamo-flavored terrorist, the Ft. Hood shooter. Not to mention four dead presidents and a couple that came close (a few attempts, and one assassinated almost president--RFK), and the almost slaying of a Congresswoman that left half a dozen others dead. A demographically-difficult anomaly in American political-violence is the FALN, a Puerto Rican independence movement that raged against U.S. imperialism from within the empire, but based outside the national boundary--locavore vengeance or import reprisal?

“We all read and watch the news about the shootings in the United States,” Mr. Groven said. “But it doesn’t happen here.”

(Will this old chestnut, the second sentence, ever not be said by community members and reported by journalists?)

So now Norway, who has been a fairly-committed ally of the war on terror, but hasn't either bent over backwards for multiculturalism compared to others in Europe or had as much as a far-right backlash, has their own homegrown terrorist--though not of the political-persuasion du jour. He's a anti-immigrant, anti-government, cultural-degenerationist, from the Christian right: two parts McVeigh, vehicular explosion and gov-hate; one part the Columbine boy's patient hunting; add a dash of Loughner's Delusion, I'll call it, the conspiratorial mindset and the belief that a lone act is necessary to change the world; shake or stir; chug. Welcome to the club; membership doesn't necessarily come with advantages.

Or does it...

[I had a quote from the same NY Times article that I lost, along with a few others and half of my writing on this blog, due to overheated computer and the apparent lack of autosave function of blogger, that the Times decide to delete from the article--as well as adding other parts--overnight. It said that this hideous event was actually a good thing, because it will bring attention to the radical right fomenting across Europe, and specifically in Norway. My reaction:]

Whoa.

But still:

Mr. Romarheim said in some ways the homegrown nature of the attack made it harder for Norwegians to accept. “With 9/11 in America, people could ask, ‘Who are they?’ and could pour their rage out on someone else,” he said. “But we can’t disavow this person, he’s one of us.”

When looking at the face of "evil," it amazes me that they usually do look like monsters, or at least there seems to be something off-putting that differentiates them from the rest of us. But perhaps that's just magical thinking: the desire to be able to protect oneself by recognizing horror. Or it's just the way our brains work; once we know someone has done something horrible, we can't help but interpolate meaning into the knowing smirks of Loughner (see mug shot) and, say, Casey Anthony, and wonder, how can anyone not see the madness lying in wait?

Rearranging lawn chairs for the apocalypse

(The only pic of a lawn/deck/porch chair.)

Or something like that. Listening to Brian Lehrer's fill-in today, and was struck by just how ridiculous budgetary/austerity/taxes (no, I mean, revenue)/default discussion has become. Actually, they were talking about the potential effects of the recent EPA-empowerment by the Supreme Court. (Yes, that SCOTUS, the conservative one; still, Kennedy, the swing vote, seems to "go both ways" almost equally, and here's an example of his liberal-lean.)

(Detroit)

Offering up the conservative viewpoint, as WNYC/NPR hosts are wont to do in the name of balance, but also to be batted down by the usual left-leaning guest, Andrea Bernstein conflated two common refrains from the right (talk about taxes/regulation "hurting job creators" and "killing jobs") into one delicious, if not menacing, concern: government intervention is "killing job creators."

(That's what happened at Coney Island, right? Nah...)

Now, I'm pretty sure she didn't actually mean to say conservatives think the government will start executing small business owners (funny how the right usually only mentions them...) or CEO behemoths (no, that's only Obamacare and senior citizens... but they're not "producers," so who cares?). But she can be forgiven given the ferocity of conservative objections to any austerity decisions based on reasonable economics (spending cuts AND tax--uh, I mean, revenue--increases) that make it seem like anything but cutting the size and scope of the government will destroy the economy--or at least the part of it who are still doing extremely well.

(Chernobyl apparently didn't have enough regulation...)

Perhaps this was too cynical (and/or petty) a thing to bring me out of my blogging-hibernation, but these days, on the brink of--again, already?--Armageddon or at least the end of America as we know it, we could all use a good laugh.

(Creepy abandoned island)

This scares me a hell of a lot more than anti-gov psychos, Al Qaeda or any other country, for that matter.

Gates also predicted North Korea will have a nuclear missile that directly threatens the U.S. within five years.

Sweet.

Wailin' on Palin

One sentence to Glenn Beck. So says Brian Lehrer.

He just read it on air--it's as rambling (as one sentence can be) as the stuff I've heard from Laughner. This isn't the first such non sequitur from Palin since she's been tweeting. But it wasn't a tweet. Why not? And, of course (?), it's just in defense of herself, equating the safety of ALL of our children with "anyone" who is blamed for inciting violence. Yeah, Palin, who put a gun sight on Giffords' district.


Oops, there was more from Palin to Beck, but that's just the clip he read and the media has picked-up on. This is the second time I've heard it. Ah, a problem with live posts. Corrections.

We don't know much about the guy except that he's obviously crazy and no type of politically organized conspirator like McVeigh--but that doesn't mean he didn't have similarly conspiratorial ideas about society and the government in particular. There was the guy who got stopped on his way to shoot-up a non-profit, caught with black-helicopter lit suggested by Beck on his show.

Let's be clear: this guy was probably no tea-partier. Yes, they're loud and petulant and perhaps get off on the violent imagery of revolution--as Che shirts on Leftys illustrate too--but they haven't actually been violent.

This was indeed a political act. A premeditated murder of an elected official at a, though relatively minor, political event. He had been to something similar where apparently he was snubbed when he asked her an incoherent question.

[Or perhaps not so incoherent:

Loughner was not just spouting jibberish around grammar - see this article today from Gawker, which describes the right wing conspiracy theory around grammar.

"The Southern Law Poverty Center's Mark Potok, whose job it is to keep track of the various crazies this country breeds and nurtures, links Loughner's bizarre fixation on language and grammar to the theories of a man named David Wynn Miller—or, as he styles himself, :David-Wynn: Miller. When Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown contacted Miller, he said he "absolutely" agreed with Loughner's assertion that "the government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar." Miller told The New York Times that Lougher had "probably been on my Web site."

Why Is Jared Loughner Obsessed With Grammar?So who is David Wynn Miller? According to Miller himself, he is a "Plenipotentiary-Judge" (and the King of Hawaii); he's also a 62-year-old former tool-and-die maker from Milwaukee. Miller's been selling his particular (and particularly bizarre) strain of the right-wing anti-tax "sovereign citizen" movement/conspiracy for years now, and gotten more than a few people thrown in jail for trying to use his theories. A visit to his website gives you a glimpse into the world of "QUANTUM-MATH-COMMUNICATIONS":"

Jan. 11 2011 11:51 AM]

So this was personal. The personal becomes political when paranoid delusions subsume politicians--and perhaps buttressed by an environment where dehumanizing political opponents in an Armageddon-ish battle for our country's soul is commonplace.

(Yes, from the Left too.)

Now Palin's taken down the crosshairs from her website. I'll take that as at least a tinge of guilt.

Best comment during a Lehrer guest trying to get at the mental state of the shooter otherwise marred by his virulent anti-pot bias (to ridiculous to get into--basically blaming schizophrenia on pot (!)):

Tricia from Brooklyn

It's time to discuss our culture which celebrates the cult of personality of murderers who do this for the notoriety. Can we talk about this man's actions without mentioning his name or plastering his face all over the media as a murdering celebrity? Can we stop enticing deranged people with the promise of instant celebrity?

Jan. 11 2011 11:41 AM

I would rather never have known her name.

A relatively minor Dem from a Red state far from me. But now I'll remember her forever. I would have been content not to.

And it goes back to the time before she was even elected to the state legislature, back in the late 1990s, when she was a businessperson in the city of Tucson. I knew her then. But, interestingly enough, in the 2000-2003, she was a legislator and we worked on what we can do in Tucson to ensure that the University Medical Center had a very high-tech, functional, world-class trauma center.

She was involved in that process back in 2003. And we have one of the best. And, as I looked down at her, I was reminded of how we worked together to provide the trauma center that is saving her life. And it was -- for me, it was a very moving event.

A good demonstration of how a public good can be of vital self-interest.