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A New Romney Meme Is Born
From Debate #2 between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. The circumstances, according to CNN:
When asked about what he’d do to improve income equality for women, Romney cited his efforts as governor of Massachusetts to include women on a state economic panel, efforts that apparently included poring through “binders full of women” in search of qualified candidates. And with that, a meme was born.
I wonder how the women felt….
Argentinean Author César Aira
Most traditional literature is somewhat like a series of nested matryoshka dolls: You come back out the way you go in. In the process, all unresolved issues are neatly resolved (one hopes), and one has experienced a real 19th century experience.
Well, that doesn’t seem to be happening any more, except perhaps in some whodunits. It certainly isn’t happening in the slim novels of César Aira, an Argentinean from Coronel Pringles who writes the way a Roomba vacuum cleaner robot cleans: He just moves in a straight line until he encounters a barrier that sends him off in another direction.
In Varamo, we are in the city of Colón in Panama some 20 years after the Panama Canal was built. Varamo is the name of a Chinese-Panamanian who works for one of the government ministries in Colón. The story begins when, as his pay, he is handed 200 counterfeit pesos which he at once recognizes and is afraid to cash. He walks to the cafe one evening and witnesses an accident in which one of the government ministers is severely injured. That makes him late to the cafe, where he runs into three pirate publishers who urge him to write a book, which Varamo gladly does. It turns out to become a Central American poetry classic: The Song of the Virgin Boy.
Along the way, he encounters other adventures, but this will do for now. In the last paragraph, Aira gives a kind of apologia for his own highly individualistic writing style:
The result was Varamo’s famous poem, except that it was less a result in itself than a way of transforming what had preceded it into a result. It produced a kind of automatism or mutual fatality, by which cause and effect changed places and became the same story. Far from diminishing the poem’s initial vigor, this circle intensifies it. Which is, in fact, what always happens. If a work is dazzlingly innovative and opens up unexplored paths, the merit is not to be found in the work itself, but in its transformative effect on the historical moment that engendered it. Novelty makes its causes new, giving birth to them retrospectively. If historical time makes us live in the new, a story that attempts to account for the origin of a work of art, that is, a work of innovation, ceases to be a story; it’s a new reality, and yet a part of reality as it has always been for everyone. Those who don’t believe me can go and see for themselves.
Now there’s a manifesto! Aira’s “new reality” has, with me, fallen on receptive ears. I have read every Aira book that I could get my hands on. They are all relatively short, but always succeed in defying any attempt at speed-reading. This Argentinean knows how to throw curve balls that bounce all over the place. Following their trajectory across space and time is not only great fun, but also profound, in a weird way.
Photo Credit: The above picture—a favorite of mine—comes from the Buenos Aires BAFICI website (dedicated to independent filmmakers).
VP Joe Biden
I am beginning to think that we have a very good Vice President indeed! Joe Biden cleaned Paul Ryan’s clock so thoroughly that the Faux News network (the one run by Rupert Merde-Duck) is lining up fake experts to claim that, far from winning the debate, he has dementia, is drunk, or “on, like, 18 lines of cocaine.” That’s high praise from such an unscrupulous opponent.
Now I think that is quite a tribute from the Republican noise machine. If you are a Democrat and do your job particularly well, the Faux noise machine will emit a high-pitched wail of compressed and variegated slander. Joseph Goebbels would have been so proud of Roger Ailes.
At one time, I wished for a Democrat equivalent to Murdoch and Ailes’s Republican propaganda network, but now I think that would not be such a good idea. Democrats are not so united as the Republicans, because we Democrats have a wide range of opinions, such that we frequently resemble a circular firing squad. Always, the most effective propaganda comes from totalitarian sources. Over time, they will end of smearing themselves so badly that people will just turn away from them.
In the meantime, we will have more patently false news stories with blatantly slanderous accusations. How many people are there who actually think that Faux News is “fair and balanced”? Al Franken laid that old chestnut to bed with his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them and the ensuing lawsuit which embarrassed the so-called news channel.
Photo Credit: The above photo is from Rolling Stone’s website.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Happiness is a lasting state which does not seem to be made for man in this world. Everything here on earth is in a continual flux which allows nothing to assume any constant form. All things change round about us, we ourselves change, and no one can be sure of loving tomorrow what he loves today. All our plans of happiness in this life are therefore empty dreams. Let us make the most of peace of mind when it comes to us, taking care to do nothing to drive it away, but not making plans to hold it fast, since such plans are sheer folly. I have seen few if any happy people, but I have seen many who were contented, and of all the sights that have come my way this is the one that has left me the most contented myself. I think this is a natural consequence of the influence of my sensations on my inward feelings. Happiness cannot be detected by any outward sign and to recognize it one would need to be able to read in the happy person’s heart, but contentment is visible in the eyes, the bearing, the voice and the walk, and it seems to communicate itself to the onlooker. Is there any satisfaction more sweet than to see a whole people devoting themselves to joy on some feast-day and all their hearts expanding in the supreme rays of pleasure which sign briefly but intensely through the clouds of life?—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Reveries of the Solitary Walker, “Ninth Walk”
Hungarian Cowboy, or Csikos, on the Hortobagy
This weekend was spent attending two Hungarian events: A Los Angeles Hungarian Meetup Group get-together at Mishi’s Strudel Shop in San Pedro and the Fall Bazaar of the First Hungarian Reformed Church in Hawthorne.
It was interesting to spend a weekend on Hungarian time. At the strudel shop, Martine and I were there on time (at 2 pm), but no one else was. At the church, the bazaar was to begin at 1 pm. We got there fifteen minutes early, and found the place was full because everything started much earlier than the posted time, perhaps by as much as an hour. (And it ended an hour and a quarter early, too.)
I am usually fanatical about being not only on time, but a little early, for everything. It was strange to be outdone in this regard by my fellow Magyars.
Fortunately, it didn’t matter. We just took our seats and enjoyed ourselves immensely through the dinner and musical program. There were two opera singers—Sándor László and Huba Marcsi—singing old Hungarian folk songs to be piano accompaniment. This was followed by a singalong led by Dr. Tai Chen of other old folk songs based on music passed out to everyone. (My Hungarian, being sub par, made it difficult for me to participate.)
There was also a number of rousing folk dances by the Kárpátok Hungarian Dance Ensemble, whose flawless execution of a series of stunning and complicated maneuvers is always a crowd pleaser. I see tthem at least twice a year and find their work to be exhilarating.
It was such a good weekend that I feel like manhandling a bunch of horses like the csikos in the above photo, which comes from Flickriver.
Ideologue for the Irreligious Right
I am, to say the least, no supporter of Ayn Rand. Thirty years after her death, she has has occupied an incongruous position with her rightist and libertarian supporters. On one hand, she was an avowed enemy of religion. On the other, her tenets have been adopted by a political party which has close ties to American Evangelical Christians. It was Jesus Christ in the Gospel of St. Luke (12:33) is quoted as saying, “Sell your possessions and give to charity; make yourselves purses which do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near, nor moth destroys.”
Contrast that with Ms. Rand, who stated in a famous 1964 Playboy interview with Alvin Toffler:
My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.
How Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, can square his religion (Roman Catholicism) with his adherence to the belief system of Ayn Rand’s so-called Objectivism is a mystery to me. I personally find much of her thinking to be abhorrent, such as her elevating productive work about family and friendship:
If they place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life, and human relationships are not primary in a man’s life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite; whereas, if he places his work first, there is no conflict between his work and his enjoyment of human relationships.
So, which is it to be, Mr. Ryan? Shall we adhere to the teachings of Christ or of Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum, alias Ayn Rand?
The interview with Rand is worth reading in its entirety. Or one could just read one of her long and confused novels such as The Fountainhead (1943) or Atlas Shrugged (1957) to get to the same point after a several hundred turgid pages.
As I … medit
ated the direction of modern poetry, my discouragement blackened. It seemed to me that Mallarmé and his followers, renouncing intelligibility in order to concentrate on the music of poetry, had turned off the road into a narrowing lane…. Idea had gone, now meter had gone, imagery would have to go; perhaps at last words might have to go or give up their meaning, nothing be left but musical syllables…. I was standing there like a God-forsaken man-of-letters, making my final decision not to become a “modern.” I did not want to become slight and fantastic, abstract and unintelligible.—Robinson Jeffers, Preface to Roan Stallion
Is There Any Escape?
We have reached that part of the election when all the millions of dollars spent by candidates and Political Action Committees (PACs) lead to a barrage of ads on television and over the telephone. During the last four weeks of a hard-fought political campaign (and they’re all that way now), I screen all my telephone calls.
Irrespective of the candidate or issue, I don’t want to talk to anyone on the phone about politics; and I most certainly don’t want to participate in opinion polls. I already avoid television—unless I am watching a movie without advertising or a DVD—so I am not susceptible to that particular attempt to poison my thought processes.
As I was coming to work today, I heard a news story on the radio about how the second presidential debate will be in a town hall format, with the participants all being uncommitted voters. Who in this superheated political arena is uncommitted any more? Doesn’t one have to be stupid or disingenuous at this point to be truly labeled uncommitted? I am as committed as hell, and I don’t want to talk to anyone about it.
In about a month, all this will be over and done with. We will have a president with whom we will be dissatisfied, to a greater or lesser degree; and the media blitz will have died down to nothing.
All those Citizens United dollars will have wreaked their damage on the American voter, who will be increasingly contemptuous of our political system. Sometimes I think the only people who like our system are those directly involved in manipulating public opinion.
In the middle of a hurricane, the only safe place to be is in out of the wind.
Picture Credit: The above cartoon is taken from the Fremd High School American Studies Ning (?!), which also addresses the same point I am trying to make.
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FDR’s Summer Home on Campobello Island
During his youth, Franklin Delano Roosevelt spent many of his summers on Campobello Island in the Province of New Brunswick, just a few hundred feet from the Easternmost Point in the United States at Lubec, Maine. Since the 1960s, there is a bridge that connects Lubec with Campobello. But back when FDR stayed here, it was approachable with difficulty, by a combination of trains and ferries.
In 1921, FDR discovered during a visit to the island that he had a paralytic illness, which was later diagnosed as polio. That was a watershed in the ambitious young man’s life: From being an active outdoorsman who loved sailing the waters of Passamaquoddy Bay and the Bay of Fundy, he found himself increasingly a cripple. From that point on, he didn’t have it in him to spend much time time at Campobello.
That was not the case for his wife, Eleanor, who continued to visit the island—especially after her husband died in 1945. One of the highlights of a trip to the massive “cottage” at Campobello is a daily event known as “Tea with Eleanor.” For twenty lucky guests, tea and cookies are served in an adjoining cottage; and the knowledgeable waitstaff tell stories about Eleanor, who is much loved by the local people.
Campobello Island is a strange little island. To buy gasoline or perform many other services, the residents must cross the border into Lubec. There are two restaurants on the island and, I believe, only a couple of places where tourists can spend the night. The cottage is surrounded by a large park and criss-crossing hiking trails, where once there were other resorts for wealthy tourists around the turn of the century.
Lubec and Campobello are about two hours east of Acadia National Park and the resort at Bar Harbor.
Help save Big Bird!
Mitt Romney has gone too far. It was a mistake to attack Big Bird. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is a tiny, but culturally significant part of the nation’s budget. Contrast that to the untold trillions we throw away in the Middle East building fortified zones from which our young men and women venture out only to be bombed to smithereens.
Sesame Street would rather not be in this predicament. It’s not as if the nonpartisan, nonprofit wants to be in the middle of a political firestorm: It clearly is uncomfortable in that role. Even Republicans have children, after a fashion, and those children are likely to find themselves identifying with the characters who dwell in Sesame Street. By so doing, they will not necessarily volunteer to serve on Obamacare Death Panels or join the Socialist Workers’ Party, They may even grow up to be distressingly normal, unlike their parents.
There are certainly a few hundred things I would think to cut before attacking tiny PBS, whose 15% contribution from the Federal Government constitutes far, far less than 1% of the budget. (Closer to 0.015% actually.)
In politics, sometimes little things have large consequences. I think that, in attacking Big Bird, the Mittster may have taken on more than he can handle.
Photo Credit: The above image was copied from an About.Com website on political humor.
Tarnmoor 
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