TWEAKING THE MULTICULTURALIST

I CAN'T HELP MYSELF in picking up Charlie's theme of inclusion, even though I am alert to the fact it's not the original thrust of the thread.

One of the many ironies of FORCED multiculturalism, and I do know something about the realties first hand, is the myth that we are all the same. Well, if we are all indeed the SAME, why the great push to make sure we test that theory by forcing all this sameness together? And yet when given the choice of aggregating freely under general conditions, we notice the tendency that real (or superficial) likeness does indeed TEND to gravitate together, but not EXCLUSIVELY.

This predilection is seen everywhere; in nature, in human society, and in logic itself. Some may laugh, and call this an over-simplication. I'd agree, but then ask the question, an over-simplication of what?

STRANGER THAN FICTION

Whether a work is a piece of fiction, or one man's peace is a work of truth matters little here nor will be long remembered. Feelings can be hurt. Names can be changed. But in the end, no reader ever becomes the wiser after the petty shuffle of literary camouflage has been cracked like a giant oyster. If an author dubs his contribution a work of fiction, while based on reality, then why change the names of those characters who fit the billing as clearly as any emperor's new array of clothing fits the emperor? It's already been declared fiction, after all. Whether the Joe Smith in a work of fiction resembles a Joe Smith kicked to the curb in Hometown USA matters nary a nub. Again I ask, how can curbside Joe whine about slander derived from a work of fiction? The simplicity of this question and its even simpler solution is easily discovered: Should the likeness an author paints upon his own fictitious Joe Smith prove false as it concerns the real Joe Smith, so be it. No harm, after all, work of fiction, right? A work of fiction is confined, defined and refined by its author's creative biases, not the concerns of some curbside Joe Smith. Are names and situations in a bustling planetary grope, like fingerprints or DNA samples, unique and proprietary? If however an author's fictitious Joe Smith does indeed resemble the real Joe Smith, how can Joe Smith sue for libel and slander on matters of truth even if depicted in a work of fiction? Truth is truth, and not a matter for libel and slander. The old ways of passing judgment on humanity are evaporating. All truth is fiction and all fiction is soon written into truth. Considering this truism, can't we just get on with it?

WHATEVER TOUCHES YOU

Originally published on September 22, 1996

Sorry to hear about your proposal-writing failures. With new years and holy days of atonement and tyranny, shiteating boyfriends, and ground round rules for fun, it's no wonder you have a tough time keeping a perfect scorecard of it all...

That was some blood rant you passed along, fitfully ironic and true to the core as word games go. Of course the coagulating flaw in this "what if" scenario is that women HAVE had that blood thang all along, and yet they still cry foul at the way this world has managed to make them be just what they are: women, nothing more, nothing less. If humanity had never learned to talk or write, the intrinsic hierarchical display we know today would as I see it change very little. The strengths of beauty and the beauties of strength are only slightly persuaded by any raw intelligence of which material progress is wrought to relinquish the powers nature has bestowed upon THEM...

All the philosophical rant in the world falls pathetically short of the complementary powers of the beautiful and of brute strength. Beauty is its own brute strength and brute strength is a beautiful persuader of all things magistrated. I charge that there can be little doubt to a supple mind that these notions I put forth here today are in a nutshell what has made the world the way we find it today, but since I am a masochist of sorts I am always willing to listen to detractors of my insight, and of course these are legion and haplessly derivative...

Because the semantics of any idea attracts buzzing gadflies not unlike shit stuffed into the mouth of a beautiful loser.

GT

PREMISE #1

I know artists and writers those latter-day Lorenzos ought to be supporting—if they knew what's good for them, and for their posterity.

But they mostly don't. So they whip out the checkbooks for Harvard, for Yale, for Princeton, for "peace studies" and for "art" that isn't art, and for teachers of literature who do not teach literature but rather about the ethnic, racial, and religious background of authors, and so on.

Usurpers.

The preceding words of Hugh Fitzgerald, as idealized by Gabriel Thy rock. Ask anyone.

PROFILING PURPOSES

Gleaned from a online post by Matthew Z:

Reading is almost always an aesthetic preference, unless it has permission through certain jargon, both "legal" or "political" to engage in praxis. The politician assumes himself to be beyond art because he actually has the power at his fingertips to physically move his ideas around. The artist has no such power of course and is reduced into the realm of aesthetics—that motionless form of subjective preference.

For starters, despite the strategic blandness of a general political attempt at writing, I think it might be useful to consider their words and actions as more along the lines of an aesthetic preference as well. The artist might gasp at this notion, stupidly assuming, through hand-me-down compartmentalizations, that the "brown bagging suit" is not worthy of being even considered in an aesthetic sense. [But, the politician]... is beyond aesthetics because he can actually make things move.

Art is otherwise, happily motionless and heavily protective of its specialized terms in the name of priority and approbation of course, more than anything else really ("Pick me, pick me, I am the best aesthete in the room! This term belongs to me and me alone in order for me to be able to sell my persona, and if you try to apply to something else, my chances become lowered on this front.").