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Some Day A Real Rain Will Come: What Travis Bickle Can –And Cannot– Tell Us About Tucson (Revisited)

December 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Voices In Our Heads

You talking to me?

It is the pivotal scene in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and it remains one of the seminal moments in movie history. Not so much because of its improvisational nature, or the uncanny way Robert De Niro (playing the alienated and ultimately violent Travis Bickle) disappears into this character, managing to seem invisible and menacing all at once. Most important, this short scene echoes a question that all of us, to a certain extent, ask the world every day.

“Are you talking to me?” we ask, and the tone may be inquisitive, rhetorical or defiant. It may be those and many other things. Mostly, as we interact in a mechanized, sped-up and increasingly unreal reality, we want to make sure people know we are there. We use our voices, our eyes, our frowns or smiles, our horns, our phones, our e-mail, our clothes and a thousand unspoken thoughts to affirm that our presence does not go entirely unnoticed.

In a way, it was easier a few decades ago, around the time Taxi Driver (1976) was released. There was no Internet, no texting, no cell phones, no cable TV, no electronic anything. If you needed to reach out and touch someone, you had to do just that. It’s possible that with the proliferation of devices and toys, in our information-overload moment (which, as it relates to art, content and information, is definitely not a negative thing), we are lonelier than ever before. This ground has been well-covered and there are compelling arguments on either side. On one hand, it can be conjectured that by remaining indoors, behind a glowing screen, we’ve effectively cut ourselves off from old-fashioned interaction and our communication—however ceaseless—lacks intimacy and engagement. On the other hand, people who in another era (including this one) may be best described as socially awkward (due to a variety of societal and self-imposed factors) have myriad opportunities to connect that simply did not exist even ten-to-fifteen years ago.

And the above observations almost entirely relate to action as opposed to reaction. It’s difficult to accurately gauge precisely how a constant bombardment of content, opinions and steadily louder voices is affecting our perception. Not too long ago it was a common joke to talk about (either in celebratory or castigating tones) how we had one hundred channels to choose from via cable TV. Now we have hundreds of channels, as well as streaming video, social media, blogs, and a dedicated website for every news channel, program and talking head in the world. And all of these voices are trying to tell, or sell, us something. Always urgently, never off message, constantly competing with all the other noise to get inside our heads and influence our opinions in one way or another.

 

Who Owns The American Dream?

You’re in a hell, and you’re gonna’ die in a hell like the rest of them.

It was horrifying enough when we had Travis Bickle types who, for their various reasons, sought violent ends to make some type of statement or try and quell that voice screeching non-stop in their ears, like a demented wasps’ nest. Taxi Driver, though wrongly or at least simplistically described by too many as the story of a psychopath, is very much a cautionary tale about what can happen when an alienated citizen has no one to talk to. The fact that it’s set in one of the busiest cities in the world is less ironic than tragic: anyone who has spent time in a bustling urban environment can confirm that it’s sometimes—if not often—the case that one can feel most alone when surrounded by millions of people who don’t know or care about them.

Loneliness, alienation and even violence are sufficiently commonplace as to be unremarkable facets of American existence: watch the news or consider your own life story. This certainly holds true in any society, particularly our plugged in but often disconnected post-millennial era. It seems safe to suggest these conditions are most rampant and profound in the United States. There are countless reasons and/or symptoms, and they are rooted more in myth than reality. For instance, while America does not have the rigid and stratified class systems that still plague Europe, we do have a collective addiction to the white-washed fantasy also known as the American Dream.

Lest that sound like a facile dismissal of a very complicated and, in many ways useful illusion, there are undeniably certain aspects of the American Dream parable that are provable and worthwhile. The ceaseless influx of grateful immigrants is sufficient testament to the inherent promise of an ostensibly free society. The same promise luring men and women to illegally enter our country is the same impulse that served as a siren song for Irish, Italian and other immigration movements through the 19th and 20th centuries. And yet, this speaks to the dream of America itself more than what we call the American Dream. Being able to do something is altogether different from being able to do anything. Most of these immigrants (then, now) are obliged to work excruciating hours doing horrific work at woeful wages, and the only thing making it tolerable is that it is (usually) better than the alternative.

The proposition that any of us, regardless of who we are and whatever our initial station in life can, with the correct combination of industry, initiative and luck, ascend to a status of wealth festers as one of the more powerful, if poisonous fictions our country has produced. More, it is not merely promulgated but actively inculcated: history books and sentimental movies tend to tout the exceedingly rare rags-to-riches allegory while ignoring, denying or conveniently dismissing the typical reality, which is that the working poor are likely to remain exactly where they are. In fact, as we’ve seen in the last few decades, this is more—not less—the case in a political and cultural system that has steadily ensured that those who have more will get more, usually directly at the expense of those who have little.

This dichotomy between what we see on screens or inside magazines is not new, but commercials, ads and websites telling us how can be or who we should be are incalculably more prevalent and powerful in today’s world. Thus, the same types of alienating forces that the lonely, angry and outcast citizens have historically been subject to are alarmingly more intense in a 24/7 info-tainment unreality. Which brings us to the Republicans in general and the Tea Party in particular. The GOP has auto-piloted the Horatio Alger story to the extent that counties receiving the most federal aid will lash out most indignantly (if ignorantly) about the perils of “big government”. Indeed, generation after generation illustrates that those who benefit most from higher taxes (and who have the least likelihood of ascending to the upper tax brackets) are consistently fanatical about keeping taxes low for those who earn the most. There are an unfortunate number of tragedies we commit as Americans, but this is one of the more profound examples.

Someday A Real Rain Will Come…

Loneliness has followed me my whole life…there’s no escape. I’m God’s lonely man.

One of the more devastatingly poignant (or poignantly devastating) scenes in Taxi Driver occurs when Travis sits, silently in his apartment, watching the attractive and fashionable folks dancing on TV. Alone in his sweltering studio walk-up, the look on his face—at once longing, frustrated and confused—reveals the hastening recognition that he will never attain the easy, if superficial, security he sees on the screen. With subtlety and lack of sentimentality (the script is actually somewhat slight, which only underscores the astonishing work De Niro turns in), we see that Bickle is the ultimate loner, an underground entity who is as much insect as human, scurrying in and out of his pointless and preordained routine.

Add to this the fact that he is a veteran, perhaps the most overlooked, yet prescient touch of the film (flash forward thirty-plus years to see how we treat our soldiers when they return from the wars we ask them to fight; little coincidence that it’s the same party that salutes the flag most tearfully who are quickest to slash and burn the programs designed to provide physical—and especially mental—assistance). The result of these circumstances and lack of choices provide us, circa 1976, with a character sketch of someone who, if one thing leads to the next, might opt for a more sociopathic solution to his problems. Importantly, Bickle is not revealed as a man destined to snap; while he is far from blameless for his predicament, he is very much a casualty of the world (the real one and the manufactured one) that he can’t master but must exist in. Therefore when he decides “my whole life is pointed in one direction…there never has been any choice for me”, it is both a confession and a one-man verdict, his indictment against this world.

There is some irony, looking back on the candidate he turns his grim attention toward: Palantine, running under the campaign slogan “We Are The People”, seems to espouse a very optimistic (if clichéd) message. (Further irony in that this notion of a collective synergy only amplifies Bickle’s isolation.) Imagine all of these elements contributing to Bickle’s disintegration placed in the context of our contemporary culture, with venom being spewed 24/7 by charlatans and circus clowns like Beck, O’Riley and Palin. Imagine Travis Bickle watching Fox News each day. If you can, you may begin to see why the concern and loathing of the Tea Party movement had much more to do with what happened this week in Arizona and little to do with comically misspelled signs and morons telling the government to stay out of their Medicare.

Travis gets his guns after a frightening encounter in his cab (and having heard about the violence fellow drivers have suffered). Only after he feels himself finally out of options does he contemplate using his gun on an innocent person (and later, people). Even in 1976, this was sufficiently compelling commentary on the ease with which Americans get access to guns. Today, appallingly, gun laws are looser than ever (and—shocker!—one political party defends this madness with the same tenacity they bring to cutting taxes and eliminating federal aid programs) and instead of a lone madman with one round, we have the sickening spectacle of semi-automatic weapons. Flash forward to Columbine, Virginia Tech and Tucson.

It slowly comes into focus: it is easier, now, for more people (except perhaps the politicians and mainstream media, the two most culpable parties) to understand the calculus that made this weekend’s tragedy predictable and, perhaps, inevitable. There are and—as ass-covering TV talking heads remind us—always will be lunatics in our midst who will kill and maim others and there is little we can do (other than disarm them). That said, it is way too easy to suggest this was an ambivalent act with random victims: in the same state the cretinous Sarah Palin put gun-sights on in a map of “targets”. It’s not necessary to pile on Palin, no matter how much blood she has on her carefully manicured hands; it is every bit the supine and opportunistic media’s fault, since they have breathlessly provided this imbecile with a public platform every step of the way. Special disgust, certainly, must be reserved for the reprehensible propaganda machine at Fox News: that so many Americans receive their “information” (and/or marching orders) from these scavengers debases us all.

And so, while the GOP gleefully fed the ill-conceived ire of the Tea Party faithful, they continued to double down on the very things that have caused so many of these folks to feel genuine hardship. It would almost be comical, except for the immorality and the guns. If someone in a red (or blue) state wants to endorse candidates who blithely promise to increase the collective misery, one can only laugh—unless one can’t help but cry. But when we see these candidates urging “Second Amendment remedies”, we need not wring our hands and ask how we all share the blame. No, the bulk of the blame can easily be laid at the spit-shined shoes of the pied pipers leading these rats to the water’s edge. That, an older and/or more cynical observer might suggest, has always been the case. Except now these rats are packing heat and they don’t mind taking out as many of us as they can, smiling as they do it.

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Some Day A Real Rain Will Come: What Travis Bickle Can –And Cannot– Tell Us About Tucson

January 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Voices In Our Heads

You talking to me?

It is the pivotal scene in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and it remains one of the seminal moments in movie history. Not so much because of its improvisational nature, or the uncanny way Robert De Niro (playing the alienated and ultimately violent Travis Bickle) disappears into this character, managing to seem invisible and menacing all at once. Most important, this short scene echoes a question that all of us, to a certain extent, ask the world every day.

“Are you talking to me?” we ask, and the tone may be inquisitive, rhetorical or defiant. It may be those and many other things. Mostly, as we interact in a mechanized, sped-up and increasingly unreal reality, we want to make sure people know we are there. We use our voices, our eyes, our frowns or smiles, our horns, our phones, our e-mail, our clothes and a thousand unspoken thoughts to affirm that our presence does not go entirely unnoticed.

In a way, it was easier a few decades ago, around the time Taxi Driver (1976) was released. There was no Internet, no texting, no cell phones, no cable TV, no electronic anything. If you needed to reach out and touch someone, you had to do just that. It’s possible that with the proliferation of devices and toys, in our information-overload moment (which, as it relates to art, content and information, is definitely not a negative thing), we are lonelier than ever before. This ground has been well-covered and there are compelling arguments on either side. On one hand, it can be conjectured that by remaining indoors, behind a glowing screen, we’ve effectively cut ourselves off from old-fashioned interaction and our communication—however ceaseless—lacks intimacy and engagement. On the other hand, people who in another era (including this one) may be best described as socially awkward (due to a variety of societal and self-imposed factors) have myriad opportunities to connect that simply did not exist even ten-to-fifteen years ago.

And the above observations almost entirely relate to action as opposed to reaction. It’s difficult to accurately gauge precisely how a constant bombardment of content, opinions and steadily louder voices is affecting our perception. Not too long ago it was a common joke to talk about (either in celebratory or castigating tones) how we had one hundred channels to choose from via cable TV. Now we have hundreds of channels, as well as streaming video, social media, blogs, and a dedicated website for every news channel, program and talking head in the world. And all of these voices are trying to tell, or sell, us something. Always urgently, never off message, constantly competing with all the other noise to get inside our heads and influence our opinions in one way or another.

Who Owns The American Dream?

You’re in a hell, and you’re gonna’ die in a hell like the rest of them.

It was horrifying enough when we had Travis Bickle types who, for their various reasons, sought violent ends to make some type of statement or try and quell that voice screeching non-stop in their ears, like a demented wasps’ nest. Taxi Driver, though wrongly or at least simplistically described by too many as the story of a psychopath, is very much a cautionary tale about what can happen when an alienated citizen has no one to talk to. The fact that it’s set in one of the busiest cities in the world is less ironic than tragic: anyone who has spent time in a bustling urban environment can confirm that it’s sometimes—if not often—the case that one can feel most alone when surrounded by millions of people who don’t know or care about them.

Loneliness, alienation and even violence are sufficiently commonplace as to be unremarkable facets of American existence: watch the news or consider your own life story. This certainly holds true in any society, particularly our plugged in but often disconnected post-millennial era. It seems safe to suggest these conditions are most rampant and profound in the United States. There are countless reasons and/or symptoms, and they are rooted more in myth than reality. For instance, while America does not have the rigid and stratified class systems that still plague Europe, we do have a collective addiction to the white-washed fantasy also known as the American Dream.

Lest that sound like a facile dismissal of a very complicated and, in many ways useful illusion, there are undeniably certain aspects of the American Dream parable that are provable and worthwhile. The ceaseless influx of grateful immigrants is sufficient testament to the inherent promise of an ostensibly free society. The same promise luring men and women to illegally enter our country is the same impulse that served as a siren song for Irish, Italian and other immigration movements through the 19th and 20th centuries. And yet, this speaks to the dream of America itself more than what we call the American Dream. Being able to do something is altogether different from being able to do anything. Most of these immigrants (then, now) are obliged to work excruciating hours doing horrific work at woeful wages, and the only thing making it tolerable is that it is (usually) better than the alternative.

The proposition that any of us, regardless of who we are and whatever our initial station in life can, with the correct combination of industry, initiative and luck, ascend to a status of wealth festers as one of the more powerful, if poisonous fictions our country has produced. More, it is not merely promulgated but actively inculcated: history books and sentimental movies tend to tout the exceedingly rare rags-to-riches allegory while ignoring, denying or conveniently dismissing the typical reality, which is that the working poor are likely to remain exactly where they are. In fact, as we’ve seen in the last few decades, this is more—not less—the case in a political and cultural system that has steadily ensured that those who have more will get more, usually directly at the expense of those who have little.

This dichotomy between what we see on screens or inside magazines is not new, but commercials, ads and websites telling us how can be or who we should be are incalculably more prevalent and powerful in today’s world. Thus, the same types of alienating forces that the lonely, angry and outcast citizens have historically been subject to are alarmingly more intense in a 24/7 info-tainment unreality. Which brings us to the Republicans in general and the Tea Party in particular. The GOP has auto-piloted the Horatio Alger story to the extent that counties receiving the most federal aid will lash out most indignantly (if ignorantly) about the perils of “big government”. Indeed, generation after generation illustrates that those who benefit most from higher taxes (and who have the least likelihood of ascending to the upper tax brackets) are consistently fanatical about keeping taxes low for those who earn the most. There are an unfortunate number of tragedies we commit as Americans, but this is one of the more profound examples.

Someday A Real Rain Will Come…

Loneliness has followed me my whole life…there’s no escape. I’m God’s lonely man.

One of the more devastatingly poignant (or poignantly devastating) scenes in Taxi Driver occurs when Travis sits, silently in his apartment, watching the attractive and fashionable folks dancing on TV. Alone in his sweltering studio walk-up, the look on his face—at once longing, frustrated and confused—reveals the hastening recognition that he will never attain the easy, if superficial, security he sees on the screen. With subtlety and lack of sentimentality (the script is actually somewhat slight, which only underscores the astonishing work De Niro turns in), we see that Bickle is the ultimate loner, an underground entity who is as much insect as human, scurrying in and out of his pointless and preordained routine.

Add to this the fact that he is a veteran, perhaps the most overlooked, yet prescient touch of the film (flash forward thirty-plus years to see how we treat our soldiers when they return from the wars we ask them to fight; little coincidence that it’s the same party that salutes the flag most tearfully who are quickest to slash and burn the programs designed to provide physical—and especially mental—assistance). The result of these circumstances and lack of choices provide us, circa 1976, with a character sketch of someone who, if one thing leads to the next, might opt for a more sociopathic solution to his problems. Importantly, Bickle is not revealed as a man destined to snap; while he is far from blameless for his predicament, he is very much a casualty of the world (the real one and the manufactured one) that he can’t master but must exist in. Therefore when he decides “my whole life is pointed in one direction…there never has been any choice for me”, it is both a confession and a one-man verdict, his indictment against this world.

There is some irony, looking back on the candidate he turns his grim attention toward: Palantine, running under the campaign slogan “We Are The People”, seems to espouse a very optimistic (if clichéd) message. (Further irony in that this notion of a collective synergy only amplifies Bickle’s isolation.) Imagine all of these elements contributing to Bickle’s disintegration placed in the context of our contemporary culture, with venom being spewed 24/7 by charlatans and circus clowns like Beck, O’Riley and Palin. Imagine Travis Bickle watching Fox News each day. If you can, you may begin to see why the concern and loathing of the Tea Party movement had much more to do with what happened this week in Arizona and little to do with comically misspelled signs and morons telling the government to stay out of their Medicare.

Travis gets his guns after a frightening encounter in his cab (and having heard about the violence fellow drivers have suffered). Only after he feels himself finally out of options does he contemplate using his gun on an innocent person (and later, people). Even in 1976, this was sufficiently compelling commentary on the ease with which Americans get access to guns. Today, appallingly, gun laws are looser than ever (and—shocker!—one political party defends this madness with the same tenacity they bring to cutting taxes and eliminating federal aid programs) and instead of a lone madman with one round, we have the sickening spectacle of semi-automatic weapons. Flash forward to Columbine, Virginia Tech and Tucson.

It slowly comes into focus: it is easier, now, for more people (except perhaps the politicians and mainstream media, the two most culpable parties) to understand the calculus that made this weekend’s tragedy predictable and, perhaps, inevitable. There are and—as ass-covering TV talking heads remind us—always will be lunatics in our midst who will kill and maim others and there is little we can do (other than disarm them). That said, it is way too easy to suggest this was an ambivalent act with random victims: in the same state the cretinous Sarah Palin put gun-sights on in a map of “targets”. It’s not necessary to pile on Palin, no matter how much blood she has on her carefully manicured hands; it is every bit the supine and opportunistic media’s fault, since they have breathlessly provided this imbecile with a public platform every step of the way. Special disgust, certainly, must be reserved for the reprehensible propaganda machine at Fox News: that so many Americans receive their “information” (and/or marching orders) from these scavengers debases us all.

And so, while the GOP gleefully fed the ill-conceived ire of the Tea Party faithful, they continued to double down on the very things that have caused so many of these folks to feel genuine hardship. It would almost be comical, except for the immorality and the guns. If someone in a red (or blue) state wants to endorse candidates who blithely promise to increase the collective misery, one can only laugh—unless one can’t help but cry. But when we see these candidates urging “Second Amendment remedies”, we need not wring our hands and ask how we all share the blame. No, the bulk of the blame can easily be laid at the spit-shined shoes of the pied pipers leading these rats to the water’s edge. That, an older and/or more cynical observer might suggest, has always been the case. Except now these rats are packing heat and they don’t mind taking out as many of us as they can, smiling as they do it.

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A Dose Of Dennis Miller With An Ian Curtis Chaser

November 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I saw something the other night that really depressed me. It concerns a genius who, for a variety of reasons, could not maintain control. His implosion can be attributed to many of the usual ailments: self-doubt, self-loathing, self-aggrandizement, solipsism, projection, and a latent condition that medicine did little to ameliorate. Oh, and the presumptive intake of questionable substances probably didn’t help either. After some remarkable highs and a steady series of lows bordering on flatlines, he flamed out, career cut tragically and nonsensically short. It was incredibly tough viewing, but I hung in there and (barely) made it through.

And when Dennis Miller’s latest HBO special was over, I watched a movie about Ian Curtis.

More on that in a moment. First, let me attempt to articulate why I found myself –for the first and hopefully last time– actually giving my TV the finger. Boy has Dennis Miller left his lofty perch as one of the premier comedians (and minds) of his generation and careened down to the earth as a shambling cliché of craven opportunism, cynical hackery and anti-intellectualism the dishonesty of which is only exceeded by his shamelessness. And this is coming from a writer who already raised an R.I.P. on his career almost two years ago, begging the question: how much lower can you go than D.O.A.? The answer, alas, is: pretty fucking far. His latest routine, while having its moments (you would know –and be correct to– not take me seriously if I did not happily concede that the man is still capable of displaying wit and invoking laughs; he has a perspicacity that does not dissipate overnight; he is not quite the post-lobotomized Randall P. McMurphy from Cuckoo’s Nest but damn is he headed there at twice the speed of sense), is so bogged down by misplaced bile and blame-the-victim banality, the bright spots are sufficiently shit-stained that you just want to look away, after covering your nose and checking the soles of your shoes.

Remember This Guy? Neither Does Dennis Miller

When I wrote my review of his then-recent collection of HBO specials (in early 2009), I figured Miller had gone about as low as a once-sentient citizen could go, and perhaps once the economy revealed itself to be the bad hairpiece it was, even a suspiciously hirsute fellow like Dennis would see the error of his ways and maybe, maybe even offer up a mea culpa of sorts. Not a chance. He has double…no, tripled down, and he not only has no regrets about the Dubya debacle, it’s quite clear that he misses the man whose boots he used to lick on Fox News. Perhaps I should not be surprised by this (and I reckon I wasn’t) but it’s a testament to how much I once respected Miller that I can’t help being disappointed.

Here is how on-target his present-day political acumen is: he ridicules the health care legislation (“Obamacare” apparently is the agreed-upon G.O.P. code-word to denigrate the initiative) by suggesting that with young adults (some may still call them kids) allowed to remain on their parents’ health plans for a few more years (while they are busy looking for the jobs that don’t exist), we are turning this country into a bunch of medical marijuana smoking slackers. Aside from the inanity of this observation, I wanted to tell Miller it was still a tad too soon to be auditioning for Andy Rooney’s role as out-of-touch-asshole Emeritus. His riff on Guantanamo (“what’s the problem? it works!”), aside from being factually wrong, morally repugnant and farcical on purely logical levels, is on par with the Fox News ethos: hold your breath, put potato chips in your ears and, well godamnit, GO U.S.A.!

He continues to ridicule global warming (“hey, this means I can play golf in December”, etc.) and shrugs off the national debt (which, obviously, Obamacare and neither voodoo economics nor those moderately expensive –and, naturally unmentioned– wars has wrought) by saying “Hey, we’re America: let’s just not pay it!” For a man who is ostensibly concerned about the next generation being a bunch of Bill and Ted’s on a government-sponsored not-so-excellent adventure, he sure sounds like a man whose mind has been hijacked by Keanu Reeves. In a particularly grotesque bit of starstruck sycophancy disguised as an anecdote, he rambles on about getting to meet the great Frank Sinatra. Ironically, this is in many ways as revealing as the political shtick: at this point in time even the most sentimental saps who love the Old Blue Eyes legend –as well as his music– can acknowledge that the man himself was a bigoted, bullying shmuck. What then does it say about someone who is already famous drooling over the opportunity to spend time with the then-senile and increasingly misanthropic crooner? Maybe they had the same scalp surgeon. Or perhaps it has something to do with getting old and washed up and increasingly falling back on jingoism and nostalgia for the good old days when white bread was what you ate and who you ate with.

Remember This Guy? Neither Does Dennis Miller

Here is a Cliffs Notes overview of my lengthy, aforementioned assessment from two years ago:

Miller was never a liberal; he ridiculed pomposity and idiocy which is always abundantly represented on both sides of the political spectrum. Of course, he had a particular penchant for calling out the bullying tactics of media blowhards and the baser instincts (fear, power) that the most cynical politicians prey upon, so it’s impossible to ignore the sad irony of seeing him prostrate himself (for a paycheck?) at the fortress of Pomposity and Idiocy at Fox News. It certainly doesn’t make his old material any less funny; it just makes it a tad bittersweet to look at, all these years later.

The devolution was slow and increasingly brutal: by the time an HBO special from ’96 rolls around, he spends an insufferable chunk of time lambasting the ACLU and has little to say about politicians or the powerful. At one point he declares “I’m looking to make a little bread, build a wall, take care of my loved ones…and stay out of the crosshairs.” Die-hard Dennis Miller fans may have to Windex off their LCD screens (if they ever see) that one. By 2003 it was all-ugly all-the time: (when) he starts in on the Middle East…things begin to derail as the stand-up turns into an occasionally ugly right-wing rant. As America was about to deploy forces to Iraq Miller, like many like-minded citizens of the time, is blasé to the point of cockiness. He not only returns to the hackneyed ad hominem toward the French, he boasts that once we’ve “won” in Iraq (quickly and decisively, obviously) the French will be sorry that they blew their chance at the spoils. It’s embarrassing. Miller actually pauses mid-performance to utter the words “I’d like to thank George Bush for allowing me to respect the American presidency again.” It is, as they say, to laugh—even if it’s for the wrong reasons.

Bottom line: at issue is not whether Dennis Miller, after 9/11, lost his mind and starting cheerleading for Bush, Cheney and the Iraq War (he did). It’s also not an outrage that, coincidentally or not, he is no longer near as nimble or gratifying as he was in his prime (he isn’t). What’s important to acknowledge is that, while his newer material is sorely lacking, when he was on his game, he was among the baddest—and brightest—stand-up comedians in the country.

All of which has to be the oddest segue ever into a discussion of Ian Curtis. If you are a Joy Division fan you probably caught Control when it first hit the screens (and streets) in 2007; if you still have not seen it, you should. If you are not a Joy Division fan, you should be. If you don’t believe me, believe this and this and especially this. 

If you are still not convinced, try this:

If you’re still not convinced, isn’t there a Dennis Miller special you should be watching?

Having just written in some detail about the sad, redemptory and mostly inscrutable life of Syd Barrett, it was impossible not to make several connections between these two extremely brilliant and deeply sensitive souls. Each of them gave us a lifetime of work in the most abbreviated artistic lives, and each was gone from the scene before most folks ever had a chance to catch up to them. Arguably, many folks are still struggling to keep pace with what they did more than thirty and forty years ago, respectively. And while there is no question that a cult of personality is inevitable when charismatic rock stars die early (Hendrix, Joplin, Holly and Stevie Ray), particularly if they die by their own hand (Cobain, Curtis and, to varying extents, Morrison, Moon and Bonham), there is still a difference between the ones who left too soon and those who may have changed the world –even more than they already did– had they managed to stick it out. Therefore, envisioning what Ian Curtis may have offered in the ’80s and beyond is…difficult. Far be it from me to fan the facile flames of myth-making, but Ian Curtis has more in common with Syd Barrett than a handful of albums that continue to influence musicians today.

Think about it: what would Syd’s music have sounded like in the ’70s? (And after?) I’m not suggesting or implying it wouldn’t have sounded incredible, but I also wonder. And I don’t think his enigmatic end justified the means, but I’m content not only with the handful of documents he did leave behind, but the import they accrue considering a would-be career cut off so bluntly. Likewise, was there anything else for Ian Curtis to prove? Changing the face of music (listen to these songs: even if you have never listened to a Joy Division song, if you were alive in the ’80s and have had ears the last two decades you’ve heard them channeled through the myriad acts who’ve absorbed them like oxygen) was, arguably, enough and quite well done for a two-year tenure. If Piper At The Gates of Dawn and Unknown Pleasures are not on the short list of all-time great debut albums nobody else belongs in the debate.

Considering the legacy of Syd Barrett, I suggested the following:

There was so much more for Syd to achieve… or was there? Do we dare ask for or expect more from any artist who gave so much? Is it both selfish and short-sighted to wonder what he may have achieved in the ‘70s and beyond when we consider what he’d already done? Did Syd pay the ultimate price for fame and artistic immortality?

I could have said the exact same thing about Ian Curtis. Watching the movie (and I also strongly encourage anyone who is interested in Joy Division, or that era in general, to check out the magnificent 24 Hour Party People, featuring the incomparable Steve Coogan), I mostly felt a tremendous sadness. Before he was an artist he was a father, a husband and a human being. On all of those levels, even (or especially) the prospects of fortune and fame could not quell the desperate gloom he struggled to keep at bay. (His offstage and onstage epileptic seizures are the stuff of Dostoyevesky, figuratively and literally.) It makes your heart hurt, and then the music helps heal you; if only it could have healed them.

Finally, I want to resist the urge, but since I also just wrote at some length about Bill Hicks, I can’t help myself. Comparing and contrasting the lives and careers of Ian Curtis and Dennis Miller on the same day goes beyond cheap irony and seems to suggest a sardonic reiteration of artistic inequity, as it’s tended to play out past and present: the great ones are too often hampered (and/or inspired) by their fragility and are inexorably broken by the world, their pieces an ineffable legacy we are left to ponder; the hacks thrive once they suicide their souls and feed their flesh, growing old and obscene by eating their unjust desserts, applauded all the way by the unreflective Hoi polloi.

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Rush Limbaugh: Don’t Hate The Player, Hate The Game

January 14, 2010 By 1 Comment

Beneath contempt? Of course.

Shameless? Obviously.

A ludicrous, cowardly ass clown? Clearly.

A bullying blowhard? Yup.

A self-aggrandizing huckster who sells snake piss to imbelices and laughs all the way to his drug dealer? You know this.

Are we really surprised by his latest lowering of the bar?

I’m certainly not.

(Which isn’t to say I almost caught myself shaking my head, not quite in disbelief but in a kind of awed amusement: there he goes again. Seriously, when you not only live in the slimy detritus of talk-radio sewage, but make a (very remunerative) living doing so, there is literally no bottom, nowhere further to sink. Indeed, the gig almost necessitates a blind, ceaseless strain to burrow further and deeper, getting to darker places. In other words, Rush’s latest outrage is merely another day at the office.)

For centuries, Punch and Judy shows were all the rage (literally). Our appetite for self-destruction is neither new nor novel; we’ve been perfecting ways to taste the pain for as long as we’ve been upright (and before that we swung from trees throwing shit at each other; before that we crawled in the primordial ooze and threw up on one another). The closest thing we have to these spectacles today is Reality TV and Talk Radio. While some humiliation, desperation and a whole lot of narcissism makes the Reality TV carousel go round, there is an element of selfishness that cuts the inexorable humiliation. In other words, it’s an equal opportunity farce: it’s like gambling or playing the lottery, chances are decent you’ll gain nothing, and the rules could not be clearer. Talk radio, on the other hand (as has been discussed and documented many million times by critics more astute –and interested– than myself) is predicated upon an uneven playing field. The prophets of fury and despair (like so many religious hucksters) offer the illusion of solidarity to their disenfranchised followers. By preying upon their real (or affected) sense of dispossession, these self-declared saviors offer solace by validating the ignorance, prejudices and pains of their flock.

We see it with Limbaugh, we see it with Glenn Beck and we’ll see plenty more of it from Sarah Palin now that she has fulfilled her destiny by getting a platform on Fox News — the purest source of propaganda money can buy.

So what?

Should we protest (and play right into his hands) Limbaugh? Of course not, that will only empower him and augment the sanctimony of his shtick. It’s not often you can call someone a vampire and a whore at the same time, but more than anyone in modern times, Limbaugh is the worst possible combination of everything we despise in humanity. And here is the thing, unlike virtually all the other vermin who fatten their wallets by fomenting unrighteous indignation, there is not a single redeeming value in anything this clownish swine says or does. Nada.

But this was all abundantly obvious almost two full decades ago.

If you want to get fired up, if you really want to feel frightened, consider the fact that Rush’s ratings will skyrocket after today’s shitstorm. Think about that. And be truly mortified for where we are, as Americans. What is most repugnant, when you stop and contemplate it, is that there would be even a single person who might hear Limbaugh’s calculated and cynical hogwash and agree. Or, worse, feel inspired by the way their chosen one brings the hate. The plain, putrid reality is that there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, who do. And will.

Just like there are tons of people who will walk over rusty glass for Sarah Palin. If Limbaugh or Palin were offering these people (the bigots, the uneducated, the willfully ignorant, the impotent imbeciles, as well as the doctors, lawyers, teachers and parents) anything –money, peace, progress, hope– it would just be politics as usual. Or as they used to say, That’s Entertainment.

But the fact of the matter is, nothing is being offered. And the worst part of the whole deal is that the most (superficially) faithful and dedicated believers are being sold a bill of goods that is straight-up nihilism. While Fox News gets their Fascist on, and Rush gorges his fat ass on profitable cynicism, these has-beens and never-will-be’s find the voice that never answers them in church, or at the office, or in their cars, or in the bedroom or –worst of all– in their own dark and empty heads when the lights go out.

It is, and always has been, a game. Let’s stop laughing at it (or ignoring it) and start hating it back. 

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Camille Paglia Needs an Enema

April 8, 2009 By 1 Comment

I have a confession to make.

I read Camille Paglia.

Of course, being a grad student in the early ’90s, it was impossible to avoid Paglia in the Cultural Studies circles. Most of us regarded Paglia’s work the way one later considers a case of chicken pox: it’s something you suffer through and appreciate never again having to endure. With chicken pox, you can’t contract the virus a second time, even if you tried. With Paglia, all you need do is avert your eyes if you stumble upon something she has written. And I certainly have not purchased, much less read, anything she has printed since my Feminist Literature seminar in ’93.

However, as an avid reader of Salon.com, I can’t help but notice she (somehow, inexplicably) remains a contributor to the site, weighing in once a month with her invariably repetitious, insipid pronouncements. And like the tortured narrator unable to overcome his perverse compulsions in the Edgar Allen Poe story, I am incapable of resisting. Each time I click on that link I know I am, to quote Poe’s narrator, “committing…a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it–if such a thing were possible–even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.”

But here’s the thing: despite the platitudes, the incessant self-referencing aggrandizement, the myopic appraisals of modern society, the deliriously cockeyed political discourse, the ravenous appetite for Cliche, I return. Once a month some folks see the moon and turn into werewolves; others are drawn inexorably toward salon.com. Not to worry, there will be no defense of Paglia’s prose or even an ironic attempt to pass this off as an awkward case of slumming, kind of the way Patrick Bateman cleverly tries to rehabilitate Phil Collins and Huey Lewis in American Psycho. No, I read the monthly articles for one simple reason: they are a delivery device for the letters. Each time out, one suffers through (with several laugh-out-loud moments guaranteed) the relatively short piece and is rewarded with pages upon pages of responses which are amusing, vitriolic and often unassailably accurate. And the really hilarious ones come from those who try to defend Camille. Check it out some time.

Give Paglia credit for this much: she seems to comprehend what is at stake and subsequently lowers the bar each month. Each time you think, “Wow, did she really just defend Rush Limbaugh while invoking, for the tenth time in a row, Vamps and Tramps?” Or, “no way she just raved about Sarah Palin while bashing, for the tenth time in a row, the feminist establishment?” But she did. Yes, she did. This month’s installment is another beauty, wherein Paglia (shockingly) defends Limbaugh (and not just the man himself or the clownish concept of his fame, but Limbaugh’s disgusting deployment of the “Barack the Magic Negro” song), and she reiterates her bizarre and inexplicable lionization of the laughable Sarah Palin.

Month in, month out, the pattern is predictable: Paglia remains a solipsistic hyena who believes she is shaking things up by obsessing about the worst tendencies of liberals and holding them up as the standard. She then doubles down by being audacious enough to rationalize some of the more insidious aspects of the right wing which she valorizes as salt of the earth Americana. In other words, she manages to embrace cliches, not comprehend the cliches she espouses, and in the process manages to be something worse than a caricature.

The result? A ceaselessly chattering champion of intellectual refuse like Rush Limbaugh, Madonna and The Titanic who is myopic enough to think she’s operating outside the system. It amounts to speaking loudly from inside a comfortable box and Paglia continues to make a career out of it. Not unlike Fox News, she thinks her view is balanced because…she says it is balanced. Unlike Fox News, one wonders if she really does believe the shit she shovels onto the screen.

Not much has changed since 1991, when the inimitable Molly Ivins bludgeoned Paglia with this hysterically funny demolition. The piece was an instant classic: it is worth reading, and retaining. Any part of it is quotable, but here is the spot where Ivins sticks in the stiletto:

What we have here, fellow citizens, is a crassly egocentric, raving twit. The Norman Podhoretz of our gender. That this woman is actually taken seriously as a thinker in New York intellectual circles is a clear sign of decadence, decay, and hopeless pinheadedness. Has no one in the nation’s intellectual capital the background and ability to see through a web of categorical assertions?

I concur. So do many other people. (Read the letters!) So why would Salon keep such a polarizing blowhard employed? Um, I am not an expert in the business side of these types of matters, but I suspect it is precisely because…she is a polarizing blowhard. She opens her mouth (figuratively speaking) and that stuff comes out (figuratively speaking) and it draws the flies (figuratively speaking). That is good business.

In sum, Camille Paglia is so full of shit she needs an enema. And yet, while our world would not be less full, it would be less funny without her. Rave on, say I.

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