Why does life have to be so complicated? Keith Olbermann has been suspended from MSNBC indefinitely for donating to the campaigns of Democratic candidates. Taken at face value, it would seem to be an egregious violation of Mr. Olbermann's rights. I'm free to donate to Republican candidates even though my union always endorses Democratic candidates. No biggie. Not that I ever would, mind you.
The problem is that Keith is a member of the press. The press is supposed to be impartial and tell all sides of the story, n'est pas? Well, that's what we've always been told at least. But it seems somewhere in the 90's the rule book was rewritten. Now we chose to get our news from he or she that supports our own political beliefs. What's the harm in that? If I'm a liberal, I tune in to Keith's Countdown and listen to his rants against everyone from George Bush to Rupert Murdock.
And if that offends me, I can turn to FOX News and listen to the Huckabees and O'Reillys of the world spewing their hatred for anyone not old and white. That's perfectly fine. See, equal opportunity. The liberals have their havens and the conservatives have theirs. Sure, it's not the traditional idea of equal, unbiased coverage, but it's basically the same idea, right?
WRONG! What this new media polarization has left out is...The Undecided Voter. The Moderate. The Independent. I, being a registered Democrat, would of course like more of those wishy-washy flip-floppers to tune into MSNBC to hear the news from Keith, Rachel, and Chris rather than hearing the evil messages of Bill and Mike. But the truth is, when Mr. or Mrs. wishy-washy tunes in to what they think is unbiased news, they are likely to be swayed based on the station his or her boob tube is tuned in to.
But maybe the wishy-washy flip-floppers have a point. Maybe we should take each individual circumstance and candidate as a completely separate situation and realize that, at times, both sides have good points. And in such cases, it seems to me, that both sides are wrong.
Should taxes be as low as possible and the government let us live our lives? Yup.
Should programs be in place for those who need them and health care be provided as a right, not a privilege? Yup.
But, sadly, you can't butter the bread on both sides without making a mess. Something's gotta give. This is why I have to ask, why does life have to be so complicated? Do evil people sometimes deserve to die in my mind? Probably. Is it somehow hypocritical, icky, and immoral to kill someone even if he or she did commit unspeakable acts? Um, yeah. I think so. Why can't the world realize that there's no clear-cut answer in any case. We all have our opinions on what's the right way to live, but who knows for sure? Nobody.
I'm left wondering what to do with my political life. I used to be an Independent, but I always voted for the Democrat, so it seemed like I was a Democrat. But I sometimes wonder if I'm wrong. Then I think, what I'm really trying to decide is what politicians I agree with--the Dems or Repubs. Guess what. It's neither. What I'm realizing is that NO politician is truly a representative of my ideals. What we do in this country--no, in this world--is elect those who want to be elected; that is, we give power to those who are not looking out for our best interests but who simply want power. That's why they run. They're not me. They don't represent me. They're greedy, power-hungry turds. I wouldn't want to "have a beer" with any of these uptight scum bags.
I am, in a small way, part of the press myself now. I advise a high school newsmagazine. Through an amazing turn of events, my editor-in-chief, a brilliant young lady, had the opportunity to interview both Tom Foley (Republican candidate for governor of CT) and Dan Malloy (Democratic candidate for the same office) in consecutive months. After getting to hear their conversations with her, I decided they were both full of shit up to their eyeballs. In fact, not only did I get the impression they weren't in it for the right reasons, I got the impression that neither of them put much thought into their own beliefs. That their beliefs weren't theirs to begin with. They don't even know what they stand for. They stand for either a donkey or an elephant and that's about it. They were pawns of an ideology they'd been spoon fed since they chose one of only two paths offered to them as young men.
Even in a relaxed conversation with a 17 year-old, the cliches were shooting around the room left and right. They were programmed machines. By whom, I don't know. It's like archetypes in literature. I feel like each Republican candidate for any office is just another Reagan and any Democrat is Franklin Roosevelt 2.0. We just keep hearing different packagings of "Trickle Down Economics" and "New Deals" over-and-over and none of it works a damn. WTF.
So what does that leave us? Nothing. We might as well define ourselves as one side or another and vote straight down party lines because that's the only choice we have. All Democratic politicians are the same and so are all Republicans. They all fall in line. All with the same message. No new ideas. No thinking outside the box. No thinking at all. The truth is, the minds that are making the decisions aren't qualified--they were simply the people that wanted the power, so they ran. They erased everything that made them an individual and became Reagan or Roosevelt just so they could be the head of something. Depressing. Therefore, we might as well separate our news coverage. There's no in between.
Until this world puts those in office who are not seeking office (a logical impossibility), we are doomed. No hope. Truth is, I have more faith in my journalism class under its current structure to run this country than all the jokers plodding around trying to scrape up a little more power in Washington and every state and local government combined. And my guys and gals are only high school students. But at least their hearts are in the right place, and their minds are free of corruption. They believe in what they believe in, not what they had to believe in to gain power.
So, Olbermann, a Teddy Roosevelt, gave some money to a few other Teddy Roosevelts. Not a big deal. Certainly, not a new deal. So what if all the FOX News Reagan clones give to other Reagan clones. They're all the same. All we need is one Republican and one Democrat sitting in one room together to make all the decisions for the entire world and the results would be the same. Nothing would happen.
I'm too old and too indocrinated into the system to stop now. I'll keep voting Democrat hoping I can get more Roosevelts in power than Reagans. But maybe the new generation can find a way to create a revolution that leads to leadership that deserves it, not leadership that simply wants it. Fat chance. The system has been good to Reagans and Roosevelts and they will fight to keep it the same, even if they don't understand why.
Maybe a true independent will run for president some day and win--then we can have three archetypes in the room making decisions, a tie breaker. Maybe then, only then, will anything get done--for better or worse.
Oh, and MSNBC, let Keith back on the air. He's entertaining.
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Did He Just Say Queynte?
I was in class discussing sex and naked girls with my students...
Wait a second. What was that? I should be fired? I'm a sick pervert? Maybe. But not because of what was happening in class that day.
Don't blame me. Blame Arthur Miller.
See, Mr. Miller's classic play The Crucible begins with a bunch of teenage girls (and younger) dancing in the woods like a bunch of, well, teenagers. One plump little sexpot Puritan, Mercy Lewis, is taken by the Barbados spirit (maybe she thought Tituba was from Cancun) and strips down to her birthday suit. Girls Gone Wild: Salem Style.
The kicker is that one of the girls, Abigail Williams, was drinking blood in order to cast a spell to kill Goody Proctor, the wife of the man twice her age that was knocking boots with her behind the barn "where his beasts are bedded." As she delivers the line (well, as the student reading her part delivers the line) "...sweated like a stallion whenever I came near" the class chuckles and a few cat-calls go up from the crowd. I chuckle, too, playing up the soap opera-i-ness of the whole thing. At this point, they are hooked and are actually upset that class is about to end. Score one for Mr. Teacher Dude.
When I have a chance to reflect later in the afternoon, on the drive home, I realize something. I have an epiphany. All of the literature schools force students to read was originally written for adults. Who was Fitzgerald's target audience? Poe's? They were writing for adults. For literary types. Not a single thing I will teach this year was designed with young adults in mind. Furthermore, most of it has been, or could have been, banned in districts throughout the United States.
Let's look at the facts. The Crucible is edgy. People are hanged until they're all dead and stuff! WTF? A thirty-something is banging a teenage girl (who was actually 12 if we look at the true history of the whole debacle) for crying out loud! But it's literature, so it's okay.*
In preparation for The Crucible we read Cotton Mathers's "Wonders of the Invisible World," which discusses a sore "breeding" in a man's groin that has to be lanced by a doctor. "Several gallons of corruption" pour out of another of his sores once cut. This is graphic. This is gross. This is STDs, dude! But it's literature, so it's okay.
What about "The Masque of the Red Death?" It's a total blood-bath! A thousand "light-hearted" friends lie dead in the "blood bedewed halls of their revel." Picture the morning dew drenching the grass. Then, picture the dew is blood drenching a hallway of a castle in the same way. Move over Freddy Krueger, make room for Edgar Allan Poe's Read Death Dude of Doom! This is gratuitous gore the likes the big screen has never seen. But it's literature, so it's okay.
How about the homo-erotic, racist, violent classic, The Great Gatsby. Come on. If Nick wasn't a flamer, than I'm a Vermicious Knid. Look at the language: "groaning down the elevator," "keep your hands off the lever." After a break in the text indicating time has passed, Nick leaves some dude he just met at a party in his underpants in bed, and nobody says a damn thing. Of course Nick thinks Gatsby is "worth the whole damn bunch put together." He wants his sexy Gatsby body! If Gatsby hadn't been shot (did I mention the violence), and Nick had gone over that afternoon for a swim, what might have happened? Gatsby and his pink suite on the rebound. Nick jaded by the immorality of the East. A match made in homo-heaven. Sam Waterston breaks out some cuffs from the now dismantled set of Law and Order and dangles them in front of Robert Redford's taught face wearing that sexy, striped swim suit. You do the math. But it's literature, so it's okay.
Finally, we end with The Catcher in the Rye. I actually start the unit by listing all the scandalous topics covered in the book on the board, not telling them why they're up there until a half hour or so into class. Nothing makes a teen want to read a book more than writing "kinky sex acts in a hotel," giving them a good thirty minutes to contemplate how that can possibly be written on a whiteboard in an English class, then telling them that IT'S IN THE BOOK. Holden talks about "perverty things," engages a prostitute, contemplates suicide, and discusses the pros and cons of spitting water "or something" in a girl's face, and in most schools, it's just peachy keen. Why? You should be all over this by now. It's literature, so it's okay.
None of this literature was meant for "children" when it was written. And this is just a small sample of what is read in high school--just the junior year. Throw in Chaucer and Shakespeare, and we're talking real perversion. Chaucer's got a cock, a chick farting on a dude, and a woman being grabbed by the "queynte," which loosely translate to the mother of all swear words (according to most woman)--C U Next Tuesday! Can you imagine! All okay. All literature. Go figure.
So it strikes me funny in that "do we ever even think about what the hell we are really doing on this planet anyway" kind of way that parents get all frothy at the mouth about some titles being marketed toward teens, when the schools their kids attend are making them read ADULT titles with all kinds of naughtiness drenching the pages. (Along with who knows what else.)
What's the point, you ask? I'm not exactly sure. I just know that it would be way super cool to see what's being taught in schools in 100 years. 200 years. Will adult books that are interesting to teens like Prep and Election be taught in schools as "the canon" while YA novels that are equally as well-written and literary are being shunned?
Thanks to that pesky Mayan calendar, we may never know.
*Literature is defined by dictionary.com as...
WTF?!?!?
Wait a second. What was that? I should be fired? I'm a sick pervert? Maybe. But not because of what was happening in class that day.
Don't blame me. Blame Arthur Miller.
See, Mr. Miller's classic play The Crucible begins with a bunch of teenage girls (and younger) dancing in the woods like a bunch of, well, teenagers. One plump little sexpot Puritan, Mercy Lewis, is taken by the Barbados spirit (maybe she thought Tituba was from Cancun) and strips down to her birthday suit. Girls Gone Wild: Salem Style.
The kicker is that one of the girls, Abigail Williams, was drinking blood in order to cast a spell to kill Goody Proctor, the wife of the man twice her age that was knocking boots with her behind the barn "where his beasts are bedded." As she delivers the line (well, as the student reading her part delivers the line) "...sweated like a stallion whenever I came near" the class chuckles and a few cat-calls go up from the crowd. I chuckle, too, playing up the soap opera-i-ness of the whole thing. At this point, they are hooked and are actually upset that class is about to end. Score one for Mr. Teacher Dude.
When I have a chance to reflect later in the afternoon, on the drive home, I realize something. I have an epiphany. All of the literature schools force students to read was originally written for adults. Who was Fitzgerald's target audience? Poe's? They were writing for adults. For literary types. Not a single thing I will teach this year was designed with young adults in mind. Furthermore, most of it has been, or could have been, banned in districts throughout the United States.
Let's look at the facts. The Crucible is edgy. People are hanged until they're all dead and stuff! WTF? A thirty-something is banging a teenage girl (who was actually 12 if we look at the true history of the whole debacle) for crying out loud! But it's literature, so it's okay.*
In preparation for The Crucible we read Cotton Mathers's "Wonders of the Invisible World," which discusses a sore "breeding" in a man's groin that has to be lanced by a doctor. "Several gallons of corruption" pour out of another of his sores once cut. This is graphic. This is gross. This is STDs, dude! But it's literature, so it's okay.
What about "The Masque of the Red Death?" It's a total blood-bath! A thousand "light-hearted" friends lie dead in the "blood bedewed halls of their revel." Picture the morning dew drenching the grass. Then, picture the dew is blood drenching a hallway of a castle in the same way. Move over Freddy Krueger, make room for Edgar Allan Poe's Read Death Dude of Doom! This is gratuitous gore the likes the big screen has never seen. But it's literature, so it's okay.
How about the homo-erotic, racist, violent classic, The Great Gatsby. Come on. If Nick wasn't a flamer, than I'm a Vermicious Knid. Look at the language: "groaning down the elevator," "keep your hands off the lever." After a break in the text indicating time has passed, Nick leaves some dude he just met at a party in his underpants in bed, and nobody says a damn thing. Of course Nick thinks Gatsby is "worth the whole damn bunch put together." He wants his sexy Gatsby body! If Gatsby hadn't been shot (did I mention the violence), and Nick had gone over that afternoon for a swim, what might have happened? Gatsby and his pink suite on the rebound. Nick jaded by the immorality of the East. A match made in homo-heaven. Sam Waterston breaks out some cuffs from the now dismantled set of Law and Order and dangles them in front of Robert Redford's taught face wearing that sexy, striped swim suit. You do the math. But it's literature, so it's okay.
Finally, we end with The Catcher in the Rye. I actually start the unit by listing all the scandalous topics covered in the book on the board, not telling them why they're up there until a half hour or so into class. Nothing makes a teen want to read a book more than writing "kinky sex acts in a hotel," giving them a good thirty minutes to contemplate how that can possibly be written on a whiteboard in an English class, then telling them that IT'S IN THE BOOK. Holden talks about "perverty things," engages a prostitute, contemplates suicide, and discusses the pros and cons of spitting water "or something" in a girl's face, and in most schools, it's just peachy keen. Why? You should be all over this by now. It's literature, so it's okay.
None of this literature was meant for "children" when it was written. And this is just a small sample of what is read in high school--just the junior year. Throw in Chaucer and Shakespeare, and we're talking real perversion. Chaucer's got a cock, a chick farting on a dude, and a woman being grabbed by the "queynte," which loosely translate to the mother of all swear words (according to most woman)--C U Next Tuesday! Can you imagine! All okay. All literature. Go figure.
So it strikes me funny in that "do we ever even think about what the hell we are really doing on this planet anyway" kind of way that parents get all frothy at the mouth about some titles being marketed toward teens, when the schools their kids attend are making them read ADULT titles with all kinds of naughtiness drenching the pages. (Along with who knows what else.)
What's the point, you ask? I'm not exactly sure. I just know that it would be way super cool to see what's being taught in schools in 100 years. 200 years. Will adult books that are interesting to teens like Prep and Election be taught in schools as "the canon" while YA novels that are equally as well-written and literary are being shunned?
Thanks to that pesky Mayan calendar, we may never know.
*Literature is defined by dictionary.com as...
1.
writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristic or essential features, as poetry, novels, history, biography, and essays.
2.
the entire body of writings of a specific language, period, people, etc.: the literature of England.
3.
the writings dealing with a particular subject: the literature of ornithology.
4.
the profession of a writer or author.
5.
literary work or production.
6.
any kind of printed material, as circulars, leaflets, or handbills: literature describing company products.
7.
Archaic . polite learning; literary culture; appreciation of letters and books.
WTF?!?!?
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Dear Borders
Really? One small bay of young adult? What, 15 books? Or was it 12? It wasn't even a section. It was a promo--blah, blah, here's the best in YA we want you to buy. Do you realize the hottest sellers (besides non-fiction with a major platform directed at the mindless reality show fanatics) are YA? Where do they store the YA, then? I didn't have any idea. I had to ask. What did Joe Borders, an average height, average weight, twenty-something male with average length hair, tell me? "Literature. It's mixed in."
Brilliant! Why didn't I think of that before? What gets teens more interested in reading a book than calling it literature? I mean, that's why high schools and colleges name courses things like "American literature," "British literature," Chicana lesbian literature," and "sex and the human body in literature." Students rejoice at the opportunity to read literature. They run through the streets with copies of Norton Anthologies of literature, waiving them in the air, proclaiming their admiration for literature. They sit home late at night lovingly running their fingers through 2.3 billion pages of onion skin pages unable to control their teen hormones. Seduced by lore and "thou"s and page long sentences, they eat, sleep, and even make love with literature under their arms, basking in the glow of literary literosity. Literature is "bomb." It is "legit." Yer!
NOT!
Truth is, there is no quicker way to turn off young adults than telling them they have to read literature. It's a burden. You could put Green Eggs and Ham in the literature section and some teenage guy will run over to the Cliff's Notes rack to try and find the Dr. Seuss edition. Actually, Borders, that would at least get you a sale. No, they'll go home and use Spark Notes or E-Cheat. What the hell are you thinking? You have a sci-fi section, a mystery section, a horror section, and even a philosophy and new age section. But not YA. You wouldn't want to make it easy for kids to find the only thing they want to read. Come to think of it, I didn't see a single young adult in the store. Hmmm... Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Of course, this is the former retail manager in me coming out. And I hate that bastard. Fuck him. But the teacher in me agrees with him. I want teens to read. Why not give them their own section, which would be undoubtedly huge considering the success of YA? They could walk in the store, head straight for their section--even put some bean-bag chairs and a rack of silly bands there to make them feel at home--buy what they want, and get out without having to contemplate the fact that they were in the same building with... ::shudders::
Condescendingadult (whispering): L.I.T.E.R.A.T.U.R.E.
Teen (sarcatically): I'm 16 years old. I can spell.
Of course, there is the writer in me. That butt-munch thinks it's kind of cool. It's a sign that YA is being accepted as a legitimate (not legit) art form in the writing community. After years of being pushed aside as dumbed-down versions of real literature (eww...the "L" word again), YA is getting it's due. It's being read by adults for crying out loud. It can be analyzed. It can have critical essays written about it. Ex-hippies with pony tails and tweed blazers with patches on the elbows can lead class discussion about it. We've made it! Look how far we've come! If mommy could see us now!
Okay, that's enough of that. The world knows YA is real. It's catching on. Do I need some huge, money-hungry conglomerate of a book store telling me that YA is real literature (I feel dirty). Screw Borders. Screw The Man. If YA's so legit in their eyes, so goddamn literary, why have the 15 book bay of extra-special, extra-legit books to force on us--none of which I have ever heard.* It's not like it was Mockingjay or something. What are you thinking Borders? Why are you so damn confused?
Or maybe I'm just being a whack-job. Maybe it just fit better that way. Maybe they didn't even put that much thought into it. Maybe I'm just venting because they made an assignment for my "individual aesthetic and process" course difficult on me. Maybe that's it.
But what if it's not? What. If. It's. Not.
*The italicized portion of this sentence, the part after the dash, was meant to be read in a snooty British accent.** I bet you wish you knew that while you were reading it.
**Scientists have yet to discover the un-snooty British accent.***
***That, however, does not mean it does not exist.
Brilliant! Why didn't I think of that before? What gets teens more interested in reading a book than calling it literature? I mean, that's why high schools and colleges name courses things like "American literature," "British literature," Chicana lesbian literature," and "sex and the human body in literature." Students rejoice at the opportunity to read literature. They run through the streets with copies of Norton Anthologies of literature, waiving them in the air, proclaiming their admiration for literature. They sit home late at night lovingly running their fingers through 2.3 billion pages of onion skin pages unable to control their teen hormones. Seduced by lore and "thou"s and page long sentences, they eat, sleep, and even make love with literature under their arms, basking in the glow of literary literosity. Literature is "bomb." It is "legit." Yer!
NOT!
Truth is, there is no quicker way to turn off young adults than telling them they have to read literature. It's a burden. You could put Green Eggs and Ham in the literature section and some teenage guy will run over to the Cliff's Notes rack to try and find the Dr. Seuss edition. Actually, Borders, that would at least get you a sale. No, they'll go home and use Spark Notes or E-Cheat. What the hell are you thinking? You have a sci-fi section, a mystery section, a horror section, and even a philosophy and new age section. But not YA. You wouldn't want to make it easy for kids to find the only thing they want to read. Come to think of it, I didn't see a single young adult in the store. Hmmm... Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Of course, this is the former retail manager in me coming out. And I hate that bastard. Fuck him. But the teacher in me agrees with him. I want teens to read. Why not give them their own section, which would be undoubtedly huge considering the success of YA? They could walk in the store, head straight for their section--even put some bean-bag chairs and a rack of silly bands there to make them feel at home--buy what they want, and get out without having to contemplate the fact that they were in the same building with... ::shudders::
Condescendingadult (whispering): L.I.T.E.R.A.T.U.R.E.
Teen (sarcatically): I'm 16 years old. I can spell.
Of course, there is the writer in me. That butt-munch thinks it's kind of cool. It's a sign that YA is being accepted as a legitimate (not legit) art form in the writing community. After years of being pushed aside as dumbed-down versions of real literature (eww...the "L" word again), YA is getting it's due. It's being read by adults for crying out loud. It can be analyzed. It can have critical essays written about it. Ex-hippies with pony tails and tweed blazers with patches on the elbows can lead class discussion about it. We've made it! Look how far we've come! If mommy could see us now!
Okay, that's enough of that. The world knows YA is real. It's catching on. Do I need some huge, money-hungry conglomerate of a book store telling me that YA is real literature (I feel dirty). Screw Borders. Screw The Man. If YA's so legit in their eyes, so goddamn literary, why have the 15 book bay of extra-special, extra-legit books to force on us--none of which I have ever heard.* It's not like it was Mockingjay or something. What are you thinking Borders? Why are you so damn confused?
Or maybe I'm just being a whack-job. Maybe it just fit better that way. Maybe they didn't even put that much thought into it. Maybe I'm just venting because they made an assignment for my "individual aesthetic and process" course difficult on me. Maybe that's it.
But what if it's not? What. If. It's. Not.
*The italicized portion of this sentence, the part after the dash, was meant to be read in a snooty British accent.** I bet you wish you knew that while you were reading it.
**Scientists have yet to discover the un-snooty British accent.***
***That, however, does not mean it does not exist.
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