It's Here! It's Here!

After a seemingly endless 72 hours, Surfergirl has finally issued "Jeopardrink!," the Ken Jennings drinking game. Click on the link and knock yourself (and your fellow players) out!

Note--Jeopardy! airs at 11:30 a.m. here, so unless I want a seventeen martini lunch, perhaps I should TiVo the last episode.

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Out of Time #1, or, What Becomes a Semi-Extinction Most?

Introduction
Permit me a quick inventory of items on my computer desk:  Computers, natch (two, both remarkably obsolete and shaky, as is everything I own); books (about fifty, the necessary dictionaries, a copy of the U.S. Constitution, favorite volumes of Stegner, Joyce, McCarthy, a few Hardy Boys books, etc.); pencils and pens (more than I'll ever use); a few framed photos; a pot of ivy that, despite my pleas still flirts with ending it all; a Slinky©; tapes of old radio shows (thirty, which I still haven't gotten around to going through and putting on a CD) and dinosaurs (seven).

Let us pause briefly to contemplate these dinosaurs. Logically, you'd think that my herd (I think that seven constitutes a "herd," don't you? Do dinosaurs even travel in a herd?) of toy thunderlizards is just another extension of my Peter Pan complex (see preceding Slinky© and children's books) but you'll be wrong. I rarely play with them, fer Pete's sakes. I surround myself with these little guys for a simple reason—I can relate to them better than any other animal— being, myself, a dinosaur.

No, I do not mean that I am covered in feathers or leathery skin. I am not afraid of comets (well I am, but not irrationally) nor am I waiting for my young to hatch from eggs. The dino-characteristic that I relate to best is the one at the end. At the doorstep of The End of the World, I contemplate their dino-thoughts as the sun began to turn a permanent shade of sunset: "Wow, that's weird...pretty cool though, nice color," thought the soon-to-be-extinct dinosaur. "...wonder why everybody is coughing...it's getting a little cold...oh, crap did I just step on another little dinosaur?"  You know what I'm talking about—the moment when the last Ichthyosaur or whatever rose from where he had been hanging around somewhere down deep (insert Nessie joke here) and stuck his head out of the roiling water and said, "Hey! Where the f@#! is everybody? C'mon guys, this isn't funny anymore..."

I'm that dino-guy.

Now, hold on. I'm sure that some part of your brain balked at my upper-case reference to The End of the World, and understandably so, what with all the "moon-black-as-sackcloth" shit wafting in the airwaves these days. However, I'm not really talking about the actual "end." For the religious among you, no seals have been broken. For the secular, there is no reference here to climate change, bacterial/viral peril or the unknown dangers of the microwave oven. By "The End of the World," I am only referring to a cultural sea change currently in progress. Again, I think I know what you're thinking—Mike's going to fuss at us with another discussion about abortion, gay marriage, The War, blahblahblah, bugeebugeebugee. And again, that's not what I'm talking about at all, (if you want to read something about a few of these topics please consult some of the other rants on this weblog).

Beyond whatever moral threats there may or may not be in the world, I simply want to take a short minute to address our cultural bandwidth: i.e, the speed at which my particular machine of culture runs and how difficult it is for me to cope with it at large. To beat this metaphor further, American Culture now runs in a DSL sort of manner while I'm a 1978 dial up with the suction cups for the receiver on top.

So, I stand and watch the rest of the country move toward a new beginning culturally toward which I cannot accompany them. In no way am I critical of the Shape of Things to Come, I'm simply standing on the platform waving the rest of you goodbye. Sorry, can't make the trip with you.

*Brief demonstrations of personal devolution:

Example 1) Television.
I'm unable to defend this position. I'll admit that I watch plenty, too much in fact. With network fare, the cheap and fast decision to stick with tabloid news and reality programming as entertainment usually makes me tired. The increased loads of LOUD commercials leaves me feeling like I'm biting on tinfoil.

But all of this goes far beyond the obscenity of Wifeswap, and a screaming car commerical immediately followed by another. With a little reflection, The Great Glass Teat can be found to be at the core of all these examples of why American culture is passing me by. Television's very nature, that of speed, sonic volume and (necessary) commercialism has singularly rendered all the previous past times obsolete. Those of you that are reading this that know me at all know I've worked for television, thus I understand the imperatives of the business, that is, commerce and commerce alone (see Rule Number One on sidebar).

Obviously, I don't mind paying for entertainment. I simply find the unrelenting quality of this pursuit unbearable. There are a few minutes of the day that I don't want to feel, well like my sole existence is as "consumer." As our attention spans shorten and our cultural shorthands become more homogenized, it is not our fault, nor is it television's really. Television changed the world and therefore, we must change with it. I'm just not ready.

Example 2) Baseball.
It's my favorite sport. How passé (Equivocation #33—I don't enjoy the sport for some tweedy, romanticized, psuedo-intellectual Geo. Willian reason. I have no desire to wax poetic about the great Kinsellaesque paradise found in a ballpark. I simply enjoy the sport for its lack of speed, contemplation of strategy and love of the color green. I happen to think its fun to watch). I love it spite the fact that Major League Baseball became the Keith Richards (It's dead but just hasn't realized it yet) of professional sports somewhere around 1994. I love hockey, tennis, college football and basketball, too.
But knowing that my sport trails NASCAR, the NFL and NBA in popularity and market share proves to me that this culture sped by. I've never believed that anything that went in a circle was a "sport" (track is the exception because it was there first), that athleticism in pro football gave way to simple endurance and performance-enhancing drug use and pro basketball is nothing but professional wrestling for non-rednecks. However, I'll admit that all three play better on TV than baseball does. If you enjoy these diversions, fine. I'll be over here in Jurassic Park reading a box score.

...In the coming weeks, I'll offer a few more examples of my icoloclastic stagnation...

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Raw fish, according to the Boston Globe

Go on, take the quiz. What's your color? I was purple (not a surprise to anyone).

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ADVISORY: The Vietnam Post

The Vietnam post is mired in difficult "academic-speak" and is unfortunately hard to read. The author recommends the first, fourth and fifth sections to save the reader's time.
Thanks for your patience.

--mlStephens

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Back to the Beginning...Our Own Private Vietnam

The following essay was the beginning to all that I think was psychotic in our national discourse. Please make a note in the 'comment' portion of the webblog if you want a list of the works cited in this essay.


"Vietnam made us all a little crazy."
—Former Weather Underground Member Brian Flanagan.



It will not go away.

Raid the trope toy chest to describe America's current relationship to our long-ended war in Vietnam—the wound or scar that won't heal; a terminal cancer; the stain that will not come out; socio-political obsessive-compulsive disorder; an elephant in the room that we've come to recognize; whatever. Twenty-nine years after the fall of Saigon, the images, insecurities and agencies left in that aftermath appear to be irremovable from America's politics, foreign relations, social dynamics, art or media.
It is one thing to admit that you finally see the elephant in the room--still another when the damned thing will not leave, —even when the workmen have cut a wall out to give him room for egress. Yet despite the pleas of American citizens, aged nineteen to ninety, the pachyderm we ignored for twenty-five years during the war (to the price of some 3.2 million lives ) and dismissed for an additional fifteen after conflict's end (to the peril of veterans and citizens of the world) still stands in the middle of the dance floor.
Disagree? Why then did the American media spend two weeks this April making sure their readers and viewers knew the differences between "battle ribbons" and "medals"? Why did hundreds of reporters from around the world spend a large part of their January resembling a mass of sugar-shocked children scrambling under a broken piñata as they scampered across Alabama looking for, of all things, the National Guard dental records of a sitting U.S. President? Why are American pundits and politicians unable to stop asking each other, "What did you do in the war?" What is it about this "police action" in Southeast Asia that we cannot extricate from our dialogue?
Allow me to suggest a brief exercise (it will take you less than a minute) to support my supposition that the agencies of Vietnam are utterly inescapable—Simply "Google" the name of that Iraqi prison—yes, that one—the name of the location of the abuse which has dominated headlines in international media for the last ten days. Add to it the location of the most remembered horror of the U.S. war in Southeast Asia. At this writing, the search for "Abu Ghraib" + "My Lai" garnered more than a thousand hits. Thus, writers reach for a metaphor for evil in combat.
However, this search elicited no mention of Nanking, Dresden or Krakow in this context. The firebombing of Tokyo and the rape rooms of Zagreb don't seem to leap into the interpretive imagination as readily as Lieutenant Calley and his murderous goons do. Arguably, while the images coming from Iraq are abhorrent, there are no photos streaming across CNN and Al Jazeera that depict babies and elderly women at the bottom of a pile of bodies in a ditch at Abu Ghraib. Nevertheless, the anxieties of our national consciousness (as occurs often in the Information Age) infiltrate narratives of events both here and abroad.
Vietnam is our shorthand and American or foreign writers don't even blink in using it, despite the possibility that the connection is apochryphal. This essay attempts to plumb the depths of national and international hysterias that not only separate the Vietnam Conflict from its historical predecessors, but also do not permit that war's separation from any conflict that follows it. In fact, I offer the notion that this cognitive dissonance interferes with the aforementioned cultural constructions that are far removed from the study of mere history.

* * *

Some blame denial for this inability to put Vietnam behind us. They claim that Americans are still actually pretending Jumbo is not standing in the midst of the dance floor (despite the fact that we wanted to boogie a long, long time ago and still cannot step out). This is to say that writers and readers are still ignoring the "realities" of history that Vietnam provides. Logically, the easiest tack in the pursuit of a palatable Vietnam exegesis would be historical in nature. However, it is likely that effective historical analysis with only thirty years between today and the end of the war is a hazardous exercise. In The World, the Text and the Critic, Edward Said poses the notion that the texts of a "conquering" nation cannot successfully be removed from the boundaries erected by their own agencies (56), and this hypothesis could easily be applied to historical views.
In elaboration of that idea, even outside of literary theory, some historians and journalists have posed the idea much of the historicized material concerning the Vietnam War is subject to the political motivations of specific organizations and interest groups. Tom Vallely, Founding Director of Harvard's Institute for International Development's Vietnam Program refers to contemporary writers like Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam as "industry writers." It is this 'industry' of Vietnam writing, unable to release itself from the anxieties and agencies of those too close to the war's questions, that "tries to regulate the debate," Valelly told a group of students at a 25 April lecture before the Kennedy School of Government, "We still live surrounded by falsehood, much of it our own invention." Again, the messengers are still too close to the subject to get away from message.
Is this primacy to the issues to the Vietnam War necessarily a negative thing? Certainly, if Barthes can distill an effective hypothesis from soap commercials (and still wear clean clothes), a liberal or conservative culture can divine historical clues in the face of these inherent social aporias of Vietnam. If this is possible, we encounter several theories concerning the errors of Vietnam that dominate discourse. One is the possibility of our society's indulgence in a citizen-based fallacy that still reflects the errors and hubris of 1945 through 1975. In her book, The March of Folly, popular historian Barbara Tuchman envisions the fallacies as twofold and as old as the Trojan War: a refusal to draw conclusions from the evidence at hand (i.e. 900 years of a land war in Indonesia had never garnered a victory for the invaders); and an "addiction to making decisions that were counterproductive to American Society [at large]" (234-5).
There is more than a little touch of library armchair psychology visible in the conclusions of Tuchman, a pervasive sense of cognitive dissonance and hysteria presiding over descriptions of events and decisions. Note the use of language: "repetition despite the lack of changing results"--the definition of insanity and the word "addiction." This would seem to apply to my notion of the Vietnam War as agent of cultural confusion. The signifiers of the insane used to illuminate insanity.
Other theorists like Elaine Scarry seek more mechanical links to political psychosis and the errors of Vietnam. In her essay "Citizenship in Emergency," Scarry offers an answer to the why's of the war with a very Information Age twist. It is the U.S. Government's need to address crises at a significant "rate of speed" (for Scarry, a result of nuclear realities) that has lead to fatal mistakes. She writes, "'Speed' has occupied the foreground not only of our descriptive statements about our national defense but also our normative statements" (224, emphasis is Scarry's). Seemingly, text alone can be invoked to sidestep constitutional or ethical objections to policy.
However, all of these deconstructions of policy, whatever their flaws, do not address this essay's central mystery—the inexorable impossibility to remove the language of ethical superiority from national and international discourse. There is more to say of history, but first a glimpse at the possible illuminations of art.

* * *

Certainly, a light in the psychic fog of history might be found in the novels and literature of the Vietnam era. Homer and Shakespeare wrote of the humanity in combat, Crane and Trumbo of its frailty, Heller and Vonnegut of its folly. Perhaps the literature of the Vietnam Generation can effectively coalesce into a better understanding of these manifestations of the anxieties described here. Potentially, fiction of the era could better investigate the ethical crises that would give momentum to the anxieties that drive Vietnam War-laden discourse.
For example, in his essay, "A Rumor of War: Another Look at the Observation Post in Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato," poses the thesis that the concept of courage is the primary thematic construction of Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato, in that protagonist Paul Berlin must "face up to, if not overcome, his repeated cowardice" (81). In addition, Slay writes that the courage struggle also represents the fallacious center of the novel. Thus we could venture that the novel provides that the cultural dissonance that this essay questions stems not from a lack of imagination but from a lack of moral bravery. It is undeniable that the fantastic element of Cacciato (the considerable bulk of O'Brien's novel) addresses the question of moral certainty in a Vietnam context, but Slay's suppositions do not effectively address the concerns of this essay. It is flawed to address this question of a national gestalt of aporia through the prism of a colonialist virtue.
Instead, it is the clash of generational and cultural value systems that Cacciato might offer a clue to our central mystery. On their "journey" to Paris, the soldiers of the novel encounter a series of Warrior Codes—a more complex series of ethical signifiers than simple courage. Lieutenant Corson, new LT for Berlin's Third Squad, is a paragon of Korean War/World War II ethos: a series of codes repeatedly noted to be missing from the Vietnam Theater. "In Korea, by God, the people liked us. Know what I mean? They liked us. Respect, that's what it was. And it was a decent war," Corson drunkenly tells an Indian hotel owner, "That's the difference. In Nam there's no respect for nothing. No heart...What happened? What went wrong?" (150). The absence of the rules of engagement embraced by his country equals a loss of moral authority for Corson. Thus in turn, inverting the moral authority of command in the Vietnam War.
Later in the novel, Iranian Savak officer Fahyi Rhallon harkens O'Brien's story to an even older set of Warrior Codes—the poetic. His version of a 'good war story' is described simply as "one about a battle in the snow and how the snow looked afterward" (203). Rhallon's 'story' is an evocation of Aristotelian poetics and their relationship to martial narratives. The squad's response is noise and vulgar, drunken storytelling of their own. Again, O'Brien illuminates the relationship between the 'Old Warrior' narrative and its creation of moral certainty and the subsequent destruction of them by the ambiguities of the Vietnam Era.
In the end, the titular Cacciato may be the least complex voice of changing moral discourse in the novel. Cacciato acts as a possible agent of moral clarity, the force that urges Berlin's squad to "Gay Paree," and away from the ethical dilemmas of the Southeast Asian rains. However, Cacciato's 'quitting' the war has no explanation, no discourse to illuminate the moral path. He is elusive and ridiculously reduced to a deux ex machina in the Tehran jailbreak.
While perhaps there are glimpses of answers in O'Brien's text, a glimmer of understanding the remarkable staying power of the Vietnam War in national discourse, the search cannot stop here. Without a doubt, a narrative that solely focuses on the American GI in Vietnam omits the bulk of the population from having an influence on these anxieties.
Bobbie Ann Mason's novel, In Country, offers a glimpse of the war's aftermath in North America. The protagonist's attempts to understand events and products of Vietnam solely within American contexts are central to the novel. Sam, a teenager surrounded by local Vietnam veterans in rural Kentucky, strives to learn more of the war and of her father, who died there. In "Oppositions in In Country," Timothy D. O'Brien poses the notion that Sam (read, "Uncle Sam" or the American civilian) is a nexus of gender/social issues that civilians back home attempted to grapple with the moral uncertainties of the conflict "rejecting the [horrific] version of her father that she finds in his war diaries" (178), yet sympathetic to the local veterans. Here we find the same disconnect one found in the Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] motto "Support the Troops—Bring Them Home." Most importantly, as the novel progresses, Sam tries to better comprehend these contradictions through television programs, music videos and Beatles lyrics. Attempting to render aid to a PTSD-suffering veteran, she tries to evoke a Vietnam memory from him "as dramatic as that one that caused Hawkeye to crack up in the final episode of M*A*S*H. But nothing came" (648). Within Mason's narrative strategy we find a link between popular culture and the anxieties of the Vietnam Era.
How then can we link Mason and O'Brien's novels (among many other novels, poems and short stories), both published more than twenty years ago, to 2004's evocations of John Kerry's war record and My Lai? It the persistence of these anxieties and their subsequent coping mechanisms that I hoped to investigate, yet all an analysis of these novels has served to do is recognize a few of the strategies this gestalt employs in discourse. The absence of moral certainty is clearly a product of the conflict and thus a viable villain in our national hysteria. However, the mystery of what separates this era from other cultures or historical eras in our national conversation still eludes this investigation.

* * *

In his heavily documented 1995 memoir, In Retrospect, Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara writes in his preface,
"I...know that the war caused terrible damage to America. No doubt exists in my mind about that. None... We of the Kennedy and Johnson administration who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why (i-iii).

Seemingly, the mathematical mastermind of the Vietnam Escalation reaches for closure and an understanding in simple language, an attempt is made to close the door of hysteria.

But the door will not close. On the week of the book's publication, McNamara was the featured speaker at the Kennedy School of Government lecture mentioned earlier in this essay. Contrite, sometimes disheveled, he still presented a meticulous fourteen-point assessment of the failures of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations policy in Southeast Asia. After the remarks of historians (including Valelly), McNamara steps up for a Q&A and any semblance of academic sterility goes out the window. The first question concerns My Lai and the former Secretary's answer refers to Hiroshima and the firebombing of Japan. The second questioner, a Vietnam Veteran, almost forgets to include a question in his list of dead buddies. The moderator has lost complete control of the session and McNamara does his best to placate the questioner.

The next exchange , which I condense here, has the subtlety and impact of a brick.
QUESTION: Mr. McNamara, you don't know who I am but you certainly-- from my entire-- you poised a situation which created the rest of my adult life. My name is Maureen Dunn. I don't know if you remember the incident of February 14th, 1968, the China incident, where you, the President, the Vice President, Secretary Clifford, General Wheeler, General Taylor, Secretary McNamara, George Christenson, Secretary Rusk, Tom Johnson and Walt ... (inaudible) met for 30 minutes about the China incident. Do you remember that?
MCNAMARA: I'm sorry, I don't
DUNN: Okay, well, the thing is you on page six of a top secret document that I received in 1992, his people were served when he was first shot down, and six and a half hours was heard for 20 to 70 minutes. And you people sat there in that room for 45 minutes never addressing his name. He was always "The China Incident." He was 25 years old. So, you never had a face to see, or to know that he had a 25 year old wife and a baby, a one year old baby. This is very emotional for me. I didn't think I would be. But, I'm that guy's wife. And you said on page 6, "No rescue attempt should be made. Don't go after him. It's not worth it." And all these years, Mr. McNamara, I wanted someone from those ten people who were at that meeting to say to me, "I am sorry." And I'd like you to say that in front of all these people to me, "I am sorry." I just want you to say, "I am sorry." (applause)
MCNAMARA: I have no recollection of the meeting and I can't--
DUNN: It's right here.
MCNAMARA: I haven't seen it and I'd like to see it. But, let me just say this. If I said it, I'm not sorry, I'm horrified. I'm absolutely--
DUNN: Say, "I'm sorry, Maureen."
MCNAMARA: Well, I'll say I'm sorry but that's not enough. I am absolutely horrified (Online).

The door will not close.

* * *

Then, what to make of the above conversation, this refusal of the language of reconciliation? While veterans of both sides of the Vietnam War use the speech of closure, our nation at large cannot. Vietnam becomes political football, subject of misanthropic hip-hop artists and textual shorthand for American cruelty.

I write this as the son of a member of SDS* and the stepson of a Navy veteran of the Vietnam War. I come from a household that rarely speaks of the war and never speaks of it in any detail. Both parents agree that the Vietnam War was a terrible, terrible thing, but their experiences hold little for them to share with one another. My mother still tastes the bitter tear gas of Denver policemen and feels the salve of moral authority. My stepfather remembers how the local Veterans of Foreign Wars lodge would not admit a Vietnam Veteran—subjecting him to an indignity of semantics, the organization would not admit those who served in a "police action." The only thread that ties these experiences is that every American hated the war, but in that hatred found no cleansing redemption. Hating the Vietnam War quickly became an insane ballet of self-loathing. The hysteria of our current dialogue is a logical result of this dance.
Historians battle their own political agencies. Authors try to decipher our collective subconscious in the harsh light of Vietnam.

And in the meantime, it will not go away.


*-I have since found that this reference was apochryphal. I apologize for the error.
-mls
Again, if you would like a list of the works cited in this essay, please click on the 'comment' portion of this 'blog and leave an available email address. It will be sent to you ASAP.--M

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Poets for people who don't like poetry

Regie Gibson

Pablo Neruda

John Lillison ("England's Greatest One-armed poet")

PJ Harvey

William Wenthe (submitted by Jefe)

Robert Frost (They are ALL ABOUT Death. all of em.)(Submitted by Jefe)

D'Annunzio (submitted by JK)

Got a few of your own? Please use the 'comment' line.

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Where, or why rather, to begin?

Whether due to my inescapable waspiness or possession of a y chromosome, I've always been a bit leery of navelgazing--yet here I am. This is in no way to detract from the endless friends (only three examples include kebig, jefe and Ms. Headley) whose 'blogs I have visited and enjoyed for years. They're great, funny and insightful.
Maybe I've been afraid that I have none of the aforementioned qualities. Perhaps I've been of the opinion that I have very little that you might want to read.

Maybe I thought it just wasn't my thing...


But I've been writing more (a great deal more) lately. It's remarkable how unemployment motivates you. After the Moore rant (below), which many of you were pestered by the week of 4 July prompted me to stop scoffing at the notion of my own blog. Beyond that, many of the responses I recieved to that rant also seems to urge me on to have a place where such a smart group of people can have a forum to tell me I'm right/wrong/boring. Here is a beginning for that.

I'm writing late and I'm too flagged to go on much longer.
I'll end here.

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The Michael Moore rant

A friend sent an email with the following message. It is followed by my response of 1 July:
hello friends,
I hope you all have supported Michael Moore's film opening weekend. Please send me any thoughts you might have on the film. I would like to work on a project a study based on the personal effects of the film. And I shall start with friends. Send comments, stories, poems any words that describes your thoughts on this monumental film.
--C

Knowing my audience, I'll begin the response with a seemingly appropriate equivocation:
1)I am neither a republican nor a democrat and have publicly (on my once un-listened to and un-listenable radio program) declared my inherent mistrust of anyone who has ever voted a straight ticket for any party in any election. Ever.
2)In no way do I harbor any affection for President W and have worn grooves into my rapidly balding scalp from scratching my head at many of this administration's decisions since January of 2001.
3)I am equally baffled by the invasion of Iraq. I may be one of only two people you've ever met that lost a friend in Gulf War One. I am the son of a Vietnam Veteran (who was married to a Vietnam War protester) and thus cannot keep my head from turning skeptically at any demand for the use of American Military power.
4)I used to be a huge Michael Moore fan. I own a copy of Roger and Me for Pete's sake. The bulk of Moore's pre-Oscar film and television work was not only funny, but I think truly spoke for people that normally don't get any voice in any format, much less in mass media. I'll never forget the bit on his television show, The Awful Truth, in which actors in puritan garb chase Kenneth Starr's car down his street begging him to let them run his witchhunt of President Clinton. It is still one of the funniest things I have ever seen (as a friend of mine often says, "It's funny 'cause it's true"). But round about Bowling for Columbine, he lost me. More about that in a second.
5)And finally, I am fully capable of appreciating good satire. As a college-educated WASP that enjoys any opportunity to poke fun at the powers that be, though I look an awful lot like those aforementioned powers (It is truly a milestone moment when you hit the age of thirty-five and it dawns on you "Holy shit, I'm The Man!") I am fully capable of grasping someone's sardonic musings, laughing and then offering that allknowing nod of the head. A comprehensive "hmmmm" burns in the back of my head when they hit on something thought-provoking. When I read, see or hear the highbrow variety (Swift's suggestion that the Irish solve their hunger problem by eating their own children) or the very lowbrow variety (Headline in The Onion—”Scientists Discover Gene Responsible For Eating Whole Goddamn Bag of Chips"), I dig. Quality satire can stir us, surprise us, shock us and make our sides hurt. In some remarkable moments, it can actually cause a paradigm shift not only with its readers but in a society at large.

Unfortunately, Fahrenheit 9/11 does none of these things.

There are two very distinct subterranean fallacies at the heart of Mr. Moore's failure of a film and I'll try to address them both with as much brevity as possible:

ONE—The Lie of "Michael Moore-as-Defender-of-Truth."
You may be surprised what my reasons are for the first lie. I will not go into tremendous detail about the factual errors in the film. Many people, much smarter than I have exploded the movies' errors ad nauseum. Never mind that (deserved) Bush-hater Richard Clarke told the 9/11 Commission under oath that he alone ordered permission for the flight of Saudi/Bin Laden cronies. And only after they had been vetted by the F.B.I. and only when other flights out of the country were permitted. Never mind that Unocal negotiations with the Taliban for an Afghan pipeline occurred under the noses of Bill Clinton/Warren Christopher, not on W's watch. Never mind.
Fine, if the facts don't matter to Moore, they don't matter to me. After all, this is supposed to be satire. I'm willing to admit that the devil is not in the details here, that he's right that the Carlyle Group/Bush connection has the aroma of a beached school of cod at low tide, that more than 800 American men and women (not to mention the countless Iraqi civilians) have died in a conflict that our stunningly incurious President can't seem to wrap his noggin around (or find a single mistake in the execution of).
Thus, my problem lies with Moore's use of his "satirical" sledgehammer. His interviewing methods are intended to be pyrotechnic, but instead they are dated (the novelty of 'chasing' your subjects wore off after the aforementioned Ken Starr pursuit, Mike) and most damagingly, serve to evoke only a visceral response from the viewer (what happened to that satirical "hmmmm" I spoke about?) thus reducing any credible sense of sincerity from the interviewer. A couple of quick examples of why I take issue with his continuing reliance on this technique:
Charlton Heston, for one. His assault on the NRA president and actor in Bowling for Columbine was indefensible. Sure, Heston held up a musket in front of his mob of toothless idiots that spend $35 dollars a year unwittingly supporting a powerful lobby that has little to no interest in preserving an amendment to the Constitution but instead fronts for weapons manufacturers and demanded that we pry it from his "cold, dead hands," but this was no excuse for Moore's pillorying an enfeebled old man in his own home. Before that point, I'd thought that Moore was addressing a vital question that no one was asking, that is, "Why does this country have just as many weapons as several others, but we shoot each other at an exponential rate in comparison?" Sadly, after the Heston segment, this question had bolted and any quest for truth had been trumped by the vision of Moses in the throes of senile dementia walking out on the asshole in his kitchen.
Then, in Fahrenheit, Moore takes an even more offensive tack—he plays the race card. With his position that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are simply another tactic of American racist oppression, he's showed his trump badly. Yes, the majority of service personnel are from poor or African-American families or both (as they have been for more than two centuries, at least the poor part). However, this screed does nothing but dishonor their choice (whatever their race) to serve and thus gain connections, better their education and find opportunity in a nation that views these things as currency. In addition, America is sadly a nation that devalues public service and Moore does nothing but emphasize the point by rendering our soldiers as nothing more than Steppenfetchits too addled to actually comprehend what they've gotten into. Thank God all the little black folk in the Army have you to stick up for them, Michael. You, the man that recently told an audience that if more black people had been on the planes of September 11th, there would have been no way that the terrorists could have fulfilled their mission. Way to honor the people of color that were on board those planes (including the multiracial contingent that actually did prevent Flight 93 from killing more people), you insensitive, racist jackass. Sorry, but nothing angers me more than a rich, fat, white guy standing behind poor, hungry black people in an attempt to make villains of others.
In both these examples, Moore does not render those in opposition to his viewpoint vile by his pursuit of the truth, but instead renders his originally interesting (and infinitely American) viewpoint purile. In both these cases, Moore's "journalistic" machete harkens me back to the Roaring '90's. Those halcyon days of Rush "The O.C." Limbaugh's sensitive "Homeless Updates" and David Brock's ridiculous accusation that Hillary Rodham Clinton had Vince Foster murdered. Garbage, whether from the left or right, no matter how you package it, still stinks like fucking garbage (look! The Vice President's favorite word!). This is a good point to switch gears, because the reason why politicians and media, whatever aisle they sit on, insist on this rhetoric of unbridgeable political separation leads me to the second fallacy at the heart of Fahrenheit's failures.

TWO—The Incredible Lie of National Division
Here I prematurely apologize for lumping Mr. Moore in with the figures writhing in this orgy of political segregation at our point in history. This kind of gross generalization is just what I was criticizing him for just a paragraph ago. Nevertheless, I find him guilty of many of the same crimes as such luminaries as George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Dick Cheney, John "I lost an election to a dead guy" Ashcroft, John Kerry, Howard Dean, The Honorable Right Reverend Al Sharpton, Rush Limbaugh, Al Franken, Oprah Winfrey, Sean and Arthur Penn, Arnold Schwarzzeneger, Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes, William F. Buckley, Jr. and his favorite sparring partner, Gore Vidal, Rick Perry, Tom DeLay, Dan Rather, Bill Moyers, Ted "what the hell did you do to Jane?" Turner, Harvey Weinstein, Rudolph Giuliani, Fred "Agreeance" Durst, Barbara Streisand, Barbara Boxer, the late Barbara Olsen, Barbara Walters, Star Jones, Dennis Miller, "Esther" Madonna Ciccone (or is it Madonna Esther?), Norman Mailer, Dr. James Dobson, Tucker Carlson, Jeanane Garafalo, George F. Will, George Carlin, John Rocker, Laurie David, David Letterman, Trent Lott, Tom Ridge, Frank Rich, the Reverend Canon David H. "lock out the queers" Roseberry, Jim Hightower, Jeff Zucker, "B-1" Bob Dornan, Bruce Willis, Tina Brown, Pat Robertson, Lewis Lapham, Mel Gibson, Hillary Rodham Clinton, David Brooks, Morton Kondracke, Molly Ivins, Terry McAuliffe (okaaay Mike, we get it) and the terrifying screech of the Mary Matalin and her scary, weirdass husband.

If you've actually been patient enough to read this far, permit a brief foray into the Socratic to get us closer to the end of this rant a little quicker:
You might ask: Mike, what could these forty-five people (among many, many others), seemingly separated by miles of political differences, have done? And what is Mr. Moore's complicity?
—Simply put, honorable citizen, they have lied to you time and time again.

What have they lied about?
—They have told you that you and your other fellow citizens are locked in mortal combat against each other. That this nation is "polarized." That you and your neighbor have no choice but to join a team and line up for the ongoing culture war. That the philosophy of "With us or agin' us" is the only way to protect our children, pets and aged loved ones; to save this nation; to honor the principles on which it was founded; to finally stamp out our history of racism, sexism, laziness, culture of victimization, violence, moral degredation or poverty and wipe out gingivitis once and for all. Through the overwhelming flood of information found in our society, they are drafting (not asking you to volunteer) you to join their armies of Christian/gaylesbian/republican/democratic/homeless/overtaxed/blue/ red/catholic/protestant/prochoice/prolife/yokobrokeuptheband/wingswasbetteranyway warriors arrayed against the great peril massed on the rhetorical border.

But isn't this country divided?
—No, it's not. People in this country have divergent opinions about many things: Abortion; whoever is in the White House; whether OJ did it; the war; the Patriot Act and whether we really need another goddamn Ben Stiller movie this summer just to name a few. However, the space where these contrasts overlap is considerably greater than any possible antagonistic oppositions.

On what do you base this theory?
—The fact that the numbers don't bear out a tremendous chasm for Americans at large. According to The New York Times, most Americans agree, for example, that abortion should be legal, but that they wish that people would have fewer of them. According to yesterday's Gallup poll, a significant majority of Americans think that health care is the primary concern facing this aging nation (and I happen to think they're right), not the War on Terror, not Janet Jackson's nipple, not gay marriage.

What about gay marriage?
-What about it? Most Americans (nearly seven out of ten) agree that longtime partners should have a legal right to their spouses' benefits like those of breeder couples. This is an argument about semantics ("marriage" v. "union," etc.), not of principle. According to USA Today and the New York Times, most Americans do not want to pull the word "marriage" away from gay couples to segregate them. Instead, in this world of the Politics of Emotion, want something to call their own. History says that the most effective tool of segregation is not language or even violence. It is economic oppression. Most Americans get the fact that their gay neighbors and coworkers have a right to be economically empowered in a free market society. Meanwhile, both Republicans and Democrats want you to think that there is a great moral threat to whatever side of this issue you find yourself on. Why? Because pollsters cynically told them to tell you that.

Doesn't the narrowness of the 2000 Presidential election prove that we're locked in a polarized struggle for our Nation's future?
-That would be a very appropriate question if more than 51.3 percent of eligible voters had bothered to show up at the polls. Could it be possible that all of this talk of antagonistic viewpoints has removed most voters from the national discourse, thus disengaging them from any concept of duty to a country that they think has nothing to do with what they believe (i.e., a differentiated but moderate mean)?

Why would government officials want to lie to the American people this way?
-Because it is in their best interest financially and rhetorically. The cynicism of the Lee Atwater-Roger Ailes-Terry McAuliffe-Dick Morris's in the post-Watergate/post-Vietnam world has gleaned from their polling data that when potential contributors are told that it is time to "circle the wagons" from the threat to "our way of life," they write bigger checks. The apparatus of money is the machine of national politics and baby, does it talk.
However, economics isn't the sole drive for this wave of disinformation. Those with extreme viewpoints (whatever you think an extreme viewpoint) not only contribute more, but turn out to canvass for their candidate in greater numbers and put bumper stickers on their cars. Why? Because they have to mobilize to counter a threat to their extreme American value.
Finally, this fallacy of dogmatic segregation is currently something of a rhetorical "get out of jail free card" for national politicians. If they can keep the National Discourse focused on issues like gay marriage, partial-birth abortion and Oval Office blow jobs they hope they'll never have to make hard, campaign-war-chest-and-reelection-threatening decisions about health care, social security, the minimum wage, globalization, unfair taxation, etc. They're an industry folks, and they don't want to piss off the customers. They've got a business to run, to perpetuate.
All I'm asking is, "Is doing the 'right thing' the center pivot of our government? Or is it greed and political advancement, jealousy and praise. Is it an indifference to the wants of ordinary Americans and instead a focus on party and team to the expense of any "other" we want to create behind the motive and principle of those that govern?" Well, I would have asked that if John Adams hadn't already done it in 1805. I just gussied up the language. Clearly, this is nothing new.

I notice that you've left the media out of the discussion. They would be telling us the truth if your ridiculous theory had any merit.
-If that were true, then a Frontline special about the cost of prescription drugs would have garnered at least ten percent of the share that Dan Rather's panting 60 Minutes interview with President Clinton did. (I'm surprised that no one has asked Bill if she swallowed yet). This apochryphal culture war wouldn't make a single newscast if it didn't sell. Viacom, Disney, TimeWarner, KnightRidder, GE, et. al don't do anything without looking first at the bottom line. Sadly, their news departments aren't free of this fact.

Uh, something seems to be missing from your rant.
—Really. What?

Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11.
—Too true. I'll draw the picture quickly.
1) Mr. Moore wants to make money, and a lot of it. There is nothing wrong with that, but any sanctimony about his mission should go out the window from the get go (as it should for Sean Hannity's next book). Need proof? Before his triumph at Cannes, Moore keened from the bell tower that Disney/Buena Vista was censoring him by not distributing the film. According to the Wall Street Journal, they were never planning on distributing it. Despite the facts, Moore played the Mel Gibson/Passion card straight out of the chute (read: "Bad secular/Bushie forces have aligned against me to prevent my telling of my pure religious/anti-war story!") and it worked like gangbusters. I see little separation between Moore and the Vatican II/almost Holocaust-denying Gibson.
2) Michael Moore may very well believe that the Bush Administration is an undeniable collection of unspeakable evildoers. It would be Unamerican of me to question his motives. However, his inability to approach the egregious (and deadly) errors of this group of nitwits currently gathering in the Situation Room (admittedly some of them by teleconference from their protected bunker) with nothing more than a series of exploitative teenage pranks fixes all the good intentions of the world onto that proverbial road to Hell.
3) Finally, I also think that Mr. Moore truly believes that he is a champion for ordinary, hard-working, impoverished Americans that can't be heard over the Ultraright din. He couldn't be farther from the truth.
In a matter of weeks, Moore has become the poster boy for the very false (and dangerous) notion that we are a nation of citizens at war with each other. It is a poison about which I can no longer be silent, a product of focus groups, polls, huge campaign coffers and cynicism.

Critic Homi Bhabha points out that in the literature of white oppression (that is, all "western" literature) must define the exotic, threatening 'other' not simply as a means of oppressing them, but for another, more psychotic reason—to define themselves. This madness is slowly creeping into our national dialogue, unfettered.
At last, opinion polls say that most Americans agree that the invasion of Iraq was an exercise in very bad judgment. Citizens that agree or disagree with this action must enter this dialogue with a vigor that would rival the speeches of Johnny Cochran. But we can no longer be fueled by the Manichean lies of those that are profiting from such plebian cynicism. To continue to believe these lies would be crime against humanity.
I'm in this with you, I swear, and I believe with every fiber of my being that you're here beside me, too. I may not agree with you, but I'll be damned if I'll let the roar swallow up your voice. Let us right whatever wrongs we see: not as celluloid-swallowing sheep, but as Americans. Multi-colored, -worshiping, -gendered, empowered Americans. We are the people that swarmed the blood banks on September 11th and said "Let's roll." We are the people that lined up to see Gibson's Passion and waved to the protesters nearby (who I hope waved back). We are the product of a time when someone really believed that some truths are inalienable. May all the fine people of the earth have such problems as these someday.

In closing, I hope that you will see Michael Moore's movie and save me a box of Whoppers.
Think this is a contradiction? Then you weren't paying attention at all and I fear we're already lost.

Blessings to you and yours and thank you for your patience,
M.L. Stephens

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