Adam and Steve (and Brad)

On Wednesday Brad Pitt announced that he has donated $100,000 to fight Proposition 8, the California initiative to ban same-sex marriage. Two years ago this month, the actor pledged that he and Angelina Jolie would not marry until gays and lesbians in the United States could marry.

Though presumably the cause is one with which socially liberal Hollywood sympathizes, Pitt’s donation is the largest that the anti-8 pro-gay movement has received so far.

The proposition, which voters will decide on in November, surfaced after California’s Supreme Court declared in May that the existing ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, prompting a flurry of gay-lesbian marriages in the state, most notably the August nuptials of Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi. California and Massachusetts are the only US states that have legal same-sex marriage.

Officially called the “Limit on Marriage” Constitutional Amendment, the California proposition would change the state constitution to read, "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

Although polls predict that Prop 8 will likely be defeated, its supporters have raised $16 million, mostly in individual fat checks from wealthy Mormons, compared to the opposition’s $11 million—money for TV ads targeting the hearts and minds of California’s undecided population, 18-22 percent of likely voters.

John McCain voiced his support for the amendment in June. Organizations supporting Prop 8 include the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Latter Day Saints, and various evangelical mega-churches. Don Wildmon’s American Family Association has contributed $500,000 to the cause, and James Dobson’s Focus on the Family has contributed $400,000.

Barack Obama voiced his opposition for Prop 8 in July. Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger opposes the amendment. Six California Episcopal bishops issued a statement earlier this month, opposing the bill.

I realize that, for many, gay marriage is a non-issue. Admittedly issues of war, the economy, healthcare, and global warming have priority.

I am of two minds about gay marriage—angry that legal privileges and rights expressly exclude gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, and yet unenthusiastic about the prospects of becoming a “respectable” minority, integrated into an essentially corrupt society.

But the fervor over McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate demonstrates the degree to which America is a reactionary, Jesus-haunted, though flagrantly hypocritical nation, especially hypocritical in matters of sex. The so-called culture wars are at least as real as the wars on drugs and terrorism—and arguably more important to the country’s future. In this area, we Americans are so far behind nations like Spain, Brazil, and, well, probably almost everybody but China, India, and Islamic theocracies.

America’s hang-ups about homosexuality—and sex in general—are as embarrassing as the country’s inability to deal honestly with its hang-ups about race and poverty.

And with the end of the cold war some 20 years ago, homosexuals have replaced communists as the hobgoblins of right-wingers, who sense homophobia as the most potent and lucrative emotional trigger to further their disastrous military, economic, social policies. Even 9-11 failed to take the heat off gays—since media figures, both religious and not, have linked America’s so-called “tolerance” for homosexuals to terrorism … and hurricanes.

As I see it, then, this is no non-issue. America’s failure to deal with “Adam and Steve” is tied to its bloodthirstiness for Armageddon.

Message to Tim (re: Lars and the Real Girl)

My friend Tim, who teaches at a seminary, sent me a lengthy message today. Here's an excerpt:

"Hey I saw [...] that one of your recent favorite movies is Lars and the Real Girl. We've found it to be a powerful movie about community! [...] One of the questions I've been asking in response is this: how do you discern when your acceptance of someone is enabling their brokenness rather than helping them experience healing? We tend to be a very accepting community (our church), but sometimes people stay stuck right where they are for years. Any thoughts on this, and on the movie?"

And here's my reply:

I love LARS AND THE REAL GIRL for precisely the aspect you mentioned--community. The brother, his wife, the would-be girlfriend, the doctor, the townspeople--the sense of wisdom and support there--fantastic--and deeply moving for me. It's what I always hoped existed somewhere.

Of course, the movie's a fantasy. Such a huge level of support and acceptance seems far-fetched--even the ease with which resistance was subdued seems improbable--far more likely (to pessimistic me, anyway) is that those who disapproved of Lars' little folly would have entrenched themselves, perhaps found a way to turn the whole deal into a Righteous Cause ("What kind of example is this for the children?")--the primal herd instinct to repel outsiders is much stronger than the movie presented.

But, then, I don't mean any of this as a complaint--it's only a movie, after all--Oz probably doesn't exist either.

Your related question is intriguing. How much is too much acceptance?

Here's my first thought on the matter, having not given it close examination yet: Acceptance is the opposite of resistance and entrenchment. When should we resist? Should we never resist?

Resistance is almost certainly the right thing to do when confronted with injustice, cruelty, manifestly destructive behavior--particularly when the harm is immediate and unmistakable.

But HOW should we resist? Nonviolently, compassionately. Is it possible? Is that really what turning the other cheek means? Satyagraha?

But we live in a culture that believes in redemptive violence--either the violence of swift revenge (or even torture) as an effective arm of true justice, or the violence of martyrdom, sacrifice, and (what's the word I'm looking for?) shunning, closing off, driving off. (I'm thinking as I go along here, so don't expect coherence.)

So, acceptance--I'm going on a limb here--is generally preferable to resistance--that is, saying YES is better than saying NO ... in general.

So when is acceptance wrong? I think acceptance runs the danger of becoming indifference when it ceases to be active. If "acceptance" is passive, it is simply not-caring. Active acceptance involves curiosity and involvement, empathy--an imaginative leap into the consciousness of others.

So in LatRG the townspeople (the ones we like anyway) manage, through openness and imagination to enter into Lars' delusion. In doing this, they are diligent enough not to become deluded themselves, but rather to find creative ways to interpret the delusion and mine it for its beneficial effects--not just for Lars but for themselves as well.

I feel the movie indicates that the people surrounding Lars are as profoundly changed in the end as Lars himself. (And we see some of them are already capable of this in the sister-in-law's persistence in trying to get Lars to come into the house for dinner, at the beginning of the movie.)

Talking about this subject, I'm reminded of something I read years and years ago about some Native American culture--what tribe or tribes I cannot remember. But it goes like this--if a child were born into the tribe whose only gift was to make dolls out of corncobs and could do nothing else, the tribespeople would then develop a NEED for corncob dolls--for ritual uses or as toys, or maybe as decorations. The tribe took from each what each was able to offer, in other words. When the dollmaker died, and if there was no replacement for him/her, the tribe gradually ceased to need the dolls anymore.

Of course, such a society would have to depend on the fact that most people would bring skills to the tribe conducive to survival, but given their organic view of community, all people's gifts were assumed to have value, not because they conformed to what is normal but because each member was already assumed to be irrevocably an organic part of the tribe.

Of course, this information may have been BS, part of the sentimentalizing of Indian culture--the noble savage and all that. But I think even if there never were such a culture, even if LatRG portrays a Hollywood dream, even if violence and ... ostracism! that's the word I was struggling to find up above ... but even if violence and contempt for outsiders are deeply ingrained in human nature, possibly even for good survival-centered reasons, still, isn't the idea of community a rather wonderful dream?

And maybe I haven't even answered the very intriguing question you posed.

A Supposedly Fun Thing

The writer David Foster Wallace was found dead by his wife on Friday. He had hanged himself. He was 46.

Twelve years ago when I read David Foster Wallace’s mammoth, gloomily comic novel INFINITE JEST, my immediate thought was that the novel as an art form was alive again. Metafictionists had declared the novel dead decades before, but here was a book that was as vital and socially astute as any nineteenth-century British novel, as playful and self-aware as any post-modern metafiction.

I sensed that the book was something big—bigger than perhaps it really was, as I half-expected it to resuscitate the role of the publicly-engaged intellectual in America, which was fading away—its last vestiges, at the time, being Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley, and Gore Vidal, the latter being the only one now alive. I thought the book was going to be the new generation’s MOBY-DICK or HUCKLEBERRY FINN.

Immediately after I finished INFINITE JEST, I caught up on my Wallace, reading his brilliant short-story collection GIRL WITH CURIOUS HAIR and first novel THE BROOM OF THE SYSTEM. The nonfiction A SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING I WILL NEVER DO AGAIN came out the next year—and in each case what impressed me was Wallace’s mastery and personal ownership of the various literary forms—short story, essay, novel.

The central event of INFINITE JEST is the appearance in the near future of a video so entertaining that people watch it to death—so captivated and entranced that they forget to eat or attend to the business of living otherwise, so they starve to death, sitting in front of their TVs. This sterile absorption by amusement also appears in the fact that the USA, Canada, and Mexico have merged into one corporate entity, the Organization of North American Nations (ONAN, recalling Onan, the biblical figure who “spilled his seed on the ground,” whom clerics in the Middle Ages interpreted as a type of the self-defilement of masturbation).

At a daunting 1079 pages, the book covers an array of subjects including Quebecois terrorists, child abuse, and tennis. I was mainly struck with its satire on consumerism—in the future, the years would be no longer numbered anno domini, but sold to the highest corporate bidder as advertising—so that a year would have a name like the Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment or the Year of the Burger King Whopper.

All in all, the book imagines the soon-to-arrive twenty-first century as dumbed-down, vapid, and doomed—contentedly soulless, proud of its superficiality and mastery of the obvious.

Back when the novel first appeared, Frank Bruni stated in a NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE article, "Wallace is to literature what Robin Williams or perhaps Jim Carrey is to live comedy: a creator so maniacally energetic and amused with himself that he often follows his riffs out into the stratosphere, where he orbits all alone."

If Wallace left a suicide letter, I have not yet heard about it. INFINITE JEST will remain his legacy, if not his suicide note. He inspired other writers, his contemporaries, for instance, George Saunders and Jonathan Franzen, to enter the stratosphere in their own ways. Whether the public will remember him, except as that rarefied being, a writer’s writer, is impossible to say. A film of his book BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN, directed by actor John Krasinski, is set for release this year.

Shaken

Even Barack Obama is saying that Sarah Palin is “shaking things up.” Unfortunately, it’s not clear what she and McCain have got lined up for after things are thoroughly shaken.

Apparently the media have selected to give Palin the Bush treatment from 2000—to follow up the understandable shock that someone so venal and incompetent could rise so high with tepid but polite admiration that the monkey gets anything right.

Palin’s inteview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson, her first public, unscripted interview, is being praised for what the Alaska governor did not do.

The Chicage Tribune praises her, saying she “passes the test.” Meaning, I suppose, a D or higher.

NPR noted that she did not “explode.”

Thankfully, the AP and New York Times were a bit more critical—but in a measured way that suggests that Palin is a special-needs candidate deserving of our understanding and patience. Furthermore, the Times characterized Gibson unflatteringly as resembling an “annoyed” “university president” interviewing a prospective student who he suspects is unprepared for college—thus perpetuating the Republican story of elites versus the pretty yet capable ingenue.

Lipstick Smears

Yesterday afternoon, Barack Obama talked about the rhetoric of “change” both parties are touting for the November elections:

“John McCain says he's about change too, and so I guess his whole angle is, ‘Watch out George Bush -- except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics---we're really going to shake things up in Washington.

"That's not change. That's just calling something the same thing something different. You know you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. You know you can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change, it's still going to stink after eight years. We've had enough of the same old thing."

The McCain camp finds the comment offensive, taking “lipstick on a pig” to be a thinly veiled attack on Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin—?—perhaps because as a hard-shell Pentecostal she should not use cosmetics?

But maybe I miss the real point of offense. Perhaps McCain can, since he alone can judge his intent when, less than a year ago, he responded to a question about the healthcare plan proposed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, saying, “I think they put some lipstick on a pig but it’s still a pig.”

Republicans excel in inconsistency and phony controversy. It always amazes me how thin-skinned a bully can be. Perhaps inconsistency is what Republicans think of as change. Perhaps hypocrisy is what they think of as values.

When asked how she could be sure that Obama directed the comment against Palin, Republican Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift replied. “As far as I know, she's the only one of the presidential candidates or vice presidential candidates who wears lipstick. It seemed to me a very gendered comment. There's only one woman in the race. It's directly analogous to comments she has made.”

I guess she means the joke Governor Palin made at the Republican National Convention—“You know, they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick.”

I loved it. I laughed out loud.

Perhaps Obama should become more tactful in his use of language. These days they prefer to be called pitbulls, not pigs. An apology is due.

If Obama won’t do it, maybe I can smooth over the situation with a little clarification:

Republicans’ calling Reagan-era economic policies and Rove-style politics “change” is no change at all. It’s like putting lipstick on the turd of a pig standing knee-deep in syphilitic splooge while you fart the Star-Spangled Banner eight to the bar.

It feels so much better when you find the right way to say things.

10 Reasons McCain Won’t Do

I’d be the first to say that John McCain is probably the best Republican presidential candidate in 40 years, but I am quick to add that Barack Obama is the best Democratic presidential candidate in over 60 years—and, more important, Obama is the better man of the two candidates.

I would like to list my reasons why a McCain presidency is not a good idea for America. Although the Democratic talking points (e.g., “McCain is Bush lite”) may be implicit in my remarks, I would like as much as possible to explore my opinions on this topic without parroting party leadership.

(1) Of Obama and McCain, McCain is less likely to preserve American democracy. He has come to represent a stance on governance centered on national security, and history shows that such a stance tends to advance a police-state mentality. Public safety and security are important, certainly, just not all-important. American liberties and rights must not be threatened or slighted.

(2) Torture is an immoral and unacceptable practice. McCain, better than most people in politics, should know this, but his party has flirted too long with redefining “torture” to exclude practices like water-boarding, widely recognized as torture since the Spanish Inquisition. Not only is torture, including psychological torture, unethical, it has proved more likely to produce false confessions than useful information.

(3) McCain has shown no capability in winning the hearts and minds of the world. His appeal, such as it is, is limited to America, and, even here, with little enthusiasm. Unlike Obama, McCain shows little capability of winning international respect and confidence or building consensus among nations.

(4) Obama’s position on Iraq has proved to be the one that even the current Republican administration has come to regard as best—recently having agreed with the Iraqi government to pull out US troops within the next three years. McCain’s one “good” idea, the 2007 surge, perhaps produced some favorable results, but the general consensus appears to be now that they have not been favorable enough.

(5) While McCain has more experience in Washington than Obama has, the nature of McCain’s experience is tainted by the corruption of the special-interest lobbyists with whom he associates and by a tendency to alternate between playing “maverick” and cozying up to power-mongers.

(6) Much has been made of Obama’s effectiveness as an inspirational speaker. Perhaps not enough has been made of McCain’s ineffectiveness in inspiring even his most ardent followers; his recent VP selection has largely eclipsed him.

(7) McCain has conducted his campaign in a manner that would have effectively sabotaged the Obama candidacy—from plunging it into near-bankruptcy just a year ago to stumbling ineptly through pedestrian rhetorical challenges in his speeches. Unlike Obama, McCain has avoided opportunities to test and prove his positions with reporters inclined to ask tough, challenging questions. Obama has proved himself superior in every aspect of campaigning and leadership.

(8) Age has not made McCain wiser. He is short-tempered, easily discombobulated, and impatient in making important decisions. He habitually blusters in the worst tradition of old coots who feel entitled by seniority to honors for which they are unqualified. He relies too much on the abilities and strategic thinking of those around him, with little flexibility in thinking, and little natural good judgment.

(9) Both McCain and Obama are wealthy men. However, McCain seems oblivious to the needs of not only the poor but also the rapidly shrinking middle class. He supports the old “trickle-down” ideology of the Reagan years, which in 28 years has not proved to benefit anyone but the already wealthy.

(10) McCain is a man of weak character. In the last four years, McCain has toadied up to George W. Bush, the man who, for political advantage, slandered McCain’s young adopted daughter in 2000. Worse, McCain has shown absolutely no disposition to hold anyone accountable for the reckless disregard for the lives and well-being of American troops or for the unconscionable lies by which these lives—and America’s former wealth and good standing in the post-cold-war world—have been imperiled.

Funny Ha Ha

I’m enjoying the new issue of ROLLING STONE (18 Sept. 2008), the one devoted to comedy.

ROLLING STONE has been my favorite magazine for the past eight or nine years, for, oh, many reasons. I like the lefty politics, the racial/gender/cultural balance, the gay positivity, the uninhibited interviews, and the film and music reviews. I don’t always agree with the RS reviews, but I always get enough from them to pick out something at the cineplex I’ll like. David Rees’s strip “Get Your War On” strip is genius, taking me back to the days when satire wasn’t on a leash, and Matt Taibbi’s social and political coverage is alone worth the price of a year’s subscription. The cover photographs are witty and sexy—the one of Obama grinning down at his US flag pin and the one, some 15 years ago, of Brad Pitt, shirtless and with shoulder-length blond hair, very Tarzan—both of them, best covers ever. (Oh, one more, the archetypal Lennon-Ono nudes of 30 years ago, how could I forget?)

This issue surveys a lot of funny people about what makes funny so funny. Two serious oversights are that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are not on the list. Also, no Ricky Gervais, no ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, no Ellen DeGeneres, no Amy Sedaris, no SOUTH PARK. What gives?

But here is my list of the 8 responses that were on the money, concerning the “Funniest Movie Ever”—along with my list of 8 movies (in no particular order) that were the most egregious omissions:

Amy Poehler: “The Jerk.”

Chris Rock: “Broadway Danny Rose” and “Superbad.”

Tina Fey: “Election.”

Steven Wright: “Harold and Maude.”

Eddie Izzard: “Life of Brian” and “Ghostbusters”

Margaret Cho: “Withnail and I”

Me:

“Shaun of the Dead,” “The Big Lebowski,” “What’s Up, Doc?” “Napoleon Dynamite,” “Flirting with Disaster,” “The Gold Rush,” “Ed Wood,” “After Hours”