On Political Correctness: Wish me a Merry Break

Now that the Christmas season is over, we can all breathe a sigh of relief, many of you because the shopping marathon has come to an end, or because you sent the in-laws off this morning, or because you dodged a bullet and succeeded in fulfilling your greedy child’s wishes.

Me, I am just happy that the stores will begin taking down the decorations, the marketers will turn their attention to Super bowl, or Valentine’s Day ads, and people will just return to saying hello, or, as is most often the case, brazenly ignoring each other as they push old ladies down on their way to catch the 8:20 train. And I’ll have until around next October to live free of hearing such expressions as Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings, or, my personal favorite, “Have a terrific December-based obligatory gift giving all inclusive period of time.”

You see, as nauseatingly sentimental as Christmas once was, I have found its politically correct sterility even more aggravating, as hollowed of meaning as International Talk Like Pirate Day.

But wait Christopher Hitchens, before you go adding my name to your hit list of Christian fascists you should know that yes, in most every case, I am a secularist. I’m not only a secularist, but a non-believer. And I’m not only a non-believer but an often radical crusader against Christianity.

But, for me, Christmas doesn’t fall into that category of teaching evolution, abortion, the Ten Commandments on courtroom walls, or prayer in school. You see our education is a right and necessity of all citizens, as is the justice system, as are reproductive rights. It doesn’t seem like a legitimate part of the debate over secular government. And in fact, Christmas might be the only non-oppressive aspect of popular Christian culture. So for this one time every year, I am not put off by the overt religiosity in Christmas greetings, decorations, or practices.

That is because Christmas is a choice. It has nothing to do with government, law, or fairness. Christmas is a Christian holiday, imported to this piece of land along with many features of Christian European culture. We may not be a government of Christianity, but we are a nation of mostly Christians. We may be a nation of equality, but we are not a nation void of an historical cultural identity. And that happens to be mostly Christian. If you don’t believe me, take a look at so many of our traditions, like wedding and funeral practices. Look at how Puritanism pervades our attitudes about sex.


Christianity is tattooed in our social consciousness, whether we like to admit it or not. It is a part of our art, our literature, and our music. And though time has allowed us to be more open-minded about how we define our values, we still owe a great deal of our national culture to the culture of Christianity. And not least among that culture, is this yearly celebration.

So if there is any real relevance in Christmas, it is in its historical and religious meaning. And one does not have to be a believer to learn about and appreciate those facts. We know that it is not actually Jesus’ birthday, but so to do we know Moses did not part the red sea. I guess the Jews should remove that from the Seder. We know that pagans from the British Isles inserted the tree into the celebration, but so too do we know that Columbus slaughtered thousands of Native Americans, and never set foot on United States soil. And he gets his own day.

The point is Christmas is a tradition, built on myths and irrational customs, and that makes it a cultural phenomenon, like Aztec mythology, or pagan fertility rituals. So it’s the lack of religion in Christmas that kills any meaning, and leaves nothing left but rampant materialism, and what is usually a fairly tense and awkward family dinner. And those meaningless holiday greetings.

It is true that traditions must evolve over time. And so too must Christmas, as immigration continues in this country, and American values and beliefs begin to incorporate those from other cultures. But we non-faithful are given a wealth of various other traditions and customs to throw our support behind. I don’t see why we even need Christmas to feel like it’s ours. So let us end the contrived attempts to increase its marketability. No one has convinced me that Christmas is a right, nor that it should even be considered a publicly endorsed holiday. It belongs to a particular cultural and religious group. And yet each year we fumble around trying to figure a way to include everyone.

If you are not Christian, then don’t celebrate. It’s as simple as that. Jews have managed for quite some time. As their Christian friends stay in Christmas day to open presents, they go to see Fiddler on the Roof in an empty theater, while their Muslim counterparts sit in the theater next door and watch their family favorite, Infidel on Our Land. And everyone is happy.

And for those Jews, or Muslims, or Hindus, or atheists who feel left out...well, I can see no reason why the holiday should change to suit your beliefs. There are 364 more days in the year. Celebrate how you believe, when you believe. And if you like Christmas, then partake as much as you wish, but don’t ask the more devout celebrators to water down their culture to the point of a mundane, sterile, political correctness, for if you were living in India today, you wouldn’t ask the Shiva statues be removed from your office building. Nor would you travel to the Middle East during Ramadan, and ask everyone to tone down the public display of Allah-worship.

And remember, for most of the year, radical Christianity is attempting to control our politics, teach ignorance in schools, and oppress women. Give them this day, and let us take back the rest of the year.

On Demagoguery: Does Michael Moore’s Sicko really contribute to the cause?

I’ll start with saying I agree with most of Michael Moore’s conclusions. The sum total of his political biography, or filmography, as it can only be determined by the ideas sold in his films and interviews, is really not as radical as it is portrayed by a painstakingly moderate media. What are radical are his means and methods. The assaults on Moore’s films, though, appear to be about his ideas, because they are so often perpetrated by those extremely conservative hacks, who think Moore is far out of line with mainstream thought, and that they are speaking from a common sense American point of view. I don’t think anyone really believes guys like Bill O’Reilly, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, have their fingers on the pulse of anything other than the veins of income churned up by their intolerance. Let them run trash pieces all night long. It’s not controversial to suggest gun control in a country that leads the world in gun violence. It wasn’t too far out of line to criticize the Bush administration and the Iraq War, though he may have been a bit early on the assertion that the war was a mistake (It has taken the mainstream a while to catch up.). And he is really not stepping out of bounds to criticize a healthcare industry that everyone agrees is broken. He begins with fairly common sense ideas, and sets out to get at those ideas by treading a path that is radical, and arguably, his biggest fault.

Moore is a master in the craft of propaganda—not documentary. He would have been easily employed during World War II, making films that sold the war, with images of heroic men lining up to fight evil with smiles on their faces, Rosie the Riveter doing her part in the factory. Films that portrayed the eagerness of all Americans to do their part by buying war bonds. In those campaigns, images were put together to create an affect, a mood, which in that time, needed to be support and patriotism. In Sicko, the same cast is on display. It’s not an irony that Moore often digs into the archives for examples of old propaganda used to sell policies and government actions he attacks. He understands this science very well, and more importantly, understands that it is in fact very possible to lead and direct an audience’s train of thought. In an insulated theater, reality is entirely irrelevant.

Propaganda is advertising, not documentary. The rules are simple: show people happy about the policies you endorse, and show them suffering from those you attack. The goal is to create certain emotions and equate them with certain ideas, an effect that cannot be achieved if Moore simply lets his camera sit and observe. He does not let his story unfold before him, but rather, shapes it like so much clay into a vision.

Most of us go into seeing Sicko well aware of the key ideas. We already know it’s an attack on the American healthcare industry. And we know that the controversial idea he’s promoting is a socialized healthcare system. These aren’t things we learn from the film. We learn them from the media storm that surrounds the movie, so after filing into the theater, we sit back and wait for the arguments. That is how I saw it, at least, unable to avoid the media hype. Knowing the subject, the conclusions, and many of the stunts he is going to use, it allowed me to train a more scrutinizing eye on how he gets form A to B. And where Moore is a champion, he succeeds again, and where he’s always disappointed, he outdoes himself.

Many attempts have been made to attack his legitimacy; I’ve heard people talk about how Moore lives in a million dollar Manhattan home, how he makes these films for profit. But his background is that of a very common American, and his films are highly successful in their focus on very common Americans. Though his career might have taken him out of Flint to live a more privileged life, a person doesn’t forget where they are from. Connecting to the mainstream community on all of these issues (gun control, war, and healthcare) is the most promising feature of his films. He finds people that are real, and on their worn faces, teary from the suffering they’ve faced, is written the problem, in a language that cannot be misinterpreted.

Moore unabashedly connects the audience with the problem, and as a champion for their cause, he sets about finding an answer. This is the two-step approach he’s used in all of his films, though Sicko is by far the most simplistic in its approach, because he goes from the problem straight to the conclusion. If Moore had ever taken a philosophy class, he’d know that Logic 101 says you have to support your conclusions on solid, inarguable premises. But Moore is more of a visionary than a debater. It’s as if he wakes up, is filled with the inspiration to bring universal healthcare to this country, and sets out to make a film selling it. A documentary filmmaker would not only establish the public’s disillusionment with the healthcare industry, but would investigate the reasons it has failed, and begin investigating possible solutions for improvement. For Moore, he already had the conclusion before shooting began–socialized medicine is the answer—the next step is finding the evidence to support it. That’s a hell of a lot easier to do with a conclusion in place. Documentary film is typically not about anything until the shoot is over, when the editors and directors sit down and see what it is they’ve filmed. If they are honest, they show what they saw, not what they wanted to see. But already knowing what his film is, Moore can more precisely point the camera.

The reason this is particularly irksome is not that socialized medicine is a bad idea. In fact, it’s a great idea, a necessary one, and deserves serious attention from academics, politicians, healthcare professionals, and the public. But Moore doesn’t do justice to the problem. In many cases, he insults the intelligence of the audience—the public—much in the way the politicians he attacks do. What this country needs on issues like healthcare is change, but the public needs to be part of that change. We do not need demagogues propagandizing to us in order to garner support, then telling us they’ll handle it if we’ll just trust their expertise. Sicko asks this of its audience, granting us only enough emotional prodding to get that support, but not bothering with including us in the investigative process. For Moore, a few Americans unhappy with their healthcare, and a few French citizens very pleased, is evidence enough. Not so.

Even if the French have a successful healthcare system, the pioneers of that system must have carefully investigated the issue, processing the financial, social, and political implications of such a system first. If you are going to sell it to the American public, it deserves the same scrutiny. The first place Moore fails in doing this is his presentation, or rather omission, of the opposing arguments. It isn’t so much that the opposition deserves credence, but rather, that a proposal of socialized healthcare reaches a new level of credibility if the opposition is properly represented, investigated, and countered. Moore would have you believe the only opponents to universal healthcare are insurance and pharmaceutical fat cats, who get rich from the corrupted system and then use that capital to buy off the representatives that could otherwise change things. That much cannot be discounted; the numbers are there, just follow the paper trail of political contributions. But this isn’t the entire population of opponents, or skeptics, of socialized medicine. There are, in fact, philosophical, economic, and social arguments that deserve attention. A proper study would include those arguments. It’s the duty of both politicians and political activists (of which Moore is a soldier) to educate the public on the issues, not panhandle for support based on faith rather than knowledge. I don’t want to have to believe in socialized medicine. I want to know it works.

No system is absolutely perfect, and addressing its faults does not bring down the belief in it, if in fact the system is primarily built on a strong foundation. What if it is true that Canadians wait in longer lines for the doctor than Americans do? Rather than omit the fact, why not simply include the fact and say what most people are thinking: I’d rather wait in a line than not have any doctor to go to at all, which is the case for 45 million people. Of those, many do choose to wait in a line, at some shabby free clinic, with overworked and underpaid doctors in a dangerous part of town, hoping they make the cut off before getting turned away. It would seem that Moore is so insecure in his belief in socialized medicine that he’s afraid his arguments will crumble under a bright enough light. So rather than present the more favorable systems of Canada, England, and France with a completely fair lens, he shies away from casting any negative light whatsoever. He’d have you believe the French system is absolutely perfect. I doubt that, but better than ours is good enough for me.

But even after we see how badly the system can destroy peoples lives, and how content the French, Canadians, and British are with their healthcare, and taking for granted they are both accurate portrayals, it still remains to be seen how these systems will work. The French have socialism in their blood, a national political philosophy with its roots in their revolution. Americans have capitalism in our blood, similarly rooted in our revolution, which was brought on by men not upset over the greed of an aristocracy (as with the French), but rather, upset over a monarchy’s hindrance to the colonies’ ability to maintain a free market without undue taxing. We have a shoddy history with socialism; a serious movement toward it sprung up and died within a few decades at the beginning of last century. It’s hardly a significant part of our political discourse. And if it is to become part of our political reality, it will mean some change, both in terms of our economy, and in how we think about government. These changes may very well serve us for the better, but they will nevertheless be significant changes. Our national debate about healthcare needs to include discussion of these changes, from bureaucratic arrangement, to political philosophy, to taxes. One of the great fears is that universal healthcare will require exorbitant taxes that will bankrupt the government. Though this argument may be formed at the very top economic class, it trickles down to the more middle class Americans, many of whom believe strongly in lower taxes and small government. You can’t defeat the argument by branding it as a mantra of the rich tycoons. It’s a mantra for nearly all Americans. Sicko implies that universal healthcare is free. In fact, that word is repeated throughout the movie. “It’s free….and it’s free…wow, free!” The point is taken, though it’s a misleading point. Nothing is free. Free at the time of your doctor’s visit doesn’t mean free in general. These countries he visits pay for their healthcare system, mainly through higher taxes, but also in a drastically different arrangement of budget allocations. Recognition of the necessary tax increase, and/or budget rearrangement doesn’t constitute the denigration of the system. Moore owes it to his audience to dig deep into the current system’s workings, and into a possible universal system’s workings, so that as citizens we can know what we are supporting, or opposing.

Perhaps due to his financial and critical success as a filmmaker, Moore has lost sight of what it means to convince an audience. He’s such a megalomaniac, he expects the audience to sympathize with those families in the beginning of the film, and immediately follow him on his path to a more European system of medicine. Nothing illustrates this more than the much publicized and criticized stunt in Cuba. What is so irritating about this purely dramatic exploit is not his assertion that Cuba has a free and good healthcare system. I have heard Cuba’s system portrayed both positively and negatively from many different sources. It is true that they spend a great deal of their budget on healthcare and well known that they send doctors overseas to aid other countries. In fact, one of the untold stories of Hurricane Katrina regards the medical aid Cuba offered to help in New Orleans, which was subsequently turned down by our government, so often concerned first with geopolitics than the welfare of its citizens. But, you know, America is not unique in that respect. Governments often mistreat their own citizens out of concern for their political standing in the world. And Cuba plays the same game. By exporting their superior medicine overseas, they bring a positive light on a country the United States has been trying to demonize for years. It would make sense for them to do this, despite not treating their own citizens with the same medicine. You cannot judge a country by its foreign affairs, whether positive or negative. You have to get inside of Cuba, and even if they have a superior medical system, few people know the truth. Amnesty International, not a conservative organization by any stretch, has consistently criticized Cuba’s lack of free press, and political freedom. But Moore expects us to believe he can walk into Cuba as an American journalist, and get to the truth. Pop quiz: what do you do when someone comes to you from a country that has been consistently critical of life in your country? Well you provide him with proof that it’s not such a bad place. And that’s exactly what appears onscreen in Sicko, a representation of medicine in Cuba as they’d like you to see it. Would Cuban doctors really turn away a group of Americans in front of American cameras, so that Moore can go back to America with a film about the detriments of the Cuban healthcare system? They don’t know Moore in that country, and obviously, like any good housekeepers, tidy up when company comes over.

But the Cuban stunt is part of the emotional fervor Sicko is expected to kick up. As I was watching, I often wondered what kind of audience he was aiming for. Do I know more, or as much, or less, than the ideal audience member? Perhaps Moore is not interested in investigating the issue, but simply wants to churn up anger, get people peeved about the system. If so, he’s too late for that stage. People have been peeved for sometime, and we are entering the desperation point, where we need the ideas lain out on the table, not demagoguery. I think people are reminded on a regular basis of the story Sicko is telling. Most Americans may be only distantly connected to the issues in Moore’s previous films, but healthcare is crawling under the skin of everyone. With so many people uninsured, underinsured, or closely related to someone suffering from the system, the anger and frustration is there. As the most successful documentary filmmaker in history, Moore owes more to his supporters, and more to this country than unproductive demagoguery of the kind that has split this nation into a polarized mess.

On Bukowski

I have just finished a Charles Bukowski binge. That’s a fitting word, binge. Because to read Bukowski is to forgo a climb to higher plains, greater realms of discovery and moral growth. Bukowski is a plunge into the bowels of the earthly beast. The discovery limited to the grime on the underside of a barroom table, the filth on a crowd of drifters in a per-week rental, or the scars on a rotting alcoholic gut.

You sit and read Bukowski and the night falls around you like a shroud. The day never comes, hunger persists. You are immobile, a dog with your face held smashed into the mess you’ve made, to teach you a lesson. He leaves us to confront all our messes, the ones we all make. He doesn’t let us see the beauty brought on by sun light, because for him the truth lies under the glow of the moon, in a dizzied state of excessive drinking. A place where people speak of their most primal desires to punch the people they don’t like, fuck ghastly strung out women, and lick the sticky residue on the soles of their boots to show how low they can be.

His writing is not pretty—it’s horrid at times, and there’s little wonder why he hasn’t entered into the American literary canon. While the romance of the greats is inspired by beauty, or at least horror set against beauty, Bukowski shuns it all together, finding as his muse the cockroach’s search for a nesting place. He’s no more interested in the importance of a hero as he is the animal instinct itching in his pants. He maybe saw nothing beautiful in his life. You don’t read him in a comfortable place; he’ll make you squirm. Hang over a toilet bowl puking your drunken guts out one night. As that fowl drool hangs from your unhinged mouth, the stomach bile stench burning your nostrils, when you feel your body crumbling with you still in it, a sinking ship you’re glad to see go down, when no moment can feel more pathetic, you may see what he’s talking about.

To quantify his contribution to words, to measure those words, is difficult, if not pointless. While other writers have sought truth, in places or people, sought to understand humanity in at least one of its forms, then bring it to light, he never bothered to look. Bukowski reached into his own asshole, and what he brought out was truth enough. He looked for nothing more than the pocked, withered, run-over face he saw in the mirror each morning.

Bukowski may not teach us anything new; he may only be a conveyor of those non-ideas that occupy most of our time, those embarrassing bodily functions it takes a few beers to talk about. But his uninhibited style forces us to confront what we’d sooner sweep under the rug, where the great poets and writers see little worthy of immortalizing in words. And maybe it’s true these beasts, odors, base pleasures—the lower tier of human function—are not worthy. But Bukowski, if not admired for his gift with words, can be admired for reminding us who we really are, the way a journalist enters war to bring back words and pictures of our murderous, violent tendencies. And the man himself? He is humility in extracted form. A man who saw the worst our species could offer, and decided it was good enough for him. You could say he was idle, base, did nothing and advocated lethargy. And certainly you’d find enough lost twenty-year olds out there reading Bukowski, as if trying to find a religion to support their desires, as evidence of that legacy. But you could also say that he took even less than he contributed, reducing his needs, distilling his take from the world down to nearly nothing, choosing to slowly wither without complaint. And what he gives back, while maybe not wisdom for young men who know nothing except that they like booze and women, is at least a taste of something more challenging than many let on. It must have taken discipline to live his life. Bukowski was an urban monk, his monastery the seedy back alleys where flow the earth’s wastewater rivers. He drank from them, and was satisfied.

Read Bukowski. Read him the way you would look at a train wreck as you pass, the bodies lying bloodied on the ground, knowing you should look away. Don’t look away. Look closer.

Xenophobe: Briefings from the US State Department

Following is an announcement posted on the US State Department’s website, issued April 10, 2007. Here I’ve copied it verbatim:

This Public Announcement updates information on the continuing threat of terrorist actions and violence against Americans and our political agenda overseas. This supersedes the Worldwide Caution dated October 11, 2006 and expires on October 9, 2007, in which time we will have likely fabricated a completely new set of threats and issue a whole new, particularly bone chilling list of threats.

The Department of State remains concerned about the continued threat of terrorist attacks, demonstrations and other violent actions against U.S. citizens and interests overseas, though our concern stops short at taking any actual action toward reducing that threat. We think that this warning will suffice to show our concern and fulfill our duty as protector of our citizens, without requiring any action on the part of the US military or international business community to reduce the so called “damages” done the cultures now attacking us. Current information, from sources akin to those providing the previous tidbits of information that have been continually proven false, suggests that al-Qaida and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks against U.S. interests in multiple regions, including Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, regions with a substantial and necessary US military or economic presence. These attacks may employ a wide variety of tactics to include assassinations, kidnappings, hijackings and bombings, desperate and evil actions from a people with no respect for their right to sit under oppressive regimes with little means to redress their grievances.

Ongoing events in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East have resulted in demonstrations and associated violence in several countries. Americans are reminded, shockingly, that demonstrations and rioting can occur with little or no warning. The right of the people to peacefully get permission from, or be arbitrary barred by a large undefeatable government body, is being ignored. Many people in the Middle East have taken to the streets in desperate attempts to get control of their country, posing a risk to all those who currently possess wealth and freedom, owed in no small part to the vast superiority of our enlightened western thought.

In August 2006, British authorities arrested a significant number of extremists engaged in a plot to destroy multiple passenger aircraft flying from the United Kingdom to the United States. The September 2006 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Syria and the March 2006 bombing near the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan illustrate the continuing desire of extremists to strike American targets. And with our agenda calling for the continued creation, at breakneck pace, of American targets overseas, the attacks are likely to become easier and easier. We will continue to retaliate, but because they have no military bases, or harbors under their country in our lands, attacks on Middle East targets require we go to their land.

Extremists may elect to use conventional or non-conventional weapons, and target both official and private interests. Those private interests remain utterly innocent and apolitical, despite government sanctioned oil contracts and adequate military support for their operations. The bomb attacks targeting buses carrying foreign workers in March 2007 and December 2006 in Algeria, a series of bombings in Thailand in May and September 2006 that targeted commercial and tourist destinations in the far south, and the bombings in the Egyptian resort town of Dahab in April 2006 all illustrate how terrorists exploit vulnerabilities associated with soft targets, and are especially cruel due to their refusal to allow foreign travels a little R&R in their country. Additional examples of such targets include high-profile sporting events, residential areas, business offices, clubs, restaurants, places of worship, schools, public areas and locales where Americans gather in large numbers, including during holidays. Financial or economic targets of value may also be considered as possible venues; the vehicle-based suicide attack on an oil facility near Mukalla and Marib in Yemen in September 2006 and the failed attack on the Abqaiq oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia in late February 2006 are such examples of their clear and deliberate hatred of natural resources, sanction by radical religious doctrine.

In the wake of the August 2006 plot against aircraft in London, wherein it was renewed their war against avian technology, the evidence for which you must take our word for, numerous terrorist attacks on trains in India in 2006, the July 2005 London Underground bombings, and the March 2004 train attacks in Madrid, Americans are reminded of the potential for terrorists to attack public transportation systems. Please take precaution and avoid all environmentally-friendly and efficient modes of transportation. Avoid riding with passengers. SUVs may be hard to come by in other countries, but the British-made Range Rover remains a worldwide popularity. It is also far more comfortable than most public transit, which are often sources of too-intimate contact with people harboring a slightly less-American sense of hygiene. In addition, extremists may also select aviation and maritime services as possible targets.

U.S. citizens are strongly encouraged to maintain a high level of vigilance by refusing to trust most people who you encounter. What appears a friendly tour guide could in fact be an al-Qaida operative scouting for a potential kidnap victim. Be aware of local events, and take the appropriate steps to bolster their personal security, including bringing your own arms where possible (see your destination country’s policy toward concealed weapons, which are often not as lenient as ours). For additional information, please refer to “A Safe Trip Abroad” found at http://travel.state.gov.

U.S. Government facilities worldwide remain at a heightened state of alert. These facilities may temporarily close or periodically suspend public services to assess their security posture, and so that personal can easily escape potential unrest by evacuating to their summer homes on the Mediterranean. In those instances, U.S. embassies and consulates will make every effort to provide emergency services to U.S. citizens, through a toll-free hotline connecting you with a very sophisticated phone answering system. Make sure you call with plenty of time remaining on your calling card. Americans abroad are urged resist their aversion to local news and maintain contact with the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate. Privacy on your travels is not a luxury you can afford.

As the Department continues to manufacturer misinformation on any potential security threats to U.S. citizens overseas, it shares credible threat information through its Consular Information Program documents, available on the Internet at http://travel.state.gov. In addition to information on the Internet, travelers may obtain up-to-date information on security conditions by calling 1-888-407-4747 toll-free in the U.S. or outside the U.S. and Canada on a regular toll line at 1-202-501-4444.

Concerning Immigration: There’s No Such Thing as an American

The powers that be continue to scramble for immigration reform, drafting bill after bill to thwart the invasion into our heartland. Last year, it was a fence; now it’s some incompressible heap of legalese that most citizens won’t care to read and immigrants won’t be able to. Another example of bureaucratic absurdity. And as people rise up, or rather, peer through those little windows in our living rooms to pass their judgments on the issue, we’ll glimpse another example of public stupidity. I say that only because it rhymes well with absurdity, but I’m not taking a crack at American stupidity. Ignorance is the more operable word. Not the kind that makes spelling dog difficult, but the kind that says Joe American the dockworker is probably quite ignorant of what life is like in the shanty towns of Mumbai. Now that I’ve cleared that up, let’s move on.

Everyone seems to know this issue, and yet, no one does. Everyone wants reform of some kind, and yet these bills seem to please no one. Maybe that’s because every person that opens their mouth regarding immigration, whether in support of, or opposition to, is just too damned arrogant to admit how slippery a handle they really have on the issue. Maybe it’s because no one truly knows who these immigrants are, or worse, what America is. If you hear a talking head on your television screen speaking optimistically about a reform bill than can accommodate all concerns over immigration (those of the immigrant and those of the “they’ve taken our jobs” alarmists), know that he is lying. He or she doesn’t know half of the concerns out there, and Congress is about as diverse as the country clubs its members patronize.

I have lived with a half-Mexican for three years. She is not Catholic. She doesn’t know how to make a tamale. She is a hard worker, but as far as I’ve been able to tell, will not do the jobs most Americans don’t want. The stereotype unravels in a thirty-word summary. She’s the child of a Mexico-born mother, and an Alabama-born father of Welsh ancestry. A match made in…well…America. We are both from Louisiana, a place with a rich immigrant past (from slightly further east), but where today people think Taco Bell is the cuisine of our southern neighbors (That was until Hurricane Katrina opened the doors for a wave of immigrant workers unfamiliar to most Louisianans.). We’ve discussed this issue extensively, my partner and I, as well as with her mother, who speaks English with a thick accent and a word choice to make an American college student scrambling for the dictionary. They support immigrants; they support America. Neither knows exactly what to call themselves: Chicano, mestizo, Latina, Mexican, American, Mexican-American. We’ve never settled on a name, no doubt because there are too few labels and too many possibilities of people. They have dark hair, healthy tan skin, speak Spanish fluently. They do not bend over lettuce crops in the Salinas Valley, live huddled-up in a too small apartment in fear of deportation, or stand at day worker locales hoping to get picked for a crew before neo-Nazis (newly inspired by the government sponsored bigots, the Minutemen Project) come by to mug them.

Now we live in California, perhaps the epicenter of this debate. We read the pamphlets, knew what to expect, or at least, the image of the immigrant framed in the media. Of the myriad conflicting stories, most are told by fear mongers on the right or impassioned activists on the left. One tells the story of un-American thieves, their conniving trickery used to undermine our legal system, swindle jobs and social services away from hard working “natives,” while all the while weakening the heartland. The other paints a suffering, to bastardize Hobbes, “noble immigrant”: an uneducated, poor, but nevertheless hardworking, loyal, just, eager-to-become American pillar of our society.

Who is correct? No one, really, because the people who’ve defined the parameters of this debate have hardly any street experience with the people for whom they advocate, or against whom they fight. Maybe they’ve had lengthy discussions with their cleaning lady over her concerns about schooling and healthcare, or they’ve read an entry in the crime section about a double murder committed by Ricardo, an undocumented gang member in east L.A who unequivocally represents the danger of open borders. These definitions are fuzzy, to say the least—simplistic descriptions of an enormous population of people. Some are hard working, some art not. Some are criminals; others know the letter of the law better than you or I, and pay possess a greater respect for it. Some want to be citizens; others have come out of desperation, seeking a higher quality of life, but still mourning the loss of their real home. Some, in fact many, join the service and give their lives for this government, while others see this government caring for ordinary people about as much as those they flee. Let’s stop with these definitions. I’ve met people with long stories about their trials and tribulations trying to become legal, learning English, working their way up the vocational ladder, and still fighting a behemoth government bureaucracy. I’ve met others that are purely just visiting. They want nothing more than to go home, but begrudgingly stay for want of the material improvements America has to offer. They may admit this, but they aren’t kneeling before the stars and stripes. You know what this kind of diversity—the laziness and dedication, patriotism and indifference, criminal and upstanding citizen, intelligent and stupid, religious and secular—among the immigrant community reminds me of? America. Immigrants appear no guiltier or worthy of any of these attributes than the average citizen. Whatta ya know. They aren’t all that different from us.

And while we relinquish our grasp on the so-called understanding of the immigrant population, let us stop branding anyone as un-American until we define what it is they are not. They are illegal, perhaps, but only according to passages in law books.

My own life has been, and likely will always be far easier to live than the life of an “illegal,” because of one major accomplishment, which earned two invaluable rewards. I was born a U.S. citizen. No small feat, being born geographically positioned with boundaries that have stood for about 2% of human civilization. If not for the Louisiana Purchase, I would be a French citizen. Ooh la la! Merci beaucoup, Napoleon, pour ta générosité. Now I’m a documented, legal worker in the wealthiest nation on earth, clearly, we are told, because today’s Americans just plain work harder than the rest of the world. We haven’t inherited a wealthy nation; we earn it each day. The Russians, the Chinese, the El Salvadorans, they could have it too if they worked like we do. And because of our hard work, I earn considerably more money for the same job performed anywhere else in the world. Now that I live in California, I earn considerably more than when in Louisiana. That’s not blind luck; it’s because Californians are better than Louisianans.

The other reward is one of class, having been given enough status in this society to attend college, make mediocre grades, and take a degree that adds even more to that hard earned salary. But this is not a gift, it’s a well earned reward for four grueling years in New Orleans, attending about 50% of my classes and drinking Thursday through Tuesday. I deserve something for my efforts, something more than those deceitful illegals. Be they martyrs suffering for the poor, or thieves looting the American dream, neither was born on American soil. The message to them should be clear: Opportunity for all, a staple of American governmental philosophy, stops at the border.

Pat Buchanan and the likes, Newt Gingrich, have been traipsing the country, crying about Americans loosing America. Well, I’ve never considered myself owner of this land. He warns of a language take over. Odd, in a country that has never in its history been 100% English, Christian, white, or as boring as a nation made solely of that would be. So Pat’s no model for the American being ripped off. No one is, really. Certainly not Newt. As difficult as it is to define the invaders, it’s even harder to define where they are invading. The color of our cities is ever-changing, our religion constitutionally unspecified, our language the product of mass immigration, pop culture, and poor education funding. We often, as Americans, brag of foreign ancestry, citing that 1/36^th Swedish ancestry, or showing a photo of Grandma Celia the Russian, when we need to feel part of a culture. Maybe it’s because, as Americans, we have no specified national culture. Pat and Newt fear the waving of the Mexican flag at demonstrations is a sign of the immigrant plans to take control of the south west. Have Pat or Newt ever been to a St. Patrick’s Day celebration? Don’t give ‘em an inch, or they’ll want textbooks printed in Gaelic. They both urge the undocumented workers to learn English. In fact, they implore they must learn English. This coming from two men who speak on a behalf of a nation that can’t speak English, led by a president, who…well…

If there is anything we can permanently call America—something not in need of adaptation every few decades—it’s the idea on which the nation was built. No, not religious freedom. No, not freedom from tyranny. These ideas are not unique. Rather, it’s the idea of a free-for-all, a vibrant land of very little government that belonged to no particular ethnic, linguistic, or religious group. A place where anyone who possesses the will can grab for a piece of the pie, uninhibited by any overarching authority, and protected from unjust theft (That is unless they are bare-assed and wear feathers.). This idea, this very American idea, should know no place of birth. The founders didn’t discriminate. If there’s any lesson to be learned from our history, it’s that this country is constantly being stolen from those less resourceful by those with an unrelenting vision for something better. An idea we preach vehemently, until not in our favor.

Concerning Film: The Film Year in Review 2006

In true narcissistic fashion, I noticed that we were coming up on the Oscar ceremony this weekend, and realized, Wow! I need to get my picks for 2006 out there quickly. People need to know what I think. So here they are. As is usual, we are nearly two full months into the New Year, and I have yet to see many of the bigger films of 2006, for a variety of reasons. The movie theaters out here in California are extremely expensive, a $20 affair when it’s all added up: tickets, parking, and snacks. It has also become the custom for art house cinema to be left finding word-of-mouth interest lurking around in limited release in New York and L.A., hoping to create enough buzz to justify its wider release elsewhere and a more prolonged stay in theaters. Why has The Good German, for instance, been discussed almost none, and Ghost Rider is plastered on every bus stop billboard in the area? I suppose because a flaming skull is easier to market, a more recognizable symbol, like a stop sign, than, say, the broader concepts that true film art tends to concern itself with.

Children of Men

Alfonso Cuaron’s work in this film is phenomenal. Here is the best science fiction film since The Matrix, and a refreshingly intelligent piece of work at that. The subtleties in this movie are immense, and amount in total to a dark portrayal of mankind’s future as one of hopelessness, cynicism, and moral ambiguity. Children of Men is an important movie, reaching into a more daring subject, with surprising success.

The Departed

It isn’t easy to get me to be interested in crime drama. I’ve never found mafia movies to be wholeheartedly interesting; they need to succeed on some other level, as a criminal bent on getting rich is simply not an interesting enough motivation to drive a compelling story. More often than not, these kinds of films are driven by style, the factor of their “coolness” rising above any artistic considerations to grant them attention. But Scorsese, returning to his roots in many ways, has directed an intriguing story, filled with excellent performances in an airtight plot. It’s pacing, suspense, and cleverness all make The Departed a work of perfect craftsmanship. But it cannot rise higher than number 2, because Irish organized crime is simply not a subject of particularly high consequence.

Little Children

An excellent work of fiction, filled with complex and nuanced characters. Little Children is sometimes bogged down by Todd Field’s mundane directing. He captures perfectly the ennui of his characters’ existence, but I think Field is failing to appreciate the camera as tool for story telling, and not simply a tool for observation.

The House of Sand

Though this technically came out in 2005, I’m promoting it to this list as the best foreign film I saw last year. The location for this film is one of the most intriguing places I’ve seen appear on screen, enough so that I immediately did research to find out where it was, and how I could potentially visit. There is profound poetic vision in this movie from Brazil.

Little Miss Sunshine

Great comedic performances in a warm piece of fiction. Perfectly quirky, funny, and moral at the same time.

Borat

Nude wrestling for an unbearable amount of time for any sicko film goer. My grandparents went to see this movie, a testament to the power it wielded while in theaters. I only wish advertising and word of mouth with films like these didn’t always mean the good jokes are spoiled before I get to the theater.

Babel

I really appreciate what Iñárritu is doing in this, the third installment in a trilogy of films dealing with tragedies bringing together unlikely people. In Babel, he has shown worldliness, sensitivity to the cultures that make this planet and an understanding of the ugliness that threatens our survival in the chaos of constant cultural friction. What Iñárritu has done in Babel, is treat with equal respect and importance, both the decency and indecency inherent in all men.

The Fountain

I have a special bias toward Darren Aronofsky. His first two films were perfect. The Fountain does not accomplish what they did, but it is nevertheless appreciated for its daringness. Making a mainstream abstract film is suicide, but his stubbornness is what makes him an artist. Here is a film that asks for its audience to work hard at understanding it. And it seems to me that requiring an imagination from the audience isn’t such a bad idea.

United 93

Denouncing terrorism, aiding terrorism, peace, and war. These are all moral values that United 93 doesn’t concern itself with, making it a refreshing film for this kind of subject. September 11 is too sensitive an issue to be rendered on most filmmaker’s canvasses. But Paul Greengrass has chosen to approach it in the perfect fashion, without making a single judgment about the day, or the broader social, political, and moral significance. This film allows us to relive the simple shock of that day, and remember that brief phase of astonishment, which was later overshadowed by war and politics. Consider how he puts the passengers of United 93 and the hijackers into the same place at the same time, where both seem to be insignificant pawns in a greater worldwide ordeal.

Volver

It may seem odd to move a film to the top ten list, and subsequently speak negatively about it, but I will any way. With such few movies making it to local theaters that are of any artistic value, Volver makes it to the list by default, filling a space left vacant by the vacuum of art create in this big budget movie world. Almodovar is a fine artist, but I question the “so what” factor in his films. He brings together colorful characters, witty dialogue, rich scenes, and ends with a final product that seems pointless at times. Volver is entertaining from start to finish, but its value doesn’t stretch beyond the end credits. If fiction is meant to teach us something about human kind, Volver is void of lessons, and erupting with everything else that makes a great story. What is this movie about? As it stands, Volver is another installment in a long running serial that could be titled Almodovar’s Imagination. Perhaps, when he is finished making films, we will be able to speak of the real importance of his films as a collection, rather than individually.

The Awards:

I don’t really subscribe to this idea that the best director of the year did not make the best film. This is simply so the Academy can avoid choosing. This way they can give two best picture awards. My pick for best director is typically my pick for best film. It’s like saying the best book I’ve read isn’t necessarily to the credit of the writer. Perhaps it was the typesetting. But for this year, I can forgive splitting the award in two, because The Departed certainly showcases perfection in the craft of directing, without being the best film of the year.

Best Picture/Best Director: Children of Men
Best Director 2: Martin Scorsese, The Departed

Foreign Language Film: The House of Sand
Documentary Film: An Inconvenient Truth

Best Adapted Screenplay: Todd Field, Tom Perrotta, Little Children
Best Original Screenplay: Michael Arndt, Little Miss Sunshine

Best Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio, The Departed
Best Actress: Kate Winslet, Little Children
Supporting Actor: Mark Wahlberg, The Departed
Supporting Actress: Adriana Barraza, Babel

Best Editing: United 93

Cinematography: Children of Men

The award for, “Bomb the studios! It’s the worst piece of crap ever committed to celluloid”: The Da Vinci Code, though Tom Hanks’ insistence on taking his material so seriously may constitute the funniest performance of the year.

--Nick Denney

Concerning Greed: Now Arriving in the Land of Conspicuous Consumption

I have just recovered from a particularly exhausting weekend showing visitors around the city. Eliza and I entertained guests from Mexico for a couple of days, and now have mixed feelings about the meaning of the entire trip. Sure, it is always good to see family and friends. But in this case, it was watching family and friends, as they descended voluntarily into the bowels of the American addiction to excess.

On Saturday, we set out for the usual car site seeing tour, with the first stop designated as the Golden Gate Bridge. I by-passed the traffic laden Bay Bridge, and drove the more distant, but faster, route across the bay at Richmond Point and through Marin County. I searched my inventory of history and local lore to point out places on the way that might be of interest to the guests, who rode in the backseat more concerned with car sickness than the sites of Mt. Tamalpais or the views of the Bay. Eliza translated; sometimes I spoke broken Spanish to seem a bit less American. The hospitality these two had shown us on a past trip to the Yucatan I had not forgotten, and pledged to show the same. But it seemed, for them, that this trip was more about the shopping than culture or site seeing. We acquiesced, because, after all, it is America, and what is a more American experience than traipsing up steep hills all afternoon heavy with shopping bags?

We stopped first at the Golden Gate Bridge, joined the busy crowds for the obligatory photo-ops. We eyeballed the plaque explaining the monotonous construction of the building. The cables are really that thick? I have been to show other guests this bridge, at this very spot, an absurd number of times since moving here 14 months ago. This time was no different, as equally beautiful and pleasant as it was foolish and touristy. But with a warm and sunny February day in San Francisco, who could complain?

From there it was on to Lombard Street. We were making good progress, knocking out those sites one “simply has to see” in order to get down to the truly enjoyable of San Francisco. The culture that isn’t necessarily marked in pop-up maps or hotel pamphlets. From Lombard, we headed at their insistence to Fisherman’s Wharf. I half expected them to see how spuriously constructed the whole area was, grow disgusted with it, and beg that we forgo the contrivances for some place better. Then we could begin showing them “the city” we know.

But Fisherman’s Wharf is a trap for those who seek highly accessible tourism—nicely packaged local culture within a few blocks—and who hope to shell out cash at every corner. And we know there are those Americans whose greatest joy in traveling is not site seeing, eating, or art, but simply the exhilaration of flaunting their cash spending ability as conspicuously as if they were aristocrats parading through pre-revolutionary Paris. As it would turn out, these were our guests. We labored up and down the sidewalks of Jefferson Street for hours, watching them go in and out of every shop. Buying chocolate, video games, tee shirts with moronic slogans and cheap designs. We walked and paused. Browsed and bought. Conspicuous consumption abounding. There is no culture here, save that of American consumerism. Though there are delicious sourdough bowls of chowder. And look, they sell it in cans too. First rule in the business of tourism: Why sell just the experience, when you can package a take home version as well?

But it wasn’t only at the Wharf we found our guests enraptured with the abundance of American goods, and their cheap prices. It continued into North Beach, once we dropped off bags from the first round and geared up with more clothing for the cold night. I scored a prime spot on Columbus Avenue and my favorite of streets, Beach Blanket Babylon Boulevard. Not five steps from the car, they disappeared into some ethnic shop, and returned with a necklace. The price they were not shy about. We ate at an Italian Restaurant, and browsed those few stores still open afterwards. Never did they walk out of a shop without buying something.

The next day, it started again, though the style of shopping switched from tourist boutique to domestic practicality. First to the Berkeley Bowl, then to Walgreen’s, the Elephant Pharmacy. Cosmetics, toys, snacks, and all those worthless little knick-knacks one never sees anyone spend money on. The kinds of things my grandfather always thinks make great stocking stuffers. How would they have felt in a dollar store? We ended this shopping-spree at the Mecca for such consumption: Target, where cheap American goods come in abundance, and in a variety of shapes, colors and sizes. Manuel eyeballed the escalator going to yet another floor, with a fancy rig that carries your cart with you, and says to me: We don’t have this in Mexico. Does that make him less fortunate? Here was their grand finale, two carts full of badly made clothing, shoes, etc., much of which was likely manufactured in sweat shops back. Full circle.

I reflected on this trip for the next few days, wondering why it would be so shocking to see two citizens of the developing world come to this country and drop absurd amounts of money on insignificant junk. And that they would elect to do this above anything else. It seemed they were completely disinterested in the city, the culture, the people. If this is American tourism, why not build a giant shopping compound in the desert, and let tourist get lost in it for days? That would surely free up space in the cities, where those who actually live there can get around more easily, without a double-decker bus claiming a block’s worth of parking spots.

I am no stranger to American consumerism or this kind of conspicuous consumption. I see it every day; in fact, I am vocal about it too. We are, in America, by far the leading consumers in the world, and have profoundly integrated this lifestyle of consumption into our cultural canon. But I am not ready to loose the grip we hold on our own very real, very rich culture. It is not superior, nor is it even as rich (if such a subjective judgment can be made) as many far older places in the world. But it does exist, and it’s a culture that defines the more admirable traits of our national character.

These visitors showed little interest in this. They were apathetic to the Italian history of North Beach, as we ate pasta on Columbus Ave. They rarely looked up to notice the Bay Area’s geographic splendor. The local music, the Latin culture of The Mission, the revolutionary ghosts in Haight-Ashbury, the Victorian houses, Chinatown and the Chinese contribution to the San Francisco culture. Barely a nod.

The reason is that this—the real American culture—does not make it abroad. It Mexico, they see little to nothing of artistic America, historical America. They see only consumer America. I could notice this when I was in Mexico. Our ambassadors are Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Starbucks. They are the ones marching the globe and “teaching” other cultures about us. They don’t see Jazz music or the Creole South. They see Britney Spears and GAP. It is no wonder that a visitor comes here looking for that “culture” they have been exposed to back home. This is the image of America we are projecting in the world. When we, as Americans, travel, we do so often because we’ve been teased by some element of a foreign culture, which is portraying itself positively. We don’t travel to see famine, poverty, blood revolutions, or bigotry. We travel in spite of the worst aspects of a culture. We travel to experience French cuisine, the wildlife of the Amazon, the temples of Jerusalem, the ruins of Angkor Wat. Why, then, would we want the world to see us for those, the saddest of our vices: Materialism and Geed?