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Straight Talk By Kaizaad Kotwal
e-mail kaizaadkotwal@yahoo.com
(January 2003 Issue)
Old Problems?: New Year's (Re)Solutions!
Happy New Year folks! Hope that 2003 is swell in each and every way for all of you. I am certain that many of you have been good and made your New Year's resolutions. Some of you will succeed at maintaining your resolutions well into the coming months. Others will try hard, and somewhere along the way - say, day-after-tomorrow - resolutions will fall by the wayside like Taiwanese-made tchatchkas from a burst piñata.
As for moi? No thank you. No resolutions here. I don't need another way with which to beat myself over the head for failing at something. So I simplify things, reduce the stress of failure, and make no resolutions whatsoever.
I've been thinking about that word, however. R-e-s-o-l-u-t-i-o-n. And putting my own twist on it, I'm offering a few new solutions (re-solutions if you will) to some of our more pressing, yet age-old, problems these days. It's time for someone to take a stand. To display some chutzpah. With Democrats acting like Republicans, and vice versa, this whole morass of moderation has got to stop! Moderation is simply a polite way of admitting to one's spinelessness, gutlessness, and essentially the abandonment of one's core values.
And I must say that I have received much of my inspiration for this bout of attacking problems with a new verve and vitality from none other than George W. Bush himself. (Never thought you'd hear me say that, did you now?) Pre-empt the problem! Nip it in the bud! Cut the cancer off at its roots. These are my mantras for 2003 and beyond.
There's the whole celebrity crime spree syndrome that has just got to be stopped. Right away! Shoplifting starlet Ms. Ryder has been asked to do community service. Community service? Whose lame-brain idea was that? I don't see the average shoplifter being let off so easily? And those ordinary folk haven't made us sit through films with lots of bad acting! I have a more apropos punishment recom-mendation: Make Ms. Ryder sit in prison for a time, and while she's there, pin her eyes open à la "Clockwork Orange" and force her to watch looped tapes of the worst films Hollywood has ever made, 24 hours a day. That'll teach her and other potential celebrity shoplifters to boot and blame it on research for an acting job!
Martha Stewart must be taught a lesson too. Why does a billionairess have to indulge in insider trading for a mere $200,000 or so? There's been lots of talk about her spending time in prison and having to eat her own words by eating institutional kitchen slop and living in a cinder-block and metal bar cell with no decoupaged accessories. It was recently announced that her television show has been renewed for another season. If we are going to send her to prison, I say let her broadcast her show from there. Let's give reality TV a whole new meaning! Above all giving Ms. Stewart a chance to learn what reality truly is!
Let us watch her work single-handedly to make prison more livable for the inmates. (This would have the added bonus of satisfying the kooks who are always wigging and whining about the rights of rapists, murderers, embezzler's and other stellar specimens of the human race.) Martha would have to decorate each inmate's cell to their specific tastes and preferences. She would be required to cook gourmet meals for all the prisoners and guards alike. And best of all she would be forced to do all this without the aid of her hundreds of minions who really do all the work behind the scenes of the show while she hogs the limelight and profits.
On the other hand, I say prison (even with my above suggestions) is too easy on the bitch that makes us all feel worthless for not having enough time to hand weave and handprint our own f***ing gift wrapping paper. So, if she wanted that $200,000 so badly, I say let her keep it! But, as punishment, block all her other money and assets. That'll teach her a lesson in greed. It's a good thing!
What about these sports hooligans who seem to have made Colum-bus their home base for now? I don't care what anyone else says, if fans can't take defeat (and especially victory) with dignity, restraint, and basic human decency, then the team forfeits the right to play in any bowl game.
To the President of Ohio State I say, "Put your money where your mouth is and take a stand. Bar the Bucks from going to play in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl." I know, I know. The poor players didn't do anything to deserve that. But piss the players off by making them pay for the crimes of the Neanderthal fans, and next time, the players will make sure no fan behaves that way. Or they can go after the fans with their own brand of vigilante, pre-emptive punishment.
Enron executives, anybody? If there's anyone who needs a good dose of "do-unto-these-bastards-as-they-have-done -unto-others," it's those tricky shliek-meisters of corporate debauchery. Here's the range of punishments available to them currently. Jail time? I don't think so. Even though the thought of them getting raped and sodomized like they did to their employees and shareholders is tempting, it ain't justice enough for me. Seizing their assets? Bah-humbug! Big deal. They've got more where it came from, hidden away in tidy investment shelters overseas and in the names of spouses, kids and other family members.
I say it's time to bring back public displays of capital punishment. A little revival of public holidays festooned with a few executions of the true evil that plagues our society never hurt anybody - except the bloke being put to death.
For the Enron executives who ruined hundreds of thousands of lives, this is how we should say to them "Hasta la vista, baby," with a good ol' Texan drawl. We set up a carnival-like atmosphere on the Washington Mall with clowns, puppeteers, and other entertainment fare. At the end of the mall framed by the capitol building, we set up a huge stage with several electric chairs. At the end of the day's festivities, the dastards of Enron who have been found guilty will be strapped to these chairs and none other than President Bush gets to do the honors by pulling the switch. Oh, the glory! Ah, the sparks that will fly!
As you well know, the Enron executives aren't the only ones with corporate karma to repent for. Many of the real evildoers these days don't wear military camouflage, à la Saddam Hussein or some other self-appointed Banana Republic leader. Nope! An ungodly number of the real evildoers wear Brooks Brothers pinstriped suits, Hugo Boss button-down shirts, and Johnston Murphy wing tips, accessorized with power ties by Donna Karan and socks by Versace.
Take the case of the achy-breaky Pfizer heart valves. Starting in the late '70s, a mechanical heart valve, the Bjork-Shiley, the 'Rolls-Royce of valves', according to doctors, was implanted in hundreds of patients. What neither patient nor doctor knew was that many Bjork-Shiley valves had fractured during clinical testing. The valve company, a subsidiary of pharma-ceutical giant Pfizer, hid this teeny-weeny detail from the government regulators.
At Pfizer's factory in the Caribbean, the company discovered that inferior equipment, which made poor welds, was responsible. Instead of jettisoning the faulty valves, Pfizer management demanded that the defects be ground down, further weakening the valves. Pfizer then sold these doctored valves worldwide. The weak valves struts would often break, causing the heart to contract and explode.
In 1980, Dr Viking Bjork, one of the inventors of the valve, wrote to Pfizer demanding ameliorative action. He threatened to go public with the cases of valve-strut failures. He was silenced by Pfizer execs. So far 800 valves have cracked, and 500 of these recipients have died. (Incidentally, you can read the details of this gory story in Greg Palast's amazing book of investigative journalism titled "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.)
In 1994, the US Justice Department got Pfizer. They avoided criminal charges by paying civil penalties and roughly $200 million in restitution to victims. And I say that ain't enough.
Here's my (re)solution to this macabre story. Take the guilty execs who master-minded the cover-up and anyone else involved in killing these vulnerable patients. Then take out their healthy heart valves (assuming that such lowlifes have hearts) and replace them with the explod-ing heart valves, and then let the real heartaches begin!
It's 2003, folks, and can you believe that we are still debating whether burning crosses on the front yards of black folks is hateful. The Supreme Court is going to decide on that burning issue this year by determining whether such acts of pyrotech-nic bigotry are protected as free speech.
You know what I say? Let's burn plenty of crosses on the front lawns of black people's homes. Bring 'em on! Let the fires blaze! Let free speech of that milieu proliferate! However, I suggest one minor adjustment. Attached to each cross, as it burns in valiant glory, should be a member of the group that thinks that this is acceptable behavior in the 21st century.
Let these Neanderthalic critters go up in flames. That way we seemingly protect free speech and decrease the population and gene pool of these racist bastards! It's about time we had some reverse lynchings. I want segregation. You bet! I want to be segregated as far away as possible from these blithering idiots who think that picking on black people is still acceptable behavior. Starting with Trent Lott.
Ah, there's a man of decency. A leader of quality. A man with his head so far up his ass, no wonder he's started reeking even to loyal ones of the Grand Ol' Party! Strom Thurmond turned 100 years old when Lott made those fateful comments. Coincidentally, Lott's racist attitudes and segregationist nostalgia are also as old and tired as Thurmond himself. Next time someone wants to burn a cross on a black family's front lawn as an exercise of their freedom of speech, let them. I just want to be the one to strap Lott and his likes to those crosses before lighting the match.
So, as of this New Year, I am diversifying my professional resumé with the new title of "Creative Visionary Consultant of (Re)solutions to Age-Old Problems."
In future installments here read about how to solve the ever-igniting Middle-East conflict, the never-ending Indo-Pak conflagrations, and the pedophilia plague in the Catholic Church.
e-mail kaizaadkotwal@yahoo.com
(December 2002 Issue)
Year-End Ruminations: Having the Time of Our Lives!
We are fast approaching the close of yet another year &endash; another 365 days, 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes or 31,536,000 seconds gone, never to return. These days, in our age of ubiquitous technology and omni-present dangers, time doesn't simply fly, it seems to vaporize.
Year 2002 is days away from being completely relegated to the annals of history, a series of chapters, pages or footnotes in sundry books yet to be written. A collection of anecdotes and events yet to be put down for posterity. An amalgamation of perspectives and counterperspectives of what has been, of what might have been. A morass of writing and rewriting the history of 2002 that won't end with the dropping of the crystal ball in Times Square.
It's been a crazy year - both personally and globally. My professional and personal life have been through more "heaves and hos" than Anna Nichole Smith's ample bosom during a session of particularly raucous lovemaking. But that's a discussion for another day. World-over, countries, cultures, and people have teetered on the brink of disaster, yet somehow managed to step back from the precipitous abyss.
Martha Stewart has managed to stay just a few steps away from having to decorate her own prison cell with a découpaged toilet seat and matching mirror frame. (It's a writer's serendipitous gold-mine that the company she "allegedly" - wink, wink, nudge, nudge - did some insider trading with is called ImClone. One misplaced apostrophe and one slip of the spacebar and the jokes just keep-a-coming! And by the way, will they allow her to use her own K-Mart sheets in prison? And how will she look perpetually dressed in flaming orange? Will a jumpsuit with no waistline make her look fat? Inquiring minds want to know.)
Joan Rivers continues to be the most nipped-and-tucked woman in America, so much so that her plastic surgeons (had they any ethics) should be warning her to desist from any further surgery. One more face-lift and she'll be sporting a beard!
Pakistan and India came closer than ever (or so it seemed) to exchanging "I-say-nuclear-he-says-nucular" weapons of mass destruction. (I give that term a prize for most commonly used and least reflected upon oxymoron of the year. I mean are there any nuclear weapons that are not ones of mass destruction? Is it really necessary to state and restate the painfully obvious ad nauseam?)
Israel and Palestine continue to be political, cultural, religious, geographical, global live wires that threaten to make Armageddon appear to be a Biblical picnic in comparison.
If the U.N. is an annoying zit on the face of this Presidency, then Iraq has continued to be a festering, puss-filled boil on its lily-white behind.
And in November's mid-term elections, the Democrats were soundly - and deservedly - Bush-whacked!
Yet somehow life goes on.
Others around the world flirted with disaster, yet failed to return from the brink of the abyss.
Winona Ryder used method acting (claiming that her shoplifting was research for a role) as a legal defense. This is sure to force an imminent FBI probe (ordered by the Justice Department) of all acting curricula in colleges and universities across the country. Bad acting just got worse, courtesy Ms. Ryder.
The nascent peacetime in Northern Ireland fell to bits like some fragile treasure of Ming dynasty pottery. The Emerald Isle is back to looking crimson.
Bali, that tropical paradise of sun, sand and breezy joie de vivre turned into a charred purgatory of car bombs, strewn carcasses and broken spirits, the most recent frontline in al-Qaeda's simmering efforts at continued terrorism.
In Washington, D.C., the snipers created Machiavellian mayhem, took ten lives and so many more "peaces" of mind with them. Those who were certain, before the cowards were caught, that it was some foreign terrorist plot, took beguiling comfort in the fact that one of the perpetrators had converted to Islam a few years ago.
Those corporate snipers, those sharp-shooters of cooked books and self-padded multi-million dollar retirement accounts, grotesquely ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands of hard-working people whose only crime was to have bought - hook, line and sinker - into the propaganda of the relentless (and unquestioned) pursuit of the American Dream.
Enron's crooks ran out of their criminal energy and the MCI-WorldCom power brokers may be forced to use Sprint or AT&T to call their lawyers from prison. It may be poetic justice at one level, but not enough to restore the decimated existences of the (now not) working poor. Yet, life seems somehow to go on.
I know that the end of one year and the beginning of a new one is a time for reflection and resolutions, but I have never been one to make New Year's resolutions. They seem no more than pointless paragons of some temporary euphoria, induced by a little too much year-end nostalgia or New Year's Eve bubbly or both.
As I reflect on my own life this past year (or for several ones before that), and as I scan the global horizon and see what moves us, what shakes us, what terrifies us and what elates us, both individually and collectively, I have begun to see things differently.
It seems to me that I, like so many around me, continually fall into the trap of living in the past or wanting to live in the future, and in the bargain always failing to live in the moment. So much of our culture, so much of our lives are dictated by the gauze-lit nostalgia of what has been and/or the Utopian promises of what will be.
Our media, our advertising mavens, our politicians, our religious leaders, our governments, our corporations, and our increasingly globalized cultures seem to be selling us the future in new and profound ways each and every day by either maligning the past or by convincing us to return to those glory-filled days of yore.
The corporate world is rife with examples of their attempts to push the future onto us in new and innovative ways each day. The past is passé, the present is about to become passé, and so all that seems to matter is the future. We are told, with great assurance that this "new and improved" product will serve us better.
When I am bombarded with such claims, I usually have two responses: First, where's the proof that this new incarnation of my laundry detergent or my toothpaste is better? What's the guarantee? And second, what the heck was I doing using the previous incarnation if it wasn't as good as the new and improved variety?
And yet, no one questions the truth of these marketing claims and no one asks for a refund after having used the not-so-new-and-improved versions of the products being peddled en masse.
Even more disturbing in the corporate world of the sell, sell, sell mentality, amply aided by the media franchises and the advertising vultures, is the culture of fear that they feed to us. From the evening news to the talking-head shows, from infomercials to the endless chatter around us, fear is the lingua franca of our cultural and socio-economic transactions.
We are told that the future is to be feared unless we buy such and such or unless we elect so and so. We are blackmailed into bankrupting ourselves in the here and now in order to buy into a better future. Remember Y2K? That technologically feared Armageddon when a few missing ones and zeros were supposed to make the globe go dark? When people stocked up on water and generators like a chipmunk hordes nuts for the winter hibernation? When rationality flew out the window as fast as our hard-earned money in buying all the stuff that was supposed to save us?
The fear culture is wreaking havoc on us in ways that we have not even begun to comprehend. Mainly, it is wreaking havoc on our health, individually and collectively. Anxiety, depression, and other psychological disorders are hideously on the rise. There are many complex and yet to be studied reasons for this phenomenon. Yet, it would seem natural that a culture in which fear is so omni-present is bound to see increased rates of the anxious, depressed, and traumatized.
Not to mention one of the worst culprits in the multi-billion endgame of fear mongering - the pharmaceutical giants. I love the ads where we are convinced that we have some deadly disease only to learn that the medical cure for it is just another set of deadly possibilities. You know what I am speaking of: Take pill "X" for allergies. You are bound to breathe easier, to be able to smell the flowers and skip gaily through endless fields of marigolds and poppies forever and a day. The down side you ask? Pill "X" may cause constipation, dry-mouth, irregular heart-rhythms, internal bleeding and in rare cases, sudden death syndrome. But at least you'll breathe more easily as your entire internal system slowly comes to a grinding halt. And when you die you'll be in an infinite field of botanical glory.
Religions across the theological spec-trum seem intractably stuck in the past. The future is filled with guilt and sin, doomsdays and raptures. The solution? Retreat into the past. Yet, fanaticism is not simply the domain of Islamic zealots like al-Qaeda or Hamas. Fascism and fundamentalism appear to be on the rise globally and in religions and sects outside of Islam. The past is precious, the future forbidden. And religious sects and leaders have not been immune from using fear as a medium of propaganda.
All this fear has us either wishing that the future were like the inimitable past or that the past would dissolve quickly into some sort of utopian future. But what of the precious present? What of the here and now? What of the need for the moment that is right here?
When we are told to live in the moment, it is usually via the message to buy now, pay later. The only way we are convinced to live in the moment is through the overwhelming saturation of our society with messages of instant gratification. We buy our way into recessions and huge personal debt, and then we are told that the best way out is simply to consume more today so that tomorrow will be more economically sound.
It seems to me that, as a rule, our individual and collective relationships to the past, present and future, need some serious reevaluation and some in-depth contemplation. Time is of the essence, as they say. Yet, how little we appear to understand the essence of time as it relates to our lives. As I go into the new year, I am hoping to find better balance in the way in which the past, the present and the future affects my life, my choices, my decisions and my life's direction. It's high time I figured this out!
e-mail kaizaadkotwal@yahoo.com
(From November 2002 Issue)
Coyote and the Cracked Pot: Ancient Parables for Modern Lives
Stories are the love of my life - tales, fictional or otherwise. I adore the art of a well-crafted story whether in a novel, a ballad, an epic poem, a screenplay, a short story, or a fable. I read to learn. I read to celebrate. I read because I love words and the ways in which words cascade together to form sentences. In turn, I respect the way in which sentences coalesce into paragraphs, washing over the reader in luxuriating torrents of entertainment, pleasure, knowledge and education. For me, language and words are to the soul and spirit what blood is to the corporeal body.
Perhaps one could say that I am a hopeless believer in the power of words (spoken or written). I am a linguistic idealist, if you will, who truly feels that language can transform the human heart, mind, soul, and by extension, the entire human condition. Words, I believe, have literally saved lives and continue to do so as the world grows evermore threatening, as the human experience becomes increasingly fraught with terror, and as our biggest conundrum as a species, our inability to communicate away our differences, morphs ever deeper into an unbridgeable chasm.
I have often turned to stories and fables, tales and histories, to help me through troubled times. We live in a society in which the self-help world of publishing has grown exponentially. Self-help, it's a quaint little term. Tell me, if it is truly self-help, why do I need someone else to write a book in order for me to help myself? Doesn't sound very self-helpish to me. My more cynical side suspects that self-help as a genre refers to the well-padded bank accounts and investment portfolios of these self-styled gurus of existential charity who prey on our fears, paranoia, insecurities, afflictions, and disabilities (social, spiritual, psychological and otherwise).
There is no shortage of self-helpers these days. The tough love tactics of Dr. Phil and Dr. Laura have given television and radio ratings an immeasurable boost. My own countryman Deepak Chopra, guru to the stars (those mortal ones in Hollywood) has become a star in his own right. Oprah Winfrey, the Goddess of self-help herself, has turned introspection and self-amelioration into a veritable cottage industry. Listening to her and the sundry gurus she brings onto her shows and into her magazine, one would think that visiting the remotest recesses of our consciousness, subconscious, id and super ego, were akin to taking an exotic, tropical vacation. Listening to her and the sundry gurus she brings onto her shows and into her magazine, one would think that visiting the remotest recesses of our consciousness, subconscious, id and super ego were akin to taking an exotic, tropical vacation. Your soul can be transformed into an existential spa, where a healed and more self-actualized you can journey infinitely. Self-discovery is the hottest ticket at your interpersonal travel agency. Just ask your inner ticket agent for discounted rates and availability!
I don't entirely disbelieve the self-help industry. I do think that there is a lot of good to it. I myself have taken advantage, from time to time, of various well-written and well-researched tomes of personal discovery and improvement. But I also know that there is a lot of baloney out there masquerading as spiritual salve to my injured inner-child, In fact, the most powerful stories, the most meaningful ones, are from our antiquities, from our ancient histories and mythologies, from our oldest folklores and traditions. I sometimes find that a short story from ancient Indian folklore or a brief parable from Native-American mythology drives home the point far more potently than an entire series of tomes on what ails the human condition.
The Guttenberg press has been a Janus-faced invention in this respect. The ancients, who didn't have the luxury of mass printings and ad-hoc felling of forests for paper, had self-help down to an enviable art. Their stories of self-discovery and self-help were short, to the point, packed a punch and drove the message straight home. The village elder, the communal griot, the spiritual sage of yore, who passed down these cherished pearls of wisdom, have been replaced by Section E, Aisle 8 at your local Barnes and Noble.
Let me share with you a couple of fables from the Old World that I cherish. The first, from ancient India, is titled "The Cracked Pot." It goes something like this: (There are variations of this lore in many other traditions as well.)
Once upon a time, in a remote village in Northern India, there lived an old water bearer. This wizened old man would walk to the nearest well, about a mile away, each day just after sunrise. Across his shoulders rested a bamboo pole, strong yet supple, and balanced from each end, dangling from fraying rope were two pots in which the water bearer carried the well's offerings back to his village. Each day he would do this just as he had for the past 35 years.
The pot that hung on his left side was a new shiny one. Copper. All gleaming and new-fangled. A pot that elicited envy in many of the other villagers. On his right side hung an old earthenware pot that had been with the water bearer from the very first trip he made to the well.
The old pot had lived a long and full life. But the years of service had weathered it, and for the last year it had been living with a small yet noticeable crack on its underbelly. The crack was a result of some cruel village children who had decided to throw stones at the old pot for sport, assuming that its usefulness was long past. The proud water bearer had intervened in the nick of time and saved his favorite pot from utter annihilation.
But the pot's scar was a cause of great consternation to the old pot itself. The pot felt worthless and useless because by the time the water bearer got back to the village after pulling water from the well, the cracked pot was only able to retain about half or less of its initial load.
One morning, as the water bearer was rising, he noticed that the old pot was trying to jump off the shelf it lay on each night in an attempt to crash to the ground below and shatter into a thousand pieces. The water bearer intervened once again to save the pot's life.
"What are you doing?" asked the concerned owner.
"I am of no use to you anymore," answered the pot. "You may as well replace me with another shiny, new copper pot."
"Why are you speaking such nonsense?" queried the water bearer.
"It's true," said the pot. "You don't know how awful I feel when all I can do these days is return with just half a pot of water that you put so much effort into in carrying us back to the village. I am a burden to you. Nothing more."
Comforting the pot, the water bearer said that he was aware of the pot's incontinence. He urged the pot to look at the side of the road on their return journey from the well that morning. With that they set off to fetch the water.
Ever since the pot's nasty run-in with the mean village children, the water-bearer had planted seeds along the right bank of the dusty road and each day as they returned from the well, the cracked pot gently and steadily watered the earth on that side of the road.
That morning as the pot observed the road below its leaky belly, it saw a most dazzling array of flowers blooming along the one-mile stretch from the well to the village. And in that beautiful roadside garden bursting with vivid colors and scintillating scents, bees and insects, birds and tiny animals frolicked under the warm rays of the early sun. The side of the road that the shiny copper pot traversed was dusty, parched, barren and drab by comparison.
The cracked pot had learned its lesson.
This little folkloric fable has much to offer in our day and age for a variety of reasons. Above all, consumer cultures, increasingly pervasive the world over, have begun to create a milieu in which we are pressured into believing that everything that sparkles is indeed gold. New is good. Newer is better. Newest is best. These are the mantras of a "buy me" globalized culture in which disposing off with the old has become a veritable sport of status climbers. Sadly, in my estimation, these attitudes towards old refrigerators and automobiles have begun to transfer over to our attitudes towards human beings.
Human beings are being treated with the same detachment and ennui as we have learned to dispose of our older PCs or our scratchy vinyl LPs from a bygone era. From Hollywood to Wall Street and from Madison Avenue to Capitol Hill, human life is increasingly commodified. We are put away with as much dignity as one would a soup du jour at a fancy bistro or a flavor of the month at your local ice-cream shop. Grandma and grandpa have become passé just like last fall's Gucci loafers in black patent leather.
I am not one to believe that just because something is old it is inherently valuable or that just because someone got to live to a certain age that they automatically acquire a halo of wisdom. But I do believe that one cannot dispose of old, human life with the same callousness as one puts out the old washer and dryer by the curbside to be taken off to a landfill somewhere. And that is exactly what many of our assisted living centers and senior care centers have become - landfills for humanity's older models.
The other thing that I take from "The Cracked Pot," is that people we consider "broken" or "cracked" or "imperfect" still have a lot to teach us, a lot to offer us, a lot that they do give us. It is my observation that the more "civilized" a society becomes, the more "modern" it wants to project its outward image, the less willing it is to face-up to and cope with the imperfections, the flaws, the brokenness inherent in its being.
Those who live on the fringes of our societies, those who have been pushed out to the margins of our cultures, are often treated with the disdain, simply assuming that they have nothing to offer, that they have nothing to teach those of us privileged enough to live at the center of things, particularly at the centers of power and prosperity.
I suppose it's connected to our attitudes on human disposability in that we think that those amongst us who are "broken" or "cracked" (the homeless, the disabled, the mentally ill, the poor, and others outside of the norm) need to be kept from public view, need to be shoved into corners where their existences don't cause discomfort or inconvenience to those of us who are whole, who are not cracked or broken. And these attitudes affect everything from public policy to private behavior.
The second fable, somewhat reflective of the above discussion, is from Native American folklore. It goes something like this.
A Coyote, who loved to imitate things and people he was not and could never be, often found himself in a lot of trouble. He envied the stars their vast home in the universe and their constant radiance and spinning around in the heavens. He often begged the stars to take him into their realm. And the stars would often remind him that, "We are stars and we dance forever." But the Coyote still wanted in.
One day Coyote managed to trick Star Woman into taking him up to the stars where they do dance forever. In his own mind, Coyote figured that he could come back to earth whenever he wanted. So for four days and four nights they danced, Star Woman and Coyote. When Coyote says that he is ready to go back, Star Woman tells him that he can't, because, "We are stars and we dance forever!"
This goes on and on and eventually Coyote's tail falls off but the dance keeps going on, and Star Woman doesn't let go
of Coyote. And then Coyote's nose falls off. Then his left ear. Followed by his right ear. Eventually there's not a lot of Coyote left to look at and Star Woman, disgusted by the way he looks, lets go of him and he falls to the earth.
It takes Coyote some time and quite a bit of ingenuity to pull himself together!
This tale, like many in the Native American traditions is a bit abstruse, a bit abstract in its messages. After all, what can we possible learn from a Coyote who falls apart while dancing with Star Woman?
There are a few things that a friend helped me glean from this stark fable. First of all, whether we like it or not, when we are falling apart (physically, emotionally, mentally, or otherwise) the dance of life goes on. Even if we don't want to parti-cipate, even if we are unable to participate, life has its own force with which it dances on all around us. One could look at this fatalistically and conclude that life is meaningless if indeed our participation is for naught in the cycle of life.
I prefer to read into this that one must continue to participate (or attempt to) in life to the best of one's abilities and with the greatest effort and stamina one can muster. Even in our lowest moments, in our times when we trust our own worth the least, we have much to contribute, like that old cracked pot. And our participation in this dance of life, brief as it may be, completely insignificant as it may seem, is integral to the grand scheme of things.
At another level, Coyote's sad story had something much more profound to teach me. First of all Coyote, unhappy with who he is, believes that imitating some greater force, some grander ideal, will bring him contentment and joy. But when he realizes that wanting to be like the stars that dance forever is not meant for him, he has to find a solution to get out of his predicament.
He thinks that all might be solved if he simply starts to get rid of parts of himself that are getting in the way. And the more he can't keep up with Star Woman, the more his falling apart escalates. My friend Terry Tafoya noted that when we try to reach some unattainable ideal (see the worlds of fashion and beauty so powerfully and relentlessly foisted upon us), we begin to indulge in behaviors that are destructive. When we become dissatisfied with what we truly are and begin to lose ourselves, this eventually robs us of our identity, our dignity, and ultimately our life force is drained away. As Nigerian author Chinhua Achebe wrote, "things fall apart."
There is so much pressure, from every-where around us (family, school, govern-ment, advertising, media, religion) to be who we are not. Or to be who "they" want us to be. Not many people know this, but in the original tale of Cinderella by Hans Christian Anderson, when the Prince's entourage comes to the house of the Step Mother and the two Step Sisters to see if the glass slipper fits, when at first it doesn't fit either sisters' feet, the Step Mother does something truly grotesque. She chops off the toes of the first daughter's foot to make the glass slipper fit and to the second one, she slashes away the heel to force the foot into the fragile shoe. Kids for several generations have grown up on the sanitized, Disneyfied version, if you will, of Cinderella.
The messages are incessant and overwhelming: If you want to fit in you have to become a conformist. Similar to the Coyote and Cinderella stories, people's desires to fit in evolve in a very self-destructive way and people start to chop things off - sexuality, spirituality, love, affection, compassion, caring, freedom, and other vital and inherent ingredients of our unique identities and supposedly irrepressible spirits.
I can say this from personal experience, and by watching those around me, that the more we try to be who we are not, the more we will damage not only ourselves but also those around us. Denial, as the clichéd joke tells us, is not a river in Africa. Denial is the river of toxicity that runs through our social, cultural, political and personal geogra-phies, eventually drowning the life out of those of us who choose to or are forced to strive to go against our true selves and fit into something we are not nor should ever want to be.
I know I have a lot of the Coyote in me. I know I have some of the cracked pot in me. But don't we all?
e-mail kaizaadkotwal@yahoo.com
(October 2002 issue)
I wanna be just like É Reveling in debauchery! Exalting in hedonism!
That's it! I've had enough. I am through with this writing crap! I've been writing these columns for almost two years now, and truthfully I am up to my eyeballs in trying to make a difference with my pen, pencil or keyboard. This is the age of ubiquitous Cyberporn, an era of digitally manipulated news footage. The written word can't hold a candle to the lingua franca of this most new-fangled epoch in human evolution. Written language simply cannot compete.
Writing. What's that? Just another way to give myself hellish heartburn, unnecessary ulcers and Paxil-resistant anxiety. I look around at the world I am engulfed in, and frankly I'd rather be doing other things. If I can't cure what ails the world, then sod it! I may as well join in and have fun, indulging in exactly what does ail the world. I want to be filthy rich. I want gobs and gobs of glamour. I want fantastical fame. I want rollicking razzmatazz. Phooey to this job (if you can call it that) called writing! Frankly my dears, I would be much wealthier today had I spent my hard hours of writing flipping burgers at Wendy's instead.
So I say, screw this paltry pittance I make at writing. See if I care about sharing some "Straight Talk" in this not-so-straightforward world. Let Bush go on unquestioned in The War Against Terrorism (TWAT). I care a twat if Ashcroft is turning our democracy into a fascist nightmare, making McCarthy seem like a commie pinko liberal by comparison.
Let Tony Blair speak openly and flagrantly about the need for a new imperialism in Third World dumps. Bring on the new generation of colonialism! Let one or two nations rule the entire world. Oppression is good, especially for back-ward dark-skinned people. They didn't seem to learn their lessons the first time around, so they bloody well deserve a second, stronger dose of neo-colonialism. Shackle the swarthy bastards and make the good-for-nothings sweat once again for the colonizer's profit! Viva la Thatcherism!
I won't give another fig if a thousand more faggots get their faces brutally bashed in and are left to die, crucified to a fence or bleeding on the stone-cold pavement. They're only faggots after all. Ain't that the God's truth, Reverend Falwell?
I give a rat's ass anymore if the gender gap stays huge. Bang your heads into the glass ceiling. See if it bothers me. Besides, the glass ceiling is just a figment of whiny women's imaginations. It's not any glass ceiling that women keep bumping into, it's their inferior abilities they keep tripping up on. I give a toss about women whining about how they're always being dominated by men. All I know is that nothing beats good domination like a sound beating.
Just ask O.J.
I couldn't be bothered anymore if racism goes on and on and on and on. I couldn't care two hoots anymore if black people and red people and brown people and yellow people are treated differently because of the color of their skin. Frankly whose fault is it if you happen to be black or brown or yellow or red? Get your damn skin pigmentation altered if it's such a burden, such a bothersome inconvenience. Michael Jackson knows a few people who can help.
So what if the environment is going up in smoke, quite literally? Screw Kyoto. Damn global warming. Let the panda, the white tiger and any other critter that wants to go extinct do so with deadly panache. Bollocks to PETA, the animal right's activists, and other inhabitants of the lunatic green fringe. Humans reign supreme and don't forget it. Global warm-ing is as ridiculous a notion as a patriotic liberal! Ain't that right, Mr. G. W.?
Let the corporate fat cats get fatter and fatter and fatter at the expense of the lay people. That's why we call them lay people, so that the corporations can f*** them any which way they choose! Or they can be laid out flat on the floor and walked all over in the service of our new gods and goddesses - the corporate elite and the dot-com billionaires. Gordon Gecko was f****ing right on when he claimed that, "Greed is good!" Yeah! Greed is grand!
Yeah baby, the greedy road, the debaucherous path, the gluttonous life is where I am headed. I am on my way to emulate many, many people who just have it so much better than I do. Hedonistic paradise, here I come!
I wanna be just like Robert Downey Jr. Do all the drugs I want and merely get a slap on the wrist from judges, the cops and sundry law enforcement agencies. And then I get to have all these softie liberal Hollywood friends who'll feel sorry about my addiction and work all their connec-tions to get me roles on hit shows and in blockbuster films. These very same friends will nominate me for awards and eventually vote me in to win these awards hoping that I'll eventually kick the drug habit. But hey, with friends like that, who needs to kick anything!
If I can't be Robert Downey Jr., then I'll settle for any one of our many Hollywood bad boys or superstar athletes who behave just as they choose and remain idolized and rake in the cash. Yeah, that's the way to be if you're gonna get anywhere in the world! All the freedom, all the moolah, and no responsibilities or conse-quences whatsoever. I got my utopia right here on earth, baby! No need to wait for the afterlife.
I wanna be exactly like Rush Limbaugh. I want to spew right-wing nonsense three hours a day on national radio, be the highest rated syndicated talk show, and be paid gazillions of dollars in the bargain. I want mindless, spineless Neanderthals to label themselves as "ditto-heads" and worship me like the god I claim to be. I want the opportunity to whine endlessly about liberal conspiracies and a liberal media while banging people over the head with my Republican, right-wing drivel. Moreover, I truly want to be just like Rush so that I can simply tell lies, make-up facts and stories, and yet be seen as a paragon of responsible media behavior.
You know who I would really love to be like? Dr. Laura Schlesinger. That's right. Ah, the joys of being a radio psychologist without even having a degree in counseling. What's great about being her (other than her obscene amount of wealth) is that people like being abused at her hands. I'd be king of the worthless masochists all across America who would call me for advice about their spouses, their children, their sex lives and their relationship with god. And I'd rant and rave to them about how stupid they are, how feckless their lives are, and about what a lousy waste of their father's sperm they are! I'd give out my half-baked advice with scorn, derision and oodles of condescension and have people eating out of the palms of my hands.
The best part of being Dr. Laura is that I'd only convert to being an ultra-puritanical bitch after I had had all my fun in life. After I was finished with my floozing and whoring around, after I was done being an irreligious rabble-rouser, only then would I get on my high horse and exhort all others to lead lives more sanctimonious than the Pope's and Mother Teresa's put together. And once again, just like Rush, I would use a psych talk show to spread a rightwing, Republican agenda far and wide and never, ever be questioned about my motives. The icing on the cake? I'd get to slander feminists and call homosexuals what they truly are - biological errors.
I wanna be just like Ronald Reagan. I want to be an F-grade, B-film actor, who was a raving liberal before he found the God of right-wing politics. And then, I'd use my charisma to lead the citizens (only the poorer ones) down the garden path into economic despair and destruction, make sordid deals with arms dealers and despotic governments, and live on as a total hero. A legend in my time and more so after my time! In fact, I'd like that just about everything in Washington would be renamed after me. I wanna be just like Ronnie, except for the Alzheimers. Ya, ya, I want to claim I never remembered anything while my brain was still perfectly functioning. I just want to be careful exactly how far I go with that wish.
I wanna be just like Billy Clinton. Getting blown under the Oval Office desk while solving global crises on the phone. What could be better than that? Oral pleasures all the way around, at every end. And with my well-aimed DNA splatter, a tacky blue GAP dress for $19.99, would eventually be offered up at auction for a cool half-a-million greenbacks. Now that's great returns on a good investment. Right, Mr. Greenspan? And, to boot, I'd get to pardon all my scummy, criminal friends when leaving office. After all, their money got me on the top (not just of that Lewsinky babe) and I gotta scratch their backs sometime.
I wanna be exactly like Ken Lay. Make millions in the energy industry. Have my friends in the White House help me along, even though they claim not to know me at all. Wheel and deal, baby! Wheel and deal, yawl! And so what if the workers lost their entire life's savings when Enron went
bankrupt? What in the world are regular folk for? To get to the top, yawl, we special few gotta stand on someone's shoulders. And who has stronger shoulders than working guys and gals? Stop all this bruhaha about all these poor workers having nothing left for their golden years. Sob, sob! Man, that's what the liberal politicians want, yawl. People to go on their welfare schemes, people to fill their tax-payer funded soup kitchens. Ken Lay. What a guy! With his kinda wealth, I ken lay whoever I want!
I wanna be just like John Ashcroft. So what if I can't beat a dead guy in a statewide election? It was the best defeat that happened to me. I still get to rule America with my draconian fists with Georgie and Donnie by my side. And that Bin Laden guy? What a Godsend! If he hadn't been the evil-doer he was, operating on his own axis of evil, how could I have made my neo-McCarthyism a reality?
What fun it'd be. Spending lots and lots of money, developing new pogroms (or programs, whatever! - semantics, semantics) to deal with people who just don't belong in my American dream! Yeah, so a few innocents will go kaput with the bad apples. But sometimes you gotta throw the baby out with the bathwater. Especially if it's a baby born with a towel on its head. Yeah, yawl, this War Against Terrorism is gonna make the world so safe you won't know what hit you! So what if you won't have any rights? Who needs rights when you can sleep at night knowing Uncle Johnny is keeping an eye out for you. Keeping an eye ON you.
Hoping across the Atlantic I wanna be just like Tony Blair. Win on a liberal platform and then show these Limeys what conservative truly is. And I'd get to be bum-chums with Billy Clinton and Georgie Bush. And England, under my rule, would become an American territory on the west coast of Europe. Years ago, we colonized them, so it's only fair we return the favor of being completely manipulated and dominated by them. Besides licking Yankee Presidential ass is what I love best for desert.
While in England, I wanna try and be just like all the members of the Royal family. Gosh, there's no place where one can get more drugs, more sex, and more debauchery than within the confines of the Windsor estates. Most of all, I wanna be just like the Queen (although I'd pass on the ridiculous frocks and the stilted wave).
Be the richest woman in England (after that other bitch, that other queen, Elton) and still get funded by the tax-payers. See, poor people aren't the only ones living on the dole! And I get to enjoy all that colonial loot and call it mine. And so what if my children are all royal f***-ups? So what if they're all wankers, one and all? When you're as wealthy as we are, who gives a damn!
Above all my desired role models, I want to be just like George W. Bush, luckiest man(-child) in the universe. Bar none! I'd live the life of a C-grade dolt, have a wild and crazy childhood, and then sober-up (literally) just in time to steal the election and become Prez of the United States of America. Being George Bush would mean I'd have a very, very influential daddy who could get me out of trouble whenever I wanted, for whatever I had done. And I'd get to have a brother who could help me steal the election by rigging the system in Florida.
I wanna be George W. Bush so that I can help out all my friends, especially in oil and energy, who helped me get to where I am. Together we will electrocute É uh, I mean, electrify the world! I wanna repay my daddy by settling his old scores, so I'll blast Iraq to kingdom come. Damn the U.N., screw multilateralism. As that commie, liberal, DiCaprio once said, "I am king of the world!" And don't no stinkin' fool forget it!
Sounds good, doesn't it? Ahhhhhhh! The great life!
But who am I kidding? I'll never get to be like any of these great role models. I'll never get to have that kind of fun, exert that kind of power. I'll never get to whore around, booze and drug all I want and have rich friends help me out each time. I couldn't even steal my election as class president, given that I was the only one running and the only one who voted. Heck, who am I kidding? Hedonism ain't for my kind. Debauchery is ill-fitting on someone like me.
So it's back to the keyboard, the pen or the pencil. Yeah, I may never make a difference with the written word. But, I love this thing called language. I cherish these things called ideas. I adore this realm of debate and discussion. So for now, I'll put aside my goofy dreams of being a drugged-out, whored-up rock star, or of becoming a corrupt, draconian politician, or of transforming myself into some corporate paragon of greed and gluttony.
For now, I wanna be just like É. me!
(September, 2001 issue)
The Other "F" Word: Why Haven't We Come Such a Long Way, Baby?
"Bitches," said one.
"Big, fat, unshaven, hairy lesbians," said another.
"Man-haters," answered a third.
"Bra burning, ball-busters," offered yet another.
"Whining, always discontented women who want to have everything," replied a fifth.
"Women who think it's okay to kill babies and that the government should pay for such genocide," interrupted one, with an angry edge to her voice.
"Women who hate those of us who want to stay at home and bake cookies and raise good children and take care of our husbands," argued someone.
"Sexually frustrated old maids who haven't had a good lay in a while," laughed a sophomore studying communications.
"Feminazis," chimed in another.
These are all recorded responses from my students (Fall Quarter of 2001) when I asked them to think of the first thing that came to mind when they heard that other "F"-word - Feminism. Nor was this set of answers specific to this particular group of students. Rather, quarter after quarter, year after year, when posed with the same question, the same answers emerge with uncanny consistency. If I were any more jaded, I would suspect there was some course they were all attending - "Anti-feminism 101," taught by Dr. Laura Schlesinger, Rush Limbaugh or some other ill-informed, propagandizing woman-hater.
I teach a course, a couple times a year, at The Ohio State University, on "Self-Images and American Identity via Theatre and Cinema." I have been teaching this course for 10 years now and little has changed in students' negative (mis)perceptions and (over)generalizations about feminism and feminists. In fact, if anything, the fervor of their animosity toward feminism, their inability or unwillingness to comprehend the good that feminists have done, seems to worsen with the passing years. It seems as though the only history that matters to people these days is the history that they have lived through. The past matters not a whit in how it shapes our futures, in how it has metamorphosized into the present.
I am always amazed by these outbursts, but I shouldn't be. One would think that time and experience might have inured me to such predictable responses. To be fair, I purposely word my question a bit ambiguously. In asking them what comes to mind when they think of feminism and feminists, I leave open the options of whether they would like to share opinions that they believe in or ones that they think exist in the culture at large. Yet, many do believe the above-mentioned litany (and worse) about feminists and feminism.
The particularly worrisome aspect of this experiment of mine is that as many women as men in my classrooms buy into this lopsided drivel. The women, some of them mothers, most of them working-class citizens, ranging in age from 18 to 35, seem to abhor feminism. As one female student, in a moment of stark honesty, half joking and mostly serious: "I'd rather be called a prostitute than a f***ing feminist any day of the week." (I thought it interesting, if not ironic that she chose to attribute f***ing to feminism rather than prostitution. It's these gem-like moments that make teaching worthwhile.) I wanted to reply, half-serious, mostly joking: "But if you had to have an abortion due to one of your johns getting you pregnant, wouldn't you be grateful for Roe vs. Wade and the right to choose?" I, of course, remained silent. My job is to engender thought and debate, not to proselytize.
These women sitting in a classroom at a state university, enjoying the right to an equal education, seem oblivious to the reality that this freedom of choice wasn't always the case. Many enjoy federal and private scholarships and/or government (read taxpayer-assisted) loans and seem to think that all women throughout time have enjoyed these privileges. Several of them may own homes and cars and operate as financially independent entities, seemingly oblivious to the impossibility and improbability of having such an existence not too long ago. Many of them claim to vote, ignorant of how recently, in the larger scheme of things, they were granted that most inalienable of rights.
Culturally, memory is short, proportional to this generation's attention span, weaned on the competing teats of MTV and a sound-byte saturated media/ information age. It is actually a misnomer to call this age the information age, as evidenced by many of my students. Sure, we have much more information, much more readily available and infinitely more accessible, but what's the use of that glut of information if it isn't being processed or used productively?
However, my students are not all so ill-informed, so brain-washed, and so cluelessly catatonic as to not know the truth, as to not know their history better. These students are more accurately a microcosm of American society at large. However, what I am concerned with here is examining the current myths and misperceptions about feminism, particu-larly amongst the post-Baby Boom generations.
Why have feminists come to be so vilified? Why this cultural, political, and social amnesia? Why this unwilling to acknowledge the indebtedness we owe to feminists for trying and succeeding (to a certain extent) to equalize the gender divides in this country? Most importantly, where does this anti-feminist propaganda come from and why is it largely ignored and unchallenged by the academics, the media, and fair-minded people?
The propaganda to discredit feminists, to tear them down, and to silence them is pervasive, pernicious and plushly funded. It is, by all evidenced accounts, a multi-pronged attack, usually well-cloaked and extremely well-lubricated by the slick grease of the Greenback, and surrepti-tiously brokered by predominantly white patriarchs with the most to lose from a true equalization of the genders.
To some degree, our news media is entrenched in the proliferation of such anti-feminist biases. (This despite the tired old tunes and worn-out songs about a liberally biased media.) Because sensationalism sells, media outlets tend to focus on the most radical elements, the most fringe aspects of groups and their ideologies. This is particularly true in the case of race, gender and sexuality.
Take any Pride day celebration and the camera lenses zoom in on the topless dykes and the ass-baring chaps. These images become the standard bearers for the entire GLBT community, just as Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton are perceived to be the true spokespersons for the black communities. The same with issues of feminism. The media, in order to boost its Nielsen ratings, will focus on the most radical aspects of feminism, reducing the wealth and diversity of the movement and its contributions to mere sound-bytes about women wanting to have it all or demanding to be called "womyn," or legalizing the right to willy-nilly abortions and ad-hoc divorces.
Not only does the media contribute to these cultural myths and (mis)perceptions about feminists by marketing only the stereotypes, it also leaves unchallenged to an intolerable extent, the sordid efforts and contributions of others to this widespread (mis)understanding and vilification of feminism. Very rarely has a Dr. Laura or a Rush Limbaugh been challenged, been called to task for not only maligning feminism but for willfully misrepresenting their agendas, their needs, their hopes and aspirations. Little wonder then, that the name-callers rule the roost and their ill-begotten propaganda supersedes the truth and substance of the feminist movement. Were the media to challenge (rightfully and dutifully so) some of these miso-gynistic malcontents, particularly from the right, they would then be shouted/shut down with accusations of a conspiratorial, liberal media bias.
Academics too have been cowered into silence, forced to retreat even deeper into the recesses of their ivory towers by name-calling and labeling as liberal conspirators determined to bring Western civilization to its knees. Academics, who study and deal with feminist issues, have been maligned as aiders and abettors in the downfall of god-fearing societies by "shoving down people's throats" Armageddon-inducing ideas such as the right to choose or the right to work and raise a family. It is sad but true that the anti-feminist propaganda has succeeded in labeling anyone with feminist proclivities not only as someone who is pro-choice but as someone who believes in gratuitous abortions. Or that a feminist by definition is anti-male, anti-family, anti-children, and anti-society.
Such propaganda has emerged to a great extent from the Republican right and the self-appointed Moral Majority (read religious right) in this country. I don't actually believe that all Republicans are so unenlightened or that all Democrats are so well-meaning towards gender equality, but members of these aforementioned groups have sought, at every step of the way, not only to prevent women from attaining true equality, but have worked hard to discredit the past accomplishments of feminists. And these right-wingers, who would have women barefoot and pregnant, are working incessantly to influence everyone - rom the highest ranks of power to the average Jane in Anytown, America - into believing the worst about feminism.
We talk these days with so much superiority about those barbaric Taliban (perhaps about Muslims in general) who veil their women behind burkhas and silence every fiber of their beings. I hate to break it to you, but given their will and their way, certain factions of this country would rather have American women treated as the Taliban women are. But to say this is to be liberally biased. To suggest such things is anti-American and taboo.
With as blunt a tongue as possible, I will say this: Rush Limbaugh's categorization of feminists as Feminazis is an atrocity against women and against all fair-minded people. The term is, in its own way, in my estimation, an act of violence against women. I seethe every time I hear him glibly pontificate about the ruination that Feminazis have brought to the nuclear family, to the workplace, and to the American way of life.
In case it isn't clear to you (as it sometimes isn't to my students), here is the problem I have with the term Feminazi. By equating feminists with the Nazis, Limbaugh is equating the fight for equal rights (gender-based) with the heinous genocide of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, and the disabled during the Nazi reign of terror.
Limbaugh is saying, via his twisted and maniacal rhetoric, that if you want the rights that these feminists keep harping on, then you are no less extreme than the Nazis. Or that by allowing women these rights, the so-called democratic majority is aiding and abetting a new form of Nazi-ism to take seed in America.
I don't care what anyone else says, the most radical of feminists - the largest, hairiest, most man-hating, million bra-burning, multiple ball-busting lesbian ones - could never, ever compare, even in the smallest of ways with the atrocious agenda of the Nazis. It's a slick piece of well-crafted and meticulously executed manipu-lation nonetheless, seemingly benign on the surface, particularly the way in which Limbaugh laughs off the term on his radio shows. It would be less of an issue were he not such a heavyweight in radioland. Yet his twenty million listeners are all too eager, all too mindless - they call themselves "Ditto-heads - and all too bigoted to lap up his drivel and spread the hate themselves. (Is anyone still harping that we have a liberal media?)
Rush Limbaugh is not the only one. Dr. Laura, with her sanctimonious fervor about the evil that feminists do in ruining families and children, is equally to blame in the carte blanche libel and slander of feminists and feminism. (Does anyone have the gall to tell me that Limbaugh and Laura are part of that so-called liberal media?) And yet, dangerous idiots with big mouths like Limbaugh and Laura go unchallenged. Their devious rhetoric seeps into the minds of their sponge-like listeners and in turn, this misinformation, the misrepresentations, and the outright hatred, seeps into the fabric of our culture. It is little wonder then that many of my students have come to have such a negative view of feminism and feminists.
I think that one of the greatest shames of American democracy, a constitutional aberration, is the fact that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), first proposed by Alice Paul in 1921, still languishes in legislative limbo as a non-starter. The House and Senate passed the amendment in 1972, and by 1982, thirty-five states had passed it as well. However, in order for it to become a legally binding amendment, three more states need to ratify it, and that simply hasn't happened.
The deadline was 1982, and today it is uncertain, in the event that three or more states do pass it, whether the original 35 states' votes will count towards a finalized ERA entering the annals of American constitutional and democratic history. The real shame is not simply that we still need three states to pass it, but that all the states have not rushed to unanimously amend the constitution with the ERA, guaranteeing women equality under that most sacrosanct of all American documents.
Those perpetrating these obstacles and maligning feminists are the ones who stand to lose the most when confronted with feminists' successes. The traditional bastions of patriarchy, who have already had to give up a sliver of their pie of power, pride and paternalism, are unwilling to compromise any further, adamant not to give up another iota of power, infinitesimal as it may be. If nothing else, the attitudes that I have discussed towards feminism and feminists are ample proof of the dire need of a continued struggle by feminists (and others) towards greater equality.
I would be in error to let the feminists (and their allies) off the hook here. They have not fought back against this misinformation with the fervor required to protect and preserve their hard-fought freedoms. They have slunk away in shame and fear of being called the "F"-word, of being labeled with the "L"-word. I am tired of people buying into the conservative propaganda that being a liberal or a feminist is a foul thing. Own up to these labels if you dare! Wear the scarlet "F" and "L" with defiance. Shout down, with equal might and equal dollars, the libelous and slanderous rhetoric. If not, what is the guarantee that we are not headed down the slippery slopes of America engendering its own Taliban of the West?
(August 2002 issue)
Ignorance Is The Disease: Correct Spelling is the Cure
Last month at the Pride Festivities in town, I was ambling around, taking photographs and people-watching as I love to do. Pride parades, sanitized and mainstream as they may have become, are still a rare treat for people-watchers like me. I love the fabulously bejeweled drag queens decked out in their finest attire, shining brighter than the late June sun, strutting their stuff in all their splendor. It's a treat to see folks gather together with genuine camaraderie, celebrating truth to one's God-given identity. It's unique to see a diverse body of people - old and young, straight and gay - join together and march in the spirit of one.
I know that many within the GLBT community are dismayed at how generic Pride marches have become. Mainstream-ing has dulled the political edge that marked the marches and rallies of yesteryear. One is more likely to see Abercrombie and Fitch clones by the score at a Pride parade these days than fists raised against the mistreatment of GLBT
folk across the country at the hands of fundamentalist clones. One is much more likely to see floats sponsored by Gap and Miller Genuine Draft than groups marching against the equality "gap" between gays and straights or groups genuinely angry about the perpetration of our state-sanctioned institutions of Lavender Apartheid.
Nevertheless, if nothing else, the Pride celebration is a unique opportunity to see a diverse body of people come together and share in the joie de vivre and exuberance of being gay, lesbian, bisexual or trans-gendered and an ally of homosexuals. There's even a lot to be said about the very existence of a community gathering such as this, given that much of mainstream America and almost all of conservative America would rather see the celebratory spirit of the GLBT community silenced.
As I made my way through Goodale Park from where the parade floats were lining up towards the epicenter of the march (at City Center), I saw throngs gathered up and down the parade route waiting to cheer the celebration on. Along the way, however, were also the jeerers - better organized than in the past. This year they had strategically placed smaller groups of protestors and gay bashers at several different points as opposed to having them all congregate at the State House. They were also hooked up via walkie-talkies and seemed well-coordi-nated. As a result, their disquieting cacophony and hatred were palpable throughout the parade route.
There is only one thing I will defend to the death and that is the freedom of speech, the freedom of expression, because without it, all our other freedoms seem senseless. Without it all our other freedoms become impossible. So, I will be the first to say that these hapless, gutless, clueless wonders masquerading as God's messengers have every right to express their bile-filled hate and try to rain on an otherwise Prideful parade.
We know that all freedom comes at a cost, but a cost worth paying, as heavy as it may seem. Having said that, it perplexes me that these vile misinterpreters of God's creation and love are not taken to task for the ways in which they hate so willfully, so malevolently, with the foremost objective of instilling fear and intimidation in those they oppose and hate. Such voices have a right to be heard, but they ought not go unopposed.
As I walked past these anti-gay activists, it was interesting to see the reaction of others. Some simply ignored them, giving them no countenance. Others found their strategies, their propaganda laughable and snickered with derision in their ruddy faces bulging with veins about to pop. A few were enraged and shouted at them, trying to make sense to a bunch of illiterate grown men stuck in prehistoric ways of thinking and behaving.
I am not sure which approach is the best or the most useful to us as a society. Ignoring these out-of-tune dinosaurs who sing the same hackneyed garbage over and over, is not such a bad idea. After all, many of their tactics are concocted to provoke reactions, so ignoring them beats them at their bait-and-tackle game, but I worry that some might view this as passive acquiescence to their ideologies.
Laughing in their faces is brilliant. We need to laugh in the face of evil as often as we can. It is a must that we scoff at certain types of inbred and perpetrated systems of ignorance. Laughing at them weakens their spirits. So, laugh away at them, laugh in their faces, laugh down their hatred, their rhetoric and their ignorance.
Expressing anger may also be productive. It is important that they realize that their egregious exhortations against GLBT citizens will not go unchallenged. It is imperative that they know there is little tolerance for their ignorance and their cancerous fanaticism. Many in the community believe that to exhibit anger is to give them more attention than they deserve. I don't agree. If getting angry at them is what suits your needs, do so with full gusto, with abandoned zeal, and with inimitable style. They deserve worse.
My point here is that whatever mode you choose to respond to these fallen messengers of God (a God entirely of their own lurid fabrications), it is important that you continue to react and respond in order to change them, to make them go away. Complacency is ineffective. We need to increase our vigilance, pump up the activism against them, and turn their grotesque ignorance and hatred into inconsequential vapor.
I know many in the GLBT press who refuse to acknowledge these protestors when covering Pride activities. Some editors, publishers, writers, and others believe that giving them press space is to further their cause. There may be some credence to such a strategy, but I must humbly disagree. I think that we need to keep the enemy as visible as possible. Giving them visibility doesn't necessarily mean giving their cause credence, quite the contrary. Keeping them exposed gives GLBT folk and their allies, ways of developing strategies, counter-rhetoric, and counter-propaganda to whittle away at their power and their agendas.
The protestors at this year's Pride Parade were run-of-the-mill evangelical morons, almost all male. A few females had been propped up holding hate-filled signs to create an illusion of wholesome women defending the folk against the perversions of Sodom and Gomorrah. The protestors were almost all white, except for two black men, almost all over the age of forty, except for a handful of teens who are probably cadets-in-training in the service of the most bastardized God I know of.
Their slogans were also old and tired: "GOD MADE ADAM AND EVE. NOT ADAM AND STEVE." Really? You don't say! This is about as far as the ingenuity of their arguments were capable of going. There were placards reading clichés: "GOD HATES FAGS" and "FAGS WILL BURN IN HELL." Yawn! Yawn! Yawn!
However, two images disturbed me deeply and should disturb all sensible and good-thinking individuals. These are the acts of, to use a popular phrase these days, "evil doers!"
The first, albeit a cliché, is dangerous and chilling to the bone. Several protestors carried around large placards emblazoned with "AIDS ISN'T A DISEASE. IT'S A CURE!" (Incidentally, the placard spelled disease as "DESEASE" in which case I would counter that "IGNORANCE IS THE DISEASE: CORRECT SPELLING IS THE CURE!")
However, the fallibility of that statement is, to anyone with even a substandard I.Q., apparent. First of all, and most obviously, at an etymological and medical level, a disease is in need of a cure and cannot be a cure itself. If indeed they mean, as I am sure they do, that AIDS is somehow God's retribution for the sins of homosexuality, then once again they are flawed to the core. The notion that AIDS is a gay disease is as passé as Linda Evans' hairdo on Dynasty. In fact, by sheer arithmetic, many, many more straight people the world over are infected today than gay people. These protestors fail to clarify what these straight people are being cured of. What about the innocent newborn who is infected? What are the wages of his sins? What about the 64-year-old woman infected via a blood transfusion? What is she being punished for?
What I loathe about their message, in addition to the fact that it attributes aspects to my God that are sacrilegious, is that it goads people towards a mentality that we needn't do anything about the disease, that somehow, this is God's plan and seeking a cure would only encourage homosexuality and further the faggot agenda. These attitudes, dear reader, are not the privilege of a few bigots braying along the parade route. This notion that AIDS is a cosmic message to homosexuals to change their ways goes all the way up to the highest seats of political power and decision-making.
For years, early in the outbreak of the epidemic, Ronald Reagan and his cohorts refused to fund research and potential cures for the disease precisely because they believed (and shouted from the highest rooftops) that AIDS was indeed a cure to rid their ilk of the likes of homosexuals. Even today, people in seats of power, individuals holding the purse strings, still believe that to fund AIDS research is to encourage this "nasty lifestyle," to "go against the will of God." These attitudes have hampered the goals of finding a cure, allowing the epidemic to turn into a pandemic.
This attitude cannot go unchallenged. We have to shout it down. We must shut it down. Not just for GLBT folk, but for all people of the world. AIDS shows no sign of slowing, particularly in places like Africa and Asia where the toll is unimaginable and where the devastation has only just begun.
The second image that burned a searing image into my brain was that of lynching homosexuals for their so-called transgressions. Right by the Convention Center, a group of white men stood with placards. Hanging from these placards were dolls stripped of their miniature clothing. On one placard a solo male doll was dangling from a hangman's noose. From another placard were dangling a pair of dolls, taped together in the act of intercourse, also the victims of a hangman's lynching.
I don't care how jaded you are. I don't care how blasé you may have become, these images should bother you. The violence, suggested and real, in those lynched dolls, may be the first step towards the actual implementation of pogroms designed to target and decimate homosexuals. If you think that there is no link between these images of dangling "gay" dolls from a pretend hangman's noose and the actual murders of GLBT folk (simply because they are homosexual), then you are living in a very dangerous fool's paradise.
It seems a little less than genuine if the War Against Terrorism is going to be selective about terrorism and its targets, even though some of those terrorists are Americans targeting other Americans. In times of war there are always dubious standards of morality and ethics that sprout up and have to be justified. For instance, while America was involved in World War II, extricating the evils of Nazism in Europe, segregation and the lynchings of black people here at home were going on unabated. Two standards of morality were applied to Nazis and to the White Supremacists even though they were the two faces of the very same evil.
So, while we fight this War Against Terrorism, I don't think that it's beyond the pale to ask what separates the al-Qaeda from the likes of those protestors at the Pride march. If you don't see the twin-like similarities therein, let me put it another way. Would we or the govern-ment tolerate a group of individuals, standing on any corner in America with placards that read: "OCCUPATION IS NOT A STRATEGY: IT IS TERRORISM" and "DEATH TO JEWS, DEATH TO THE AMERICAN INFIDELS!" Or worst of all, how would we feel, if standing on the corner of any street were protestors with signs that read: "SEPTEMBER 11 WAS NOT TERRORISM! SEPTEMBER 11 WAS INFINITE JUSTICE!" They'd be carted off to some detention center before you could say Osama Bin Laden.
I understand that acknowledging these fundamentalist bigots is tiring and even boring, but we can't let that fatigue, that ennui allow us to lose momentum, granting them the space and time to spread their hate and intimidation even one inch further. Terrorism such as theirs, in the absence of the friction of opposition, is like a bigoted murderer's rolling stone which gathers no moss, only the blood of innocent victims.
Comedienne Suzanne Westenhoffer put a comic twist on these evangelizers and their irrational obsessions with homosexuality. She said that she was fully aware that certain Christians were awaiting the Rapture, wherein God-fearing, good evangelicals like the bigoted protestor's would be taken away to heaven by the second coming of Christ. "I am sure," she added, with a pause and a chuckle, "that many, many of us too are desperately awaiting the Rapture as well!"
(July 2002 issue)
DECADENCE 201:
On couriered haute couture and airborne canines: The Writing is on the WallI have acquired a strange hobby of late. I collect stories about the more insane side of affluence. I search for tales about the more ridiculous aspects of the lifestyles of the nouveau riche and (in)famous wannabes! Luckily, I have my friend Matt to keep me good company in the practice of sharing and dissecting these bizarre blurbs about egregiously extravagant existences. I have nothing against extravagance per se, but as you will see, some of these stories are beyond the pale, and border on the disturbing.
Last year, in a column titled "Decadence 101," I wrote about the fantastically ludicrous Cabbage Patch Hospital in Helen, Georgia, where a faux medical establishment has been set up to birth and take care of these grotesquely stuffed and cherubic looking dolls. I still marvel at the audacity of a culture, a society which can provide health care, Disneyfied as it may be, for inanimate dolls while multitudes here in America still go without adequate insurance coverage or health care. These are the not so subtle signs that the apocalypse is looming on the horizon.
Take the case of the extremely rich American family, here in our own backyard, who spend more in one year on their prized canine friend than most people will earn in several lifetimes. You see, this family loves their dog, some purebred pedigreed pooch. They insist that the dog be with them wherever they go, but they don't like to travel with the dog. (There are, after all, limits to familial love and affection!) The solution was to charter a private jet for the aforementioned pooch.
Yes, you heard right. The family flies on some domestic carrier, first-class of course. The dog gets its own private jet. To save the bother of chartering a flight each time - because sometimes in the lifestyles of the rich and famous, taking off for some exotic destination can be an overnight decision, and chartered flights are not always so readily available - this family has leased a quarter share in a private jet through one of America's largest private jet companies.
The dog has its own pilots, its own flight stewardess - are they to be called doggie attendants or canine hostesses? - and is served gourmet in-flight meals of prime ribs or filet mignon prepared especially by some gourmet chef. This particular habit sets the family back a mere six million dollars a year. Do you need that repeated in case you think you heard or read wrong? Yes, leasing a quarter share in this private jet for their prized pooch costs this family six million dollars a year. If some imaginative author were to invent such a story, no one would believe it, for life is certainly stranger than fiction.
How can we truly make sense of such behavior? What must it be like to be in their shoes, where there is so much wealth that six million dollars a year for canine travel is easily affordable? Most of us poor sops can only imagine, and many of us may hardly be able to do that! I can't even begin to see myself spending that kind of money on such a frivolous expenditure even if I had that much expendable wealth.
My recent sojourns in India, especially Bombay, brought me in touch with equally bizarre budget binges. Take the case of Shalini (I have changed all names), a thirty-something socialite. Shalini is the heir to a very large empire, fortunes made by her grandfather in the chemical industry. Shalini and her sister Shobha wear only designer clothing - Channel, Prada, Gucci, Versace, and other such houses of haute couture. (I am certain that they wouldn't even allow their servants to wear off-the-rack stuff from K-Mart or Target!)
Now there's nothing particularly extra-vagant about wearing strictly designer-wear. Many people do that everyday. Here's where a simple extravagance becomes a Frankenstein-like financial frivolity. Shalini and Shobha have their designer wear couriered to London every Monday so that it may be dry-cleaned. They are open about their complete mistrust of Indian dry cleaners and the local workers ability to handle expensive haute couture.
The part of the Shalini-Shobha story that has me fuming the most is that while the family has stashed away enough wealth (so much so that the daughters can afford to import and export their laundry), the company that they built on the shoulders of shareholders' hard-earned money has gone virtually bankrupt.
Once a blue-chip stock on the ISE (Indian Stock Exchange), their company's stock has crashed and burned like some fiery piñata, and many people have lost huge sums of money via the mismanagement of the company's assets. It is true that these two demented daughters didn't directly bring the company to its knees, but it must be acknowledged that the family's wealth has not suffered at all despite the fact that stockholders have lost, in some cases, life-savings.
This pattern is so familiar today in our increasingly globalized economy, where the average worker loses life-savings in a flash (à la Enron) or where day-to-day workers are laid off to save costs (à la the airline industry post 9-11) while CEO salaries increase exponentially. Although this is not entirely disconnected from my tales of the zany bravado of the rich and richer, a detailed analysis of corporate ethics would warrant an entire column or two in the future.
Back to Shalini. Shalini is also a renowned hostess in Bombay and often throws exotic soirees at her palatial home or at seven-star hotels. During my recent stay in Bombay, she hosted a very quiet sit-down dinner for eight. As is her habit at such intimate parties, she makes her entrance to her guests wearing a diamond tiara. When my friend informed me of this ritual of hers, I fell to the floor laughing, and then, scraping my Wal-Mart clad body off the carpet, I argued that even Queen Elizabeth doesn't always wear her tiara while hosting sit-down dinners. But what else should one expect from a bonafide wannabe?
I remember a few years ago, and I am loathe to admit any association with these two sisters of stupidity, when I actually spent an evening with them in their London home. I was staying with some friends who left town a day before I was to leave London. The two sisters had a spare room, so I was to stay with them for that one night. When I arrived, Shalini and Shobha were embroiled in a vicious cat fight with a lot of swearing, scratching, beating, and general violence. I tried to intervene, but suffered my own set of scratches. Eventually Shalini shoved her sister into the walk-in closet and locked it from the outside!
It turned out that Shalini was angry at Shobha for the egregious fashion crime she had committed while the two sisters were on a shopping vacation in Milan. The two of them had gone to Milan and Shobha had bought a pink Channel suit with matching purse and stilettos. Meanwhile, Shalini had been forced to buy a teal Channel ensemble, even though her favorite color was the aforementioned pink.
Leaving these two behind, let me tell you about Deepika, another socialite and industrial heiress. In an age when debutante balls have become laughably anachronistic, except in certain New England enclaves of pretend royalty and desired decadence, Deepika decided that she needed to have one for herself in Bombay. And because she had such a blast at the first one, she decided to make this a yearly tradition. As a result, Deepika has had a coming-out party five years in a row. Of course, in her case the coming-out party is presumably to publicize the fact that she is a very eligible young woman. Obviously no bait has been bitten and hence the successive debutante balls. This would be tragic were it not so humorous.
Of course, with her being a socialite and having pots and pots of unaccounted for money, each of these parties turned into a society affair to be remembered and talked about for years to come - not always in a positive vein. Each party has been a themed affair. The first one was titled "Gucci and Sushi."
The second year Deepika's ball was billed as a "Denim and Diamonds" affair. At this oxymoron affair (what else can you call a second coming-out party? One can only come out once and that's all!) the guests were asked to blend the polar worlds of the casual denim with the ostentatious diamond. It just so happened that Deepika's best friend was getting married the same month as this debutante ball.
Sita, the friend, had made the great faux pas of not checking with Deepika and had also scheduled a denim and diamonds party as part of her pre-wedding festivities. Deepika had a hissing fit at this attempt to rival her party and steal her thunder. She immediately sent out a letter to all 1000 of her invitees that they were to outdo Sita's guests in their diamond attire. After all, there is only so much denim one human being can wear.
The third coming-out party was a Moroccan themed party where she flew down fire-eaters, belly dancers, and other entertainers from Morocco to entertain her 1,000 guests. Indian fire-eaters and indigenous belly dancers were simply not good enough. Imported things have a lot of cache in Bombay's high society. The fourth and fifth coming-out parties were equally tawdry and sordid affairs, but suffice it to say that Deepika may be the only woman in history to have the dubious distinction of having come out five times.
Then there's the odd case of the gem-induced whiplash to the neck of a one-year old. There's this industrial family in India, let's call them the Heera empire, who are amongst the richest people in the world. Well, Mr. Jay Heera (someone I actually went to high school with) got married a few years ago and had three daughters. Being rich yet socially and ethically backwards, this family insisted that the couple somehow have a son to carry on the empire's name. Fourth try was a charm and they had a lad.
This family possesses an invaluable heirloom (one amongst thousands), a cut ruby the size of a small-sized chicken's egg. This couple, so happy that they had finally produced a male heir, threw a huge party on their estate for the boy's first birthday party. At this party, along with his diaper and designer baby wear, the couple adorned the child's nubile neck with this huge gemstone.
A friend who attended the party told me that the poor one-year-old could barely keep his head upright as the weight of the ruby pulled his neck downwards. Every time someone walked up the child to greet him, the person carrying around the child had to lift the boy's head up by the chin so that the guest could make eye-contact with the birthday boy. It's odd, the priorities affluence can buy! What's a little post-natal whiplash in comparison to displaying the family jewels!
Returning to airline related affluence, take the case of a thirty-something dot-com billionaire from Southern India who flies up to Bombay a couple times a week to get his favorite sandwich. Who said money can't buy you time? Obviously this chap has a lot of time and money to burn in order to enjoy such extravagances.
Finally, to prove that such behavior is not isolated to individuals, take the case of one of India's many Muslim sects who have erected a magnificent mosque in homage to one of their longest serving leaders. The mosque, a palatial structure, protected by a twenty-foot high wall, sits in a beautiful landscaped garden with fountains and other such Edenesque accents.
The mosque, actually an elaborate grave, has been built in an area that can only be described as a ghetto. The area, almost completely inhabited by members of this particular sect, is congested beyond belief. Most of the populous are barely middle-class at best and painfully poor at worst, living in deplorable conditions, sometimes ten or twelve in a one-bedroom hovel. That's not so unusual. This is the real politique of a developing nation.
However, one visit to the Mosque illustrates a sense of priorities as warped as those of the socialites I described above. The interior of the mosque (which in its entirety is built of exquisite marble) is adorned with the entire Qur'an engraved into the walls. The engraving of the entire holy book is done in twenty-four karat gold, and the beginning of each chapter is done in inlay work of rubies, diamonds and emeralds.
At one level, it is a work of art that is awe-inspiring in its artistry and in its sheer decadence. Yet, I couldn't help but sense how that ornate image clashed in my mind with the condition of the worshipers outside the confines of the mosque. Maybe the money invested in this grandiose structure, put to other uses, could not have completely eradicated the poverty, the illiteracy, and the other social ills plaguing the community, but it may have sent a message to the masses that the religious leaders had their priorities straight.
To be fair to this community, they are not alone. All the money that almost every religion spends on edifying icons in praise and celebration of its own glory could have better been used towards helping the less fortunate amongst each religion. I am not suggesting some sort of neo-communist or neo-Marxist redistribution of wealth. I am however suggesting that limited resources (a fundamental precept and cornerstone of capitalism) have better allocations in our increasingly polarized world between the haves and the have-nots.
At one level the above tales are great entertainment. Sensational stories about the inane habits of the (newly) rich and tawdry tales about celebrity (wannabes) are a way in which we can bring them all down a peg or two. But at another level, these tales of bizarre behavior should move us to asking a few serious questions.
Is a carte blanche consumer culture the panacea to all economic quandaries? Why has the accelerated globalization of the '90s led to lower standards of living in 2002 than there were in 1992? And most complicated (and dangerous of all), how wide can the chasm between the rich and the poor grow before everything collapses, and swallows with it, the entire social, political, economic, and cultural structure kit-and-caboodle?
To many, the sordid tales of Shalini, Shobha, Sita, Deepika, and the Heeras mentioned herein are not to be interpreted as a doom-and-gloom assessment of global conditions. In my humble estimation how-ever, it's all connected. It's a behavioral six degrees of separation, if you will. The serious lack of viable health coverage and care for millions of Americans is inextricably connected to the existence of a Cabbage Patch Health Care facility.
The extravagances of Shalini and her kin are indelibly linked to the lost fortunes of innumerable individuals who invested in stock of that family's companies. And many, many of the social conundrums of the twenty-first century like the AIDS pandemic, the communal annihilation of Hindus and Muslims in India and Pakistan, the increase in trafficking of women for prostitution and children for labor, and global terrorism, are unconditionally birthed from the increasingly darkened womb of the divide separating the rich from the poor.
The writing is on the wall. More accurately, the writing has been on the wall. Are we prepared to listen, to read, and to learn? Will we come out at the other end of the tunnel, relatively sane and unscathed? Ponder this while I go remove my tiara and peel off my Versace trousers and Prada shirt. The courier is coming and I must get my clothes off in time to be laundered in London. Didn't you know that writing, as I do, is a very lucrative occupation these days?
e-mail kaizaadkotwal@yahoo.com
(June 2002 issue)
Saints and Sinners: Pointer's Fingers and Hypocrite's Hearts
I've been thinking a lot about sinning lately. Other people's sinning that is. Frankly, it's so much easier to focus on another's transgressions than one's own. Not that I don't have plenty of my own transgressions to focus on. Add that to the fact that I had a fairly religious upbringing and was schooled entirely in Jesuit and Catholic institutions, so guilt and transgressions were first and fore-most on my youthful mind. I still vividly remember the dragon-eyed art teacher, nostrils brimming with righteousness, who threatened to wash my tongue out with soapy water on a Brillo pad because I had dared to use the word "bastard" in casual banter with my deskmate while we were painting one of our childhood masterpieces in the third grade.
That painting has long since disinte-grated, but the memory has not. I don't know if I had the savvy then to counter her tongue-washing threats with the fact that the term "bastard" was a perfectly technical one, denoting the child of an illegitimate marriage, something I am certain the church was/is vehemently against. But I was probably too young, my debating skills still relatively nascent, and in all honesty, I was using the term as a curse word at that tender age of ten.
So sinning has been on my mind for quite a while now, but more so recently. Just last month, my sister, who lives in Atlanta and has married a white southerner, was told by a very religious scholar (from our faith of Zoroastrianism) that she had committed a sin by marrying outside the religion. To be fair to him, he also acknowledged his own transgression since he too had married a white woman outside the faith. The mind boggles at such bizarre conviction, but it is reality for some nonetheless, even in this our most modern twenty-first century.
Sometime last year, my second cousin, who lives in the city of Nagpur in India, became a cause célèbre in her own right. She is the product of a mixed-marriage and was in Bombay to receive a very high honor and award at the young age of fifteen. At this ceremony, one of the speakers, who was a high priest, used this awards event to propagandize his views on interracial marriages and their offspring.
He openly and blatantly referred to my cousin as "a bastard" during his speech. When my cousin's mother flew into a rage and took him to task, he entered into a letter writing campaign stating that he had used the term bastard in its technical connotation, reasoning that children of interracial marriages are illegitimate, since such mixed-marriages are not recognized by the religion. Of course, this rationale is all in his own estimation of the scriptures and their interpretation, a highly egregious misreading of Zoroastrianism if ever there was one.
As you can see, my family is full of sinners (at least according to these outsiders), and these recent events have caused me to think a lot about sinning, sinners and those that deem us to be sinful. Of course, the examples I've given are all very personal and subjective. On a grander scale, the notion of sinning and being sinned against are ever-present in the mass-media, as well as in our daily trials and tribulations as a human race.
Take the Mideast conflict for example. Every piece of rhetoric, every sound-byte of propaganda, every single dialogue emerging from that region, on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides, centers on who is truly the transgressor. When a suicide bomber from Palestine detonates himself inside a pizza parlor at lunchtime, the Israelis are quick to call it, and rightfully so, a massacre. Yet, when the Israelis march into a Palestinian settlement and kill hundreds of innocents (along with the terrorists they are targeting) they call it self-defense. So too with the Palestinians who refer to their suicide bombers as freedom fighters and call any move by the Israelis to defend themselves as terrorism.
India and Pakistan are embroiled in a similar exchange of sinner and sinned-against. In the recent communal violence between Hindus and Muslims, unabated since February, in which dozens or more are being killed each day, the pitch of name-calling and blame-giving has been feverish to say the least. The Hindus claim that they went on a killing rampage of Muslims because the Islamic citizens of the state of Gujarat halted a train carrying Hindu pilgrims and set them and the entire train on fire.
The Muslims, in their interpretation of events, maintain that they had to burn the train and its mostly Hindu devotees because some of those so-called "religious Hindus" had gang raped a young woman on the train simply because she was Muslim. Thus, because they had been sinned against, the Muslims had to take action to avenge the wrongdoings. It is immensely banal for me as a writer to state the tired cliché that two wrongs don't make a right, but obviously with the examples of the Hindus and Muslims, and in the case of the Israelis and Palestinians, such a cliché seems to be persona non grata.
In soul-searching through the never-ending and perpetually igniting conflicts, like the ones I've mentioned, it becomes clear to me that sinning is often seen in absolutist terms as opposed to the actual relative truth behind such transgressions. Those who must justify their actions, their deeds, their political raison d'être, have to maintain that they are the ones being sinned against no matter what the truth may be. If both sides claim that they are sinned against and not the sinner, then it is little wonder that conflicts deteriorate into the sordid stalemates that we witness today.
The human impulse to brand other people's transgressions a sin while failing to examine one's own foibles, one's own shortcomings, one's own less-than-honor-able deeds, is prevalent in human nature. Ever since evolution allowed us to stand upright (interesting word choice if I may say so myself) and gave us the opposable thumb, species Homo sapiens has turned finger pointing into a veritable art form. From the Salem Witch Trials to the Scopes Monkey Trial, from the Spanish Inquisition to the Clinton Impeachment, fingers have wagged with the same frequency as those very tongues have sought to destroy lives by branding others' deeds and very existences as morbid sins.
What is so fabulously ludicrous in these cases and others is that many of those doing the finger pointing have been no less worthy of being pointed at themselves - pointed at for sins perhaps far greater than the ones committed by the people they were accusing in the first place. Hypocrisy has become the hallmark of the true sinners of our human race. I suppose there is some warped psychology that causes real sinners to point their fingers at others in an attempt to deflect attention away from their own transgressions. History has borne this out time and time again. Here are a few egregious examples:
Take the bizarre circumstance of Roy Cohn, one of McCarthy's henchmen who blatantly targeted Jews and homosexuals during McCarthy's reign of terror against the communists. In a case of unimaginable irony, something no fiction could make believable, Cohn himself was Jewish and gay. Similarly, it is well documented in recent historical writings that many of the Nazis who persecuted homosexuals (in addition to Jews, Gypsies and the disabled) had male lovers.
We need look no further than the Clinton fiasco. Many finger pointers, such as the Bob Barrs and the Gary Condits of the world, scolded President Clinton for having had an adulterous affair. Need I spell out the incongruous algebra of such accusations from the likes of Condit? As an aside, I am sure Clinton is happy, for legalities alone, that Lewinsky didn't disappear like Condit's intern/mistress, and I am equally sure that many others wish that Lewinsky had taken her fifteen minutes of shame and vanished for good!
Barr's own multiple marriages and divorces, by the very religious standards he condemns Clinton, would also have him branded so, since divorce in the Old Testament is akin to adultery. This is not to justify in any way what Clinton did "willy-nilly with his many adulterous affairs, but to have that pointed out and impeached by other adulterers reeks of hypocrisy at the least or a dubious lack of self-awareness.
It does merit mentioning here that while those who participated with unabated zeal and gusto in the Clinton witch hunts seemed to think that his (oral) offenses in office were the worst crimes a President could commit against his country and the electorate, these very same people would defend Oliver North, Reagan and others embroiled in the Iran-Contra affair to the nth degree.
It is not a futile or facetious question to ask which is worse: having oral pleasures delivered by an intern snuggled under the President's desk in the Oval Office or making dubious arms deals under the same Oval Office table with known enemies against the self-interest and well-being of the American public? It is foolish and naive to believe that the exchange of Presidential bodily fluids is the worst thing that has gone on within the confines of the Oval Office walls or that it was the most treacherous and sordid transaction signed, sealed and delivered under that infamous desk!
The week that I was contemplating my own notions on sinning and finger-pointing, the very same day that I was fine-tuning this column, I had an interesting experience that brilliantly drove my point home. I was invited to a book launch of an amazing debut novel by the stellar literary talent of Hari Kunzru. At the event to launch The Impressionist, hosted by the British Council of India and Penguin Publishing, guests were given the opportunity to meet with the author after the formal presentation.
I was patiently waiting in line behind one gentleman who was speaking with Mr. Kunzru. The man being a little hard of hearing had to ask Mr. Kunzru to repeat some of the answers. I was enjoying the exchange and knew that I would get my turn in due course. A few minutes into the exchange between that man and the author, a woman sauntered up, seemingly impatient to fawn over Mr. Kunzru. Seeing me in line, she smoothly and deftly inserted herself in front of me!
Although shocked by her dazzling rudeness, I made the decision not to create a scene and embarrass Mr. Kunzru. Amusingly enough, as the waiter passed us with a platter full of exotic hors-d'oeuvres, she side-stepped her position to stuff her face. I regained my position in line and held fast as she tried impressively once again to get in front of me.
So what does this relentless line-thief do? She waddles over to my left and tries to insert herself between the afore-mentioned man and the author. Then, she has the audacity to tell the gentleman, who perhaps was monopolizing the author a bit, although not maliciously, that "Other people too would like to speak to the writer." The gentleman hurriedly wrapped up his conversation, somewhat embar-rassed and very apologetic. Then, the piece de resistance of this woman's gall: She steps in front of me and starts to have her own tête-à tête with the author.
This woman saw it fit to point out what she saw as another person's transgression but thought nothing of her own rudeness and brazen behavior whatsoever. I had the opportunity to call her on her dubious set of principles a while later when we were both out of view and earshot of the author, but chose not to for some reason, relishing in the thought that this is exactly the point I was trying to drive home in my column.
Sure, cutting in line while chastising a man for monopolizing Mr. Kunzru hardly qualifies as high crimes and misde-meanors, but it elegantly illustrates the fact that it is so much easier to point fingers at others than it is to identify one's own behavior as worthy of criticism.
That woman's double standards and complete lack of self-awareness are not germane to her alone, neither are they particularly rare in human interactions. Come on! We've all been there. Flipping off the driver who cuts us off on the highway as though we ourselves have never been guilty of such an offense. Or cursing the bloke driving at 50 mph in the fast lane, convinced that we have never, ever done something so stupid and irritating.
If each of us focused on our own set of behaviors and tried to improve them with time, knowledge, and acquired wisdom, then the world would already be an infinitely better, more progressive and more tolerant place. After all, if we expect to be tolerated for our own transgressions we'd better be willing to tolerate others' as well. (I am aware that this opens up the Pandora's Box of quandaries once more.)
And while sinning has been on my mind a lot lately, I haven't figured out an easy and explicit way to wrap my brain around these age-old conundrums. I do remember however, the wisdom shared with me by my mother, in the form of a poem by an anonymous author, which eloquently and elegantly hits the nail on the head! It has followed me around from the age of 9 when I first read it. Take from it whatever wisdom you can glean.
kaizaadkotwal@yahoo.com
(May 2002 Issue)
Holding Talks in the Tower of Babel: Heartbreaking Homecomings and Diehard Dreams
Yet another installation of "Straight Talk" from my bizarre sabbatical (exile?) in India, where I am still awaiting news of when I will return to Ohio. This extended, forced sabbatical in my homeland has been an amazing growth experience for me. Perhaps I say that to find some comfort or value in my circumstances, but I don't think that's the reason. I really think that coming home, no matter what Tom Wolfe asserted when he said that one can never go home again, has been an eye-opening and at times heartbreaking experience.
I had my heart broken just the other day. No, don't worry, I'm not about to subject you to some sordid tale of an amorous entanglement gone wrong, some sort of exotic holiday fling gone awry. I'll leave that to the likes of Joan Collins and Bill Clinton. But I did have my heart broken the other day when I reunited with two classmates after eons.
I was invited to the Israel Day celebrations in Bombay, a grand party for about 700 people hosted with style and some decadence. I felt quaint there, given that right before I left home to go to the Taj Mahal Hotel where the party was being thrown, I had been catching up on world news on BBC and CNN, which was dominated by Colin Powell's attempts to bring peace to Israel and Palestine. It felt bizarre being at a celebration for Israel in India while Israel itself was beleaguered by a horrendous stalemate in the region.
I felt guilty sipping champagne and dining on risotto and grilled fish, ending up with exotic chocolate desserts after the meal was over. As I sat in this lush ballroom at one of the best hotels in the world, celebrating Israel's independence in 1948, I couldn't help thinking about those who had lost their lives since then and more recently in the terror that has held sway for far too long. Nibbling on the hors-d'oeuvres of mini pitas and humus and baby falafel, I couldn't erase from my mind the stories of the siege in Palestine during recent weeks.
I am not suggesting that Israel Day should not have been celebrated in India or elsewhere - as I am sure it was. Maybe in times of hostile crises, like the ones being witnessed in Israel and Palestine today, it becomes even more imperative to celebrate the fragile independence and freedoms that remain. It is possible that within the darkest hours of our existence, we must find whatever there is to celebrate and do so with defiance and chutzpah.
However, that isn't why my heart was broken. I was at this event when my childhood friend Wrathful, whom I hadn't seen since 1978, came up to me. We recognized each other immediately. It was a warm reunion and even happier because his wife is another schoolfriend of mine, Zia, whom I haven't seen since 1985.
It was nice to be back in touch with these two friends from my youth. We had shared good times, meaningful ties, and had built fond memories. In some ways it felt unreal that so many years had passed, because we were able to pick up almost immediately where we had left off, as if it had been only yesterday. But it wasn't this reunion that broke my heart either.
We updated each other about our work and our whereabouts. I explained my situation to them, my education and work history, when Zia asked me whether I was considering a move back to settle in India. I said that I wasn't sure, but eventually I would like to return to my roots and settle here, give back to my country. She said, "Don't do it. Stay there. It's so much better. This place has gone to the dogs." It was then that my heart broke just a little bit more than it already had these past 33 years of my life.
Truth be told, Zia wasn't the first to say something like that to me. I've been back in Bombay since mid-January, and even on prior trips here since moving to the United States in 1987, many friends, family, acquaintances and strangers have told me to give up any foolish ideas of repatriating to India, and each time my heart breaks a little. Let me explain why.
I love India. I adore Bombay. My roots are here even after all the years living thousands of miles away in the United States. Yet, I have never really felt as though I belonged completely, totally, unconditionally in India. On the other hand, this is where my deepest connections lie, and to be told that my desire to keep those roots alive, to maintain my sense of attachment to my homeland, is some sort of naive folly at best or delusional nightmare at worst is a heartbreaking message indeed.
The reason that many of these naysayers give is that India is losing its direction. It has lost its uprightness, its moral compass. These Indians feel that after living abroad, returning to India is like having lived in Buckingham Palace and then choosing to move into a slum. It is true that my India, my Bombay is in a lot of trouble. There is so much wrong with this country and my city that it is overwhelming. In the 54 years since Independence from colonial rule, we have had our ups and downs, but we have never risen as high or gone as far as we should have. The reasons for that are too many to enumerate.
To be fair to Zia and the others, they have said such things out of concern for me. Rahul, who had lived away from India for 9 years, chose to return home - despite discouragement I am sure - and has found life in India difficult to adapt to. The corruption here, the inability to solve problems in this country, is mind-boggling. However, at that Israel Day celebration as Zia told me that I should plan on staying put in some foreign land, I wondered if I would be told that I were an Argentinean returning to Buenos Aires or a South African repatriating to Johannesburg.
As I look around at the world, where is there a haven where corruption is absent? Where can I look across oceans and horizons to find a place where humans are not self-destructing with alarming alacrity and a chilling contempt for this fabulous gift of life? Can you direct me to an oasis in our war-torn globe and profit-maximizing world, where the dignity of life, human and otherwise, takes precedence over self-interest and war mongering? If you know of such a place, book me on the first plane, train or automobile there - I am even willing to walk - and you will be my travel agent for life!
I was watching a BBC show called "Hard Talk" where a Brazilian leader was being grilled about the appalling abuses by the police all across his country, a nation where civilian murders at the hands of law enforcement officials has become a human rights travesty of epidemic proportions. (Incidentally, why does the War on Terrorism not include these corrupt officials on the "axis of evil"?) If I were from Sao Paolo and contemplating returning to the land where the police are the worst criminals, would a Brazilian Zia tell me to stay away?
I can't tell you how sad and angry it makes me to hear about the continued suicide bombings in Israel by Palestinians. I am angry at the loss of civilian Israelis, but I also wonder how hopeless and meaningless life must be for a Palestinian teenager to willingly become a human bomb. How can life become so devalued where such acts are possible? If I were from Tel Aviv, would my Jewish Zia beg me to stay away?
I can't get over the carnage of civilians in Palestine as Ariel Sharon continues on with his campaign against terrorism. I can't even begin to comprehend living under occupation for 36 years. I who take my roots so seriously can't imagine belonging to a group of people who have no place to call home, no land to call their country. If I were from the Gaza Strip, would my Palestinian Zia tell me to stay away?
I am constantly reading about the appalling plight of black South Africans, post
