Foster Dickson's Blog, page 97
December 30, 2014
“Real Politics, Anyone?” in Commonweal
In a recent article in Commonweal titled “Real Politics, Anyone?” Margaret O’Brien Steinfels says to politicians what many of us are thinking: don’t focus your energy on tricking us into voting for you; instead be the kinds of leaders that we want to elect. Decrying the current obsession with demographics, she writes about how campaigners carefully craft “messages” that will create quasi-coalitions of voters with big enough majorities to win at the polls. That ghost-strategy may win elections, but it contributes to our overall disillusionment— especially when the mass of us realize (too late) that no one actually supports the overall agenda of the people we installed! Meanwhile, the people who make a living by winning campaigns reduce us to being one-dimensional; Steinfels writes,
This demographic strategy is of a piece with identity politics, which claims that ethnicity, race, religion, income, and age dictate what you care about. If there’s any truth to that, it’s not enough to get out the voters.
This bizarre sub-philosophy of identity politics is called essentialism. It’s the same concept that invokes racialized/racist questions, like “What do black people want?” and “Why do white people act like that?” Essentialism is basically impossible. No matter how badly demographers (and dating websites) want to reduce us to a data profile, human beings are more than their “ethnicity, race, religion, income, and age.” Yet, heuristics – it always goes back to heuristics in a fast-paced world – allow the politicians and their campaigners to create a shortcut that reels us in . . .
For me, the problem is the way that elections work now. Politics has become a team sport, where election results are equivocated with sport scores: my team beat your team, 55 to 45 . . . Sadly, when so many people vote (based on the heuristics created by identity politics) with the simple goal of installing their own ideologues in order to keep out opposing ideologues, we have division and stalemate.
I don’t think we elect representatives to handle the task of telling us what to do or how to live; I believe that we elect them to work out (and solve) our widespread differences on public administration issues and, through microcosms of small assemblies, create public policy that should reflect the common good. We want our representatives to create a system under which we can all live (somewhat) happily and respectfully.
Filed under: Catholicism, Social Justice, Voting

December 28, 2014
A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #47
“Only one fear was greater than the fear of black rebellion in the new American colonies. That was the fear that discontented whites would join black slaves to overthrow the existing order.”
– from the chapter “Drawing the Color Line” in Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, 1492 – Present
Filed under: Civil Rights, Reading, Social Justice, Teaching, Writing and Editing

December 23, 2014
Two recent “New York Times” op-eds
Two recent op-eds that ran in the Sunday Review section of the New York Times (both on December 14) got my attention. Not for the specificity of their subjects, and not because they provided me with any new revelations, but because both seemed to encapsulate what I’ve been saying to people for years now: stop tearing each other down to improve only your life, and find ways to cooperate for the betterment of all our lives!
The first, Brendan Nyhan’s “Our Unrealistic Hopes for Presidents”, gives a glimpse into our decades-old search for the messianic politician who will bring order out of chaos. Nyhan points out the unrealized desire for a uniting figure who can dispel dissent, who can bring us under one umbrella and find the means to answers our most difficult queries.
The other, Mark Bittman’s “Is It Bad Enough Yet?”, propounds the common-sense notion that we’re pushing each other too hard. Bittman hands us another bitter pill: our social problems are not isolated, but complex and interwoven. Economic inequality and racism and over-incarceration and police brutality and unemployment are all connected. And we’ve got to realize that before we can move forward, out of what seems to be a near-revolution.
We are our best hope. Looking at the political scene today, the irascible tendencies of the two parties, each struggling not for the nation’s good but to overpower the other, are driving their constituencies to more and more polarizing positions with venomous and demonizing rhetoric. I say, if the people who have chosen a “side” were to get their of their echo chambers for a moment – turn off Fox News, or log off the Huffington Post – and look at the scene from a distance, they would easily see that our many emphases on winning these thousand little wars are driving us to madness. Brinksmanship isn’t working because it never does . . .
One of the most beautiful lessons that I’ve learned from my Catholic faith is that light always overtakes darkness. Always. Never will you turn on a lamp in a dark room and have the darkness be so strong that the lamp can emit nothing. Never will the sun rise and the night remains, pushing the sun’s light back to its source. Even when the darkness is strongest and thickest, the faintest light will break it, if only just for a short space. In this nation, where we are realizing our darkness – political divisions, police brutality, economic inequality, the torture of political prisoners – and we need light! Emitting our own kind of darkness will never conquer the darkness we see and despise. It’s got to be light. I can’t be partisanship masked as light, nor empty promises that will get mired in legislative process— no, it’s got to true, honest, kind and loving light coming from the people themselves. We are our best hope.
Filed under: Catholicism, Civil Rights, Reading, Social Justice, The Deep South

December 21, 2014
A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #46
“In the grown-up world, creative nonfiction is not expressive writing but rather communicative writing. And an axiom of communicative writing is that the reader does not automatically care about you (the writer), nor does she find you fascinating as a person, nor does she feel a deep natural interest in the same things that interest you. The reader, in fact, will feel about you, your subject, and your essay only what your written words themselves induce her to feel.”
– from “David Foster Wallace’s mind-blowing creative nonfiction syllabus,” published on Salon.com, November 10, 2014
Filed under: Education, Literature, Reading, Teaching, Writing and Editing

December 18, 2014
A nod to regional identity
I tore this off the corner of page two in the Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times, on November 9. Amen, Tommy Lee!
Filed under: Alabama, The Deep South, Writing and Editing

December 14, 2014
A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #45
“That is to say, the only people who can testify or verify the meaning of the United States as a democratic state, as a pluralistic culture, these are the very peoples whose contribution to a national vision and discovery meets with steadfast ridicule and disregard.
A democratic state does not, after all, exist for the few, but for the many. A democratic state is not proven by the welfare of the strong but by the welfare of the weak. And unless that many, that manifold constitution of diverse peoples can be seen as integral to the national art/the national consciousness, you might as well mean only Czechoslovakia when you talk about the USA, or only Ireland, or merely France, or exclusively white men.”
from “For the Sake of People’s Poetry: Walt Whitman and the Rest of Us” by June Jordan, which is available on the website of the Poetry Foundation.
Filed under: Civil Rights, Literature, Poetry, Reading, Social Justice, Teaching, Writing and Editing

December 9, 2014
The “There’s Hope for this Generation’s Music” Playlist
Near the end of last school year, one of my seniors gave me a mixed CD she had made, songs she thought I should listen to, and on a half-folded index card inside was the handwritten title “The ‘There’s Hope for this Generation’s Music’ Playlist.” She and I had often talked about music during the four years she was in my classes, and she knew that most of my disappointment in current music came from seeing a steady procession of (mostly bad) new groups or singers on Saturday Night Live! Without malicious resentment or in-your-face stubbornness, she laid this shiny metallic offering on the desk of a cynical, forty-year-old Generation X-er, and just asked me give it a fair listen. I can do that, I agreed.
My musical tastes are really eclectic, rooted in the days before corporate A&R men co-opted the term “alternative”— back when “alternative music” really was an alternative to pop radio. Down here in Alabama in the 1970s, 1980 and 1990s, we grew up on the quasi-country music of Kenny Rogers and Jerry Reed, on the synth-pop championed by early MTV, and on the latter-day radio hits of once-almost admirable folks like Chicago and Steve Miller. We were there when rap appeared on the scene, though most of didn’t really know what to do with it. We graduated later to our older brothers’ Led Zeppelin, Van Halen and KISS records, only to discover Suicidal Tendencies, The Cult, Sonic Youth and the Pixies for ourselves through mixed tapes made by friends. In the two decades since college, I’ve also developed a real affection for the musics of Louis Armstrong, Sam Cooke, Victoria Williams, and Willie Nelson. I’ve still got places in heart (and on my iPod) for the Purple Rain soundtrack and for “Come On, Eileen” even though I’m mostly a Bob Dylan/Neil Young/Widespread Panic kind of guy now— though with strong leanings lately toward Gary Clark, Jr., the Derek Trucks Band and North Mississippi All-Stars.
So this homemade CD. I could give it a fair shake. But I warned this young lady that I listen to music like I read books— this was going to take a while. Music does not sit in the background with me; I hear the music everywhere I go, and bad music really gets on my nerves. When I get new music, I go somewhere, alone, and let each song be an individual work of art. I get the lyrics and follow along. I play the whole album over and over to pick up on the nuances that the producers and engineers threw in there. (There’s an old anecdote I read once about Al Kooper waiting until Lynyrd Skynyrd left the studio to put horns on “Don’t Ask Me No Questions,” and also how Kooper also thought that Ed King’s solo on “Sweet Home Alabama” was in the wrong key.) I listen to a song in the same way your English teacher made you analyze poetry in class— then I decide whether each one on the album is any good.
The playlist – I’m still having trouble with the term, since I still think of them as mixed tapes – had variety, mostly groups I’d never heard of, though a few I had: Frank Ocean, Florence + the Machine, Robin Thicke. Of the twenty tracks, the only folks I knew beyond a name were Radiohead and Tony Bennett (on a duet with Lady Gaga). Not keying in to the spelling difference, I asked her as I looked over the card if Regina Spektor was any kin to Phil Spector, and she said, “Who?” I tried to explain: you know, the Wall of Sound . . . [nothing] He was the drug dealer in the beginning of Easy Rider . . . [nothing] OK, I would be starting from scratch with her just like she was starting from scratch with me.
Good news first. My favorite tracks were easily the rock and post-punk tunes: “Do I Wanna Know” by the Arctic Monkeys, “This Head I Hold” by Electric Guest, “Blue Blood Blues” by The Dead Weather and “DNA” by The Kills— tracks two, seven, ten and thirteen. Guitars riff with heavy distortion, vocals tinged with resentment— That I understand. I also liked Julie London’s “Cry Me a River,” which was welcome jazzy surprise at track three.
Bad news now. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis are terrible. Whoever gave them a record deal – and a Grammy! – needs to leave the music industry forever. (I feel the same way about Florida-Georgia line, frankly.) I was willing, up to the point of their song at track eight, to concede that there really might be hope for this generation’s music, but their rude intrusion on my listening experience was offensive. The other major failure of the playlist was the crowd favorite Robin Thicke. I don’t see how anyone likes that stuff. Crooners don’t have to be cheesy. I have to be honest, too: I don’t like Frank Ocean (“Sweet Life”), Florence + the Machine (“Bird Song”) or Maxwell (“Pretty Wings”), though I see why other people might. Maybe I’m too just old . . . That’s very possible.
As a last word, I felt a lot of pressure from all of the students who knew I had this CD to react to Earl Sweatshirt’s “Chum,” which came next to last. I listened to it, assuming from the giggles and snickers that this song would somehow stand out. It didn’t. To me, it sounded like something a guy would do in his bedroom with one of those cheap keyboards that loop beats and short musical phrases. Yea, sure, he threw out some cursing and racial slurs, but overall the song was unimpressive in multiple ways: style, music, lyrics.
Yet, my former student did succeed in convincing me that, yes, there is hope for this generation’s music. The Dirty Projectors’ “Gun Has No Trigger” sounded like a mix between ’90s U2 and ’80s David Bowie, which while not showing much originality did draw on credible influences. However, Lady Gaga, for all the hype around her, added nothing to Tony Bennett’s “The Lady is a Tramp.” I see Lady Gaga as either a stepped-up Madonna imitator or a toned-down Marilyn Manson.
Generationally, I’m very biased. It’s really sad that my generation had Nirvana and Pearl Jam to sweep aside hair metal, and this generation has Nickelback and Foo Fighters, who are basically grunge-influenced hair metal. Pitiful. Somehow, cheesy music never dies: Mumford & Sons is just a new incarnation of Creed, dump the electric guitars and go Americana. Green Day held up for a little while. Where the male singers of my generation perfected the angsty scream, this new crop somehow thought that high-pitched was the way to go: Adam Levine, Justin Timberlake, et al. Personally, I can’t stand it.
I’ll tell you where I see some hope for this generation’s music. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros— they’re unique and energetic and their songs are really solid. The Lumineers are another one, taking something old and making it new. Benjamin Booker, too— he sounds to me like a cross between electric blues and skate punk.
What’s missing, though, if you ask me, are those groups so good that we’ll still be talking about them in thirty or forty or fifty years. In the ’50s, we had Elvis and the Motown sound; in the ’60s, we had the Beatles and the Stones; in the ’70s, The Clash; in the ’80s, Prince. Undeniable brilliance. Who are those groups among this crowd? I think about a time when we’d see Paul Simon or even the Grateful Dead on Saturday Night Live! Who do we see now? Hosier, and people like this.
And it isn’t just pop music. In country music, we’ve had Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Tammy Wynette, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, George Strait . . . who is going to continue that tradition? Luke Bryan— I don’t hardly think so. Little Big Town reminds me so much of ABBA that I don’t know whether laugh or get angry. And rap— it has hardly evolved at all since the ’90s. Twenty or twenty-five years of virtual stagnation (required by safe-bet corporate record deals) have churned out a long succession of cookie-cutter same-old same-old.
I have to think that there’s underground music going on that’s just poised to appear. Something going on in the streets or at house parties or garages— that’s where it always comes from. Whatever it is, it won’t be Five Seconds of Summer doing a cover of “What I Like About You,” I’ll tell you that.
Filed under: Education, Music, Teaching

December 7, 2014
A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #44
” . . . the ‘meaning’ we speak of in literature is different in kind from the meaning of a word or a sentence in the context of a purposeful, real-world exchange. In the latter, the use of words has consequences, in that it gives rise to action, whereas in literature – even literature that seeks to inspire readers to political action – words lack direct application. When we speaking of ‘meaning’ in relation to literature, we quite often meaning something like ‘significance’ or ‘point,’ but when we speak of, say, the meaning of a line of poetry, we mean something more like interpretation or paraphrase. And this is where confusion is liable to arise, for we can also interpret or paraphrase a meaningful expression. But the difference remains, for, absent a need for clarification, we can use a meaningful expression as is, and there are ‘measures of meaning’ with such expressions – actions, consequences – that literature lacks.”
– from the essay “Wittengenstein: A Memoir” by Garrett Caples, available on the website of the Poetry Foundation
Filed under: Literature, Poetry, Reading, Teaching, Writing and Editing

December 4, 2014
The Need for Progressive Heuristics
Ever since I encountered the idea of heuristics, I’ve been fascinated by their power and influence. It’s all about creating the shortcuts that allow people not to have to think out the whole process every time. Make it easy on ‘em and they’ll come with you. That’s why I was really interested in this Salon.com interview with George Lakoff titled “This is why conservatives win.”
Why do so many people cling to political beliefs that are out-of-touch with their own self-interest? Because heuristics were offered, and they gladly “got the memo.” Some brief form of the party’s agenda was organized, summarized and packaged in such a way that it was acceptable to and digestible by ordinary people, allowing these voters not to spend hours and days and weeks studying political theory and public policy so they could make truly informed choices in multiple races.
The lead-in to the Salon.com interview proffers a briefing on three of George Lakoff’s books, published in 1980, 1996 and 2004. We learn about “Lakoff’s goal of educating the progressive community to stop shooting itself in the foot and start living up to its full potential.” It’s all about strengthening the message and giving in an accessible way, something Lakoff says conservatives are doing really well.
Why can’t progressives change the ossified politics of the Deep South? The linguistic shortcuts aren’t there. What Lakoff calls the “conceptual metaphors” aren’t there. The “framing” isn’t there. And I don’t see a long-range plan to put them in place. So “Christian,” “conservative,” “family values,” anti-federal government and pro-gun constitute the “framing” that moves people to action. Progressive candidates have no clear-cut set of terms to match those. And in my opinion, until Deep Southern progressives develop the terms, and entrench them – as Lakoff says, they’ve got to embrace cognitive science – they will keep losing elections.
Filed under: Civil Rights, Social Justice, The Deep South

November 30, 2014
A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #43
“. . . So fate requires
That all things whirl to ruin, slip behind,
Like one who rows his skiff against the current,
Touch and go: if once his arms ease off,
The current sweeps him headlong down the stream.”
— from Virgil’s Georgics, Book I, translated by Smith Palmer Bovie
Filed under: Gardening, Literature, Poetry, Reading, Teaching, Writing and Editing

