Amazing Grace

If you did not see or read President Obama’s eulogy for Rev./SC State Sen. Clementa Pinckney on Thursday afternoon, you missed something unique and magnificent. The perspective of the President’s language was very Christian because he himself is very Christian and he was offering a eulogy about a minister, so that’s not surprising. But his tribute was particularly eloquent and filled with messages of basic humanism, the possibility for the evolution of human kindness, historic truth, common sense, and social and political necessity, all of which was entirely appropriate in the context of the eulogy and the time in which we live. If you missed it, I encourage you to click on one of the links above.

The President’s core message was that we are blessed by God with grace – the grace to be good people; people capable of love and forgiveness even in response to the most vile wrong-doing and the most heart wrenching grief; and that if we can learn how to live our lives and view others with a more open heart, anything and everything good is possible. Even if you take God out of that scenario and simply view the capacity for grace as something that is a central part of our DNA which we can choose to cultivate or ignore, the message still rings true and is worthy of contemplation and discussion.

As my regular readers know, I embody a great deal of anger, cynicism, and hardcore judgment about things and circumstances I don’t like. I apply this rancor to all the subjects this blog is primarily about: politics, contemporary culture, new technology, and the ruination of the English language. I try to reveal the sense of humor I have that keeps me relatively sane and has so far prevented me from committing acts of violence. But I’ve also discussed my considerable depression and misery.

Over the past couple of days, I’ve twice watched the President deliver the eulogy and read the text once. Besides increasing my respect and affection for him, I’ve thought a lot about the lack of grace I’ve cultivated within myself and wondered (1) if I have the ability to do so and (2) if even the effort would give me a greater sense of inner peace if not outright love, happiness and joy. I don’t know the answer, but I admit that I fear the process, not because of its difficulty, but because I’ve clung to these feelings like a teddy bear for decades.

Indeed, they remind me of a great Robin Williams scene in Moscow On the Hudson, in which he plays a foreign musician and he’s just jammed with a blues band and is talking to one of the American musicians: “When I was in Russia, I did not love my life, but I loved my misery. You know why? Because it was my misery. I could hold it. I could caress it. I loved my misery. You know, I have a whole family I will never ever see again. You see? Now you see. You know it. There it is. Now you know that the saddest thing in the world is life. Yeah, man. Now you see. Thank you. Thank you for a wonderful night. Boy, I feel great. Take care. I love you.”  “If that was wonderful, what happens when he hits deep depression?” 

The murders in South Carolina filled me with a hopeless sadness and fire-breathing rage. The ability of a number of family members of some of the victims to confront the killer in court and express their grace and forgiveness filled me with humbled awe. The President gave me a whole lot to think about. And the Supreme Court’s affirmation of national marriage equality gave me happy hope – and the sense that enough of the Justices had been blessed with true grace.

I don’t know what the lasting impact of the diverse events and language of the last couple of weeks will be for me – or others. I don’t know how I’ll feel or think or what tone my writing will take, especially as the 300-year campaign of the 2016 election moves glacially along. But whatever people’s different feelings about all this may be, none of us can deny that something extraordinary has happened. And that in itself is amazing.

Goodbye and Thank You, William Zinsser

There are people who like to look up and those who don't – which is to say, those who take pleasure in admiring/respecting/appreciating truly special people, and those who relish looking down on everybody.

My dear mother, who taught me to love language, also taught me to look up. I rant on this blog so much you might not think of me as someone with heroes, but I have quite a few. I like to look up. There are many writers I look up to. But above them all, my favorite teacher of writing was writer and teacher William Zinsser, who just died at age 92.

I’m not sad; he had a long, productive, and apparently rewarding, happy life. He also helped countless writers and teachers of writing with his great book, On Writing Well. I’ve read it through several times over the years and still refer to it often. If you are a reader, a writer, or just a lover of language used splendidly and you’ve never read On Writing Well, I heartily encourage you to pick up this slim, fulsome paperback.

And for your reference, here’s Zinsser's New York Times obituary. Doesn’t he sound like someone you’d like to know? I’m sorry I never got to meet him. But I got to learn from him, and for that I’m grateful.

Bad Karma, My Ass

I’ve always liked Shirley MacLaine. I like her as an actress; as a woman who gained the respect to be treated like one of the boys instead of a bimbo in Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack; and I like her interest in other cultures, distant lands, and spiritual/philosophical ideas that make a lot of people think she’s wacky. She doesn’t care if people think she’s a New Age nutjob and I like that, too.

But Shirley crossed a line when (as reported this week) in her new memoir, What If... (she’s written enough autobiographies for several lifetimes), she wrote: “What if most Holocaust victims were balancing their karma from ages before…The energy of killing is endless and will be experienced by the killer and the killee.” Shirley isn't the first person to suggest this connection. She’s just the first one to do so whom I like.

And not for nothing, but: killee? This is not a word. The word is victim. Not used in a sentence, one might say: “The Nazis killed more than 12 million people, half of them Jews, the rest: homosexuals, the aged, anti-Nazi political activists, the mentally ill and retarded, the physically disabled, and everybody they caught trying to help such people.”

The notion of karma – which is the Sanskrit word for action, human behavior – has been a core religious and philosophical concept since the days of ancient India and remains so today in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and Taoism.

Unfortunately, in the sense that Shirley means karma, it's bad karma and punishment in this life for crimes, sins and other really bad stuff one did in this or a past life. But the repercussions of bad karma are a small part of the larger wisdom of karma. In all the traditional schools of thought and faith there are The 12 Laws of Karma, and they are focused on how one should behave in this life in order to learn, grow and make the world a better place. (Give it a click, it’s a good read.)

Nowhere in karmic creed does it say it’s permissible for someone to deliberately harm or kill another as punishment for that person’s “bad Karma.” But, not surprisingly, western New Agers have grabbed on to a piece of a concept that appeals to them, in this case the idea that “you’ll get yours,” even if it distorts the context of the larger laws of karma. Think of it as The Cliff Notes of Enlightenment On My Own Terms. 

Which is why I have never liked the concept of what-goes-around-comes-around bad karma.  And I think it’s no accident that this aspect of karma was so fervently embraced in Asia, which for many centuries has contained styles and levels of poverty, starvation, cruelty, official punishment, criminal violence and abject suffering that are particularly (if not uniquely) horrendous, overwhelming, and seemingly beyond defeat. It’s much easier to watch a paraplegic six year old drinking out of a mud hole, or listen to the screams of a 12 year old being gang raped when you believe it’s their bad karma come home to roost.

The idea of retribution for bad karma is very dangerous right now. It places a tidy, comforting, blanket of righteous cosmic justice on the unspeakable as we move further into an era defined by terrorism, war, human trafficking, a desperate lack of the basics of survival (food, water, shelter, the usual) in many places, a lessening of human rights and an increase in oppression – especially of women and girls – along with extraordinary poverty, the ravages of climate change, and the dark side of new technology (signs of which are already apparent to some, but not to most).

I haven’t read What If..., which includes many other questions.  So, to give Shirley the benefit of the doubt, what if she was just posing a spiritual question about the victims of the Holocaust? The problem with that question is the inherent answer – which many people find insensitive and insulting – is that the victims’ bad karma would make the Holocaust comprehensible and okay. It is neither. And to possibly suggest so is a form of Holocaust Denial: yes, the Holocaust happened, but it was for a sound spiritual reason. 

Nein, Shirley. Such a conclusion would be dishonest, dishonorable and disgusting. I don’t know if you’re wacky, but you need to realign your chakras or dye your aura or change your mantra or something, because you’ve got it all twisted. You’re 80 years old. Where’s your common sense, personal growth and sound wisdom? Just asking a question.

Celebrating Maya Angelou

As I’m sure you already know, the magnificent Maya Angelou died this morning in her North Carolina home at the age of 86. While I certainly extend my sympathies to her family, friends, and the many members of the worldwide public who felt a strong even daily connection with her (she was on Facebook and was a frequent tweeter), I don’t feel a sense of loss as much as I feel a sense of celebration of and for her spirit. As a writer, she leaves behind a strong and sensitive body of work; and as a human being, teacher, and leader, she leaves behind such a courageous, proactive, and never-ending legacy, that I feel Dr. Angelou has a kind of immortality.

If Rosa Parks was the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement, Maya Angelou was it’s brave, bold daughter. After Bayard Rustin died, she took his place as the SCLC’s (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) New York Office Coordinator; that was the organization that Rustin and others had founded with Martin Luther King, Jr. She later worked with Malcolm X, helping him put together the Organization of Afro-American Unity in 1964. When Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968 – the date of her 40^th birthday – she stopped celebrating her birthday for many years after. But before, during and after these significant events, hers was a booming voice and substantial presence in the movements for civil rights, women’s rights, and human rights. For the rest of her life, she lived and worked around the world as an organizer, administrator, teacher, speaker, writer, and the human embodiment of inspiration for millions of people, but most especially women.

For me personally, she entered my life with her first book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, in the years after I’d been awakened and inspired by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kurt Vonnegut, and Allen Ginsberg, and, irritated by Nikki Giovanni and Ntozake Shange (I appreciated the politics of those women but their personalities and language left me cold). Maya Angelou’s prose was clean and had the imagery of poetry; her poetry was visionary and had the clarity of good, clean prose. She spoke like she wrote and wrote like she spoke, which to me is the totality of a born writer. Her spirit, her essence, was always with me, even when I didn’t know it. Which may be why I don’t feel a sense of loss now so much as a sense of celebration.

The other reason is that I’m a natural intuitive (clairsentient meaning clear knowing, as opposed to clairvoyant, meaning clear seeing), and for five years I also took psychic development classes with an amazing medium, the late Gene Sterling. A few weeks before Maya Angelou recited her great poem, On the Pulse of Morning, at Bill Clinton’s first Inaugural, I channeled an energy that gave me the first real sense of being a channel, because the following words certainly weren’t coming out of my consciousness (or attitude towards nature) as they fell out of my mouth: “The rocks have feet, the trees have feet, the rivers have feet.” I don’t remember the rest of the message, but I’ve never forgotten that line and the whole stunning experience.

So can you imagine how I felt on that January day when Maya Angelou began to recite On the Pulse of Morning and I heard her say: “A Rock, A River, A Tree.” I later bought the recording of that poem, for which she won a Grammy, and I still have it. Listening to her, and listening to that poem, convinced me like nothing else could, that ideas, messages, language, energy, are all around us all the time, and we can pick them up if we’re able to put our egos aside and listen. That’s why, in a way, I’ve long felt that Maya Angelou and I have been tuned into the same otherly frequency. She did much more and a whole lot better with it than I have. But it is in that spirit that I say to her this evening, “Thank you for everything, Dr. Angelou, for all you endured, all you did, all you said, and for just being here. Rest in peace and live well in spirit. I’m still listening.”

Being and Doing

A whole lot’s been going on in the month since I last wrote a post, but I haven't enough to say about any of it to constitute a full essay. Putin’s going to keep Crimea, which a lot of its citizens seem to want and those who don’t will relocate or disappear or die. The international community won’t do anything because it doesn’t want a war, so we're just taking some of Putin’s privileges away, as if this half-naked- horse-riding, power-hungry egomaniac with lots and lots of bombs were just a naughty child, which might actually be the smart way to go. And in any case, whatever the President says or does, the Republicans will say he’s weak and wrong.

It’s unlikely we’ll ever find enough of that Malaysian plane or the 280+ persons who were on it to tell us definitively more than we already know, but that won’t stop the news channels from giving it close to 24/7 coverage until we wish we were missing. Red states across the nation will continue to take advantage of the elimination of that portion of the Voting Rights Act the Supreme Court didn’t think we needed anymore to keep advancing the suppression of voting by the young, old, and people of color.

And Republicans will keep saying outrageous things about women, then wonder why they’re not winning our hearts and minds. My current favorite is Conservative radio host Dennis Prager’s comment at a fundraiser for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: “A wife should have sex with her husband – regardless of her ‘mood’ – because it is one of the ‘mutual obligations’ of being married.” In other words, the New Normal will keep stupidly lumbering along. (And Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.)

So my concern at the moment is more philosophical – a way of thinking that has become irrelevant and downright disrespected in a society that has made the rich, even the just comfortable, extraordinarily greedy, self-centered and cruel, while the poor, even the just making it, are preoccupied with economic survival. Ideas, language and creative culture are apparently luxuries we either don’t need or can’t afford – like a liberal arts education that isn’t a straight line to a job, or well-scripted TV programs that employ good writers and actors, because trash reality TV is not only cheaper to produce, it gives us social permission to be crass, ignorant, inarticulate, and shallow.

This is why I’m particularly disturbed by what’s happening to the English language in the 21^st century, a time in which language has become smaller, more banal, and used poorly and less creatively. This seems especially true among young adults, who just don’t care about language. But language and how it’s used is important, because it reflects the nature, values, and personality of a culture.

I believe this dangerous change began when we started to turn nouns into verbs, beginning  in the 80s with impact. Things used to have an impact on other things, but then things suddenly became impacted, as in “the sluggish economy has impacted government’s willingness to support vital social programs for the poor.” This matters because a noun is a person, place or thing - essentially being - while a verb describes action, which is doing.

I’m a natural intuitive, but I took psychic development classes for five years with a very wise and gifted woman who used to remind us regularly that we were human beings, not human doings. But because people now guide their lives with an abundance of digital devices, communicate in 140-character fragments with a whole new vocabulary of acronyms, and take pride in multi-tasking, we are increasingly becoming human doings rather than human beings. Expedience has become more important than style and the appreciation of good language is quickly disappearing, because people rarely hear or read it.

So we no longer keep a scrap book, we’re scrapbooking; we don’t give someone a gift, we’re gifting; we didn’t buy something at a thrift shop, we thrifted; during the recent Olympics, athletes didn’t win a medal, they medaled. And of course, we no longer laugh, we LOL and we don’t offer an opinion we IMHO. This has become so commonplace among younger people that I was recently told by two Human Resources managers they get résumés filled with such acronyms – along with ugly new words like incentivize (not to mention disincentivizes).

We don't have conversations, we dialogue, and we don't have relationships, we're in relationship. In business, a cohort isn't a chum it's a team, and silos aren't big towers that hold stuff they're departments or divisions. Writers no longer provide copy they write verbiage - as little as possible, of course. Artists don’t paint, draw or take photographs, they create images. Usually on a computer. I have a dear friend who's an artist and used to work in a variety of media (media used to be the plural of medium in art; today it just refers to technology and electronic journalism). Now he works exclusively by computer and brags that he makes art pieces in ten minutes. I’m supposed to hear this as a positive thing. I do not.

You may also have noticed that people have become things: “Tom is the guy I told you about that I went to college with,” as opposed to “who I went to college with.” Strictly speaking, it should be “Tom is the guy I told you about with whom I went to college,” but I guess one has to pick one’s battles (remember when one was something other than a number?).

The meanings of words are also changing - and not for the better. In fashion, there are no longer colors and fabrics but colorations and fabrications, instead; and couture, which is merely the French word for clothing, has lost its "haute" (the phrase haute couture used to mean high fashion, the expensive designer stuff). Now couture all by itself is used to mean haute couture, which must make us sound even more stupid to the French than we already do. In both fashion and food, decadent has become a synonym for sophisticated, and while they might be considered first or second cousins, they're not the same.

In real estate, house and home have become synonymous, which at the very least is insulting to those of us who make our homes in apartments. But whatever the structure may be, even when there are walls and doors (rather than "open concept"), there are no more rooms, there are areas. In general usage, I once heard someone compliment someone else by saying "You're totally superfluous," but I don't know if that's caught on. The one that has and makes me grit my teeth every time I hear it is downfall when what is meant is downside. I get similarly upset when I hear people say infamous, which of course mean famous for something terrible, as in "Charles Manson is infamous," but is now being used to mean very famous. I understand that new words must enter the language as new things enter the world, but I have no patience with the misuse and unnecessary changes of words. 

Given that language is my thing – along with many other things that were a routine part of my youth and even my middle age – this degradation of language hurts my heart and befuddles my brain. So does all this technology that was intended to increase communication but has only decreased it. One used to have a handful of close friends with whom one spent time and shared activities. Now people have hundreds, even thousands of “friends” through social media, people who give you a thumbs up when you put something they like on your wall.

I’ll tell you straight out: I’m 62 years old as of this month and I truly hate the 21^st century. I feel I have no place in it, that I’ve outlived my time, and it’s a combination of feeling deeply lonely and being totally infuriated. I saw an online ad today; it was intended to sell a new way to send photos to people. But to me, it said it all, about language and everything else that's sick and bad and lost in the 21st century: “Lots of sharing. No attachments.”

History, Language, and the Movies

Two important films connected to Black History were released in 2013: 12 Years A Slave, directed by Steve McQueen (not the dead one, another one) and Lee Daniels’ The Butler, directed, obviously, by Lee Daniels – who was not trying to be an egomaniac by inserting his name in the title, but was forced to by Warner Brothers, which holds the rights to a 1916 silent film entitled The Butler and wouldn’t let him use it without that name distinction.

I haven’t yet seen 12 Years A Slave, which has been highly praised and got nine Oscar nominations.  I look forward to seeing it, especially after watching an interview with screenwriter John Ridley, who greatly impressed me.  I have seen Lee Daniels’ The Butler, which I loved and feel deserved an Academy nod to Forest Whitaker for Best Actor, if nothing else.  This film is good (if not great) and it reveals the noble history of Black servants in the White House who hold a special place in Black History of long-term, impeccable, discreet service, despite the horrors of Slavery, post-Reconstruction Jim Crow laws, and the long hard road to Civil Rights.

I don’t think …Butler received the same kind of audience enthusiasm because (if online comments on reviews and other articles are anything to go by) the increasingly language-ignorant public didn’t understand the difference between “inspired by” and “based on” and therefore felt …Butler was somehow illegitimate.

…Slave was based on the memoir of Solomon Northup, a real-life free Black man who lived in New York in the 1830s, and was kidnapped in Washington DC in 1841.  He was forced to live and work as a Slave on a Louisiana cotton plantation until he was rescued in 1853.  He subsequently wrote his autobiography, which was published in 1853, and it was this true story that captured the interest of McQueen and Ridley.

It is worth noting that in the Ridley interview, he said his one fear is audiences will leave the theater with a sense of relief that the terrible days of Slavery are over.  They are not.  As he explained, the level of Slavery worldwide – including in the U.S. – is three times larger than the enslavement of Africans that brought them to America, the Caribbean, South and Central America and parts of Europe.  Today, tens of thousands of women and men and girls and boys are roped into Slavery, Sex Trafficking, and Indentured Servitude, which have yet to be adequately addressed by individual countries (including ours) and the United Nations.  If …Slave doesn’t inspire widespread indignation and calls for international intervention into contemporary Slavery, this fine film will only stand as a well-crafted bio-pic about the past.

…Butler was inspired by a Washington Post article about retired White House butler Eugene Allen, who served at the White House from the Truman through Reagan administrations.  Forest Whitaker’s character, Cecil Gaines, is not and was never intended to be Eugene Allen, nor was the film meant to be Gaines’ story.  Certain events in Gaines’ life are used in the film, because they’re typical of the privileges and indignities experienced by all Black White House servants, especially the butlers.

But this story tells the truth about the many Black men and women who had and still have unrivaled access to America’s presidents’ public policies and personal feelings – and who consistently protect the privacy of America’s chief executives and their families while providing top-notch service for which they are highly trained.  Most serve in these positions for decades and can sometimes hand them down to their children.

While some of those who saw …Butler were outraged by insignificant differences between Allen and Gaines – such as where they were born and worked prior to their White House careers, what their wives and children were like, etc., – they missed the important messages of the film.  One of Gaines’ two sons, Louis, is a Civil Rights maverick who sees his father as an Uncle Tom.  And much like Forest Gump, Louis finds himself plunked into the major events of his time: marching in Selma, being with Martin Luther King Jr. in jail and in King’s Memphis hotel room before he’s killed, joining the Black Panthers et al. 

When Louis tells Dr. King, clearly with a sense of shame, that his father is a butler, King says the following: “Young brother, the black domestic defies racial stereotypes by being hardworking and trustworthy.  He slowly breaks down racial hatred with the example of his strong work ethic and dignified character.  Now while we perceive the butler or the maid as being subservient, in many ways they are subversive without even knowing it.”  I don’t know if King ever really said this, but it doesn’t matter.  That’s language to pay attention to.

The Tower is Closing

For the past couple of months, I’ve been weighing the pros and cons of ending this blog, which I started in August, 2007.  In the end, I’ve decided the pros outweigh the cons – so this is my final post.

This blog has given me a chance to express my ideas, concerns and opinions and giving up this opportunity was a big “con” in my consideration.  However, I’ve never done the enormous amount of personal and technical work necessary to bring this blog to the attention of a larger audience, and I don’t feel like doing it now.  But by not doing it, I’ve increasingly felt that I’ve just been sporadically and inconsistently screaming into an unhearing void, and what’s the point in continuing if I’m not going to do the work to promote/market Views From the Tower?  For me, the final answer is that there is no point, so it’s time to end it.

That said, I very much appreciate that those of you who have been following this blog took the time to do so, and some of you have often taken the time to send me private emails of response: much praise and sometimes disagreement.  All of it was gratifying, encouraging, and gave me the sense that I wasn’t entirely screaming into an unhearing void.  Thank you very, very much.

As a writer, I certainly intend to keep writing.  I’m working on a mystery novel, something I’ve always wanted to do.  In a way, given my politics, it amuses me and reminds me of the time in the 70s that Eldridge Cleaver moved to Paris and became a pants designer.  But I’m no Eldridge Cleaver and also have no delusion that I’ll become a modern Agatha Christie.  I just want to have some fun (and maybe make a little money).  I haven’t had a lot of fun as a writer and now seems like a good time to do it.  Equally important, I abandoned my relationship with The Tarot about ten years ago and I want to reclaim it.  It enriched my life when I had it and I want that connection again – and that’s a study/practice that takes time.  You may or may not understand what this means, but suffice it to say The Tarot is important to me and that’s reason enough for me.

In general, having turned 60 earlier this year, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to time – time past, present and future.  And December is annually the month in which I give the most thought to time: it’s filled with holidays I no longer celebrate with family and friends; it’s the end of one year and the birth of a new one; and I’m reminded of what was lost in Decembers past.  John Lennon, who was murdered at the age of 40 in December 1980, would have been 72 this year.  His five-year-old son who was left fatherless turned 37.  A dear friend of mine, Stuart Franklin, died in December 21 years ago.  Had my mother and father survived their 70s, they would be 89 and 90 now – a misery I’m glad they were spared, but I still miss them terribly.

I also think about the meaningful, functional time I have left.  I don’t have oodles of it.  Over the past few months, arthritis has settled in my left shoulder, wrist and hand.  Over the past few years, my teeth have started screwing up.  My right knee is prone to slipping out from under me.  My hearing, especially in my left ear, has greatly diminished.  My home and daily routine are both a mess and hugely dysfunctional.  I need the time to get these things together and bring some peace and order to the rest of my time.

So again, my thanks, and my best wishes to all of you, as well as my hope that you have the opportunity to do what you wish and need to do with your time.  Also, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year.  Here’s hoping the future brings better times for us all.

Old Modern Man

I miss George Carlin terribly.  I think of him often.  I wonder what he would have said about our sick, wacky times.  Carlin was never a political comedian in the sense that he commented on politics and politicians; he thought it was all bullshit and that voting was pointless.  But he certainly spoke knowingly and critically of our age, always being funny and usually wise and eloquent, as well.  I miss him because his honesty and intelligence, as well as his humor, comforted me, acknowledged me, justified me.  George made me feel proud to be an outsider because he was King of the Outsiders and he made that pretty cool.

I got to interview George Carlin twice, both times by phone.  The first time was when I worked for HBO and one of his specials was coming up.  The second time was when I did some freelance work for the producers/ creators of Shining Time Station / Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends and George was the lovable Mr. Conductor.

Carlin, especially in his post-heart attack years, was reputed to be difficult to deal with (for producers, suits and such, which was probably true) and no easier to interview.  But on both occasions, which were about five years apart, he was pleasant and easy-going; willing to answer any question I put to him; and generous with his time.  Maybe it was because I wasn’t a journalist but instead just a p.r. hack trying to do her job; Carlin always respected ordinary working folks.  I think it was because he was just a decent guy who sometimes gave greedy or bossy or nervy people a hard time.  After all, he was George Carlin.

If George were here now, he’d probably be quietly, maybe anonymously, sending food and blankets to assorted Occupy Wall Street sites.  He would be talking about the legitimacy of gay marriage, tax and income inequality and the danger wrought by the Religious Right’s slow, steady, disciplined 30-year-climb from minor local politics to the less-than-hallowed-halls of Congress, the Court and the White House.  He would be angry, brainy and funny as ever.  And he would be a sane voice in crazy times.

A couple of hours ago, I saw a re-run of the Mark Twain Prize ceremony that honored George Carlin a few months after his death at the age of 71 in June, 2008.  It ended with Carlin’s complete performance of his magnificent routine, “A Modern Man.”  Whether you recall it fondly or never heard it, I present it here for your enjoyment and edification:

“I’m a modern man, digital and smoke-free; a man for the millennium.  A diversified, multi-cultural, post-modern deconstructionist; politically, anatomically and ecologically incorrect.  I’ve been uplinked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced.  I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading.  I’m a high-tech low-life.  A cutting-edge, state-of-the-art, bi-coastal multi-tasker, and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond.  I’m new-wave, but I’m old-school; and my inner child is outward-bound.  I’m a hot-wired, heat-seeking, warm-hearted cool customer; voice-activated and bio-degradable.  I interface with my database; my database is in cyberspace; so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive, and from time to time I’m radioactive.

“Behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, ridin’ the wave, dodgin’ the bullet, pushin’ the envelope.  I’m on point, on task, on message, and off drugs.  I’ve got no need for coke and speed; I’ve got no urge to binge and purge.  I’m in the moment, on the edge, over the top, but under the radar.  A high-concept, low-profile, medium-range ballistic missionary.  A street-wise smart bomb.  A top-gun bottom-feeder.  I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps, I run victory laps.  I’m a totally ongoing, big-foot, slam-dunk rainmaker with a pro-active outreach.  A raging workaholic, a working rageaholic; out of rehab and in denial.  I’ve got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant, and a personal agenda.

“You can't shut me up; you can't dumb me down.  ‘Cause I’m tireless, and I’m wireless.  I’m an alpha-male on beta-blockers.  I’m a non-believer, I’m an over-achiever;  laid-back and fashion-forward.  Up-front, down-home; low-rent, high-maintenance.  I’m super-sized, long-lasting, high-definition, fast-acting, oven-ready and built to last.  A hands-on, footloose, knee-jerk head case; prematurely post-traumatic, and I have a love child who sends me hate-mail.

“But I’m feeling, I’m caring, I’m healing, I’m sharing.  A supportive, bonding, nurturing primary-care giver.  My output is down, but my income is up.  I take a short position on the long bond, and my revenue stream has its own cash flow.  I read junk mail, I eat junk food, I buy junk bonds, I watch trash sports.  I’m gender-specific, capital-intensive, user-friendly and lactose-intolerant.

“I like rough sex; I like tough love.  I use the f-word in my e-mail.  And the software on my hard drive is hard-core—no soft porn.  I bought a microwave at a mini-mall.  I bought a mini-van at a mega-store.  I eat fast food in the slow lane. I’m toll-free, bite-size, ready-to-wear, and I come in all sizes.  A fully equipped, factory-authorized, hospital-tested, clinically proven, scientifically formulated medical miracle.

“I’ve been pre-washed, pre-cooked, pre-heated, pre-screened, pre-approved, pre-packaged, post-dated, freeze-dried, double-wrapped and vacuum-packed.  And I have unlimited broadband capacity.  I’m a rude dude, but I’m the real deal.  Lean and mean.  Cocked, locked and ready to rock; rough, tough and hard to bluff.  I take it slow, I go with the flow; I ride with the tide, I’ve got glide in my stride.  Drivin’ and movin’, sailin’ and spinnin’; jivin’ and groovin, wailin’ and winnin’.  I don’t snooze, so I don’t lose.  I keep the pedal to the metal and the rubber on the road.  I party hearty, and lunchtime is crunch time.  I’m hangin’ in, there ain’t no doubt; and I’m hangin tough.  Over and out.”

What’s in a Word?

Since the passage of gay marriage in New York State last week, I’ve been talking to friends about their reactions. Gay and straight, some people are delighted, others seem disinterested, particularly straight people who think it’s fine but it really doesn’t have anything to do with them (and are therefore not thinking of the rights issues and political implications of the matter that affect us all).

One straight woman said she’s very happy and proud of New York and cited, along with the fairness of the law, the many ways that the state/cities can benefit financially. I agree. This will be a boon to wedding-related retail goods, services and tourism (honey-moons!), which is a great side benefit of something that needed to happen for completely other reasons.

Another friend said the greatest importance is that gay couples will now have all the legal rights and privileges (and shared problems) that married straight couples have, from health care coverage, to hospital visiting and living will decisions to greater child adoption and custody rights, etc., et al. These and other practical key issues will continue to be highlighted as the fight for marriage equality continues.

The two responses that interested me the most – and which have been a large part of the marriage equality debate since it began – were the liberal woman and conservative man who both said they were fine with gay couples having the rights of marriage, but they don’t like that it is called marriage. They feel “the union of a man and a woman is the definition of marriage” argument is inviolable, he on religious grounds, she on the grounds of tradition and proper English usage. And apparently the state of Rhode Island agrees, because yesterday it legalized “civil unions” for “same-sex couples,” not gay marriage.

Although I’m an Interfaith minister, I have no religious issue with the use of the word marriage, and as a prescriptive language maven (which I wrote about extensively a few posts back), it doesn’t bother me either; published definitions of marriage of course describe it as a union between a man and a woman, because until very recently (and hardly entirely even now), gay people were not considered normal, healthy, equal persons and their relationships were not considered legal, even valid, in most places.

Using the word marriage – and the word gay – is vitally important. From a civil/human rights standpoint, as well as a legal definition, the word marriage is what makes the committed relationships of gay people equally legitimate as the committed relationships of straight people. It sends important messages: love is love, commitment is commitment, and families take many forms, no matter what combination of two persons the marriage is comprised of.

Emotionally, being two wives or two husbands is very different from referring to each other as “spouse” or “[life]-partner.” Those words have none of the romance of husband, wife (or marriage), and they fail to convey genuine intimacy and betrothed alliance between two people. Not using the word marriage makes the relationship seem lesser-than [straight marriages]. If you’re a straight, married (or even divorced) person, think about how it first felt to call someone husband or wife, to describe yourself as married. Wasn’t there a special sense of warmth, connection, and status, that came with that? Isn’t there still at least a semblance of that, even if you’ve been married for a long time?

I believe the root of the objection to the word “marriage” for gay couples is largely religious, rather than linguistic. While I believe in the importance of the stability and consistency of language in the main, I also appreciate that great social change, such as civil rights and feminism, have brought new words into the lexicon and altered others, and when that happens for such major reasons, I think language is improved, rather than degraded.

But more than religion or language, I think the idea of “gay marriage” is very new, very uncomfortable, very alien to lots of straight people – who have never met a gay person (to their knowledge). Many of them equate gay with the most outlandish participants they see in gay pride parades. Some still don’t believe people are born gay; and they certainly don’t believe that gay relationships are equal to straight ones. To them, gay marriage is an oxymoron and a cheapening of their “real” marriages. I know my two friends who dislike the use of the word marriage don’t fall into this category of less sophisticated people, but I think many do, only it’s become politically incorrect to express such ideas (which is why political correctness is such a pain in the ass and should be the antithesis of progressive thought – but that’s another post…).

The continuing fight for gay marriage is essential. But so is giving all Americans a chance to knowingly interact with gay people so they can see that gays are not freaks to be scorned or feared. And the only way that’s going to happen is if more and more people come out of the closet – to family, friends, people on the job, folks in church, the other guys on the bowling team, the other gals in the quilting and book clubs – just plain everybody everywhere. And invite these straight people to your gay weddings. Every little bit helps.

English On the Rocks

As a writer, a reader, and a person living in a supposedly civilized society, I despair about the future of English, because it’s being misused, abused, belittled and just generally trashed at every turn.

I was saying to a friend just the other day: there are two kinds of language mavens – the prescriptive and the descriptive. The descriptive school says language is a living thing and it changes with the times and we shouldn’t get hung up on grammar and spelling and usage, because all that can and should be flexible. The prescriptive school says language has been honed and perfected over time and it’s important to speak and write properly, because that creates the opportunity for maximum communication, as well as an expression of the beauty of language.

As a prescriptive maven, I also feel strongly about the role of good language in thought. If your understanding and usage of language is poor, it follows that the quality of your thinking will be poor: simplistic, incorrect, limited. Clear thought, original thought, rests in good language.

I’m concerned about English, because that is the only language I know, and it is (still, so far) the international language of diplomacy and trade. (French used to have that position, but it lost it. See what happens when you don’t take care of your language?) I’m not proud of only knowing one language; I should know more, at least Spanish, since it’s becoming our nation’s second language. I don’t have a problem with that, but I do think all of us should be bi-lingual, because that will foster greater understanding among us. But for the moment, my subject is English.

First I want to address usage, because the meaning of words is becoming twisted. The Times’ language guy was recently complaining about figuratively, and the fact that people are using it to mean literally and actually, which is the exact opposite of what it means. If we don’t share agreement about what words mean, then we can easily misunderstand each other – even before we get around to disagreeing with each other based on common understanding.

Some of my other pet peeves: irregardless, a word that doesn’t exist, but is often used to mean regardless. Simplistic in place of simple. Simple means easy or straightforward or unfettered. Simplistic means stupid, or more precisely, to speak or think of complex things in an inappropriately simple manner. Decadent used as a synonym for luxurious. One could make a working class argument that luxury is decadent, but that still doesn’t give the words the same meaning. Decadent is, more accurately, a side-effect of too much luxury; it means jaded, even depraved, but certainly wallowing in the worst kind of sophistication – another word that’s rarely used to mean what it means (jaded not glamorous).

Infamous [when] used to mean famous, perhaps really very famous, but that’s not what it means. Bad people, bad things that become famous are infamous. Adolf Hitler is infamous. Adolph Green is famous (or at least he used to be…). I once heard someone call someone else superfluous, but she didn’t mean that the person was unnecessary, she meant to say that the person was super! That’s a problem.

The fact that many people today can’t distinguish among there, their and they’re drives me nuts, along with your and you’re, to and too, weather and whether, its and it’s, fewer and less than, as well as more than and over. And don’t forget about using like when you mean as. If you don’t know the difference, look it up; I don’t have the space to go into it here. Because (and, by the way, it is not incorrect to begin a sentence with because, it’s incorrect to begin a paragraph with because) I want to address other pet peeves.

The first is using nouns as verbs, which has appalled me ever since things started impacting other things. I wince when I hear that people are scrapbooking or journaling. Now they’re blogging, tweeting, texting and friending. I’m vomiting. A noun is a person, place or thing. A verb is an action. In essence, what I’m saying addresses one of our core social problems: confusing being with doing. Think about this one, it’s important.

Then there’s the frequency with which people add mis to the beginning of words and ize to the end of words that formerly had neither. I can’t explain why it’s okay to formalize but it isn’t okay to incentivize, and indeed, Strunk & White did not approve of formalize. In any case, English is inconsistent. A foreign-born person once asked me why Kansas and Arkansas are pronounced in their different ways instead of alike. Who knows? All I know is, one can misspeak, misunderstand and misinform, but one cannot misdescribe, which is what Paul Ryan accused Barack Obama of doing in regard to his kill-Medicare budget.

Last but not least – and this is perhaps the most egregious – is the offshoot of English created by…texting. If U thnk its k 2 reduce language to charmless abbreviations, you’re wrong. It’s a bastardization (I’m not sure if that’s a word…) of the language that is creeping (running, actually) into other forms of written communication, and it’s ugly and ignorant and decidedly ill-advised.

Yesterday, I wrote about our being overly concerned with unimportant things, because we can’t cope with the big issues of our time. Perhaps my fixation with proper English is one of those unimportant things. But it isn’t to me. I’m a writer and it bothers me that nobody seems to care about good writing, good use of language, anymore. I think it says bad things about where we are and where we’re going. Take it as you please.

Regarding Bob Dylan, `Round His 70th Birthday

They say that if you can remember the 60s you weren’t really there, but I was there, and while my memories are sketchy, they’re there, and I’m glad I have them. And some of my fondest memories are of Bob Dylan and what he meant to me as I was growing up. I had this poster of Dylan (left) on one of my bedroom walls for ages. I think it came with one of the rock albums, but I’m not sure. I just know that it, like he, was a constant presence, an inspiration, a yardstick, a spokesman for my times for a long, long time. The fact that he’s still with us and still writing and singing is comforting to me. It makes me feel that I haven’t been set loose into the future like a forlorn balloon, even though I have been – we all have been. May 24^th was Dylan’s 70^th birthday. I was never aware of his birthday, but his being 70 now – just 11 years older than I – feels important.

I remember reading an extensive interview with Dylan in Rolling Stone (one of the first of many in that magazine over the years), and the interviewer asked him how it felt to be the Voice of His Generation and he said “I don’t see myself that way.” I guess; it’s hard for any of us to see ourselves as others see us. But Dylan has always had public and critical response to him as an artist and a person to reflect back at him. Yet for as long as I can remember, Bob Dylan has always looked like he didn’t quite understand how he got to wherever he was and that he didn’t want the responsibility of being the Voice of His Generation. I imagine it’s hard to have greatness thrust upon you, even if greatness is what you aspire to. It just wasn’t the kind of greatness he had in mind. So it goes.

From the start, all Bob Dylan wanted was to make music, and rock `n’ roll was his first love. He wanted to be Elvis Presley before Woody Guthrie captured his heart, which took him unexpectedly into the folk revival of the 60s. He wanted to be relevant more than he wanted to be political, but he allowed himself to be embraced by the civil rights/anti-war politics of the time and to reflect that in his music as a “protest” singer/songwriter. He allowed Pete Seeger to take him under his wing. He allowed Joan Baez to share her fame and her social voice with him. He may have been sidetracked, but he wasn’t stupid.

Dylan gave the movement some of its most important anthems, but he was never on the front lines. Oddly enough, he wasn’t really a political animal, he was an artist and a poet. And when he went electric (to the dismay of the folk/political purists), he really didn’t understand why people responded with such rage. The man with so much insight and talent to express, the artist cunning and ruthless enough to be an opportunist, never understood what he meant to people, and never saw any obligation to his audience because of that meaning. That he was so clueless in his prime is what made him human. I think he gets it now and has for some time. What makes him human now is his age.

I sort of tell time by his albums, at least up to a point. I remember being about 12 or 13 and buying his first three albums, Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and Another Side of Bob Dylan and devouring them. I was among the folk purist audience who booed him at the infamous Forest Hills concert when he went electric in the mid-60s, but I came to relish the Highway 61 and Bringing It All Back Home albums. He turned me; I got it. I remember sitting in the back of the B-41 Flatbush Avenue bus clutching the Blonde On Blonde album I'd just bought (I still think it was his greatest) and actually tingling with anticipation until I could get home and play it. I remember the seductiveness of Desire and the boldness of Blood On The Tracks (his important, eloquent middle period), and the lively, interesting Shot of Love and Empire Burlesque. Then for a long time he lost me. I didn’t catch up again until 1989's Oh Mercy (which was the soundtrack for a torrid love affair I had in the early 90s) then he lost me again. The man has released more than 50 albums, not counting numerous bootlegs. In 2009 he put out a Christmas album; you can’t buy everything.

It doesn’t matter that as I got older I didn’t keep up with Dylan’s Born Again period, or his cowboy/Pat Garrett period, or his extended Greatest Hits period. I’d shake my head about his odd ventures into different things, but I respected that he dared to try, and to do it in public, too. Bob Dylan taught me to express myself and take risks at every turn – lessons I haven't always lived up to. But he inspired the poet in me and the socially caring person in me and the dreamer in me. I’m grateful for that.

Now, as an old man, the father of six (including the talented, adorable Jakob) and the grandfather of nine, Dylan represents endurance to me, and a willingness to try new things at any age. In the 90s, he created some very lovely Matisse-esque paintings, and he performed in China for the first time just a few months ago. I pray he outlives me. I would feel untethered without the voice, and conscience, and very human confusion of my generation that is Bob Dylan.