Taking a Break from the Heavy Stuff

only for today, I mean.

Attending meeting frequently lifts my spirits and today's gathering of fellow Friends succeed as it so often does, providing my life some desperately needed perspective. As a largely solitary person, I frequently forget the positive benefits of basic human interaction and the corresponding simple pleasures of a spiritual outlet comprised of fellow worshipers. Though as an introvert, contact with others frequently leaves me drained and exhausted, I nonetheless greatly appreciate and treasure the numerous blessings that the weekly ritual of socialization have to offer.

In great contrast to spiritual worship is the online-based, tightly-knit network of like minded individuals that I call my blogging friends. This morning, during the first hour for worship, I couldn't help but mull over the massive difference between the dual roles those two dynamics play in my life. They are polar opposites to each other, appealing to completely different parts of my personality and sides of who I am Two years spent perusing the blogosphere and making connections with others who daily put their thoughts and reflections out online for public display has given me a sense of perspective I didn't have before; I've come to a few pertinent conclusions about us: who we are, what makes us up, how we think, and what we espouse. To wit, many bloggers, I find, are loners, malcontents, eccentrics, and feel chronically misunderstood and underappreciated. We are certainly of like mind, but often too alike for our own good. Too much commonality is both a blessing and a curse. The sum total of unhappy people is a communal black hole full of frustration, anguish, depression, righteous indignation, and woe.

I read anywhere from forty to sixty blogs a day and in the two hours or so it takes me to plow through all of them, seldom do I find myself with my spirits uplifted afterward. What is more likely to result is elevated blood pressure and crushing despair, a direct result of being exposed to an exhaustive number of harangues on a theme, all railing against that which is wrong, that which is unjust and unfair, and that which is unlikely to change for the better any time soon. A certain amount of this is instructive and necessary, but in excessive quantity the resulting stress and pressure remove the fun of life and blogging. Though a part of me likes to play the part of the activist and feels obliged to decry the wrongs of the universe in an effort to set them right, I've come to understand this morning that I've crossed the threshold from purpose to pain. Blogging is, after all, supposed to be fun and instead it's been transformed to a guaranteed non-stop bummer trip.

This post is partially prompted by a friend who, seeing me with a smile on my face, while I was chuckling at some private joke over dinner Friday night, said quite pointedly--I can't remember the last time I saw you smile. As I paused to reflect upon what he said, I had to admit that it had certainly been many months since I'd found much humor in anything except for the dark variety. Lately I've found myself in a groove of gallows humor or snarky satire, the kind which is only amusing at all because its very premise is so bleak, grim, and above all, deadly serious. Today was the first time I laughed at something charmingly amusing and innocently humorous, the way humor should be, and not a derivative of sarcasm or mean-spirited banter masquerading as amusement. Laughing is something I think we all might consider doing more of more often. If life is always unpleasant--little more than an ordeal, then what's the point of living?

Saturday Video

Mazzy Star were perhaps the best known and most successful adherents of the early 90's dream pop movement. Incorporating elements of psychedelic folk, blues rock, and country, the group road the coattails of the alternative rock revolution into minor chart success. This song "Fade Into You" barely missed the Top 40 and picked up substantial MTV airplay, back when a single in heavy MTV rotation was a powerful force in determining eventual mainstream success. From the vantage point of fifteen years hence, this song has dated slightly and is very much of its time, but it remains a minor gem of the era.

Singer Hope Sandoval's lazy, echo-drenched vocals and guitarist David Roback's skillful, soaring slide guitar were perfectly matched for each other. "Fade Into You" may be best known due to the fact that it was included in the soundtrack of countless teen dramas and sitcoms. Perhaps it's understandable then that the track found itself incorporated into more than a few proms, slow dances, and adolescent romances.

*A commenter notes that the music sounds decidedly, in her words, "hypnotic." I completely agree.

Oh, It Looks So Good

Because it's made out of wood.

At The American Street.

Remember: No One Understands You

Listen -- I'm no role model. I don't give advice. But over the last couple of years I've received a lot of letters, all with the same questions: Kevin, how do you get started as a blogger?

And what advice do you have for someone trying to break in?

OK, here it goes...

First of all, I guess if you're in school, make jokes. Don't worry about it if your teachers like it or not. The only teacher you should listen to anyway is your English teacher. But not too much, because, remember --

NO ONE UNDERSTANDS YOU.

Education is not your friend. Neither is sleep; you won't need it where you're going. Instead of studying, try listening to tragically loud music daily. And be strict with yourself -- you gotta do it everyday!

You know, now that I think about it, I think it's very important to let liquor be the wind beneath your wings. Yeah, I guess I'd have to advise drinking a lot with guys like Calvin Renny and Terry Rockio and pissing out the back of a fast-moving truck.

Oh, and if a policeman goes by, try doing this under your breath: "Pig pig oink oink bacon sandwich at 2:00".

Now, get a lot of experience coming home drunk. Stand up to your dad; he may tower over you now, but as he begins to shrink, you pick your day.

It's very important that you begin to juggle lovers. Remember:

NO ONE UNDERSTANDS YOU.

I think it would be helpful to get a lot of dead-end jobs in warehouses with linear thinking racist pigs who will teach you only one thing: how to steal.

Did I mention piss out the back of a fast-moving truck? Oh, I did -- OK -- Then move to the biggest city you can find, get the smallest apartment you can find, keep your underwear in a bowl in the fridge, never answer your phone, never remember your family's birthdays, never make it home for Christmas, think a lot about vampires, death and sex with your friends' mothers.....or fathers -- you figure it out, I did.

Wear a crash helmet around just in case, watch your friends get married and grow beards to cover their puffy, compromising faces...then become a major force in the blogsophere.

I guess I'd have to say that that's my only advice.

Oh, It Looks So Good

      Now, if she ever comes now-now
     if she ever comes now-now
     if she ever comes now

     Now, if she ever comes now-now
     if she ever comes now-now
     if she ever comes now-now

     Oh, it looks so good
     oh, she's made out of wood
     Just look and see

     Now, if she ever comes now-now
     if she ever comes now-now
     if she ever comes now

     Now, if she ever comes now-now
     if she ever comes now-now
     if she ever comes now

     Oh, it looks so good
     oh, she's made out of wood
     Just look and see

Handicapping The Debates

Alright friends, you have seen the heavy groups. Now you will hear morning maniac music. Believe me.

It's a new dawn.

-Grace Slick at Woodstock
________________________________________

The Democrats have spoken. The Republicans have spoken. From now on out, expect a daily dose of attack-style politics and increasingly personal attacks. Nothing will be off limits, except of course, families. (And maybe not even then) When the total impact of the RNC shows up in polls at the first of next week, Obama's bounce will subside and I predict the race will again be effectively tied for quite a while.

Three weeks from today, the first Presidential debate will be held at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi. I fully expect the race to be firmly deadlocked at the moment both speakers take their places behind the podium. For two candidates who have never been confused as experts at the discipline of verbal jousting, I recommend both begin honing their skills now. Cliches are in no short supply during any campaign and from the first debate forward, the phrase "acting Presidential" will find its way into everyone's summary and analysis of the proceedings. It will certainly be fascinating to observe who comes across sounding, acting, and behaving best in that regard.

This year, Democrats are negotiating from a position of strength due to the unpopularity of George W. Bush and the resulting deeply tarnished Republican brand. Obama's performance in the over twenty debates held during the Primary campaign reveal him to be a solid, steady, but altogether unremarkable debater. He did, however, improve greatly from contest to contest, and, if practice truly makes perfect, the exhaustive, lengthy run up to the general have given the Illinois senator a substantial advantage over McCain. Most of the fireworks on the Republican side did not involve the now official GOP nominee. Though there were a few prickly moments between the Arizona senator and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the Republican debates were relatively subdued and unremarkable.

If prior behavior dictates future conduct, McCain's responses will likely be the most heavily scripted, down to the attacks on his opponent. The cerebral Obama, by contrast, has rarely resorted to one-liners or blistering attacks in debate settings, instead intent on framing the context and resulting direction of the proceedings, this forcing others to fashion their responses within those specific parameters. Obama's strategy is wisely designed to make his opponent fight on his terms and on his territory. McCain's famous temper has been kept largely in check but in an extemporaneous format such as this, one wonders if we'll see any perceptible flashes of it. Obama's ability to shake off barbs and callous comments will likely be to his advantage again, though he has not been immune to firing back in exasperation when his patience finally reaches its end.

The 1980 election between Reagan and Carter was, statistically speaking, dead even by the time the debates. That's another analogy soon to see massive usage if this year's Presidential Election is as down to the wire as I suspect it will be. Reagan's command performance at those functions turned a close race into a complete landslide. The difference, however, between twenty-eight years ago and today is that the incumbent Democrat Carter was deeply unpopular, but voters were hesitant to exchange a known quantity for the risk involved in electing Reagan. Once assured that the standard-bearer of an opposing party could be trusted with the office of President, voters abandoned Carter wholesale. All Americans were looking for was an opportunity to feel comfortable ditching the current Chief Executive and starting a new course.

A strong performance in the debates would go far to shore up support and neutralize the nagging doubts in the minds of many voters about whether Senator Obama is up to the task. Whomever is elected certainly will have his work cut out for him. As I conclude, I am reminded of the words spoken by outgoing President James Buchanan when he passed over the reigns of command to incoming President Abraham Lincoln. "If you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning [home], you are a happy man."

A Blast from the Past

After all the speculation, spin, and pontification this is kind of how I feel about Sarah Palin.

Your Face When Sleeping Is So Blind

Book Review: Team of Rivals

There is a myth prevalent nowadays that this epoch of partisan gridlock, interpersonal rivalry, and venomous criticism is a phenomenon peculiarly unique to this age and this age alone. It is fashionable these days to critique our times as more polarized, more intense, more nasty than at any other point before in our nation's history. History is, as we know, written by the victors, and time has a way of smoothing out the more unpleasant details of an era. As strife and turmoil gives way to placidity, so too are the unpleasant realities of difficult days obscured by a broad brush of accolades and triumphs. Any but the most obscene vestiges of internecine strife or popular upheaval often find themselves unreported in the final tally. To wit, anyone who thinks these hyper-partisan times are the worst ever in almost 300 years of the existence of the United States would be wise to consider a close examination of the way things were during the Lincoln Administration.

That a person routinely considered one of the most effective, most competent Chief Executives of all time could have withstood withering attacks from all directions, even among his most trusted advisers, escaping with his sanity firmly intact is a marvel unto itself. Then, as now, the President faced a variety of difficult challenges and was required on a constant basis to make a wide variety of snap judgments and often painful decisions. Then, as now, the President endured an almost constant barrage of criticism from the presses and bully pulpits of several influential newspapers. If you think the media bias in this day is excessive, you would be wise to consult how things were in the decade of the 1860's, nearly two hundred years ago.

Reading Team of Rivals provides an excellent opportunity to contemplate just how little has changed between then and now. Pressure on the President on all sides from a frequently hostile Congress? Check. Petty rivalry among cabinet members? Check. Embarrassing and unflattering details about the inner workings of the government leaked to the press for political reasons? Check. Rude, unflattering comments made to tarnish the reputation of the First Lady? Check. A high level official tendering his resignation, only to later withdraw it under heavy Presidential pressure? Check. Crucial decisions second-guessed by every press in existence and then promptly analyzed exhaustively for weeks afterward? Check.

I'm sure you get the picture by this point. It's a wonder that Lincoln was able to govern as effectively as he did when one takes into account the tremendous pressure and nearly constant drama which raged unabated in his own inner circle. Lincoln's saving grace was his ability to be slow to anger, quick to forgive, and loathe to hold a grudge. Honest Abe's nearly infinite patience and his skill at pulling together people of different political stripes and allegiances--many of whom hated each other passionately--showed an ingenious knack at mastering the minutia of human nature and interpersonal conduct. Lincoln had an innate talent as a master politician and benevolent peacemaker which, though it was the saving grace of a nation in the midst of a great Civil War, runs contrary to the innate temperament of who we are. Though we often take pride in our tempers and our fevered passions---though we lash out and fight back and speak fondly of uncompromising, bombastic, at times fiercely confrontation public figures, Lincoln knew instinctively that this kind of behavior and emotional display was as isolating and divisive as it was cathartic. This instinctive skill is how Lincoln secured the nomination of his party in the first place and then maintained his grip on power so successfully.


____________________________
Author's Note:

I know this much. I don't have the Lincoln-esque power of restraint, nor am I inclined to be magnanimous in the face of a slight or a defeat. The politicians I admire most are are occasionally caustic, frequently combative brawlers. This is how I was raised to be. In my family if you didn't hold strong opinions you'd find yourself unable to have a voice in the debates. My childhood was a prize fight and I had no desire to be counted out.

The Year of the Woman

Having consulted a variety of polls (and yes, I recognize that polls are often hardly authoritative sources) it appears that Obama's post-convention bounce has continued largely undiminished until today. The most interesting aspect of the race I've found, numerically speaking, is the observation that both the Senator from Illinois and the Senator from Arizona actually lost ground after they announced their picks for Vice-President. While Obama's reverse bounce was widely attributed to his refusal to put Hillary Clinton on the ticket. McCain's reverse bounce may well be a mild backlash against his choice of a total dark horse for the second on the ticket, scorning a more conventional pick.

While the media is doing an excellent job of revealing flaw after flaw and scandal after scandal with Sarah Palin, I pause to reflect for a moment about another statistic that jumps out at me this morning. To wit, over 80% of those surveyed believe that this country will see a woman as President within the next decade. I wouldn't disagree with that. Whether it will be a matter of course or a conscious pick on behalf of one party or the other remains to be seen. Hillary Clinton may or may not have put eighteen million cracks in the glass ceiling, but she has certainly established precedent.

Arguably, Geraldine Ferraro's poor performance as Walter Mondale's Vice-President in 1984 set the cause of electing a woman to high office back many years. Hillary Clinton's strong showing in the primaries has done much towards convincing skeptical party leaders that putting a woman at the head of the ticket is a strategy that can succeed. I fully believe that neither sexism nor gender bias were the primary factors for why it took twenty-four years to see both parties willing to place women in high positions of authority. The desire to secure power and attain control is far more potent a force than discrimination. Either party would eagerly run a zebra for President if it was thought that doing so would produce a resounding victory. The most interesting facet of this whole election year, in my opinion, is that Hillary Clinton's reemergence as a scrappy underdog did more to make the case for a woman to be President than had she ascended to the nomination without more than a token resistance. Her failure in the short-term will lead to a net gain in the long term for women in power. Paradoxically, her loss will likely pave the way for future female leaders in ways a victory never would. And in the end, assuming Obama fails to be elected, her close finish puts Hillary Clinton in a far stronger position to run again.

In contrast, it's easy to be cynical about the GOP's selection of Palin. It's quite a bit of an affront to those who have long advocated for women's rights, if one acknowledges that the Republican party likely would have never selected Palin if they had not felt they could win by any other measure. Gender as bargaining chip plays far worse on a national stage than gender as social statement. Thankfully, the American people are not fooled by this kind of empty political posturing. Seventy-five percent of those surveyed in a recent poll understand the self-serving motivation that drove the Palin nomination.

In a less contentious, saturated election cycle, 2008 might be qualified as the year of the woman. Instead, this shining accomplishment has been obscured by more pressing matters, or at least conflicts and fault-lines that attraction attention for more efficiently. A multitude of so many different issues is at stake this go-round that each fights for center stage and open acknowledgment in a public forum. Nevertheless, let's pause to reflect upon that what has been accomplished. For the first time ever, this country has come to terms with many of its ingrained prejudices--so many, in fact, that I can certainly understand those have grown weary and exhausted with the intensity of electioneering. Though the process has been at times harrowing, this kind of mass introspection is the only manner by which reforms will not only succeed, but remain. Ignoring for a moment the potent reforms still in need of cultivation, we might at all do well to reflect that we have made progress, much progress, towards advancing the cause of social evolution. Change is an agonizingly slow process that is best observed from a vantage point of years, not days, months, or hours. When a woman runs again for the top job in the land, whenever that shall be, we'll all take stock of our prior successes and our failures and evaluate both where we've been and where we need to go.

I Watched It for a Little While

Satellite's gone
up to the skies
Things like that drive me
out of my mind

I watched it for a little while
I like to watch things on TV

Satellite of love
satellite of love
Satellite of love
satellite of

Satellite's gone
way up to Mars
Soon it will be filled
with parking cars

I watched it for a little while
I love to watch things on TV

Satellite of love
satellite of love
Satellite of love
satellite of

I've been told that you've been bold
with Harry, Mark and John
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
with Harry, Mark and John

Satellite's gone
up to the skies
Things like that drive me
out of my mind

I watched it for a little while
I love to watch things on TV

Satellite of love
satellite of love
Satellite of love
Satellite of love

Movie Review: Sunrise

Sunrise strikes an impressive claim to the best silent film of all time. Today's audience, which likely has never seen more than a handful of non-sound pictures, has a tendency to assume that all films of the silent era are impressively rendered and of high quality. Viewing a rather pedestrian silent next to this one will reveal, by contrast, exactly how groundbreaking and evocative a silent with high artistic quality is to most of its contemporaries. Cinematography alone shows Sunrise to be a masterpiece, showing what films were capable of revealing visually. Much cinema of the twenties could be a tremendously dull affair, utilizing the same basic camera angles, shot composition, facial closeups, and plot devices.

The relative ease of technology in this day and age has given rise to the age of the amateur, for better or for worse. In film's infancy, what required a massive amount of skill and a nearly Herculean undertaking on the part of the crew can be accomplished with a flick of a switch. The extremely primitive quality of movie-making in those days makes these revolutions in the craft ever more remarkable.

The best silents are, quite often, the ones which work within the confines of the medium, rather than trying to fight against its limitations. While some films of the period used strict narrative structure, particularly the historical fiction of D.W. Griffith, the most evocative films of the silent era are often its more expressionist works like Sunrise. Silent films could never hope to present a completely realistic view of life--that was a goal that could only be accomplished by the incorporation of sound. Instead of producing an exact facsimile of reality, the best films of the period gave birth to a profound dream-logic and corresponding visual beauty. Seeking to capture the ultimate fidelity of human interaction was a Holy Grail of sorts for the pioneers of the medium, a goal that many directors sought, but few succeeded in realizing. Filmmakers who instead set their sights towards creating poetry on celluloid like Murnau, often found themselves more successful in their efforts.

To be sure, the experience of watching a silent film certainly requires a kind of discipline totally foreign to today's audience. Without dialogue to advance a scene, plot and character development often comes across as maddeningly simplistic. Directors who attempted to pack too much into one movie found it frequently necessary to use an exhaustive number of intertitles. Even with a judicious use of them, films that overstripped the technical limitations of the medium still had a tendency to confuse and frustrate viewers with information overload. Films like Sunrise use only a skeletal framework of characters and action, placing most of the focus on what would today be called special effects. Then as opposed to now, these effects were never used gratuitously and never simply for the sake of creating a spectacle. They are integral to the film itself and even eighty years after the first release still radidate freshness and achievement.

By the end of the twenties, film technique and film grammar, a thirty-year process of slow, steady achievement, had finally been mastered. Ironically, just as the silent screen produced its masterworks, talkies appeared abruptly on the scene, changing every rule of the game. Sound technology in its infancy restricted camera movement and demanded clunky microphones and soundproof booths to effectively capture audio. Many of the breakthroughs that came to be in the year or so before talkies had to be scrapped for quite some time because they were utterly unworkable with sound. What is undeniably true is that the films of the pre-sound era reveal a world unto themselves, one utterly, beatifully alien to anything that came after.

Pictures

She showed me pictures. Most of them focused on the golden years before she'd engaged in twelve years of wedded misery. Since I am heavily self-conscious, camera shy, and not terribly photogenic, photos of me are rare. She, on the other hand, was a camera hog. A biographer will find his or her task considerably lessened when it comes time to compile the details of a life, if there is ample evidence of it. Visual representation of where she was and how she lived is certainly overflowing.

Preferring to have her life obsessively documented, her favorite past-time involved showing visitors the visual record of her riotous youth. I pictured her in the sorority house, some idle Sunday, putting together scrap books full of the physical representations of parties. If I had a dollar for every picture I saw her in some state of intoxication, hefting a beer, smiling a contented smile, I'd be beyond wealthy. Maybe I just don't understand those who would want to be Greeks. Maybe I never will. Though I went to a university where fraternities and sororities were such a non-factor that they only mattered to those who wished to join their ranks, I was still critical of their very existence.

I suppose I was raised differently. Both of my parents spoke fondly about college, but for neither of them were those times their repose. They were reasonably pleasant times for them but still rather transitory. By contrast, it was plain to see that her life had plateaued, whether willfully or as a matter of course around age twenty-one. This might explain her taste for men substantially younger than she was. She sought lovers at the exact age she wished she'd stayed. Many women yearn for the looks and the metabolism of their younger days, but few seek to negate the passing of time as judiciously as she.

Few people knew her exact age. It was somewhere in the early forties but if directly questioned, she rudely brushed off the question. I'm not going to tell you that, she'd say, annoyed. Women like that leave themselves open for for criticism, in my opinion. In my own life, I associate my youth with confusion, loss, and frustration. Though I do not wish to be ancient, the passage of years have been kind, kind in a way my youth never was. I have a hard time understanding those who romanticize youth, since to me it was neither especially joyful nor particularly rewarding.

I read Crime and Punishment recently. Dostoevsky's strongest assertion in that work is that only through suffering can an individual move towards self-actualization. I would like to believe that myself and indeed, if I look for it in my own life, I can find similar examples. Though I validate it in my own personal philosophy, I realize also it's a conclusion drawn from many of those whose life has been full of loss, grief, and upheaval. In my background research of the author, I surveyed several photographs of Dostoevsky. None of these radiates an air of contentment, joy, or celebration. In that era, one had to hold pose for several minutes so as not to ruin the glass plates upon which the image was rendered, so smiles are rare. I've only seen one photograph in that epoch of a smiling person, and the facial expression appears well-suited for her. She must have smiled often. Those for whom joviality in life was rare, however, are revealed with great expressive detail as the melancholics they were.

In picture after picture, she smiles with a kind of genuine warmth. With time, however, and the grind of a bad marriage, the smile is rendered more and more forced. She stayed for the same reason she smiled, refusing to acknowledge her mistake. As happens sometimes, an increasingly frosty relationship with him produced a fruitful windfall in cash. He may have been a poor companion, but he was a good provider--such a good provider, in fact, that she tasted the fruits of great wealth. I suppose I am different. I would sooner settle for genuine love and genuine poverty than a marriage for which affection had long ago left, leaving only the consolation prize of affluence. Twelve years of misery. Twelve years of sleeping with the enemy. Twelve years which could have been twenty or thirty had not the life of her child been threatened.

Get Over It?

In response to Brian Alexander's coverage of the Palin daughter's pregnancy, I have a few thoughts to share. While I can understand the author's exasperation at how much of a story this has become, I have to disagree with his conclusion.

I will concede him this much--the scandal reveals how much we are stuck in a state of arrested development when it comes to sex. The doctored images I've seen on so many blogs that reduce Palin to either a beauty pageant princess or a vacuous celebrity aren't nearly as amusing to me as they must be to some. They're juvenile and pander to directly the lowest common denominator and our worst impulses. Our unwillingness to be honest with the role sexuality plays in our daily lives is responsible for the kind of coy games we play with each other when it becomes an issue with a public figure.

However, thanks to the judicious work of the New York Post, we have learned that the father of the child apparently has a MySpace page. It doesn't reveal the baby daddy to be a particularly stellar character. Never before in the history of Western Civilization has there ever been such an effective way of reminding the world of the kind of asininity only a teenager can espouse. The king of culture or profundity he is NOT. He's a real catch. *sigh*

The real lesson to be learned from this is that birth control is the only effective way of managing teen pregnancy. My father and I are opposite in many respects, particularly in political allegiance, but he differs from conservative ideology in his unceasing support for birth control. When I was a child, he spent two years on the local Board of Directors for Planned Parenthood. This speaks volumes to me.

Look At You All

A Brief Rant about Southern Literature

H.L. Mencken characterized the entire Southern United States as "the sahara of the bozart", particularly upending the region for its lack of creativity or artistic accomplishment. That harsh critique created a firestorm of controversy in the region, arguably inspiring a period of fecundity that made Southern literature very much in vogue. William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor, Katherine Ann Porter, and Margaret Mitchell began a long tradition that mined the same themes over and over again. Shunning the rapidly industrializing urban cities, these authors focused on the agrarian past and the rural concerns of small towns.

The South of my birth and my residence was absolutely nothing like the hackneyed stereotype that so many people want to pass off as authentic. I grew weary of front porches, incestuous families, farms, overwrought dialect, and all the trappings. While those of a certain generation--the generation of my parents and grandparents, particularly--love this genre, it has long since become a stock cliche. A new generation, my own, finds nothing particularly spectacular or compelling about the old ways. As a matter of fact, I deliberately avoid most southern literature for the reasons I've spelled out in some detail earlier in this piece.

The south I know isn't all that much different from most other regions in the country. The middle class suburb in which I grew up could be easily located in just about any state in the union. Mass communication, starting with the television, has been a great leveling force. Accents are less pronounced, clothing styles are more uniform, and regional peculiarities are increasingly few in number. Some lament that this region is losing more and more of its authentic flavor, but this is a phenomenon that's hardly the domain of the south. With mass production we eat the same foods, watch the same programs, frequent the same shops, and obsess about the same things.

If Southern Literature wants to stay current, it needs to adapt to these times. Yet, in the twenty-first century, region is becoming less and less important to the dialogue. Each part of the country will always retain some of its own unique flair, but the capitalism of this modern era, individuality is being replaced by consumerist conformity, for better and for worse. If progress is a million identical Target shopping centers, one wonders what that impact will be upon popular culture, art, and all creative pursuits.

On The Way

to the American Street.

Saturday Video

Garbage was comprised of three music producers and a young Scottish singer named Shirley Manson. Landing squarely in the middle of the 90's alternative music heyday, they managed to put a pop sheen on the harsher, more abrasive elements popular during the decade. Members like Butch Vig had been instrumental in shaping the sound of classic grunge-era albums like Nirvana's Nevermind and The Smashing Pumpkin's Siamese Dream.

It also didn't hurt that Manson was a redheaded beauty, capable of delivering lyrics with a sexually charged seductiveness.

"Queer" was the first single off of their self-titled album Garbage. Its modest success paved the way for the breakthrough singles "Only Happy When It Rain", and the biggest hit of them all, "Stupid Girl."

A Calculated Risk for McCain

In being willing to sacrifice his strongest argument, experience, McCain has taken a gamble selecting his Vice-Presidential choice. Attempting to reach out to disaffected Hillary Clinton Democrats by putting a woman alongside him on the ticket, such a strategy might have worked if McCain had picked an ideological moderate. Instead, he picked a solid conservative. It's a curious selection because few Clinton supporters will be swayed by the presence of a woman who is conspicuously pro-life. The entire McCain/Palin ticket will be officially against abortion rights and rooted solidly in the tradition of fiscal conservatism.

As politics is the eternal chess game, it is interesting to see the Republican party of McCain change its focus from the traditional solid Southern conservatism to the more libertarian West. A large reason why GOP voters in this state have never fully embraced McCain is that he's not a favorite son and not brought favors to the region in the way George W. Bush did. Voters here in Alabama will likely still provide McCain with a comfortable margin of victory, though it's telling that the party no longer caters to this region of the country. Enough neglect by the Republican party and South might be a vulnerable region for Democratic gains, but not this election. An energized Democratic party will shrink the Republican margin of victory but that will be about all.

Picking a female candidate for office doesn't quite have the same appeal for Republicans as it would for Democrats. While it is certain that this year's Republican Convention will give perfunctory acknowledgment of their party's first time to put a woman within striking distance of the Presidency, large sections of the GOP base are still uncomfortable at the thought of a woman in position to secure the highest office of the land. Evangelical conservatives, many of which would not approve of a woman as their minister, will certainly not wish to see a woman as their President. Palin's self-proclaimed title as feminist, even a conservative feminist, will further isolate large sections of the base. As I've said before, this is a gutsy choice, a bold choice, but also a choice that attempts to nudge the Republican party in a direction which may offend many party stalwarts.

We shall see.

For Barack Obama. Il Miglior Fabbro