Quotables

Steven Pressfield and Impostor’s Syndrome

By Chris Hall
April 24, 2015
Leave a Comment

I don’t actually know who Steven Pressfield is, but this quote sums up a lot of my deepest fears, and the monologues that go through my head all the time. Frankly, I often have a hard time believing that anyone looks at my writing with anything other than kind indulgence. I do ask myself this question — Constantly. The trick is that although my brain understands the truth of Pressfield’s quote, my gut doesn’t quite buy it.

Steven Pressfield quote: "If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends) 'Am I REALLY a writer? Am I REALLY an artist?' Chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is *wildly* self confident. The real one is scared to death."

“If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends) ‘Am I REALLY a writer? Am I REALLY an artist?’ Chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is *wildly* self confident. The real one is scared to death.” — Steven Pressfield “The War of Art”

-30-

When a Song Becomes a Threat: SAE and “Speech”

By Chris Hall
March 15, 2015
Leave a Comment

Photo by theglobalpanorama

I’m pretty sure that although intent might not be magic, we white people must surely be magic. The proof is in the media response to the SAE lynching chant. Most of it magically turns white racism into something that’s black peoples’ fault. That’s amazing. It can’t be done with rationality or anything else of this world, so it must be magic. For an antidote to all that, here’s a great summary by Ellie Mystal on how the words of the chant go beyond simply being “speech” and turn into a threat when looked at through black history:

Now, I get how a white listener wouldn’t take the threat as a true threat. They weren’t threatening Eugene Volokh. And, I don’t know, maybe when white people are by themselves, they talk like this and they all understand that they don’t actually intend to solicit a lynch mob to go after the black people on campus. Who knows what you say when I’m not around. Maybe white people are just used to chants about hanging people from trees, and intuitively know that the drunk frat boys weren’t serious?

But that’s not really an objective reading of the situation, at least if we dispense with the notion that the white perspective is the only objective one. Objectively, a bus of drunk white people were singing about hanging people. Buses of drunk white people singing about hanging folks is a true threat, because sometimes buses of drunk white people then actually go out and hang people. IT’S HAPPENED BEFORE.

In fact, I’m getting pretty sick of white people telling me how I’m supposed to perceive threats from white people. Of course I perceive the chant as an attempt to solicit a criminal act. How could I not? Don’t most hate crimes committed against African-Americans start with drunk douchebags talking about n***ers?

Feminist Batwoman Explains It All: Quit Calling Things “First World Problems”

By Chris Hall
November 16, 2014
Leave a Comment

Cell phones and makeup aren't exclusive to the US and Europe. Starvation and police brutality aren't just "third-world problems" either.

Cell phones and makeup aren’t just things here in the US. Starvation and police brutality aren’t just “third-world problems” either.

I have always loathed the term “First-World problems” for more reasons than can be expressed properly here. This post by Feminist Batwoman on Tumblr is a thing of beauty that really articulates how it enshrines some really bad misconceptions about what life is like in the so-called “third world.”:

If you’re ever tempted to say “first world problems,” do me a favor, and pull down a map. Tell me EXACTLY where the “third world” is. Make sure you correctly identify Switzerland as part of the third world, and Turkey as part of the First World. Don’t forget that Djibouti is a part of the first world.

Literally sit down and learn what “third world” means and why people from nonwestern nations think it’s a total bullshit term.

Second: you think people in the so-called third world don’t care about shit like makeup, and love, and technology? You think they don’t care about internet harassment? You think women over there don’t care about street harassment? You think they don’t care about fashion and clothes? You think they don’t care about music and video games?

Because THEY DO.

Right now, there is a woman in burundi teaching herself how to do a cut-crease eyeshadow look. Guaranteed.

“Third world” nations have fashion shows and fashion magazines. They care about street harassment. They care about the internet. They play video games. They know more about anime than your sorry ass every will. And the idea of “first world problems,” which makes it sound like all women in “third world” nations are dealing with starvation, rape, war, acid attacks etc.

Is bullshit.

Rank.

Bullshit.

Women in Iran spend shitloads of money on makeup. Women in the DRC don’t just care about rape. Rape – the ONE THING westerners can be expected to know about women in Congo-Kinshasa – ranks NUMBER FOUR on the list of issues women in Congo want addressed. Political participation is number 1. Economic empowerment is number 2. Women in India are passionate about information technology, and you know what they hate? Coming to the United States, where Indian women in STEM are suddenly considered LESS GOOD than their male colleagues. My friends in Senegal taught ME how to download movies off the internet. Zimbabwe has a fashion week. [More. Read the whole fucking thing.]

The terms “first world” and “third world” are confusing, especially since they’ve been functionally obsolete in their original meaning since the end of the Cold War. They evolved as a way to describe the divisions between capitalist and communist countries and their respective allies: The “First World” was the United States and its allied countries; the “Second World” was the USSR, the People’s Republic of China, and the countries aligned with them; the “Third World” was the countries that were aligned with neither. Just as elections are fought over the moderate middle, the Cold War was fought mostly in the Third World, especially when it turned into actual war, instead of the metaphorical kind.

Now, its meaning is rather ambiguous at best, and functionally means little more than “countries that are brown and poor.”

Amanda Marcotte: Our Country Has Value Because The People Have Value

By Chris Hall
November 12, 2014
Leave a Comment

By: James G. Milles

Conservatives got their panties into a bunch because Bruce Springsteen played CCR’s “Fortunate Son,” at a concert for veterans. The song famously mocks leaders and members of the privileged classes who expect other people to fight their wars for them in the name of patriotism. Amanda Marcotte has a better definition of patriotism:

Washington Post gathered up a couple of tweets by people complaining about the song being played at “patriotic” events. Again, it’s interesting how the concept of being a “patriot” is tied up in the idea that we should just want some wars, because yea wars! But I would like to offer another definition of a patriot: Someone who believes that her country has value because the people in it have value. Which means that you defend the right of soldiers to live and argue strenuously against going to war unless it is truly necessary. Which is what Springsteen was doing.

Joe Morton is Evil?!? Does Not Compute

By Chris Hall
November 2, 2014
Leave a Comment

One of the reasons I finally surrendered and started watching Scandal was I heard that Joe Morton had a role on it. Now that we’ve hit season three, I’m having a really hard time thinking of Joe Morton as evil. The man could read the phone book and make it into a major dramatic performance, but in all his roles, there’s always been a fundamental decency to his characters. Even when he seemed like he was kind of a dick, as in Lone Star, there was still the sense that he was trying to do the right thing.

Joe Morton

At the very least, Morton’s characters never seemed like the kind of people who would toss you into a hole for months on end because you refused to torture and kill someone else.

Rowan Pope (Joe Morton): Not the kind of person you want to meet in a dark alley — or even in a brightly-lit, comfortable room with lots of people around.

Scandal is definitely filling my need for extreme, paranoid conspiracy theory. I know a lot of people might look down on it for being unrealistic and sensationalistic, but seriously — once you’ve accepted that the Republican President has an openly gay Chief of Staff who’s married to another man, you’ve pretty much given up any commitment to realism.

Quote of the Day: Sex Workers and Feminist Allies

By Chris Hall
September 17, 2013
Leave a Comment

In yesterday’s post, I made a deliberate point of saying that I wasn’t going to go into detail about specific steps for Feministe and other sites to improve their relationships with sex work communities. As I said, there’s already enough non-sex workers talking about what sex workers need. But I think that reading Olive Seraphim’s “How to Be a Feminist Ally to Sex Workers” would be a good first step for the Feministe staff. The excerpt below seems particularly germane. And like most good things, it doesn’t apply only to sex workers, or feminists.

Acknowledge how feminism actively pushes sex workers out of feminist spaces

A non-sex worker said to me the other day something feminists have been saying to women they’re trying to silence for years; but your analysis isn’t nuanced! (Insert whatever excuse to ignore our perspective you like, as there are many feminists like to use against us and this is but one example). Of course, this is actually code for; I don’t like what you’re saying so I’d rather shut you out of the conversation completely by getting an academic who has no experience with what you’re saying to word things in such a way that you can’t understand them while complicating the issue into a philosophical argument so we don’t need to address the real life shit you have to deal with on a daily basis. Feminism needs to stop being academic to the exclusion of everyone else, especially if you take privilege theory seriously and realize that those with intersecting identities may well have had less access to education than your privileged ass.

Atlas Twitches

By Chris Hall
October 17, 2007
14 Comments

For me, Dorothy Parker summed up everything that needs to be said about Ayn Rand’s tribute to greed, Atlas Shrugged:

“This is not a book that should be set aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

Atlas Shrugged is a fantasy of what Rand thought would happen if the “creative elite” (i.e., privileged industrialists, businessmen, etc.) abandoned the sissified, liberal proles and went off to form their own society in a canyon in Colorado. The media has been making a big deal over the 50th anniversary of its publication, and not without good reason — it’s been very influential in the intellectual development (such as it is) of the conservatives that run the Republican party nowadays. The message of Rand’s Objectivist philosophy is that the ultimate social virtue is selfishness, which weeds out the weak and allows the strong to rise to the top of society. In other words, it’s not just acceptable to fuck over your fellow human being; it’s a moral duty. Rand’s children have given us New Orleans and Iraq, two open petri dishes for the theory of eliminating governmental regulation and infrastructure in favor of the genius of private enterprise.

The Carpetbagger Report has more to say on the topic of Rand and her legacies, and Bob the Angry Flower gives us the sequel to her masterwork.

—————-

Now playing: Blondie – Hanging On The Telephone

Republicans and the New Newspeak

By Chris Hall
August 7, 2006
Leave a Comment

Untitled document

Gore Vidal will be a great loss when he finally dies. He's one of the old-style intellectuals; arrogant as hell maybe, but also insightful and brimming with a moral sense that seems almost quaint nowadays. I would cheerfully rip Dick Cheney's pacemaker right out of his chest if it meant that Vidal got to stay around for just one more day. Actually, it would take significantly less than that to get me to tear Cheney's pacemaker out (like perhaps, a free month of Netflix), but rhetorically, it illustrates my point. James Wolcott, the Interweb's inside man on the intelligensia, got an advance copy of Vidal's latest memoir, and provides the following excerpt, which neatly summarizes not only the success of the Republicans at gaining Orwellian control over the language of modern politics, but why simple decency can be made to seem like such an

A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking than you are, but lately the adjective is often applied to those 'liberals' who prefer to improve the lives of others rather than exploit them. Apparently, a concern for others is self-love at its least attractive, while greed is now a sign of the highest altruism. But then to reverse, periodically, the meanings of words is a very small price to pay for our vast freedom not only to conform but to consume.

And of course, there is the other side of the coin, the perverse dismissal of every good intention as "politically correct," which not only manages to portray humane gestures and ideas as authoritarian demands while also making every possible form of thuggishness and bigotry seem not only acceptable, but noble. The Republicans have truly mastered the language of slavemasters.

To Billy Sunday, by Carl Sandburg

By Chris Hall
April 28, 2005
Leave a Comment

Billy Sunday: Nov. 19, 1863 – Nov. 6, 1935

Billy Sunday was a well-known fundamentalist in the early 1900’s, famed not only for his crusading against liquor (and for Prohibition), but for also becoming as rich as Croesus in the process. His sermons were of the classic “fire and brimstone” variety. Carl Sandburg wrote his own fire and brimstone sermon against Sunday and his firey moralizing. Originally titled “To a Contemporary Bunkshooter” with references to Sunday removed to avoid libel, it was only printed in its original form after both men had passed on. In his way, Sunday is stronger than ever, thanks to the modern-day versions of him who have carried his legacy deep, deep into the halls of power; if there is one overwhelming threat to our freedom today, it is the glee with which the wall between Church and State is being demolished, and how some refuse to acknowledge its validity at all. The portrait Sandburg paints of a conman in preacher’s clothing hasn’t faded one bit in the ninety years since it was written. If anything, now that the charlatans run the place, it’s more important to remember what they are.

[Read more…]

Quotations: Blasts From the Past

By Chris Hall
March 28, 2004
Leave a Comment

A few words of wisdom from those who made this country great:

“You hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, ‘That man is a Red, that man is a communist!’ You never hear a real American talk like that.”
–Mayor Frank Hague, Jersey City, New Jersey, 1938
“I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.”
–John Wayne
“Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.”
–General William Westmoreland