David Foster Wallace’s 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College is my favorite piece of oration. In college I printed it out once or twice, even going so far as to tape it above my desk; but then I moved rooms and, really, who can keep track of a piece of paper? So now every time I want to re-read the speech (every couple months, on average) I find my way back to the same transcription page at marginalia.org. Spare and static, unfussy and largely unedited, that page is one of the few corners of the Web that has come to feel like home.
In 2006, when I was tasked with writing a commencement speech of my own, I tried to read widely in the genre, but kept coming back to DFW. I reread his speech so much that I’m afraid what I came up with was a pretty direct rip-off, albeit more jokey and less smart. DFW’s is not the best-written university speech in history (Emerson’s might be). It is not the funniest (Conan’s might be), nor the most poignant/inspirational (I’m sure there are any number of paraplegic mountain climbers vying for that distinction). DFW’s speech starts not with a bang but with a whimper and, frankly, it doesn’t really get going until the middle. Still, DFW accomplishes in that speech what he so often struggled to do in his longer works: he says one true thing, simply and fully, and then gets the hell off the stage.
https://www.nyc.gov/html/ccrb/html/complaint.html
Waiting for a Coney Island-bound Q train at 12:15 on a Saturday Sunday is no one’s idea of a good time. (If you were to stage Beckett in Brooklyn, you could do worse than DeKalb station for a set.) Luckily, last night a pair of couples pierced the midnight melancholy. They were on a rollicking Valentine’s double-date and were not ready for the fun to end.
The taller man — debonair, pointy shoes, old enough that he would have been embarrassed if not for the alcohol — was being prodded, by the other three, to dance. “No music!” was his excuse. The shorter man brandished a cellphone, and “Hips Don’t Lie” chattered from the mouthpiece. The tall man’s bluff had been called. He had to dance. Imagine your father, slightly buzzed, performing an enthusiastic and terrible Shakira impression. That’s how entertaining it was.
Suddenly, though, the man was stopped by the police. Not the tall man, but the shorter one. “Dancing is legal,” Officer Dadura (shield number 4784) explained. “Playing music such that it is audible to other people, however, is illegal.”
I don’t usually do this, but I intervened, since I was the only person to whom the cellphone music was “audible.”
“I didn’t mind,” I said. “I kind of liked it.” This had no effect, of course. The short man was in store for a $50 ticket. But that was not all.
“Do you have any identification, sir?”
He did not.
“No driver’s license, nothing witchyur picture on it? No passport? If you can’t produce anything, sir, I’m afraid I’m going to have to arrest you.”
Did I mention that the men were Latino?
Now, I’m not going to get started on a rant about racial profiling and immigration paranoia and “quality of life” policing and fascism; I won’t even elaborate on how unfortunate it is that in this, the Age of Obama, the NYPD is still stuck in its regressive, Giuliani-era mentality. The point I want to make, for now, is much simpler: the cellphone guy didn’t do anything wrong. He certainly brightened my night. I do not doubt that Officer Dadura is correct, that New York City has a law against playing audible music in the subway. Every city has its share of dumb and/or oppressive laws. Laws are human constructions. They are no more or less stupid than the legislators who make them up. “Illegal,” therefore, is hardly the same as “bad” or “wrong” or even “inconsiderate.”
We have pursued such ridiculous crime policies for so long that we no longer expect our laws to be reasonable. In theory, though, shouldn’t they be? I am not going to argue that commonsense utilitarianism will solve all our problems. But before we bother someone and cart him off to jail (which didn’t happen in this case, thankfully), shouldn’t we at least consider whether he did anything wrong — anything, that is, other than break some law?
The more salient point is even simpler: if the NYPD is trying to stop looking racist — and if they aren’t, they should — then Officer Dadura is doing them a disservice. Maybe he had a quota to fill, or maybe he is just a huge dick, but his actions certainly looked like ethnic profiling to me. You can file a complaint against him here.
Much, much more can be/has been said about this. Several books, and at least one mediocre undergraduate thesis (mine), have argued that how a society chooses to define and respond to crime says more about the society than about the pursuit of Justice. In other words: the function of laws and cops and prisons — at least, sociologically speaking — is not to improve our lives and keep us safe. If you think it is, you have been watching [too much] TV. Sociologically speaking, says Durkheim, the primary function of “law and order” is to define deviance, and, in the process, to define normality — who We, as opposed to They, are.
French theory aside, something has got to give. The financial crisis could be a great excuse to make reforms that are long overdue. Lucky for us, Giuliani did not win the election. Let’s hope that Obama has the courage to try to overhaul the system.
Arkansas is about to allow guns in churches.
The bill’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Beverly Pyle, said she introduced the measure after a series of church shootings across the country. She said it would be up to each individual church whether to allow the concealed guns….
Pyle had an unexpected ally in liberal Democratic Rep. Lindsley Smith, who said she supported the bill because it was an issue of separation of church and state. Smith urged lawmakers to pass the bill because churches shouldn’t be treated differently from other private entities under state law, she said.
Apparently some pastors dissented, claiming that guns don’t make people safe. Goddamn hippies.
http://www.pixcetera.com/pixcetera/young-americans-reflect-on-obama/45763
How does it feel to be a patriot for the first time? A few young New Yorkers tell all. (Disclaimer: I’m linking to this because I’m one of them.)
1. OMG, Michelle Malkin is left-handed??
2. I love how she pronounces “Nas” as if it rhymes with “pizazz.” Maybe it’s because she has never met a black person except for Shelby Steele.
3. Obama has ushered in a “quote unquote post-racial era”? Who is she quote-unquoting? NO ONE THINKS THAT. Excuse me — no one thinks that and is not an idiot.
OK, so this is Fox bullshit-as-usual, but here’s what’s cool about it: these people just sound silly and irrelevant now. During the Bush era, they were laughable but also a little scary, because fear-mongering was the dominant currency back then. Now it’s hope-time, and these fools just look dated. Reminds me of that moment in Obama’s inspiring first interview as President, when he puts on that smooth, cocky smile and observes that Al Qaeda is denouncing him because “They look nervous…What this tells me is that their ideas are bankrupt.” Substitute “Michelle Malkin” for Al Qaeda (something I do often) and the point still holds. “I’m not looking at you dudes, I’m looking past you.”
I used to be on the fence about whether to buy a My President Is Black t-shirt, but now I’m all in.
Oh, PS, the “D.C.-mix” is even better than the original.
We have long known that Obama was a pragmatist in the lay sense–a practical politician, someone interested in getting the job done. Cass Sunstein classed up this line of thought when he dubbed Obama a visionary minimalist.
But last Tuesday’s measured, moving inauguration speech made me wonder whether Obama isn’t also a pragmatist in the more technical sense: a proponent of the American philosophical tradition pioneered by C.S. Peirce and Williams James. I think he is; and I think this might be precisely what is making some pundits angry.
Obama has had more hope and anxiety heaped on his shoulders than perhaps any person in history; so it was only fitting that hordes of pundits looked forward to the inaugural address with zealous anticipation. One found, in those inaugural preview articles, the phrase “soaring rhetoric” repeated endlessly. Well, the soar-seekers were bound to be disappointed, and disappointed they were.
As Obama would say, their memories are short. Soaring rhetoric is to inaugural addresses as long, dark hallways are to horror movies. Soaring rhetoric can be stirring or turgid, meritorious or meretricious, but in and of itself it is no achievement. The longest, purplest inaugural speeches in history are also some of the worst. Obama’s address was not only appropriately austere; it was also well-crafted, if understated, writing.
Every inaugural address says more or less the same thing, so the differences between them are bound to be subtle. No new president praises corruption and partisan bickering; each one vows to bring the country together, to move forward. The only question is, “How, Mr. President, do you propose to do this?” This where Obama’s pragmatism comes in.
Those who would paraphrase the thrust of pragmatism in four words often proffer these four: “truth is what works.” Now, no century of discourse is reducible to a phrase; but as reductions go, it’s not bad.
For our purposes, though, I’m less interested in how pragmatists define “truth” or “knowledge,” and more interested in the methods pragmatists use. In short, rather than adding more evidence to their side of the debate, pragmatists (at least modern ones) seek to change the terms of the debate altogether. This is just what Obama has begun doing, starting with the first speech of his administration. Where other politicians have fought back against their opponents, Obama simply replaces the old agenda with his own. This is what the famous postmodern pragmatist Richard Rorty called “changing the vocabulary.” Or, as the even more famous pragmatist Jay-Z put it, “I’m not looking at you dudes, I’m looking past you.”
OK, I know I’m a few hundred news cycles late on this, but there are still a few things I want to say about the inauguration. For one, I don’t understand why Elizabeth Alexander’s poem is being maligned. I really don’t. OK, some of her metaphors were trite: I’ll give her critics that. And she read it like a confused robot. But if you read the poem and consider it on its own, how it combines the prosaic with the prophetic, I think it makes a pretty powerful impression. It’s certainly the best inaugural poem in American history, which no one seems to be mentioning.
As long as we’re debunking the haters, I have some things to say about Obama’s speech too. Well, I might as well make that a separate post.
“With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.” – Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On The Campaign Trail ‘72
Every year at Passover, along with the singing and the salt-water, my family has a rollicking argument about Israel. The argument never gets anywhere because we can never even agree on terms. It’s like we’re speaking different languages. I would go on, but this insightful article explains exactly what I’m talking about.
Like most insightful articles about the Middle East, Bronner’s is terrifying. If we can’t even talk to each other, how can we make real progress? Well, from the very same Week in Review, here’s a good idea. Counterintuitively, but I think persuasively, the column argues that language can be the solution as well as the root of the problem.
