Author: Andrew Sullivan

Elif Batuman expands on her definition of awkwardness as “the consciousness of a false position”:

Here is the top-rated definition of awkward in Urban Dictionary: “Passing a homeless person on your way to a Coin Star machine.” In other words, denying that you have any spare change while carrying a whole jar of change, a transparent column of money, right in front of the person. In fairness, although there is a sense in which you can spare the change, there is also a sense in which you can’t. Who are you, after all—the one per cent? The one per cent doesn’t use the Coin Star machine.

“Awkward” implies both solidarity and implication. Nobody is exempt. Awkwardness comes from the realization that, when you look around the world, it’s difficult to identify anyone who isn’t either the victim or the beneficiary of injustice. Awkward moments remind us that we are never isolated individuals, and that we are seldom correct when we say, “Not in my name.” Awkward moments are, by definition, relatable. Hence the tagline for “Curb Your Enthusiasm”: “Deep inside you know you’re him.” This is a key distinction between Larry David’s comedy of awkwardness and its closest predecessor, Woody Allen’s comedy of anxiety. Anxiety is pathological, neurotic (a word you don’t see so much anymore); awkwardness is existential, universal.

Richard Metzger spotlights The Memory Hole, a deeply weird video project thought by some to “have been culled from over 300,000 VHS tapes housed in a basement storage space belonging to the producers of America’s Funniest Home Videos“:

It’s very Gummo meets Un Chien Andalou meets like Andy Milligan meets Tim and Eric. The producers are aspiring to get either David Lynch or Werner Herzog to host the show as a computer generated character. The pilot they’re currently shopping around Hollywood is probably the hottest thing since Jackass started making the rounds on VHS in the late 90s. Everybody wanted to see that tape and the same thing seems to be happening for The Memory Hole‘s sizzle reel which already has quite a reputation.

The Memory Hole is a terrifyingly REAL glimpse into the dark heart of America in the later part of the 20th century… it’s also a gut-busting, hilariously “new” form of comedy.

More weirdness here and here.

Dish poetry editor Alice Quinn writes:

Copper Canyon Press has just released a new book by Jericho Brown, welcomed by Pulitzer-Prize winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, who is not given to exaggeration, as follows:

Jericho Brown’s The New Testament chronicles life and death, personal rituals and blasphemies, race and nation, the good and the bad, as well as illuminating scenarios of self-interrogation and near redemption. The lyrical clarity in this poignant collection approaches ascension. And here the sacred and profane embrace … The New Testament is lit by signifying, an anthem of survival and jubilation.

We’ll post three poems from this stunning book in the days ahead.

“Romans 12: 1” by Jericho Brown:

I will begin with the body,
In the year of our Lord,
Porous and wet, love-wracked
And willing: in my 23^rd year,
A certain obsession overtook
My body, or I should say,
I let a man touch me until I bled,
Until my blood met his hunger
And so was changed, was given
A new name
As is the practice among my people
Who are several and whole, holy
And acceptable. On the whole
Hurt by me, they will not call me
Brother. Hear me coming,
And they cross their legs. As men
Are wont to hate women,
As women are taught to hate
Themselves, they hate a woman
They smell in me, every muscle
Of her body clenched
In fits beneath men
Heavy as heaven—my body,
Dear dying sacrifice, desirous
As I will be, black as I am.

(From The New Testament © 2014 by Jericho Brown. Used by permission of Copper Canyon Press. Photo of Jericho Brown by John Lucas)

Leonid Bershidsky warns of its dangers:

Perhaps propaganda is the most dangerous drug of all. The U.S. Congress appeared to understand the potentially corrosive effects back in the 1970s and 1980s, when it banned the dissemination on U.S. soil of government-funded media such as Voice of America, partly in an effort to prevent domestic propaganda (the ban is no longer in force). The no-holds-barred war of lies between the governments of Russia and Ukraine shows propaganda machines maintain their deadly effectiveness even today.

Governments’ power to influence public opinion should be restricted as tightly as the most dangerous drugs, and free media – where they still exist – need to pay special attention to how they relay government messages. Otherwise, when officials grow older and decide something was done wrong, their wisdom will fall on deaf ears.

Drug Czar Michael Botticelli recently stated that the marijuana legalization movement “sends the wrong message, particularly to the youth of our country.” But Jon Walker believes the real problem is the message sent by the government’s draconian drug policies:

To begin with there is the fact that the federal government keeps marijuana a schedule I drug, classifying it as having no accepted medical value despite significant evidence that it provides relief to patients with a range of conditions. By doing this the federal government is telling our young people that it is okay to completely disregard science if you don’t like the results. It also lets young people know their government doesn’t thinks relieving the suffering of the sick should be a priority.

The government also continues to spend billions of dollars and has arrested millions of Americans in our decades-long marijuana prohibition war, yet it has completely failed to stop marijuana from being widely used. From this young people learn the important lesson that you should never admit you made a mistake, no matter how expensive or destructive that mistake has been.

Li Yinhe, a Chinese sociologist who keeps a popular blog on sex and family issues, compares attitudes toward homosexuality in China and the West:

In your blog you’ve advocated legalizing same-sex marriage. Is that a realistic goal in China?

The attitude toward homosexuality in China is not as absolute as in the West. At least in some earlier eras, there wasn’t an absolute opposition to it. In China it’s never been illegal or outlawed. During the Song dynasty there was a law against homosexual prostitution, but not against homosexuality in principle. It’s more something that might have been considered ridiculous but not a crime.

So the main thing was you do your duty—get married and procreate?

Yes, that’s the key. But maybe more, Chinese people’s view of sex is different than foreigners’. Chinese view it as purely a physical desire. Who your partner is—male or female—or how you express it doesn’t matter. Anal sex or things like that, they don’t think it’s bad. So from this point of view, homosexuality is not such a problem. I read a survey of attitudes about same-sex marriage in 2008: about 10 to 20 percent thought it was absolutely no problem and 10 to 20 percent thought it was absolutely wrong. But the rest—the majority—just didn’t care. By contrast, in the United States, 47 percent were in favor of same-sex marriage and 43 percent were against. Only 10 percent didn’t have a view. For the Chinese it was like this: It doesn’t have to do with me so I don’t care.

For Chinese who do oppose it, what are their reasons?

They think it’s unnatural because homosexuals can’t have children. But I think this view is slowly changing. The main hindrance is there are no rights groups. In the West, you might have members of parliament or prominent people who are gay or lesbian and they can raise the issue of same-sex marriage. In China, no one raises the issue. Most people don’t think it’s a big issue.

Andrew Simmons frowns at food festivals:

Some food festivals trumpet sustainability as a pillar of their mission, but this is self-evidently ridiculous. While biodegradable forks made from potato starch are popular, at the end of the day, napkins, plates, and discarded food billow out of garbage cans. Piles of trash sprout wherever attendees feel like starting them. Just because the heritage-breed pigs everyone’s tucking into were raised on chestnuts, doesn’t mean that the event is somehow expanding the crowd’s understanding of food systems. Responsible animal husbandry is great, but the very notion of encouraging a few relatively privileged people to dramatically overindulge—and then leave piles of garbage behind for janitors to clean up—seems unsustainable.