Kevin Marshall's America
New episode of MANville, sans yours truly! Something came up at the last minute, so I cancelled on Johnny and Dan and they weren’t too happy about it. Also, Johnny hates sci-fi.
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TONIGHT!!!
TOMORROW!!!
Just a few weeks ago, this landed in my inbox after Felix Salmon (who since the golden days of Gawker has made a habit of asserting every time I sneeze that I must be intentionally spreading Ebola) not surprisingly criticized my fitness as the editor of the Observer. Felix issues—and creepy obsessiveness—notwithstanding, I was a bit surprised at the DM because I hadn’t seen or talked to Breitbart in over a year, and the whole thread seemed too small potatoes to even be on his radar.
But it made me think about the last time we had a substantial conversation and it was a lengthy discussion about being adopted (we both are) and we were sitting in a booth at the Box. It was a party and it was loud, but we sat for over an hour talking about it. He was thoughtful and introspective—two qualities that probably wouldn’t be associated with his public persona, which sometimes seemed like a bit of an alter ego to me.
I met him in 2003 while in LA and taking the obligatory potshots at LA for Gawker (back when the Gawker worldview was New York Is the Center of the Universe) and it didn’t go over very well with some of the LA readership. Andrew was a good sport about it, got the joke, wasn’t offended. I’d run into him occasionally at events and I don’t remember ever talking to him about politics, though like every one else, I knew what his politics were. But even when I thought he was wrong-headed about things, I never thought it was in bad faith. I didn’t think he was a nihilist. When he signed on to co-found the Huffington Post, I was surprised—and then not surprised when he left. But I think you have to have a certain courage of your convictions to join forces with someone you fundamentally disagree with in order to create something that you believe will create more dialogue, siphon through the mess to get to the facts and create a new model for how journalism is conducted. I don’t think HuffPo necessarily did that, but it was a noble aim.
Andrew was a smart provocateur—and in some ways reminds me of another smart provocateur I know. And whatever I thought about his politics, I respected the fact that he was willing to scrap with people, make enemies and fight to present his ideas and promote what he believed in.
A Breitbart / Felix fight would have been epic! Sad we’ll never get to see it.
Disagreed with most of Andrew’s politics but respected how he confronted his enemies directly and was not afraid to meet them face to face rather than hide behind a keyboard.
He was also a web pioneer, with a large hand in the formation of The Huffington Post and Drudge Report.
I’ll miss having someone with this much passion (though misguided as I think it was) around.
I did a show tonight for a group of about a hundred or so kids at Job Corps in Glenmont. These are kids who can still make it, sitting on the cusp with a chance to do something. I spoke to them before and after; they were enthusiastic, excited, and congenial. When we arrived, they were discussing an incident that had occurred earlier in the day, and that strange energy carried over to the show put on by a friend of mine who works for them and also does stand-up locally.
It was a Hell of an experience. They’d alternately talk over you, then you over them, then they’d be hanging on to your every word. Every one of us that went out there got a heckler, but unlike any other audience I’ve been with, they policed themselves and stood up to the more obnoxious and disrespectful of the bunch. Then my friend Vernon almost died…well, not really. But one kid who yelled gay slurs finally blew up, tried to go up to the stage, but was stopped and escorted out. It was wild, memorable, and thrilling. Being who and what we are, we were laughing about it almost immediately.
After the show a group rushed the stage. Though I’ve gotten far bigger laughs and despite my attempts to tailor my set for them, I felt it didn’t connect in a way it usually does. In fact, I’ll be honest: I was garbage. I bombed. Yet afterwards, I still got more appreciative smiles, compliments, and handshakes than I’ve ever gotten from any other performance.
More importantly, though, I got a chance tonight to show a side of myself I rarely show and speak to kids like the ones I used to know. I was able to tell them what I wish I could tell so many of my friends from elementary school: that yes, there are really people rooting against you but that the best revenge is success in spite of their cynicism. I knew too many that didn’t get that chance, and I don’t know where they are now. Some were, maybe still are, incarcerated or worse. Not all, mind you; our school was a mix of kids from the projects and a suburban development across the street. And I do run into and reacquaint with those from our projects that made good of themselves and their families. But God, there’s so many more that end up in the newspaper for all the wrong reasons. They’re the ones that stick out to me, because I remember being in class with them and playing with them and wondering how the Hell that happened.
It’s all too easy. Tonight was a sobering reminder. I have gratitude. But I also have hope that there’s somebody in that audience who’s going to buck a trend and reverse a course. There was a sense of optimism mixed with all that chaos and nervous energy. It was weird, beautiful, and inspiring.
Thanks, Mo.
Shocking news this morning as Andrew Breitbart, controversial conservative blogger and activist, was announced dead of natural causes. He was 43.
Actually, to call him controversial is, for many, a diplomatic understatement. Some saw him as a pariah; he did unfairly cost some people their jobs and, to further his agenda, did not show many qualms about tactics such as editing video and removing context.
In other words, he was in politics.
But he should, despite all this, also be recognized for standing up to the bigoted wing of the GOP in welcoming homosexuals into the party. He hosted GOProud in the CPAC 2010 conference despite the protestations of many groups and served on its advisory board. On that and a handful of other issues he’ll be seen as being on the right side of history.
No man is without his shortcomings. Breitbart’s didn’t come intellectually; he was cunning, clever, and biting. Rather, it was in areas like restraint, shame, and dignity where Breitbart often fell tragically and frustratingly short. He was a complicated individual whose transgressions were often confused or veiled with his passion and beliefs. He was ultimately a dedicated and charismatic, but also troubling, figure.
I often roll my eyes at the undeserved posthumous praise one gives to public figures, especially when it’s insincere and ascribes personality traits, charm, and accomplishments to the individual that were wholly undeserved. I can’t and won’t excuse some of the campaigns he engaged in, including but not limited to the awful and ridiculous campaign against Shirley Sherrod that rightfully got him slapped with a defamation lawsuit. Yet I think Breitbart, to his credit, never claimed to be anything he wasn’t, even when he was tripping over his own language to try to justify what he did.
I can’t say I hated the man, and I’m a bit troubled by the reaction of some to his passing. Media Matters among others that were his most frequent and passionate critics have stayed above that fray, and even expressed a bit of genuine sadness at his passing. That must mean something.
“You’ve been awful careful about the friends you choose, but you won’t find my name in your book of who’s who!”
I hope you guys also have best friends.
When I was a little boy, the working theory I had was that they died at the end.
Davy Jones has died from a heart attack. He was 66.
One of my first obsessions with any television show was “The Monkees.” I think it was either VH1 or MTV (or both) that showed them incessantly at one point in the 1980s after it was found that Baby Boomers were finally old enough to feel and crave nostalgia. The show was perfect fodder for a child whose father was rearing him on The Beatles, combining fun and kitsch with genuinely great songwriting.
Of course, I was too young at the time to know or even listen to the cynical explanation of The Monkees as a crass commercialization of sixties culture. As I got older, the uber-cynical part of me actually embraced The Monkees through what some would see as the contrarian view that the project was no more manipulative or exploitative than most other acts from that era. If anything, one could argue they were in a very real way a bit more transparent than many of their “legitimate” contemporaries, in that while Mickey Dolenz aped being able to play the drums, they didn’t pretend to be anything they weren’t.
Then there was “Head.”
I actually didn’t see “Head,” The Monkees’ move to the big screen after the cancellation of their television show, until I arrived home at some absurd hour one weekend when I was 19 and turned on Turner Classic Movies. I’d never heard of it, even, and as I watched I kept mumbling to myself (in-between continued solitary imbibing) “what on Earth?” I woke up the next morning determined to see it again, but sober. It took eight years but it finally happened. I adored how absurd yet honest it was. The film, co-written and co-produced by Jack Nicholson and Bob Rafelson, alternately lampooned and grappled with The Monkees’ role as corporate pitchmen with dadaist humor that went off the rails of the narrative but never became pretentious. It was self-aware but gorgeous, as shown in the video above (“The Porpoise Song.”).
It also highlighted the oft overlooked talents of the group, especially Davy Jones. What an incredible performer he was: charismatic, engaging, genuinely likable. He was such a small guy physically, but carried such a tremendous presence with him. And that voice! One of the things I’ve always felt but don’t think I’ve ever seen expressed is how earnest and believable he was when singing those songs. Of course it helped that he had people like Neil Diamond writing them (though fellow Monkee Michael Nesmith also wrote some tremendous stuff for them), but only Davey could have made the whole thing work.
The news of Davy Jones’ death legitimately bummed me out when I read it. So long, kid.
A quick reminder that THIS SATURDAY NIGHT I’ll be featuring for Gina Brillon at Comic Syndrome (Savannah’s; 1 South Pearl St., Albany NY).
Tickets for the event are $15; $25 for a ticket and a three course meal. Facebook event invite is HERE.
As a bonus, here’s a quick interview I did last Thursday with Ethan Ullman for his Alternative 2 Sleep program.
“President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob,” said the former senator from Pennsylvania. “There are good, decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor to try to indoctrinate them. Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image.”
– Rick Santorum this past weekend in a speech given at a Detroit rally (The Washington Post)
This sort of batshit populism seems familiar somehow…
The intellectual forces of the workers and peasants are growing and getting stronger in their fight to overthrow the bourgeoisie and their accomplices, the educated classes, the lackeys of capital, who consider themselves the brains of the nation. In fact they are not its brains but its shit.
– Lenin in a 1918 letter to Maxim Gorky.
Huh. What do you know. Wait, there’s also…
“Fascism combats…not intelligence, but intellectualism…which is…a sickness of the intellect…not a consequence of its abuse, because the intellect cannot be used too much…it derives from the false belief that one can segregate oneself from life…”
— Giovanni Gentile, addressing a Congress of Fascist Culture, Bologna, 30 March 1925
I’m noticing a pattern…
“The youthful brain should in general not be burdened with things ninety-five percent of which it cannot use and hence forgets again… In many cases, the material to be learned in the various subjects is so swollen that only a fraction of it remains in the head of the individual pupil, and only a fraction of this abundance can find application, while on the other hand it is not adequate for the man working and earning his living in a definite field.”
– Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
OH C’MON. We can’t…we can’t evoke Hitler. Even though it fits. We just can’t.
But it is disturbing, isn’t it? And apt. I’m not saying Santorum is Hitler. Of course I’m not. I am saying that anti-intellectual and anti-science attitudes are often cornerstones of authoritarian beliefs. It’s the shared link between fascist dictatorships and totalitarian Soviet-style communist governments and betrays the true nature of both: that despite all pretenses, the sole philosophy is destruction and power at any cost. No body, government, or civilization has ever improved when such aggressive attitudes have been taken against something as beneficial as education. Rick Santorum is not a monster, per se, but his position and poll numbers should frighten anyone with half a brain, regardless of their political leanings.
Isaac Asimov put it best:
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”
Couldn’t have said it better.
STALK ME
