Crucial Minutiae

“In the understandably general yearning for “change” in the governing of our country, we might pause to reflect on just what is being changed, and by whom, and for whom.”
- Joan Didion, writing about the 1992 democratic convention

Part of the problem with trying to write anything interesting about a presidential election, is that by the time a layman part time political junkie gets around to actually putting thoughts to paper a) whatever thought generated the impulse to write has been so chewed over, digested and strewn over airwaves it feels like last year’s news, b) very little new seems possible to say and c) you are already so sick of the endless coverage and infuriating substance of that coverage that it seems unforgivable to add to the pile of commentary.

And yet, the current campaign for the democratic nomination is so fascinating and important – as far as what it says about our politics and our country – that it seems worth trying to retain some sort of interest and strive for some sort of clarity despite the fact that the non-stop coverage makes any additional commentary seem like so much more needless wanking.

(more…)

I recently re-read Night, by Elie Wiesel. Wiesel begins the memoir with the story of “Moishe the Beadle.” Moishe lived in Wiesel’s village and was captured by the Nazis in the early years of the war. He managed to escape and return to tell the villagers of the hell he had witnessed: soldiers murdering mothers in front of their children, babies thrown into fiery pits. He tells everyone in the town to immediately escape. They tell him he is crazy. They say he has only imagined these horrors, for how could they be real? And, of course, the village is soon evacuated by the Nazis, and almost every inhabitant is killed. Moishe the Beadle is the quintessential screamer.

The crisis in Darfur seems to me particularly modern tragedy. Unlike the massacre of Jews in world war II, or the events in Rwanda in the early nineties, this genocide is widely recognized and – at least in a general way – part of our national conversation. The crisis in Darfur was named a genocide by Powell on September 9 2004 – nearly three years ago. Today, while most of us don’t know the name of the president of Darfur, or the precise root of the conflict, we know that something truly horrible is happening, something we will look back upon with shame. And this is where the peculiar modern aspect of the tragedy arises: we live in a time where we know the full extent of horrors that occur on other continents, and yet that information doesn’t empower us in any new ways to address those horrors. As our awareness grows, so grows the pain of impotence.

(more…)

At Rikers, “upstate” is an ominous term, a name for some shapeless place that steals people away for reasons unspoken and for stretches unknown. There are two kinds of prisoners at Riker’s: those who are awaiting sentencing and the trip “upstate” and those that are serving sentences of less than a year. For some, then, the time on the Island is a few weeks of waiting before long stretches in high security prison; for others, it’s a few months away from home to reconsider the path that led you to the island. This means that there are two distinct groups, marked by their clothes – those awaiting sentencing wear their own, and those serving sentences wear bright orange prison garb. But in practice, the daily humiliations of prison do away with any sense of “innocent until proven guilty.” In Riker’s you’re reminded at every moment that you’re, well, in Riker’s.

(more…)

So I was all set this week to keep up with my habit of writing about yesterday’s news several days past the due-date of my column by ranting about Don Imus. And then the incomprehensible occurred in Virginia, again (the incomprehensible seems to keep happening) and so now my vent about the trivial is all folded into my emotions facing the unimaginable (What if my sister were there? What if it was my child who was killed, who did the killing? Scenarios of horror played out in wandering minds around the country). So, here’s the product of a week’s thinking about Imus and two days considering the impossible.

First, on Imus: every few years our nation offers a sacrificial lamb to the gods of racial sensitivity. It makes us feel better, like we’ve come so far, like we can spot a bigot, call the bigot a bigot, and that bigot will pay for his sins, absolving us all the process. It’s a purification rite. I’m not sure if the first act of sacrifice was Jimmy the Greek, or if that’s just the first one I can recall, but in 1988 he said this gem: “During the slave period, the slave owner would breed his big black with his big woman so that he would have a big black kid—that’s where it all started,” and got summarily fired from NBC. And more recently, of course, we’ve had Michael Richards destroy his career via Youtube and a cell phone video. And now Imus joins the ranks of the slaughtered.

(more…)

The Russell Office Building’s Room 325 is where Anita Hill testified, where hearings into the sinking of the titanic were held, and where John F. Kennedy announced his campaign for presidency. The room looks the part: along the back wall hang red curtains that bend between white pillars, a backdrop so theatrical it makes the room look like a set dressed for a filming of the hearings on the sinking of the titanic more than the actual room where they happened. The pillars are way too big for the space, and the ceiling is easily as tall as the room is wide. Room 325 is, above all, stately.

Room 325 is also where the Senators from Illinois host their “constituent coffee” every Thursday at 8:30am. On a bitingly cold morning February morning, the room was less crowded than I expected. The face of one of the senators, after all, had greeted my walk through Union Station, gently smiling out from the covers of a dozen books stacked in a display in the B. Dalton window. It was cold, and it was early, but it was also Barack Obama. He was set to announce his presidency for candidate the following Saturday, and I was nervous, running in the cold at 8:25, that I wouldn’t get in to the thing. Instead, of the maybe 150 seats, 60 or 65 were taken. Most of the donuts and coffee, on a table to the side, went uneaten.

(more…)