"To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist. And there is no decent or chartered way of making a living at it. It is something [that] you are, and not something that you do." -- Christopher Hitchens.
Anything that one says concerning a controversial issue is bound to anger someone. Any cultural opinion may be interpreted as a rejection of an alternative view. Hence, by liking Opera, I may appear to be "judging" (horrors!) another person's fondness for, say, traditional yodelling during the mating season of the Norwegian mountain yak. To prefer Mozart's great piano concerto played by Maurizio Pollini to the guy on the corner playing "Camp Town Ladies" on a tin can, is a sign of my insensitivity to the plight of the common people and an obnoxious form of "elitism," whereas I think of it simply as musical taste. ("A Night at the Opera" and "What you will ...")
We are told (sometimes by English professors!) that Shakespeare is no better than Tom Clancy; Plato and Kant are nothing compared to Depak Chopra; and Freud and Jung are from Mars, whereas John Gray is from Venus -- the Beverly Hills section of Venus, that is. All establishment of preferences in culture or learning is frowned upon as "elitist." Despite my radical politics I am described as an "elitist," right before I am condemned as a "Communist" opponent of all standards of decency. I am, in fact, against middle class standards of decency (that is, hypocrisy) and in favor of what Freud and later Marcuse called, "polymorphous perversity."
"Political correctness" is bullshit. In a very few instances, good taste and moral concern should dictate what language may not be used -- excluding certain offensive terms barred from civilized discourse -- but censorship is never justified when it comes to the discussion of ideas or art for adults in a free society. Some art and intellectual work is better than others, even when it happens that such art is created by white males. In order to explain why I bother to say this, however, I will need to digress a bit to discuss the forbidden subject of class in America.
To the extent that I have made contacts with the privileged class in American society, it has been far from a pleasant experience for me. For those who are mentally defective or who have been staring at television for too long, allow me to explain the facts of political life. Despite what you may have been told, there is no human society without a class system. This includes U.S. society. There never will be. The criteria for admission to the "upper crust" in America is ostensibly enormous wealth, which will certainly get you an invitation to a charity dinner. On the other hand, there are subtle signs and rituals involved in membership in the old, WASP (oh, oh ... I was just "politically incorrect" again!), cultural and intellectual "elite," class, group, or tupper-ware party which usually excludes the stereotypically crude billionaire real estate developer -- whatever his or her ethnicity -- from membership.
This exclusion from society (to the extent that there still is such a thing) will result not merely from his or her not recognizing a Henry James title (which may be a plus), but for having very little idea of what a novel or even a book may be. Money is still not enough for admission to the best homes, though it sure helps to have a lot of it if you want to buy one. You will not enter the "best society," as Oscar Wilde would say, if you pick your feet at the dinner table or tend to discuss topless mud wrestling -- admittedly a fascinating subject -- though either interest will get you on a reality t.v. show.
It is also a fact, as Gore Vidal and such notables as Luis Auchincloss (both writers were "to the manor born") would be the first to point out, that every ruling class will open its doors to a witty and charming, intellectually daring and attractive person, regardless of that person's origins. Every hostess has to figure out how to entertain the proverbial dull-witted Grand Duchess (of either gender) in her dotage. The charming young man who can sit next to her at dinner and amuse her for hours is "paying his dues" for admission to what used to be called, "The Great World."
The division of human society into classes is instinctive and can be observed even in the playground, where small children will arrange themselves naturally into groups on the basis of which of them are most attractive, intelligent, athletic and so on. No one is going to legislate any of this away. People will find a way to get around any and all legal codes in order to do what they want to do, especially when it comes to selecting social and/or sexual companions. Incidentally, this fondness for getting around laws is usually accomplished with the help of lawyers, who will happily discover the means by which to circumvent (violate) the law "legally," at the dop of a fee. No, that is not what they are supposed to do.
There are always corrupting factors when it comes to such divisions and stratifications, that is, unfair advantages conferred by birth and wealth or natural endowment. Persons at the bottom of the society, like me, are well-aware that they are being screwed and denied important opportunities in life by this informal system of rewards and demerits that governs such things as admissions to "elite" universities and to the ranks of power in the State. Post-coital cigarette or are you getting the munchies? Bend over and say thank you.
We members of despised minority groups tend to focus, by way of compensation, on the ways in which we are -- often unwillingly and undeservedly -- the beneficiaries of social injustices too. Most of the important ways of screwing people in America are decided secretly, behind closed doors, so they can then be denied by the powerful, who tend to wrap themselves not so much in the flag, as in the minute provisions of administrative procedures. My instinct is to say "fuck 'em" (a very useful phrase), face-to-face, and only then to move on.
British actor Richard Burton -- who came from a humble Welsh mining family -- said that when he got to Oxford University, he made it a point to "look down on people from below." Albert Finney said pretty much the same thing. Curiously, affluent people then find themselves struggling to be liked by the person who has snubbed them and doing their best to be admired by their prospective butlers. In an egalitarian age, this becomes fodder for P.G. Whodehouse-like novels. While the very real suffering that results from a fiercely powerful class system and its rules is explored in some of the greatest literature in Western history. For example, it is the subject of the novels of Edith Wharton and Henry James, and is also at the center of Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, where these issues are dramatized at the very higest level, as in Shakespeare's historical plays.
Some social hierarchies are indeed illegitimate; others are not. If there were such a thing as a "pure" scale of aesthetic merit, then it would be democratic and fair to rank the cultural achievements of persons on the basis of genuine merit. It may well be that such a thing is impossible, since it is said (usually by "skinny people dressed in black") that there can be no fully "objective" determination of what constitutes merit -- when it comes to the arts or philosophy -- or maybe in any intellectual work, including philosophy. We are told that "it's all relative." Not surprisingly, this sort of claim ("there is no truth!") is rarely extended to scientific work, which is deemed to be objective and true, if corroborated. I have my doubts about this distinction.
There are comparative judgments that we can make, I am sure, with a great degree of confidence which allow us to arrive at accurate assessments of merit in the arts and in philosophy. Shakespeare is better than Agatha Christie, better than everybody else too, come to think of it; Tolstoy is better than Tom Clancy; Immanuel Kant is better than Ayn Rand; Leonardo Da Vinci matters more than Andy Warhol; Beethoven is better than Brittany Spears, who definitely has her merits. I would happily vote for Ms. Spears for the U.S. Presidency. Notice that the first in each of these pairs of names belongs to a white European male. "That's elitism!" No, that's just good taste.
In educating young people and helping to form their tastes and judgments in the humanities, it must be the goal of a university to expose students to what Mathew Arnold famously described as the "best that has been thought and said." Yes, there is such a thing. This is a category that is flexible, which should and must remain open, to include new people who clearly fit the bill -- like Toni Morrison or James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison and Paul Robeson, Cornel West and Angela Davis, Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Carlos Fuentes, along with many others who are now, FINALLY and appropriately studied in university classrooms.
Nevertheless the core group of great names will not change much and will be made up, overwhelmingly, of white males of European extraction. This is for the excellent reason that such persons were, traditionally, the only ones permitted to acquire an education or encouraged to develop and express opinions on important subjects. Is this fair? No, but it is our history.
We simply cannot ignore the achievements of white males in science and the humanities because they were the only people, for the most part, who had the opportunity to "achieve" anything significant in these fields. True, there are exceptions that prove the rule. This only confirms my point. We must not be afraid to say what we mean without being intimidated by the possibility of offending people who will disagree with us. Censorship is not justified because our words or expressions will offend people, since "offense" -- as John Stuart Mill demonstrated -- is not the same as "harm."
I wish to delve into this moral minefield with a little help from Camille Paglia, known hereafter as "La Traviata" -- so as to set everyone straight, as it were -- and I will then provide my own opinions concerning this controversial issue. I have decided to refer to Professor Paglia as "La Traviata," or "the lost one," not because she reminds me of Verdi's Operatic character, but because she shares with that character a fondness for shocking the conventional pieties of a hypocritical society and violating its prudish sexual mores. Besides, for all I know, she may be quite capable of tossing off an occasional B flat aria for the hell of it. Think of this essay, then, as a duet.
My sources for Professor Paglia's position are two essays "An Open Letter to the Students of Harvard" and "The Nursery School Campus: The Corrupting of the Humanities in the U.S.," both of which may be found in Camille Paglia, Vamps and Tramps (New York: Vintage, 1994), pp. 117-121, pp. 97-102. I like to think that I am a bit of a "vamp and a tramp" myself, in the right situation. Naturally, this is only after I have been taken to dinner.
"Anyone concerned with the future of literature and art in America should be repelled by that witch's brew of hypocrisy and sanctimony called 'political correctness,' which has poisoned the professional life of the elite colleges and universities." (p. 117.)
"The Lost One" goes on to distinguish the true tradition of Sixties radicalism from the false and distracting nonsense about political correctness: "Political correctness, with its [class-based] speech codes and puritanical sexual regulations, is a travesty of Sixties' progressive values." (p. 118.)
She then offers a brilliant diagnosis of what is really going on with this P.C. nonsense:
"The multiculturalists and the politically correct on the subjects of race, class, and gender actually represent a continuation of the genteel tradition [George Santayana] of respectability and conformity. They have institutionalized American niceness, which seeks, above all, not to offend and must therefore pretend not to notice any differences or distinctions among people or cultures." (p. 98.)
Professor Paglia is a self-professed lesbian and feminist, as indeed am I. No one has the right to determine the language that people "should" use in order to be deemed good, sensitive and intelligent persons. This authority to "cleanse" the language is a power which must be contested, for it is a true political power that will determine how people see the world. Attempts to control forms of erotic expression or consumption for adults in a free society are equally totalitarian. It's O.K. for adults to enjoy erotic or naughty stuff every once in a while, especially in the right company.
Thought cannot be extricated from language, which is far from concluding that, therefore, "there is no truth." To concede this authority to define "niceness" is to give away too much, including the ability to distract us from what really matters -- like who has the money and how did they get it. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead.") "Niceness" will always be defined in terms that are suspiciously convenient for those very same self-proclaimed altruists whom heaven has placed above us on the social scale. Yet we need the concept of "niceness" and the standards implied by it for social cooperation. Let us struggle to define niceness from "below."
George Orwell would have been the first to recognize the hypocrisy of "political correctness" for what it is: a power-grab by those skinny people dressed in black, being driven to demonstrations in their expensive German cars, then rushing to that proverbial thousand-dollar-a plate dinner for the poor. It is not up to the affluent Upper West Side matrons to hand down to the rest of us, the hoi-polloi, a "correct" view of reality from which the "unwashed masses" (meaning you and me) are not to stray, much less are they welcome to do so on the basis of some assumed noblesse oblige benevolence on their part. What is "for my own good" is only for me to decide.
Civility is a democratic value. It should not be confused with snobbishness. The essence of politeness and civility is a concern for the comfort and well-being of others, as they define these things, not the attempt to "act all superior." Tom Wolfe's "social X-Rays" -- skinny people dressed in black, again, who are usually sun-bronzed and wear expensive, but discrete jewelry -- have no right to instruct us concerning how to refer, for example, to our own children in the privacy of our homes. I can attest to this affront from personal experience. I will not be "controlled" (without having committed a crime), legitimately, by agents of the State; nor will I be enslaved by anyone for any reason; nor will my values or opinions be "prescribed" to me by any "authority."
No one can tell me whether it is appropriate to use pet names for my child beyond a certain age; nor which names are appropriate; nor whether I am permitted to admire attractive members of the opposite sex, or to imagine fantasy sex partners (who doesn't have those?); nor the language that I may use to refer to persons from different -- or even from my own -- ethnic or racial group. I know what is offensive. Condescension is offensive. I will not put up with anyone telling me which works of art I may admire. Much less will I be told by anyone what I may not admire or read with approval. My inner life is my business. Do I need to say this again? ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")
When people take it upon themselves to decide such matters for the rest of us, we are simply dealing with our old enemy Fascism in the guise of a new sensitivity and touchy-feely "concern" and "care" for us, for those of us "in need of instruction and care." Inferiors. This was the view of Dr. Josef Mengele regarding Jewish children. These children were in need of Mengele's determinations concerning what was "for the best" and how they could best contribute to society. Jewish persons were seen as "objects" to be exploited by Mengele for his purposes. ("Richard A. Posner on Voluntary Actions and Criminal Responsibility.")
There is condescension and insulting as well as patronizing so-called "instruction" in such guidance, which self-professed "superiors" would be the first to reject if it were imposed on them "from below" by those they mean to "help." This is exactly why I recommend doing so. ("Why I am not an ethical relativist" and "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism, then "Nihilists in Disneyworld" and "Nihilism Against Memory.")
One of the great surprises resulting from my multi-year experiences of suppressions of speech and censorship in America is the appalling ignorance among so-called "elites" in positions of authority in an American jurisdiction, many of whom lack the cultural awareness and knowledge of European high school graduates. I wish that I could say that this is unusual. Ignorance among the powerful in America, sadly, is not unusual at all. This would be a good time for further censorship, boys. ("Nihilists in Disneyworld.")
An "error" was inserted in this essay overnight. A letter was deleted from one of my words. No images can be posted at these blogs. The true number of hits at this site cannot be determined. In response to such frustration tactics from the home of the mafia -- which is the Garden State -- I will focus on the "politically correct" lesbianism of Anne Milgram, Esq. in New Jersey and whether this "hobby" has led to Anne's corrupt or incompetent practices or to those of her "friends." Do you wish to insert another "error" in this text? ("Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Another Mafia Sweep in New Jersey and Anne Milgram is Clueless.")
Tact and sensitivity are not dirty words, except when extended to proponents of censorship. Offend, if you must, by expressing your opinions freely and fearlessly. Read the foregoing paragraph again. But try to do it "nicely." By all means, tell the disloyal opposition to go "fuck themselves" -- if you must. Why not offer a smile and a curtsy as you do so? I especially recommend this to men. I guess it is a "real job" for many of them to read books without pictures in them.
Woody Allen reminds us that, if we must be bigots, then let us be bigots for the Left, never for emaciated fashionistas concerned to make it into to the pages of People magazine. Genius transcends all rules -- which is my serious point -- by creating its own forms of "niceness." Physician heal thyself! And get off my back and front while you're at it. ("What is it like to be tortured? and "What is it like to be plagiarized?")
