October 31, 2011 at 2:00 P.M. Fittingly enough, on Halloween, this essay was severely damaged by New Jersey's hackers, censored and suppressed. I will try to repair the harm done.
March 27, 2011 at 10:46 A.M. "Errors" inserted and corrected in this essay that had been left alone for a while.
I can not see my books on-line, my security system's updating feature has been disabled, and I am still blocking: http://view.atdmt.com/iview/msnnkhac001728x90xWBCBR00110msn/direct;wi.728;hi.90/01 (NJ)
The effort to publish a book of essays I've worked on for nearly two years and dismissals of one's writings by people who haven't read them, make this essay especially poignant today, when I've spent 45 minutes trying to get into this blog. ("How Censorship Works in America.")
January 12, 2007 at 6:32 P.M. More harassment and obstructions to writing efforts this morning.
July 24, 2008 at 10:40 A.M. More of the same.
As of February 6, 2009 at 11:34 A.M., the censorship and harassment efforts continue, every day.
May 5, 2009 at 8:06 A.M. spacing affected in several essays yesterday, "errors" were inserted and corrected. New Jersey officials have decided to ignore copyright law and the U.S. Constitution for harassment purposes. Scary and sad.
C.J. Sullivan, "Slay-Cam Horror: Harlem Gundown Teen Wanted to Quit Bloods," in The New York Post, May 4, 2009, at p. 5. (Videotaped murder as advertising for street gang.)
Mark Mazzetti & Scott Shane, "Debate Over Interrogation Methods Sharply Divided the Bush White House," in The New York Times, May 4, 2009, at p. A13. (Cheney versus Rice.)
Rich Schapiro & Robin F. Moore, "Drag Queen Beaten in East Village Horror," in The Daily News, June 11, 2006, at p. 8.
Kerry Burke & Tracy Connor, "Fat Nick Ma' Rages: Calls Prosecutor Wed 'to a Black Guy' Biased," in The Daily News, June 11, 2006, at p. 8.
Norman Mailer, "The White Negro," in The Time of Our Time (New York: Random House, 1998), p. 211.
Anthony Easthope, What a Man's Gotta Do: The Masculine Myth in Popular Culture (London: Routlege, 1990).
Harvey Mansfield, Manliness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).
Martha Nussbaum, "Man Overboard," The New Republic, June 16, 2006, at p. 28.
Any young man growing up in America's urban culture will have to come to terms with violence. Even the good guys, and I was certainly one of them -- it is not clear what I am now -- will experience violence and will live with a possibility of violence on a daily basis. This alone changes men, often in ways that women do not understand.
Minority boys and men in America's inner cities always live and die in a war zone. As a nineteen year-old college student by day -- street kid by night -- I spent four or five hours a day on exercise, building muscles meant to convey the message that there was enough potential for harm in me to make entry into violent struggle a matter for serious calculation by a rival. The goal was to discourage such confrontations.
No one knows who may be armed ("Is he packing?") or psychotic in our city streets. Hence, it is always best for hoodlums to search for the middle class suburban dad, who will turn over his wallet without a word and shit in his pants while doing so. It is important not to look like a suburban dad, even if you happen to be one and to be prepared for the worst at all times.
Luckily, theft and crime were never my "thing." Some violence was unavoidable in early adulthood, simply as a matter of survival. People who knew me later in my life would have been astonished to learn this. Cultivating a sharp duality in my nature was a psychological requirement of survival, also unavoidable. ("Finding Forrester.")
Why are people mystified to learn that a young man from an urban background has never hit a woman in his life and is incapable of such a thing? Prejudice? I have also never paid for sex nor (depressingly) have I been paid for sex, although I was a lawyer for too many years. ("Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal.")
Many friends of my early years were on their way to a life of crime and others were talented amateurs. "Everybody has a secret," was a bit of street wisdom passed on to me at the time. My secret was reading Walter Pater and Alfred Lord Tennyson, listening to Mozart, and then walking out into the urban night without allowing this reading habit to show.
Among the occasional youthful pranks common with "us" were charming practices, like urinating in a liquor bottle and then giving it to one of the local winos. Harmless stuff like that. (Not that I ever did such things.)
There were "guys" whose eyes already possessed that glint of pleasure in causing physical pain to others indicating that a dark future lay ahead of them or a career in the legal profession. Same thing? Also a dark future was in store for those unfortunate persons -- usually women -- coming into contact with them. They were the "boys" who never wanted to stop hitting people, who beat up strangers on subway trains or in bar fight "stomps," after "wilding" for twenty hours or so. I tried to stay far away from them.
How does one account for this human capacity for violence? Why is it connected to masculinity? Why is violence as American as "apple pie"? Are apple pies really Sweedish? Does all of this have something to do with why we are in Iraq? ("America's Love of Violence.")
In a culture that, traditionally, equates masculinity with power and wealth -- which are overlapping categories -- and these things with a promise (usually fulfilled) of sexual success for those who are wealthy and powerful, then denies all of these attributes to poor, urban young men, violence must be expected. Naturally, the culture will sanction "real men's" violence against women. It is only within the last twenty years or so that genuine stigma has attached to the most despicable form of violence by men, which is physical brutality against women. If there are a few morons out there who are unaware of this fact, let me clarify, AGAIN, that I have never hit a woman in my life. ("Burn Notice.")
This abstinence from physical cruelty on my part shocks people, I think, because minority men are almost expected to engage in displays of violence and are encouraged to do exactly that by popular culture's celebrations of violence. I hate violence as the surest sign of imbecility for a man.
This struggle with -- or against -- violence is one of the themes in the works of Norman Mailer, whose relationship with masculinity and violence was difficult and only partly successful. Mailer's best book is an engagement with the horror and grace of American manhood's flirtation with death as the gateway to self-becoming. (The Executioner's Song.)
There is something about men in America that requires men's willingness to produce mayhem to be combined with a constraining commitment to honor and values that limit use of violence to those who are violent themselves. This willingness is Mailer's great theme in his works. I recognize that violence is sometimes a necessary evil. The crucial paradox of American men is that one must be willing to brave physical destruction for some key values and also to be incapable of deliberately injuring the weak or brutalizing a woman. One of the best screen images of American masculinity that captures these ambiguities is provided by Robert Mitchum. ("Raymond Chandler and the Simple Art of Murder.")
This demonstration of paradoxical commitment to physical courage was on display for the world to see on 9/11. There are and can be no finer men -- and women, this is not always gender-specific -- than the police officers and firefighters who saved lives, bled, and died on 9/11.
No one will make me violent with a woman. No one will move me or intimidate me when it comes to the rights guaranteed to every person under the Constitution. I have learned that some of those who sit in judgment of others are even more disgustingly cruel and inhuman, with much less excuse for it. I am revising this essay on a morning when I have experienced deliberate obstructions of my writing efforts and attempts to communicate, when my writings are under attack, again, in violation of criminal laws and that same U.S. Constitution for which so many Americans have died and are dying every day. Persons responsible for the daily commission of these crimes say that I am "unethical." (See "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "What is it like to be tortured?")
I think that they (N.J.) are unethical and criminal. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.") You decide.
Many people from all over the world seem to agree with me about the Garden State, including many persons unfortunate enough to reside in New Jersey. I have been reading Martha Nussbaum's review of Harvey Mansfield's book Manliness. It is difficult to believe that any scholar is capable of holding the positions attributed to Mansfield by Nussbaum. I have not read Mansfield's book. I don't know and cannot say whether the review is accurate. My respect for Nussbaum (assuming that Nussbaum wrote every word in this review, which is doubtful) leads me to believe that she's right. The topic is an important one, however, though not necessarily one that a tenured member of the Harvard faculty will be in a great position to discuss.
Is "manliness" best understood in Mansfield's terms as "confidence in the face of risk"? Much depends on what is meant by "confidence" and "risk." Some of the bravest people I know are women. Not surprisingly, they brag a lot less than men. John Wayne is not my idea of ultimate manliness. Wayne did not serve actively in the military during World War II, for example, whereas many other Hollywood stars did, including Ginger Rodgers -- who entertained U.S. troops under fire -- and Carol Lombard, who died in a plane crash after selling war bonds.
The fight against Nazism is a war for which I would have volunteered, incidentally, since I am no pacifist when it comes to evil. My list of nominees for "ultimate manliness" must include people like John Lennon (who was great at caring for his child and turned over financial decisions to Yoko), or Muhammad Ali, who loved to play with his daughters, or Robert F. Kennedy, whose gentleness could turn to steel when confronting a segregationist. All those guys could kick ass. The nicest woman you know will kick your ass if you mess with her kids.
Is that manliness? Or just toughness? The idea of "play" and comfort with one's emotions, as well as courage -- both physical and moral courage -- are qualities I associate much more with manliness than risk taking. There are equal forms of feminine courage, many related to identity issues. Manliness/femininity and courage are qualities that I find, EQUALLY, in men and women. Much depends on the specific risk.
Courage and manliness should not be confused with stupidity. I am not willing to take the "risk" of fighting Mike Tyson, if I can avoid it. If I can not, then I will face that challenge with determination, whatever happens. I have learned that sort of endurance from brave women as much as from men. Repression is what I associate with John Wayne-types.
It is also clear to me that men who are "bottom-line" tough guys usually have limited experience of violence outside of the conference room. Dick Cheney did not serve in Vietnam because, he explained to an interviewer, he "had other priorities." I am sure that many of those who served and were injured (or died) would have said the same. It is easier, perhaps, to favor "toughness" and a "kick in the ass" when one has limited experience of being "kicked in the ass." The billions of people in our world who are experts on the subject of being kicked in the ass by the powerful, by persons like Dick Cheney perhaps -- powerful officials who prefer to act from a safely anonymous position -- are not delighted with such "get tough methods."
Any more "errors" inserted by New Jersey's hackers? Manipulating people for your strategic purposes or for the pleasure you derive from seeing people squirm is evil. I cannot wait for these cowards to step out from behind my back. ("Is Senator Bob 'For' Human Rights?")
Minority young men who are denied respect or recognition as human beings can expect frustration levels to remain high at all times. Those young men lack resources to cope with anger and the wounding effects of social stigma. Most of them do not read Tennyson or Hegel. Most of them do not keep before their eyes at all times, as I did and do now, the examples of Dr. King and Robert Kennedy. Maybe they have a little too much respect for John Wayne's swagger.
I graduated magna cum laude from college, was in the top twenty percent of an accredited law school class, received a J.D., passed a bar examination once, a long time ago. I was admitted to what was a tiny Ph.D. program in philosophy at NYU which (today) may be among the best in the country. Yet there was never a time when people I met failed to asume that I was an idiot, or less intelligent and well-informed than "the average person," especially themselves. This has also been my experience in Internet discussions. I was told: "Latinos are not smart enough to be philosophers." Conga drums?
I have come to terms with the realization that, based on my name, this is how many people in America will react to me for the rest of my life. This makes me embrace my name and ethnicity. Opposition makes me more determined to persist in my struggle. At least, I can tell you that you're full of shit in four languages.
Judges -- men and women in elite professions -- will condescend and patronize you, as an "urban" male. I was amazed that people who had read a tiny fraction of what I had absorbed while still a student, assumed that I needed their instruction on cultural matters. The stupidity and shocking ignorance of judges and other powerful persons still mystifies me.
You (any minority male) will be treated by "suburbanites" with disgust and disdain, thinly hidden behind a token or minimal civility. "You are unethical." New York is an exception to these comments and a unique place in the world. I have attended lectures by distinguished philosophers (including Jacques Derrida) and others, rarely encountering members of New Jersey's legal profession at these events. In addition to my formal education, I have spent more than a decade on serious and intense study of philosophy, literature, politics-economics, law, sciences, arts -- viewing taped lectures, reading a great deal of scholarly work -- developing skills in several languages and seeking out aesthetic experiences.
I was told by Internet "debators": "We are going to instruct you." Participants in a philosophy forum explained to me that I "just didn't get it." I got it alright. I am looking forward to meeting all of them again. (Another inserted "error" was corrected in the foregoing paragraph.)
"Where do you live?" This question usually means: "Are you a ghetto person?" Your answer will immediately "place" you in a category of persons unworthy of being taken seriously. Liberal fashionistas will "instruct" you concerning politically correct or acceptable views of matters which they fail to understand half as well as you do. Then they'll offer you a subscription to The Nation. I think of feminism as a social justice issue. Feminism is not (primarily) a matter of cultural identity from which all males are excluded, I hope, even as they are demonized.
Identity issues are relevant in feminism, mostly as they are related to power struggles. I have also encountered women whose so-called "feminism" is the flip-side of the sexism they deplore and is just as hateful. (See "Skinny People Dressed in Black" and yes, I have read Backlash and The Beauty Myth.)
"Surely we can agree," Drucilla Cornell writes, "that feminism is about changing a woman's place in the world." Beyond Accomodation: Ethical Feminism, Deconstruction, and the Law (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), p. xv. (Professor Cornell is better than the other two authors mentioned.)
If you are a minority male in America, you will live with daily insults and humiliations (different from those faced by your ethnic sisters). You will be provided with fewer emotional resources for coping with anger and frustration than women. You cannot discuss feelings or admit to having them, for example. Soon, you won't have too many feelings left. You will be programmed to "get" women (you have been taught, absurdly, that women are trophies, like expensive cars).
You will be told to have lots of sex, then denied socially acceptable means to the items that are said to make you sexually desirable -- like money and power. So you will go out to get those things -- money and power as well as sex -- in any way that you can. Mostly, you will go out to get respect from those same people who deny it to you, "suburbanites," who fail to "see you" as a person as opposed to a category.
Mark Leyner? Were you among my interlocutors at The Philosophy Cafe, Mark? At whose invitation were you a debator at that site, if you were? ("Sybil R. Moses and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Stephen J. Schaeffer and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")
Struggle for respect is a mission to obtain what every human being deserves by virtue of his or her humanity, a modicum of recognition. It will be mostly minority or poor young men who will die in street battles, as canon fodder in Iraq, in prisons, as crime victims. It is minority and all poor men who will be objects of disdain and biased treatment in courtrooms, schools, institutions and professions, also at the office Christmas party. Explosions of violence are not unforeseeable in such circumstances. I have a feeling that there is one coming to America's inner cities.
This observation is not a matter of complacency for me. I am disturbed to see growing social tendencies that can only lead in one direction. There are many men walking around New York city who are on the edge of an explosion. 283,000 jobs were lost last month from the American economy. Those jobs "ain't" coming back. The jobs that are becoming available are a tiny amount of what has been lost. If you see a fraction of the hatred in the eyes of people aware of being exploited and violated in America -- hatred that I see and anger in which I share, every day -- then you should be nervous about what is coming to America's streets and culture.
There is never a shortage of "dominations and powers" that are highly adept at exploiting that anger to produce violence on demand. As we approach 2011, we are holding steadily at almost 10% unemployment. I have shared with some young men in a look of absolute hatred and disgust directed at comfortable hypocrites offering unsolicited advice to a homeless man on Broadway, in Manhattan.
My tendency is to say something funny to defuse a situation that could result in someone getting killed without knowing why the explosion happened. I still read the equivalent of a book every two days or so. I see films in several languages. I know classical symphonic music, Opera, American jazz. I attend, regularly, theatrical performances, visit museums, study science. Yet I continue to be dismissively "instructed" concerning the right view of controversies that are barely (and badly) understood by my would-be instructors.
My writings are censored and suppressed. I am "tracked" by government agencies when I make use of Internet resources. I am often followed when I walk in the city. This daily experience of trivializing, silencing, suppression and dismissal is not common even to poor women in America, but it is "hunky dory" when it comes to minority men who are crime victims of the power stucture. Nothing is more frightening to America's power structure than a highly intelligent and well-educated minority male with radical political views. ("Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal" and, soon, "Malcolm X at The Oxford Union.")
My experiences reveal a disdain for all that is "foreign" or "rebellious" -- together with delight in ignorance -- among influential and affluent people in American society or media. Such people are detested everywhere in the world. They should be. Furthermore, they sometimes write reviews for The New York Times and The New Yorker. (Compare "Incoherence in 'The New York Times,'" and "Incoherence in 'The New Yorker,'" then "What is it like to be plagiarized?" and/or "Barack Obama and The New Yorker" as well as "'The Reader': A Movie Review" and "'Revolutionary Road': A Movie Review.")
Intelligence has become a category of guilt for men like me. This is not a moment in history when stupidity in Americans is wise or tolerable. Assholes who attend Ivy League schools remain the idiots that they are to less affluent fellow citizens. Marilyn, you are smarter than most of the idiots I went to school with and, probably, also smarter than me. Some of those idiots who attended classes with me are now government officials or judges. They are "successful" and I am not. Along with many victims of their success, I do not envy such persons. This is when you should insert another "error" in this essay, Mr. Rabner. ("The Heidegger Controversy" and "Manohla Dargis Strikes Again!")
I live in a society which -- despite the bullshit spouted by politicians and judges -- regards the torture and killing of minority young men as acceptable, since such actions are greeted with indifference by incompetent and corrupt courts in places like New Jersey. It is acceptable to destroy or ignore -- even to steal -- the artistic or intellectual work of minority men. By tampering with their blogs and MSN groups perhaps? Or by denying them the use of images?
This essay that I am now writing has been subjected to numerous attempts at censorship. My image-posting feature in my blog has been disabled. After all, minority or urban men merit no recognition, neither do their creative or communicative efforts. Ignore them. Deny them an opportunity to be heard. They are less than human. All outlets for frustrations are cut off.
Any more "errors" to be inserted in this text, "gentlemen"? "Daniel Mendlesohn" (Rabner, Poritz, or Tuchin?) seems to express opinions concerning "Brideshead Revisited" that are strikingly similar to mine. Coincidence? ("What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "'Brideshead Revisited': A Movie Review.")
I wonder why those young men are upset and violent? I am baffled by the print media's indifference to my experiences of censorship and harassment. I realize that the connections between politicians and journalists have become much too cozy (Mr. Leyner?), but there must be a few writers who are honest and care about censorship. Mafia intimidation? ("How Censorship Works in America" and "Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey.")
A lid is put on the proverbial kettle as the heat rises: racism, ethnic discrimination, a culture of violence, poverty in a money-worshipping culture, denial of EARNED recognition for intellectual or artistic achievement, denigration, disrespect, closure of creative opportunities, daily insults and violations of one's rights from police and other authority figures, insults or worse directed at family members, frustrations (economic and otherwise), differential rewards granted to those less talented -- and much less intelligent -- who come from the right neighborhoods or schools, separation from loved-ones or broken homes, legal double standards and visible corruption among judges, who then evaluate our ethics. Ethics? You are judging my ethics? Here is the result:
"An internationally known drag queen and recording artist was robbed and beaten by four trash-talking bullies who shouted anti-gay slurs at him in the East Village early yesterday. 'We're going to kill you, f----t!' at least one of them screamed as they followed 38-year-old Kevin Aviance down the street. 'We're going to get you, f---t!' ..."
Notice the victim's perceptive observation:
"The gang dragged him to the sidewalk and started kicking him, he said. 'They were not human,' ..."
No, they were not human, Kevin. Those young men were MADE inhuman by the inhumanities of a society insisting on depriving them of recognition, dignity and of their chosen meanings, refusing to see them as persons. This violent act against a gay man is about two things for those urban men: 1) an assertion of masculinity -- which is all these men have left -- as a sick and twisted version of pride. It is an insistence on being "seen" by those aligned with what (the criminals regard) as opposed to them, which is: 2) the world of feelings and beauty, gentleness and sensitivity that they secretly desire but which is perceived as closed to them forever.
This attack on a gay man was an assault on the feminine in the perpetrators. It resulted from a failure to admit or recognize what is feminine within them, in those young men. (See the essays on Nietzsche and Hamlet in my blogs.)
Denial of femininity as equal to masculinity -- as a kind of strength and resource for resistance -- is no accident. No, I am not saying that they should all be gay or that I am gay. I am suggesting that recognition of both feminine and masculine aspects of our natures is a matter of sanity. Not to grant such recognition is to guarantee psychological turmoil, whether for the radical feminist, who hates all men; or the young tough guy who hates all women. It is crucial to see that BOTH of these psychological "types" are only hating themselves. ("Thoughts of a Domestic Revolutionary.")
Masculine and feminine are aspects of what is universally human and these qualities (the boundaries of masculinity and femininity) mean whatever we want them to mean socially -- and no, there is no contradiction between these principles. Put Judith Butler together with Carl Jung, then you will begin to have some sense of the complexities of human nature with regard to gender. No wonder some people want to silence me for suggesting these things. I am going to spoil the party for trendy "feministas" and for macho, arm-pit sniffing, back-to-the-good-old-days guys. Great.
See June Singer, Androgyny: Towards a New Theory of Sexuality (New York: Anchor, 1977) and Judith Butler, Gender Theory: Gender and the Subversion of Identity (New York & London: Routledge, 1999). ("Let's Hear it for the Boys.")
I am finishing the study of a collection of scholarly essays commenting on the work of Hans Georg Gadamer, and I have discovered this gem: Georgia Warnke, "Social Identity as Interpretation," in J. Malpas, U. Arnswald, J. Kertscher, eds., Gadamer's Century: Essays in Honor of Hans-Georg Gadamer (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), pp. 307-331 and Georgia Warnke, Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 167-175.
I say all of this knowing the ridicule and insults of me that will follow from public honesty about our natures, in terms of gender, mostly from heterosexual men in an urban environment. Men who are honest about the equality and importance of what is feminine in themselves -- and in society -- will be called all of those names that were used against the victim in this gay-bashing incident. I am sad to say that this is especially likely in "macho" Latino culture.
Being heterosexual makes it worse, somehow, since anyone who advocates these egalitarian views is then accused of being "on the side of the f__s." As a matter of fact, I am on the side of gays and against all violence directed at people because of sexual-orientation or any life-style choice. This is sufficient for moronic feministas to target me for harassment. Who knows why? Money? ("Is there a gay marriage right?")
Feminism is about social justice, as I say, not whether you look at an attractive woman when she walks by, which is something I can't and won't (and wouldn't want) to avoid. The alternative to an acceptance of one's feminine attributes, as a heterosexual man, is a likely plunge into self-destructive violence and pathological behavior. Allow yourself to feel or you will regret it. Do not worry about the insults because those who shout insults at you, seeking to censor you are only frightened about what is feminine/masculine in themselves.
Time for more "error insertions," boys and girls? The victim of this assault was African-American, like two of the perpetrators, who were striking at their own (unknowingly) hated race, as a way of showing their superiority to what society has taught them to despise, themselves. It is the ultimate victory of racism to instill self-hatred, which results in self-destruction by those who see their own dark skin as a category of guilt. They must strike against that skin color outside of themselves. One way to do this "striking against" is to victimize others who look like they do, which is only a way of hurting themselves even more.
Instilled self-hatred is exactly what happens to many women. Marilyn? The flip side of this coin is the young ethnic male who has nothing going for him, but takes pride in "at least not being black." These are the men who wield baseball bats against minority males wandering into their "territories." ("Jersey Shore.") As adults, they may enter politics to become "big fish in little ponds" by running the corrupt local town council in a New Jersey community or becoming judges in New Jersey's mafia-saturated municipal courts or "crusading" county prosecutors. I have met such men. ("Jay Romano and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")
In a situation that provides many of those minority and poor young men with a life-expectancy comparable to troops in war time, violence is an assurance that one is still alive and somehow fighting back against the "shits who are killing us." (Norman Mailer)
I first wrote these words after spending nearly twenty minutes fighting to get back into my own blog, so that I could finish an early version of this essay. As I did so, I had no idea whether I would be able to post it. My texts are routinely defaced or altered in their spacing and form, so that young people who may benefit from reading them will be discouraged from doing so.
I wonder why I continue to be censored? It is impossible that daily censorship over a period of many years could take place without state action. Furthermore, this attempted censorship is content-based. ("Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba.")
I can never be sure of whether my computer will be operational from one day to the next. I can never know whether my writings have been destroyed by New Jersey's protected hackers. Cognitive dissonance takes over when I listen to U.S. government officials lecture to the world about free speech. Efforts to destroy a voice with some power and resonance for others are never innocent, politically or aesthetically. There is something about the mere existence of an articulate spokesperson for the underclass (or some portion of it) in America that powerful segments of society find highly unsettling and unforgivable. I suspect that this reality explains many of the difficulties faced by Reverend Sharpton in his life. ("Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal.")
I refuse to give in to violence. I refuse to do to another person what has been done to me. I also refuse to surrender my demand for justice and respect. My humanity is not negotiable. I will keep writing. ("What is 'homeland security'?" and "Habeas Corpus.")
I say to those violent young men that their quest for the "sweet," for that moment of affirmation and respect, of self-imposition against a reality that closes in on you, when you show the world that you've got balls, cannot be won with violence. The "sweet" can only be achieved with the recognition of women's equality and everyone's acceptance (especially your own) of all that is feminine and beautiful in you, as a proud young minority man.
What you want is love and beauty, and those things can only be given to you. They must be earned morally, in other words, and cannot be taken by force from unwilling persons. You cannot make persons or the world love you, but if you can find and/or create yourself, then you will discover that people do love you. And there are forces in American society that will do everything in their power to prevent you from doing exactly that, achieving yourself. There are also forces in society wishing to assist and facilitate this "effort of self-becoming." (James Baldwin, Carlos Fuentes, Toni Morrison.)
Anyone who violates your privacy, presumes to make your value choices, manipulates or hurts your family members to insult you -- anyone doing these things, for any reason and without your consent, is reducing you to the status of a SLAVE or a laboratory animal. "It is a real job" to fight such oppression, but we must never hesitate to struggle for autonomy. The attractiveness of a handgun for very young minority men is that the weapon has a way of compelling the attention and respect from others that are denied to those young men under ordinary circumstances.
To reach for that gun, however, is to surrender and give up on your claim to be respected -- for yourself. Fear of a weapon is not respect for you as a man. Skills at displacing intellectual and creative energy into academic study or creative work will never be developed by them -- angry young men -- whereas the fury they feel (which I share) will demand expression somehow. You will not find American media addressing those young men nor examining their concerns intelligently or sympathetically. Popular culture and exploitative media designed to make them more dangerous is directed at young men. We are pouring gasoline into the flames, then we complain that the fire persists -- the fire this time. ("America's Love of Violence.")
Feminists often fail to appreciate the hardships of minority men's lives or the treatment received by African-American and Latino intellectuals and artists denied all recognition. A review of Amiri Baraka's "Dutchman" in The New York Times is still among the most incompetent and racist pieces that I have seen in that publication. And that's saying a lot, given the decline at the Times. I will be discussing Claudia Roth Pierpont's (pseudonym?) review entitled "James Baldwin's Flight From America," in The New Yorker, February 9 & 16, 2009, at p. 98.
Ms. Roth Pierpont must be related to "Barbara Taylor Cohen" or "Manohla Dargis" perhaps. I know, maybe she's "Patricia Cohen." Or is she the opposite of those women? How can writers bearing all of those names appear in the same publications when their prose is so vastly different in quality? Politics, perhaps.
Benicio del Toro received the Cannes Film Festival award for best actor and Goya award for best actor -- these are globally recognized prizes -- but Mr. del Toro was not nominated for a golden globes or Oscar award for his performance in Che. ("Barack Obama and The New Yorker.")
Mysteriously, Meryl Streep was nominated for both awards for her performance in something called: Mama Mia. Mr. del Toro's wearing of a gun in Che must have made his performance unacceptable to the skinny people dressed in black who constitute the culture police in Manhattan. Upper West Side self-admirers have become irrelevant even to most people in this city let alone to national or global culture. (Again: "Barack Obama and 'The New Yorker.'")
You want to belong to a community that values and respects you. You have no way of obtaining the things that you mistakenly believe are requisites for membership in such a community. All you have to do is stop, look around you, then give to others the respect and concern that you desire for yourself. You will receive the same in return. All you have to do is to be. No matter how poor you are, you possess a very special kind of magic -- like the force in Star Wars, let's call it "the Kingdom of Heaven" -- and it is always within you. Your sensitivity to the feelings of others is what makes you strong, like the women who cared for you as a child.
Celebrate them -- celebrate feelings of love and compassion for those brave women. See where those emotions of tenderness and concern with strength take you, be like Ali or Lennon. My prediction is that they will take you to a different place, with less anger and more creativity. Fight to hold on to those creative impulses -- good anger -- no matter who tries to destroy you and/or your work. And they will try to destroy you. I am also fighting to do my work -- fighting morally and lovingly -- to give that work to others who may use it as a form of resistance.
Don't be afraid to be child-like, to weep, to be filled with joy at beauty. Don't be frightened of (or by) your humanity, which is the beauty in you. Be a warrior for love. ("How Censorship Works in America" and "What is it like to be censored in America?")
I feel disgust and disdain along with rage for the powerful in places (like New Jersey) who exploit and violate people, like me -- while making a nice living at it -- for the torturers and those who cover for them, for the "holier-than-thou" crowd worshipping at the altars of new gods, pseudosciences or positivist legal schemes, while others are made to "adjust" to their values and hypocrisies. Your "therapy" destroys lives. Your lives are lies, whatever robes of office you wear and no matter how much wealth you accumulate. This means you, Terry and Diana. (See "Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Jaynee LaVecchia and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in America," then "Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks" and "New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead.")
"Unstated but obvious is the social sense that there is not nearly enough sweet for everyone. And so the sweet goes only to the victor, the best, the most, the man [or woman] who knows the most about how to find his [or her] energy and how not to lose it. The emphasis is on energy [which can be a woman's energy of life-enhancement] because the [philosophical] psychopath ... is nothing without it, since [he or she] does not have the protection of a position or a class to rely on when ... overextended ... . So the language of the street is a language of energy, how it is found, how it is lost."
The urban male needs to recognize the zen-like negative energy of his woman's side that says: "The best way to get even is to be good, so you can do good." Love is power of resistance. It is that "combative spirituality" (Cornel West) or "philosophical Ali shuffle" that says: "I will deal with your hostility with a smile and by laughing at you."
Women have been using this power of resistance for centuries and sharing it with those men who are not too stupid to get it. Think of Dr. King and Ghandi. I am not going to let you turn me into what you are, a person poisoned by hatred. I will not be destroyed by hatred because I have too much love to tap into, too much to do and not enough time to do it. I call this Marilyn's "hands on hip move," named after someone I know and love.
Leontyne Price spoke of racism as "somebody else's problem." She had to get ready for a performance and would not worry about who was upset that she won the lead in Tosca. Dr. Ben Carson is the world's foremost pediatric brain surgeon. Your child's life may depend on his multimillion dollar hands. To insult, attack and hit Dr. Carson as he is performing surgery on your loved-one would be unwise.
Barack Obama is seeking to perform delicate surgery on America's economy, legal system, and image in the world -- after eight years of grotesque incompetence in the handling of all three have placed the nation in lethal peril -- to obstruct President Obama at this moment may be unwise, if you care about your family's future and your own well-being. This is true even if you are a Cubanazo-Republicano with a gold medal on your chest and your house "all paid for" in Miami. Plastic covers for the couch?
"Security" is not just a military matter. No nation that has experienced economic and cultural collapse has retained military superiority. President Obama and Secretary Clinton are doing an almost miraculous job of coping with monumental foreign policy challenges. Vice President Biden should be the person to address the anti-Americanism issue before the world. You want these people to succeed. Censoring and further harming me is making them liars when it comes to human rights and free speech issues in the world. ("Is America's Legal Ethics a Lie?" and "America's Unethical Medical Torturers.")
My fight against corruption and criminality in New Jersey's legal system may benefit everyone who lives in that state. If you can't or won't help me in that struggle, then get out of the way. You cannot make me believe -- not at this point in my life -- your insults and lies. I cannot accept your claim that my writing is poor or unworthy of publication. You cannot convince me that I am stupid or that my writing is ineffective, not when I see people who can't write to save their lives getting a book deal or reviewing movies in the Times.
You cannot persuade me that in a state filled to the brim with morally repulsive individuals, like Neil M. Cohen, Esq. -- usually occupying positions of power and influence in the legal profession and politics, Anne Milgram, Esq.? -- I should accept the anonymous smears and insults, attacks on my name and dignity emanating from the corridors of power of that malodorous territory near the old Raritan. ("Go, Rutgers!")
I am going to choose to turn away from hatred and use my anger in writing. I will continue protesting and confronting you with what you are. On the polished surface of my prose, you cannot avoid seeing your own horrifying face, New Jersey ... and now it disgusts even you.
What have you become, Mr. Rabner? Have you no shame, Ms. Milgram?
