Literary V.-Chips

[Steelhead]

Ever since Mascaro weighed in with his astonishingly moronic commentary on
that Kenosha Kid, Orson Welles (Gregg Toland's cinematography alone vaults
CitKane to the top five films of all time), I've only read about one out
every 20 postings to this list, which seems to be ensared in an entropic
tailspin.

By chance (or destiny) I came Diana York Blaine's prudish postings on Larry
Flynt, in particular, and pornographers (whatever that means) generically.
Like the rolly-polly Andrea Dworkin in her censorship tracts, Blaine often
speaks in the imperial "we" to parry her points. As someone who writes for
living, I should probably be more infuriated and threatened by her
censorious ravings than--curiously enough--I am. Certainly, I am not
foolish enough to assert that DYB's position is anti-American. The best
interpretation of the free speech clause of the constitution that I am
aware of is Leonard Levy's remarkable book:  Legacy of Suppression, which
argues convincingly that the "founding fathers" were no friends of free
speech. Adams passed Sedition Laws and Jefferson enforced them against his
political enemies. It's about power, as any reader of Foucault knows.

Blaine and her troops would probably be the first to stricken that great
regicide and defender of unrestricted speech Milton (not to mention Donne,
with all *his* crude metaphors) from the canon, have him replaced by that
literary sing-song artist Anne Bradstreet. But as a writer, I say:  Go
ahead, censor. Drive us underground. Make us speak our own dirty argot, our
own porno ebonics. There is power in existing on the black margins of
society, a community of exiles, outlaws. The more hotly the Culture
Czarinas suppress speech, the stronger the Return of the Repressed when it
comes, as that great comedy team Lenin and Freud always said.

So...what are DYB and her troops up to? The usual patronizing act with a
post-modernist twist. They truly believe that most people--especially women
I think--are idiots who don't know what is good, bad, or indifferent for
them. This is in keeping with the class bias in the feminist ranks that
revealed itself so horridly in the treatment of Paula Jones--just trailer
trash who didn't know a good thing (being flashed by cock of presidential
proportions) when she saw it.

The post-modern femininist censors (who oddly enough tend to believe as a
group that it is only the "interpretation of a text" and not the text
itself that has any "reality") are largely academics who can't write. Their
heroines Cathrine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin spew forth some of the most
turgid prose ever produced, which is admittedly a windfall for us
pornographers since only the brain dead can penetrate their syntax.

The act of censorship validates their chosen calling in life:  the
professional critic, the arbiter of taste, of standards of presentment and
discourse. Who is to say if a text or photograph or film is
pornographic--which is not to say arousing or obscene, but politically
seditious? Certainly not the individual reader. The critic, of course, the
academic hack, literary V-chips. Fuck the reader--we've dumbed them down so
much they can't possible discern objectification from commodification. They
need US to show them what to read, they need US to tell them how to act,
how to feel, to distinguish pleasure from pain. If only there was some way
to implant these qualities in their minds, in their genitals, before
birth...by the time they show up in our classes at university it's almost
too late....

In support of the fetish to oppress thought and the enjoyment vicarious
pleasures, DYB cites the inestimable Gloria Steinum. But when it comes down
to choosing between Flynt and Gloria S., I'd side with Larry any day. And I
suspect P. would too. Gloria S. afterall is an admitted narc, a
self-confessed asset of the Central Intelligence Agency, who through her
involvement with the National Student Association--and other agency
fronts--informed on student "radicals" and teachers with pacifist and
socialist leanings. Who knows what the toll in real lives was? In P.'s
world, there aren't many creatures lower than a snitch. And Gloria's
betrayals make Frenesi Gates's look like misdemeanors by comparison.

Isn't it funny how the pieces fit together? For example, wasn't it DYB who
recently--in the saddest song competition--invoked the lamentable memory of
Cat Stevens, the man who has so enthusiastically endorsed the fatwah on
TRP's friend--and the second most important living writer of
English--Salman Rushdie for his supposedly blasphemous scribblings?

Hop on board the Peace Train, b-a-b-y and ride....

Steelhead

"A schoolmaster is a man employed to tell lies to little boys."
Henry Adams in the education.