Why dont we protest?

[Dave Monroe]

Why don’t we protest?

Apr 11, 2006
by Mary Grabar 

[...]

What is the job description for “activist”? It
includes a rejection of everything that has come
before the “activist” has discovered his own
profundity—usually by the age of eighteen. Often this
youthful wisdom matches that of his Marxist teacher.
An activist sees violence in a positive light, as a
sort of aesthetic display. But most activists live far
away from such violence. From their offices they just
like to write about the redemptive qualities of
violence as Norman Mailer did in his The White Negro.
In this little known 1957 pamphlet, Mailer presents
the “Negro” male as the new model for the rebellious
white male. It was the black male’s “authenticity,”
manifested by his propensity to violence, that Mailer
praised. Thomas Pynchon, literary darling of the 1960s
radicals, similarly equated a rejection of traditional
values through violence with manhood.  For the readers
of the New York Times Magazine, in their penthouse
suites, he presents them with his insights in a 1966
article titled “A Journey into the Mind of Watts”:

    As this summer warms them [the residents of Watts]
up, last August’s riot is being remembered less as
chaos and more as art.  Some talk now of a balletic
quality to it, a coordinated and graceful drawing of
cops away from the center of the action, a scattering
of The Man’s power, either with real incidents or
false alarms. 

In this article Pynchon shows his empathy for
disaffected residents, “boys who like to wear Malcolm
hats, or Afro haircuts,” who reject the job-seeking
advice from counselors at government-sponsored
programs. For Pynchon, “Far from a sickness, violence
may be an attempt to communicate, or to be who you
really are.”  


http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/marygrabar/2006/04/11/193273.html

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