Who Cares?

While one may take heart in the fact that the American public just doesn't seem invested enough in the war effort to let the Bush administration get away with the full-scale war in Iraq that its Right Zionist insiders wanted, what do we make of the fact that even the highest-ranking elected representatives and officials in Washington complicit in the war don't seem to care enough to learn the difference between Sunnis and Shi'ites? Call me crazy, but if you're in a position of power and have come out in support of one or another faction's imperialist agenda, wouldn't you at some point bother to figure out the details and long-term implications of their war strategies?

Of course, Jeff Stein's above-linked piece in The New York Times could just as easily be applied to the anti-war camp. "If knowing your enemy is the most basic rule of war," as Stein says, then anti-imperialists should think twice before finding common cause with just anyone who opposes the Bush administration's execution of the war in Iraq. At home as well as abroad, the basic question remains: "Who's on what side today, and what does each want?" Perhaps the press and the rival cabals of warmakers have done such a good job at mystifying and oversimplifying the on-the-ground realities - as well as the decisionmakers' motivations, strategies, and designs on Iraq - that they've fooled the public and the powerful alike. I may be more inclined to believe that, for better or worse, most of us just don't care. And that may be good enough for me.

What I want to know is this: How many people who do have an opinion on - or worse yet, a say in - US war policy remain blind to the truly monumental stakes of the project in Iraq?

Think of the Children!

Teenagers are back in the headlines in America. Over the past couple of weeks we've witnessed three more suburban/rural school shootings, one of which was perpetrated by a student. The biggest news, however, has been the ever-ballooning Mark Foley scandal.

As you'd expect, there has been no shortage of outrage amongst the moralists on both sides of the aisle. The Family Research Council issued the following statement, the first half of which has predictably been echoed by Democrats:

If our children aren't safe in the halls of Congress, where are they safe?

Both political parties need to be more serious about protecting children from sexual predators. We need public policy in our country that protects marriage, respects parental authority and aggressively polices boundaries around our children.

Strange, I don't see any FRC press on the safety of kids who are getting shot at school. With all this attention on Foley, he must have done some pretty heinous stuff. Well, let's see. It is now alleged that Foley had sex with a 21-year-old former page, which is of course not even close to illegal (I somehow doubt we'd have to look far to learn that some 50-something Congressmen have had sex with women half their age). But there is that tepid - I mean positively lurid - IM conversation with the former page.

To review: the FRC is arguing that to ensure that no Congressperson ever again engages in a mildly raunchy IM conversation with a kid who wasn't really into it but for some reason decided to play along, we'd better be sure to...bolster parental authority while...aggressively policing boundaries around our children? Wait a second: all this for some bad cybersex? What's going on here?

As I said, kids have been in the news a lot lately. But they're not all portrayed as passive victims of some ravenous predator. The New York Times reports that evangelical leaders "fear the loss of their teenagers." This ain't exactly news, but someone at the Times thought we should all be aware that Christian teenagers and their pastors

say they cannot compete against a pervasive culture of cynicism about religion, and the casual 'hooking up' approach to sex so pervasive on MTV, on Web sites for teenagers and in hip-hop, rap and rock music...They said they often felt alone in their struggles to live by their 'Biblical values' by avoiding casual sex, risqué music and videos, Internet pornography, alcohol and drugs.

At one meeting, youth ministry leader Ron Luce

led the crowd in an exercise in which they wrote on scraps of paper all the negative cultural influences, brand names, products and television shows that they planned to excise from their lives. Again they streamed down the aisles, this time to throw away the "cultural garbage."

Trash cans filled with folded pieces of paper on which the teenagers had scribbled things like Ryan Seacrest, Louis Vuitton, "Gilmore Girls," "Days of Our Lives," Iron Maiden, Harry Potter, "need for a boyfriend" and "my perfect teeth obsession." One had written in tiny letters: "fornication."

Some teenagers threw away cigarette lighters, brand-name sweatshirts, Mardi Gras beads and CDs, one titled "I'm a Hustla."

In short, pastors are finding that while their crusades against secular material culture may work on the pre-pubescents, they're having a lot more trouble keeping teenagers connected to the teachings of the church. The Internet and MTV, fashion and "fornication" all tempt teenagers to abandon their flock for the reckless, individualistic hedonism encouraged by secular culture. But as anyone who's been reading the news for the past few decades knows, moral panic is nothing new. And it's not just the churchgoing kids who are said to be at risk of spinning out of control - and out of the social fabric (although with this Foley scandal swinging into high gear, it's no wonder that today's youth aren't engaged in civic life. Or would we expect the opposite?).

Since the emergence of the teenager as linked to consumer culture in 1950s middle-class America, adolescence "has been both celebrated - as a time of innocence and idealism, a time when all life's choices can still be made - and condemned - as a time of anarchy and hysteria, irresponsibility and selfishness" (I don't have the full citation here but can attribute the quote to Simon Frith).

Adult anxieties surrounding teen independence speak to the relative freedom that young people have come to enjoy as consumers within market capitalism. Kids’ ability to spend time and money in places of their choosing has contributed to a breakdown in the hegemony of adult-supervised space. Today, notes Amy Best in her study Prom Night, "schools have to compete against other leisure spaces (McDonald's, movies, shopping malls, video arcades, and dance clubs) organized within commodity culture" (134). Distanced from the gaze and control of adults, teens in market spaces are encouraged to act as subjects of their own desires in pursuit of personal gratification. In this context, the FRC's comments start to make a little more sense. Protecting children often has nothing to do with ensuring that kids are "safe" (which is itself a loaded term) and everything to do with bolstering adults' ability to regulate youth spaces and behaviors.

What better time to see Kirby Dick's This Film Is Not Yet Rated, a stunningly smart look at the Motion Picture Association of America's intensely secretive ratings board, instituted during the 1960s to protect the industry from political pressure in an era when creative content was becoming increasingly risqué. Of course, the censorsh-- er, ratings board -- operates under the guise of a benevolent guardian of the nation's youth whose primary task is to "advance cautionary warnings to parents so that parents c[an] make the decision about the moviegoing of their young children."

Dick interviews directors who describe their amazement at learning that initial cuts of their films were flagged with NC-17 ratings not for brutally graphic scenes in which women or queers are the object of extreme violence, but instead for scenes in which these same people are the subjects of sexual desire. Mary Harron, the brilliant director of American Psycho, asserts that the MPAA seems to believe that these sorts of depictions have the potential to pose a significant threat to our nation's social bonds. Indeed, it seems that for an organization like the MPAA, which is charged with "protecting" children and helping parents keep the social fabric strong, there is nothing scarier than portrayals of women experiencing sexual pleasure. Well, that and queer sex.

I'll come back to this later, but first let's pay a visit to The New York Times' David Brooks, who bolsters the FRC and MPAA with some much-needed support. Yes, it seems that Brooks, too, is outraged. You see, enlightened man that he is, Brooks attended the Vagina Monologues a few years back, only to find the audience roaring - roaring! - in approval of a story about a female secretary who has an affair with a thirteen-year-old girl. (I don't know if there's anything funnier than the mere idea of Brooks attending the Vagina Monologues, but it might be the thought of him seething and muttering under his breath, "Who's in charge here?!" as he is swallowed by a sea of women hooting and hollering at the onstage antics.)

How is it, Brooks wonders, that Foley is universally reviled (rightly, of course) for his explicit IMs with a page while women in the VM audience were cheering a far more abhorrent act of depravity (not only did the couple in the story have sex, but the older woman taught her charge "some new techniques" for masturbation)? Borrowing from k, I'd like to note that the characterization of "sexual predators" casts a woefully wide net, including everyone from those who sexually abuse children to those who engage in sex acts with willing participants who in some cases are not even below the law's arbitrary "age of consent" (in D.C., we're talking about "a person who has not yet attained the age of 16 years").

Brooks derides the code of "cosmopolitan culture" that says:

Behavior is not wrong if it feels good and doesn't hurt anybody else. Sex is not wrong so long as it is done by mutual consent.

By the rules of expressive individualism, Ensler's characters did nothing wrong. They performed an act that was mutually pleasurable and fulfilling.

Just so we're all on the same page here: It's the 21st century, it's the New York Times, it's... time to get upset about something that

a) "is done with mutual consent"

b) "feels good"

c) "was mutually pleasurable and fulfilling"

d) "doesn't hurt anybody else"

Are you with me and Brooksie (sorry, channeling Maureen Dowd)? Let's see how he wriggles his way out of complete I-know-what's-best-for-you-and-it's-not-feeling-good authoritarianism and brings us back to good ol' enlightened liberalism. Let it be said that I know and respect a lot of liberals who argue that we should think twice about our own pleasure when it may be connected to the suffering of others. But what's wrong with feeling good if it's at the expense of nobody else, Dave? Why are you aghast that the young girl in Ensler's story was taught to pleasure herself?

[W]hen an adult seduces a child, it tears the social fabric that joins all adults and all children. When a congressman flirts with a page, it tears the social trust that undergirds the entire page program. When an adult seduces a teenager, it ruptures the teenagers' bond with his family, and harms the bonds joining all families.

This older code emphasizes not so much individual exploration as social ecology. It's based on the idea that people are primarily shaped by the moral order around them, which is engraved upon their minds via a million events and habits. Individuals are not defined by their lifestyle preferences but by their social functions as parents, job-holders and citizens, and the way they contribute to the shared moral order.

In this view, the social fabric is a precious thing, always in danger. And what Foley, and the character in the Ensler play, did was wrong, consent or no consent, because of the effects on the wider ecology.

We're not just talking about sex here. We're talking about "a million events and habits" that "contribute to the shared moral order." The pursuit and practice of any individual pleasure that undermines any one of these million habits or roles is like taking a straight razor to our social fabric. In Brooks' world, it is incumbent upon us all to deny ourselves any pleasure that might disrupt the current social order (remind me again when we all signed up for that in the first place?). Remember, your life should never be about what you want - it's about who you are. You're a parent, an employee, a goddamn American! Whatever you're about to do for yourself, don't do it. Think of the children! Sit down. Get married. Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots.

Now I wonder why the women in the VM audience weren't as keen as Brooksie boy to judge the women in the story by their "social roles"? The "older code" has served women well for centuries, right? Well, why don't you ask the women who grew up under the boot of the patriarchal code that: requires them to think of a man's pleasure first and always; teaches that their bodies are shameful; values docility and servility; requires mothers to represent and uphold the values of society and the nation; asks that they continually sacrifice their own desires so that the next generation can be clothed by the very same social fabric which they are duty-bound to uphold. The list doesn't end there, but for brevity's sake let's let that suffice for now.

Now why would an audience full of women celebrate the sexual liberation of a teenage girl within the context of a consensual, mutually pleasurable and fulfilling lesbian relationship? Brooks is right - as are the FRC, the MPAA, and a whole host of others - when he worries that pleasure, consensual or not, has the potential to irreparably damage the current constitution of our society. I'm guessing that at least some of the women in that audience don't share these folks' devotion to the social bonds that hold our moral order together. Thank you, David Brooks, for reminding us that those who carry on about "protecting our children" from sex, popular culture, and themselves are usually more interested in preserving their place in the social order than freedom for all.

Cultural Learnings

Sascha Baron Cohen should be sending flowers and chocolates to the state of Kazakhstan and the Anti-Defamation League, both of which have recently expressed concerns with Cohen's portrayal of the exaggeratedly and hilariously bigoted Kazakh Borat (and whose website promoting the forthcoming Borat movie brings me back to the days of the Mahir phenomenon).

Lest American investors and tourists get the wrong idea about Kazakhstan (though I'd be hard-pressed to show you even one American who has any ideas about the place), the nation's foreign ministry spokesman and embassy in Washington have condemned Cohen for propagating the idea that Kazakhstan is a backwards wasteland paradise for homophobes, misogynists, and anti-Semites. Of course, the government's complaints have resulted in the kind of free P.R. opportunities that entertainers like Cohen can only dream of; he promptly took advantage of the situation, engaging the critics in his "homeland" by replying to the Kazakh charges in character.

In its carefully-worded statement, the ADL did not argue for censorship or denounce Cohen for Borat's anti-Jewish songs (the most famous of which can be found here) and rants. It did, however, employ one of my favorite warnings against artistic and comedic freedom: in the words of one source's report on the statement, the organization "fear[ed] the humor to be dangerously too sophisticated for some." While the ADL moderates its warning by explaining that the organization is fully aware of the satirical nature of Cohen's comedy, it is clearly trying to distance itself from Cohen's approach to fighting prejudice.

The ADL's concerns stem from a fundamental misrecognition of the source of humor in Cohen's Borat sketches. There's nothing intrinsically hilarious about Borat's rendition of "Throw the Jew Down the Well" - taken out of context, few would fail to find the lyrics disturbing. But Borat's show is not about what Borat says or does, but about what his presence does to the unwitting folks around him.

That's why the Kazakh government should also give Borat a break. I'm not saying that Borat's frequent malapropisms and outlandish proclamations about Kazakh culture aren't funny. But they're not the point. If the pleasure in watching Cohen's Borat sketches turned on ridiculing a fictionalized Eastern European culture, that trick would have gotten old very fast.

Though Borat is ostensibly representing Kazakhstan, all of Cohen's Da Ali G Show sketches are purely about America and how the Americans who he encounters react to him. The pleasure in viewing lies in watching how Borat's mere presence alters and challenges the space of the politically correct American culture that he inhabits.

When Borat finds himself among bigots, he quickly disarms them, carrying them out of the P.C. American culture that punishes those who fail to keep their prejudices veiled and into the fictional Kazakhstan where, Borat assures them, the most un-P.C. of fantasies are lived out. Borat's presence provides a safe space for these people to crawl out of the woodwork and say what's on their minds. This stuff can be sad and disturbing and uncomfortable to watch. But it's almost always funny to watch people play along with Borat, to realize that Cohen has suddenly yet subtly shifted from outrageous to straight man as his subjects one-up him with the real-life absurdity of their beliefs. Rarely has an entertainer (improvising, no less!) showcased such striking comedic prowess in the service of such biting social criticism. In a P.C. world where there are fewer and fewer places for people to publicly state that Hitler had the right idea, Cohen puts the bigots in the spotlight exposes just how dimly they shine.

When Borat encounters the opposite type of Americans - the P.C. type that is eager to teach him American etiquette or to give him acting lessons - we are invited to observe the absurdities on the flip side of our culture. Most people who come up against Borat's rampant misogyny, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and the like stammer and sidestep his blatant offensiveness. Relying on his subjects' unyielding respect of and deference to cultural difference, he shows us Americans who politely downplay or skitter past Borat's blithe disregard for the equality of women, Jews, queers, etc. Here part of the fun is in watching Cohen challenge the limits of multiculturalism and political correctness, to see just how far he can take his act with well-meaning folks who will tolerate in a Kazakh what they would never abide by in one of their own.

Like Ali G, Cohen's streetwise rapper-cum-talk show host, and Bruno, his hopelessly stereotypical gay Berliner who skewers the world of fashion and the homophobic machismo on display during spring break in Daytona Beach, Borat is here to bring attention to the most absurd of contradictions in American politics and culture. With all due respect to the state of Kazakhstan and the ADL, Borat is dangerous to nobody but the Americans whom he visits. He's no eastern European half-wit. He's just a British Jew holding a mirror up to our culture.