Writings by Pat Hartman.
My main claim to fame is the zine Salon: A Journal of Aesthetics, 25 issues published from 1988 to 1998. My book, Call Someplace Paradise, can be found here.
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Tuesday, March 06, 2007
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first published as "Class Privilege is Still Alive and Thriving" in the Johnstown Breeze (Colorado) Dec. 14, 2006
The holidays are over – the time of year when family is uppermost in the minds and hearts of just about everybody. During this past holiday season, my thoughts were with the Picagli family of New Haven, whose tragedy could have happened in any state, any town. The mother and children spent their first Christmas without their husband and father, because in October, Officer Dan Picagli was struck down by a vehicle. Four days later, on the 21st, he died.
We all know what happens to a cop-killer in America: unrelenting pursuit, until the day after forever, right? Around the same time, a Colorado man was sentenced to 80 years for trying to kill an officer. Not for succeeding, no – just for making the attempt. The solemn tradition of law enforcement is that nobody gets away with killing a cop.
Nobody, that is, except a federal appeals court judge, who also happens to be the cousin of former President Bush. We must take it on faith that John M. Walker Jr.’s connection to the highest office in the land has nothing to do with the fact that he walked away unscathed. Judge Walker was not required to have a breathalyzer, blood, urine, line-walking, or nose-touching test.
After the 65-year-old driver’s SUV struck Officer Picagli, the responding officers saw no "red flags" to indicate that Judge Walker might have been impaired. Excuse me? The fact that the man he mowed down was at that very moment being loaded into an ambulance, would seem to be a fairly significant red flag.
"Police have ruled out drugs and alcohol…," the local newspaper said. Usually the term "rule out" means to eliminate a factor from consideration after performing a test that proves it should be excluded. In this case, however, the officer at the scene ruled out drugs and alcohol by eyeballing the judge and, more to the point, his Bushevik ID, and arbitrarily decided this driver was not substance-impaired.
Anyone else would have been asked to take a breathalyzer test, and hit with an automatic six-month license suspension if he refused. But Judge Walker wasn’t even asked. And this in a state where a driver can be prosecuted for operating "under the influence," even without the evidence of any lab test!
"If you were driving and were involved in an accident which resulted in death or serious injury to a person, and the police have probable cause to believe you were under the influence, a BAC test is mandatory," says the state’s official website. But the bleeding, unconscious body of Officer Picagli was not seen as probable cause. According to an official spokesperson, "police did not feel it was necessary to test Walker for drugs or alcohol." And no charges were filed.
Dan Picagli was a good cop, who specialized in working with at-risk youth, dozens of whom showed up for his wake. They say he had a rare gift for seeing the potential in every child. In 1998, a White House forum on school safety focused on the school where Picagli had been the "resource officer" for three years. He appeared in training films and held workshops. In his spare time he ran the Police Athletic League, organized a toy drive at Christmas, and took youngsters to baseball games in New York City. The local kids remember his July 4th fireworks and bonfires.
A car wash donated half of a day’s profits to an education fund for the Picagli kids. See, their dad was moonlighting. He wasn’t killed on active duty, so in terms of compensation, his family probably is eligible for bupkis. Meanwhile, the "retired" judge pulls down $175,000 a year.
There’s a lovely remembrance page about "Danny Pags" on the Web, where the tributes from fellow officers have the ring of sincerity. "Maybe someday I can touch as many people as you have," said one. "Any rookie out of the Academy should want to follow in your footsteps," said another. By all accounts, Picagli was tough act to follow.
The memorial messages spoke of caring, commitment, understanding, patience, friendship, competence, integrity, dedication, and energy. Picagli was called mentor, brother, and inspiration; described as positive, upbeat, happy; with a smile and kind words; always thinking of others; never saying no to a task; a good and decent human being.
That's who John M. Walker Jr., cousin of former President Bush, killed.
People have different opinions about the police. Some would say Judge Walker managed to kill the only good cop in the entire North American continent. Others would say Officer Picagli was a shining representative of thousands of cops who are equally good. That’s not the question here. When somebody dies, it’s not our job to set a value on that life. All are equal in the eyes of the law and the Lord.
And maybe Judge Walker is not an evil man. A courthouse acquaintance describes him as "warm and wonderful." Maybe he’s a great guy, an exemplary judge, an incomparable husband and father. Maybe he wasn’t even impaired at the time of the accident – not drunk, not drugged, not speeding, not talking on a cell phone.
The fact remains that Dan Picagli is dead, and John Walker killed him. The conclusion? Perhaps it’s that someone can be a killer and a nice guy at the same time.
So: What should be done with the judge? My modest suggestion is, get him off the appeals bench and bust him back down to DUI court. Nobody should get away with hurting another person, but an awful lot of people who haven’t hurt anybody are pulled in by the law. We probably all know someone whose life has been derailed by a drunk driving checkpoint, or an accident that wasn’t really their fault.
It might be good to have a judge with some personal history ruling on DUI court cases. Maybe the system needs more judges with experience at the other end of the legal hierarchy. All we can hope for from this mess is that it’s made John M. Walker Jr. a more compassionate human being. If so, reassign him where that quality can do the most good.
Labels: DUI, justice, Picagli, Walker
posted by Pat on 11:57 AM |
Thursday, February 15, 2007
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The majority of Holocaust revisionists claim to be neither Nazis nor fascists. They believe that history has been misreported, and they urge us to entertain the concept that, even if they were Nazis or fascists, they could still be right about history being wrong.
Revisionists differ, but the major articles of faith are: a) the Nazis never planned to exterminate the Jews of Europe, but merely to remove them elsewhere, and b) gas chambers never existed.
They are called "Holocaust deniers," but this is inaccurate because in actuality, very few deny the Holocaust in the sense of saying that nothing whatsoever happened. Most admit that the European Jews suffered a very real catastrophe. Those who are skeptical about the commonly accepted Holocaust story in its entirety, nevertheless admit that Germany and its allies committed atrocities against the Jews. They admit that many died from disease, malnutrition, shooting, etc. but the total number of Jewish deaths from all causes was as low as 200,000, or one million at the most.
What Kind of Monsters Would Spread These Lies?
Revisionists seem to all have little quirks which mitigate against the formation of a stereotype. There are Jewish revisionists and gay ones, and even Scientologists. There is a vegan who used to be a hippie anti-war activist student organizer. There is a Jewish publisher of revisionist material, and a man who has been known to attend bar mitzvahs on account of his Jewish former wife. There is a revisionist with a Mexican spouse, and another who was married to a Puerto Rican. There is a revisionist who was decorated by the French government for his Resistance activities. And one who takes beautiful nature photos, and there's an aficionado of B movies.
Most un-stereotypical of all, there is Ernst Zundel, an artist who has sold over 700 paintings, 80% of them to Jews. Do these collectors buy his work because of his anti-Semitic identity? Are they aware of "who he is"? Do they actually enjoy the art and hang it on their walls? Or do they buy his work simply to burn it, like the person who purchased the oeuvre of mass murderer John Wayne Gacy?
Revisionists don't stick together very much. Similar to poets at an open reading, they have to show up and listen to each other because few others will, but they don't have to like it. Each is certain in his heart that he is the only true poet, and the rest mere poseurs. Like poets, each revisionist feels that his own version of reality is the only true one that explains everything. When critique time comes around, some un-brotherly words are heard.
Life is strange, and one of the strangest things about it is how people who aren't Politically Correct are quite often fun, interesting, generous, helpful and nice.
And this works both ways: the members of the PC corps range from "not my favorite person" to "totally humorless pain in the butt." An example is the Donahue show featuring Bradley Smith and David Cole. Smith, as usual, comes across as a soft-spoken reasonable fellow. Cole comes across as exceedingly well-informed and intelligent, though a bit hyper, and understandably frustrated by the constant interruptions. Saint Phil comes across as a pompous windbag and a flaming asshole.
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Hippest One of All?
The self-image held by revisionists tends to portray them as members of the genius fringe, among the eccentrics and heretics who later turn out to have been right all along. They place themselves in the company of Copernicus, Galileo, Socrates, even Christ, as prophets reviled during their lifetimes and gloriously vindicated by history.
It’s Pariah Time Again
George Will looked at some revisionist literature and characterized it as full of "dizzying non sequiturs and mock-scientific analyses of a sort concocted only by lunatics or sinister cynics." Revisionists get called all kinds of names, particularly if they are Jewish. All the armchair psychoanalysts leap to explain in Freudian jargon just how fucked-up they are.
Bradley Smith's description of the revisionist's life mentions "the lack of a regular income, the hostility and contempt of almost everyone in the society, the loss of old and even lifelong friends, the feeling of alienation that is irreparable, the threat of violence that's always in the background ......."
Many revisionists profess to be hurt by the ad hominem arguments favored by their critics. They especially dislike having people dwell on their motives for being revisionists, rather than looking at the research and evidence on their own merits.
They resent the vicious personal attacks, the dirty politically incorrect names they are called, like anti-Semitic, racist or neo-Nazi. Well if they're not any of these things, why do they want to associate with people who actually are, and provide them with ammunition? Tell you what, some revisionists do a damn good imitation of anti-Semitic racist neo-Nazis!
Ernst Zundel
Here we have an uninhibited Canadian neo-Nazi of whom a fellow revisionist says, "I would never want to live in a world run by Zundel." He came into prominence through reissuing a British pamphlet called "Did Six Million Really Die?" When brought to justice for the crime of "publishing false news," he carried a large wooden cross to the courthouse. This got him on the front page of seven Canadian newspapers which can't resist a good photo op. His conviction was later overturned.
More notoriety followed when his publishing house introduced the Leuchter Report to a waiting world. Zundel is said to mail out hundreds of parcels a week containing pamphlets, newsletters, books, audio tapes and dozens of different video tapes. He has a TV show that plays on public access television wherever his supporters can arrange for it. He once told an interviewer that his activities are in some respects like operating a church. The ability to procure a lot of media attention and to elicit donations from believers are important facets of the mission.
Holocaust studies cover a lot of territory, a lot of facts, and it’s inaccurate and unfair to assert that everyone troubled by questions is a fiendish Jew-hater. It's especially unfair, not to mention insulting, to Jews who have supported revisionism to one degree or another, such as Joseph Burg, who testified as a defense witness during Zundel's second trial in Toronto in 1988.
Zundel has some questionable ideas, for instance that German skinhead youths are "totally apolitical". According to him, they just hang out and look menacing for photographers in order to make their beer and cigarette money. Harmless and kind of cute, like hippies in the Haight.
Zundel sees Hilter as sort of a Jim Jones type, a sincere altruist who started out on the right track but lived too long. "Hitler's contribution to mankind, if he had died in 1939, would be as one of the great statesmen of the 20th century," he says. Another revisionist notes that no wonder he has trouble being taken seriously, as would anyone who regards "a dictator and a militarist as the misunderstood hero of the age."
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Extracted from Salon: A Journal of Aesthetics, Issue #22, published in 1994. Titled "Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Holocaust Revisionism But Were Afraid To Ask," this issue was named "Editor’s Choice" by Factsheet Five.
The entire text, and some of the artwork, is available as a Word document on a CD for $10. Write hartman at frii dot com, after changing it into an e-mail address.
posted by Pat on 10:35 PM |
Monday, January 01, 2007
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(Note from Hartman: I didn't write this. I cut it from a newspaper on May 6, 1981 (that's the date I stamped on the clipping - I don't know what date it was published) and it now exists as a yellowed clipping. I don't think these words are anywhere online and I think they should be. So I transcribe it as closely as possible.)
YIPPIEE!
"...Become A Thumbtack In The Heel Of Fascism..."
By The National Resistance Conference, March 20-22
We the members of the Youth International Party, faced with a threat to everything we've known and worked for, call on the Real Majority, the majority in this country who did not vote for Ronald Reagan, to embark on a course of total obstinate non-cooperation with Haig, Reagan and the Moral Majority, wherever and whenever they strike. We believe that anyone that does not actively encourage resistance is in fact discouraging resistance, and for this reason we are setting forth the basic points of agreement the Real Majority have in common - to draw the line, past which we cannot compromise.
1. The greatest threat is not just war abroad, but regimentation at home. De-militarize America! Unionize the Army. We deplore the splits in the anti-war, anti-draft movement which are fostered by the attempt of one left-wing faction or another to take over the whole thing. And we feel that anything less than one hundred percent encouragement to draft resistance is doing the work of the Government.
2. We vow to stop Ronald Reagan from stealing from the poor to give to the rich. If he wants less government, snooping and intrusion, let's start with the Feds, and the Defense Department. We will protest. We will demonstrate. We will haunt Reagan's footsteps wherever he goes.
3. Uptight, upright bigots are the natural constituencies of the Haig-Reagan War Junta. Today's attacks on the sexual freedoms we wrested from their control are the bigots' payoff. Youth has a right to define their own sexuality! We demand full and equal rights for all people, gay, straight, and bisexual, to make love uncoerced.
4. We believe that any erosion of a woman's right to choose contraception or an abortion is an attack at the underpinning of all sexual liberation. It was this right, more than any other, that cut the chains which bound us to a life of early, unwanted pregnancies, and a lifetime of working in factories to pay for it. Keep the government out of women's wombs - stop forced sterilization of poor and Third World women!
5. The rising tide of racist incidents and murders shows that the Nazis, Klan and their friends amongst the authorities, have brought home to America the death squads of El Salvador and Soweto. We deplore and attempts to solve this problem by abolishing the Bill of Rights. We are working to build Rock Against Racism in this country to fight the fascists. We believe that these sick racists ought to be recognized as the genocidal maniacs they are, and treated accordingly. However we can no longer trust the government. We support neighborhood vigilantes like those in Atlanta.
6. Though we feel Nazis should be dealt with like "crazy people," at the same time we oppose the use of phenothiazines against prisoners and dissidents in general. Nobody should be forced to take drugs to "cure them" that are more unhealthy than drugs they are already taking. No drugs should be forced on people at all.
7. The main drug that is being foisted off on our communities is heroin, by means of subtle media campaigns and deliberate and calculated diversion of enforcement by Reagan and such groups as the so-called War on Drugs. As long as 85% of all drug busts are still for pot, anyone who spouts the "War on Drugs" line is doing their work. Heroin is the ultimate commodity - the perfect instrument of neo-colonialist exploitation of our cities by the Mob, CIA Cubans, and neo-Nazis abroad. Both as a long-recognized tool of counter-insurgency, and because smack is controlled by World Fascism, we call for the formation of a new group, Citizens against Heroin, to struggle and educate around this issue.
8. At this moment, from the Indians of Dakota to the coal miners of West Virginia, people are being dispossessed by the energy barons and their cancerous conglomerates. The planet belongs to the people! We demand housing for the squatters, living wages and control of the workplace for the workers, respect for Native American Treaty Rights, land for all the dispossessed, and legal pot for the farmers. Multinationals out of North America now!
We will put out this call for resistance everywhere: Throughout the whole counterculture, throughout the schools, through the factories and neighborhoods, in the countryside, in the media, and the System itself - to all free-thinking people who are debating whether to go along or resist, wondering whether or not the Moralizing Majority is the majority, we call on you to rise up and become a stone in the jackboot heel, a thumbtack in the foot of fascism!
(NOTE: THE PHONE NUMBER AND ADDRESS ARE MORE THAN 25 YEARS OLD IN THIS HISTORICAL DOCUMENT.)
212-533-5028 P.O.B. 392 Canal Street Station N.Y.C. 10013
posted by Pat on 6:26 PM |
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
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(for Blog Against Sexism Day)
Sexism is the product of the patriarchy, and the patriarchy must die. One way to help kill it is to end the genital mutilation of male infants, abbreviated here as RNC (routine neonatal circumcision).
Sisters, stay with me. Yes, we all know that “female circumcision" (a term with several meanings, none of them good) is ghastly and wicked, but it is illegal in the civilized world, and there's not much we can do about the benighted places where it is practiced. This is about baby boys, and why preserving their genital integrity is crucial to the safety, happiness and well-being of women. What’s bad for women is the patriarchy, and RNC is the patriarchy’s tool.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and postulate that RNC has been and continues to be responsible for an overwhelming amount of damage to men, which is then passed on to women. But judging from the evidence, it’s a pretty stout limb. There’s a ton of information available, and if you pursue it, I think you’ll find that RNC is behind a plethora of the male traits that women find deplorable. After some background material, I’ll list some of those traits and show how it all connects.
The first thing to know is, there’s no such thing as a foreskin. The inaccurately named foreskin or prepuce is actually the forefold of the skin system. It isn’t a distinct anatomical feature, but an integral part of this ingeniously engineered mechanism which belongs to both the penis and to the body’s largest organ, the skin. What so many casually accept as RNC is actually the partial amputation of a healthy organ.
A look at circumcision’s disreputable past takes us into some very murky psychological territory, with lots of sick motivations at work.
Way back in history, the typical marauding army would bring back to its overlord a pile of trophy so-called foreskins (or entire penises) to verify the body count. In the Bible, there’s King Saul, whose price for his daughter’s hand in marriage was a hundred Philistine foreskins. David, always the overachiever, went out and got two hundred. Egyptian tombs and other stone monuments of war depict piles of chopped-off trophy penises. Throughout time, castration was the worst thing, short of killing, that could be done to a man. As a symbol of defeat for enemy warriors, the substitution of “only” castration rather than execution is said to have represented humane progress.
Even later, circumcision was in some cases substituted for castration: more progress. The religious leaders rationalized that the gods would accept a mere “foreskin,” rather than a life, as sufficient tribute, and human sacrifice went out of style. So circumcision became entrenched as a religious rite - this allegedly symbolic loss of a small bit of flesh which is not symbolic, but all too real.
Though the religious motif is still widespread, modern and unsuperstitious Americans are also urged to support RNC on hygienic grounds, because it supposedly prevents some medical conditions. Need I say that excising a portion of an organ to prevent future problems is absurd? Do we perform compulsory double mastectomies on teenage girls, so they won't get breast cancer some day? The arbitrary removal of a body part because something might go wrong with it, is beyond madness. Many sources detail the complications and, far too often, the life-long damage. Except in a few rare instances, RNC is medically indefensible.
And on religious or “cultural” grounds, even more so. Especially where they use an unsterile glass shard, rusty razor, shell fragment, or whatever other sharp instrument happens to be available - an excellent way to contract septicemia or AIDS. Face the psychological reality: old men enjoy punishing the young and lusty. Freud named fear and jealousy as the motivations for ritual circumcision, and though he wasn’t right about everything, he hit that nail squarely on the head.
There's a point past which no custom can be justified. Some Australian aboriginal tribes would knock out a kid's front tooth - a permanent tooth. That probably isn't done any more, and the young generation is the better for it. Today, a conscientious dentist will tell you that the extraction of one tooth is equivalent to the amputation of a limb. How much more heinous is cutting off a piece of a baby boy's penis?
How can anyone cry out against child abuse and at the same time allow this thing? We have laws about "invasive" procedures and acts, as if that were the worst possible violation. What could be more invasive of a body part than its excision? In backward nations, poverty-stricken parents used to purposely scar and disable their babies so they could make at least some kind of living as pathetic beggars. American parents allow their kids to be mutilated with even less justification!
Granted: plenty of circumcised men are absolute sweethearts. Granted: there are plenty of belligerent and misogynistic uncircumcised men. And I’m going to stipulate that multiple forces other than genital surgery are at work to make men violent and woman-hating. But let’s enumerate some of the things about men which inspire fear and loathing in women, and connect the dots.
Emotional unavailability
RNC severely messes up the bonding process between baby boy and mother: step one in a lifelong War of the Sexes. The medical and religious fanatics claim the pain of the procedure is minimal. In truth, an infant may be too wounded even to cry, entering a state of traumatic shock that can be passed off as evidence that he didn’t feel a thing. If a tiny helpless infant is so injured as to be unable to accomplish the most primal, basic bond of all, how in hell will he ever bond with any other woman, later on?
Lack of true sensuality
The glans of the penis is meant to be moist and enclosed, just like an eyeball or a tongue. After RNC, the glans rubs against clothing and develops a thicker skin, and its nerves become desensitized. But the true crime of this obscene operation is that the excised portion of the penile skin system contains 240 feet of nerve fibers and 20,000 nerve endings. With foreskin intact, the glans has mucous membrane gliding against mucous membrane. As a voluptuous sensation, it must be the next best thing to giving yourself head.
Why should women care? Because intact men aren't the only ones who enjoy sex more - their female partners do too. When a man retains his full capacity for sensuality, it can mean the difference between a splendid lover and a “wham-bam-thank you ma’am” guy. Many an experienced woman not only prefers an intact cock, but raves about it. For starters, due to the slack allowed by the loose skin, she doesn't need supplemental lubrication, and what moisture there is won’t quickly evaporate when the shaft is withdrawn during the "out" phase of the in-and-out cycle.
A woman friend: "The most amazing sex in my life, I was over fifty. And the guy was intact. I don't think that's a coincidence.”
An anonymous man: “I always wondered why women seemed so much more naturally sensitive until it finally dawned on me that I was born equally sensitive, but they cut it off.”
Heedlessness of consequences
Safe sex? The circumcised man is more likely to reject a condom, because his ability to feel is already messed up. In his quest for intense sensation, he’s more likely to prefer the back door to the front – which is fine if the woman likes it, but dreadful if she doesn’t. He may be less willing to use a rubber for birth control, too. Is there a tiny atavistic voice in his head saying “I endured sexual wounding – why shouldn’t she?”
During intercourse, a cut man is more likely to slam away like a pile driver, regardless of the discomfort it causes - because he is desperate to feel. Some experts trace the need for extreme sex (bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism) back to the desensitizing effects of RNC.
Quote from a man who restored his foreskin: “With all the recovered sensations, feelings, sensuality and complexity … I have no need to go through all those machinations just to come. Intercourse... just plain old, missionary position, normal, slow-motion intercourse is interesting enough.” (Rio Cruz)
Macho ‘tude
Defensiveness, superiority, the unremitting need to be right and to put women down - you know the drill. This comes from castration anxiety. A man gets all obsessive about how long or hefty his unit is, when he might have been perfectly content with the thing if it hadn’t been butchered. It's no wonder some men have to spend the rest of their lives proving how very macho they are.
On a deep level, the subconscious knows: it is the enemy who collects foreskins. By this pre-emptive act of hostility and grievous assault, whoever was responsible - the parents, the doctor, the hospital, the State - have declared themselves as enemies. If theories of the subconscious have any validity at all, this must be so. Of course minds will be warped.
If I were a man who'd been RNC’d in infancy, I'd be righteously angry for sure. I'd like to see some hospitals sued...... except that would only contribute to making the health care situation more impossible for everyone. I'd like to see some doctors sued ..... except that would only raise the cost of malpractice insurance and thus of patient care.
Sure, a thousand things can mess up a person's psyche, from potty training to environmental toxins. But this much is certain: no matter what else is going on with a kid's heredity, environment, or reincarnational status, having a piece of his dick cut off doesn't help.
There’s the ingrained knowledge that a major choice has been made without his consent, which causes pigheaded resistance to even useful authority, an unwillingness to accept anybody’s opinion, including reading the instructions or consulting a map. Nobody’s going to tell them what to do, ever again!
An uncut man has options. Operating on a baby takes away his options. An uncut man can change the look of his cock and make it resemble, at least temporarily, a circumcised one. The cut man doesn't have that option - unless he's willing to spend a lot of time and attention on the rehabilitation project. The uncut look is, to a certain extent, recoverable by means of skin expansion techniques which, although the process takes a year or two, involve minimal risk and are said to be almost universally successful.Yes, there is a surgical procedure: expensive, multi-staged, hazardous, and recommended by no reputable practitioner. But even for a guy who successfully remodels the appearance, and restores the protective function, and achieves better sex, the fact is there's still a big, functional piece missing. Those thousands of nerve endings are never coming back.
Violence against women
RNC causes an unquantifiable but vast amount of “normal” sexual problems in men. Scarring, deformity, tightness, numbness, and numerous other conditions impair function. The nervous system is confused, the brain aware that it should be receiving messages from a body part that’s not even there any more. Why should women care? Because we often catch the blame. If his dick doesn’t work right, it must be our fault – for being too old, too demanding, having the wrong shape ass, not wanting to suck his cock, whatever. When he can’t get it up, gets off too soon, can’t get off at all, there’s an inchoate rage. Something is wrong and it must be this woman’s fault – because she’s here. Whap!
Serious mental/emotional illness
To claim that a baby or child can be genitally mutilated without a lasting traumatic effect, defies reason. The younger the child is when molestation occurs, the greater the likelihood of severe emotional damage. And anyone who thinks RNC is not molestation, is profoundly out of touch with reality. If he belongs to the statistical majority, the first thing a baby boy learns about his penis is, it’s the source of unthinkable agony. The first thing he learns about other people touching it is, they’re going to torture him. How can there not be huge psychological fallout?
Fiction writers rack their brains to think up childhood traumas horrifying enough so their readers can believe a kid would turn into a predatory murderous monster. In a novel I read once, the cruel grownup told the little boy: “Get that big pair of scissors, take off all your clothes, lie down on the bed, and wait for me.” Kind of makes you sick, doesn’t it? After waiting there for hours, he didn’t even get his dick cut off – just the threat of it was punishment enough. But the terrifying incident caused him to grow up to be a sexual sadist serial killer. And every day, in the U.S. of A, a few thousand baby boys actually have pieces of their dicks sliced off. It’s the number one surgical procedure in this great land of ours.
In the ‘70s, RNC in America was flying high, with 4 out of 5 baby boys chopped. The madness reached its height in the early '80s. Take 1980, with a victim tally of about a million and a half infants cut. If only a tiny fraction, like say 1%, of those boys developed some kind of psychosexual pathology, that would make, in the 26-year-old age group alone, a total of 15,000 sexual psychopaths.
Warmongering
And what about the temperament that leads to wholesale destruction of humans and the environment? Note which major groups circumcise: Jews and Moslems, who have been at war since the beginning of recorded history. By a strange coincidence, these same two cultures, in their most virulent forms, keep women covered up with their hair concealed or shaved off. The other major group that practices RNC? Americans. Q.E.D.
Circumcision is one of the strongest methods by which the patriarchy replicates itself and maintains control. In the most hidden recesses of each victim’s brain, it implants the stern warning: “We already took part of it, and if you don’t fall in with the party line, we’ll be back for the rest.”
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statistics U.S.
sign the Ashley Montague Resolution
activism
the intact penis and your sex life
more on the subject, by the same author, at Earthblog.net in the Archives
posted by Pat on 11:31 PM |
Sunday, February 26, 2006
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I don't remember how I met Manuel Samaniego - probably he was working on an outdoor mural - but it was in 1977 or '78, in Pomona, California. A couple of times I visited his studio, a huge space over an empty store in the ghost mall.
The art blew me away! So strong, vibrant, imaginative, intelligent and trippy! I thought, "If this guy doesn't make it, there is no justice in the world." And as we know, there is very little justice in the world - which is what we had been discussing. A friend of his had been killed by the police in front of thirty spectators. A close relative had been in serious trouble due to mistaken identity - a car's identity, to be precise, because it was the same color as a car the cops were looking for. Other visitors stopped by the studio and told similar stories. I remember feeling a guilty unease, because it had been a long while since I'd been politically active in any meaningful way.
I moved away and years went by - almost 30 of them. "What ever happened to this guy?" was a question that crossed my mind more than once. From time to time I'd look at my photo album and there would be the pictures Samaniego had let me take with my little Instamatic, because I couldn't afford to buy any art. If I'd been an heiress, I would have stripped those walls and left not a single painting on the premises.
Eventually, and later than everybody else, I joined the webiverse and gained the ability to look for people and information. But still, somehow, it wasn't until today, when a piece of paper slid out of a file folder, that I actually got around to looking up Manuel Samaniego. And there he is, at Buddha Belly Studio - still painting, still showing his art, still keeping the faith. The discovery that this wonderful talent hasn't been crushed by the years and the world, just made my day. In fact it feels like Christmas, such a gift it is to know Samaniego is still out there doing it. My favorite painting from back in the day, one of the ones I took a photo of, is on the homepage of his website now, introducing the oldies.
Manuel Samaniego is still painting, and I'm still not an heiress. But if any heir or heiress reads this, I say to you: buy this man's work.
posted by Pat on 4:13 PM |
Friday, November 26, 2004
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Topic: Vision 10
Category: Vision
Mutability is a quality of vision since vision, like everything else, is subject to change. Graham Greene gives the example of a novel which may take years to write. It is not only the characters who develop in the course of the book, but the author, who is not the same person at the end as at the beginning. Annie Dillard notes the same problem: "The vision is not so much destroyed, exactly, as it is, by the time you have finished, forgotten." Some deny that a vision can ever be realized at all. Giacometti reportedly was frenzied by the impossibility of seeing clearly or of capturing what he saw.
Inner visions can cause measurable, tangible change in the physical plane. A mental picture of some nauseating accident scene or surgical procedure can make a person throw up, and a mental picture of a sexual stimulus can cause an erection. It has been known for over fifty years that muscle tissue shows increased electrical activity if the subject merely thinks about flexing it. Cancer patients and many others use creative visualization to bring about healing in their bodies. Those preparing for job interviews, sports tournaments and other crucial events are told to repeatedly picture a positive outcome. Visualization is an enormously powerful tool, and there is nothing mystical about it.
When the inner, individual vision does not coincide with the outer, worldly way of viewing things, trouble begins. People who don't see things in the accepted way can wind up institutionalized or crucified. Many people suffer from seeing too much or too clearly, and sometimes wish for the blissful ignorance of blindness. The question of cost is not to be taken lightly. Often those who see more, like the archetypal tormented artist, pay a high price for their folly. This unfortunate fact is illustrated charmingly in a recent animated film, where the protagonist watches the clouds turn into a sailing ship, a sleeping lion, etc. In their final metamorphosis the clouds become three cupids, one of whom descends toward the hero with a collection plate in hand.
posted by Pat on 8:03 PM |
Tuesday, September 09, 2003
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Category: Soap Operas of the Great and Famous
Widely acknowledged as the handsomest man in Paris, Amedeo Modigliani provided fuel for the cherished stereotype of the wild and crazy artist. The bohemian quarter of Montparnesse was inhabited by prostitutes, models, and art students who paraded naked through the streets. Modi joined the fun by performing more than one public striptease. Undressing for an audience seems to have been rather a habit with him. After a bath, he would go out on the balcony in his birthday suit to pose and dry by evaporation. When he met a dancer at a club, they locked themselves in a shed and lived for days on alcohol, cocaine and sex, finally emerging to dance naked to the edification of passers-by.
"If a woman poses for you she gives herself to you," was Modigliani's creed. The art dealer Cheron would lock him in the basement with a servant girl and a bottle of booze, and not let him out till a painting was done. The enterprising dealer would give the artist 15 francs and sell the painting for 200.
Modi had charming personal habits. While living in a rented house, he amused himself by spitting at the walls to see how high he could make a mark.
At a friend's 1909 New Year's Eve party, Modi stood at the door handing out nuggets of hashish to the guests. Later he set fire to the punch bowl. The blaze spread to the decorations, causing a panic and nearly burning the place down.
One of his women had a lover who was a lawyer, who set out to do him physical harm, but Modi took him to a cafe, sympathized with him, let him buy glass after glass of liquor, and they emerged as friends.
Alcohol was a problem. One of his best friends said that when he was drunk (which was often) "he was crazily irritable and hypersensitive for reasons he did not seem to know." His painting Rose Nude almost didn't survive. When a friend intruded on a work session, the artist became so enraged he threatened to throw the naked model down the stairs and destroy the canvas.
It wasn't easy being Modigliani's friend. If you were Drouard, he might smash one of your sculptures, or if you were Doucet, slash one of your paintings. After a drunken night with Utrillo, Modi pawned his friend's overcoat. Utrillo went berserk and ended up in a lunatic asylum.
Friends would often find Modigliani unconscious on the floor of his studio, or worse, in the street, in which case they would have to carry him up five flights of stairs to his room.
It wasn't easy being his lover, either. A woman who was three months pregnant with his child got him to write a document promising marriage. Accidentally or intentionally, he got her name wrong. When Simone Thiroux gave birth to Modigliani's son, he refused to acknowledge the child as his, and publicly called Simone a slut. In a letter to a friend, he pontificated: "The best gift you can give a woman is a kid. But stop there. They mustn't upset art, but serve it. Up to us to watch out."
One of his lovers was Beatrice Hastings, a femme fatale who may have been a spy for the Germans. He got her attention by sleeping naked among the plants in her garden. He beat her and once pushed her out a window. Fortunately, they were on the first floor at the time. He was also known to lock her out of the quarters where they cohabited, and once tried to set the house on fire.
Another of his mistresses was Jeanne Hebuterne, whom he was observed dragging around by the hair. Jeanne gave birth to his daughter, at about the same time when another woman, Therese, bore his son. The daughter was raised by a nurse in the country. Jeanne was pregnant again when Modigliani died of tubercular meningitis, and reacted a couple of days later by throwing herself from a high window to meet her death.
posted by Pat on 10:19 PM |
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