Where are we now? Strung out on the super-information-highway, in this the two thousandth and tenth year of Our Lord. In another crevice of cyber space, looking again for something meaningful to say.
Yeah, something like that.
Well, we’d best get right to the heart of the thing. Lot’s going on upstairs. Strange madness. Odessa by Caribou is playing eylix5c8fb.mp3 — Health care is allegedly available in the America now, and here, in the Great White North, Ann Coulter is running a muck with the locals, and the old debate about freedom of speech has once again arisen. I feel obligated to comment.
Let’s start with Ann Coulter, the angriest man in America.
What has happened to this poor woman to make her so angry? So vicious? There are ultimately two possibilities here, one (and this is more likely) is that she is not actually this angry. The other is that she has a serious drug problem (most likely cocaine).
She has said openly that she thinks it is a marvel that America permits Canada’s existence on this continent. Now, I doubt Ann Coulter really loses any sleep over Canada’s existence, or its proximity to America for that matter. Coulter is a provocateur, a glorified shit disturber. The comfortable existence she is afforded is a direct result of her mostly crazy, inane rambling. People don’t really care about what Coulter says, not in the same way they care about what’s on the BBC or the daily newspaper, but they feel obligated to have an opinion. I trust they realise she is no expert. I am not implying she is unintelligent, I daresay she is quite brilliant, a conclusion i have reached at the cost of my own grief, but if she has any real political insight she has yet to make use of it. Which is shocking for a Cornel graduate (one of those non ‘bushleague schools’ she was talking about).
Where am I going with this? What’s the catch?
There is none. Nothing of importance. Nothing Ann Coulter says is truly outrageous or even newsworthy. Her existence, the capacity in which she makes her arguments, that she makes a profit from non-ideas, are the real cause for alarm. In the age of 24 hour news-media, we have lost touch with what news really is. We’ve been reduced to a bunch of neck-craining car-reck enthusiasts.
Okay, that’s enough for Ann.
I want to get to the heart of something, but i feel i must take the long-way-round – the scenic route.
Michael Ondaatje once said it was the image of the burning man falling to the earth in The English Patient that came to him first. In the film (and there is a similar sentiment in the book) there is a moment when Almasy says ” You can’t explore from the air, Madox, if you could, life would be very simple.” (Minghella, 28). I feel, nowadays, we are mainly exploring from the air, and Coulter would be like spotting a very ugly, obscene crater below, and from that you’d draw an entire history of the earth.
I’ve yet to decide if it is because of the internet and Modern Technology that we’ve become so quick to make up our minds, but I’m sure there is some correlation. I’ve taken issue to partisanship, or political-sidesmenship, for as long as I can remember. Calling yourself a ‘conservative’ or a ‘liberal (in the Canadian political party sense) is idiotic and undemocratic. You are, in effect, preemptively surrendering your vote ; you are sacrificing your political autonomy, your right to make an informed decision, in the name of the Business of Politics. People like Coulter or Rush Limbaugh, (i’d list a left leaning pundit who uses a similar approach but I can’t think of one) are merely states-people of a different system. They are the ghost writers of a new constitution, one that is contracted verbally but is just as binding. They are herd agents, co-conspirators of the end of thoughtfullness.
During one of the McCarthy hearings someone said “Is there no such thing as human decency?”, “No. Not any more, you poor bastard.”
Let’s switch gears. First poetry, then music.
I
Strung out again. Staring at the spaces
In between words – desperate for…
I don’t know what.
Filled the spaces between broken floor
Boards with scholarship, endless wisdom
Made into something simple- something useful.
I want to cut out all the pages, glue the blank spaces
Together to make a tar-paper-shack,
They will shelter me.
And on bodies, on empty things, I will write
Down little hallmark descriptions,
Nothing serious. Short anecdotes.
Distracted again, by the clicking of keys
Like little raindrops on pavement,
And mixed in with invasive voices,
The cacophony of strangers, all working diligently,
Looking for that pearl of wisdom
Crushed from coal by hand.
Out here in this vacant city, this dark realm,
I am an undecided vote, a white canvas.
I think maybe this is not the right scar for me.
The Young Offender 