Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
The piece is hard to get through, and it's not always clear what he's saying, or why. If it came from an author with whom I generally agreed, I would be more critical of it, but I appreciate the author's willingness to agree that his own team's shit stinks.
Most artists are involved in a self-creation creation of an artistic persona, be it Robert Zimmerman becoming Bob Dylan or Thomas Pynchon opting out and using Irwin Corey as a surrogate. Williamson's treatment of Tupac is not particularly sympathetic or insightful, except in that he is wiling to acknowledge this process of creation, which is significant to him not as it relates to artistry, but as a debunking of the conservative notion (or the notion often advanced by conservatives) that black culture represents some cultural pathology. Williamson sees that it's a schtick, and that so is country music, and that the later can be just as pathological. This is not particularly insightful biography or cultural criticism, but politically speaking it is something of a statement against interest, and so relevant and admissible. Would it have been better if he hadn't tried to say anything about Tupac? Sure. But a conservative pathology is that you can't say anything critical about conservatives unless you also prove your bona fides by going after someone like Tupac or Elizabeth Bruenig, whose value in demonstrating Williamson's bona fides was, I suspect, in inversion proportion to her relevance in what he was otherwise talking about.
|
I think this is all fine. Like I said, I understand what the author was trying to do. But I am so sick of giving these types of assholes credit for not being complete shitbags. "Hey guys, black people aren't inherently bad people, mostly. Poverty is the issue." Great. Let's throw you a parade. You guys going to change anything at all? No? Well, here are some pats on your back for
thinking about stuff, kinda.
The level of frustration I have with the world has never been higher and I grew up in NYC in the fucking 80s. I just came back from a memorial service for my daughter's step-grandfather. This man grew up in NYC. Did well. Has a large apartment on CPW and a huge house in the Hamptons (bay side, let's not get carried away). My daughter and I were the
only people of color in a room of at least 100 people. Sad occasion for sure. But I'm looking around the room just completely disgusted at the isolation white people carefully cultivate. He was a Democrat. Voted for Hillary. Seemed like a nice enough guy. But how the fuck is it even possible that you don't know
one black person well enough for them to show up to your funeral? That's the problem with this country. And it's
never going to be fixed.
How many people of color will show up to your* funeral? What's your excuse for why none will? Travel in different circles? None in your neighborhood? Didn't really hang out with any at your elite undergrad? Not really in law school either? Private school parents aren't exactly diverse and you just haven't gotten to know the others yet because your kids aren't friends with theirs? There aren't many at work and the ones there never seem to go to group stuff? Sure. It just happened that way. You don't have a racist bone in your body. Right?
This country is fucked.
TM
*Obviously this is a rhetorical exercise.
