Authors: Betty Dodson Inga Muscio
My mom asks me why I always have to put a damper on things.
I say, “I don’t know.”
If you watch the teevee, you get information that serves the white men that are selling
the earth so they can have a power that is an illusion in the first place but they
don’t know this and could give a fuck anyway.
And yes, they are white men.
And yes, you can find out their names and what they are up to and why.
But not by watching the teevee.
Turn the piece of shit off, or better yet, smash it to bits.
It’s time to connect the dots folks, and it may not be the easiest thing to do, it
may not be something that “lucky” people do, but I, for one, am sick and fucking tired
of living in a culture of violence and destruction.
The violence is everywhere, we perpetuate it and we can stop it.
The time has come.
Fucken rad.
For months now, I’ve danced around the whole prospect of writing this afterword thing.
The world appears drastically different than it did when I wrote
Cunt.
At that time, there were foreshadowings of a planet-wide corporate takeover—one going
by innocuous-sounding designations such as “globalization” and “free enterprise.”
While I wrote
Cunt
, NAFTA, GATT and deregulation laws steamrolled a golden expressway of opportunity
for huge, multinational corporations. Meanwhile, mindlessly brutal atrocities took
place throughout the world. Bosnians, Haitians, East Timorese, Somalis, Hutus, Tutsis
and the people of Chiapas are just some members of the world’s population who could
tell tales of what was going on while I wrote
Cunt.
Every indian tribe and nation living in what is now called the U.S.A. has been under
some kind of siege or another for the past five hundred years. Corporate and police
forces all over the U.S.A. brutalize black men, women and children without so much
as a slap on the hand. Jamaican, Southeast Asian, Latino, Haitian, Pacific Islander,
African, Middle Eastern, Chicana, Central Asian, Cholo, Vato, Mestiza, Cuban, Puerto
Rican, Asian, Hispanic, South American and Central American people are routinely marginalized,
victimized and wantonly stereotyped as a matter of course in this country.
These trends continued as I wrote Cunt, and they continue today.
What is different now is it is difficult for me to focus on my work because I am completely
obsessed with what is going on in the world, in this country. The sense of desperation
that I was once able quell in the nether regions of my heart has exploded into my
every day life.
In a recent article in the
Observer
, author, political commentator and self-described “hooligan” Arundhati Roy spoke
about pointlessness. Ms. Roy lives in New Delhi, and the article, “Under the Nuclear
Shadow” was a response to the threat of nuclear war between India and Pakistan. Here
are her thoughts about foreign reporters asking her if she is working on a new book:
That question mocks me. Another book? Right now when it looks as though all the music,
the art, the architecture, the literature, the whole of human civilisation means nothing
to the monsters who run the world. What kind of book should I write? For now, just
for now, for just a while, pointlessness is my biggest enemy. That’s what nuclear
bombs do, whether they’re used or not. They violate everything that is humane, they
alter the meaning of life. (
Observer Worldview
, June 2, 2002)
And I, American me,
I
should not feel this way. I shouldn’t consider pointlessness
my
biggest enemy. I’m a “lucky” one. No one is talking about obliterating almost every
single person
I
have ever loved on this planet, myself included. No one is talking about me looking
into
my
mother’s eyes as we sit at her kitchen table and wait, because the buttons have just
been pressed.
My desire to write has presently been consumed by my desire to understand—and perhaps
anticipate—what is going on.
At present, I know a lot.
I know more than I have ever known in my life about U.S. history, foreign policy and
domestic policy.
I know names, dates, places, events.
But I have not felt much like writing, even though I know very well what kind of book
I should write. I have been working on it for three years.
Pointlessness is my biggest enemy.
According to the freaky little white men running the show right now, my job as an
American is not to concern myself with big, faraway things like the rest of the world.
My job is not even to concern myself with my country. Most certainly, my job is not
to spend endless hours scouring the Internet for actual news, and piecing together
the fragmented hints reported in the mainstream “media.”
My job is to consume the products that the world produces for me at breakneck speed,
in sweatshops where folks are fired for failing a mandatory pregnancy test, or killed
for trying to organize a union. My job is to watch teevee and allow it to shape my
view. My job is to keep on the look-out for suspicious Muslims in my neighborhood.
If I adhered better to my job description, the desperation and pointlessness that
haunts me would surely go away.
Conversely, part of the pointlessness I experience is
directly related
to how very well my fellow Americans are following the freaky little white man’s
idea of a job description.
We are ass-deep in shit, but the “media” keeps telling us that new, improved, compassionate
shit no longer stinks. A gaping disparity between the daily myth and the daily reality
is producing a form of collective schizophrenia.
I recently came across an article on PopPolitics.com, written by a lawyer named Steven
C. Day. He describes how a trial in which he was involved gave him insight on how
the bias of the mainstream “media” messes with public opinion and creates this kind
of collective schizophrenia.
It seems the plaintiff’s lawyer was buddy-chums with the reporter covering the trial.
Every day, the local newspaper printed articles about how the trial was going in favor
of the plaintiff. People would stop Mr. Day on the street and tell him he needed to
seriously get his shit together. His only response was, “Don’t believe everything
you read in the newspaper.” When the trial was over, and the judgment went for Mr.
Day’s client, people in the community were stunned. Based on the news accounts written
by the other lawyer’s pal, folks were pretty sure Mr. Day’s side would lose.
From this experience, Mr. Day clearly saw how the U.S. “media” operates on a much
grander scale:
Am I stretching too far in trying to compare the actions of this Midwest legal reporter
to those of the journalistic royalty of the presidential press corps? I don’t think
so. The truth is, the relationship between the White House and White House correspondents
is every bit as symbiotic as the associations legal reporters build with certain lawyers.
The Bush administration, like others before it, provides reporters with information
and inside access that is critical to their jobs. By all accounts, Bush himself also
provides them with a much-appreciated salve to their well-developed egos, by handing
out nicknames and engaging in friendly chit-chat. In exchange, the reporters disseminate
the administration’s point of view to the public. (Steven C. Day, June 6, 2002, PopPolitics.com)
Walter Cronkite:
I’m deeply concerned about the merger mania that has swept our industry, diluting
standards, dumbing down the news, and making the bottom line sometimes seem like the
only line. It isn’t and it shouldn’t be.
You know times are worth concerning ourselves over when a white guy who got rich reporting
what was once considered “the news” sounds like a goddamn pinko revolutionary.
At this point in history, regardless of our race, gender or class, we are informed
by homogenized “media” outlets that read us verbatim press releases from the Heritage
Foundation, the present corporate government administration and whatever sponsor has
a new product that ties in to a current event (such as Bayer Pharmaceuticals, makers
of the much-touted Anthrax antidote, Cipro).
Here are a few of the media outlets that “inform” us:
Here are a few more examples of how the “media” creates this debilitating form of
collective schizophrenia:
1. May 10, 2002. CNN has a small story on its website about “C-18,” a one hundred
and twenty-five-mile-long iceberg calving from the Ross Ice Shelf. In June, it’s reported
that Mt. Everest is melting.
May 10, 2002. Reuters runs an article where the man who is and, yet, is not, president
emotes on the patent non-existence of global warming.
I am not a scientist, but I still feel really safe asserting that ice melts when it
warms up. ( From ; for evidence of the Bush quote go to buzzflash.com archives for
May 10th.)
2. During a dramatic “dead or alive” manhunt for the most wanted international criminal
known to modern history (which, for some reason, involved a “carpet of bombs” for
a population also victimized by this selfsame man), the U.S. government flips the
bird at the world’s creation of an International Criminal Court.
3. In May, the German magazine,
Der Speigel
, reports that Bush asked Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and I quote:
“Do you have blacks too?”
On May 9, 2002, the
Miami Herald
reports on the deteriorating relationship between the present corporate government
administration and Brazil. “What is beginning to look like an escalating diplomatic
skirmish between Brazil and the Bush administration went up another notch this week,
when a Brazilian diplomat claimed in an academic paper that the U.S. government’s,
‘irrationality and arrogance’ could expose the world to a Nazi-style imperial power.”
Because I’d seen the translated
Der Spiegel
article, I know very well what the reporter is talking about when referring to the
“escalating diplomatic skirmish.” Many Americans, however, do not have this frame
of reference, since Bush’s quote was published only in “alternative” news sources.
Millions and millions of people rely on “alternative” news sources. How do all these
people feel when Larry King interviews Anna Nicole Smith, and J.Lo’s divorce makes
headlines, while the country is going to corporate hell in a handbasket and the rest
of the world is rabidly protesting our present government? 4. In June, BartCop.com
published an article by Gene Lyons about the U.S. media’s “selective” reporting of
Bush’s embarrassing behavior during his trip to Europe.
Something the Washington press did report, if only because it involved one of their
own, was Junior’s bitchy response to what he apparently saw as NBC correspondent David
Gregory’s attempt to show him up by speaking French. At a joint Paris press conference
with President Jacques Chirac, Gregory asked Bush about the perception that U.S. policies
were unpopular in Europe. He then directed the same question to Chirac in his own
language, a courtesy generally followed by European reporters.
Bush bristled. “Very good,” he snapped. “The guy memorizes four words, and he plays
like he’s intercontinental.”
Insulted, Gregory volunteered that he could continue in French.
“I’m impressed,” the president sneered. “Que bueno. Now, I’m literate in two languages.”
The
New York Times
account emphasized how tired Bush was, an excuse you wouldn’t make for a fifteen
year-old. Which is exactly what Junior, kept up past his bedtime by decadent European
dining habits, sounded like: a resentful preppie at a fancy school on Daddy’s money
showing his contempt for a brainy scholarship kid—pretty much how people who went
to school with Bush describe him.
For the record, it has been reported that Mr. Gregory considers this interaction to
represent the end of his career as a journalist.
Do you remember all the reports that Bush was “tired” during his trip to Europe?
The
Washington Post
reported that President Chirac
surprised
Bush with a press conference after lunch one day. Bush was completely unprepared
to meet the press, and I suspect President Chirac was well aware of Bush’s need for
totally scripted “press conferences.” That’s right: the president of France pulled
a fast one on Bush, and the U.S. media’s response was to report that a caught-off-guard
Bush was “tired.” How utterly humiliating for every U.S. citizen. The
Washington Post
, however, made no connection between the surprise nature of this press conference
and Bush’s embarrassing behavior. 5. Since when does the Supreme Court decide who
the president is? I wasn’t the best student, but I enjoyed government and history
classes. I paid attention. I read the textbooks. There was nothing about the Supreme
Court deciding anything about who would be president.
EVERYONE KNOWS THIS.
But it has been palmed off since day one like it’s this
perfectly normal thing
and you’re just being a sore loser or a bitter partisan or an eco-terrorist if you
insinuate anything close to a question on this never before heard of rule that the
Supreme Court decides who the president is.
I mean, how weird and surreal is this?
I learned about “dazzle camouflage” from Lynda Barry in her work of staggering genius,
Cruddy.
Dazzle camouflage is from the Navy and it’s where you do something really glaring
and obvious to get your opponent’s attention away from what you are
truly
doing.