Gumption (19 page)

But, no matter. The delivery systems of each “side” may differ in taste and decorum by a wide gulf, but their net results are similarly low when it comes to fostering progress. When we tune in to either flavor of entertainment, are any of us lending any brain power to solving these problems? Or are we a righteous, chuckling choir, pumping each our respective fists at the drubbing our “entertainer” has just delivered that asshole across the aisle? If we, all of us, just continue to call one another assholes, then what good is that doing anybody? Will we ever recognize and subsequently tire of the futility of this exercise?

As Mr. Frank points out, we used to cull our information from more unbiased sources so that we might then engage in our own conversations—millions of tiny debates on any given topic across the nation, the smallness of which allowed for the influence of local conditions. Citizens in Phoenix are going to have one opinion about Monsanto’s development of GMOs, for example, while the farmers in Nebraska will have some very different things to say on the topic. Urban dwellers will invariably exhibit different needs than suburbanites whose concerns will vary from those of small, rural towns. All these disparate opinions, combined and weighed to strike a balance somewhere in the middle of our two starkly polarized parties, were once a great strength in our nation’s politics, a strength that we have evidently all but lost.

On both sides of the congressional aisle, this creates a stark divisibility in which it can be hard for our legislators to find compromise. Barney Frank said, “For some politicians, one of the hardest things to do is to differ with some of the people you agree with on
most
issues on
any
one
issue. And people need to learn that that’s not a betrayal, because . . . if you want to agree with Stewart eighty percent of the time and Limbaugh twenty percent, people get very angry. There’s no tolerance for that kind of disagreement within the faction.”

He then stated that he thought we should adopt a second national anthem, at least in regard to politics: “It’s all about the base.”

I said, “It’s all about the bass?”

He replied, “You know, ‘It’s all about the bass—no treble’?”

I said, “Ah, yes.”

“The political song is: ‘It’s all about the base—no moderates.’”

Thus did this Democratic firebrand, thirty years my senior, make a clear and effective point whilst simultaneously schooling me in popular culture. I’ll confess that I was rather nervous to interview him after listening to and reading several other interviews in which he nimbly demonstrated his ability to vigorously dismantle any agenda and quickly clarify the heart of any matter at hand. Part of the reason I’m typing this here book in the first place is because I have become aware of my blithe ignorance when it comes to politics and my place in them. However, once he made his “all about the bass” joke, I knew that he would be gentle with your humble pilgrim of an author.

In a 2012 issue of
New York
magazine, he said, “You know, it’s the primaries: People who want to be moderate lose. And when we try to compromise, what you find is not people simply objecting to the specific terms of the compromise but the activists object even to your trying to compromise, because they say, ‘Look, everybody I know agrees with us, so why are you giving in?’”

Mr. Frank feels that this extreme bipartisanship began to take root in the 1980s. The Republicans were desperate to find a pot in which to piss when Newt Gingrich took it upon himself to demonize the opposition, as a new and unscrupulous political tactic. This was followed by the right-wing takeover of the Republican party, which was followed by this red/blue bifurcation that occurred in modern communications.

The modern brand of campaigning, then, utilizing low techniques like slander and attack ads, completely distracts voters from anything resembling a productive conversation, encouraging us instead to violently back our own team, whether it’s for or against the fashionable issue of the season, like gun control, immigration, health care, abortion, or same-sex marriage.

Condemnation by category is the lowest form of hatred, for it is coldhearted and abstract, lacking the heat and even the courage of a personal hatred. Categorical condemnation is the hatred of the mob, which makes cowards brave.

This quote from Wendell Berry’s essay “Caught in the Middle” seems like it could apply equally as well to this brand of political hate-mongering, as to the continuing discrimination against homosexuals in our country.

This “hatred of the mob,” of which Wendell Berry writes, I think is what has begun to rankle me when it comes time to vote. With the exception of the exaggerated optimism that surrounded the first campaign of President Obama, which had less to do with tangible issues,
I think, than with his generally appealing to a Democratic idealism, when’s the last time I voted for the candidate who impressed me with proactive results as opposed to the one who seemed the lesser of two evils?

Even the language behind the campaigns is a problem. The terms that surround issues of homosexuality, like “tolerance” or “defense of marriage,” have done nothing to assuage my feeling that this long-running prejudice is nothing short of criminal. That any person’s sexual orientation should require “tolerating” is a flagrant example of discrimination. I could sadly name a few altar boys who might have something much more tangible to say about “tolerating” the sexual orientation of their superiors in the sacristy of the church. As for the “Defense of Marriage Act,” Barney Frank told me, “I asked on the floor of the House how does [a same-sex union] threaten your marriage? Anyone who’s married stand up and tell me how it threatens your marriage. So one Republican got up and said, ‘Well, it doesn’t threaten my marriage, it threatens the institution of marriage.’ I said that sounds like an argument that should be made by someone in an institution.” This is splendid. As my
Parks and Rec
costar Retta would say, “Barney Frank got jokes.”

The Christians who are so offended by homosexuality point to the references in the Bible wherein gay love is described as a perversion, but Mr. Berry fairly points out in “Caught in the Middle” that he can see no reason why perversion should be reserved as an indiscretion particular only to the homosexuals. It goes without saying that the condemnation of the perfectly normal lifestyle of homosexuals as a “perversion” is egregious. It again smacks of the elitism of the
Manifest Destiny mentality that allows a veil of false righteousness to cloak the true brutality of a people’s actions from their own self-reckoning. Vicious behavior is justified by ideas like “God’s plan for the white people,” or in this case, the straight people.

Further, there are plenty of legitimate perversions being enacted by straight people every day with as much gusto as anyone, rendering their complaint rather toothless, or at least powerfully hypocritical. Wendell Berry also hilariously points out that anything going on in the gay bedroom is going on in straight bedrooms as well, with interest. He asks, “Would conservative Christians like a small government bureau to inspect, approve, and certify their sexual behavior? Would they like a colorful tattoo, verifying government approval, on the rumps of lawfully copulating persons?”

I asked Mr. Frank if the climate of “tolerance”—you know what, I’m going to say equality; no, decency—if the climate of decency had changed in the halls of Congress since he voluntarily came out in 1987. He said, “To use a cliché—it’s like night and day. Well, I think dawn and noon would probably be better.” When he came out, he explained, his friends tried to talk him out of it, because it was assumed that his credibility and approval rating would drop through the floor. In recent years, he has seen that his homosexuality and his marriage to his husband in particular have helped him in the polls more than, say, getting the financial reform bill passed.

Like many of the indiscretions we white folks have inflicted upon groups of “others” over the centuries, discrimination against gays has some very colorful chapters historically: colors like black and blue and crimson red, primarily. Skipping past the early English punishments
for “sodomy,” like burning alive and hanging, let’s zero in on what has been going on in modern-day America. “Sodomy” (I am putting it in quotes, because I am confused by the term. Does it refer merely to sex acts between a gay couple? Seems like a rather prurient topic for the law to concern itself with. The lady doth protest too much?), while no longer considered a capital crime, does remain an offense for which one can be imprisoned in twelve states of our nation (as of April 2014).

Okay. Let’s just hang on here and remind ourselves that what we’re talking about, specifically, is an act of physical love between two consenting people. In the vernacular of Mr. Berry, then, apparently twelve state governments still deign to identify
unlawfully
copulating persons.

In the year 1610, Virginia adopted Great Britain’s “sodomy” laws, which basically made the act of copulation between men punishable by death. In 1777 Thomas Jefferson raised eyebrows when he proposed that the penalty for sodomy be reduced from death to castration. (I can almost hear the haters demeaning Jefferson: “. . . classic Hollywood liberal.”) Of course this proposal was deemed as too lenient and so was never enacted.

America’s armed forces have also been a hotbed of discrimination and controversy throughout our history. Initially, soldiers could be discharged only if witnessed in flagrante delicto, mano a mano, but after World War II, simply admitting to homosexuality became grounds enough for dismissal. The army began asking soldiers for their sexual orientation, yet another shameful example of the government sticking its nose where it didn’t belong. In ’53, Eisenhower, the president of the United States,
banned
gays from employment in the
federal government! By executive order! And this wasn’t repealed until 1975! Oh, hello, we have arrived at Barney Frank.

Now we have a little clearer idea of the guts Mr. Frank exhibited in taking up this cause for equality, even years before he himself came out. Despite the very real prejudice that existed then, and is still prevalent (although thankfully somewhat diminished) today, he didn’t bat an eyelash in his pursuit of legislation that will serve us all in our continuing quest for decency. Simply, he has put up with a lot of shit in thirty-two years in the House, and he has risen above it.

Look, this job certainly didn’t make any sense in terms of maximizing my income or minimizing my stress or maximizing the comfort of my life. I think it’s a wonderful job to have, because I’m able to work to make fundamental changes in society and improve the quality of people’s lives and eliminate and diminish unfairness at various times. If I wasn’t able to do what I thought was important public policy, it would be a stupid job to have.

Mr. Frank and Mr. Berry and I all seem to agree that we humans are complicated and messy animals in many ways. It’s our nature. Despite that nature, in order to fulfill our Founding Fathers’ vision of a nation where no persons suffer unfair prejudice, we must find ourselves an uncomfortable place in the middle of issues. If we all can consider gay people, including lesbian and transgender folks, simply “folks,” only then can we move forward with addressing all the
actual
tasks we have in front of us. More hugs, less punches.

YOKO ONO

O
h, Yoko.

If any of you hear her name and think, “Oh, you mean the no-good so-and-so who broke up the Beatles?,” well, let’s get that cleared up right off the bat. There happen to be some incredibly satisfying accounts of the Beatles’ history in book form (my favorite recently was
The
Beatles: The Biography,
by Bob Spitz) that should serve to satisfyingly untangle any misapprehensions we fans might have been under in regard to the forces that actually did bring about the end of the greatest rock band in history. But before that information was available to me (or rather, I to it), as a rather simple rube pretty fresh off the sweet-corn truck from Illinois, I was certainly subscribing to that particular inaccuracy about Yoko. My beautiful bride set me straight, yet another reason they call me “the Lucky Bastard.”

In 2002 Megan announced to me that we would be attending an art opening at the Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Santa Monica, California, and that the opening was for Yoko Ono. I squinted slightly and blinked a couple of times as I determined that, no, this was not some
sort of uproarious ruse. “What kind of
art
?” I believe I asked. “You don’t like her, do you? You know . . . the Beatles?”

Then it was Megan’s turn to gauge my sincerity. She blinked thrice while inhaling, then sighed and, evincing forcible restraint, set down her spatula. She quietly said, “Her art is amazing.” Then added, with defeat, “You don’t know about her art?”

I hadn’t known one bit. Considering all the ways in which I am still profoundly ignorant today after reading a hell of a lot of books, you can only imagine the breadth of my innocence thirteen years ago. Megan has been the most tolerant of teachers, understanding inherently that, in my case, the fruits of the tree of knowledge must be plucked, chewed, and digested but one at a time, if she wants me to keep them down. Fortunately, that night was the perfect time for some fruit.

We went to the opening early, because if you’re famous, like Megan had become after four seasons of
Will & Grace
at that point, you can get into the gallery before the public for a preview, which also means you can get dibs on purchasing pieces of art, should you be so inclined, before they get scooped up. Megan is a keen art collector, so she was known to the gallerist, who in turn mentioned her to Yoko.

Well, it turns out that Yoko was a very big fan of
Will & Grace
, and so when we arrived at the preview, she was there to greet us with her son, Sean. If I was incredibly excited to meet Yoko and Sean Ono Lennon, an
amazing
musician in his own right (and a right sweetheart), then Megan was on the roof. Hell, she was over the moon. We all made pals, and Megan and I toured the collection, which included
some Cloud Pieces, as well as a series of photographs of a window in her apartment at the Dakota building on Central Park.

But this was far from Yoko’s first gallery showing, by forty or more years’ distance. What Megan had explained to me before we arrived was that Yoko Ono had already been an iconoclastic and groundbreaking conceptual artist when she and John Lennon met in 1966. She had mounted a show in a swell-sounding pad called the Indica Gallery in London, to which John arrived (for a preview, natch), on the invitation of the gallery director, John Dunbar. Apparently, Yoko was not a fan of popular music, as she had not heard of John Lennon, but Dunbar explained that he was a rich chap who might like her work and hence buy something.

As he toured the work, Lennon noticed an apple for sale for two hundred pounds. “I thought it was fantastic,” he said. “I got the humor in her work immediately. . . . There was a fresh apple on a stand—and it was
two hundred
quid to watch the apple decompose.” First of all, two hundred quid in 1966 pounds was equal to about three thousand pounds in today’s purse.

Second, the idea of reducing the artist’s participation in the experience to the mere curating of a scenario in which the patron was paying to watch nature work one of her many miracles—in this case, rot—was indeed hilarious, but also visionary. It recalls Michael Pollan’s description to me of the Chez Panisse dessert of pear and fig that could not be improved upon (see chapter 12), but in the case of Yoko’s apple, one was meant to “enjoy” the fruit with eyes and nose and, of course, imagination and humor.

Now, this was getting good. The more I heard about this early
brand of Yoko’s mischief, the more I liked it. In the early sixties, according to Alexandra Munroe of the Guggenheim, “[Yoko] was the first artist, in 1964, to put language on the wall of the gallery and invite the viewer to complete the work. She was the first to cede authorial authority in this way, making her work interactive and experimental.” (I’m a tad puzzled by Ms. Munroe’s authorial redundancy, but as an aspiring student, I will let it stand, in the name of accuracy, however much it may make my cheeks blush a reddish red.)

Another piece from 1964 that is considered by some her most courageous work was called
Cut Piece.
In a more theatrical setting, it was wholly interactive; almost more performance art than a conceptual piece, in which Yoko sat, silent and unmoving, while the audience was invited to approach her and snip away at her clothing with a sizable pair of scissors. Again, for the early sixties, this was shocking material to comprehend. There’s a filmed piece of it on YouTube. If you examine it, try to imagine the vulnerability and submissiveness of this tiny, young, beautiful Asian woman, allowing herself to be so subjugated in front of an audience. One young white man in particular becomes rather rapacious with his cutting, as though to say, “Well, I’ll show you how this is done.” The way that makes me feel: That is the artistry of the piece. Yoko has long been a master of using her skills in disparate media to leave her magic roiling, not on the wall or the stereo, but within the brain and heart of the receiver.

Megan and I recently saw the excellent documentary
Marina Abramovic´: The Artist Is Present
(highly recommended), in which Ms. Abramovic´ is described as “the grandmother of performance art.” Megan exclaimed, and said, “Make sure you put it in your chapter
that Yoko was doing
Cut Piece
a decade before Marina even started!” Perhaps, then, Yoko could be considered the great-grandmother of the medium.

The omission seemed too obvious to be accidental, but perhaps it occurred partially due to the world’s inability to put a label on the many varied disciplines of Yoko’s art. While Abramovic´ is specifically a “performance artist,” Yoko Ono defies any one moniker. According to the Guggenheim’s Munroe, “What makes her so slippery is that she is so wide-ranging. She is a musician and a poet, a peace activist and a performance artist, a maker of objects and a conceptual artist—and married to John Lennon.”

Speaking of John, let’s get back to their first meeting. There was one more item in that Indica Gallery show, the description of which incited me to immediate Yoko discipleship, and it happens to have been the artwork that hooked John Lennon as well, so let’s let him describe it: “There was another piece that really decided me for-or-against the artist: a ladder which led to a painting which hung on the ceiling. It looked like a black canvas with a chain with a spyglass hanging on the end of it. I climbed the ladder, you look through the spyglass and in tiny little letters it says ‘Yes.’ So it was positive. I felt relieved. It’s a great relief when you get up the ladder and you look through the spyglass and it doesn’t say ‘No’ or ‘Fuck you’ or something. It said ‘Yes.’”

When I heard about that historic moment from 1966 London thirty-seven years later? Christ,
I
fell in love with her. To me, this anecdote sums up what I most admire about Yoko: her positivity. The spirit of everything she has created, and continues to create,
is swaddled in an unmitigated message of, quite simply, love. In the name of love, she perpetually challenges us to reexamine the dogmatic thinking of our time, to expand our emotional capabilities beyond the mediocre level of decency to which we’ve acquiesced.

Quite possibly the greatest artistic couple in the past century had met and begun to recognize the magic between them. John would never be the same, certainly, but in fairness, how could we ever blame Yoko for John’s subsequent maturation? When anybody falls under the sway of true love, what use can there be in blaming the beloved? If you’re an ardent fan of John, Paul, George, and Ringo, then the supposition that Yoko could have caused the Beatles’ breakup, even indirectly, doesn’t actually make much sense. Particularly in the case of John, who was nothing if not an intensely discriminating individualist. That one of his life choices was to be with Yoko at that point was certain, but
their
relationship’s blossoming had considerably less to do with the Beatles’ disbanding than John’s own relationship with his mates.

John said, “That was it. The old gang of mine was over the moment I met her. I didn’t consciously know it at the time, but that’s what was going on. . . . That was the end of the boys, but it so happened that the boys were well-known and weren’t just the local guys at the bar.” To accuse him of the pithless character that would have been required to in any way let “Yoko break up the band,” as though he had no free will to divorce himself from them of his own accord, is seriously demeaning to the man we reportedly admire so. Those of us who have chosen domesticity (a wise choice) have all been there. You sacrifice the pub, as it were, for the household.

The most explanatory but seldom mentioned fact is that the Beatles were simply done. They had created a gorgeous collection of music together, a prolific body of work that altered the landscape of music and, arguably, Western culture, more expansively than anything since the printing press. The creative flame of the collective had burned terrifically bright and then, having consumed its fuel, gone dark. How can we complain at the duration of the candle’s life when what remained was the best bunch of records ever cut by four cute white boys?

As significant as the Beatles were, it turned out that John had even bigger fish to fry. With all their work as “passive activists,” John and Yoko cleverly began using their fame as just another medium in which to practice creativity. Their campaign “War Is Over! If You Want It” was born of their antiviolent contribution to the national protests against the Vietnam War. Aware that their wedding would bring with it a tsunami of press attention, the couple took the opportunity to shift the focus to their experimental protest efforts in the name of peace.

In 1969, as the conflict raged in Vietnam, Yoko and John staged two “bed-ins” from their hotel rooms in Amsterdam and Montreal. The “bed-in” (a humorous take on the more traditional sit-in, in which protestors camp out at a location until they are either arrested or evicted, or, conversely, their demands are met) simply involved the press entering the couple’s hotel room, where they conducted all-day press conferences on exploring new methods of cultivating world peace. John later said of these, “It’s part of our policy not to be taken seriously. Our opposition, whoever they may be, in all manifest forms, don’t know how to handle humour. And we are humorous.”

I can’t help but cite the similarity to these lines from Wendell Berry’s “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”:

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn’t go. Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Yoko and John’s ideas were indeed simultaneously funny and inspiring. They introduced a new methodology called “Bagism,” which entailed a person covering his or her entire body in a cloth bag, so that they would be perceived by others without regard to appearance, race, sexuality, hair length, age, habiliments, etcetera. The use of the bag would free the public from the influence of stereotyping and its resultant prejudices. Pretty hilarious but also true.

Another gesture from this period in 1969 that I find very touching was when Yoko and John sent a gift of acorns to the heads of state from fifty countries, asking them to plant the acorns as a symbol of peace. The couple had such an excellent attitude about addressing the political entities that engaged our nations in “warfare” then, as does Yoko still to this day, although I have to put “warfare” in quotes, since we have relegated the inaugural American foreign policy of “justified fair fighting” to the distant past. (Now we are fed the softening line
that we’re engaged in “policing actions,” as though that makes the victims on both sides any less dead.)

In a substantial way, John and Yoko were the forerunners of today’s best source for open-minded news: the comedy news program. Let’s face it—the state of our nation’s decency is an absolutely shameful mess. It’s become perfectly clear that our democracy is being run, not by the people it supposedly represents, but by the corporations who control the vast majority of those people, as well as the vast majority of the nation’s wealth.