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The Uncanny Valley 8: Pet Robots

2012-02-04T08:12:00.009-06:00

[This is a continuation of my (now numerous) reflections on the Uncanny Valley. You can read the previous seven installments here if you're interested.]

Late last semester, as a part of my department's semi-regular Philosophy Film Series, we screened Mechanical Love, a 2007 documentary about the ever-evolving relationships between humans and robots. The film focuses chiefly on two robot projects, both from Japan: (1) IRC's (Intelligent Robots and Communication Laboratories) Geminoid Project, which manufactures very human-like androids, and (2) AIST's (Advanced Science and Technology) project that created Paro the "therapeutic robot." Both Paro and the Geminoids fall under the general category of "social robots," which are designed to mimic human interactive social behaviors and which, the film suggests, might even come to replace other humans for our social relationship needs. I've discussed the Geminoid Project in this series already, so I want to focus more on Paro here. As you can see from the picture above, Paro takes the form of a plush baby seal and is programmed to respond (positively and negatively) to human touch and voice. Paro isn't meant to actually "replace" a human being so much as it is meant to replace a non-human animal, like a pet. (For many people, of course, relationships with their pets already replace or mimic relationships with real human beings. More on that below.) If the depictions that we see in the film Mechanical Love are true, Paro is very good at doing what it was designed to do. So good, in fact, that Paro seems.... well, uncanny.

Interestingly, the design plan for Paro indicates that the roboticists behind it made a concerted effort to avoid the uncanny valley phenomenon that I've been discussing in this series so far. In the film, we're told that Paro's general size and weight is meant to approximate the feel of a small child. Also like a small child, Paro can't speak, so it cant and isn't meant to generate complex or sophisticated interactions, like a conversation partner. Paro needs its owner to "care" for it (by stroking and petting), respond to it when it "cries," and also to "feed" it (by plugging it in periodically). That is to say, Paro is designed to be dependent in the way a small child is, and also to make its owner feel indispensable and necessary, like I imagine the parent of a small child feels. Unlike scientists at the Geminoid Project, however, the AIST designers didn't want to produce a robot-version of a small child, but rather a robot-version of a non-human animal pet that also happens to be the size of a small child. No offense to all the parents out there, but I think AIST's fundamental intuition is right, namely, that the similarities between our relationships with pets and our relationships with small children, even if not identical, is remarkably similar. The dependency of pets and small children on us fosters a particularly strong relational bond, if only because that dependency forces us to respond, and to be responsible, to them.

So, why not a small cat or dog? As it turns out, the original design of Paro was in the form of a small cat, but that form was rejected by almost all of its test "owners." The reason for this, the Paro designers explain, is because most people are familiar enough with the look, feel, sound and behaviors of real cats to be immediately turned-off by the robot cat's imperfect approximation. (That "imperfect approximation" is, as I have contended in this series, the root of the cause of the uncanny valley effect.) When the designers switched to a form that was equally cute but not nearly as familiar (the baby seal), Paro's uncanny problems disappeared. In this way, I think Paro accomplishes the same effect as Speilberg's creature E.T. and does so by many of the same strategies. Paro's designers were correct that most people have no idea what the up-close-and-personal interactions with baby seals are like-- and, with a few highly improbable exceptions, nobody knows what the up-close-and-personal interactions with extra-terrestrials are like-- so choosing the form of an unfamiliar-animal or an unfamiliar-being to serve as the host for very-familiar interactions and behaviors gives designers quite a bit of latitude. What Paro's creators needed to capture, like Speilberg, was the essence of what makes these creatures the sort that enable relationships. It turns out that the basic characteristics needed to manufacture that effect are simple and few: big eyes, small stature, minimal capacity for communication, some element of dependency, complete lack of malice or aggressiveness, and a rudimentary simulation of the basic biological functions (eating, sleeping, mortality*) by which we understand beings to be capable of Being. Oh, and not incidentally, they need to be skilled at fostering and maintaining that thing captured in the title of the documentary: "mechanical love."

[*Paro, despite the fact that it's a machine, is what we could analogically call "mortal." Machines do die, as anyone with any kind of machine knows.]

In Mechanical Love, Paro is placed with an elderly woman in a nursing home named Vera, with the hopes of giving her enough social stimulation to maintain (if not improve) her diminishing cognitive capabilities. The story of Vera and Paro is, quite frankly, heart-wrenching. Vera immediately takes to her new robot companion, and she is obviously happier with Paro than without it. The other patients in her nursing home, as well as the nursing home staff, find Paro annoying and bothersome. They ridicule Vera for treating Paro as if it's real. The staff suspects Vera's attachment to Paro is crazy. But when we see Vera's interactions with her fellow patients in the home, who appear far more "robotic" and "mechanical" (given their compromised social and cognitive faculties) than Vera or even Paro, it's not difficult to surmise why Vera finds her relationship with her robot pet so meaningful. It's what we humans might consider a "social relationship" stripped-down to its bare minimum essentials, but those essentials are undeniably present. Paro is, as it was designed to be, a "therapeutic robot" for Vera and the therapy that it is dispensing is something that uncannily simulates real human social interaction.

So, the question is: what difference does it make whether or not Paro is an actual non-human animal or a robot? Don't our relationships with all "real" domesticated pets function in the same basic way for humans as Paro does? One of the really interesting, and for the most part unexamined, questions raised by Mechanical Love is the extent to which our relationships with domestic (non-human animal) pets says a lot about the liminal space between our relationships with other humans and our relationships with machines. Even as technology gets more and more characterized, defined and understood by the rules of "social" networking, most of us still find it difficult to project onto machines the human characteristics that we easily project onto pets. Still, we forget that our projections onto non-human animal pets are nonetheless projections and, as such, are projected no differently onto non-human animals than they are onto non-human animal-like robots.

But, of course, there is a difference that makes a difference. Non-human animal pets can SUFFER and DIE, while robots/machines can only "break" (or stop working). So, it seems like there must be something more significant that we're capable of investing into our relationships with sentient beings than whatever it is that we invest into our relationship with machines, which we know are not sentient, however much we may pretend otherwise. The interesting phenomenon exhibited in Mechanical Love, in the relationship between Vera and Paro, is that "sentience"-- or, rather, the lack thereof-- is not really a dealbreaker when it comes to what makes for a meaningful, even therapeutic, social relationship. In fact, there are many sentient beings about which the ability to suffer and die is not in the least questionable (like, for example, Vera's companions in the nursing home, or the staff of that home) who nevertheless not only fail to inspire and/or sustain the basic sentimental intuitions necessary for a meaningful relationship, but who may also undermine those same intuitions.

Is Vera's attachment to and love for Paro both meaningful and therapeutic? Undoubtedly so. Is it "crazy"? Arguably not. What does that say about the prospect of "replacing" real sentient beings, like humans and non-human animals, with machines? I don't know.

The fundamentally aleatory nature of our relationships with other human beings (and "domesticated" non-human animals) is, of course, what makes those relationships unique. But it's also what makes them mutable, grossly unpredictable, constitutionally fragile and, as a consequence, quite often extremely painful. As anyone who has a pet-- or a real human friend, for that matter-- knows, the option to "program" one's partner in those relationships such that the possibility of their under-performance might be circumvented is a very attractive option, even if only self-interestedly so. What's interesting about Paro is that Paro remains uncanny, though not because it too-closely approximates the appearance of a human companion or a non-human animal companion, but rather because it too-closely approximates the very companionship we have with human and non-human animals.

Paro approximates those relationships in every way except their imperfect unpredictability... which leads one to wonder after our attachments to those imperfections. In many ways, this particular iteration of the uncanny reminds me of "God's Song" (provocatively subtitled "That's Why I Love Mankind"), penned by Randy Newman and performed best by the late, great Etta James. In that song, Etta James recounts, from the point of view of God, the kind of blind trust with which mankind believes in and depends upon its relationship with God. Here's the song, if you don't know it already:

What Paro is able to accomplish, which no human or non-human animal could, is in the end something truly divine, viz. the ability to constitute itself as a relationship-partner whose "mechanical love" is thoroughly reliable, predictable, determinate and unconditional. Would that it were so with the rest of us imperfect beings!

**NOTE: To those of you who have written to me concerned that you couldn't access this blog recently, I'll just say that I took it down for a few weeks. Why is not important. It's back online now and I'm glad to have you here.**

Young Adult: The Least Funny Comedy of 2011

2012-01-09T11:35:00.062-06:00

I'm guessing I'm not the only one who saw the trailers for the new film Young Adult (directed by Up In The Air and Thank You For Smoking auteur Jason Reitman, penned by Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody) and thought to myself: that looks really funny! I want to see it! I mean, I didn't expect The Hangover-funny or Caddyshack-funny or even Superbad-funny, but still, you know, "ha-ha" funny. I've seen the other films by Reitman and Cody, so I was fully aware that Young Adult wasn't going to make me guffaw. That's just not their style. What I love about them is that theirs is a smart but dark humor, intentionally reflective in a way that capitalizes on the kind of recognition that Aristotle praised in tragedy and Hegel drew out of the hard heart of self-righteous self-consciousness. That's a difficult sort of "funny" to capture on film, but it's Reitman and Cody's bread-and-butter. There's just no denying that their films-- especially those, like Young Adult, that are marketed as "comedies"-- are funny, even if uncomfortably, ironically, sometimes pathetically, sometimes sardonically. So, on the basis of what I considered a semi-informed opinion, I went to see the film and expected it to meet my expectations.

You know, sometimes you're wrong, and sometimes you're WRONG. I have to say that I'm cataloging my expectations for Young Adult under the latter.

Just so you know, ALL the conventionally "funny" parts of Young Adult are right there in the trailer. Other than those scenes, this movie is about as funny as Apocalypse Now. (Oh, come on, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning"? Admit it, you had a few bad-faith chuckles in Apocalypse Now. Never get out of the boat.) In fact, if the Vietnam War took place in the psychic space of a late-thirties professional woman instead of on the Indochina Peninsula, and if the warring factions were that woman's pathologically-arrested and self-sabotaging developmental tendencies instead of the Americans and the VietCong-- and also if there was a better soundtrack-- Young Adult pretty much would BE the same film as Apocalypse Now. But maybe I exaggerate...

No, actually, I don't. Young Adult is the LEAST funny comedy I've ever seen. And, weirdly, the fact that it's marketed as a comedy (that "I-don't-think-that-word-means-what-you-think-it-means" dissonance) is exactly what makes Young Adult brilliant. Because I think this really is a brilliant film, I'm throwing out my usual rule about avoiding spoilers in the following. Not that that rule matters much, since the plot isn't the point in this film and, at any rate, you can pretty much glean the whole plot from the trailer.

First, you should be prepared for Young Adult's psychic, emotional and aesthetic assault from the moment you chomp down on your first mouthful of buttery popcorn. Reitman's opening 15 minutes unfold at a snail's pace-- a sedated, clinically depressed, probably hungover snail, that is. It's almost painful to watch. We see the film's protagonist, Mavis Gary (played by Charlize Theron), schlogging through existential minutiae in what appears to be a pharmaceutical haze. Partly because it's boring, partly because it's pathetic, but mostly because it's a little-too-familiar, Reitman's decision to depict the quotidian details of Mavis' life sans sonic salve makes the quietness of those scenes all the more foreboding. Even before the opening credits, Mavis has embarked on an as-yet-unexplained road trip to WhoKnowsWhere and, already, we've been given ample reason to decide that we probably don't want to come along. Despite the fact that the movie's soundtrack, as a whole, constitutes a pretty impressive homage to 90's nostalgia, Young Adult nevertheless feels disturbingly quiet for most of its duration. In fact, there's only one really prominent song in the whole film, Teenage Fanclub's "The Concept," which Mavis plays over and over on a cassette tape in her roadtripping car and which has the unbelievably inappropriate-for-the-film chorus "I didn't want to hurt you oh yeah / I didn't want to hurt you oh yeah."

Fair warning, moviegoers: don't believe that chorus for a second. Mavis Gary (AND Reitman AND Cody) want to hurt you. And they're going to do it.

The credit for that hurt is due, first and foremost, to scriptwriter Diablo Cody (née Brook Busey). In other interviews, Cody has said of Young Adult's arrested development storyline:

I felt like there were a lot of movies out there about the man-child. It had become a kind of genre unto itself. Everybody thinks the man-child is so funny and cuddly and lovable, but I thought there’s something sinister and disturbing about a woman who’s in the same place... I believe in just having as many representations as possible of women onscreen … good, bad, shitty, whatever. There just needs to be volume.

There's certainly no volume-shortage of the "bad, shitty, whatever" woman here, though precious little of the "good" one. Unlike she did for Juno, Diablo Cody pens absolutely no redemption for the young adult Mavis. Audiences may be able to indulge their desire/need to pull for Mavis even in spite of Mavis' first gross demonstration of self-centered solipsism, maybe also after the second, more reluctantly after the third and fourth... but Cody just doesn't let up. She keeps those demonstrations coming with relentless emotional brutality, like a jock's proper junior high beat-down of the nerd du jour. Cody's Mavis is pathetic, pathological, embarrassing, cringe-worthy. (Even when she's being sympathetic, as she supposedly is in her so-awkward-it-hurts sex scene with her own high-school nerd du jour, the crippled Matt Freehauf, played brilliantly by Patton Oswalt.) It's not that this "bad, shitty, whatever" woman doesn't inspire sympathy (even, for some of us, empathy), it's just that she's what we might call-- to borrow Nietzsche's phrase-- "human, all too human." That is to say, Mavis is profoundly broken, like some badly played, dive-bar-cover-band version of a really great song, the one that physically hurts you to hear. Mavis is needy, she's lonely, she's morally and metaphysically insubstantial, she's painfully and painfully recognizably vulnerable. She fails as a matter of character. She has failed her family, her partners, her friends, her dreams, her potential and, as the story goes, herself... but she's utterly blind to all of these weaknesses. So, she doubles-down on her superficial, ephemeral strengths (good looks, professional semi-accomplishment, fading high school social cachet) whenever her weaknesses are exposed, and the consequence is always-- every time-- that her doubling-down is a bad bet.

Mavis is such a tragically sad and unlikable character that I can't help but think that Reitman and Cody made this movie for her. The whole film feels like an intervention. (And if you've ever watched the television series "Intervention," you know how hard it is to watch such things.) That's a credit to this otherwise painful story, in my estimation, and I want to be the first to thank Cody and Reitman for it, because there are a whole lot of Mavis's out there in the world. They've been mindlessly and recklessly crashing about on the pinball-bumpers of life for a long time without an artist to tell their stories honestly and sympathetically, even if their stories don't inspire much sympathy. So, kudos to Reitman and Cody for giving us a warts-and-all picture of "bad, shitty, whatever" women.

There are a lot of them/us.

Don't see Young Adults if you're looking for a laugh, or a grown-up version of Juno, or a less-depressing relay of Up In The Air. Reitman and Cody are in their sweet spot in this film, which is an uncomfortably un-sweet spot, as it should be. There's nothing comfortable or pretty or, to be honest, sympathetic about being broken like Mavis Gary is broken. And/yet/but, as Derrida was fond of saying, those women are still among us and they need our sympathies. Even when-- nay, especially when-- they're unsympathetic, when they're hard to watch, when they're hard to love or even like, when they're embarrassing. As much as I hate myself for it, I feel for Mavis in Young Adult because, at the end of the day, there is no such thing as a "young adult." You're young or you're an adult.

And never the twain shall meet.

The Problem with Forbidden Knowledge

2012-01-03T08:12:00.035-06:00

Over on the NewAPPS blog, which is becoming a more and more excellent philosophy blog by the day, Eric Schliesser has authored a provocative (and provocatively brief) post asking whether or not we need a professional code of ethics for philosophers. Schliesser's question was prompted by the recent publication of two books-- one that condones torture and the other that condones the disenfranchisement of ignorant voters (in both cases, Schliesser adds, "with qualifications, of course")-- leading him to wonder whether we philosophers ought to collectively disavow the sorts of arguments about which there is a negative moral consensus. As an example of "arguments that are not treated as worthy of consideration" currently by philosophers-- other than arguments that are obviously trivial-- Schliesser offers those "exploring subtle distinctions that can help illuminate the inherent moral inferiority of some ethnic group." I think we are meant to presume that Schliesser (implicitly) judges arguments that "condone torture" or the "disenfranchisement of ignorant voters" as worthy of the same moral opprobrium with which we currently regard pseudo-scientific and manifestly racist arguments, and I think we are meant to presume that any argument morally equivalent to those would be the target for Schliesser's putative Philosophical Code of Ethics. The problem is, of course, that Schliesser's comparisons are more equivocal than equivalent for many (if not most) philosophers. How do we determine which arguments rise to the level of philosophical "taboos"? Schliesser suggests that "disciplinary moral consensus" is likely a necessary, even if not a sufficient, condition for delegating a certain philosophical topic taboo. But, again, it's evident even to Schliesser that disciplinary moral consensus is very difficult to locate.

Interestingly, the main point of Schliesser's post seems to be to elucidate the sometimes "very pernicious policy consequences" of philosophic activity. He suggests that most philosophers likely wouldn't sign on to a professional code of ethics like that of engineers, which obligates engineers first and foremost to "hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public." Why not? Because the "safety, health and welfare of the public" is not the paramount virtue of philosophic activity. Schliesser writes (my hotlinks added):

Let me offer two (controversial) examples: i) a great deal of philosophic sophistication is regularly deployed in order to clarify the doctrine of double effect. In practice the main function of the principle, however elegant, is to be a rhetorical fig-leaf to let politicians and generals morally off-the-hook for atrocious deeds. ii) Plenty of prominent philosophers are engaged in projects that facilitate the development of causal discovery software to be used in expert systems with the (foreseeable) dual use to fight, say, cancer or annihilate enormous number of innocent people deemed enemy by the government (etc.).

Should we be more willing to hold each other responsible for the foreseeable public impact of our words or shared standards?

So, in the case of the principle of double effect, Schliesser rightly notes that the products of philosophic activity quite often provide excuses for morally objectionable acts. In the second case, Schliesser worries that too many philosophers are willing to under-emphasize or overlook problems endemic to causal discovery algorithms-- e.g., the problem of ignorance and the problem of inconsistency-- in effect providing philosophical sanction for the development of systems that are predictably antithetical to the "safety, health and welfare of the public" (even if the "double effect" of those systems is positive). He asks: should we be more willing to hold each other responsible for the foreseeable public impact of our words or shared standards?

I can't imagine that many philosophers would answer "no" to Schliesser's question. That general agreement notwithstanding, I also can't imagine that many philosophers would agree to the formulation of a Professional Code of Ethics of the sort that Schliesser seems to want, either. As he notes, there are several categories of arguments that professional philosophers might have a collective professional interest in disavowing. To make things clearer, let's say they're of three general sorts:

Untrue Arguments, which may or may not also be morally objectionable. For example, "some ethnic groups are inherently inferior."
Trivial Arguments, which are not morally objectionable, but rather which tend to (in Schliesser's words) "diminish the beauty or elegance or worthiness of an argument."
Arguments with Foreseeably Negative Policy Implications. I imagine that arguments that "condone" torture in exceptional circumstances, like the infamous "ticking time-bomb" scenario, would be examples of this sort.

Obviously, there are already more general practices and rules of Academia in place (like graduate training and peer-review) that safeguard against philosophers engaging in manifestly untrue arguments or poorly executed ones. So, a Professional Code of Ethics wouldn't be needed for those. It's the third category that's Schliesser's real concern here, and for good reason. Unfortunately, I just don't think there's an Ethical Code that could do what he wants it to do.

Let me say that I am completely sympathetic with Schliesser's concerns. I think he lays them out well, and I think his examples (in the comments section, which is expanding even as I write this) of philosophic activity with deeply problematic policy implications are spot-on. Here's my issue: what would the putative Philosophers' Ethical Code forbid? Let's return to the general principles of the Engineering Ethics Code for a moment. They are as follows:

Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public and shall strive to comply with the principles of sustainable development in the performance of their professional duties.
Engineers shall perform services only in areas of their competence.
Engineers shall issue public statements only in an objective and truthful manner.
Engineers shall act in professional matters for each employer or client as faithful agents or trustees, and shall avoid conflicts of interest.
Engineers shall build their professional reputation on the merit of their services and shall not compete unfairly with others.
Engineers shall act in such a manner as to uphold and enhance the honor, integrity, and dignity of the engineering profession and shall act with zero-tolerance for bribery, fraud, and corruption.
Engineers shall continue their professional development throughout their careers, and shall provide opportunities for the professional development of those engineers under their supervision.

Principles 2-7 could easily be adopted by professional Philosophers (with the possible exception of 4 which doesn't have much purchase for client-less philosophers). In fact, they would likely be adopted without much objection, as I'm guessing they're already accepted as general practice. But adopting any or all of those first seven principles wouldn't assuage Schliesser's concerns. It's some variation on the engineers' First Principle that we need for that. Presuming, as I think we must, that there are many good reasons to pursue philosophical arguments that do not serve the safety, health and welfare of the public, we have two options for those arguments: either (1) keep them "secret" from the public, or (2) trust "the public" to do with them what they will.

I'm not sure what could possibly serve as the First Principle for a Professional Philosopher's Code of Ethics that wouldn't amount to something like declaring "forbidden knowledge." Many years ago, I attended a lecture by my (at that time) dissertation advisor, John D. Caputo, where he was asked to answer the question: is there such a thing as "forbidden" knowledge? Jack answered "no"-- not because there aren't some questions that, if pursued to their philosophical ends, produce knowledge that has foreseeably pernicious consequences for the public, but rather because the pursuit of knowledge per se can't be forbidden. If we can ask a question, Caputo speculated, we will pursue it to its end. In fact, we're already engaged in the pursuit of its end. (See the first sentence of Aristotle's Metaphysics.) I don't think Caputo's point was to say that "anything goes" in philosophical speculation-- a position he, and many other deconstructionists, are often wrongly credited with holding-- but only to say that the fact of the matter is that if we can think it (even as a question, as a possibility), "it" already is in the realm of that for which we are, and ought to be, held intellectually (and, I would add, professionally) responsible. "Forbidding" certain questions, or certain arguments, or certain conclusions, only serves to resign those matters to the realm of the Secret, which poses a far more pernicious danger to the public than bad arguments do, because it removes them from the public space where we hold each other accountable for our arguments and their consequences.

For that reason, I think Schliesser's question-- should we be more willing to hold each other responsible for the foreseeable public impact of our words or shared standards?-- is the MOST important question. But it can only be asked because professional philosophers don't have an ethical code that forbids any particular question from being asked and answered, however incompletely, imperfectly or, in some cases, dangerously.

*********************
UPDATE 1/5/12: Schliesser's essay has generated several other critical responses. See Mohan Mathhen's here and here. Joshua Miller's (excellent) criticism is here. Schleisser's rejoinders are here and here.

2011 Year in Pop Culture

2011-12-30T11:20:00.009-06:00

Doing the end-of-the-year Pop Culture list is definitely something that I look forward to each December. I was worried that last year's list was going to be hard to top-- what with 2010's introduction of the Facebook "like" button, the Jersey Shore "GTL" mantra, the iPad and the Rally To Restore Sanity and/or Fear-- but 2011 had enough of the awesome and the awful to give 2010 a run for its money. Some of the headlines that made my earlier lists (2011 Year in Music, 2011 Year in Sp orts and 2011 Year in Politics) could have easily made this list as well, but I'm trying not to repeat stories on multiple lists. So, unfortunately, the pop-culture trend of "Tebowing" got bumped.

"Pop culture" is a funny and fuzzy category and it's difficult every year to determine what really counts as a popular or a cultural phenomenon. For the most part, I use this list as a kind of catch-all for the things that I can't list under music, politics or sports... but that means that there's a lot left to cover. So, below you'll find a little bit of celebrity news, a little bit of science, a little bit of literature, a little bit of television news, and a whole lot of other cultural detritus. Before we commence, I do want to point you to Buzzfeed's amazing collection of "The 45 Most Powerful Images of 2011," which is a really striking way to capture the past year. I think next year I'm going to try to give arresting images like those a bit more attention on this blog.

But without further ado, here's the 2011 Year in Pop Culture:

"Winning" with Charlie Sheen
It was just so awful that you couldn't help but watch when Charlie Sheen went completely off the rails earlier this year. The star of Two and a Half Men, one of the highest paid television actors and member of the iconic 1980's "Brat Pack," Charlie Sheen had a lot going for him... but he also, unfortunately, had a weakness for prostitutes, pills, booze and blow. In a series of interviews he gave obviously under the influence, Sheen described himself as being infused with "tiger blood," as having "a 10,000 year-old brain and the boogers of a 7 year-old," and as "not being bi-polar but bi-winning." (Jimmy Kimmel runs down several of his other bon mots here.) Earlier this year, it was pretty much impossible to turn on a television without hearing Sheen say something that would make you cringe with excitement, embarrassment, or fear that you may really have just been transported through a wormhole to a compossible world of insanity. Sheen got fired from his longtime gig on Two and a Half Men, but shortly thereafter seemed to find his way back to the world the the rest of us inhabit. That recovery is surely a good thing for him and his family, though it's probably a major disappointment to the staff at TMZ.

Man vs. Machine on "Jeopardy"
Back in February, a computer program named "Watson" (developed by IBM) competed on the television quiz show "Jeopardy" against that show's most celebrated contestants, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. The showdown was described as the "natural language processing" equivalent of the 1997 chess match between IBM's Deep Blue and world chess champion Gary Kasparov. It was also, in a way, a version of the Turing Test (or the Loebner Prize Competition), both of which are meant to measure how close computer programmers have come to creating "artificial intelligence." Earlier this year, I read Brian Christian's very excellent book The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means To Be Alive, which deals with (among other things) the complicated process of trying to train computers to master "natural" human language. Of course, we all know that computers can think faster than us, can calculate in a more complex and sophisticated way than we can, and can store far more information than our little brains can hold. But what computers don't do very well is what we do best, namely, "understanding" the nuances of natural language. And that's what Watson needed to to better than any other computer before it in order to be successful on "Jeopardy." If you're interested in understanding how Watson works, you can read the interview with programmers from NPR, but it suffices to say here that Watson did work. Watson beat both Jennings and Rutter on "Jeopardy," though Watson's errors and mistakes were as interesting as it's win. It was the first ever Man vs. Machine showdown on "Jeopardy," and even though Man lost, he looked pretty strong.

Planking
You know, sometimes the kids come up with really cool things to do outside, like parkour, and other times they decide they're just going to stiffen their bodies and lay any-old-place like pieces of wood. The latter is called "planking," and it was all the rage this year for reasons that I still don't quite understand. According to Wikipedia, planking originally went by the (incredibly creative) name "The Laying Down Game." It also has several variations, which include Teapotting, Owling, Horsemaning, Batmanning, Tebowing and Plumbking. No, I'm not kidding. Other than faithfully imitating a wooden plank, it appears that the only other "rules" to the Laying Down Game are that you have to have someone take a picture of you and post it on the internet. Like many other stupid ideas, this one has been taken up by a few less-stupid people, producing what are actually pretty cool images like this one and this one. I don't know, maybe I'm getting old, but I just don't get planking. On the other hand, if I am in fact getting old, planking looks like a fairly decent hobby to take up.

Steve Jobs (1955-2011)
This was a pretty exciting year for Mac-users, what with the introduction of the iPhone 4S (and its talking Siri app) and the iPad 2, but the excitement generated by those new tech toys was far overshadowed by the passing of their creator, Steve Jobs in October. According to his sister, Jobs last words before he passed were: "Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow." That seems fitting, not only because those words demonstrate the instinct for wonder that drove Jobs' professional career, but also because they're the same words that he inspired in millions of people who bought his products. It's really hard to capture how important Steve Jobs was for my generation. He was like our Willy Wonka, only instead of making chocolate, he was our generation's greatest maker of toys. President Obama perhaps said it best, when he noted: "The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve's success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented." Thank you, Steve Jobs, for making technology beautiful, easy to use, exciting and innovative. And thanks for thinking differently.

No More Food "Pyramid"
Remember the food pyrami d we all learned in grade school? Exactly how was that organized? What was on the bottom? Were we supposed to eat more of the stuff at the bottom or the stuff at the top? Honestly, do you remember much more about it than that it was a pyramid? Yeah, I don't either. The FDA and the USDA decided that not many of us really understood the food pyramid, so they ditched it this year in favor of a food "plate" that they're now calling MyPlate. The new food plate emphasizes smaller portions, and encourages eaters to dedicate half their plates to fruits and vegetables. First Lady Michelle Obama is a big supporter of MyPlate, which she says goes hand-in-hand with her national exercise campaign to combat childhood obesity called Let's Move. Obesity is not just a problem for children in our country; according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, almost one-third (33.8%) of American adults are obese. In 2008, the medical costs associated with obesity hovered somewhere around $147 billion. The USDA thinks that the simplified MyPlate should help Americans make wiser food choices. Let's hope they're right.

Oprah Winfrey's Farewell Spectacular
After a quarter-century of daytime television reign, Oprah signed off for a final time from The Oprah Wi nfrey Sho w in May. The two-part "surprise" extravaganza was a star-studded homage to Oprah, featuring Tom Hanks, Beyonce Knowles, Josh Grobin, Tom Cruise, Patti LaBelle, Madonna, John Legend, Diane Sawyer, Rascal Flatts, Halle Barry, Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, Michael Jordan, Jerry Seinfeld, Jamie Foxx, Stevie Wonder, Simon Cowell, Rosie O'Donnell, Dr. Phil, Queen Latifah, Maria Shriver, Tyler Perry, Maya Angelou, Alicia Keyes and Aretha Franklin. (I probably left some out, but you get the idea.) Watching the show-- which I did-- it was hard not to think that Oprah is something like The Godfather of the celebrity world. Everyone who is anyone came by to pay their respects to Oprah, fawning and shrieking and cooing and crying in the affective manner that most befits The Queen of Daytime Television. I've never been a fan of Oprah's-- I really can't stand the self-righteous, self-help, quasi-spirituality that she doses out like Ambien-- but even I can't deny that she is a cultural force of a singularly unique kind. I mean, of course she's singularly unique. She's freakin' Oprah. Her "retirement" from the show is anything but, though, as she's simply moved her Empire over to her own network (called OWN, or the Oprah Winfrey Network). Starting in January, Oprah begins what she's calling Oprah 's Next Chapter. Meh.

Homeless Guy With "Golden Voice"
At the beginning of 2011, a video of Ted Williams (pictured left) went viral. Williams' was homeless and jobless at the time, begging on the streets for money in Columbus, Ohio. He carried a sign that read: "I have a God-given gift of voice. I'm an ex-radio announcer who has fallen on hard times. Any help would be greatfully [sic] appreciated. Thank you and God bless you. Happy Holidays." As it turns out, Williams' did have a God-given gift of voice and was quickly dubbed the man with the "golden voice." After being discovered by a local reporter, Williams' life took a dramatic turn for the better. He made appearances on several television shows (including Today, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and The Early Show) telling his story, and he was offered several hig-profile jobs. Then, his life took a turn for the worse, as the rapid launch into celebrity caused the recovering alcoholic Williams to relapse. Several stints in rehab resulted in dwindling job prospects for Williams, but he eventually evened out and is now clean, sober and employed with Ne w England Cable Ne ws.

American President Proves He's American
The "Birther" movement, driven by a bunch of lunatics who don't believe that President Barack Obama is really American, received its greatest support back in March when Donald Trump jumped on the Birther bandwagon. For weeks, Trump endlessly demanded that President Obama produce his birth certificate. He threatened to send an investigative team to Hawaii to "prove" that Obama's claims to have been born there were false. He even produced his own birth certificate. After nearly six-weeks of Trump's annoyance, the White House finally conceded and released Obama's long-form birth certificate. (Yes, Obama is American.) Despite having his conspiratorial madness debunked, Trump still declared victory, claiming "I am very proud of myself because I have accomplished something that nobody else has been able to accomplish." Our President, unimpressed, issued one of the best rejoinders of his career, when he said: ""No one is prouder to put this birth certificate to rest than The Donald. Now he can get to focusing on the issues that matter. Like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened at Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?" Game, set, match to the Hawaiian.

Humanity Reaches 7 Billion
Speaking of births, sometime around the end of October, somewhere in the world, the 7 billionth human was born. The United Nations released a document entitled The State of the World Population 2011 that offers a truly fascinating glimpse of the promises and problems tied up with this milestone. The world population has almost doubled just within the span of my lifetime, and it is projected to reach the 8 billion mark before 2030. The "demographic transition" is the name given to the process, occurring during the past century, which lead to a stabilization of population growth in the more highly developed countries. Because more developed countries have stabilized in terms of population growth, this means that most of the future growth will happen in developing countries that are still struggling to undergo a demographic transition of their own, which would bring birth and death rates in greater equilibrium. Of course, we know that the most challenging economic, social, political and environmental problems that plague humanity are concentrated in the developing world, so we're really going to have to work together over the next 50 years or so to assuage the impact of their population growth. To get a picture of what the impact of 7 billion people is on our shared world, take a look at the excellent slideshow published on The Huffington Post. It's time to start thinking about ourselves as a single human community, for sure.

Harold Camping Predicts World Will End on May 21...
No, Wait, He Meant October 21...
Or Maybe Sometime in 2012...
End of times predictions are always good fun. This year's celebrity doomsayer was (conservative Christian) Family Radio station President and Biblical numerologist, Harold Camping. Camping originally predicted that on May 21, 2011, Jesus Christ would return to earth, the Christian faithful would fly up to heaven (in the Rapture), and five months of fire and brimstone would follow, with millions dying every day, culminating on October 21, 2011, with the end of the world. When May 21 passed without incident earlier this year, Camp ing declared that a "spiritual judgment" had happened that day, but that the physical Rapture wouldn't occur until October 21. And when October 21 passed without incident... well, let's just say that it was a little AWK-WARD for poor prophet Camping. For the most part, Camping retired from public view (and from Apocalyptic predictions) after the October disappointment. But, this is AMERICA, and we never want for some loony-tune to step up and take the place of a debunked zealot. The new target date for eschatalogical events is December 21, 2012. The so-called "2012 Phenomenon" is based in part on the Mayan calendar, in part on pseudo-scientific astronomy, and mostly confirmed by a quick glance at the Republican Presidential primary candidates. Time to get right with God, folks.

On Second Thought, Mass Fish and Bird Deaths DID Look Kind of Apocalyptic
I had almost forgotten about this until I started to put together my end-of-year lists, but 2011 had a rather inauspicious start when reports of mass animal deaths were turning up everywhere. First, blackbirds literally fell out of the sky in Arkansas on New Year's Eve, followed a few days later by the same phenomenon in Louisiana, and later the same thing in Sweden. (Those deaths were unconvincingly explained as the result of "blunt force trauma" to the birds. To which all the rest of us replied: Whaaaa???) Then, over a hundred pelicans dropped dead in No rth Carolina. Almost 2 million fish in the Chesapeake Bay died. Then 40,000 crabs in Britain and 150 tons of tilapia in Vietnam. SOMEBODY GET HAROLD CAMPING ON THE PHONE 'CAUSE WE WANT TO KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON?! As it turns out, there was no reason to be alarmed. Eminently reasonable biologist E.O. Wilson stepped in with words of comfort for the nonscientific hoi polloi, explaining that mass animal deaths happen all the time. The real problem is that we know about it now because we all have smart phones and the Interwebs. (Wilson: "This instant and global communication, it's just a human instinct to read mystery and portents of dangers and wondrous things in events that are unusual... Not to worry, these are not portents that the world is about to come to an end.") Oh, okay. That makes me feel a lot better. But, seriously, blunt force trauma?

Scientists (Maybe) Locate the God Particle!
I love it when science makes it's way into pop culture. Probably not as much as scientists do, but I'm nerdy enough to have been totally fascinated when various news outlets began reporting that science may have found the "God particle." What's that you say? There's a GOD PARTICLE? That's awesome. Turns out they were talking about the Higgs bo son, which is crucial to understanding the origin of mass. Shortly after the Big Bang, it is thought that many particles had no mass, but became heavy later thanks to the Higgs field. The Higgs field is a theoretical, invisible energy field that stretches throughout the universe. It clings to fundamental particles wherever they are, dragging on them and making them heavy. So, in theory, particles can weigh nothing, but as soon as the field switched on shortly after the big bang, they got their mass. The so-called "God particle," the Higgs boson, is the signature particle of the field. Finding the Higgs boson would vindicate the so-called Standard Model of physics, which envisages that the universe is made from 12 basic building blocks called fundamental particles and governed by four fundamental forces. The existence of the Higgs boson is predicted by the Standard Model but it has yet to be found by experiments. The celebrity researchers in this story are at CERN and they're using something called a Large Hadron Collider (pictured above) which is just badass.

People Still Care Too Much About Other People's Weddings
If there's one thing the American public can't stop obsessing over, it's other people's marriages. So, this was a banner year for Nuptialphiliacs as Prince William married Catherine Middleton in a bona fide Royal Wedding AND Kim Kardash ian married-- uh, what's his name again?-- Kris-with-a-K Humphries in a American version of a Royal Wedding. The Prince and Princess seem to be enjoying newlywed life quite well, while things went bad quickly for the other Kouple. Kardashian and Humphries split after only 72 days. Because their wedding was a televised media event of the first order, it is speculated that the Kouple earned something like the equivalent of $250K for every day they were married. I suppose it's still possible to believe in the "sanctity" of the institution of marriage, but it gets more and more difficult every year to do so. In a hilariously ironic turn of events this year, Minnesota gays issued an formal apology to Minnesota conservative politician Amy Koch, expressing their regret for threatening traditional marriage and causing Koch to engage in the scandalous infidelities that ended hers. I predict that in 2012 the importance of the institution of marriage will only more closely approximate the importance of the Royal Family. Snore.

Big Writers Pen FAT Books in 2011
Two of the biggest novels released this year-- Haruki Murakami's IQ84 and Jonathan Franzen's Freedom-- were also two of the BIGGEST novels released this year. Although neither of them are quite the mammoth that David Foster Wallace's (1000+ page) Infinite Jest was, Murakami IQ84 weighs in at a hefty 944 pages and Franzen's Freedom is an impressive 608 pages. (For perspective, Roberto Bolano's 2666 sits somewhere between them in terms of length.) I haven't read either, though I did get Freedom for a Christmas gift and plan to dig in soon. In the circle of my bookish friends, Franzen and Murakumi are both favorites, so let me just go ahead and extend my congratulations to all of my friends who have already made it through these mammoths. I didn't get to do nearly enough "pleasure" reading this year. I'm resolving to fix that for 2012, but I have to say that the increasing size of my favorite authors' products are causing me considerable concern. I mean, these aren't books you can just leave in the bathroom without looking like you've got a real problem. On the other hand, my guess is that they make really good doorstops or bookends when you're done!

Bruno Mars Swears He's Not Doing Anything

Last year, my favorite viral video was "Jessica's Daily Affirmation." Rivaling Jessica for pure feel-goodness is one of my favorite viral videos of 2011, which came courtesy of Bruno Mars' "The Lazy Song" (below). First, it's just a damn catchy song. Second, those monkeys are adorable. Third, the lyrics are hilarious. But most impressive of all, I think, is the fact that this entire video was done in a single camera shot. No cuts, no editing. Who knows how long it took them to get it all down, but the final product is super impressive. Fair warning before you watch: this is definitely an "earworm." You'll be humming it for the rest of the day.

And finally, what would a 2011 Year in Pop Culture be without...

2011 Was the Year of the Honey Badger, Stupid
Ah, the honey badger. Watch it run in slow motion. It's pretty badass. The honey badger has been referred to by Guinness Book of World Records as the most fearless animal in all of the Animal Kingdom. It takes what it wants. And for many people in 2011, the honey badger became our spirit animal. It said what we won't, or don't, or can't say. Namely, we don't give a sh*t. The honey badger video that went viral this year was narrated by the fey and foul-mouthed "Randall," much to the delight of us all. It quickly spread through the pop culture undercurrent like a... well, like a virus. Thanks for the metaphor, stupid. Lousiana State University football player Tyrann "Honey Badger" Mattheiu finally broke through the NSFW restrictions on public honey badger talk when his nickname forced sports announcers to stumble all over themselves trying to explain the honey badger without using profanity on national television. Honey badger would've just said what he wanted. Honey badger doesn't give a sh*t. If you didn't see the video, you definitely missed out on one of the best "inside" jokes of 2011. And if you saw it and didn't find it hilarious, you probably have no sense of humor at all.

So, that's the end of the year-end lists for 2011. Here's hoping you all have a safe and happy New Year's Eve celebration. See you all on the flipside.

2011 Year in Dr. J

2011-12-29T12:09:00.041-06:00

Before I drop the 2011 Year in Pop Culture, which will be the last of my year-end lists, I thought I'd do one recounting my own year. 2011 began for me with a bit of a rough transition, as I was returning from a semester-long sabbatical, but things eventually smoothed out and stayed running smoothly (for the most part) for the duration. I had some great classroom experiences with my students this year, I met a couple of my musical and academic heroes, I spent a lot of Saturday nights having incredible fun at Wild Bill's, the traffic on this blog got a couple of major boosts from national media outlets, and I even made my first foray into the "art" world with the American Values Project. To top it all off, my hometown Memphis, a city that I love as much as I love bacon, also had a pretty great year. So, all in all, I figured that Memphis and I deserve to record our own 2011 list for posterity.

So, here it is, the 2011 Year in Dr. J (in roughly chronological order):

[January]
"Why I Chose Memphis" Series Featured in The Memphis Flyer
Near the end of 2010, I started a series on this blog called "Why I Chose Memphis," where I asked people to tell the stories of how they ended up living in Memphis. We got stories from an econo mist, a filmmaker, a local news broadcaster, a Bulgarian ex-pat, and even a sommelier! I got the idea for the series from one of my ex-students, Jessica Lotz, who had decided that she was sick and tired of all of the bad press Memphis had been getting in 2010. The stories I featured in the "Why I Chose Memphis" series accomplished what Jessica and I had hoped: they debunked the myth that Memphis is a miserable city, devoid of intelligence and attractiveness. Instead, our stories showed the warmth and resilience of Memphis and Memphians, as well as the love that both have and deserve. Then, in January of this year, I was contacted by a reporter from our local alternative weekly newspaper, The Memphis Flyer, who wanted to run a short story about the series. My interview with the Flyer is here. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this was the first of what would be several times in 2011 that other news outlets linked to this blog. For the record, I'm still taking "Why I Chose Memphis" stories, so send yours in!

[February]
American Values Project Sprouts Wings
In February of 2011, I had a half-baked idea to make a video, which I imagined would be a collage of photographs of people naming something that they value. So, I put out a (not very well designed) call on my blog for photos... and that, my dear readers, was the beginning of what is now the American Values Project. People from all over the United States responded to my call and sent in photos of themselves holding a handwritten sign naming something that they valued. I made the short video that I had originally planned, but very soon afterwards I realized that the project had taken on a life of its own. Photos just kept coming in, and at some point I was going to have to figure out how to keep the project going. So, I set up a Facebook page for what I was now calling the "American Values Project." And the photos just kept coming in. Then, in April, the American Values Project got another big boost, when curator Tally Beck (of Tally Beck Contemporary) in New York City invited us to exhibit a portion of our photos in his gallery as a part of the Festival of Ideas for a New City. (That exhibit happened in May and was a great success!) Not long after the New York exhibit, Rhodes College featured the project on it s website, and decided to give me an assistant for the Fall semester. Now, American Values Project has its own websit e and Twitter feed, and we're in the process of trying to fund another gallery exhibit in the Spring. It's only as I write this now that I'm realizing just how far this project has come in less that one year. If you haven't taken a minute to watch the slideshow of images from the AVP, you really should. It's moving, funny, inspirational, sometimes even curious. And it's one of the best things I've "created" in my whole life. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself!

[April]
Memphis Believes In "All Heart, Grit, Grind"... And I Do, Too!
In April, the whole city of Memphis was on fire with Grizz fever, as our NBA team (the Memphis Grizzlies) made an improbably fantastic run in the playoffs. Memphis was in the middle of a historic flood and a tragic foreclosure crisis, and the all heart, grit and grind of the Grizzlies was just what we needed to bring us together. (There's nothing like sports fandom for galvanizing civic pride!) Grizz strongman Zach Randolph summed it up best when he said that one of the reasons the Grizz thrived in Memphis was because they were a working-class team and Memphis was a working-class town. So true. I was lucky enough to be at the FedEx Forum (aka, the Grindhouse) for the Grizzlies' series-clinching win over the San Antonio Spurs, which also happened to be the same night as the Memphis in May Music Festival. Downtown was downright electric. People were honking and high-fiving and hugging and shouting "BELIEVE MEMPHIS!" I don't think I've ever loved my town as much as I did that night. Perhaps best of all, the Grindhouse theme song "All I Do Is Win" became a Memphis theme song. Now every time Memphians walk into the building everybody's hands go UP. And they stay there.

[June]
30 Day Song Challenge Reminds Me That I Love Writing
In June, as regular readers of this blog will know, I participated in the Facebook meme "30 Day Song Challenge." (You can read all of my entries here.) The Challenge gave me a musical prompt for every day-- a "song that makes you happy," a "song that you want played at your wedding," a "song you used to love but now hate," etc-- and I chose to write a blog post for each selection. I can say, without any reservations at all, that the whole month of June constituted the most purely enjoyable 30 days of writing I've ever done. I don't think I realized how much I love music, or how central it is to how I understand my life and my world, until I did the Challenge. Even better, my posts during the Challenge sparked a lot of really interesting conversations with my friends, some strangers, and some strangers that became friends. Just a few days ago, at Christmas dinner, I learned that even my mom read all my posts for the 30 Day Song Challenge! (My mom and I had a brief disagreement about my Day 16 disparaging of Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl," but it's all good.) In July, I briefly attempted-- and then gave up on-- my ridiculously self-designed 31 Days in Seuss, realizing in the process that I am most definitely not a poet. Honestly, if you want to know all there is to know of significance about Dr. J, you can find it in the blog posts from the 30 Day Song Challenge. F'realz.

[September]
Anthony Appiah visits Rhodes and The Honor Code

In September, Rhodes had the good fortune of hosting eminent philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah. He came to campus to discuss his NYT bestseller The Honor Code, and as one of the (only four) philosophers in residence at Rhodes, I got to spend quite a bit of time talking to him about it. The basic premise of Appiah's book is that there are certain extra-moral codes (like codes of "honor," for example) that often shape what we end up calling "moral revolutions." Appiah's book poses the rather perplexing question: why, when all of the rational arguments against things like slavery, foot-binding, and dueling are already in place, do those practices continue to persist as acceptable? What exactly is it that prompts moral revolutions? Appiah's public lecture was as erudite and compelling as I anticipated, but it was really in our more intimate conversations over lunch and dinner that I found myself utterly impressed with his quite natural philosophical skill and cosmopolitanism. Almost every year, I teach Appiah's famous essay "The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race" in my Philosophy of Race class, but I had always been suspect of some of the philosophical assumptions that underpinned his wok in critical race theory. I'm so glad I had the chance to sit and chat with him at length during his visit to Rhodes. He is, without question, a scholar and a gentleman... and I say that with absolutely no irony. He's also quite funny, which is always a plus in my book.

[October]
Hanging Out With Lucinda Williams
In October, I was getting ready for school one morning when the local NPR station announced that they had 2 tickets remaining to give away for Lucinda Williams' concert the next evening. They said anyone who wanted the tickets should just email the radio station. So I did. Now, let me just say that I've never won anything in my life... but at the end of the day, I checked my email and I HAD WON THE TICKETS!! The only thing more exciting than winning concert tickets was winning tickets to Lucinda Williams, who is one of my musical idols. I asked my good friend and fellow Lucinda-superfan, Kelly (who writes the very excellent blog, A Certain Solitary Pleasure), to go with me. We had a great time and it was an amazing show. We were right on the front row, less than 5 feet from Lucinda, singing along at the top of our lungs the whole time. After it was over, I asked one of her road crew if there was any way I could meet her. (Kelly said I was being "pushy" but, hey, the worst they can say is "no," right?) The roadie looked a little skeptical, so I started to tell him about my American Values Project, since Lucinda had spoken quite a bit about #OWS during her show and I thought she might be sympathetic to a project like ours. As it turns out, she was. My friend and I got invited onto Lucinda's tour bus, where we spent about an hour talking, laughing, and taking photos (of her and her whole band) for the American Values Project. Lucinda was warm and funny and smart and committed to good politics, just as I hoped she would be in "real" life. Along with my night with Kermit Ruffins in New Orleans last year, and my getting to sing onstage at B.B. Kings on Beale Street the year before, this will go down as one of the most memorable music moments of my life!

[November]
Talking Truth and Reconciliation with Antjie Krog
In another getting-to-meet-my-idols story, I had the good fortune to meet and serve on a panel with Antjie Krog, South African poet, journalist and author. Krog was one of the reporters who covered the proceedings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and wrote Country of My Skull recounting that experience. She came to Rhodes in November to deliver a lecture and poetry reading, both of which drew an overflowing audience. Thanks to my good friend, Mark Behr (who organized Krog's visit), I got to spend a lot of time with Krog. She is, in almost every conceivable way, the very model of an engaged intellectual. I don't think there's been any academic, other than Derrida, who has had me so star-struck upon meeting him or her. Krog not only has a very powerful presence about her, she IS a presence-- a soft-spoken, slight, mild-looking woman who commands attention and respect with the power of her words alone. Greatest moment: getting to discuss my weak humanism ideas with her, outside on a deck, smoking an after-dinner cigarette.

Rhodes College Gets Occupied
Well, kind of. My college attracts a lot of socially- and politically-engaged students, but the nature of their engagement, on the whole, is more service-oriented than it is activism-oriented. So, although our campus hasn't really seen a homegrown contingent of Occupiers just yet, a significant group of students were moved enough by the events at UC-Berkeley and UC-Davis in November to organize a candlelight vigil in solidarity with the students at those schools. They had a great turnout and a really inspiring and mature open discussion at the vigil. What's more, it looks like the Rhodes Solidarity Vigil might have been the first seed planted in a burgeoning "consciousness-raising" movement at Rhodes. There's a core group of students, staff and faculty (myself included) who have committed to keeping the Occupy Movement at the fore, and there's now a Facebook group to keep everyone informed and connected. (If you're a Rhodes alum, you can join the group, too!) I attended the Rhodes Vigil and wrote a short essay on Why I Stood With The Students for this blog. I have high hopes that this might be the beginning of something really great at Rhodes. Our new Wilson Chair of the Humanities, Jonathan Judaken, has arranged to bring Noam Chomsky to campus during the first week of classes and also to organize an ongoing Communities in Conversation series throughout the Spring semester. Small liberal arts colleges like Rhodes are the perfect places to imagine different and better futures. Here's to seeing what our community can imagine!

[December]
The New York Times Opinionator (Finally) Recognizes the Awesomeness of Dr. J's Blog
Okay, that may be overstating the matter a bit, but this blog did enjoy a brief moment in the spotlight a few weeks ago after the New York Times linked to my post on "The Philosophy Smoker Controversy" in their Opinionator section. Then, the same post was linked on InsideHigherEd and Jezebel and Gavagi. I really have no idea how in the world my $0.02 got moved up the ranks on this issue, but the viral storm sure was a boon for my blog traffic. And it was my first (and probably last) appearance in the NYT. For what it's worth, I largely disagree with the vitriolic opprobrium directed at Philosophy's so-called "Smoker," though I think it definitely has some fix-able problems, and I outlined as much in my original post. This has been a pretty rough year for professional Philosophy. Not only are we still suffering a truly soul-crushing job market and a tragic under-representation of women and minorities among our ranks, but many of the intra-family fights got downright ugly this year. I suppose there's some good to be found in the momentary distraction that was the Philosophy Smoker Controversy, if only because it gave us a brief reprise from the tired old "who's really doing REAL philosophy?" arguments that plague our profession. That, and I got mentioned in the New York Times. FTW!

Trial Run for Amazing New Music Venue in Memphis
Last Monday night, I went down to visit a new studio that my good friend Ronnie Wright has been building for the last couple of years. It's downtown at 508 S. Main, right on the trolley line and just across the street from the famous Arcade Restaurant and the infamous Ernestine & Hazel's bar. Ronnie has built a state-of-the-art recording studio and intimate performance space, which will host live webcasts on a site called Dittytv. He hosted a laid-back night for musicians and singers on Monday, so I grabbed my friend Chris Pitts (guitarist at Wild Bill's) and we went down to see what there was to see. It was A-MAZ-ING. Chris and I got to do a couple of numbers together (that's us in the picture here). It was one of those nights that I imagine can't happen in many cities other than Memphis. The room was filled with professional and amateur musicians, and everyone was happy to grab an instrument and join in with whatever anyone else wanted to play. True music, true people, true fun and utterly, absolutely, truly Memphis. I don't think you can spit in Memphis without hitting more talent that you would in any other place in the world.

Saying Goodbye To 2011
As I am every Saturday night, I will be at Wild Bill's this coming Saturday night, New Year's Eve, to say goodbye to 2011 and hello to 2012 with good friends, good food, good music and a lot of drinks. (That's me and one of my closest friends in the world, Chris Pitts, performing at Bill's to the left.) I really can't exaggerate how much of a central place this place is to me. When I think back over the best moments I had in 2011-- or any other year I've been in Memphis, for that matter-- the vast majority of them have occurred in the reddish, rocking, drunken glow of Wild Bill's. I'm not at all looking forward to 2012-- I'll be undergoing tenure review next Fall-- so I'm sure I'll be counting on Wild Bill's to deliver the spiritual sustenance that I need to make it through. And I know, without a doubt, that it will deliver. There's going to be a rocking good NYE party at Bill's on Saturday night, so if you happen to be in the River City, stop by and say hello. If you come down to the river, you betcha gonna find some people who live. You don't have to worry 'cause you got no money. People on the river are happy to give.

That's it for the 2011 Year in Dr. J. The next, and final, list is coming shortly: 2011 Year in Pop Culture. Stay tuned.

Finally, for my friends who read this blog, please take the opportunity to say hello and let me know you're still here in the comments. I thank you all for staying with me and this blog. Happy New Year!

2011 Year in Politics

2011-12-26T14:04:00.007-06:00

I don't think I'm going out on a limb here to say that 2011 will likely go down as the most significant Year in Politics in my lifetime. Time magazine named "The Protester" as the 2011 Person of th e Year. It was an interesting selection, since Time couldn't actually photograph The Protester for their cover. They opted for an imaginative artistic mash-up of many types of protesters' faces instead, because the 2011 Protester was not a person, but rather The People. From Bahrain to Manhattan to Algeria to Wisconsin to Chile to Egypt to UC-Davis to Tunisia, the Protester was legion. Even on my own campus, a small, mostly wealthy and historically apolitical liberal-arts college in Tennessee, I could tell that revolution and solidarity were in the air.

This really was a monumental year. Wars were started and ended. Old leaders fell and new ones arose. The world began conversing in different political vocabularies, imagining different political futures, listening to different political constituents voicing different political concerns. And thanks to Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and a thousand blogs, we could see every exciting and tragic and inspirational and heartbreaking moment happening in every corner of the globe. Even North Korea's corner.

On the other hand, 2011 delivered plenty of garden-variety political shenanigans and buffoonery as well. This year's ridiculous answer to last year's The Rent Is Too Damn High Party is The Taxes Are Too Damn High Party, a.k.a. the Republican Party, which seemed even more hypocritical, culturally tone-deaf, anti-science and "oops"-inclined. In fact, it wouldn't be too difficult to do a whole list of 2011 Year in Politics just focusing on GOP debate gaffes. Alas, these lists are never long enough, never complete or comprehensive, but here's a go at some of the biggest headlines from the 2011 Year in Politics:

Arab Spring
One could make a convincing argument for the claim that most of the other significant political events of 2011 would not have happened if the Arab Spring had not sprung. Protests that began with the cry "Ash-shaʻb yurīd isqāṭ an-niẓām!" in Tunisia last December eventually spawned a great Awakening that spread across countries in the Middle East and North Africa, including Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman and Morocco. Of course, one can't reduce the initiation of a movement of this far-reaching to a single event, but if one could, it would have to be the tragic self-immolation of Tunisian street-vendor Mohamed Bouazizi on 17 December 2010. Harassed and humiliated by local police, Bouazizi took his own life in protest of Tunisia's autocratic regime headed by now-ousted President Zine El Abidine Be n Ali. Bouazizi's bravery emboldened his fellow Tunisians, those Tunisians' bravery emboldened a region, and that region's bravery emboldened a world.

War Without End, "Ends"
The nearly nine-year U.S. occupation of Iraq came to an end on December 15 with a flag-lowering ceremony. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, in attendance, said that a free and democratic Iraq was worth the cost-- "in blood and treasures"-- that the U.S. paid, though that's hardly a consolation to the families of almost 5,000 servicemen and -women who lost their lives in the Iraq War. Nor is it a consolation to those suffering the brunt of our devastated economy, which hemorrhaged an estimated 3-4 trillion dollars as a result of this war. The last of the troops are scheduled to leave Iraq by December 31, leaving behind what is without doubt an unrecognizable country to most Iraqis. This past semester, I realized that many of my students (ages 18-22) have lived with the U.S. in a state of war with Iraq for over half their lives. They were children when it began; they're adults now. They likely don't remember that "Operation Iraqi Freedom" was initiated under a cover of lies. Then-President George W. Bush declared Iraq "the central front in the War on Terror" after manufacturing false-links between al Qaeda, 9/11 and Iraq. The Iraq War may be over, but the larger War on Terror of which it was a part still looks to be a war without end.

Osama bin Laden Assassinated
"Justice has been done." Those were President Obama's words, part of the dramatic address he delivered to the nation late in the evening on Sunday, May 1, announcing the death of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after a Navy SEAL team raided his c ompound, assassinating him. Obama's announcement was just short of ten years after the attacks bin Laden helped orchestrate on September 11, 2001. It had been a hawkish decade of war and fear, which had traumatized and refashioned the American psyche surely as much as the events of 9/11. Despite the fact that almost every news outlet repeated, over and over again, that Obama's announcement was "the most significant," "the most awaited," "the most desired" news story for our country, the on-the-ground reactions were not unanimously in agreement with those evaluations. For some, Osama bin Laden's death represented both justice and closure; for others, it was only a reminder of how costly ("in blood and treasures," to use Panetta's formulation) justice and closure can be. Without question, Osama bin Laden was cruel and murderous, an ideologue whose impact was as far-reaching as it was devastating. But our final treatment of bin Laden-- like our treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, like our treatment of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib, like our treatment of Uday and Qusay Hussein, like our treatment of Yaser Esam Hamdi and like our treatment of Guantanamo bay detainees-- the decision on the part of our President to execute justice outside of the constraints of the rule of law complicates and compromises any satisfaction we might feel in the justice that was done.

G.O.P. Primary Debates Offer a Masterclass in CUH-Razy
I try on this blog, as best as I am able, to not over-inject my analyses with partisan prejudice. But when I look at the Republican Party's 2012 Presidential primary candidates, I can't help but think that they're taking a few of Jesus' beatitudes a bit too literally. (I'm thinking of the fourth, the sixth and the eighth in particular.) Waving the banner of Christian (read: Protestant-capitalist) righteousness, the GOP seems to have dug up every last loony-tune in their ranks and designated him or her a "strong" candidate for President of the United States. It's a good thing that they control the House (though not the Senate) right now, because otherwise there might not be enough Republican politicos in power to pepper-spray the little kid crying that their Emperors are butt-naked. It's really difficult to pick the highlights (or lowlights) from this year's GOP primary debates, they're just too n umerous and ridiculous and hilarious and frightening to narrow down. It's also a good thing for Republicans that Obama hasn't brought about enough change people can believe in over the last four years, because even the least of the GOP looks a helluva lot better as a consequence of Obama's underperformance. I won't lie, I'm kind of looking forward to seeing what other madness this group is going to roll out over the next several months. It's like a rubbernecker's dream.

North Korean Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-il, Dies
Just last week, the International Cult of Bad Guys took another hit when North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il died of a heart attack. It's hard to underestimate the repressiveness of Kim Jong-il's regime. He has been almost single-handedly responsible for sealing his country off from the rest of the world for the last three decades. According to Human Rights Watch, North Korea was one of the world's "most oppressive governments," holding up to 200,000 people in brutal prison camps and concentration camps. Under Kim Jong-il's rule, North Koreans were allowed no freedom of press or religion, no representation for political opposition, and no equal education. Because he was also the supreme commander of the fourth-largest standing army in the world (the Korean People's Army), his overthrow has been all but impossible, despite the fact that all reports indicate that South Koreans living under his rule are "some of the world's most brutalized people." Nevertheless, Kim Jong-il's people publicly and dramatically mourned his passing in Pyongyang, though it's unclear how much of their grief was coerced. Kim Jong-il will be succeeded by his third (and favorite) son, Kim Jong-un, while the rest of the world continues to hope that some of the revolutionary spirit that has swept across the Arab world will find its way onto the Korean Peninsula.

Go Ahead! Ask! Tell!
After many years of lobbying, LGBT advocates finally won their fight to repeal the military's longstanding "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, which forbade gays and lesbians from serving openly in the U.S. Armed Forces. Rick Perry and Mitt Romney notwithstanding, almost everyone else has realized for a long time that this policy was ignorant, prejudicial, unconstitutional and grossly disrespectful to the brave men and women who serve our country. I hate to be cynical about what is definitely a huge step forward for the LGBT movement, but I can't help but think that this particular step was motivated in large part by our country's increasingly desperate need for soldiers. Even still, gay and lesbian soldiers who have been forced to hide (or lie about) their lives and loves deserve this victory, and it's at least one confirmation that Obama really does believe in LGBT equality. (There haven't been many of those confirmations.) Last week, a really heartwarming video went viral of a Navy Second Class Sergeant giving her girlfriend a kiss after returning home. They probably still can't get married, but one step at a time.

Supercommittee Fails To Avert Debt Ceiling Debacle
For most Americans, the real-- perhaps the only-- news story of 2011 was the continuing decline of the U.S. economy. There were several flashpoints in this story over the course of 2011, but those flashes seemed to concentrate in a paparazzi light-show near the end of the year. Back in March, President Obama, Democrats and Republicans came to blows over the 2011 budget. Congress was sharply divided along political lines, and the division of those lines was exacerbated by several freshman Congressional members who had come to office on the back of Tea Party support. They forged a tentative deal in the Spring, but only after severely rattling the stock market and consumer confidence. A few months later, animus flared again--this time on the issue of whether to raise the debt ceiling. Conservatives, including Tea Partiers, argued that Congress should not raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling even if it meant the U.S. defaults on its debt. In November, a bipartisan subcommittee (dubbed the Congressional Supercommittee) was charged with getting the long-term federal deficit under control. Instead of a deal, they delivered an EPIC FAIL, demonstrating the inability to compromise that has characterized so much of the work of the 112th U.S. Congress. Lawmakers eventually reached a stopgap deal and averted what many economists said would have propelled another economic crisis. (Republicans agreed to raise the debt limit by up to $2.4 trillion through 2013, in exchange for $1 trillion in spending cuts in 10 years.) But this 13th hour deal was, again, only a temporary fix. Next round coming to a theater near you in February.

99% #Occupy
If 2010 was the year of the Tea Party, 2011 is the year of the Occupy Movement. On September 17, a group of disgruntled New Yorkers set up camp in Zuccotti Park (also called Liberty Park) in the financial district and commenced protesting the gross economic inequality of our nation and our world. The self-described "culturejamming" internet company AdBusters quickly hashtagged the protest #Occupy Wall Street, and most of the major media news outlets began ridiculing them as a bunch of unemployed, dirty hippies. But they stayed, they kept camping, and they grew in number. By early October, #OWS had became a nationwide-- and then a worldwide-- movement, with similar Occupy campsites springing up in almost every major metropolitan area. (As of December, the Occupy Together site lists Occupy sites in over 2500 cities worldwide.) They called themselves the 99%, and they set themselves against the 1%, indicating the concentration of wealth in a sliver of the population. By November, it had become increasingly difficult to dismiss the Occupiers as a fringe movement, as it was beginning to resonate with the millions of Americans put out of their homes by foreclosures or otherwise struggling with inescapable debt. Then, the Occupy Movement moved onto college campuses and captured the imagination of debt-laden and debt-increasing students. When Occupying students at UC-Berkeley and UC-Davis were beaten and pepper-sprayed by police, it seemed that the police/State crackdown on the Occupy Movement had finally, violently, begun. Shortly thereafter, the evictions of OccupyOakland, OccupyPhiladelphia, OccupySanFrancisco and other sites demonstrated for the nation that the full force of the State and the police were decidedly in the service of the 1%. OccupyWallStreet, the original Occupy site and the home base for the movement, temporarily avoided eviction in a standoff with New York Mayor Bloomberg, but were themselves evicted from Zuccotti Park in the wee hours of the morning on November 15. The evictions and police violence have failed to deter the Occupiers, though, and the attention it has brought to the Movement seems to be galvanizing a whole new set of the American public. The class war has begun. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

Those are the highlights for 2011 Year in Politics. Next up is my favorite of the year-end lists: the 2011 Year in Pop Culture!

Good Guy, Bad Guy

2011-12-17T16:17:00.007-06:00

George Clooney's 2011 political film The Ides of March is based on Beau Willimon's 2008 play "Farragut North," which is itself based on the 2004 Democratic primary campaign of Howard Dean. That is to say, The Ides of March is a political drama situated squarely in the "now." It's story is post-9/11, post-Iraq and -Afghanistan wars, post Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. It's not post-Obama, nor is it post-economic crisis, but the valence of those events is palpable and all the film's characters are recognizable ones of our time: the idealistic liberal, the libertarian conservative, the cynical behind-the-scenes politicos, the suspicious journalists, the naive volunteers and interns, the disillusioned electorate. The film follows Pennsylvania Senator Henry Morris (played by George Clooney) on his Presidential election campaign. Morris' campaign is run by a pair of smart and savvy advisers, who operate with and against each other like a Janus head. There's the irascible, slightly paranoid, obsessive journeyman Paul Zara (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and the brilliant, driven, disciplined, but tragically idealistic wunderkind Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling). The plot turns as much on the relationship between Zara and Meyers as it does on the deeds/misdeeds of Morris.

[Spoiler alert! Skip this paragraph if you don't want plot details revealed.]
In fact, the title of the film "the Ides of March"-- a reference to the day that Caesar was stabbed to death in the Roman senate by a group of friends and conspirators-- seems to describe best the downfall of Zara at the hands of Meyers. Meyers is a True Believer for most of the film; he works tirelessly on behalf of Senator Morris because he believes in the person and the character of Morris. Meyers has good reason for that belief. Morris is the model of a "principled" candidate: he's boldly and straightforwardly atheist (arguing in campaign debates that "the Constitutions is [his] religion"), he's anti-war, he's an environmentalist, he's for the working class, he's pro-technology, he's cosmopolitan. Meyers' believes that Morris is the one who should be President, the one who's different, the change he can believe in. So, Meyers does not find himself sullied or soiled by the dirtiness of politics that is his business. He believes he is backing the best candidate,and he says as much several times in the film. Meyers' talent, intellect and dedication do not go unnoticed by the opposition, however. When the campaign manager (played by Paul Giamatti) for Morris' Republican opponent tries to lure Meyers over to the other side, Meyers rejects the offer, but he suffers a guilty conscience for entertaining the idea of jumping ship, which he sees as an implicit betrayal of his mentor Zara. No sooner does Meyer get a chance to smooth out the wrinkles of his minor indiscretion than he is met with the cold, hard, ugly truth of Senator Morris' major indiscretions. Meyers learns of Morris' illicit affair with a young campaign intern (resulting in a pregnancy, an abortion, and a suicide) and Meyers' disillusionment is devastating. Alas, he's a True Believer by constitution, so instead of turning on his candidate, he turns on Zara instead and uses his knowledge of Morris' affair to oust his mentor. The twist of The Ideas of March is that the audience is led all along to believe that Morris is the "Caesar" of the film, that he will be betrayed by those he trusts, and that that trust will be as much his undoing as his actual misdeeds. Morris is not undone in this film, though. Everyone else is.
[Spoilers over]

Pace the NYT review, I thought The Ides of March was a solid film. My favor is largely based in Clooney's performance as the good guy/bad guy Morris. Clooney is one of the few actors, in my view, who can so effortlessly, seamlessly and believably manage complex characters who are equal parts good and bad. Clooney played a similar good guy/bad guy in the 2009 Reitman film Up In The Air, a remarkable film that I reviewed here. The only other actors with this skill that come to mind are Clint Eastwood (for example, in Unforgiven) and Jeff Bridges (most impressively, in Crazy Heart and True Grit), though The Ides of March co-stars Ryan Gosling and Phillip Seymour Hoffman are pretty adept in this area as well (see their performances in Half Nelson and Capote, respectively). The trick about playing the good guy/bad guy (hereafter GG/BG) is that both the goodness of the character and the badness of the character has to be maintained with integrity, and simultaneously. It can't be the case that the GG/BG turns from good to bad, or from bad to good, as happens with both Gosling's character and Hoffman's character in The Ides of March. (That's just peripeteia, a device we're all accustomed to seeing in tragedies.) Rather, the GG/BG has to maintain a tension, an undecidability, that makes it impossible to issue judgments about his or her character with any kind of resolve.

No doubt, the reason Clooney's character in The Ides of March resonates so deeply with me is because he reminds me of President Obama (and more than a little bit like President Bill Clinton). I was a True Believer in Obama back during the 2008 campaign season. I thought he was the one. Then, he got elected and he didn't end the wars, he didn't help the gays, he didn't close Guantanamo Bay, he didn't reverse the Patriot Act, he didn't deliver the change I believed in and voted for. Like Meyers believed of Morris in The Ides of March, I believe-- despite all the evidence to the contrary-- that Obama is still a man of principle. Principles that I share. So, the disillusionment that I feel when recognizing that Obama is just a man like any other, perhaps even just a politician like any other, is truly disheartening. It's disheartening because he hasn't become a Bad Guy. (Obama, for all his faults, is not Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld.) He's just weak and mortal and imperfect and a whole host of other vices that we don't permit in our heroes. Obama is a GG/BG, which makes it impossible for us True Believers to stop loving him, but also to start hating him.

Maybe Zara isn't really the Caesar-character in The Ides of March. Maybe Meyers is. Meyers stands in for all of us True Believers whose "et tu?" cries are the dominant, and unfortunate, civic sound of the new millennium.

2011 Year in Sports

2011-12-16T13:24:00.049-06:00

Oh what a difference a year makes! After the mostly feel-good festival that was the 201 0 Year in Sports, I regret to report that much of Sportsdom-- athletes, coaches, owners AND fans-- found their way onto Team FUBAR in 2011. Sure, there were some Good moments, but they were so overshadowed by the Bad and the Ugly that the 2011 Year in Sports looked about a bearish as the economy. Big, Bad, Ugly Bear.

It's hard not to long for last year's stories-- the World Series-winning San Francisco Giants, or the NCAA bracket-busting Butler Bulldogs, or the Superbowl champs New Orleans Saints, or even good old Landon Donovan-- but 2011 just wasn't delivering those kinds of stories. Instead, we got scandals and lockouts and scandals and indictments and scandals and controversies and scandals and riots and SCANDALS. Seriously, 2011 was F.U.B.A.R. To avoid a thoroughly gloom-and-doom list, I've decided to split this year's sports headlines into The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. It should go without saying that "Ugly" is a euphemism in what follows.

Here's THE GOOD for the 2011 Year in Sports:

Lombardi Trophy Returns Home To Green Bay
The Green Bay Packers won Super Bowl XL V back in January, after only barely making it into the playoffs. The victory was especially sweet, not only for all of those who wanted to see ex-Packer Bret Favre get his come-uppance, but also for everyone who fell in love with the Little Quarterback That Could, Aaron Rodgers. The Packers defeated the Philadelphia Eagles 31-25 and brought home the Vince Lombardi Trophy, which they were the first team to ever win and which is named after the legendary Packers coach. It looks like last year's victory wasn't a fluke, either, as the Packers are looking at the possibility of going undefeated this year and finally busting the record held by the 1972 Miami Dolphins. Go Pack!

Give Me Some Pujols And Cracker Jacks
The World Series champs Saint Louis Cardinals weren't quite the story that last year's San Francisco Giants were, but they sure provided one of the most exciting end-of-season runs in a long time. The Cards didn't win their Division, and they needed a complete meltdown by the Atlanta Braves just to make it to the playoffs. The Braves melted-- in a truly EPIC choke-- and the Cards rode that good luck all the way through their Series against the much-favored Texas Rangers. The Cards trailed 6-2 going into the bottom of the seventh inning in Game Six. They were down to their last strike-- not once, BUT TWICE-- and somehow managed to eke out the trophy anyway. This year the darling player was Albert Pujols. He's no Brian Wilson... but, then again, who is?

Tim Tebow Proves God Really Is On His Side
Whatever reservations one may have about Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow-- his overt religiosity, his sub-par athletic ability, his mediocre stats, and that god-awful performance against the Lions earlier this season-- there's just no denying that the kid's somehow managing to do alright. Against all NFL conventional wisdom, Tebow seems to be getting 'er done for the Broncos, and it appears that he really is the "leader" that made him the darling of Florida fans. Oh, and did I mention that he loves Jesus? He does. A LOT. At the end of the day, it's his faith that has made him such a lightning rod for (both positive and negative) attention. But whatever else you may think of mixing Christianity and football, all evidence points to the fact that Tim Tebow is a "Good" guy... and he's turning out to be a pretty good NFL player, too.

Memphis Is All Heart, Grit, Grind
Back in the Spring, our little NBA franchise, the Memphis Grizzlies, inspired an entire city with their (in the words of Tony Allen) heart, grit and grind. Memphis is, and has always been, a basketball town. But we suffered quite a blow a couple of years ago when the University of Memphis Tigers lost the NCAA Championship and legendary coach John Calipari left town under a cloud of recruiting violations. Memphis is a town with a lot of problems-- poverty, crime, high infant mortality rates, epic health problems, racial tensions-- and to top it all off we got hit with a major natural disaster this year. So it couldn't have come at a better time when, in April/May, the Grizzlies decided to take the hopes and dreams of the whole city on their backs in an unlikely march through the NBA playoffs. It was exciting. It was unifying. It was magical. The whole city was plastered with the logo of the Grizzlies' run: BELIEVE MEMPHIS. In a town where it's often hard to believe in good things, the Grizz were a godsend. Thank you, Zach Randolph, most of all for showing your love to the working class town that loves you back.

And here's THE BAD for the 2011 Year in Sports:

NBA and NFL Won't Play Ball
Both the professional basketball and the professional football seasons were almost cancelled in 2011 because players and owners couldn't come to contract agreements. In professional sports, these are called "lockouts," but they should be called "pissing contests." Of course, nobody really believed that the seasons wouldn't go on, just like nobody really believes that the government will "shut down" every time the pols in DC threaten it. Still, things looked pretty hairy there for a while. The NFL ended up reaching a 12th-hour deal, but the NBA delayed their season by several weeks and have only just now started playing games. Fans were justifiably irked at the drama, a fact that seemed entirely lost on the players and owners. I mean, who cares about the fans, after all? They only pay the bills.

Show Me The Money
In October, the Atlantic published a devastating exposé of the Big Business of NCAA sports. It laid waste to the prevailing delusion of the "student-athlete," crunched the numbers of college sports profits, and not-so-subtly suggested that D1 colleges and universities are basically supporting themselves with slave labor. Student-athletes, many of whom are African-American and all of whom are forbidden from collective bargaining in their own interest, generate billions of dollars for colleges, universities, and private companies every year. Some of them get a free education in return, the value of which is nowhere near what they're "paying" for it with their talent and the risks they're taking to their bodies and reputations. It's really no wonder that Ohio State student-athletes and University of Miami student-athletes have turned to illicit entrepreneurship, nor should those 2011 "scandals" come as a surprise to anyone. (I've weighed in on the whole question of paying student-athletes before on this blog here.) The collusion between colleges and private business, and the unwillingness of college Presidents and AD's to own up to that collusion, only makes the whole business more unseemly. The Atlantic article was penned by (Pulitzer Prize-winning) Taylor Branch, a scholar of civil rights, which lends the whole story exactly the right tenor. What's going on in college sports is about rights. And it's not right.

Conference Realignments Likely Will Solve Nothing
The soap opera that is college football got a little stranger this year with the announcement of several major conference realignments. The (BCS dominant) Southeastern Conference agreed to take on two new teams (Texas A&M and Missouri). The Pac-10 became the Pac-12 with the addition of Colorado and Utah. The Big Ten is still the Big Ten, only now it has 12 teams, with Nebraska as the newest member. The Big East was decimated, with Syracuse moving to the ACC and West Virginia to the Big 12. Why should anyone care? Because all of these moves are just maneuvers in the chase for the the Big Television Dollar, which remains tightly clutched in the greasy, grimy paw of the the NCAA and its minion, the BCS. Nobody involved in these changes cares about "parity" in college conferences, even less so about the sports these changes are affecting, nor do they care about the main concern of fans (i.e., finding a reasonable way to determine national "champions.") This is entirely, exclusively, about the money. In other words, see story above.

Mayweather Suckerpunches Ortiz
Despite the fact that the punch Floyd Mayweather, Jr. delivered to Victor Ortiz was completely legal, it sure looked bad. For four rounds, Mayweather had been delivering Ortiz a sound beating. With only a few seconds left in the fourth, Ortiz headbutted Mayweather, causing referee Joe Cortez to momentarily stop the fight. When it resumed, Ortiz approached Mayweather in what looked like a conciliatory gesture-- Ortiz tried to touch gloves and embrace Mayweather-- only to be met with straight right hand to the face. Knockout. Fireworks ensued in the post-fight interviews, with Mayweather defending himself and calling for his critics, especially HBO sportscaster Larry Merchant, to be fired. (Merchant's reply: "If I was 50 years younger, I would have kicked your [expletive].") A fair fight is a fair fight, of course, but if you looked up "suckerpunch" in the dictionary, the accompanying picture would look a lot like the one here.

Dan Wheldon Dies In IndyCar Season Finale
IndyCar racing is a dangerous sport, everyone knows. I'm one of those people that doesn't understand the appeal of auto racing at all, and when I saw the video of 33-yr-old racer Dan Wheldon's fatal crash the whole sport became even more unintelligible to me. Wheldon had won the 2011 Indianapolis 500 and was, by all accounts, on the rise. Such a sad and tragic story. The skill and speed with which these drivers handle more than a thousand pounds of steel, at distances of sometimes inches from one another, is truly remarkable. Is it wise? I don't think so. The complicated relationship between Man and his Machines is often inspiring, sometimes puzzling. This time it was truly, deeply saddening.

Last (and least), here is THE UGLY for the 2011 Year In Sports. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, but all of The Ugly concerns Penn State:

WE ARE... Shamed
Full disclosure: I'm a Penn State alum. I'm also a college football fan. There are very few institutions in higher education that are more synonymous with football than Penn State. So, when the news broke that one of Penn State's former assistant football coaches, Jerry Sandusky, was accused of sexually abusing young boys over a twenty year period, I personally felt shame. The story quite literally sent shock waves through the entire sports world. Sandusky allegedly used his influence as one of the directors of a program for troubled youth, The Second Mile, to prey upon and molest children, some of the incidents allegedly taking place inside of Penn State's athletic facilities. What's worse, it appears as if the administration at Penn State had been alerted to Sandusky's misdeeds and chose to cover them up in order to maintain the integrity of the football program and the Penn State brand. The fall-out of what is now being called the "Penn State Sex Scandal"-- who would have ever imagined we'd hear those words together?-- was severe and far-reaching. Penn State President Graham Spanier and head football coach (and living legend) Joe Paterno were fired. Athletic Director Tim Curley and Vice Presdident Gary Schultz stepped down after being indicted for perjuring themselves to a grand jury. Penn State launched its own investigatory committee and is till paddling desperately upstream against public opinion. This was a story that just got worse with every new bit of news. The real tragedy, of course, was the damage done to the young boys that Sandusky abused. But the collusion and coverup by top Penn State officials drew back the curtain on the ugly beast that is Division 1 college sports.

Joe Paterno Should Be Ashamed
There's just no way to exaggerate the legendary status of Joe Paterno in college football. JoePa, as he is affectionately known in Happy Valley, was the mastermind behind and architect of Penn State football program's "Grand Experiment," which emphasized academic discipline and personal integrity on the part of student-athletes. His philanthropic contributions to Penn State are immense; the Penn State library is named after him. And he is the winningest coach in college football history. His thick, 50's-era eyeglasses, his sneakers and his ornery-but-lovable affect are as iconic in the Penn State imagination as the nondescript, nameless jerseys he insisted his players wear. JoePa is the face of Penn State, and has been for almost a half-century. So, if the reports are true that he basically punted after being made aware of Sandusky's alleged rape of a young boy in the Penn State locker room, he should be ashamed. And we should be ashamed of him. The embarrassment of his exit won't erase all the good he did over the years. It can't and it shouldn't. But it will remain a stain on Penn State and on JoePa's legacy forever. And that's a real shame.

Penn State Students Show No Shame
Lest one think the Penn State scandal couldn't get any worse, a throng of students stepped in after the announcement of Joe Paterno's dismissal and rioted. The rioters clashed with police, destroyed downtown State College, and overturned a television news van. All while chanting their support for Joe Paterno. There's just no other way to describe this display of Penn State "pride" than as deeply shameful. The student rioters should be ashamed, for they have shamed all of us. There are over 500,000-- that's right, a half million-- living Penn State alums. I'm one of them. Penn State cultivated in me, like it does all of its charges, a sense of being a part of a larger community, the Penn State community. I've been in places far, far away from Happy Valley and heard someone shout "WE ARE" and, no matter what else I may think of groupthink, I can't help but say "Penn State," even if it's only to myself. Penn State has always been a "we," warts and all. I suppose that, in the most generous evaluation, that communal sensibility and loyalty to Penn State is part of what motivated the students who rioted on that night in November. But they should have known better. We are not that "we."

So that's about it for the 2011 Year in Sports. I'm sure there are some things I've overlooked, so the comments section is open for your contributions. Stay tuned for the next list: 2011 Year in Politics. Oh, it's gonna be a good one.

2011 Year in Music

2011-12-16T10:02:00.035-06:00

It's that time again, readers! Time for Dr. J's retrospective wrap-ups and utterly unscientific evaluations of the year that was 2011.

In 2010, I decided to split my year-end lists up into categories-- see the 2010 Year in Music, or the 2010 Year in Sports or (my personal favorite) the 2010 Year in Pop Culture-- and I'm sticking with that plan again this year. We'll start with the 2011 Year in Music list since it's least likely that another blockbuster album will be released in the next couple of weeks. I'll start with the same caveat as last year, namely, that this list is a list of my personal favorite albums of the year. There might have been a totally awesome Celtic Women album or thrash metal album released this year, but you won't find it on this list, because I think that music sucks. My list will, per usual, lean towards the rootsy and the soulful, simple tunes with great stories. Back in June, I participated in the 3o Day Song Challenge, so you can go back and read through those posts to get a sense of my musical prejudices if you're interested.

These are in no particular order. They're just the best albums of 2011, as determined by me.

Adele's 21
According to most music critics, Adele's 21 is one of the best albums of 2011. I couldn't agree with them more. This young Brit's got it all: a powerful and soulful set of pipes, an entirely believable delivery style, an arsenal of sad stories and an ear for that most elusive of artistic elements, the pop hook. On 21, Adele blends the funk and groove of Motown and retro-soul with the honesty and vulnerability of coffeehouse singer-songwriting. Her "Rolling In The Deep" quickly became one of the Lovers' Anthems of the year, and her "Someone Like You" sounds like it was ripped stright from a Grey's Anatomy soundtrack. (That's not a bad thing!) The rhythmic, marching determination of "Rumor Has It" is both brilliant and contagious. Her pleading ballad "Don't You Remember" hasn't gotten the attention it deserves, but on an album of faultless tracks, one can understand how some might be overlooked. Perhaps best of all, Adele's 21 has a kind of timeless integrity to it, and I suspect that I will have it on regular rotation for many years to come.

Nick Lowe's The Old Magic
I have to admit that my love for Nick Lowe's music sometimes makes me feel old. I don't think I can give a helpful elucidation of these categories, but I think there are basically three types of "feeling old" while listening to music: (1) there's the kind of old that one feels when enjoying Bon Jovi, (2) there's the kind of old one feels when enjoying Motown, and then (3) there's the kind of old one feels when enjoying Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennet. My enjoyment of Nick Lowe's music is closest to the latter. I find Lowe's lyrical dexterity astounding and his compositions masterful, but it's really that "classic" sound that draws me in and keeps me there. On This Old Magic, Lowe is in top form. "House for Sale" has gotten the most critical acclaim, but my vote goes to the simple and sad "I Read A Lot," where Lowe recounts the all-too-familiar practice of replacing life (and love) with books. Best line of that track: "so if you ask me how I stop contemplating what I now am not / I'll reply / I read a lot." This album, like Lowe's 2007 At My Age, is a perfect rainy day album. It's quiet, it's reflective, it's equal parts sorrow and irony. And it manages, somehow, to maintain a kind of not-too-sweet sweetness that just soothes.

Kanye West and Jay-Z's Watch the Throne
Watch the Throne was probably one of the most anticipated albums of 2011, pairing what are without question two of the most formidable forces in hip hop, Kanye West and Jay-Z. I was totally prepared to hate this album. Then I heard it.. and I am happy to admit that I was wrong. Not every track is a winner, to be sure, but the Stax-inspired "Otis" makes up for any other faults of the album all by itself. "Otis" samples Otis Redding's classic "Try A Little Tenderness," capitalizing on both Jay-Z's brilliant lyrical flow and Kanye's pop-savvy beats/hooks. There's plenty of the usual hip-hop subject fare here-- gold watches and jets and women and money-- but there's also religion and politics, delivered sassily but smartly. The Horatio-Alger-esque "Ni**as in Paris," in which Kanye and Jay-Z tell the story of their rise to absolute dominance, has a insistently hypnotic groove to it. And the history lesson that is "Made it In America," with its repetitive name-checking of Af-Am historical icons like Martin, Malcolm, Corretta, Betty, Joesph and Mary and baby Jesus, manages somehow to be inspiring without being cheesy. I have no idea what the title of this album is meant to convey, but it's pretty clear whose throne the throne we're supposed to watch is.

Lady Gaga's Born This Way
Okay, I'm just going to start by saying that I do NOT like the title track (and biggest hit) off of this album. And I like even LESS that it's become the new LGBTQetc anthem. (Why that is is a topic for another day, but I'll just say that I'm not a fan of promoting tolerance by appeal to inevitability. People may or not be "born" queer, but living that life is still a choice. And a choice that can be celebrated.) Those political qualms aside, Lady Gaga's Born This Way is without a doubt a pop-music tour de force. I was a latecomer to the Lady Gaga train, convinced at first that she was nothing more than a gimmick, but I couldn't resist her pull for long. Fact is, she's got one of the best voices out there, and her ability to convincingly maneuver a wide range of musical genres is astounding. My favorite track on Born This Way is "You And I"-- and if any of you can honestly tell me that the first time you heard that song you didn't think it was Shania Twain or Kelly Clarkson, then I'll call you a liar. The other winner is the Cher-esque "Edge of Glory," which has just enough of an 80's anthem feel to be addictive, without having so much of it as to be corny. Born This Way will probably be in a dead-heat race with Adele's 21 for best album of 2011. As Beyoncé says, who runs the world? Girls.

Lupe Fiasco's Lasers
I can't believe I hadn't been turned on to Lupe Fiasco before his release of this year's Lasers. "The Show Goes On" was the first track that caught my attention and prompted me to download the album. I was hooked. I read somewhere that Fiasco's title Lasers is an acronym for "Love Always Shines Everytime Remember 2 Smile," which is the most inexact acronym I've ever seen, but whatever. This is a great collection. The Afrocentric "All Black Everything" is equal parts deferential and bold. Fiasco joins up with MDMA on "Coming Up," and that pairing is contagiously funky and electric. His track with Skylar Grey, "Words I Never Said," is smart and honest. And "Never Forget You" with John Legend is one of the few Legend-pairings that doesn't sound like Legend took over the song. I'm not sure how much staying power this album will have, but its initial force was enough to convince me to go back and check out Fiasco's 2006 Food & Liquor, which is every bit as good as Lasers. What I liked most about Lasers, probably, is that it reminded me of Far East Movement's 2010 Free Wired, which should have made it on my Year in Music list last year, but didn't. So, although I don't think that Lasers is a good as the other albums on this year's list, it's got enough merits to make me want to avoid regretting next year that I DIDN'T include it here.

Ryan Adams' Ashes & Fire
You can pretty much count on Ryan Adams being included in my "best of" music list any year that he releases an album. (Except for last year, of course, when he briefly lost his mind and recorded that crap metal album Orion, which was truly awful.) This year's Ashes & Fire marks the return of the Ryan Adams that I've always loved. It's the kind of quiet, reflective, mourning, smart and sad music that first isolated Adams as the heir apparent to the Alt-Country throne. There's not a single weak track on this album. "Kindness" is a treasure: a loping, pleading ballad that repeats its simple, quasi-metaphysical insight ("kindness don't ask for much but an open mind") over and over, until one can't help but find one's hardened heart softening. "Save Me" has the old sound of Adams' old band, the Cardinals, and is profoundly reminiscent of his Heartbreaker album. The best track on the album, "I Love You But I Don't Know What To Say," quickly found its place on my list of Songs I Would Cut Off An Arm To Have Written. (That's a very selective list.) It's a representative of what I love the most in music: three chords and a sad story. There are very few other artists who have a voice as emotively vulnerable as Adams-- Smokey Robinson and Nina Simone are the only others that come to mind-- and its a gift beyond parallel. Adams is probably one of the most prolific singer-songwriters alive, which causes many of his critics to wish he would self-edit more, but I'd prefer to have him keep on doing what he's doing. I'll take 10 Ryan Adams' albums every 5 years if only half of them are as good as Ashes & Fire.

LMFAO's Sorry For Party Rocking
Yeah, okay, I know. Don't judge. LMFAO's Sorry for Party Rocking is just a helluva good time. It was practically impossible this year to NOT hear "Sexy And I Know It" if you managed to leave your house at all. (Yeah, I work out.) And their "Party Rock Anthem" quickly became, well, the Party Rock Anthem of 2011. As a rule, I'm not opposed to the techno-disco-mania that characterizes most of LMFAO's music, but most of the time any particular song in that genre tends to kind of blend into the rest and, as a result, be largely forgettable. Not so with LMFAO's stuff. They've managed to take a genre of music that pretty much caters to an adderall-popping constituency and somehow command whatever remains of their fans' deficit attention. Every year I have something like a "guilty pleasure" entry on my Best of Music list, and LMFAO gets the spot this year. I fully expect that, six months from now, I will resign this album to the stacks of the Lost and Forgotten. Five years from now, maybe, I'll revive it and say to my friends: "OMG! Do you remember THIS?!" But until then, I'm indulging every last ounce of the Cheez Whiz corniness of LMFAO. So sue me. I'm sorry for party rocking.

Honorable Mentions for 2011 go to:
Florence + the Machine's Ceremonials-- She's got a voice to die for, but the melodrama is a bit too much for me.
Paul Simon's So Beautiful or So What-- This was actually a great album, but I'm still recovering from a concert that I saw when Paul Simon toured with Bob Dylan many years ago. I found Simon (live) to be the most ridiculously pretentious a**hole in existence, and I can't help but hear that in his music ever since.
Beyoncé's 4-- If it had one or two more really good tracks on it, 4 would've made my list. Oh how it hurts me to leave Beyoncé off, but there's just not enough to make the cut on this album.
The Black Keys' El Camino-- Like it, don't love it. But still, I like it a lot.
Cyndi Lauper's Memphis Blues-- I actually sat with Cyndi Lauper one night last year when she visited Wild Bill's to do some "research" for this album. And the keyboardist on the album is my good friend (and Wild Bill's keyboardist) Archie Turner. I'm glad Lauper caught the Memphis music bug, and this is a pretty solid album, but every time I hear it I can't help but think that the whole sound is just a rip-off of any Saturday night at Wild Bill's. Still, not a bad problem for an album to have.

So, that's Dr. J's 2011 Year in Music. Comments and suggestions are welcome. Stay tuned for the 2011 Year in Sports, coming soon!

Rick Perry's Weak

2011-12-14T14:20:00.000-06:00

GOP Presidential candidate and Texas Governor Rick Perry has released a campaign ad called "Strong," in which he bemoans the fact that "gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in schools." (For the record, kids can pray in schools. They can even do so "openly." It's schools that can't, and shouldn't, pray openly. I've said it once and I'll say it again: As long as there are tests in schools, there will be prayer in schools.) In his ad, Gov. Perry is sporting a casual, rugged outfit and he delivers his reflections on faith-- which "made America strong, and can make her strong again"-- with the kind of casual, rugged straight-talk that Presidential candidates tend to adopt during campaign season. Because Perry opens with the bold proclamation "I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian," we're meant to see him as a beleaguered, marginalized, even oppressed outside-of-the-Beltway Everyman. But we're also meant to see him, like his ad, like faith, as strong. Like America used to be.

Here's the entire ad, if you haven't seen it yet:

Let's suppose for a moment that one did have good reason to believe that Presidential candidates might be ashamed of admitting that they're Christian. (That requires putting aside, of course, the fact that every President in the history of this country has been Christian, that every other candidate currently running for President is Christian, and that the closest we've ever been to disrupting that pattern was when Joseph Lieberman, a Jew, served-- and LOST-- as the candidate for Vice-President on the Democratic ticket with Al Gore in 2000.) But, supposing that it did require some strength to admit that one is a Christian, as it certainly does to admit that one is an atheist or a homosexual, the question remains: is Rick Perry's ad an example of that strength?

No, it's not.

Taking an unpopular or unorthodox stand requires quite a bit of moral fortitude, to be sure, especially when the stakes are as high as they are in Presidential elections. That moral fortitude is not what we see in Perry's ad. What we see in Perry's ad is a bait-and-switch. He serves up his declaration of faith as a defensive amuse-bouche, but the main course here is offensive, and aggressively so. Although he doesn't explicitly condemn gays serving in the military or the separation of church and state, his implicit condemnation is crystal-clear. He positions himself as the David to Obama's Goliath; the rock in his sling is homophobia. He has manufactured a "war on religion," in which we are to assume he is a holy warrior, but his defensive gestures are just the delivery vehicle for what is in reality his own declaration of war. The strength that he displays, such that it is, is made strong only by capitalizing on the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of others. It's an illusory strength. But is it the strength that made America "strong"?

Unfortunately, yes, it is.

Or, at least, it's the kind of American strength that the GOP seems to prize. It's the kind of strength that flexes its muscle at the barbarians at the gate. It's fearful and forceful. It's preemptive. It's all shock and awe. It's hospitable to its own kind only by being equally hostile to strangers. And it's absolutely dripping with what Nietzsche would call ressentiment. Perry's ad turns his weakness-- his fear of difference, his intolerance, his solipsism, his lack of compassion, his fundamentally anti-democratic sense of the "common"-- into strength, but he can only do so by first making his weaknesses righteous.

They are not righteous. And they are not strong.

Occupy Aristotle

2011-12-08T09:35:00.011-06:00

Recently, I saw that a philosopher friend of mine (Jeffrey Bernstein) posted the following as his status update on Facebook:

"For an explanation of (1) why Occupy Wall Street doesn't need a positive political program and (2) why the Occupy Movement exceeds the designations of Democrats and Republicans, read the first paragraph of Aristotle's Metaphysics."

I'll admit, it's been a while since I've read Aristotle's Metaphysics, but every philosopher worth his or her salt knows the first sentence of that text: "All men by nature desire to know." So, I went over to the shelf, dusted off the Metaphysics, and refreshed my memory of the rest of Aristotle's first paragraph. Not surprisingly, Bernstein's recommendation was spot-on. The first passage of the Metaphysics posits our universal desire to know, but also explains why we are inclined to value our sense of sight above all the other senses. Here's the whole paragraph:

ALL men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.

Maybe it's not so obvious what Aristotle's insights have to do with to the Occupy Movement, so here's a summary translation of the operative metaphor: The Occupy Movement is like our sense of sight. It's not (instrumentally) valuable for what it allows us to see, but rather it's (intrinsically) valuable in that it allows us to see. Like sight, it "brings to light many differences between things"; it is able to "make us know." And all of us by nature desire knowledge.

Why doesn't Occupy Wall Street need a "positive political program"? Because, apart from anything particular that OWS may want to posit or accomplish, it has allowed us to see the world we share in new ways. (NB: I think the OWS does have a positive political program-- see here, here and here, for example-- but I agree that it doesn't need one.) Occupy Wall Street, quite literally, brought to light many differences between things, including but not limited to: the difference between the reality of the lives of the so-called 1% and the lives of the so-called 99%, the difference between a primarily economic view of the world and a more humanistic view of the world, the difference between our interests in and conceptions of things like justice and fairness, the difference between our democratic principles and our actual democratic practices, and the difference between the aims of libertarian and capitalist ways of organizing our social interactions and the (until recently hidden, disavowed or ignored) consequences of those interactions. OWS has, quite literally, brought to light things that many of us did not know or did not see. To that end, its primary value is to be found in its "enlightening" function, that is, its satisfaction of what Aristotle calls our "natural desire to know."

You may remember the now-famous little bit of wisdom issued by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld back in 2002, when he said (video here): "There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know." I think the most valuable achievement of OWS has been in moving things previously located in Rumsfeld Category 2 (unknown knowns) to Rumsfeld Category 1 (known knowns), and secondarily in moving things previously located in Rumsfeld Category 3 (unknown unknowns) to Rumsfeld Category 2 (known unknowns). Evaluating this movement and rearrangement of things known and unknown is where Aristotle's insights are the most fecund. According to ¶1 of Aristotle's Metaphysics above-- and to Book X of his Ethics, and to the whole of Aristotle's Politics-- the work of moving things from Rumsfeld Categories 2 and 3 to Rumsfeld Category 1 is not only the most important work of the kinds of rational, political animals that human beings are, but also the most pleasurable work. Again, we all, by nature, desire to know.

The reason the Occupy Movement exceeds the designations of "Democrat" and "Republican" is because it has figured itself, first and foremost, as a knowledge-seeking movement. That is to say, a truth-seeking movement. It has aimed, from its beginning, to draw back a veil of lies that has convinced us that some untruths are true, that other truths are unknowable. For all my disagreements with Republicans (and, less often, with Democrats), I fundamentally believe that each one believes his or her analyses proceed on the basis of a "true account" of things. And I fundamentally believe that, were any of them to see the difference between their accounts of the world we share and a truer account, they would amend their positions. As I hope would I. "Political discourse" is not, primarily, partisan discourse... but, rather, the discourse in which partisans take part (and are "parted"). It exceeds the designations assigned to any particular position. In fact, it is what makes those designations make sense. I think there is a good case to be made that the Occupy Movement is chiefly concerned with refiguring political discourse in such a way as to reorient its focus, away from partial accounts and toward true accounts.

Even if my evaluation is not true of every individual Occupy Movement supporter, which of course it cannot be, it is still the case that one can value the Occupy Movement as a metonym for the kind of sight Aristotle praises in the first paragraph of his Metaphysics. The Occupy Movement has brought to light differences between things and it has forced, as a matter of principle, one to decide what difference those differences make. It can be loved, to use Aristotle's language, even apart from its usefulness, even if we are not going to do anything about it, because we prefer seeing to not seeing.

The Philosophy Smoker Controversy

2011-12-04T09:45:00.021-06:00

For those of you fortunate enough not to know what a "Philosophy Smoker" is, let me begin by saying that it has nothing to do with either "smoking" or "Philosophy." "Philosophy Smoker" is, rather, the informal term used to reference end-of-the-day receptions held at professional Philosophy conferences. Generally speaking, Philosophy Smokers are garden-variety academic conference receptions: there is finger food, there is a bar, they're usually held in a big hotel ballroom, where conference participants mingle and chat with one another, comfortably or awkwardly as is their wont/ability. They're called "smokers" because it used to be the case that one could actually smoke cigarettes (or pipes, or cigars) at these receptions, but since you'd be hard-pressed to find a conference hotel nowadays that would allow smoking in one of its meeting spaces, tobacco consumption is actually verboten at Philosophy Smokers. (For a hilarious flashback to the days when smoking and Philosophy were still bedfellows, see Bertrand Russell's interview commentary on his own smoking habits.) Something like a Philosophy Smoker happens at most Philosophy conferences, but when people reference "THE Philosophy Smoker," they're actually talking about one particular conference and its particular variant of the Smoker. Specifically, they're talking about the receptions held each year by the APA (American Philosophical Association) at its Eastern Division meeting, which happens also to be the meeting where applicants for professional positions in the upcoming academic year undergo the first round of interviewing.

Consequently, the Philosophy Smoker (the one at the Eastern APA) is NOT your garden-variety Philosophy Smoker. The stakes are considerably higher, especially for job candidates. At the end of the day, everyone gathers in the conference ballroom for the Philosophy Smoker-- there is finger food, there is a bar, people chat with one another, comfortably or awkwardly as is their wont/ability-- but the APA Philosophy Smoker, unlike others, is only nominally an "informal social gathering." In reality, in many cases, it serves as another (off-the-books) chance for the faculty of hiring departments to vet job candidates. So, most job candidates assume (rightly, I think) that they should be at the Philosophy Smoker and, what's more, that their "performance" at the Philosophy Smoker is another one of the many performances by which they will be measured in their pursuit of a job.

The Philosophy Smoker has been the source of much Sturm and Drang over the years and is regularly bemoaned by hiring departments and job-seekers alike for the frustrating ambiguity generated by its coincidental importance and unimportance. It is, on its surface, merely (and perhaps only nominally) a "social gathering"... but, alas, professional philosophers are not, on the whole, the most socially adept population. Consequently, the social, psychological and professional skills required to successfully maneuver one's way through Philosophy Smokers causes great anxiety for a great many. Add to that the fact that the socializing constituency present at Philosophy Smokers are primarily defined by a massive and massively significant power asymmetry (job-seekers and job-hirers) and you've got what can only be described as PAYDIRT for some grad student majoring in psychopathology seeking a dissertation topic. (Really, why hasn't there been a study like the Stanford Prison Experiment or the Milgram Experiment focusing on the Philosophy Smoker? I'm serious, Psych students, Social Anthropology students, Foucault scholars: This. Is. PAYDIRT.) Every year, for as long as I've been around anyway, the moaning and gnashing of teeth surrounding Philosophy Smokers has been deafening... and also ignored.

Recently, however, there has been a resurgence of criticism directed toward the Philosophy Smoker as a consequence of a Smoker-related horror story published on the blog What Is It Like To Be A Woman in Philosophy?. That story was linked on both of the most-widely-read philosophy blogs (Leiter Reports here and newAPPS here), and has served as the catalyst for the newAPPS blog's recent "Plea to end informal interviews at the APA." There, the contributors to newAPPS (Mark Lance, Helen De Cruz, John Protevi, Berit Brogaard, Eric Schliesser, Mohan Matthen, Jeff Bell, Dennis Des Chene, and Catarina Dutilh Noveas) argue that the Philosophy Smoker, which they characterizes as a venue for "informal interviews," ought to be disavowed by hiring departments and banned by the APA for a number of reasons, inlcuding:

(1) its informal/unstructured nature fosters bias in the hiring process, since a uniform and non-preferential environment for candidates who are interacted with at the Smoker cannot be guaranteed, and as a result
(2) the natural environment of the Smoker disadvantages some job candidates (newAPPS cites "pregnant folks, sick folks, shy folks, those with even the slightest bit of social anxiety, anyone with any sort of hearing problem") over other candidates,
(3) the presence of alcohol at Philosophy Smokers (NB: each APA attendee is issued two free "drink tickets" to the Philosophy Smoker) impairs performance on the part of interviewees and judgment on the part of interviewees AND interviewers, and
(4) it is unclear what role the conversations between interviewees and interviewers at the Philosophy Smoker plays in the overall hiring process. Job candidates operate under the assumption that they should solicit conversations with their potential hirers at the Philosophy Smoker, despite the fact that this is quite often not the case and can actually work against the job candidate.

NewAPPS' plea asks not only that hiring departments cease requesting candidates to "drop by their table" at the Philosophy Smoker, but also that the APA explicitly ban any sort of "informal interviewing" at the Philosophy Smoker. For all of the reasons that they lay out, I think the former is a reasonable-- in fact, imperative-- request. I'm less persuaded by the latter.

Let me start by saying that I am sympathetic with all of newAPPS' reasons for imploring the APA to ban informal interviewing at Philosophy Smokers (similar to 1994 APA ban on interviewing in "sleeping" rooms, which was issued for many of the same reasons). My hesitancy about newAPPS request is not a result of thinking that it's a bad idea, but rather a real concern about how one might enforce a ban on all of the other Philosophy-Smoker-like "informal interviewing" that happens outside of the actual Philosophy Smoker. My suspicion is that, were such a ban to be issued by the APA, the very same (objectionable) informal interviewing that currently takes place at the Philosophy Smoker would simply move to the hotel hallways, or to the hotel bar, or to nearby restaurants, or to the huddled gatherings of Philosophers-Actually-Smoking that one can always find wherever the conference hotel has located its outdoor ashtrays. That is to say, I don't think there is any way to ban "informal interviewing," which I understand to be the real heart of newAPPS' plea, and I'm seriously concerned about what sort of thicket the APA is entangling itself in by attempting to ensure that such a thing doesn't occur at its conferences.

Let's suppose that the APA does issue such a ban and, as I've somewhat pessimistically anticipated, a Search Committee member instead says to one of his or her candidates at the end of the "formal" interview: "We're meeting in the lobby bar this evening for a drink. Feel free to stop by and say hello if you're around. I'd love to hear more about your work on x." (In my experience, FWIW, solicitations to "drop by our table at the Philosophy Smoker" are quite often phrased in just this manner. And I say that as someone who's been both the issuer and the recipient of said solicitation.) Is that conversation off-limits, pursuant to the APA ban? If the target of the APA's putative ban is "informal/biased/preferential interviewing practices," is the APA then obligated to intervene in cases of informal interviewing that replicate the Philosophy Smoker, even if they don't actually occur at a Philosophy Smoker? Do we expect the APA to go so far as to prohibit all non-formal interaction between job candidates and hiring faculty on the same principle, for example, that prohibits interaction between attorneys/plaintiffs/defendants in a legal case and the judges/juries that decide those cases?

I think this kind of a ban is impractical, if not impossible. I'm not even convinced it's advisable. Hiring departments are, after all, not just hiring "a philosopher," but also a teacher and a colleague. I'm not entirely persuaded that the kinds of social skills put to the test in informal "social" environments are irrelevant to choosing the best candidate. Obviously, those social environments should not be constructed in such a way as to effectively exclude the kinds of candidates that newAPPS notes in its criticisms of the Philosophy Smoker environment. But the idea that jobs should be issued simply on the merits of a candidate qua "philosopher" masks a whole other set of hidden, and prejudicial, criteria for judgment. (That's a topic for another day.) I, for one, would oppose a proscription of informal interactions with job candidates. And I would even oppose a proscription of using informal interactions with job candidates as a criterion in one's judgement of a candidate's viability for the job under consideration. Those reservations notwithstanding, I agree with newAPPS that the structure of the Philosophy Smoker is deeply problematic, and those easily identifiable problems ought to be addressed by the APA.

Instead of soliciting the APA to disavow the Philosophy Smoker, we should change the environment of the Philosophy Smoker to minimize, if not eliminate, its structurally problematic elements. Here are my suggestions:

(1) Ban hiring departments from soliciting candidates to attend the Philosophy Smoker at all. No explicit or implicit invitations to "drop by our table" and, more importantly, no APA publications that identify who is (or will be) or isn't (or won't be) present at the Smoker. At the very least, this would require job hirers to seek out job candidates to engage in (presumably innocent) conversations about philosophy at the Smoker, rather than the current arrangement, which effectively requires job candidates to seek out job hirers for conversation. That is to say, eliminating the APA "table chart" might mitigate, if not in some sense reverse, the social power-dynamic of the Smoker. In order for this to be effective, of course, ALL job candidate would have to be aware of, and encouraged to report violations of, the APA's prohibition.

(2) Remove alcohol from the Philosophy Smoker altogether. No more bar (not even cash bar) and, for the love of Wisdom, no more "free drink tickets." That's always been a terrible idea. If attendees want to socialize over a drink before (or instead of) the Philosophy Smoker, that's their (unsanctioned by the APA) decision and there's always the hotel lobby bar for those informal meetings. We can't reasonably expect the APA to regulate all of the "informal interactions" between job-hirers and job-seekers, nor can we reasonably expect the APA to take some kind of a moral-prohibitionist stand about the demerits of alcohol-influence on social interactions. We can, however, reasonably expect that the APA won't officially structure an environment where drinkers are prejudicially advantaged or disadvantaged.

(3) Schedule the Philosophy Smoker for earlier in the evening or, more ideally, some time that might reasonably be considered within the regular "interview time" of the day. This would not only remove the vague social pressure to consume alcohol at the Smoker, but it would also accommodate the needs of child-carers who are asymmetrically burdened by extra-hours interviewing requirements.

I will concede that my suggestions don't eliminate the concerns articulated in newAPPS' points (1) and (4) above, and they only mitigate newAPPS' point (2), but I'm not convinced that anything short of a total ban on informal interactions between interviewers and interviewees could effectively address those concerns. However, my suggestions are consistent with newAPPS' more general concern to minimize the effective (and affective) bias realized by the current structure of the Philosophy Smoker.

I can say, with relative confidence, that I've never made a hiring decision entirely based on my informal interactions with a job candidate at the Philosophy Smoker. However, it is certainly the case that Philosophy Smoker interactions have been, when they occurred, one of many things that have influenced my final judgment of a candidate. I'd like to think that those candidates who opted not to attend the Philosophy Smoker have not been diminished in my judgment as a result of that decision, just as I'd like to think that those who "performed" badly at the Philosophy Smoker have not been significantly harmed in my judgment by those interactions... though I am, of course, aware that one cannot always impartially measure those effects. Nevertheless, my (now three-time) experience as a SLAC (small liberal arts college) Hiring Committee Member has inclined me to consider my informal interactions with job candidates to be very significant interactions, even if not interactions exactly equivalent to those that happen in the formal interview.

Comments section is open and, as always, your comments are encouraged.

First As Tragedy, Then As Farce

2011-11-27T09:38:00.016-06:00

We barely had a moment to digest the horror of the incident at UC-Davis, where police pepper-sprayed nonviolent student protesters associated with the Occupy Movement, before the image of the offending policeman (Lt. John Pike) was transformed into an internet meme. Pike's image was photoshopped into some of the great works of Western art, including those pictured to the left (clockwise: Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People, Trumbull's Declaration of Independence, and Rockwell's Freedom from Want), which were then disseminated at fiber-optic speed on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and countless blogs. In fact, there's a whole site dedicated to this meme now, called Pepper Spraying Cop. The events at UC-Davis were tragic, to be sure. So how did the Pepper Spraying Cop become funny?

At first, many of the mash-ups appeared to be implicitly meta-criticizing Lieutenant Pike's action. The brashness and brute force of Pike's assault is amplified in the Seurat image, where the pastoral calm of the painting's subjects is violently disrupted by Pike spraying the seated woman with the parasol. (Incidentally, Seurat's is also a painting about class mixing--Sunday afternoons were the only time the lower classes had leisure time, and they would go to Grand Jatte to relax, mingling with the upper classes.) Similarly, the fundamentally anti-democratic nature of Pike's actions are highlighted in the Delacriox and Trumbull images, where Pike's pepper-spray can is positioned to aim its assault directly at "liberty" and "independence." And Pike's complicity with (and protection of) the wrongs of the 1% is dramatized in the Rockwell image, where the introduction of Pike's figure essentially negates the "freedom from want" represented therein.

Like all memes, though, the Pepper Spraying Cop took on a life of its own and began to be inserted into images that lacked a metacommentary like those above. (Pike spraying a baby seal, Pike spraying the kid from The Shining, Pike spraying Beyoncé and Harry Potter and Tim Tebow, even Pike spraying God.) These latter iterations were funny, to be sure, and so were the earlier images. But "funny" comes in many flavors, and it's difficult to determine in what way these images are amusing. Are they ironic? Are they satirical? More importantly, is it okay to be amused by them? How soon after tragedy is too soon to transform it into farce?

As a member of the Stewart/Colbert generation, I often wonder how fit I am to decide these questions anymore. For at least the last decade, my "news" has been deconstructed and reconstructed as satire, irony or farce on a daily basis. Back in 2001, I remember there being a palpable hesitancy around making jokes about the events of 9/11 for a long while. The question 'how soon is too soon?' weighed heavily on everyone, not just comedians, not just political pundits, not just bloggers. That reticence seems to have waned, if not completely disappeared, in the intervening years. Another example: Within 48 hours of the Sandusky/Penn State scandal, I heard the following joke:

Q: If a woman who has sex with younger men is called a 'cougar,' what do you call a man who has sex with younger men?
A: A Nittany Lion

It's brilliant as a joke, of course, despite the horrible events upon which it depends to be funny. And the Pepper Spraying Cop is brilliant as a meme, despite the events upon which it depends to be funny. But what to do with the requisite desensitization that is necessary for both jokes to "work"?

Philosopher Cynthia Willett (Emory University) addressed some of these questions in her recent text Irony in the Age of Empire: Comic Perspectives on Democracy and Freedom, where she argues that we ought to embrace the way in which comedy, satire and irony can be not only critical, but emancipatory. Now, for most people of my generation/education/political persuarsion, the idea that comedy has some political purchase is nothing new. In fact, for many of us, the only thing standing between our day-to-day existence and total despair is Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Most of my friends have themselves adopted this sharp (or, negatively stated, acerbic), quick (sloppy), biting (mean), and astute (cynical) sense of humor, which often turns an everyday conversation over beers with them into an exercise in pugilistic hilarity. Some people (namely, my father) find this generational characteristic a little off-putting--we're too loud, too mean, too enamoured with our own disillusion and, yes, a little too honest to make for good (read: polite) company. I actually respect his criticism to a degree, as I myself (like almost everyone I know) have certainly gone home and plucked the barbs out of my own ego after having been lambasted by friends... all in good fun, of course. But it is what it is. These are my people.

What Willet's work has made me think more about, however, is how much can actually be accomplished by such comedic criticism. Every night I watch Jon Stewart and I wonder: how in the world can things continue to go on like they are with this kind of truth out there? Of course, I know that the targets of Stewart's and Colbert's not-so-subtle criticisms probably don't watch their shows, or grossly misunderstand the jokes, but one would think the fact that The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are such a central part of the social milieu would have some cash-out value. One would think that shows like Stewart's and Colbert's (and jokes like the PSU one above, and memes like the Pepper Spraying Cop), at the very least, can reduce the number of lies that are allowed to go uncontested in public discourse.

When I taught Media Ethics, I would show the clip of Jon Stewart's visit to the FOX exercise-in-ridiculousness show Crossfire. If you haven't seen it, you can watch it here. (And even if you have seen it, watch it again!) Stewart's dilemma in that conversation is the one that I imagine is the most insurmountable for the comedian who actually wants to effect political change-- how do I get people to take me seriously? But every time I see the clip again, I am reminded that it is one of the most brilliant, and most inspiring, moments of political confrontation that I have seen. It's such a perfect little concentration of all that is wrong with political discourse in our country right now... namely, that there is no "discourse." The Right caricatures and then lambasts the Left seriously, and the Left caricatures and lambasts the Right comedically. We all know who's been winning that battle for the last several years-- the question is, who's going to win the war?

For my part, I think that we have to keep the distance between our tragedies and our farcical representations of them-- like the Pepper Spraying Cop meme-- as minimal as possible. The joke must be biting and more than a bit sour so that we do not forget that it's only funny because it's not funny, after all.

The Material Infrastructure of the Internet

2011-11-26T08:11:00.003-06:00

Like most people, I presume, I have a tendency to think about "the Internet" or "cyberspace" or the "virtual world" as something fundamentally non-material. I type emails, I post on my Facebook page or this blog, I search and find things on Google, and it seems to me each time as if every strike of my fingers on the keyboard activates some kind of magical, ethereal force, existing outside of space and in hyper-compressed time. Of course, I am aware that there are material elements of my activity-- my laptop, the power chord and plug that connects it to my wall, the wireless router that has (of course) its own physical wire, to which I must maintain a certain physical proximity-- but each of those concrete, tangible items seem ancillary. They provide access to the Internet. They are material, of course, but the Internet itself is not. Or is it?

For the last couple of decades, people have been struggling mightily for an apt metaphor to explain what exactly "the Internet" is and how it works. The metaphors that have prevailed-- metaphors of "network" and "space"-- are partially responsible for our tendency to think of the Internet as non-material. But as we all know, when we really think about it, that "network" and that "space" must have a material architecture. My cyber-connections with the rest of the globe are also actual, physical connections. Millions of miles of material cable and wires, thousands of material mega-machines in material brick-and-stone buildings, must already be in place in order for me to tap my fingers and have a real-time conversation with my friend in Australia.

I came across this short (10 minute) documentary about all those material parts of the Internet, which are "bundled, buried and behind closed doors" (as well as, quite often, right there in plain sight!). It's a fascinating look into the architecture of the Internet, but what's really interesting about it is the way it shows that the routes and lanes of the Information Superhighway reproduce the routes and lanes of trade. And information, like all of the other goods and resources traded across seas and borders, concentrates power. As one commenter says, "communication is bound up, historically and in the contemporary period, with the projects of Empire." Take a look at some of the "maps" of the Internet presented here. Fascinating.

Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors from Ben Mendelsohn on Vimeo.

Why I Stood With The Students

2011-11-25T10:34:00.012-06:00

As I reported in my previous post, students at my college organized an event last Monday night, the Rhodes Solidarity Vigil, which was meant to demonstrate solidarity with the nonviolent student protesters at UC-Davis (and elsewhere) who were brutalized by police while peacefully exercising their right to assemble. This is why I stood with the Rhodes students that night:

For at least the last 50 years, college and university campuses have served as cultural, moral, and political crucibles, where the often white-hot heat of our nation's collective values are tested, refined, sometimes challenged, and sometimes changed. There are, I imagine, a myriad of ways to explain why this is the case, but I'd like to think that chief among them is the fact that students constitute a rather unique sub-population, the characteristics of which make them uniquely capable of apprehending more directly the systemic injustices that plague our body politic. College and university students exist, for the most part, as a community of shared interest, age, and vocation. They are, for the most part, sheltered from the burdensome weights of adult life, like disease, death and (until quite recently) debt. They are engaged with one another in the difficult tasks of educating themselves, of training and disciplining themselves, of fabricating for themselves a place and a purpose in the world. And, for the most part, they have not yet had their ability to imagine more and different possibilities restricted.

It is that last characteristic-- their unrestricted imagination-- that I find the most inspirational in my day to day interactions with students. If given the resources and freedom to imagine their world otherwise, they can and they do. College and university campuses have been, and ought to be, safe spaces for that imaginative work. Recently, however, some campuses have not been so. Most dramatically demonstrated at UC-Davis and UC-Berkeley, where students were beaten with batons and pepper-sprayed by police while peacefully assembling, campuses have not only become focal points for an ideological struggle taking place in our country, but battlegrounds for that struggle. The scenes of that battle, disseminated as they were through the viral network of our new media, are disturbing. Students, armed with nothing other than their grievances and their nonviolent discipline, have been met with the unjust and unjustifiable violence of police force. Inexcusably, administrators charged with protecting those campuses and the students who inhabit them have turned a blind eye.

I am so very thankful that my campus has not been host to such violence, that my students have not been quieted or harmed, and that our collective space remains safe for the free expression of ideas, even unorthodox, unpopular or dissenting ideas. Ours remains, thankfully, a campus that has maintained its integrity and, more importantly, its hospitality to critical discourse, civic engagement and democratic action. So, when our students gathered to show solidarity with their peers at UC-Davis and UC-Berkeley, I stood with them and for them. I saw it as my moral obligation to do so, inasmuch as I find the deployment of brute force against nonviolent protesters to be a gross moral transgression. I saw it as my political obligation to do so, inasmuch as I find the exercise of police violence against the citizenry it is charged to serve and protect, the violation of basic constitutional rights to assemble and to dissent, and the suppression of free and open democratic discourse to be gross political transgressions. And I saw it as my professional obligation to do so, inasmuch as I consider it my charge to protect my students' freedom to insist on a better world for themselves, to call into question the values of those who govern and discipline them, to put the intellectual resources they have gained in the course of their education to practical use, and to not be beaten or violated for doing so.

As a member of the faculty at a liberal arts college, I wish that we had the courage and conviction to lead and not follow on this issue. I am, quite frankly, embarrassed that we haven't done so. Even if there are those among us who are unconvinced of the merits of the grievances voiced by the larger Occupy Movement-- which I am not-- I cannot understand how one can, in good conscience, not publicly and resolutely oppose the suppression of students' opportunity to participate in the long and virtuous tradition of using campus spaces as safe spaces for positive forms of dissent, where visions of moral, political, social and economic alternatives can be given fair consideration.

There are brave, disciplined, informed, reflective, convicted and committed students in this country who are exercising precisely the sort of imagination that we try to cultivate in them and on which our collective future depends. I stand in solidarity with them. And whenever my students stand with them, I will stand in solidarity with my students, too.

Solidarity

2011-11-25T09:30:00.005-06:00

This past Monday, November 21, students at Rhodes College organized a candlelight vigil to show their solidarity with the student protesters at UC-Davis who were assaulted by police while nonviolently protesting on November 18. Rhodes' event was an answer to the call sent out by Occupy Colleges, the student wing of the Occupy Movement, asking campuses across the country to hold candlelight vigils to show solidarity with "all injured students who were protesting tuition hikes and economic injustice." Our students had a lot working against them in this effort-- the weather in Memphis was rainy and windy that day, they had less than 24 hours to organize and publicize the event, and Rhodes isn't a campus where collective political statements of any sort are the norm-- but they managed to pull it off beautifully. I'd estimate about 100 students, faculty and staff attended, with the overwhelming majority of the attendees being students.

I've never been to a candlelight vigil before. To be honest, in the past, I've often considered those kinds of vigils to be merely symbolic and I didn't really appreciate them as effective political statements. But I can honestly admit that Rhodes Solidarity Vigil changed my mind. There is something about a large group of people standing in solidarity, observing a moment of silence, and shining a light in the darkness that serves as a very, very powerful statement. After the minute of silence, students opened the "floor" to anyone who wanted to remark upon the events at UC-Davis (or the larger Occupy Movement). The discussion that ensued was sober, reflective, intelligent, egalitarian and, at times, quite moving. Here are some images from the vigil:

(Apologies for the blurriness of some of these images, but it was rainy that night.)

As impressive (and unprecedented) as this event was, I can't help but also note my disappointment that it wasn't better attended. I heard through the grapevine that day that many in the Rhodes community expressed their reservations about attending because they were concerned that showing solidarity with the students at UC-Davis would be interpreted as solidarity with the larger Occupy Movement. I find that argument both weak and disturbing. If one cannot stand in solidarity against the use of police violence against nonviolent protesters, whatever the merits or demerits of their protest, then one needs to recalibrate one's moral compass.

Beautiful Politics

2011-11-19T11:59:00.004-06:00

Please, please take 4 minutes and 29 seconds out of your day and watch this.

Dr. J Catches Up

2011-11-19T09:26:00.030-06:00

It's been too, too long since I've posted here. Two whole months, in fact. [Insert standard excuse about being too busy.] My absence was particularly egregious this time, since my last posts, back in September, left a few issues hanging. (Just as an aside, it's hard for me to believe that the last time I posted on this blog was in the pre-Occupy-era. What a difference 8 weeks makes.) I'm using this post not so much as an effort to adequately tie up loose ends, which I think might not be possible, but more as a segue to new things. Here are a few, all too brief, remarks on what has happened in the interim:

Leiter v Alcoff: As to the Leiter v. Alcoff hullabaloo, a lot has happened since my last weighing in on the issue. Among other things, SPEP passed a resolution in support of the Pluralist's Guide to Philosophy, a decision which sparked much debate on Leiter's blog, the New APPS blog and elsewhere. As many anticipated, the debate over the merits/demerits of the Pluralist's Guide have now ballooned into a much larger contest about the state of the so-called "analytic/Continental" divide in professional philosophy. And, as has been our way, the quality of the debate has ranged from puerile and ad hominem attacks to seriously reflective and constructive suggestions for reform. I'll just say, for my part, that I was one of the 24 who voted against the SPEP resolution (outnumbered by the 118 who voted in favor of it), though I still think that there are many merits to the Pluralists Guide and something of that sort is needed in our profession. I'll also say that I think Leiter-et-al's personal attacks on Alcoff (and, more generally, the SPEP constituency) were unprofessional and inexcusable. I'm sure this matter will be revisited on this blog again.

Penn State scandal: My graduate school alma mater, The Pennsylvania State University, was recently rocked by a s ex scandal involving one of their former football coaches, Jerry Sandusky, who is alleged to have used his position as the director of a troubled-youth program (The Second Mile) and his influence as a football coach at PSU to prey upon and sexually abuse several young boys over the course of a couple of decades. PSU President Graham Spanier and longtime football coach/legend Joe Paterno were both fired for allegedly knowing about and covering up the misdeeds of Sandusky. (Penn State's former Athletic Director, Tim Curley, and Senior Vice President, Gary Sschultz, were arrested along with Sandusky and charged with perjury.) After the news of Spanier and Paterno's dismissal was announced, Penn State students rioted in the streets. As a Penn State alum, this has all been heartbreaking and embarrassing. I *will* have a post on this matter forthcoming, but in the meantime I'll directly you to Associate Dean (and Professor of Philosophy) Chris Long's excellent Open Letter to Liberal Arts Undergraduates at Penn State.

Ask me what the inside of Lucinda William's tour bus looks like: In happier news, I got to meet one of my musical idols, Lucinda Williams, several weeks ago. I went with a friend (Kelly Robinson, author of the really excellent blog A Certain Solitary Pleasure: Adventures in Reading) to Williams' concert at the New Daisy here in Memphis and, after it was over, I asked one of her road crew if there was any way I could meet her. (Hey, the worst they can say is "no," right?) He looked a little skeptical, so I started to tell him about my American Values Project, since Lucinda had spoken quite a bit about #OWS during her show and I thought she might be sympathetic to a project like ours. As it turns out, she was. My friend and I got invited onto Lucinda's tour bus, where we spent about an hour talking, laughing, and taking photos (of her and her whole band) for the American Values Project. Lucinda was warm and funny and smart and committed to good politics, just as I hoped she would be in "real" life.

Antjie Krog at Rhodes: In another getting-to-meet-my-idols story, I had the good fortune to meet and serve on a panel with Antjie Krog, South African poet, journalist and author. Krog was one of the reporters who covered the proceedings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and wrote Country of My Skull recounting that experience. She came to Rhodes this past week to deliver a lecture and poetry reading, both of which drew an overflowing audience. Thanks to my good friend, Mark Behr (who organized Krog's visit), I got to spend a lot of time with Krog. She is, in almost every conceivable way, the very model of an engaged intellectual. I don't think there's been any academic, other than Derrida, who has had me so star-struck upon meeting them. Krog not only has a very powerful presence about her, she IS a presence-- a soft-spoken, slight, mild-looking woman who commands attention and respect with the power of her words alone. Greatest moment: getting to discuss my weak humanism ideas with her, outside on a deck, smoking an after-dinner cigarette.

American Values Project: I've also been really busy with the American Values Project this semester, which has launched a new website and a new Facebook page. Rhodes College also gave AVP two new assistants this year, and their addition has helped a lot. We recently participated in an event sponsored by CODA (the Center for Outreach and Development of the Arts) called "Exhibition Momentum," where we were able to take AVP photos of people, print them out, and create a real-time collage of those image on the Jack Robinson Gallery's wall. The AVP team is really committed to keeping this project going, and we're still working toward creating a physical exhibit of the images that could travel the country during the 2012 Presidential campaign season. So, if you haven't submitted a photo to the project yet, please do so! And if you have submitted a photo, please spread the word and encourage others to do so! The AVP began right here on this blog back in February of this year, and since then we've been shown at a gallery in New York City, been featured on the Rhodes College website, grown the size of our team by 200%, and even gotten celebrities to contribute! Sometimes, when I'm buried in the mundane business of the AVP, I think to myself that I shouldn't be so committed to this project. But I am.

Occupy Everything: Last, but not least, you may have noticed that we have a revolution on our hands. The occupation of Wall Street that began in September of this year has spread out across the nation. Initially dismissed as the content-less complaints of a marginalized few, the protesters have now taken on the sobriquet "the 99%", and their message is resonating with the heartland. Every week, it seems, their messages and strategies get more innovative, more powerful, more inclusive, and more insistent. It is no longer possible for any of us to dismiss their presence, and it's increasingly more difficult to ignore the systemic injustices to which they are calling our attention. Because of the Occupy Movement-- yes, it's really a MOVEMENT now-- I've had some of the most interesting and reflective discussions in my Marx classes in years. (No more of these problems!) All of the other interesting things that have been happening in my life in the last couple of months notwithstanding, I've missed the most blogging about OWS. More to come, for sure.

Okay, that should just about catch me up. Stay tuned!

Leiter v. Alcoff, Part Two: The Context (or, Why This Isn't Simply A "He Said, She Said" Story)

2011-09-05T17:42:00.003-05:00

Okay, if you haven't read Part One of this series, you should go back and do so. Otherwise, the following won't make much sense.

If you have read Part One, and if you don't already have a dog in this fight, you may be wondering: what exactly is the big deal here? So what, two philosophers disagree about the merits of two surveys about philosophy (and both of them obviously have vested interests in the surveys they support)? Both sides accuse the other of being partial and unfair? Sounds like a classic he said/she said, right?

As a matter of fact, this is a fairly typical case of "he said/she said"... as long as one understands that all those conflicts that traditionally get characterized as "he said/she said" are really about much more than whatever it is that he or she said.

[Again, consider the following "preliminary" information. Without pointing any evaluative fingers (yet), I just want to clarify the context in which this conflict is taking place.]

Professional philosophy in the United States is, for the most part, dominated by a particular tradition that we call Analytic, or "Anglo-American," philosophy. (FULL DISCLOSURE: I do not work in, nor was I primarily trained in, the analytic tradition. In fact, I received my PhD from the Pennsylvania State University, which is consistently considered one of the "top" graduate programs in Continental philosophy. That said, I have tremendous respect for my colleagues in analytic philosophy and hope that they will find my following remarks fair.) "Analytic philosophy," as a category, only came to mean something significant in the 20th century, when it was distinguished from the more historically-oriented tradition that subsequently came to be known as "Continental" philosophy. Typically, Analytic philosophy is characterized as the kind of philosophy that focuses on philosophical problems (as opposed to texts, figures or traditions), that primarily proceeds by way of the scientific method of analysis, that emphasizes clarity and rigor in its arguments (a la formal logic and the natural sciences), that de-emphasizes the particularities of historical, individual, cultural and ideological identities, and that aims to locate universalizable, axiomatic truths about the issues under its consideration. As a rule, the sub-fields of philosophy practiced within the Analytic tradition tend to be metaphysics, epistemology, logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind and other cognate areas... although there are many, well-established and well-respected, analytic philosophers who work in ethics, social/political philosophy, feminist philosophy and philosophies of race. About 50 years ago, there was something like a schism in the APA (the American Philosophical Association, which is the primary organization representing professional academics working in philosophy in the United States), and a separate organization called SPEP (the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) was formed as a result. Today, SPEP primarily represents those professional philosophers working in the so-called "Continental" tradition, which is, for the most part, a broad field of traditions focusing on (1) the history of philosophy, (2) the various European traditions that grew out of post-Kantian and post-Hegelian philosophies, (3) the late-20thC. newcomer "critical studies" fields like feminism, queer theory, critical race studies, deconstruction, poststructuralism, and pop-culture analysis/aesthetics, and (4) mostly post-Cold-War political and ethical theories like those found in postcolonialism, globalization theories, late-capitalism critiques, posthumanism and neo-Marxism, For reasons that far exceed the space I have here for explanation, the analytic and Continental traditions within professional Philosophy have been at odds for the last half-century or so, and their disagreements have been neither friendly nor productive.

In terms of the profession, Analytic Philosophy is the big dog. It is the tradition that dominates R1 (i.e., research-oriented) universities in the United States and, consequently, determines the sorts of people who get hired for those jobs. That is to say, if you're good at philosophy and you're aiming to have a career in it, your time and money are best placed on Analytic philosophy. On the other hand, Continental philosophy (and its siblings) tend to dominate in liberal-arts institutions in the United States. If you happen to be an undergraduate in a Catholic school or any other top-tier SLAC (small liberal arts college), chances are that you're being educated by those who have been thoroughly trained in the History of Philosophy, which means (effectively) those who have been trained in the Continental tradition. There are a few well-respected graduate programs who specialize in Continental philosophy (Penn State, U.Memphis, StonyBrook, Emory, Vanderbilt, DePaul, Villanova, New School, etc,), but the fact of the matter is that none of them carry the heft on the job market that even second-tier Analytic programs do. It's a tilted field, really.

[I pause here to give thanks, again, that I have a job.]

And if Analytic philosophy is the big dog in the profession, then Brian Leiter is the 800-lb. gorilla. Leiter, a philosopher of law at the University of Chicago Law School, who has also published somewhat extensively on one of the Continental tradition's pets (Friedrich Nietzsche), is probably THE single most influential living philosopher today. Although he is well-respected and well-published as a philosopher, I think that even Leiter would admit that his tremendous influence in the field is not the consequence of his academic contributions, but rather of his precocious internet savvy. Several years ago, Leiter began what has come to be known as the "Philosophical Gourmet Report" (also known as the "Leiter Report"), a ranking of the best graduate programs in Philosophy, which he organizes and promotes via his blog, the Leiter Reports. Whatever else one may think of the PGR or Leiter's copious positions and pronouncements, one simply MUST admire him for planting his flag first and claiming our little area of the philosophical internet as his own. The truth is, when it comes to Philosophy on the Internet, it's Leiter's sandbox. The rest of us are just playing in it.

This is the power-asymmetry context that makes the kerfuffle between Leiter and Alcoff complicated. Leiter is not only on the side of power in terms of the profession, dominated as it is both by men (who have not, intentionally or unintentionally, given much attention to the under-representation of women in their field) and by analytic philosophy (which has not, intentionally or unintentionally, given much attention to the philosophical proletariat doing the laborious work of maintaining an educational standard with regard to the history of philosophy), but he's also on the side of power in terms of the medium of this dispute. (For the record, I don't blame Leiter for the latter. I blame the Continentalists for being too cool-- read: backwards-- to engage in the new medium of communication.) The point is that when Leiter says something like "Alcoff is making unsubstantiated claims about philosophy graduate programs," he has an army of philosophers ready to come to his defense, whether Alcoff's claims are substantiated or not. (More on that in the next post.) Alcoff simply doesn't have the same army, partly because her tradition of philosophy has elected to remain behind the times in terms of tech-savvy (John Protevi not withstanding), but also because she is herself a representative of the underrepresented class under dispute!! That is to say, this is not simply a "he said/ she said" fight with regard to the climate for women studying philosophy, because ANY "he said/ she said" in this context is not a fair fight from the start.

Both Leiter and Alcoff have their supporters, but the fact is that Leiter has cultivated his crew on the web over the last several years in a way that Alcoff simply hasn't. Leiter's army is bigger, more numerous, more powerful. Every single demographic account of the profession shows that Alcoff's army is smaller, less powerful, more vulnerable. Anyone who has followed the comment-streams of late can easily see that the Alcoff-supporters have clearly brought a pillow to a knife-fight. As a self-identified Continentalist, and as a web-savvy one, I'm quite frankly embarrassed that what I'd like to count as "my" side has come off as so ill-equipped to handle a web-based battle like this one, but even I waited until all the vitriol died down to enter the fray, which ought to demonstrate (at least to me) that it's not as easy to man up as one might think.

Here's the thing that will be a pro forma insight for those who do feminist philosophy, and probably a total shocker for those who don't: the playing field is not even for women in Philosophy, even very powerful women like Linda Alcoff. Women in philosophy, especially when they're discussing the problem of "women in philosophy," are at a disadvantage. The skills of analysis that are heralded in our field-- impartiality, objectivity, universalizability, disinterestedness-- are, in fact, disadvantageous for women in this debate. And so, the "he said/she said" paradigm is perhaps more apropos that I originally intended here, inasmuch as it represents the paradigm most appealed to in cases where vacating the contestants in the debate of any particularity is of advantage to one side.

Of course, that doesn't mean that there's not a lot still to say about what "he said" and what "she said.' Stay tuned.

Leiter v. Alcoff, Part One: The Basics

2011-09-05T15:53:00.005-05:00

Now that things have quieted down a bit, and in response to readers who've been asking me to do this for a while, I've decided to offer a few reflections on the recent (and very public) kerfuffle between Brian Leiter and Linda Alcoff. I expect that most of you who aren't professional philosophers don't have any idea what I'm talking about-- and likely won't care much even after you do-- but for those of us working in the field, it's been a pretty big deal. Actually, a VERY big deal. So big, in fact, that there's no way for me to address it all in one post. I'll try to recount (as disinterestedly as possible) what actually happened, in order to set the stage for my follow-up evaluative posts. Apologies in advance to my readers outside the Academy, who may see this as indulgent airing-of-the-family-laundry, but it really is my hope that I can relay this in a way that magnifies the importance of these sorts of conflicts to everyone.

First, a short recap of events:
The Philosophy blogosphere, such that it is, was afire this past July and August concerning a new addition to its ranks, the "Pluralists Guide to Philosophy Programs " (PGPP)-- and, more specifically, its supplemental report on the "Climate for Women Studying Philosophy" at some graduate programs in the U.S.. The Pluralists Guide's focus was primarily on graduate programs specializing in areas of philosophy other than analytic philosophy, like Continental (European) philosophy, American Philosophy, Critical Race Theory, Feminist philosophy and LGBT studies. For the uninitiated, it's important to know that, before the appearance of the Pluralists Guide, there was only one other guide to (in this case, a ranking of) philosophy graduate programs in the United States, namely, the Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR) produced by Brian Leiter (Professor, University of Chicago Law School). It's difficult to say whether or not the Pluralists Guide was intended this way, but it was most certainly taken to be a challenge to what has been widely recognized as Leiter's turf. Shortly after the release of the Pluralists Guide, Leiter called its methodology, its prejudice and therefore its legitimacy into question on his blog (Leiter Reports), dubbing it the "SPEP/SAAP Guide to Philosophy Programs." (SPEP, or the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, is the professional organization that represents philosophers working in Continental philosophy, as well as many of those working in the ares of Critical Race Theory, Feminist Philosophy and LGBT studies. SAAP is the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, which represents philosophers working in that area. Graduate programs that are primarily represented by faculty working in SPEP- or SAAP-related areas are traditionally underrepresented in Leiter's rankings and were, by the nature of its organization, overrepresented in the Pluralists Guide.) So, in sum, the authors of the Pluralists Guide claimed that they were attempting to balance out the unmerited authority accorded to Leiter's rankings (in the PGR) by giving due consideration to programs other than analytic programs. Leiter, in response, accused the Pluralists Guide of using the adjective "pluralist" inappropriately to disguise what was, in reality, a self-interested campaign on behalf of SPEP- and SAAP-affiliated philosophers and programs.

That's basically the "he said"/"she said." But wait, you may ask, why is the Pluralists Guide a "she" in this disagreement?

The vitriol soon concentrated around one particular element of the Pluralists Guide, namely, its Climate for Women Studying Philosophy. In that climate evaluation, several graduate programs were listed as "strongly recommended" and (considerably fewer) as "need[ing] improvement." The "strongly recommended" list includes many, if not all, of the programs that are generally recognized as the strongest in Continental philosophy and its cognate ares, while the "needs improvement" list included three programs (NYU, Princeton and Rutgers) which regularly appear in the top-10 of Leiter's PGR rankings. Consequently, it appeared as if the "Climate for Women Studying Philosophy" list constituted an accusation on the part of the Pluralists Guide that analytic philosophy programs (which represent the overwhelming majority of graduate programs in the United States) were either the cause of, or at least complicit in, the well-documented under-representation of women in professional philosophy. (NB: Less than 2 out of 10 tenured or tenure-track philosophers working in the U.S. are female, well below the average of other fields in the humanities, and FAR below the averages in the natural sciences, social sciences or fine arts.) Of the three identified authors behind the Pluralists Guide-- Linda Alcoff (Professor of Philosophy, Hunter College), Paul Taylor (Professor of Philosophy and Head of African-American and Diaspora Studies, Penn State University) and William Wilkerson (Professor of Philosophy, University of Alabama-Hunstville)-- only one of them was both a woman and a scholar of feminist philosophy, so Leiter naturally directed his questioning of the Climate for Women Studying Philosophy survey at Alcoff.

And this is where things got ugly...

Once Leiter squared-off with Alcoff, the battle lines were drawn. Leiter's (and his compatriots') position was that Alcoff was hiding under the cover of the "so-called Pluralists" Guide to grind her own personal axe about women in philosophy, that she was intentionally occluding whatever methodology she used to generate the "Climate for Women Studying Philosophy" as a cover for her own Continentalist prejudice, and that she was doing real harm to legitimate graduate programs in philosophy with her accusations. Alcoff's (and her compatriots') position was that they were merely making public (and/or "official") what was already known (or needed to be known) about the systemic sexist prejudice of professional and pre-professional philosophy, that Leiter's objections were just a cover for what was really his wounded turf-battle hubris, and that her own SPEP- or feminist-sympathies were ultimately irrelevant in the face of this ad oculos problem in the profession.

In other words: He said. She said.

5 Years, 100K Hits

2011-09-05T10:22:00.003-05:00

Five years ago this month, I began this blog. At the time, I was in the final stretch of writing my dissertation and entering the job market. The title that I gave to the blog had been a personal mantra of mine for a long time, something I had scribbled down on a piece of paper my sophomore year in college as a way to motivate myself. (I've somehow managed to hang on to that piece of paper all these years. It's now tacked on the bulletin board by my office desk.) I didn't have a clear idea then what this blog would be, and I had NO idea what it would become, but I was spending a lot of time, alone, in front of my laptop, and I needed to write about something other than truth commissions, crimes against humanity, and deconstruction on occasion. There have definitely been periods when this site has seen a lot of activity (most recently, during my 30 Day Song Challenge in June) and other times when it has laid dormant (like, the last couple of months), but over the years it has come to be a rather important part of my identity. When I neglect it, I miss it and feel guilty about it, and when it's active, I feel more active.

I've definitely been neglecting it of late, so I was pleasantly surprised to see, upon returning, that this blog passed 100,000 hits while I was gone. In the grand scheme of things, 100K hits over 5 years is a pretty paltry number. There are something like 50 million tweets everyday, almost 34,000 Google searches per second, and 100 billion Facebook hits per day. Still, I'm not complaining. 100K people have passed by here at some point, and I'm glad to have served as their host.

So, thank you again, readers.

Cause of Death: Seuss-icide

2011-07-26T11:57:00.004-05:00

Okay, I tried really hard to do the 31 Days in Seuss, but I lost steam on the whole thing about mid-month and never recovered. I know when I'm beat, so I'm throwing in the towel.

Turns out it's actually hard to write poetry-- even bad poetry-- every day. Let me go ahead and extend a heartfelt apology for all the merciless fun I've made of the poets I know. (If you're a poet, you probably didn't know about the ridicule, since I usually do it behind your back.) Poetry is no joke hard work.

I really do like the month-long "theme" challenges, but I need to find one that is a little harder to do than the 30 Day Song Challenge but a lot easier to do than the 31 Days in Seuss. I'm opening the comments section up to suggestions from you, readers. Right now I'm leaning heavily towards an idea (borrowed from Kate Drabinski's blog What I Saw Riding My Bike Around Today) where I would take a picture from my daily life each day. I've been noticing recently that there are a LOT of times in my mundane Memphis experience when I see things that I should photograph. Just a couple of days ago, when the heat index was hovering around 110 degrees, I saw a man in a full Santa costume sitting on the curb in Midtown and cutting out paper snowflakes. That's some positive thinking that should be documented.

Bring on the suggestions!

31 Days in Seuss, Day 12: My Scariest Moment

2011-07-19T13:18:00.006-05:00

Still trying to catch up on the 31 Days in Seuss Challenge, but I'm determined to get them all done before the end of the month! I posted the whole (non-rhymed) account of today's story on my blog before. It's here if you're interested, but here it is in verse:

MY SCARIEST MOMENT
Here's a true story from 2 years ago
The scariest of all the moments I know
When I woke up one morning and went into work
And everything, suddenly, went completely berserk.

I was feeling quite strange when I rolled out of bed
Nauseous and dizzy, with a pain in my head,
But nothing too serious, or so I thought,
No reason it seemed to get too overwrought.

I made it to work, but things just got worse
The stairs to my office seemed hard to traverse
I couldn't quite get my bearings about me
My hand was shaking as I turned the door-key.
I took some deep breaths, drank some water and tried
To ignore the symptoms that wouldn't subside,
But I wasn't okay and I knew pretty fast
That whatever this was could not be surpassed.

I went down to my classroom. I couldn't teach.
But when I tried to announce that-- Oh no!-- NO SPEECH!
I stood there bewildered, a stammering mute
I must've appeared to have wits subacute.
My students just stared, waiting for direction
While I was lost in a fog of confused introspection.

Where were my words? Why wouldn't they come?
I knew what I wanted to say, but was dumb.
I could think in full sentences and intend with full will
But the sound all around remained stubbornly still.
Something was definitely wrong, I knew that.
It was my turn, but I stood there, at-bat.

To the ER I went in dystopic fantasia
Where the doctors informed me that I had aphasia.
The result of a stroke, my speech had been taken
A little spasm in my brain was the cause for my achin'.

After a whole lot of tests and a hospital stay,
They finally said it would all be okay.
Just like that, a second chance was transplanted
For me to never take my own words for granted.

31 Days in Seuss, Day 11: My Excellent Adventure

2011-07-19T12:50:00.005-05:00

MY EXCELLENT ADVENTURE
It's hard to think of an adventure I've had
That might count as "excellent," like, totally rad
I mean, I once skydived (or is it "skydove"?).
On a dare I once at a whole garlic clove.
I ran away once. Out the window I flew!
(But I was back in two hours, and nobody knew.)
I drove from Memphis to Boston once, straight
Without taking a rest, to meet up with a date.

But "adventure" is a hard word to define
And I'm not sure it applies to ventures of mine.
The best I can think of is one night last summer
In NOLA, with Kermit, a keyboardist and drummer,
And four of my friends at a late night jazz show
When I took a turn as la chanteur nouveau.

I'm punting on this one, as will become clear
When I direct you to read the whole story here.

31 Days in Seuss, Day 10: My Hometown

2011-07-19T11:48:00.005-05:00

My apologies for dropping the ball on the 31 Days in Seuss Challenge over the last week or so. I got busy and then had some internet issues at home. Anyway, I'm going to try to catch back up, starting where I left off. Here's Day 10:

MY HOMETOWN
My hometown sits on the Big Muddy bluff
It's rough and its tough and it hides lots of stuff
Some of it bad, like poverty and crime
But most of it good, and all of it mine.

It's the birthplaces of soul, home of the blues
Where The King first flashed us those sweet blue suede shoes

Where Johnny and Roy recorded at Sun
Where the lights stay on till the drinkin' is done
Where there's always been tension between whites and blacks
But where all that's just noise when the DJ plays Stax.
This city's a legend, and there ain't no mistaking
That Soulsville has always been slowly remaking
Itself into something more strange, more eclectic
Like some bourbon-soaked, barbecued, Southern-culture dialectic.

We've got the Arcade, the Lorraine, the Peabody
We learned from our neighbors how to make hotty-toddy's.
(And speaking of hot, we sure bring the heat
From March to November, sweat-glands will secrete
That sweet film of humid and oppressive heat
About which our speech can be quite indiscreet.)
We've also got Graceland and Gibson and Beale
And Bellevue mega-church's surreal mega-zeal.
In fact, we've got more churches than gas stations.
The only thing MORE numerous: temptation locations!
Like Wild Bill's, my personal favorite in town
Where the renowned getting-down is the best all around.

We're a city full of hustlers, no place for a wimp
(Every Memphian knows it's hard out there for a pimp!)
The Grizz, the Redbirds, the Tigers keep us cheering
And all of those tourists make room for profiteering.
We've got our fair share of loonies and quacks
(Hell, we even ELECT some of those hacks!)
But at the end of the day, there's no denying the facts
This is still a helluva place to relax
To kick back, to unpack, to talk a little smack
To locate that one thing that your soul somehow lacks
To relish in the unrefined and unclean,
To feel the sweet release of your spirit's dopamine
To know you're in a place where History was made
Forbade, surveyed, underpaid, disobeyed,
Weighed in the measure of a sweet serenade
Pervading the air where music is played
Night after night and day after day
In a city where no one's stay is overstayed.

I tried to leave Memphis, it wouldn't let me go.
It brought me back home to the home that I know
Where the good and the bad, in fact, do interwine.
But most of it's good, and all of it's mine.

31 Days in Seuss, Day 9: My Family

2011-07-09T09:51:00.013-05:00

MY FAMILY
This will be brief, for the story's quite plain.
We're a common family with a common name.
We were five in count for a whole lot of years
Then my brother got married, and new kids appeared.
So now we count nine, to each one's delight.
And nine, for the time, feels just about right.

My dad was a Preacher, and he's led the brood
Though thick and through thin, with passions subdued.
My mother's the firm (sometimes strict) regulator,
The translator of what counts as upright behavior.

My sister, the youngest, "quiet" as a rookie
Grew up to be quite a tough little cookie.
My brother, the handsome and lovable clown,
Has a knack for picking you up when you're down.
His wife, my new sister, is her own kind of force
She's an addition I can fully endorse!

And the kids! Oh, the kids! I do love them so!
For being an aunt is the best job, you know.
I don't ever scold them, I don't tell them "no"
They can come to me whenever they're granted furlough.
The little one, she likes sweet sweets topped with sprinkles,
Her eyes always harbor mischievous twinkles.
The older one's smart, and so talented, too.
(But she's nearing her teens and might soon come unglued!)
The middle, our boy, has the best little swagger
He's sweet and eccentric, never a bragger.

It just so happens that our hometown coincides
With much more extended family besides,
Which makes for impressive holiday gatherings
With stories a-plenty and continuous blathering
On and on about this and that and the other
All of it code for "we love one another."

We poke fun at each other, ride each one hard,
Watch movies together, grill out in the yard,
Tell jokes until everyone's faces contort,
And exhort the reporting of feats of all sorts.
We sometimes unfortunately hold our own grudges,
Treat one another like each other's judges,
But at the end of the day, with skill and aplomb
We find our way back to the place we call home.
Family is family, and family's permanent.
It's the one unchosen, unbidden determinant
We have in our lives. So I will take mine
Without amendment or redesign,
Without substituting any other
Sister or brother, father or mother,
Or anyone else we adopt for the day.
You could join, too. You can't overstay
Your welcome in a family like mine.
(Believe me, I've tested it many a time!)

31 Days in Seuss, Day 7: My Best Idea

2011-07-08T10:14:00.007-05:00

There's a Facebook page for 31 Days in Seuss now. Click here to like it. And without further ado, here's Day 7:

MY BEST IDEA
I've had a good idea or two in my day
(And many more bad ones I won't redisplay)
Grad school was a good one, confronting my fears,
And bachelorette-ing for these past few years,
And one time jumping right out of a plane,
Choosing a life and a home that's urbane,
Spending my twenties in a rock-n-roll band,
Embarking on many adventures unplanned,
Saying I'm sorry for an error or two,
(And not apologizing for more than a few!),
Moving back home when I was given the chance
And keeping my sweet spot for sweethearts' romance.

But my BEST idea, I think, when I think on it hard,
Is the one that I'll never, no never, discard.
My research underwent a major upheaval.
A few years ago, I turned my attention to evils
Like torture, the denial of key recognition,
And not so very "extraordinary" rendition,
The things that are done causing moral distaste,
Exploitation resulting in persons debased
Racism, sexism, the logic of Empire
The harsh regulation of basic desire--
In short, all our missteps that would go unchecked
Without human rights and a will to protect.

But laws just declare rights, they can't ever ground them
(MLK said that, the disenfranchised gathered around him)
It's philosophy's job to try and illumine
Whatever it is that binds us as "human."
So I made it my aim, my research obsession
To contribute my best idea to that question.

Here it is: we are, all of us, weak.
What's "human" about us is that, no mystique.
We're mortal, mutable, sometimes petty and mean.
We're defined by our futures, which remain unforeseen.
We can be a capricious, unpredictable lot.
But defined by some essence? Well, we're just not.
Despite all our difference, there's one thing we share:
None of us, not one, lives a life solitaire.
We may be rational, free, many other great strengths,
We may build great machines and go to great lengths
To distinguish ourselves from nature, the beast,
The stranger, the alien, the unknown, unreleased,
But at the end of the day, we need one another,
Sister and sister, brother and brother
To step in and defend and declare a loud "No!"
To insist that not anything, not everything goes.

For whatever else we may know of ourselves
From the volumes of thinking we keep on our shelves,
We're the only animal that can settle our quarrels
Without force or fight, by discharging our morals.
So my best idea, above all else, is just this:
We ought not, cannot, ever be remiss
In protecting human rights. We need to pursue
The "them" that's a "we", the "I" that's a "you"
For someday, you should know, they'll come for you, too
And you'll need the ones who won't misconstrue
The difference between you and them as innate
And who won't, in reflex, underestimate
The humanity that you share with the rest of us folk
For that's a humanity that can't be revoked.

31 Days in Seuss, Day 6: My Biggest Hope

2011-07-06T11:55:00.004-05:00

I'm not exactly sure that "hopes" are things that can be quantified in categories like "biggest" or "smallest," but here's my go at it anyway for Day 6 of the 31 Days in Seuss challenge:

MY BIGGEST HOPE
Pageant contestants with their big empty smiles
And big empty eyes and feminine wiles--
All say the same when asked of their hopes.
"World peace!" they exclaim, like big empty dopes.

We ALL think, of course, that world peace would be nice,
But REAL hopes are typically much more precise.
They usually have something more specific to do
With you, your purview, and the things you pursue.

So, although I've lots of big hopes to convey
The biggest of all, I can't help but say
Is a very clear-cut and crystal clear pining
For a "yes" that would be in great measure defining
Of all of the work, and the stress, sleepless nights I've endured
To procure the allure of a job well-secured.

It may seem quite selfish to be so in thrall
With the hope that I'm calling my "biggest" of all,
But what I long for most is the official extension
Of that sweet golden "yes" at my tenure contention.

If my tenure bid fails, there will be no excuse.
I shouldn't have spent all this time writing Seuss!

31 Days in Seuss, Day 5: My Hate

2011-07-05T12:02:00.011-05:00

Here's the next installment for 31 Days in Seuss. I'll just say that I sure would appreciate some commentary, if only to let me know whether or not I should keep soldiering through this very difficult challenge. Is anyone reading this? Hello?

Also, again, if you're participating in this Challenge with me and Ideas Man, PhD, please let me know so I can be sure to read (and link to) your entries!

MY HATE
Hate is a word I don't use too often
Preferring instead those words that can soften
The things and people that make us perspire
With vitriol, disgust, venom and ire.

But since I've chosen to poetically rehearse
Those things that prompt me to feel love's inverse
I'll make an exception, just in this case
And tell of the hates I usually efface

Bigotry, prejudice, and postures sardonic
(I know, hating "hate" is profoundly ironic!)
But I simply cannot underestimate
My hatred of those who don't tolerate
The difference that makes this world so enriched.
When I hear them, I become slightly unhitched
And can't help but despise the haters that hate
And longingly plead that they NOT procreate.

Really, who needs more of that kind?
Their wills undisciplined, their minds unrefined,
They whine and they bind and they decline to sign
That precious social contract keeping us all intertwined.

I hate ignorance, too, thinking that is hazy
Principles based on a relativism lazy
And those who simply will not condescend
To defend their positions, who can't comprehend
That a concept, or any ethical schematic,
Can never be totally idiosyncratic,
Theocratic, static, or stupidly automatic
And who can't see why that's so problematic.
If there's one thing that stymies the spirit democratic
It's a demos that's thoroughly, blindly fanatic.

In smaller hates, I'll note that I also dislike
The poetry of Beats, and Cognitive Psych,
Celtic music, tomatoes, capitalist elites,
Meetings where all that they serve is sweet sweets,
Scary movies, standstill traffic, and all things suburban,
People who look down their noses at bourbon,
Commitments for which I did not volunteer,
And bars that want to put fruit in my beer,
The people who never get up and dance,
Anything resembling those dumb capri pants,
Undercooked chicken and overcooked steaks,
Those who remind me of all my mistakes,
The smell of vanilla, the taste of champagne,
And any and every crime inhumane.

On reflection, I've more hates than I imagined at first
But at least they seem nicer when all rhymed and versed
Seuss-like, as was the call of this test.
Still, the list can't help but make me a little depressed.

31 Days in Seuss, Day 4: My Books

2011-07-04T11:01:00.003-05:00

My entry for Day 4 in the 31 Days in Seuss challenge is a little late, but I'm posting yesterday's and today's now. This one was the hardest to rhyme so far.

MY BOOKS
If you wanted an accurate glimpse of myself
Stop by and survey the books on my shelf
They're tattered and worn and filled with scribbles
The many unsettled scholarly quibbles
I've had with those writers over the years
And which fashioned the borders of my thinking's frontiers

There's the mundane, the mighty, the deep and the smart
Derrida, Foucault, Fanon and Sartre
Lots of philosophers from the region of France
And Americans, too, who wear French Thinking Pants

Alongside the Frenchies, and worth equal mention
Are the great works of many illustrious menschen
Nietzsche and Kant, Marx and Hegel
Philosopher-poets, like Goethe and Schlegel
They have their own space, as is their wont
(Their Gegend is still la arrondissement)

On separate shelves you'll find all my fiction
Full of addiction, constriction, affliction, contradiction
Dosteovsky, Kundera, Franzen and Roth,
Foer and Faulkner (most are in cloth)
Junot Diaz and his sad Oscar Wao
And all of the tragedy that space will allow

You won't find any sci-fi or Beat Generation
But there's plenty besides for smart conversation
The subjects that keep me ever transfixed
With the ins and the outs of Realpolitiks

No vampires, no volumes of young Harry Potters
I much prefer Steinbeck-- his downtrodden squatters
Stand in for the rest of us weak human beings
Petty and proud, in search of some meaning
To make our small lives seem less ordinary
When recorded by artists of arts literary.

My books, my friends, my confidantes too
I cannot imagine my space without you
There's just this one thing, which I cannot approve:
You're such a pain in the ass when I move!

31 Days in Seuss, Day 2: My Love

2011-07-02T15:18:00.016-05:00

This 31 Days in Seuss Challenge is already harder than I thought it would be. But the good news is that there's at least one other person who I know is doing it, so be sure to check out Ideas Man, PhD's blog. He's got mad Seuss skills.

I'm hoping that the more one tries to write in Seuss, the easier it gets. We will see. Anyway, here is today's attempt:

MY LOVE
The Prompter said today, "I know what we'll do!
I'll ask you your love, and you'll tell me your Who!"
Poor Prompter, he could not have known what I knew
That my love is a What and not really a Who.

"Nonsense!" he said, with an incredulous glance
The look that he gave me profoundly askance
"Love is for Whos, real people and such
No one loves Whats in that way, not as much."

He handed me a tablet, a big shiny pen
Demanded the names of my Who-loves, and then
With a growl and a huff he slammed the door shut
Shouting: "You must write of Whos and nary a What!"

I stared at the page, whatever to do?
There are too many Whos whom I love (and too few)
And my love for each is so different, too.
And what of the ones I already outgrew?
People could so easily err, misconstrue
Why THEY weren't the Who for My Love pas-de-deux.

So I decided I'd make a list of the Whats
That I knew that I loved with no ifs, ands or buts
Love isn't as simple as that mean Prompter said
I would make My Love list how I wanted instead.

Music and books were on the top of my list
And the big ideas with which all Whos and Whats coexist
There were warm summer nights and parties and sports
And the laughter that sounds like a hundred loud snorts
And classrooms where arguments are welcome and sound
The sweet smell of honeysuckle right out of the ground
The rush of a roller coaster's exhilaration
And the feel of a juke joint's dancing gyrations
Sad songs and high-fives and pool tables too
And the heavenly taste of pork barbecue.

Those were my loves. That was my list.
I knew that the Prompter would certainly be pissed.
He took it, surprised, and said "How apropos!
List the Whats that one loves. The Whos already know."

31 Days in Seuss: The Rules

2011-07-01T15:12:00.008-05:00

Some of you have already written me to ask "what in the world is 31 Days in Seuss?!" Well, it's like the 30 Day Song Challenge that I did last month (in June), only it's done in verse, like Dr. Seuss. Each day, I will have to answer the Seuss prompt with as much cleverness, wit and rhyme as I can muster, and with a healthy dose of neologisms.

I'll just say at the outset that I'm no poet. I didn't even know what anapestic tetrameter or amphibrach tetrameter or trochaic tetrameter was until I looked up Dr. Suess on Wikipedia. But, then again, not many people of Theodor Geisel as a "great poet" either, so I'll just try to slip in like he did. I'm not as confident about making it all the way through this challenge as I was about the music challenge, but I'm certainly going to give it a shot.

Oh the places we will go!

Here's how the Seuss Challenge will proceed for July. Please let me know if you're playing along on your own blog. And extra points for comments in Seuss-ese!

THE RULES:

Day 1- My job
Day 2- My love
Day 3- My music
Day 4- My books
Day 5- My hate
Day 6- My biggest hope
Day 7- My best idea
Day 8- My best friend
Day 9- My family
Day 10- My hometown
Day 11- My excellent adventure
Day 12- My scariest moment
Day 13- My saddest day
Day 14- My country
Day 15- My politics
Day 16- My religion
Day 17- My lost cause
Day 18- My embarrassment
Day 19- My parents
Day 20- My death
Day 21- My baggage
Day 22- My pet
Day 23- My most random moment
Day 24- My style
Day 25- My home
Day 26- My delusion
Day 27- My talent
Day 28- My principles
Day 29- My philosophy
Day 30- My worst moment
Day 31- Why you should know me

31 Days in Seuss, Day 1: My Job

2011-07-01T09:52:00.013-05:00

I'm beginning a new Challenge today, called 31 Days in Seuss. I'll be taking some element of my life each day and describing it in verse like the children's author Dr. Seuss. I have to admit that I'm not entirely confident I'm going to be able to do this for the whole month of July, but we'll give it a shot and see how it goes.

For the first day, I'm supposed to describe "My Job." As readers of this blog already know, I'm a professor of Philosophy at a small liberal arts college in Memphis. I always find it difficult to explain what I do to other people, so perhaps trying it in Suess will be a bit of an advantage. I mean, as far as I can tell, when I talk about Philosophy to other people it sounds a lot like Seuss-ese anyway.

So here it is, in Seuss:

MY JOB
One Who, two Who, three Who, four
A Little Who for each year, every year, sometimes more
The Big Whos leave them here, just an unprepared corps
To meet Great Whos of Whomanity and settle the score

I work at the Who-House. I meet Whos in great number
Eager and restless, imaginations unencumbered
I teach them Who thoughts and Who history and Who news
And how to read, write and talk like smart Little Whos

We struggle through annals of Who Life and such
And I hear their Who drama a little too much

In time, they are able to manage Who tussles
They begin to develop impressive Who muscles
They stumble, they falter, they beg and they plead
But they pick themselves up, brush off their Who knees
They learn the Who-House is a temporary stay
For Whomanity awaits! They musn't delay!
The Who-Doctors, like me, who have watered and fed them
Must some day, regrettably, cut loose and shed them

Eventually, the day comes when Little Whos have grown
And we Who-Doctors confirm what was already known
They had untapped Whomanity in them all along
And they now know the difference between Who Right and Who Wrong
So we send them off to the world of Whos great and small
To find and to answer their special Who-call

We return to the Who-House, more Little Whos in waiting
For the training of Whos is a task unabating
But each Little Who is a Future Who needed
To tend the lawn of Whomanity, which must be constantly weeded.
So the Who-Skills are taught and tested and graded
Quite often with love (those Little Whos get jaded!)
All the Big Whos in Who-Land depend on us dearly
To make Little Whos who can think and speak clearly
Of philosophy and life and the goods of Whomanity
To save us all from the nonsense of Fox-Whos insanity.

As a Who-Doctor, I confess, I love what I do
Even when charged with corralling bad Little Whos
So it takes no Who-effort to make this confession:
Mine is the best of the best of the best Who-Professions.

30 Day Song Challenge, Day 30: Your Favorite Song This Time Last Year

2011-06-30T08:20:00.005-05:00

Today's the last day of the 30 Day Song Challenge, and it's been a lot of fun for me. That's partly because I love music so much, and spending a whole month thinking about the different whys and wherefores that brought me to the songs that I love has indeed been a "challenge," but a thoroughly enjoyable one. This is also the first time that I've dedicated my blog entirely to one topic for such an extended period of time. I'd like to do something like this again in July, but I haven't yet found a 31-day worthy topic, so I'll leave the comments section open for suggestions. Maybe I'll aim for more modest challenges-- like 10- or 14-day ones.

It was about this time last year that my very dear friend E introduced me to The (other) "King" Solomon Burke's excellent album Nashville. I've been a fan of Solomon Burke's Philly-soul sound for a long, long time, but I had no idea that he had recorded an album of Nashville (country) standards reinterpreted through that Philly-soul sound. The combination, as unlikely as it may seem, is a perfect one. And Burke's execution of it is pure sonic gold.

The song I've chosen for today was most definitely my favorite song at this time last year. It's Solomon Burke's version of the old Tom T. Hall ballad "That's How I Got To Memphis." Here's a live version of Burke performing it (and it takes a little while to buffer, so be patient):

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I heard a few years ago that the city of Memphis is mentioned in more songs (over 1000 and still counting) than any other city in America. A well-deserved notoriety, in my view. I like this song because it's not sung from the point of view of a Memphian who loves Memphis, but rather from the point of view of someone who followed his heart, which demanded that he follow a Memphian back to Memphis. Burke's right, if you love somebody enough, you'll go wherever they want you to go. If that's how you got to Memphis, you should count yourself doubly lucky.

Memphis has got a lot of problems, to be sure, but (as my friend Dr. Trott once told me) you can't really say you love a place until it's given you reason not to love it. The same goes for people. I think "That's How I Got To Memphis" manages to capture that insight about both places and people. I love Memphis all the more because it's given me plenty of reasons not to love it, and I don't think that's some kind of nativist sentiment on my part. I think you've got to spend the time and effort to see everything this city has to give... and that's a lot. Y'all should come here sometime and see for yourself.

I'll just wrap up this 30 Day Song Challenge by saying that I count being from a city that is so thoroughly infused with music as one of the great serendipities in my life. That's not how I got to Memphis, but it sure is why I'm happy to stay.

30 Day Song Challenge, Day 29: A Song From Your Childhood

2011-06-29T06:10:00.001-05:00

The television show that I loved the most as a child was a vaudeville-type show created by puppeteer Jim Henson called The Muppet Show. Some of my very best Muppet friends appeared on the show regularly: Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Fozzy Bear, The Swedish Chef, Rowlf the Dog, Statler and Waldorf (pictured left), Sam the Eagle and many, many more. Every week the show had a famous (non-Muppet) host but, to the child-me, none of the hosts ever seemed to be as famous as the Muppets themselves. The world of the show was, to the child-me, a completely real world where pigs and dogs and frogs and whatever Gonzo was could talk and where the soundtrack to everything was provided by Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. Eventually, the Muppets made it to the big screen in movies like The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, and The Muppets Take Manhattan, and I love those movies now as much as I did as I child.

Part of the brilliance of "The Muppet Show," I now realize, is that it was just as entertaining for adults as it was for children. Some of that had to do with its featured guest-hosts, who put themselves in the awkward and hilarious situation of having to talk to puppets, but more of it had to do with the archetypical characters created by Jim Henson. Each of the Muppets had a fully-developed personality that no doubt resembled some "real" person that you knew. Anyway, here's the theme song, which still makes me giddy-happy whenever I hear it:

Maybe it's too "dated" at this point, but for those of you who are parents of small children, I highly recommend giving them a healthy dose of "The Muppet Show." I've seen some of the children's programming today and none of it seems as good as this classic.

30 Day Song Challenge, Day 28: A Song That Makes You Feel Guilty

2011-06-28T07:48:00.001-05:00

Funny enough, I was just thinking about "a song that makes me feel guilty" a few days ago, when I noticed that the ice cream trucks in my neighborhood were playing "Camptown Races" and a bunch of other tunes that seemed to be taken from Foghorn Leghorn's Greatest Hits. My selection for today is another one the ice cream trucks were blaring (in their totally creepy, carousel-winding-down, kind of way), and I mentioned to a friend that it made me feel guilty. Or, I should say, it makes me feel guilty now. It didn't when I was younger.

The song I've picked is "Dixie" also unfortunately known as the "Confederate Anthem." For most (white) people of my generation, this song is probably best known as the sound of TV's two lovable outlaws, Bo and Luke Duke, on the run. The Dukes of Hazzard drove a car (called the General Lee) that played the first few notes of "Dixie" when they blew the horn. I doubt I knew, back in my Dukes-fan days, that the lyrics to their horn sound were: I wish I was in the land of cotton. I probably did recognize the flag on the top of the General Lee as the Confederate flag, but I doubt I really knew what it meant. You see, I was in grade-school in the 80's and we didn't get a super-nuanced rendering of the Civil War in history classes, as far as I can remember. I mean, we certainly knew that the South lost and that it may or may not have had something to do with slavery-- and also that slavery was wrong-- but the idea that there might be a substantive connection between General Lee, the Confederate flag, the War of Northern Aggression, the sound of "Dixie" and the racism of people I actually knew quite simply never crossed my mind back then.

When I got older, I learned better, of course. And that's why "Dixie" makes me feel guilty. Here it is:

"Dixie" is a song left over from another embarrassing art form in American history: blackface minstrelsy. The song's original source is contested, but it's be re-written several times (in various gradations of "racist") over the years. Almost all versions of the song present themselves as anthems of Southern Pride, which could be a innocent demonstration of region-specific affection... but only if you don't know anything about the Civil War.

30 Day Song Challenge, Day 27: A Song You Wish You Could Play

2011-06-27T08:00:00.006-05:00

Okay, so I actually can play the song that I'm selecting for today, but I play it badly. Despite my pretensions to the contrary yesterday, I'm not a very good guitar player. I never learned the scales, I don't know anything about musical theory, and I can't pick worth a damn. What I can do is good enough for rock n' roll, for the most part, but when it comes to playing slower songs with a lot of nuance, I just don't have the chops.

One of the most frustrating things is to have a song that you can sing but can't play. This is one of those songs for me. If I had my druthers, I would be able to play not only the slow-pickin' parts of this song, but also that sweet slide. The sound of a slide guitar is, in my view, second only to the sound of a pedal-steel in mimicking the human voice. There's just something about that sound that wails and cries. It's beautiful.

Speaking of wailing and crying, today's song selection is from Sugarland, whose lead singer Jennifer Nettles has a voice that I would easily cut off a limb to have. Sugarland does a lot of the kind of overproduced pop-country that shouldn't really count as country music (think: Lady Antebellum), but Nettles' voice redeems all of that for me. Anyway, here's their very best, "Very Last Country Song," from their 2008 album Love On The Inside:

So, yeah, I can't play this in any way close to what might do it justice. But what an amazing song. There are a lot of jokes about country music-- what happens if you play a country song backwards? you get your job, your wife and your dog back!-- and I suppose that ridicule is somewhat earned. The great thing about "Very Last Country Song" is that it trades on all of the same stereotypes of country music, but does so with all of the affection of a true country music lover. And, come on, this is just one of the best choruses ever written:

If life stayed the way that it was
And lovers never fell out of love
If memories didn't last so long
If nobody did nobody wrong
If we knew what we had before it was gone
If every road led back home...
This would be
The very last country song.

I suppose that would be nice if lovers never fell out of love and every road led back home and all that.. but, for my part, I sure would miss the country songs.

30 Day Song Challenge, Day 26: A Song That You Can Play On An Instrument

2011-06-26T08:13:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, I noted that I couldn't believe I made it 25 days without picking a Johnny Cash song. Today, I can't believe I made it 26 days without picking a Bob Dylan Song. Something must be wrong with this Challenge.

Bob Dylan's songs were the first songs I learned to play on the guitar. I got my first guitar almost 20 years ago now. I had dropped out of college after my second year and was living in Boston at the time with a group of ne'er-do-wells, several of whom were in a band together. One of my roommates gave me a guitar in exchange for some rent money. (I still have that guitar, which I love dearly, though it's in significantly poorer condition after all these years.) I never really played any instrument as a kid-- I mean, I did massacre some songs on the recorder in grade-school music class, and I think I reluctantly took piano lessons for a short time when I was small-- but when I got my first guitar, I couldn't read music (still can't) and I didn't really know anything about it. But I wanted to play, and so I picked and strummed and winced and built up callouses, and eventually I got to the point where I could rightly pass as a guitar player.

By the time I moved back to Memphis (the first time), I had learned enough guitar to semi-justify joining a band. Which I did. Then I started writing songs. For the next ten years or so, I played in various bands (of various qualities) all over Memphis. The bands I was in played at some of the very worst places in Memphis and sucked it up pretty badly, but my last band was quite good and had a regular Thursday night gig on Beale Street. (That last band even opened for Dr. John once at W.C. Handy Park!) All in all, it was a good run, a fine way to spend one's 20's, and something that I don't think I'll ever regret.

That whole time-- in every band, at every campfire, during every pickers' night, even to this day-- I've been playing Bob Dylan songs.

Most of Bob Dylan's songs aren't that difficult to play on the guitar, so it's not that much of an accomplishment to say that you can do it. But this song is one of the more difficult to play and it's the one that I'm most proud of being able to play well. It's also, not for nothing, one of his BEST songs. Here's Bob Dylan (né Robert Allen Zimmerman) doing "Don't Think Twice, It's Allright" from his 1963 The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan:

The story I always tell about this song is that my good friend, Prof. Grady, once convinced me that this is the Saddest Song Ever. (You can read that story here.) Since I've said about all a person can say about the lyrics in this song, I thought today I would note the one musical moment that makes this song so great. In the lines right before "don't think twice, it's alright," there's a chord progression from the G to the G7 that is just soooooo perfect. Go back and listen to it again. Dylan's move from the major chord to the 7th exactly reflects the sentiment in those moments when it occurs. The story of the song is going along fairly predictably, when all of the sudden the 7th chord gives you a sonic hint that something unusual is about to sneak up on you. (Namely, the "don't think twice, it's alright" line.) For some reason, going from a G to a G7 always causes me to cock my head sideways. It's almost as if the very sound of it is like saying "hooooold on just a sec" or "wait a minute, whaaaaat?" or something like that. I suppose if I had any kind of technical knowledge about music, I could explain it better, but I don't. I just know it sounds right.

The fact that playing this song made me think a lot more about how music and words should go together is one of the reasons that I like it so much.

30 Day Song Challenge, Day 25: A Song That Makes You Laugh

2011-06-25T07:59:00.002-05:00

I can't believe I made it 25 days into the 30 Day Song Challenge without picking a Johnny Cash song. I could probably do all 30 days of this Challenge ONLY picking Johnny Cash songs. Maybe I'll start over in July and do that.

I suppose it's appropriate that I finally picked Johnny Cash on the day that I'm to select "a song that makes me laugh." The novice Cash fan may not appreciate just how funny his songs can be, what with all their drinking and philandering and incarcerating and repenting and killing men in Reno just to watch them die. But the truth is, Cash had a way of telling the stories of life's lesser moments with a healthy helping of... well, see the picture to your left. All it takes is a little irony in your lyrics, a little snark in your voice, a little twinkle in your eye and, all of the sudden, an execution song becomes downright amusing-- even when YOU are the one set to be hanged.

That's the story of my selection for today. Poor Sam Hall, he killed a man (so they said) and a-swingin' he must go. But before he goes, he intends to give the Big Fat Finger to anyone and everyone who has come to look. Here's my choice, Johnny Cash's "Sam Hall" from his 2002 album The Man Comes Around:

When Johnny sings "so I said, Sheriff, how are YOU?" I can't help but bust out laughing every time. And there's something about Sam Hall's declaration "I hate you one and all" that seems less the expression of a cold-blooded killer and more the expression of a frustrated 2-yr-old who's just been busted. Cash wrote a lot of "epic" stories during his time-- "Folsom Prison," "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," "Long Black Veil"-- but this is not one of them. "Sam Hall" is the story of a small, mundane, ordinary and thoroughly petty man who just so happened to do something noteworthy. The fact that Cash grounds the song in the personality of Sam Hall and not his actions is what makes it so funny, and so believable. For that reason, it belongs right up there with "A Boy Named Sue" as one of Cash's best.

Johnny Cash was one of the greatest songwriters to have ever lived, in my view. He wasn't an innovative musician or even a great singer. At heart, he was an ordinary, rural, somewhat broken man who loved his pills and his bottle as much as his wife and his God. But he was emotionally plugged-in to all of the mistakes and missteps that befall our misbegotten species. Humanity-- a weak and assailable and resilient, but quite often very funny, group of talking animals-- was the bread and butter of Johnny Cash's art, and we're all better for it. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if God's speaks to humanity, He does so through Johnny Cash.

Long live the Man in Black.

30 Day Song Challenge, Day 24: A Song You Want Played At Your Funeral

2011-06-24T07:30:00.003-05:00

IT'S A TWO-FER TODAY in the 30 Day Song Challenge!! I just couldn't pick one so I'm giving you both of my picks for today. That may be kind of a sad commentary on the things I think too much about, since today calls for me to pick a song that I want played at my funeral... but, whatever. This has been the most fun category so far.

And I'll go ahead and say that it was very hard for me, like a lot of people I'm guessing, to NOT choose "Another One Bites The Dust." Hey! They're gonna get you too!

My first pick, I have to admit, is one that I stole from the early-80's movie The Big Chill. If you haven't seen that movie, you should watch it. Besides having a star-studded cast and being a pretty decent mid-life crisis existential flick, it's also got one of the best soundtracks of all time. The basic premise of the film is that a bunch of long out-of-touch adult friends have gathered for the funeral of their friend who has committed suicide-- and also who, by the way, is played in the film by Kevin Costner, although you only see him for a second (and in a casket). In the movie, this is the song that is played at his funeral. It's The Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want" from their 1969 album Let It Bleed. In case you've been living under a rock for the last 40 years and have never heard this song, here it is:

Now, I was pretty young when I saw The Big Chill-- certainly not old enough to appreciate the delicious irony of having this song played at one's funeral-- but even then I remember thinking what a great song it was. And as weird as this sounds, I remember thinking what a great funeral song it was. Maybe it's that haunting boys' choir at the opening, I'm not sure. At any rate, I got older and "got" it eventually, and the selection only became more solidified in my mind. I suppose that I particularly like the "ah well, those are the breaks" kind of attitude behind playing this at your funeral. I like that it's unorthodox, maybe even a little ironic, and I like thinking that people might chuckle a little when it started to play. I mean, if you're going to leave people with one last memory of you, it might as well be funny.

Which brings me to my next selection: this one is from the musical Chicago. If you don't know the story, it takes place during the Chicago 1920s, when the combination of liquor, celebrity, and jazz produced equal numbers of scandals and scoundrels. The protagonist is a young jazz singer facing trial for "accidentally" shooting her lover. She's placed her fate in the hands of a oil-slick lawyer who manipulates the newspapers, the jurors and the public and who makes a mockery of the entire judicial process. In this song, the lawyer and his (very obviously guilty) client are about to go into trial. She's worried that they can't win their case, but he knows they will. Why? Because he's going to give them the ol' "Razzle Dazzle." Here it is (the actual song starts about a minute in):

It's all a circus, a three-ring circus. This trial, the whole world. It's all show business. That's what he tells his client when, quite literally, her life is on the line. Just give 'em the ol' razzle dazzle. Razzle dazzle 'em.

I know it might seem a little cynical to want this played at my funeral, but I like it for the same irreverent feel that the Stones' song has. I mean, I don't want people to be all sober and sad at my funeral. I'd prefer they snicker a little and shrug their shoulders when they hear these songs and say to themselves, "well, she's got a point." You can't always get what you want. Might as well razzle dazzle 'em.

Now that I have officially documented my funeral song selections, I expect all of you to make sure this happens.

30 Day Song Challenge, Day 23: A Song That You Want Played At Your Wedding

2011-06-23T08:12:00.010-05:00

I don't plan to ever get married, but that doesn't mean that I (like every other girl in America) haven't ever thought about what song I would want played at my wedding. When I was younger, I wanted my wedding song to be "Rainbow Connection" (though I prefer the Willie Nelson version to Kermit the Frog). At some point, I think I outgrew "the lovers, the dreamers and me" stuff, though I still thought it was possible that I might still marry at some point. After I got a little older, there was a long period that I wanted my wedding song to be the Dixie Chicks' "I'll Take Care of You," which I still think is a super-sweet and realistically romantic song. Then, for a whole lot of reasons, I guess I just stopped thinking about a wedding as a realistic-- or desirable-- thing for my life, and the whole idea of picking a wedding song just kind of fell by the wayside.

Today's 30 Day Song Challenge made me realize that I hadn't really stopped thinking about it, though... because as soon as I read the prompt, I knew exactly which song I would want played at my wedding. I can't remember when I decided on this one since I can't even remember the last time I really thought about a wedding that might involve me. At any rate, this is the song that I would want. It's Percy Sledge's "Warm and Tender Love," which is on a lot of albums, including his 1990 The Best of Percy Sledge. Here it is:

First of all, I love that there are practically no other lyrics to this whole song EXCEPT the inimitably sweet invitation to "let me wrap you in my warm and tender love." I'm not sure what else a person could want than that. Everything about this song is warm and tender: the sentiment, the organ, the back-up singers, the horns, and those sweet, sweet vocals of Percy Sledge himself. I know that, quite often, weddings are more about the families and friends and guests than they are about the betrothed, so I like the idea of playing a song like this that is both demonstrative of a powerful love and at the same time very, very intimate.

So, if any of you out there were thinking of courting Dr. J, you better make your peace with Percy first.

30 Day Song Challenge, Day 22: A Song That You Listen To When You're Sad

2011-06-22T16:44:00.000-05:00

Unlike yesterday, when I interpreted a "song that you listen to when you're happy" to mean "a song that makes you even HAPPIER," today I'm interpreting the 30 Day Song Challenge prompt in just the opposite way. When I think of the "songs that I listen to when I'm sad," I think that even though they're sad, they still tend to make me feel less sad when I hear them. Maybe misery does love company.

I'm not going to go on and on again about how much I love sad songs. (I did that already on Day 4, if you're interested.) I will say that this particular song is not your garden variety sad song, despite the fact that it's subtitle is "Sad Song." Here it is, Otis Redding's "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)" from his posthumously-released album Dock of The Bay.

I waited until too late in the day to get started on this selection, so I won't add a whole lot here, except to say that I like the fact that Otis' "sad song" is also a sing-a-long song. That whole "my turn" and "your turn" stuff he does is very comforting, I think, and whenever I hear it I am reminded that sadness is something that we ought to share with others more.

Also, those horns. THOSE HORNS. Yes, please.