Grim Musings

2011.01.09
142 Days Remaining

01. It snowed throughout the day yesterday, and on into the night. Not a lot of accumulation for all of that, but I enjoyed sitting here last night with all interior lights off and the blinds open on my glass doors, watching the snowfall in the complex's exterior lights' glow. It's windy out today, and the snow was very fine so the various gusts send cascades of infinitesimal bits of snow across my line of sight. Because there are so many I can actually see the patterns of the air's movement. Sometimes I look out the window and have a clear view of the street, and the trees and buildings across it. Other times, I turn around and my view is of the same scene through billows of thousands of white grains of fallen snow.

02.01. In light of the snowfall, and the only recent ending of the 12 Days of Christmas, last night I watched (via Hulu.com) a previously-unknown-to-me film Santa and Pete. It stars James Earl Jones (as the modern time narrator) and Hume Cronyn as Santa Claus. The film was poorly written, poorly acted, and overall silly. But, that said, it was an alleged history of Santa Claus and Black Peter (the dutch companion of Sinterklaas) and their voyage from Holland to the New World. I won't go into the historical problems of it, but the sentiment was sweet (one of the very heavy-handed themes was interracial companionship and harmony) and there were moments when the visuals were really eye-catching.

02.02. On the further, but important to note, downside, the character of Pete had very uncomfortable elements which made me think of American minstrel shows as they've become integrated into the idea of the "good black person" in American popular culture (he's subordinate to a white person, but lovingly so, he's vaguely comical, he's focused on bodily concerns, etc.). This was perhaps even more strongly at the forefront of my mind because the traditional figure on which the movie was drawing, the Dutch Zwarte Piet has become a recurring source of controversy in Holland, as he is represented each Christmas by white people (usually teenage girls, interestingly) in blackface. So the film, where Pete was represented by an adult African American man, was clearly diverging from traditional depictions, but the characterization still reaffirmed (I think) many of the coded racial messages that are part of the Dutch custom (btw, interestingly, this version of Zwarte Piet is actually only first attested in sources in the 19th century, and so most of the narratives I've heard about its origins are wrong - not based upon resistance to Spanish imperialism, etc., though it was designed to reference earlier times).

02.03. It got me thinking, once more, about the history of Santa Claus and the ways that this is very rarely presented well or accurately. This led to some poking about on WWW and in various academic databases, and one of the more interesting discoveries was that St. Charles, Missouri has a very complicated Christmas festival each year, which might be fun to go to someday: http://www.stcharleschristmas.com/index.html.

03. There hasn't been much going on here the past few days. I have been remiss in noting here that my telephonic disarray continues. Upon arriving back up here last weekend I discovered that the cell phone loaned to me by Iuno and Romulus is also incompatible with my SIM card (which I had left in New Aldwych when I came to Delaware for the holidays, because I wasn't being careful). In fact, from what I can see, I'm going to have to buy an old phone off of eBay to replace the one that broke, because I've apparently missed several generations of phone technology over the past three years, and so my cell phone (which remains on my ex-wife's account because it would cost $200 to sever the contract before this coming July) is out-of-date. Specifically, it's SIM card. Sigh. I'm able to make calls using Gmail's phone function, but I can't receive any. If you need to call me, please send me an email with a time you want to be called, and I can call you. The incoming call will say it's from Escondido, CA (which is where I'm not, btw).

04. I recently asked my upcoming Supernatural students about whether they'd like to try out a ghost-hunting experiment on campus, and as the vacation-laden responses have trickled in, one of them has a brother who is best friends with one of the newer Ghost Hunters (from the TV show). So she's going to see if he can arrange some way for me to talk with them, since they do not respond to any email I've sent (and, in fact, don't like talking to academics in general).

05. This next bit is excerpted from an email I sent to Silvanus earlier today, and is complicated enough that for my own sake I'm breaking it up into sections as I revise it. Basically I've seen postings from both Democrats and Tea Partiers that share the assumption that Loughner's attack on Congresswoman Giffords (and assorted bystanders) in AZ were related (or relate-able) to his politics. I've seen responses to those postings arguing that it's absurd to link Loughner's politics and actions, and that any such linking is politically motivated.

06. In attempting to not fall into the either/or perspective, I've turned to historical analysis, and am proceeding by framing this particular event in terms of the Oklahoma City Bombing, the Order (who did a bunch of very bad things in 1983), the Weather Underground, Sacco and Vanzetti, etc. That is, structural comparison with other small group (or individual) actors who act violently towards political and media figures indicates that those actors tend to orient themselves towards the margins of dominant political discourse, but that those margins may be either on the left or the right.

07. Conversely, those margins are most likely to employ not simply violent rhetoric ("we're in it to win it" "this is a struggle for our country's soul" etc) but also, in various ways, to advocate for actual violence, even if they do so only haphazardly. I remember seeing Ted Nugent (whom I like, btw, but often disagree with) remark that if Obama won in 2008, the government would present itself as a "target-rich environment" - this said while holding an assault rifle. Or the various "2nd Amendment solutions" comments voiced by Sharron Angle, etc. come to mind. What I'd like to know is quantifiable data about the amount of threats of physical violence directed towards Democrats since the Tea Party began (and, really, since Obama was elected); I have heard that the Secret Service has had a massive upsurge in credible threats against the President than in previous administrations, and I have heard more about violence directed towards Democratic representatives and senators, but I don't know if that is numerically accurate or impressionistic.

08. On the third hand, I have heard Tea Party leaders saying "of course this is all metaphor" and, using the principle of charity where I accuse someone of lying only when I have good reason to do so, I'll accept that they believed that. As Jack Schafer on Slate.com has pointed out, the vast majority of folks who get mad at the government don't physically attack other people. And yet...most racists in the post-bellum South didn't participate in lynchings, but they stood by and even rhetorically supported that violence, so that when it occurred they weren't protesting. Let me state here that I'm a Free Speech Absolutist: barring the "fire in crowded theaters" and "using known falsehood to materially attack someone" exceptions, I think one can say as much racist, sexist, age-ist, bigoted nastiness as one wants. But I think that it's disingenuous to plead "first amendment" as a way to avoid talking about whether certain speech climates make certain physical actions more or less likely.

09. So I'm left with an interesting interpretive problem: historical comparison suggests that we should not be surprised that Loughner had extremist political views, but I don't know that evidence suggests those views were particularly causative in his murder of six people and injury of others. On the other hand, that does not mean that there isn't a causative dynamic going on, we simply don't have enough evidence to prove it. And, god willing, we never will, because the only way I could see such evidence coming to light would be other assassination attempts by people with similar political views to his. And I'd prefer that not happen.

10. Those are my thoughts for now. Oh, and on an incongruously not-grim note, happy birthday to my sister Agrippina, who turned 33 today.