Category Archives: News

The Struggles of Teaching Political Science to College Students

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My role as a teacher

Every semester that I teach a new batch of students in political science, I find myself less and less confident in the future of America. Every now and then, a semester will throw off this natural trend, but more often than not, I find myself wondering what kind of future we’re leading to when so many students seem to have little to no grasp of the events happening around them.

I’m not talking about obscure political knowledge here. I’m talking about answers to simple questions like: “What’s going on the country today?” or “What are the important events happening in the world today?” I can understand the concept of being put on the spot to think of something. It used to happen to me when I first started my undergraduate days at West Point and an upperclassman would jump in front of your face and demand answers to “Tell me what’s on the front of the New York Times, New Cadet!” and you’d draw a blank more because you were scared to death of failing rather than actually not remembering what you read in the paper that morning. But this is different. When we finally end up with some story of current events in the discussion, like Obama’s “big speech on Thursday” I look around the class, and I’m met with completely blank stares, like they have no idea what was just mentioned. And when this continues over EVERY subject that gets brought up, you really start to feel scared when it comes to young people understanding what’s going on around them.

At one point in the past, I completely figured this was inconsequential because I started thinking, “who cares who knows anything about current events?” I figured it wasn’t all that important anyway. But it is important because significant decisions are being made each and every day in our governments, and quite often the people who influence public opinion and the decisions of leaders are completely clueless about what’s going on anyway. As Mussolini pointed out, when you have a population that is so blind to what’s going on around them, you can so easily influence them into doing anything you desire.

When we look at the last presidential administration and the atrocities that may have been carried out in our name, I look at the people of this country who don’t seem to care, and I immediately understand why so many bad things can happen at the hands of our leaders because no one will ever hold them accountable if no one has a clue what’s actually going on. When a presidential election occurs and the only reason someone votes for a leader is because of what partisan letter they registered for at one point in their life, we have a real problem. The country is divided into two camps of partisan designations, which means that the people who make up the party leadership of those two parties can practically do anything they want to do, and they’re still going to get the support of blind, oblivious constituents.

This is why someone like former Detroit mayor Kilpatrick can commit outright crimes against his own constituents, and he’d probably get reelected by the same people he cheated because their loyalties are to a mindset rather than to an individual. It’s why we have so much corruption in our governments these days. It happens so often that leaders rarely even hide it because they realize that they’re still going to get reelected because they’re not “the other guy”. This sort of thing stems from the fact that it takes a simple majority to put someone into office, and the majority of the population is filled with people who have no clue what’s going on in their government, and more importantly, don’t care.

The usual response to this argument is that “education” is the solution, but as one of those educators, I practically give up myself because no matter how much energy, how much struggle or how much entertainment I add to a class, students are generally only interested in rote memorization that will lead them to the answers for a test that they generally don’t understand. I’ve had students tell me a correct answer, but when I try to analyze the answer to see if there’s an understanding of the nature of that concept, they stare at me as if I just asked them the question in Klingon, meaning a) they don’t understand it, and b) as Klingon is from Star Trek, they figure it’s not important for them to give a rat’s ass about it anyway.

Yet, each semester I teach, I’ll receive a random email from a former student who thanks me for opening his or her eyes to knowledge he or she never realized existed, so I feel that I got through to someone. But when you have a classroom of 30-50 students, reaching two of them each semester leaves you with a sense that it’s not a successful achievement on a cost benefit analysis. You start to wonder if they would have come to this knowledge regardless, and you’re just surfing the wave that was heading towards the shore anyway. Or did you cause the wave to form? And if so, was it worth the costs of creating the wave in the first place.

I fear that not enough people are “getting it” to make a difference because when only 0.4% of the people who vote understand the process well enough to cast an enlightened vote, do the 99.6% doom us to bad choices, a doomed future and inevitable Mussolinis?

A Nation Without a Rudder

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Sometimes, it is so easy to fall into partisan bickering that it’s not even necessary to write the column. Circumstances fill in all of the details for you. But if you’re one of those people who purport to be lacking in partisanship, or at least trying to avoid the pitfalls, it’s a lot harder to talk about the same issues without someone automatically believing you are part of the status quo (one side or the other) and immediately fill in criticisms because of such observations and beliefs.

The President of the United States delivered his “jobs” speech last night, and it went over like a lead balloon. The Los Angeles Times (most definitely not a conservative newspaper) took a tongue in cheek approach to covering the speech, and wrote an article that is probably one of the most sarcastic I have read in ages. Here’s an example:

But here’s the catch that Obama and his Windy City wizards missed: Most Americans are not politically obedient machine Chicagoans. Like a linebacker reading the quarterback’s eyes, they’ve already figured out this South Sider’s game.

But after the laughing subsides, you have to start looking at the bigger picture and wonder what’s really going on here. If it’s just about one side failing, and the other side benefiting, I guess it would be fine (if you were on the side benefiting, I guess), but in this case, we’re not in a zero sum situation (where one side wins); we’re in a no sum situation (where no one wins). The United States is in such need for sustained success, and we’re nowhere near finding it.

Unfortunately, our country is like a boat with no rudder. Granted, it’s a pretty strong boat, capable of floating quite well, but at the moment, no one has any idea where to take it, and even if they did, they don’t know what to do with it once we get where we’re going. Instead, the hope is that things will get better, and all we have to do is just hold our breath until we get to that better place. That’s not a plan for sustained greatness. It’s a plan to avoid bad things by hoping things won’t be so bad if we get beyond the current wave of bad things.

So what is the answer? Well, we need leadership that can focus on what’s really the problems with America and then do something about fixing them. But as long as every leader is only interested in self-interests, like getting re-elected, we’re never going to find a solution because we’re too stupid to realize that we need to allow them to fix things first instead of punishing them for trying to do what’s right. It’s like the whole Jimmy Carter election where he spent his re-election period trying to point out what needed to be done to fix America. He got slammed and destroyed by his opponent because he “hated America” and other such false-isms. We’re so stupid and incapable of realizing our own self-interests that we’ll let someone say nice things about us and then convince ourselves that the person must be a great leader because he said good things about us. That’s how simple the America psyche is. And that’s why we’ll never actually get any success.

America needs a splash of cold water in its face to wake up and realize what’s really wrong. But we’ll never get that because anyone who wants to run for office is doomed to have to say nice things and embrace American exceptionalism rather than try to fix anything that’s wrong. Think of it this way: If I was to run for office and say that the way to fix our cities is to eradicate poverty by actually focusing our attention on improving the lives of people in poverty, while creating a new atmosphere of intolerance towards gangs, racism, hatred, and corruption, and then turned around and devoted my political life to doing just that, my career would be over before it started. However, if I got up on stage and talked about how great America is, how I’ll use my office to put more police on the streets to “stop crime”, and that I will support business to “rebuild this country”, I have a far better chance of being elected, and once in office, I’ll be completely ineffective, but will probably be able to enrich myself by giving rich lobbyists exactly what they need to make sure their clients become richer, while people who really need help get limited help and lots of condemnation for not raising themselves up by their bootstraps. Think about that for a second because I’ve described practically every politician out there, from your local mayor to the President of the United States. And somewhere out there is a voice thinking to itself, “well, the problem is too big, so there’s really nothing that can be done about it” and another voice thinking, “well, if I can’t fix it, I may as well try to profit off of it and make a good life for myself”.

And so the band will keep on playing on.

Fired Yahoo Boss Needs to Put Firing into Perspective

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"I love you Duane, but I've decided to date the football team instead of you"

I’m always amazed at the outrage people can purport to feel over very minor things. Years ago, I was working for a major hotel chain, owned by a name that just so happens to be similar to a bar hopping floozy who is famous for being famous (and a conveniently released porno tape of her having sex with a former boyfriend). The company decided that it wanted to get rid of its union employees because it couldn’t come to an agreement with the union over how to screw over the people in the union and take money from them that the union employees were getting for doing work that the hotel couldn’t figure out how to profit off of. So, it fired the employees. And it did it by setting up these employees in a “sting” operation that consisted of the employees doing what they did every day and then telling them they were “stealing” from the company for doing what was already established procedure. So, when it came to applying for unemployment, the hotel chain decided to be even more greedy and try to challenge the ex-employees (not wanting to pay a red nickle to them whatsoever). The employees threatened lawsuits against the hotel for wrongful termination, so the hotel backed down. The employees left, forever pissed at the shitty company they used to work for, and the company walked away, thinking that somehow it managed to accomplish something by losing long-term employees who had made the error of letting their union stand up for their rights.

So, when I hear this Yahoo boss complaining that she got fired from her job over the phone, I want to kindly tell her, “go fuck yourself”. Things could be a lot worse, and they’re not. You got fired because you did a crappy job, knew it was coming long before it happened, and got a SERIOUS severance package as a consolation prize. Yahoo won’t show up to the unemployment hearing and try to pretend that you are pond scum and so beneath them that you don’t deserve your $200 in UI compensation while you try to find another job, scrounging up on pork n beans because you can’t afford anything on the dismal wages you were getting previously (and now are barely receiving). No, you’ll be eating in fancy restaurants, probably courted by major corporations that will ofer you golden parachutes to grace them with your presence. You’ll probably be offered a huge publication deal with some book company to write a book about how to run a billion dollar company into the ground, and you won’t even have to write it. No, they’ll hire some minimum wage wannabe writer who is looking to get his foot in the door (or her foot in the door) at some publishing empire. And you’ll collect money just for putting your name on the cover.

So, stop complaining. So they fired you over the phone.  A girl I was dating once broke up with me over the phone, said we weren’t really compatible any longer, which was a translation of what she was really trying to say (“I found someone else while I was dating you, and it was easier to lie to you than tell you that I was fucking him behind your back, and I definitely couldn’t have told you this with a straight face if you were standing in front of me, you great stud of a man you.”) Okay, the last part she didn’t say, but I’ll remember the break-up my way, thank you very much.

For those of us without superpower jobs like Carol Bartz, we’re kind of stuck with the realization that respect doesn’t come to us in our world. Therefore, you should try living in our world for a bit before you try to gain our sympathy for the insults you perceive that you received. You had a pretty good thing going, and you didn’t live up to the expectations that were placed on your plate. But you got out with a pretty nice bonus. Be thankful for that. Not all of us have always been so lucky.

America Needs a Social Messiah

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Most people feel it but don’t really know how to put it into words. Something’s wrong with our country, everyone seems to know it, but no one really knows what to do about it. Our politicians keep claiming they have it all figured out, but they’re floundering, unsure of what to do and constantly going back on everything they say because they’re as confused as the masses. Something’s wrong, and we’re at a stage where something needs to happen to fix what’s wrong.

Having said that, I have to point out that one of two things is going to happen (aside from nothing happening and this state of morass continuing for more years before a solution finally occurs). Either someone is going to come along and rally everyone together to lead them off the end of a cliff, or someone, or some thing, is going to arrive and lead us to a better place. We’re at that stage where we need something, and unfortunately everything already in place is totally incapable of doing the trick.

This is part of why Obama became president. He came after a crappy period in US history, when we had a president and and administration that led the country down a road into near despair and depravity. He came along and promised a new sense of America that would put the country back on track, kind of like a political messiah who would lead us to the proverbial promised land. Instead, he gave us a lot of what we already had, and basically became Bush Light, leaving us in a state where we’re still waiting for someone to come along and pick up the slack he was supposed to actually use to make things better.

It’s not just a bad economy that’s causing the frustration. It’s a sense that no one knows what to do with the most powerful country on the planet. We have no rudder, steering us to some place better because we honestly don’t know where a better place might exist. Technologically, we’ve created the computer and hand held devices that make life simpler, although they tend to make things even more complicated (adding to our work day instead of cutting it down). Intellectually, we kind of have a lot of science and medicine already figured out, although we still can’t provide health care for everyone, our medicine is created by companies that make only the drugs that are profitable and lobby to make sure things don’t get better for the masses, and we pay our businessmen far more than our engineers and scientists, which means we’ll always have more people making money than making better products. Our political landscape hasn’t changed since the 1800s, as we still rely on diplomacy that requires tit for tat game theoretical models which reward last year’s actions and beg next year’s compliance (even the Roman Empire planned five years ahead, rather than this “what have you done for me lately” policy we seem to have fallen into).

In other words, we don’t seem to have a direction, or even a clue as to how to get ourselves pointed in any direction. People are so focused on the now that they could care less about the future, and anyone who things progressively is seen as foolish and foolhardy, which means we are like ten year olds planning for lifetimes of mediocrity.

This is the time when someone can come along and change things. This could be a great thing, especially if we find an enlightened thinker, but unfortunately we’re so 18th century in our thinking that we all seem to believe we need an enlightened “leader” rather than an enlightened “thinker.” Think about that for a moment. When it comes down to it, we’re going to end up going to the polls, or erecting an homage to a power base, rather than follow the enlightened ideas of someone who has the right ideas. We’re so Hobbesian in our ideals (needing a leader to lead us) that we have forgotten that the US was created in Lockeian ideals (where we control the leader), and really should have been leading to Rousseauian ideals (where the group identity has more power than the individualistic desires that we have today…where some corporate entity can dominate the masses because it has economic power that speaks louder than ideas and voices).

Part of my fear is that most of the west is filled with people who are only capable of the lowest levels of Maslowian achievements (basic needs) rather than higher level analysis (using logic to figure out ways to fulfill needs rather than immediate gratification). This means that when someone comes along and tells us what we want to hear, we’ll comply and expect great results, and when that person proves to be no better than your average Detroit politician (i.e., corrupt), we’ll back that person even when things turn into Ponzi schemes and false hopes and promises. When people are incapable of thinking logically through higher level concepts, they’re constantly doomed to being cheated and exploited by their leaders (kind of where we are today).

The ideas of Rousseau are probably interesting to point out here because the ideas he espoused were those of an enlightened society that realizes its needs are met through its communicative knowledge, but as long as we want things fulfilled within easily constructed plans, we’re always going to be doomed to Hobbesian outcomes (the leader telling us to do what to do so he can get the payoff instead of us). The solution, unfortunately, involves more and more people talking to each other about how to make things better, but as long as media is one-way communication (them to us), we’re never going to get there. Social networking is designed to be two-way, but as I look at the recent approaches of Facebook and Google+, all I see are attempts to create celebrities with bullhorns, rather than a process to open communication between both sides. Which means we’re moving further and further away from where we need to be.

At the end of a diatribe like this, I’m sure the logical question will come: “Do we need to know this for the test?” And when I say no, thinking stops and texting starts.

So I give up again.

Can Anyone Actually Beat Obama in 2012?

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There are a bunch of Republicans trying to run for office, and tons of talk about stupid subjects, like will Sarah Palin run for office, but what no one really seems to be discussing is the HUGE elephant in the room, and that’s the fact that the incumbent rarely loses, especially when no one else is massively popular in the same arena. If you would have asked me back during the second election for George W. Bush if he was going to win or lose, I would have actually thought his chances of winning were slim. But it turned out that incumbency was the overriding factor that propelled him towards a second victory.

We’re in that ballpark again right now. We have a president who was thrown into office with a massive wave of popular support, but even his most loyal critics would be willing to say he’s been quite disappointing as a president. There was a lot of hope for hope and change, but unfortunately the only thing that really changed was the person in office, and to be honest, this man has been somewhat of an after the fact speech maker who seems to think that the bully bulpit is the only thing he needs to run the country. It’s one thing to have a great orator in office, but when all he does is make great speeches, you start to wonder what kind of person you really put into the Oval Office.

But having said that, the Republicans have absolutely no one with any sense of popularity that can get someone elected. Their options are crap, more crap, and a lot of the same. Their show stoppers are carnival clowns that make the audience jump up and laugh, but other than that, they have no one capable of doing any real damage during the election. So, unless they somehow find an underdog that no one is expecting, or one of the boring people running right now suddenly becomes infused with superpowers, I don’t see anything happening this time around other than another four years of a very insignificant, do-nothing president who will basically be a place-holder until someone new comes along.

If you think otherwise, say something. Let us know. I certainly don’t have the last word here, but for some reason people seem so quiet over this issue, or they end up being reactive, falling into political paradigms and relying on talking points that don’t mean anything. So speak up and let us know what you have to say. Otherwise, this is going to be a very boring election with absolutely no surprises whatsoever.

XXX: The Domain That No One Wants

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An interesting thing has happened to the Internet. It’s adding porn. Yes, in case you didn’t know it, porn has not existed on the Internet until someone decided there was a need for it. Up until now, anyone involved with porn has been required to keep in off line, but some kid with a dream (supposedly a wet one) came up with this pie in the sky idea of creating a web domain so that all of the poor porn purveyors could one day experience pornography on the Internet. So, the government decided to invent XXX as a domain suffix (affix?) that now leads people directly to whatever their heart’s desire, as sick as that might be.

Okay, all sarcasm aside, porn has been on the web as long as the web has existed. You might even say that it led the growth, so to speak, of the Internet. But for the longest time, pornography has been integrated with non-porn sites so that quite often you ended up on a porn site instead of the one you were trying to get to. At least that’s the excuse I’ve been using, but that’s probably another issue. Anyway, the government decided some time ago that if they could create an area of the web where porn could be “controlled”, then everything would be great. So the idea of a XXX suffix was designed. And of course, because porn makes a lot of money, they decided they would charge $100-200 for the usage of the XXX domain.

Here’s the problem with their plan. No one wants it. And I mean “NO ONE.” The pornographers don’t like being separated from the rest of the web because they realize that most legitimate Internet providers will be cajoled into just blocking any XXX area. I’m sure someone will say “it’s for the children”, but whatever the reason, someone is going to make sure that people are unable to access this area of the web. The people who don’t like porn don’t like it either because they think that all of the bad people will suddenly come to the web (like they weren’t on it before). And I’m sure they’re convinced that because “of the children” they’ll need to somehow shut down this cesspool of depravity.

And no one else will like it either because it will mean more crap on the web that they don’t want to deal with. You’ll probably have all sorts of privacy issues and scams and whatnot because of this. What will end up happening is that the porn people will continue creating and making porn on the regular sites, and XXX will be relegated to a few choice names that most people won’t pay attention to. The government will probably step in and surreptitiously design some kind of monitoring system so that they can see who accesses pornography on the web (which they’ll argue is for good reasons, but will eventually be used to shame, humiliate and then blackmail people), so that the only people who use XXX will be those who are clueless at the problems they’re causing by accessing porn the “right way” instead of the logical way.

In the end, the whole project will be abandoned, much like the old newsgroups were destroyed when they were spammed to death by, well, porn. What started out as a great idea always ended up being destroyed by someone trying to make a quick buck, doing whatever he can do to scam you before you figure out what’s happening to you. The only victims will be the ones who went into it innocently because they felt it was the proper way to do things. The bad people, the criminals, and those smart enough to realize the value of anonymity, will continue to do things the way they have always done it. In secret and not where government and censors can find them.

(Update: Turns out I was incorrect on the price of the domain registration. According to Daily Tech, it is $200-300, not $100-200 as I thought).

What Causes the Media to Focus on a Particular Story?

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ABC News International ran an interesting story the other day about Mikhail Gorbachev. It covered the last years of Gorbachev’s control of the Soviet Union right before it collapsed. Today, Reuter’s ran yet another interesting analysis of the August Coup that precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union. Both stories came out of nowhere and pretty much had nothing to do with any particular story that was going on at the time. So, my question is: Why are mainstream news entities running these stories that seem to have no current relevance, yet both seem to be very intent on covering details that happened at around the same time, almost as if they’re complementing each other to tell us a much larger story of some kind of relevance.

Normally, I wouldn’t notice this, but I happened to have done a lot of research on the August Coup for my master’s thesis a few years ago, and it’s currently the setting of my most recent novel, 72 Hours in August. So when this sort of story drops, and it has a lot of relevance to what I’m writing, I find it very significant. However, before this, there was almost no information on the subject, which made for some very difficult research at the time. Now, it’s almost as if I could have just typed Google and would have everything I needed a few years ago. It sometimes doesn’t make any sense.

So I wonder at what agenda news medias have when they run these sorts of stories. Is there something going on with Gorbachev right now that causes senior members of the media establishment to want us to focus on the information? Is Russia about to become highly relevant again on the international stage in a way that it isn’t already? Does some analogy of coups have the possibility of transcending current events in a way that someone feels we need to have this seed planted before new events take place? In other words, is some huge coup coming around the corner, involving social media (in which Yeltsin’s response to the August Coup pretty much reinvented social media responses to huge events) so that we need to be reminded of how significant resistance is because we’re about to experience it again? Or is this such a slow news cycle that media personnel are resurrecting old stories for no reason, that have no connection to anything, just because there’s nothing else going on?

I tend to go with the conspiracy side of the house. I believe things are linked for reasons, even if it’s not that obvious why. I’m not saying there’s some diabolical mustache-twirler in a hidden office hidden underground who is manipulating things (although I’m not saying there’s not one either), but some things seem a little too random to be completely random, if that makes any sense.

Anyway, I’m wondering if we’ll start to see the third prong of the story framing, because one thing still seems to be missing, and I have a feeling it’s coming around the corner. Unfortunately, my guess as to what it will be is probably as good as yours. Or worse, considering I usually suspect Elmo is involved, but that’s a whole other issue….

Finally an app for studs like me who get way too much sex

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How many times has this happened to you? You’re in the middle of a series of dates, just ran out of condoms during the last orgy you were attending with Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, and suddenly Angelina Jolie turns to you in the heat of passion and says, “Duane, please tell me you have a condom on you right now, you great big sexy beastyly man of a stud.” And you do the math, remembering that the pack of Trojans you bought that had 30 condoms in it was supposed to last all day, but you’ve already used up 20 or so during that run in with the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders when their bus broke down and only you, in your Penthouse letter-like encounter, required you to service them, which should have meant changing their tire, but you know how these things get out of hand. Anyway, as I was saying, you suddenly do the math and realize that you had planned to save one condom, but Paris Hilton kind of went nuts and then Bjork showed up and needed one to make balloon animals (or whatever the hell she was doing in the corner by herself), so you now have to turn to Angelina and say, “I might not have any condoms left.” And of course, Brad Pitt didn’t bring any, even though he knew he was bringing the two of them to a wife-swapping orgy party you were throwing this weekend, and he had all week to prepare beforehand. So, now you’re left without options.

But out of nowhere a solution has arrived. It turns out that MTV has always had my back. First there was that whole explanatory video about how video killed the radio star, and now they’ve come along and created an iPhone app that tells you where the nearest place is that you can find a condom. So, thanks to MTV, you can now make sure that you never have to say these tragic words: “I’m sorry, Angelina Jolie, but I have no more condoms.”

Too Much Information About the Sex Lives of Creepy People

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Today, on the front page of CNN.com, I saw stories that wanted to tell me that Hugh Hefner’s ex-girlfriend reveals that Hugh could only last two seconds, and then a follow-up story where Hugh says women think he’s a great performer in bed. Uh huh. Right under that, there’s an in depth interview with a young 16 year old girl who talks sex with her 51 year old, creepy husband actor who dated her when she was way too young to even know how to spell the word “consent”. Personally, I think she probably still can’t but that’s another story completely.

Why is the news constantly trying to push stories on me that are designed to creep me out? Yeah, I can ignore these things, but I can’t seem to escape them because they come on the news constantly, and they show up everywhere else I look. And then people want to talk about them. At what point do people start to realize that an aging, oversexed man whose claim to fame is smut magazines isn’t a story because he somehow bamboozled yet another 21 year old blond bimbo into thinking he’s the cat’s pajamas, or that he wears cat’s pajamas, or she wears cat-like pajamas because they turn him on, or whatever.

Look, I understand the media in the United States is overly consumed with sex information and somehow thinks that the fact that they don’t have any relevant news to report means that somehow they’re going to have to run with the “sex sells” as a substitute. But some of this stuff is really inappropriate, and I don’t even mean on a prurient level. I just mean that some stuff really should be private and left in that area. When I first discovered that some aging actor married a 16 year old girl, I was somewhat disgusted, but I pushed the story aside, thinking, “well, it really doesn’t have anything to do with me, and people do what people do.” But then the media keeps throwing it back at me, as if I’m supposed to care, or that somehow because I’m human I’m supposed to be involved, or get involved.

Please stop. I don’t care. I don’t want to be an accomplice to this story. I understand that sex sells, but at some point somebody in the media has to be able to tell a colleague, you know maybe we shouldn’t be running this trash as news. If it’s news, great. But if the purpose is to try to shock people who were minding their own business, it’s the news equivalent of terrorism. It’s done to disrupt, shock and cause people to change their normal routines for the sake of some hidden profit. If I was interested in stories about older men with children, I’d seek it out on the Internet like everyone else, at least until Chris Hanson caught me and embarrassed me on national television. If I seek it out, let me be ashamed. If you throw it in my face, don’t be surprised if more and more people who were oblivious don’t start seeking it out themselves because you helped them get used to it.

The Death of Amy Winehouse & the Problem with Santimonious People

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The singer Amy Winehouse died a few days ago in London. From my understanding, she suffered from alcohol abuse and had a difficult time breaking away from the addiction. In the end, she lost her battle, and the world lost a talented young musician. She, like a number of others before her, died at the early age of 27.

I’ll go out on a limb here. I’ve never heard any of her music before. I was not a fan. To be honest, I rarely even followed her antics, other than peripherally hearing about them much like I heard about Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and various other celebrity names that had very little relevance on my normal, daily life. But I did hear about her, and secretly, it always bothered me that everything I heard about her indicated that this was a young woman constantly on a projectory towards where it eventually led her. Many others would point out that they saw it coming, but no one ever really “sees” it coming, and unfortunately, she’s lost, and her talent will never have a chance to create again.

So why am I writing about this? Well, the amount of chatter about her death has started to really bother me. The blogosphere, and the conversations that come from the usual suspects has really gotten on my nerves. People can’t be satisfied with pointing out that her life developed towards a tragic end and then move on from there. Instead, whenever I read about her and saw “common people” comment, I couldn’t help but read how some people can be so really mean towards another human being, even if they may have disapproved of her antics, her lifestyle and/or her way of handling her demons.

Part of the fame of Amy Winehouse involves a direct tie to her battle with alcoholism. There really can’t be any disputing that. She’s one of those artists who created while suffering, and I would argue that a lot of her creativity probably needed a touch of her suffering to make it work. It’s sad, but there have been great artists who needed that sort of connection to develop the work they did. Van Gogh was that type. I suspect so was Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Cobain, and Ernest Hemingway. She may or may not have her own place in artistic history, or she might not, but at the same time there are a lot of people who were touched by her music, and I think it does a horrible disservice to their memories for people to go on message boards ridiculing them, her and the music she created. There’s a lot of hatred in this world, and it really makes itself seen whenever an event like this takes place.

Part of the tragedy of Winehouse’s death is that it came at time where it cannot be examined without someone else believing it has to be compared to something else. Salon has a great article on this, where the author Mary Williams talks about how people have ridiculed her death by comparing the tragedy to horrific events in Somalia and even the recent horrible actions of some crazy right-winger in Norway. At what point did we make it so that people cannot mourn the losses they feel without having to be felt that their tragedy is not worthy?

One of the things that started bothering me about this incident was on the weekend when I heard about her death. I was on itunes, and I noticed that the service was trying to milk its customers by selling her most popular work, as if paying Apple money would be “honoring” the artist rather than helping executives at Apple profit from her demise. Then I found out that Amazon was doing something similar, and after awhile you just start to shake your head and realize that we live in a very greedy society that will do anything to make a buck. At some point I really should stop being surprised.

The biggest tragedy to me is that her music might have been great, and I never bothered to pay attention when she was still around. I kind of had that same feeling with Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. I never got to know the music until after he died. Others, however, were big fans long before that happened.

For me, I’ll probably start listening to her work to see if I can ascertain the message she was trying to deliver. She was an artist, and for me it’s important to try to find out what the artist was trying to share. Sometimes, the message is brilliant, and trascends time and space. Other times, the artist just wanted to make you snap your fingers and maybe tap your foot to the beat. And sometimes, we forget that that is important, too. I’ll listen and try to figure it out. If her message is knowledge, I’ll try to discover it. If it was just to make me sway with the rhythmn, that’s okay, too. The tragedy is in never bothering to listen in the first place.