Sympathy for the oppressed September 6, 1985

  

Something’s up with Michael.

I’ve noticed it several times over the last few weeks, somewhat distant, and this worries me.

I think partly it is the change at work – a new manager and new habits to adjust to. He wanted the manager job for himself and his disappointment has drained some of his enthusiasm.

He’s also deeply involved in his band. On Labor Day, he made his debut at CBGBs  - the ground floor in a career, or so he claims.

The conflict between work and art no doubt weights heavily on his shoulders and mind. But there is something else, perhaps my dislike of elitist behavior – especially when it comes to politics and religion. This came up during a lunch we had with other friends. I’m not sure which side he took up when it came to the Middle East and Israel.

I have a problem with any faith that declares itself as the chosen people, Christian, Moslem, Jewish or Buddhists, just as I am offended by all the in-groups, whether they be spoiled brats from Ivy league schools like Princeton or Harvard, or some exercise club in the local park that takes over public space and dares you to stop them. This is particularly true when it comes to race and feminism, where if you don’t tread lightly, you get labeled a bigot or worse, misogynist.

Michael got a distasteful look and told me he’s sympathetic to oppressed people.

This is a party line attitidude, but one I saw was deeply imbedded in him, as if there were specifics he did not wish to discuss. I didn’t press it.

The issue came up again over a series of stories that appeared in our zine. Michael called the work of one of our authors “Nazi-like” while he could not put his finger on the whys and wherefores of a story I had written, he didn’t like it either.

In college, liberal professors had done their best to excuse antisemtic writing by modernist authors as “fashion of their times, choosing to ignore the bad feelings generated from such remarks.

I don’t completely understand why Jews have been made scapegoats, targeted by scores of people for centuries. Even Shakespeare – who probably never met a Jew before writing his epic – seemed to paint them in a bad light. While we hear a lot about conservatives being like Nazis in this regard, most of the anti-Jewish stuff I’ve seen comes out of the black and  so-called tolerant liberal communities, partly due to the trend to support Muslims supposedly oppressed by Israel – these groups largely ignoring the slave trade the Arabs engaged in, sending more blacks into slavery than those that ever reached the west.

Frued would have claimed that Jews, Christians and others bring this wrath upon themselves. It is ironic that the most suffering people on the planet over the centuries should adopt tactics as a nation that so resemble what has been done to them.

But this “bringing things down on themselves” argument can be used to explain the plight of any of those oppressed peoples Michael is concerned about, and those who question why blacks prey on other blacks while blaming whites, are considered racists, but those who question Israel are not always called antisemites.

There is a kind of arrogance that comes with being one of the oppressed, part of a special people who are struggling against unfair odds, this sense of entitlement that liberals like Michael find attractive – such as most artists like him do. We are all in this together crap.  When, in fact, most of it is about getting something, using power to obtained privilege, to mask open lust for power behind this sense of injustice.

“We are superior because we are oppressed” mentality which makes no sense.

All this says something horrible about the human condition, and I must be very insensitive not to automatically throw my lot in with those who seem to be struggling against overwhelming odds.

Perhaps Michael senses this evil side in me, one that refuses to fall in line with something just because we are expected as artists to support certain causes. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I’m a bad person for refusing to give in.

 

 

 1985 menu

 


email to Al Sullivan

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An old nemesis December 11, 1985

Image
    Surisky hated me from early on in grammar school, although “hate” may be too strong a word to describe his reaction to me. I was simply available to him for abuse, Third grade was pivotal for both of us. Prior to that, we were simply feeling our way through Catholic School routine, emerging eventually as whole personalities from the muck of early childhood. He came across as a thug, trying to convey the image of a tough guy. He wore a leather jacket and spiked boots, and snuck into see James Dean movies. Third grade was tough on everybody, including the teachers, who considered us the worst class in the history of the school – even in the safe grades of Kindergarten, First and Second. Two of the three nuns retired after passing us on. But it was in the third grade that we began to work our magic, driving even the stout-hearted nuns crazy. Later, the nuns tried to break our spirit. But we fully represented our age and had the full impact of the 1960s behin...
Read more

The clock is ticking July 18, 1985

Image
  We’re talking love here – silly fictional love with all the connotations of disaster. I seem to be on the meat chopping block with Safire looking for qualities in me that are lacking in her husband. The fact that there is a husband in the first place greatly disturbs me. All this said, I’m uncertain as to why I haven’t ended this already, except to know she is too much like my ex-wife to pass up without a closer examination. Even the way she thinks: slow, methodical, going from point A to point B. It has only been a week since she blurted out drunk that she wanted me in bed. It seems like much longer. And she hints of something more permanent, suggesting that I might fill in for her husband for a much longer duration. The night before last she suggested I come see her in her trailer, as if she is legally separated from her husband, when in fact she is supposed to be biding time until he finds them both a place to live in Baltimore. This is the same kind of smoke and...
Read more

Pauly leaves Passaic for the final time July 24, 1985

Image
    Pauly is leaving Passaic again. This comes after two years of us rubbing shoulders after he had been cast out of paradise in Towaco, after his goddess, Jane, went and married that man Pauly calls “a bum.” This has been a tough two years, filled with Pauly’s typical manipulation, his usual shaping of reality to his own needs often at other people’s (mine) expense. When Pauly first came I had Fran’s cultist brother as a temporary guest and Pauly spent most of his time trying to push me into getting that guest out. A few months later – in November – Fran got the ax from her ex and changed her mind about moving in with me after I had committed the spare room to Pauly. He assumed she meant more to me than he did and was already packing when I told Fran no. She had no place to go except for her father’s house, a father she had a love/hate relationship with, and she held it against me, even though we continued to see each other romantically. Pauly being Pauly drove ...
Read more