I’ve let this space go idle this summer for a variety of reasons, but none that seem to add up to more than procrastination and laziness. Not that I haven’t been able to keep busy, of course, but what are a few minutes to take down some thoughts? But since this joint is low traffic anyway, at least I don’t need to worry about losing readership…!
At any rate, what’s been on lately? Oh right, certain drum-beaters and flag-wavers have gone mental at the thought of brown people doing religion. Of major concern here, of course, is the politicization of faith in any form, moderate or fundamentalist, since the personal and the public never quite make for the best of bed fellows. Nevertheless, the cacophonous chorus of xenophobia that seems to have captured the American airwaves, however anecdotal it may yet be, has brought with it all the awkwardness one would expect from a hypocrisy that praises freedom above all else and at all times, except not above pettiness and not all the time.
Anyway, this lust for banishing from sight the things that in one way or another run afoul of our precious sensibilities is as old as the world, so what’s to be done? Censorship and prohibition always fail on their own incongruities (communism, war on ____, abstinence…take your pick). Earlier, I was indulging in the not-so-guilty pleasure of old time heavy metal, and this filthy little gem from the mighty Anthrax struck me as particularly relevant:
For the sake of context, it was a response to the PMRC…how quaint that now seems!
Aaaaanyway:
Now I’m startin’ up a posse
And we’ll damn sure make you see
Something that offends you
May not be offensive to me
Barely passable as art, that still pretty much sums it up, no?
