Staring into the Abyss

I don't know much about The New Yorker magazine. I've never thumbed through its pages, nor perused its website, assuming it has one. I know one Seymour Hersh contributes to it from time to time, and I do know his work to be rather comprehensive, so I figured it to uphold a reputable reputation. Two days ago, I was rather surprised, as I imagine may others were, when I learned of its caricature of Mr. and Mrs. Barack Obama adorning its front cover for the world to see. There he was, our beloved Barack Hussein Obama, clad in traditional Muslim garb, greeting his heavily-armed better half with the "terrorist fist pump". Many witnesses stood (or sat) aghast: how could this magazine, friend to civil liberties, denigrate followers of the Islamic faith in such a manner, not to mention the would-be successor to America's throne? The magazine's brain-trust, in its defense, claimed it a satirical depiction of how many citizens view this man, though few were buying it, chiding this action for its lack of sensitivity.

I, myself, upon learning of this, sat stupefied. For a moment, as I gazed upon this image, I thought I had flipped open the Sun to see one of Donato's spoofs; then I blinked and saw it was The New Yorker, this beacon of liberal journalism! Suffice to say, however, I couldn't figure out where I stood. On the one hand, I am a fan of satire, thus I can understand the motivation of the editorial staff; on the other, I sympathize with those who have grown awfully tired of seeing, time and time again, the same tyrannical stereotype being purported through Western media. After allowing this to retreat to the nether recesses of my mind, the following phrase popped into my frontal lobe this morning:

They said what many of us think.

I will admit, it was a crass move on the part of The New Yorker to publish this cartoon, but as the truth surfaces after such a long period of captivity, toes are trampled and hearts are broken. The truth, as demonstrated by our friends at this renowned magazine, is that, contrary to our general belief, racism is alive and well, this time in the form of Islamophobia. Try as we did to put it behind us by declaring it a problem of the past, here it is, staring at us in the face, like the eyes of a hungry mountain lion. As insensitive as this action was to followers of the Muslim faith, as well as to Mr. and Mrs. Obama, it shines the spotlight squarely on our deep-seeded fears. Like the depictions of the Prophet Muhammad in the Danish newspaper - and again by Ezra Levant in his Western Standard - it says to the world that us White folk are still afraid of any being with a face not resembling our own.

I can't say I would have ever made as bold and brash a statement as the one gracing the front cover of The New Yorker, but before I grab my sack of feathers and bucket of tar, I have to stop and reflect. The way I see it, this cartoon serves as a mirror, revealing the inconvenient abyss lying within each and every one of us. Beyond our awareness resides that implicit fear of the outsider - that foreign person, that alien concept - that which we cannot quite understand. Sadly, for us, the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s did not wash it away (by and large, Whitey remains apprehensive of the Black population), nor did the Suffrage movement of the early twentieth century. It's a shame, being shrouded in ignorance even after all that toil and sacrifice by so many.

We can cry foul all we want - we can even hurl rocks at the offices of The New Yorker, though I highly recommend against doing so - and it will do nothing about our own ignorant fear and loathing. If there is a silver lining on this dark cloud cast over us, it is the fact that this ignorance of ours rendered itself in a form for all to see, should we choose to see it. Passing judgment only serves to distance ourselves from our own problems, rather than confront and vanquish them (see John 8:7, if you're a fan of Christian folklore).

This racist piece, as some have deemed it, came to light because of our own inherent racism, the racism we are afraid to address because we want so badly to believe it dead and gone. Well, it's here, and it's not about to venture out of our lives anytime soon, so long as we deny its existence within the very fabric that holds together our society, eating away at its foundation like a ravenous virus.

Fear not, for we can rid ourselves of it; the first step is acknowledging its presence.

Monsters on Parade

I used to wonder why he looked familiar
Then I realized it was a mirror
And now it is plain to see,
The whole time the monster was me
- Gnarls Barkley, "The Boogie Monster"

I know I said only yesterday that I wasn't going to worry about writing all that much, but alas, there are thoughts swirling in my brain that I feel need translating onto this page.

Yesterday marked the third anniversary of the bomb attacks on London's transit system. I did not catch any of the festivities, but I imagine they were laden with the same rhetoric we hear every September 11, that our suited superheroes will not rest until the world is safe from these "monsters". It was yesterday that I also overheard, from the room adjacent to mine, one of Toronto's more popular morning show hosts (featured on a "new rock" station that shall remain unnamed) trumpet his dismay over this rash of sex crimes and his desire to see these "monsters" receive capital punishment - at least that's how I interpreted the message from what little of it I perceived. It was also yesterday that one of the city's most popular daily newspapers (the one with the pretty pictures on the front that reads like a tabloid) announced the coming of a "monster" who is seeking to clear his name in the wake of a sex crime conviction.

As usual, I am puzzled by their concern over these "monsters" with little or no regard as to what lies at the root of the problem. Are they not interested in how these "monsters" came to be? Do they believe people are born "monsters", who serve no purpose other than to bring about our destruction? Is there a secret desire to distance themselves from these "monsters" by assigning them such a label? Do they fear what might be uncovered should they seek to address the problem at hand?

Perhaps, if they did decide to probe a little further, what they would find might scare them, for they would (hopefully) come to realize the eerie similarity between these "monsters" and themselves. Taking the last first, each day this newspaper, on its last page inside the cover, features a full-page spread of a scantilly clad woman in a provocative pose - its London equivalent goes a step further by revealing her nipples for all to see. On the radio show, not ten minutes before the host's diatribe against rapists, there was featured an advertisment for an "energy drink" in which a "very sexy Heidi" asks her stalwart male counterpart if he would like to try her cans, to which he responds by saying "I'll take two", followed by cheers from his posse of wing-men. And the individuals who claim to rid the world of the "monsters" who attack us? Well, they own all of this.

The problem lies not in the individual, but in the society that breeds these "monsters", a society in which one seeks dominion over another, in which Man dominates Woman, in which White dominates Black, in which Man dominates Nature - though don't expect the ringmasters of this three-ring circus to tell you that; after all, they would hate to reveal the magic behind their act. The irony of it all is, the more they rile us with their caustic rhetoric, the more tense, the more violent our society becomes.

Allow yourselves to think back to Sir Isaac Newton's discovery of a very fundamental attribute of our physical realm: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Perhaps you're wondering, "How do the laws of Physics have anything to do with any of this?" Simple: nothing happens in isolation; our mental and emotional states are linked to the physical world. When we hear these vitriolic diatribes on the radio, see them on television, or read them in the newspaper, we react with vitriol ourselves. When we lay a nation to waste in response to an attack on our soil, its citizens respond in kind. When we raid apartment complexes in low-income neighbourhoods searching for "thugs", the locals respond in kind. When we push problems away by locking the perpetrators in jail, they push us back with full force in the form of more perpetrators.

It's high time we stop reacting and start responding in an appropriate manner. It's time we take the pen out of the hand of the master and start writing new acts for this script ourselves. It's time to recognize the "monster" in the mirror before we talk of vanquishing any in our society (see Matthew 7:3), or else we will remain forever bound by this charade.

Progress

How do I start this? The start is so hard! Oh, Lord, it is so hard!

I want to write about writing, particularly why I don't write so much anymore. Today, I found myself retracing my steps over the past few years on my quest for knowledge. Upon completion of my degree, I felt as if able to breathe for the first time, so I used my newly-found free time reading about the world. 'Twas an eye-opening experience, to say the least, having belief after belief shattered with every turn of a page. I immersed myself in books and essays on the rotting state of the world, the crass behaviour of the government, and the secret power of the have-mores.

There came a time when reading wasn't enough; I had to put this knowledge into action, hence my foray into writing. It seemed simple enough initially: I signed onto the interweb and spat out a couple of paragraphs on how much I hate the government and the corporate elite, then repeated daily as I saw fit. Soon enough, one or two paragraphs became several, and I learned to connect more and more dots, so I wrote and wrote and wrote. (If you have time and feel so inclined, faithful reader, have a look at my earlier stuff and work your way to the present; Blogger conveniently chronicles my entries by month on the right-hand side of the page.) Over time, political banter became perfunctory, so I began relating worldly knowledge to the happenings in my own backyard.

Lately, though, I haven't felt much like sitting down and writing words on my computer, for I feel the time has come for me to start doing. I can hole myself up in my room with a television set and network connection, ingest every morsel of every media outlet, process the shit out of the content, output my interpretation of it all onto your screen, and hope I have, in some way, enlightened you. In the end, what have I done? In times of need, do I sit here and write, then pat myself on the back for a job well done, shut off the light, and retreat into slumber?

Mind you, I have no intention of shunning the practice of writing, for it has proved invaluable - Hell, I find myself feeling a sense of worth after translating my thoughts to something tangible, something with which I struggle mightily - but lately, I've found myself wanting much more to be out in the world, to get into the shit, to get my ass in gear and do something about this mess, so I write this to you, dear reader (if you're still reading), not to worry if you see less and less of me through this medium. As much as I enjoy writing - that is, the few times during which I'm not spewing sanctimonious crap - I'd rather be living, and helping others to do the same.

It's one thing to scribe the experience of walking alongside a ravine on a summer's day such as this one; it's another to actually experience it. Perhaps when I'm old and grey and my legs no longer work quite as well as they do now, I'll sit here and remark on my life's experiences on a more frequent basis. Today, during my daily reading, I paused and said to myself, "My favourite writers could not have been had they not lived." It made me wonder if pressuring myself to write pages and pages of fabulous nonsense is the proper approach, or if I should simply live and worry about documenting my journey some other time.

I had to pause for a few seconds to see how long I managed to stretch this piece. I hadn't planned on continuing as long as I have, probably because I felt stuck at the top of the page (which explains my cry to the heavens on the opening line).

Point being, I would love to transfer my experiences onto these pages to share with all of you, but I would much rather be experiencing, and there are many who need our help - all of us - even if it means spending time with a loved one, or smiling at the cashier and asking how her/his day has been, or picking up litter in a park. I could meander ad nauseam about how these instances connect, but I'll save that for another time.

For now, I'm not going to worry so much about writing.