It would be easy to chalk up my abstention to the busyness of life. The petition seemed to fall into the category of benevolent could-do’s that are almost always trumped by daily have-to’s. But if that had really been the case the petition, like the steady stream of requests in the mail from local charity groups for the donation of gently used clothing, would have quickly been forgotten. Instead, several days later, I am still thinking about it. And what I‘ve realized is that I abstained from signing the petition not because I simply didn’t have to, in the way that I never seem to give to the destitute folk with signs at city intersections because nothing at all will change about my day if I keep my window up and the sports radio on, my absence of charity resting on a foundation of nothing to lose (this “it costs me nothing if I ignore my neighbor” orientation is both a) what some might plainly call sinful, and b) strange bedfellows with another belief that informs my praxis, which is that “it costs me nothing to smile”; apparently one can be both very friendly and selfish at the same time, which combination is likely how we can remain self-centered enough to survive in an increasingly unfettered free market economy while still thinking of ourselves as basically good people) but because something about the petition felt off kilter.
Reading the petition felt strangely like what it must have been like trying to get laid at Antioch College in the early 1990’s. It was then that Antioch put into effect the following infamous policy: “Obtaining consent is an ongoing process in any sexual interaction. Verbal consent should be obtained with each new level of physical and/or sexual contact/conduct.” The Antioch policy is very much like the petition in that both are born out of good intentions, the former to address the very real problem of sexual assault against women, and the latter, of course, to confront our staggering cultural disregard for the basic needs of others (to see how far the total disregard for the poorest among us has gone, one need only look as far as the Hawaiian State Representative who spent several weeks toting around a baseball bat to smash up the personal belongings of homeless people, with whom he is “disgusted.” And no one did anything to stop him. Please note that this guy is a Democrat, bringing to this registered Democrat’s mind the old saying that with friends like these, who needs enemies. I’m not making this up: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/11/19/2966371/hawaii-homeless-smash/ ) Despite these good intentions, the authors of Antioch’s policy lack the most basic level of insight into human sexual behavior. This is not to suggest that men should take what they want without first obtaining consent (and, to be clear, no indeed ALWAYS means no), but the devil is in the details, that devil being the fact that some questions can only ever be answered, but never asked (unlike those questions which can be asked but never answered, e.g. “Does this dress make my ass look fat?). These unspeakable questions include “Do you love me?”, “Will you forgive me?”, “Are you going to tell the truth?” (which can be asked in the courtroom, but nowhere else), and, in play here, “Do you want me?”
The art of seduction requires that one ask that last question without ever verbalizing it; “Do you want me?” can only ever be pantomimed. It is, like the Tao, a truth that can never be spoken. And everyone on planet earth, but for the well meaning folks at Antioch, knows this, thereby collapsing the policy into absurdity. It is no less farcical than requiring everyone to stop and think before each breath. Not to mention how confusing it would be to put into practice. Would the traditional first, second, third, and home base progression suffice for defining “each new level of physical and/or sexual contact/conduct,” or would it require questions such as “May I now press my thigh into your mons veneris?”
The similarity between the petition and the policy goes much deeper than the mere fact that both result from a good faith effort to make the world a better place. To understand how the petition asks a question as unspeakable as “Do you want me?”, we must turn to Noam Chomsky, the Grand Poobah of that endangered species, the leftist American public intellectual. (After Chomsky and Cornel West, I am drawing a blank; I can’t think of anyone else with the chops to qualify. As Tony Kornheiser would say, “That’s the list.” A vigorous opposition being part and parcel of a functioning democracy, the near vacuum one finds when looking for substantial thinkers who question the reigning American ideology is but one more reason that Bill Moyers may be right when he says, in a Salon article last week, “We are this close to losing our democracy.” (http://www.salon.com/2013/12/12/bill_moyers_we_are_this_close_to_losing_our_democracy/ )
Chomsky is crystal clear in his take on what he thinks the media should be doing, which contrasts with the role he sees it actually playing, and his formula for the former is as simple as it is clear: “what the national press ought to be doing is looking at the world from the point of view of its population.” (http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm ) But instead, “the product of the media, what appears, what doesn’t appear, the way it is slanted, will reflect the interest of the buyers and sellers, the institutions, and the power systems that are around them. If that wouldn’t happen, it would be kind of a miracle.” (Interestingly, if we fuse these two thoughts, Chomsky is essentially saying that miracles ought to be occurring. And if there is one thread in human history that seems universal, it is that the miracle of our existence is never enough. There is an urban legend that in China if you save another person’s life they don’t owe you a thing, but you are suddenly obligated to care for them for the rest of your life. Perhaps God is one of these mythical Chinese, and by indulging in the miracle of creating us, She is forevermore on the hook for swinging us more and more miracles.)
Chomsky’s analysis then divides the corporate media in two. In the first camp are the mass media, who are “basically trying to divert people.” If you have ever watched five minutes of The Jerry Springer Show you know exactly what Chomsky is talking about and know everything you ever need to know about the mass media; Springer’s formula of gawking at poor people for the first 55 minutes of his show and then tying it all up in a bow by delivering a moral platitude in the show’s last five minutes can rightly be categorized as pure evil. (In a depressing echo of the bat-wielding Hawaiian fascist, Springer too was once a Democrat in elected office, in his case as mayor of Cincinatti. The only difference is that rather than smashing up the belongings of the impoverished, Springer demolishes their dignity.) Chomsky’s second group, among whom he explicitly includes CBS News, serves an altogether different function: “the elite media set a framework within which others operate.” The elite media establish and guard the boundaries of the ruling ideology. Looking back over our shoulders at the petition, we might say that the elite media determine the unspeakable. Money, of course, is where the ideological rubber meets the road; Chomsky draws on George Orwell’s observation that “the press is owned by wealthy people who only want certain things to reach the public.”
Before connecting the remaining dots, a word in defense of Chomsky’s assault on the vanguard of the elite corporate media. One man’s leftist public intellectual is another man’s radical left wing nut bag, and it would be easy to dismiss Chomsky’s media critique as the tired rant of an old man whose definitive characteristic is a cancerous animosity towards his own country’s way of life, and perhaps just towards his own country. I’m just saying. So to put Chomsky’s analysis to the test, I thought of two questions: when did the labor movement, along with voting rights the greatest tool the people ever did have, peak, and when did television, the greatest tool wealthy people who only want certain things to reach the public ever did have, become widespread? The answer: The labor movement, legalized in the 1930’s under FDR, saw widespread growth in power and influence right up into the 1950’s, when membership peaked, the same decade in which that ultimate tool in the manufacture of consent first sunk its teeth into our collective skulls. The correlation in the subsequent decline in union rolls with the increased consumption of televised media is as rock solid as the correlation between the rise in CO2 gasses and the rise in global temperatures. Noam Chomsky is right as rain, while, to borrow an image from David Foster Wallace, we’re all busy staring at the furniture.
Delivering a petition to CBS News for fair coverage of the Affordable Care Act, then, is no different than asking “Do you want me?” Asking an unspeakable question provides its own answer, and, whether one is asking after love, forgiveness, truth, desire, or fairness, the answer is always already no. The rich have their own way of putting the very same thing. “If you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it.” The rest of us need to put down our impotent petitions while also laying down our arms in the pointless culture wars that only serve to distract us from the only unspeakable that matters: One never asks for permission to go on strike. (Or, for that matter, to turn off one’s television.)
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