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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Ban Johnson
Published Letters: 102 Editor's Choice: 10
Cary's essay is insightful but overly broad and one-sided.
1) "Porn" is a hazy, broad, confusing term. Is Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue porn? Is a brutal rape scene porn? Some so-called porn assaults; some seduces; some puts near-ideal beauty on artfully erotic display. Some porn is crack; some is a really fine chardonnay.
2) Sexuality isn't merely biological. It's rooted also in the archetypal, ideal realm -- which is why sexual desire often resembles a kind of worship. What a person desires, in all its surprising permutations, helps reveal, over time, as a kind of enigmatic mirror image, who a person is.
Why can't porn be one tool on that journey? For many, discovering what is other/opposite/attractive/completing is so complexly varied, it simply wouldn't be possible (or safe) to work it all out with actual people in real time in the physical world. At its best, porn cultures the sexual imagination. Porn helps one know oneself.
3) Yes, porn can be dangerous, but when is sex not full of dangers? Perhaps "using" others is an inextricable aspect of sex. If so, isn't using a person's image often a far less costly exchange than using her body?
It doesn't matter how much money Imus donated to charity. The largess bestowed on a few children by him and his wife -- with as much self-aggrandizing fanfare as possible, incidentally -- did not license him to damage millions of others with his pathological ranting. It entitled him to a tax break, which no doubt he enjoyed to the maximum.He's done a hell of a lot more for children than I or most people have. But apparently he's not even allowed that shred of dignity, without a high-minded critic snarking all over it. Simple humiliation isn't enough? Apparently it must be abject humiliation. While what Imus said was certainly indecent, there's something indecent about all the piling on as well.
While I have never enjoyed his tedious rants, I have a hard time understanding how they "damage millions." That's PC hysteria. We really shouldn't be so scared of words. People's psyches aren't that fragile. Even when someone has said something truly vile, at some level adult human beings always can choose whether or not to "take offense" and be victimized by it, or whether to ignore it with dignity.
By the way, no one on the Rutgers basketball team, and I imagine, very few young black women, were listening that morning when Imus made his comment. So if anyone was "damaged" by it, it likely happened during the weeklong hyperbolic media regurgitation of it. I'm no fan of Imus -- I find him a meanspirited, tedious, insecure ass -- but this story has been blown ridiculously out of proportion. There's an ugly whiff of scapegoating and score settling about the whole thing.
How soon we forget! Just about 1 year ago, Dirk Nowitzki scored 50 points in an equally pivotal Conference Final game 5 against the Suns. Like Lebron, he took over the game late, in an almost equally dominant, won't-be-denied performance.
So please, quit ragging on Dirk as if the truth is that he ALWAYS comes up small in the big moments. He doesn't. Sometimes he comes up very big indeed. Check out his career playoff stats -- actually better than his impressive career regular season stats.
Yeah, Dirk has disappointed big-time in his last 2 playoff series. That doesn't mean the story on Dirk's career has been written, or that it proves once and for all what Dirk is all about.
Please consider coming up with a new superstar whipping boy -- TMac, KG, or Carmelo perhaps. The facts just don't back you up when it comes to Dirk.
Habeas Corpus. Torture. Fiscal Insanity. Department of Justice turned into political machine. Iraq War. Outing of CIA Agent and then Libby pardon for lying about it.
Heather makes some great points about the lack of realism in the peripheral characters. This ungroundedness makes JFC seem at times like off-off-Broadway experimental theater...which is a deeply weird thing to behold in HD in one's living room.
That said, I find myself thankful for its weirdness. As much as I loved Deadwood, I always sort of suspected that the story, costumes, and historical setting were besides the point -- like that was just the predictable stuff I had to endure to get Milch's deep intuitions about character and spirit.
JFC, on the other hand, feels more personal and immediate, more like a poem than a novel. I drink a beer and just sort of flow with it, always finding plenty of brilliance and humor to sustain me through the chaos, lunacy, uneven acting, and occasional preciousness. I'd love to see more surfing, too, however.
Memento
Va Savoir
Mulholland Drive
Amores Perros
The Widow Of St. Pierre
Code Unknown
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Secrets And Lies
The Thin Red Line
What Time Is It There?
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
