POLITICALLY INCORRECT MY ASS!
Except for the Steven Kings, Kurt Vonneguts and Joe Connellys
of the world, most writers operate in relative obscurity.
This is why the internet is so marvelous. One does not need
a publisher’s approval to display one’s craft. He need not comply with the
guidelines of the mainstream. He may simply be himself, or at least, be the
fraud he chooses to be, and let
the chips bake as they may.
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Last night on ABC’s Politically Incorrect, host Bill Maher was complaining about the preposterousness
of people with personal websites (much like this one); and submitted that
nobody should care about these nerds and what they put on their pansy websites.
Admittedly, there are some truly pathetic websites out there.
And, sadly, I realize that even edwindecker.com is probably
just another milk carton in the landfill of the internet.
But that is so not that point.
Maher went on to say that, hosting a nationally syndicated television program, gives him the right to expound on whatever topic he’s sunk his poisonous fangs into that week, and that those of us who do not host television shows – or have deals with major record labels or posh New York Publishers – are wankers and hacks for the trying.
How utterly unenlightened.
How utterly “Upper class vs. lower class.”
That’s what it is really, a class war in the entertainment
industry. An enormous portion of entertainment dollars sustain only a tiny
fraction of the entertainers: For every Pearl Jam, there are thousands of
bar bands, banging their heads against their amps to find ten people to pay
a three-dollar cover; not necessarily because they lack talent. . . they
lack marketing, dig?
And there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s the way things work. What is wrong is when some upper class asshole unconditionally disrespects
those in the classes below him.
Actually, it’s not wrong; just ignorant.
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So, Mr. Maher -- Curry, Peter Pan, Mummy Hazel, and I are keeping
our web pages. We are fighting side by side against the man; because we are
what art is; people expressing themselves for as many reasons as there are
people to express it.
Besides, I visited your
television show once. The whole thing was a disgusting display of un-originality,
starting with this horrible comedian who warmed the audience before we aired.
After his excruciating set, he became the MC and instructed us on: how to
laugh at the jokes and comments made by the panel; how to clap every time
somebody displayed intelligence; and how to howl whenever somebody said something
outrageous.
Then the comedian asked us to practice our laughter, (he wanted
us to actually say the words, “Ha, ha, ha”). The audience did so on command: Three hundred automatons blurped
“Ha, ha, ha,” in unison, as though they were all happily plugged into a futuristic
government/corporation that controls emotions.
Practice our laughter? Practice
howling? Practice feeling? Ah Bill, Politically Incorrect
my ass.
ejd
5/2001