*sigh*
I am so tired of "Our hearts go out to the victims of hurricane Katrina." There is something that rings false in the myriad car washes and flyers and 'click here to help!' buttons. The sororities and fraternities on campus are each attempting to outdo the other with their shows of charity. The same sympathy contests can be seen on the various blogging sites: The more dramatic banner, the more heartfelt plea. Are there ribbons or wristbands yet? There will be.
I laughed out loud at an automobile commercial lampooning this pseudo-altruism. "For the price of 2 or 3 latte's a day you could save" something silly about truck bed damage. What is implicit in the ad is the self-masturbatory pride when you skip the office trip to Starbucks: "Oh, no, I'm donating to *insert pop-cause*"
Or maybe I'm wrong, maybe this isn't a dick size thing. Maybe it has become socially obligatory. Still, the end does indeed justify the means, occasionally. Maybe if it wasn't for the Jones', nobody would get the financing needed (and I don't deny a need). But why the focus on Katrina? Perhaps there are just so many tragedies in the world that to alleviate the burdens on our collective conscience we pick one here or there to pour ourselves into; our popped zit sympathy.
Damn, some more dead in Iraq. Wait, lets go back: remember those Genocides in Africa? It seems almost silly to write about them here. After all, I am sure you all felt a quiet pang over your daily news, but you've visited the Holocaust Museum, what more can you do?
Of course, Katrina brought with her particularly delicate race-related issues, so perhaps it has brought out a bit of the cock in caucasion:
Take up the White Man's burden
Send forth the best ye breed
With public personalities using one tragedy to highlight another, it is not beyond reason that the collective white 'we' have some issues we would like to feel better about. After all, our country's latent racism is certainly less apocalyptic but, over time, far more damaging. Of course, to have any sort of dramatic affect on the class system would require a true revolution in every branch of government. It is far easier to drop a quarter in the firemans boot; to click the stupid button and bear with a much less complicated, not to mention effortless, redirection.
Neatly entwined with this line of thought is a pretty red silk thread of guilt. My heart doesn't go out to the survivors. Sure, on a strictly rational level I can conjure up some sort of celluloid influenced image of what a tragedy like that must be like, and from that wish the survivors, the extras in my little mental movie, all the best. But that's nothing to do with the heart. I haven't actually been moved in that funny-feeling-in-your-chest teary-eyed way. It isn't that I lack the capability to experience that. I've cried at movies, I cried on 9/11, too, though not at the absurd site of planes meeting buildings, but at the anger in voices on the radio demanding retribution. I've cried. Who knows, though, by what crooked heart-logic we are emotionally affected by one tragedy and not the other?
Did it burn for you, the way despair will do?
On that, or rather, those notes:
Musee des Beaux Arts
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
~WH Auden
I am so tired of "Our hearts go out to the victims of hurricane Katrina." There is something that rings false in the myriad car washes and flyers and 'click here to help!' buttons. The sororities and fraternities on campus are each attempting to outdo the other with their shows of charity. The same sympathy contests can be seen on the various blogging sites: The more dramatic banner, the more heartfelt plea. Are there ribbons or wristbands yet? There will be.
I laughed out loud at an automobile commercial lampooning this pseudo-altruism. "For the price of 2 or 3 latte's a day you could save" something silly about truck bed damage. What is implicit in the ad is the self-masturbatory pride when you skip the office trip to Starbucks: "Oh, no, I'm donating to *insert pop-cause*"
Or maybe I'm wrong, maybe this isn't a dick size thing. Maybe it has become socially obligatory. Still, the end does indeed justify the means, occasionally. Maybe if it wasn't for the Jones', nobody would get the financing needed (and I don't deny a need). But why the focus on Katrina? Perhaps there are just so many tragedies in the world that to alleviate the burdens on our collective conscience we pick one here or there to pour ourselves into; our popped zit sympathy.
Damn, some more dead in Iraq. Wait, lets go back: remember those Genocides in Africa? It seems almost silly to write about them here. After all, I am sure you all felt a quiet pang over your daily news, but you've visited the Holocaust Museum, what more can you do?
Of course, Katrina brought with her particularly delicate race-related issues, so perhaps it has brought out a bit of the cock in caucasion:
Take up the White Man's burden
Send forth the best ye breed
With public personalities using one tragedy to highlight another, it is not beyond reason that the collective white 'we' have some issues we would like to feel better about. After all, our country's latent racism is certainly less apocalyptic but, over time, far more damaging. Of course, to have any sort of dramatic affect on the class system would require a true revolution in every branch of government. It is far easier to drop a quarter in the firemans boot; to click the stupid button and bear with a much less complicated, not to mention effortless, redirection.
Neatly entwined with this line of thought is a pretty red silk thread of guilt. My heart doesn't go out to the survivors. Sure, on a strictly rational level I can conjure up some sort of celluloid influenced image of what a tragedy like that must be like, and from that wish the survivors, the extras in my little mental movie, all the best. But that's nothing to do with the heart. I haven't actually been moved in that funny-feeling-in-your-chest teary-eyed way. It isn't that I lack the capability to experience that. I've cried at movies, I cried on 9/11, too, though not at the absurd site of planes meeting buildings, but at the anger in voices on the radio demanding retribution. I've cried. Who knows, though, by what crooked heart-logic we are emotionally affected by one tragedy and not the other?
Did it burn for you, the way despair will do?
On that, or rather, those notes:
Musee des Beaux Arts
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
~WH Auden