Fashion-challenged, and proud of it.

Today's Boston Globe features a roving-reporter piece interviewing Bostonians about their home town's recent selection as both the crabbiest and worst-dressed city in the country.

The crabbiness is another question for another day; suffice to say that I would a whole lot rather be crabby than artificially and intrusively "friendly" like some other parts of the country. (Yes, there is a middle ground. It's called Chicago, and if we could borrow a little of that town's unforced congeniality, we would be the better for it.)

But the fashion bit? I acknowledge it. In fact I celebrate, nay, revel in it.

There is nothing in the universe sillier than fashion. (Well, OK, maybe libertarianism.) Clothes exist to keep us warm, to protect us from the elements, and to hide the parts of ourselves that are considered taboo because they remind us of sex and we have enough trouble keeping our minds off sex as it is. They have no higher purpose, and in the absence of any higher purpose, we should feel free to please ourselves.

There is, therefore, one simple criterion to be met by any piece of clothing we put on: we should feel comfortable in it.

Now, it's true that "comfortable" is a multi-faceted concept. It encompasses not simply physical comfort--the garment should be of the appropriate weight for the season and somewhat less scratchy than 150-grit sandpaper--but also psychosocial comfort. We should feel that the clothes we wear are well suited to the situations we will face in them, and that they make us look (within the limits of the possible) good.

But the fashionistas miss a simple truth: that last part is for us to decide, and no one else. I don't care whether the shirt I'm wearing fits someone else's concept of what looks good, as long as it fits mine. If I feel like a presentable person in it, that's enough. Others are certainly entitled to their opinions, and if they want to have a good laugh at what presentability means to me, they should absolutely enjoy it.

But that's not good enough for the fashionistas. They want to set up a quasi-objective standard (which changes every few weeks), judge people's wardrobe choices by it, and, if those choices are found wanting, subject them to criticism that often seems to go right past the aesthetic to the moral, as if wearing pleated trousers were not just in questionable taste, but really wrong. They talk about fashion errors as if they were an urgent social problem to be solved, somewhere on the same priority list as homelessness and global warming.

What a perverse waste of time all of this is. And the fact that Bostonians, by and large, couldn't care less about it speaks to our good sense and our well-ordered priorities.

Comparisons legitimate & illegitimate

Last night I enjoyed one of my favorite evening pastimes, watching Jon Stewart nail Bill O'Reilly's head to the floor. In this case, the carpentry was occasioned by O'Reilly's typically blustering response to Stewart's earlier skewering of Megyn Kelly for insisting, in the face of comically overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that Fox doesn't compare people to Nazis. Kelly was, of course, alluding to remarks by Steve Cohen (D-TN) earlier in the week, which compared Republican disinformation on health care reform to the fabled "big lie" tactics of the Nazi propaganda machine.

What struck me about the whole exchange was that everyone took it for granted that Cohen was out of line simply for making a comparison to the Nazis. I saw little effort to elucidate the reasons why the comparison was invalid; it was judged to be so, prima facie, simply because of its object.

I was reminded of an exchange during a Senate hearing a long time ago, on some security issue or other, when a witness pointed to an inconsistency between US policy and our pronouncements on Soviet policy, and a Republican senator harrumphed, "Are you comparing the Soviet Union to the United States of America?"

Damn straight he was, Senator.

Allow me to state, as a categorical principle, that anything in the universe can be compared to anything else in the universe. The comparison may or may not be valid; that must be judged by examining it. It will be valid to the precise degree that the object of the comparison resembles, in salient, relevant aspects, its subject. It is never invalid merely by virtue of the object's identity. I can compare you to Hitler, Jesus Christ, Mae West or Fred Flintstone, and in every case the comparison must be judged on its specific merits.

The contrary principle, as observed by all parties in the Stewart/Fox brouhaha, provides wonderful cover for evildoers and hypocrites. Comparison is fundamental to human communication: we understand things in terms of their resemblance to other things much more readily and deeply than in terms of their abstract attributes. When you declare certain persons or phenomena off limits for comparative purposes, you make it more difficult to describe anything that resembles them. If comparisons to Nazis are inherently beyond the pale, then those who behave, to any significant degree, like the Nazis will be that much harder to call out.

Perhaps Cohen's comparison was off base--but if so, we need to hear why. Simply saying, "Oh! He said they were like Nazis! How dreadfully inappropriate!" is mere noise. Stewart, if no one else, should know better.

Billy Bragg, Prophet

Billy Bragg wrote the song "Ideology" circa 1990. Its relevance to the current situation in Washington would be downright eerie, except that human nature being what it is, it would probably have been relevant to the situation in Athens in 400 BC, too.

When one voice rules the nation
Just because they're top of the pile
Doesn't mean their vision is the clearest
The voices of the people
Are falling on deaf ears
Our politicians all become careerists

They must declare their interests
But not their company cars
Is there more to a seat in parliament
Than sitting on your arse
And the best of all this bad bunch
Is shouting to be heard
Above the sound of ideologies clashing

Outside the patient millions
Who put them into power
Expect a little more back for their taxes
Like school books, beds in hospitals
And peace in our bloody time
All they get is old men grinding axes

Who've built their private fortunes
On the things they can rely
The courts, the secret handshake
The Stock Exchange and the old school tie
For God and Queen and Country
All things they justify
Above the sound of ideologies clashing

God bless the civil service
The nations saving grace
While we expect democracy
They're laughing in our face
And although our cries get louder
The laughter gets louder still
Above the sound of ideologies clashing
Above the sound of ideologies,
Above the sound of ideologies,
Above the sound of ideologies clashing

An Evolutionary Doggerel

A couple of years back, in response to an awful "poem" promoting intelligent design ideology to children, I composed this piece of amphibractic verse, which was shared with a few friends but never made public. I have decided that now is the time and here is the place to inflict it upon an unoffending world.

So complex and intricate Nature appears,
it's hardly a shock that for thousands of years
our forebears were certain that lurking behind her
there must be a planner, a conscious Designer.
The details would vary from nation to nation,
and each culture told its own tale of Creation,
but all were agreed: "such a finely tuned dance
must be choreographed--it can't happen by chance!"
It wasn't till AD eighteen fifty-nine,
that Charles Darwin dared to suggest the "design"
could be thoroughly explained without need of invoking
divine supervision. "What has he been smoking?"
society wondered; but his explanations,
acutely derived from minute observations,
were made with such force that his "Origin of Species"
changed history, like Luther's 95 Theses.
The theory of Natural Selection he backed
has been tweaked and refined, but its gist is intact.
Opponents who mock it put stress on the random,
but that's half the story--for riding in tandem
with haphazard mutation, selective pressure
preserves the most able and weeds out the lesser.
This process unfolds over timescales so great
that our consciousness, tuned to the short term (as fate
would have it, so tuned by our genomic history),
recoils, and takes refuge in scripture and mystery.
But the facts, found in fossil and DNA chain,
have borne out Chuck's theory again and again:
differential survival (and hence, procreation)
steers life toward an unknown, unplanned destination,
with some mutant genes faring better than others.
Thus each time a variant outlives its brothers,
a new thread appears in the web of "design,"
but the weavers are nothing but life, death, and time.

Precious and Marie

Just saw "Precious." Incredible. Mo'Nique completely deserves whatever she wins for one of the most brutally honest, nearly unwatchable (yet completely riveting) performances I've ever seen.

A facebook post about the movie prompted a conversation about the forgotten and vulnerable girls around us, and this reminded me of something I haven't thought about in a long time, a poem about one of those forgotten girls, called "Concerning the Infanticide Marie Farrar" by Bertolt Brecht. (I think there's a more widely accepted translation out there, but this is the one I know best.)

Marie Farrar, born in April,
No marks, a minor, rachitic, both parents dead,
Allegedly, up to now without police record,
Committed infanticide, it is said,
As follows: in her second month, she says,
With the aid of a barmaid she did her best
To get rid of her child with two douches,
Allegedly painful but without success.
But you, I beg you, check your wrath and scorn
For man needs help from every creature born.

She then paid out, she says, what was agreed
And continued to lace herself up tight.
She also drank liquor with pepper mixed in it
Which purged her but did not cure her plight.
Her body distressed her as she washed the dishes,
It was swollen now quite visibly.
She herself says, for she was still a child,
She prayed to Mary most earnestly.
But you, I beg you, check your wrath and scorn
For man needs help from every creature born.

Her prayers, it seemed, helped her not at all.
She longed for help. Her trouble made her falter
And faint at early mass. Often drops of sweat
Broke out in anguish as she knelt at the altar.
Yet until her time had come upon her
She still kept secret her condition.
For no one believed such a thing had happened,
That she, so unenticing, had yielded to temptation.
But you, I beg you, check your wrath and scorn
For man needs help from every creature born.

And on that day, she says, when it was dawn,
As she washed the stairs it seemed a nail
Was driven into her belly. She was wrung with pain.
But still she secretly endured her travail.
All day long while hanging out the laundry
She racked her brains till she got it through her head
She had to bear the child and her heart was heavy.
It was very late when she went up to bed.
But you, I beg you, check your wrath and scorn
For man needs help from every creature born.

She was sent for again as soon as she lay down:
Snow had fallen and she had to go downstairs.
It went on till eleven. It was a long day.
Only at night did she have time to bear.
And so, she says, she gave birth to a son.
The son she bore was just like all the others.
She was unlike the others but for this.
There is no reason to despise this mother.
You, too, I beg you, check your wrath and scorn
For man needs help from every creature born.

Accordingly I will go on with the story
Of what happened to the son that came to be.
(She says she will hide nothing that befell)
So let it be a judgment upon both you and me.
She says she had scarcely gone to bed when she
Was overcome with sickness and she was alone,
Not knowing what would happen, yet she still
Contrived to stifle all her moans.
And you, I beg you, check your wrath and scorn
For man needs help from every creature born.

With her last strength, she says because
Her room had now grown icy cold, she them
Dragged herself to the latrine and there
Gave birth as best she could (not knowing when)
But toward morning. She says she was already
Quite distracted and could barely hold
The child for snow came into the latrine
And her fingers were half numb with cold.
You, too, I beg you, check your wrath and scorn
For man needs help from every creature born.

Between the latrine and her room, she says,
Not earlier, the child began to cry until
It drove her mad so that she says
She did not cease to beat it with her fists
Blindly for some time till it was still.
And then she took the body to her bed
And kept it with her there all through the night:
When morning came she hid it in the shed.
But you, I beg you, check your wrath and scorn
For man needs help from every creature born.

Marie Farrar, born in April,
And unmarried mother, convicted, died in
The Meissen penitentiary,
She brings home to you all men's sin.
You who bear pleasantly between clean sheets
And give the name "blessed" to your womb's weight
Must not damn the weakness of the outcast,
For her sin was black but her pain was great.
Therefore, I beg you, check your wrath and scorn
For man needs help from every creature born.

Seekers Syndrome

When I was a kid I had the 'Georgy Girl' album by the Seekers and loved it. I recently rediscovered it on iTunes and found that I still love it. The title song is undeniably a little piece of pop froth, albeit a tasty one--a guilty pleasure and nothing more. But the rest of the songs are something else entirely. I had forgotten that the Seekers were actually a band. They had a singer (Judith Durham) with a big ringing voice, robust (if not always letter-perfect) vocal harmony, and a secret weapon in 12-string virtuoso Keith Potger, one of the best guitarists you've never heard of. They lived somewhere in the stylistic and commercial middle ground between Peter Paul & Mary and the Mamas & the Papas, but had a robust Aussie duende that PP&M couldn't touch and a rootsy simplicity that the M's & P's could only dream of.

As I listened I realized that the Seekers are the quintessential example of a particular syndrome in pop music--a band that kills itself with a hit. If "Georgy Girl" had never happened, they would have been remembered best for stuff like "A World of Our Own" and "I'll Never Find Another You"--songs that were commercial only in the sense that they were too tuneful and accessible not to find an audience. But that ghastly whistling hook was enough to cast them forever in the mawkish mold of the Association, the Christy Minstrels, and the Sandpipers.

It's a shame, because the world should know some of this stuff better. It's pop-folk in the "Mighty Wind" tradition, for certain, but with a bracing, unselfconscious energy and not a trace of that self-congratulatory piety that gave folk music a bad name. "Come the Day," with its titanic guitar strums, full-throated harmonies, and unabashedly idealistic lyrics; "All Over the World," a nakedly emotional but never melodramatic torch song featuring a gorgeous vocal from Durham; a full-steam-ahead version of "Red Rubber Ball" (with Potger at his muscular, precise best) that's so much better than the Cyrkle's tepid, pimply hit that it sounds like a different song; superb covers of folk chestnuts like "The Last Thing On My Mind" and "Well, Well, Well"--these recordings deserve a better fate than to languish in the iTunes servers as forgotten extra tracks by "the Georgy Girl group."

Who else has been a victim of Seekers Syndrome, I wonder?

Teabag Girl

to the tune of "Georgy Girl" (with apologies to Tom Springfield and Jim Dale....)

Hey there, teabag girl,

marching down the street so angrily,

the media elite could never see 

the loneliness there inside you

Hey there, teabag girl,

why does modern life just pass you by?

Could it be you just don't try,

or is it the shows you watch?

When you go channel hopping,

you're always stopping at Fox

it's time to wean yourself from the box

a little bit

Hey there, teabag girl,

there's another country here outside,

bring out all the love you hide,

and oh what a change there'd be,

the world would see

a new teabag girl!

Hey there, teabag girl,

clingin' to the way things used to be, 

welcome to this century,

you can't always run away

Don't be so scared of change

though it feels so strange

and so new

it's time to try a fresh point of view

a little bit

Hey there, teabag girl,

there's another country here outside,

bring out all the love you hide,

and oh what a change there'd be,

the world would see

a new teabag girl!