[link|http://www.codrescu.com/|Codrescu]



9/11
with Allen Ginsberg in mind
by Andrei Codrescu


9/11, I can barely remember you, they\ufffdve buried you in so much hype!

9/11 I wept when you were first on television! I wept for New York, for the dead, for all of us, for myself, for the world!

9/11, I was sure that the world had changed forever because bad guys wanted America dead & hated us because we listen to rock\ufffdn roll and wear no miniskirts on our naked faces!

9/11, I cheered when our warplanes ripped through the skies of Afghanistan scorching the caves where our enemies burrowed & I marvelled at our precision-guided bombs trying to ignore their occasionally murderous imprecision!

9/11, I sat mesmerized in front of Fox News and CNN as the gargoyled faces of the Cold War began crawling out of the musty cellars of history and, eyes unaccustomed to light blinking, began to spout the doctrines of Total War!

9/11, I started to feel sorry for you when retired generals, admirals, spies, loonies and fakes brushed off their swords and rushed to your defense! So many double-chins! So many watering eyes! So many dentured grins and brush haircuts! So many double-bottom suitcases clutched in so many pimp-ringed hands! They even brought Ollie North from felonious disgrace to stand up for you with his Constitution-overthrowing boyish old looks!

9/11, I felt bad for you when the Lefties crowded you from the other side with their guilt-filled jaws of \ufffdI told you so,\ufffd and their eternal excuses for the wretched exotics of the world whose suffering they experience in their marble-topped kitchens between arguments about what wine to serve with the wild rice! And I wept for you again when soured professors who missed the collapse of commie fascism in 1989 descended on you like rabid wolverines led by Naom Chomsky whose teethmarks are all over the zero ground of American academia!

9/11, you saved the paranoids from self-cannibalism!

9/11, you were a boon to advertisers and publicists and flag-manufacturers, and they sold you with cars and pizzas and they drained you of your raw primal power even as they pretended to grieve for you! Zero down payment until Doomsday!

9/11, you were a godsent to poetasters who were out of the gate lamenting and whining before your towers even gave out!

9/11, your dead and your heroes are covered by thick layers of ash & greed & the Republic owes you an apology

9/11, I close my eyes and recall you in all your gory glory & I still hate those who did this to us and to our greatest city

9/11, I can barely remember you & I\ufffdm sorry

First, Codrescu has a regular spot on NPR; great voice - lots between the lines. Best to hear him at least once.

My guess is that he's referring here ~ to maybe two aspects of Chomsky: his over-detailed and patently academic tone, frequently of rant-length then.. to the Chomsky wannabes who excerpt some of his phrases, run with it: but don't really know shit about our history or world history. Protesters Light, say? I don't think this is about any serious disagreement with C. ie about the scam of Capitalism; just the means of dealing with the crap.

My own take (whether or not I've grasped the basis of Codrescu's dis here) is that Chomsky's approach to the patent "rich will always be with us" root and Dream of Capitalism (as spawned the ungovernable Int'l Corporations) - is to argue the principles of democracy that are raped. Few people IME are sufficiently ept about political theory to do much with this. Or they've made one of these a personal religion already = no communication is then possible.

More people are able to grasp verifiable facts about just where the world's wealth (control of same) ends up, grok the methods by which this shell game is kept functioning as the gap widens. This I'd call practical demoronising of the cant we were fed in Civic 101.

I think Codrescu's style is to make his little homilies with explicit examples too - and with little patience for 'theory', given the much larger audience than academia. Someday I'll ask him. He's one sharp middle-European (descent) Murican, and I'd deduce that his education has been in both university and street - in some rough times.


My take,

Ashton