I wasn't going to mention Valentine's Day, since the only romantic thing I've done today is watch VH2's "Songs with Love in the Title". But then, courtesy of Booksquare (you enabler you!) I hit the blog trifecta: books, politics, and chocolate, all that speaks to my heart. Seems Steve Almond wrote a book about candy, and decided to flaunt his first amendment rights and express his (cover your eyes, kids) political views. His readers were upset. Oh, they liked the candy part, but apparently mixing candy with opinion (particularly lefty opinion) is like bringing Veuve Clicquot to the church potluck.
As he says in a Moby Lives guest column, How I Managed to Galvanize the Right Wing Hate Machine Without Really Trying:
"What folks want from the pop — hell, what we deserve as tax–paying Americans — is a nice soothing mind bath. A few chuckles. A nice melodrama in which to park our emotions for a couple of hours. In a word: opium.
He goes on:
This country's chief signifier is our staggering capacity to isolate ourselves from the effects of our political and lifestyle choices.
This is the reason, for instance, that so many people can vote for a party that believes gays are sub–human but still watch "Queer Eye For the Straight Guy," (because fags are so darn funny!). It's also the reason liberals can drive around in SUVs, while decrying policies driven by oil–dependency.
But of course it is one of the functions of art (yes, even popular art) to call people on such bullshit, to raise people's consciousness, to awaken their capacities for compassion.
William Faulkner probably put this best in his 1951 speech, upon accepting the Nobel Prize: "The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."
It seems to me that the time has come answer this call.
I don't mean to suggest that writers should begin cranking out polemics. Art resides in an argument with the self, not others.
What I am suggesting is that artists need not regard their political identities as wholly separate from their artistic ones — especially given our unique historical circumstance.
Look at what's happening: our country is being led down a path of almost unprecedented moral negligence, a kind of suicidal selfishness in which the civic discourse has been reduced to bumper stickers. Those in power stand ready to vilify anyone who threatens their power. The opposition has abdicated its duties to John Stewart.
I love it when my fellow writers join the resistance. Public discourse hasn't been so well served since Twain penned Pudd'nhead Wilson--and weren't we just speaking of sweets?
So Happy Valentine's. Now, I'm off to find some chocolate, curl up with Wuthering Heights, and try to get that damn "Love Cats" song out of my head.
