Some much good material on the web, so little time.
First, I'm thrilled to have discovered a British online forum with a healthy dollup of Dalrymple (under his real name of Anthony Daniels). It's called "The Social Affairs Unit," and has been described by The Times as being...
...famous for driving its coach and horses through the liberal consensus scattering intellectual picket lines as it goes [and] for raising questions which strike most people most of the time as too dangerous or too difficult to think about.
Articles are arranged under about 40 different heading as thematically diverse as "Hunting," "Jazz," and "Anti-Economics." I, of course, hit the Dalrymple first, enjoying short essays like "Cannibals, Psychiatrists and the CPS" (love the opening phrase, "Everybody loves a cannibal...), "On Bullshit and Humbug," and "Anthony Daniels Finds Too Much Self-Expression." There are more Daniels pieces, and a good sized offerings of other Molotov cocktail toasts by other authors. I particularly enjoyed Zenga Longman's "Betty Boop's Jazz legacy," although find it incredible that the article makes no mention of Helen Kane, the inspiration for the Betty Boop character.
While we're on the subject of Dalrymple, I learned to appreciate the old curmudgeon anew after plowing through a piece whose theme has been treated by the good doctor time and time again. Christie Davies provides plenty of statistics and historical background in The death of religion & the fall of respectable Britain in a New Criterion piece. Informative, yes, but entirely lacking the spark that makes Anthony Daniels a joy to read, even at his most dour. How wonderful, to write about what is right and defend social order by writing the right words in the right order!
Also at the New Criterion are the thoughts of Peter Pettus on the new National Museum of the American Indian: "Native Mythologies." He's not impressed. Boomers like to pride themselves on being promethean bestowers of the truth upon pepsi-addled American white bread culture. I grew up idolizing guys like John Lennon spitting out "Just Gimme Some Truth," and Bob Dylan. I recall the stirrings of curmudgeonry while watching D. A. Pennebacker's documentary of the burgeoning star at his brattiest (Don't Look Back-- good advice for Dylan if he wants to hold onto his self-esteem). I went fully prepared to be bowled over at not just the musical and poetic brilliance of The Bob but to gain insight into why he was a Genius with Something To Tell The World. Nah. He was just a nasty little jerk with a way with words. When interviewed by a Time reporter, he shot back accusatory questions like,
"Why don't you show the truth?"
"Well, at Time, we try to do this. What exactly do you mean, Mr Dylan?"
"You know, the truth, like, like, a bum, puking in the gutter."
And so we come to the National Museum of the American Indian. We might as well confine our research into the panorama of American social life in the 1950s to Leave It To Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet.
Within, the awed visitor is introduced to the spiritual “universes” of the various tribes, each housed within a glowing tabernacle. In addition to scenic tableaux and related artifacts, the spaces are decorated with depictions of tribal myths and such spiritually uplifting homilies as “Every time elders talk, they tell us we are given responsibility to look after Mother Earth”—that sort of thing. Eventually, all of these images and exaltations tend to merge into one big pantheistic hymn of glorification. The American Indian, it would appear, from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego, is unlike any other homo sapiens on the planet in terms of the purity of his spirit, the natural harmony of his life, his cooperative and peaceful demeanor, the vibrancy of his art, his . . . well, you get the idea.
Can this possibly be true? Can these idealized people be for real? In the artificial context of the NMAI, it doesn’t matter. The bargain has been struck. Wallowing in “victim” mode, the Museum has swept aside the vast tribal differences, all the rough edges of Indian life. Indeed, their entire history is both homogenized and sanitized to produce the archetypal Noble Savage. It is a sad irony that the NMAI, in its efforts to allow the Indian to speak of his own past, has managed to produce this de-natured version of what were once flesh-and-blood people. Where is the Indian Warrior? Where is the reminder that one of his primary activities was the waging of ceaseless war—war directed not just at the white interlopers, but against other Indian tribes? Why is there no mention of ritualized torture, human sacrifice, or cannibalism? These were also real aspects of the American Indian experience, but they have been airbrushed away to present a sanctified and unreal image. Truth has been subordinated to myth. As much as we may understand and sympathize with the benign intentions of the Museum’s founders, the loss of historical reality is a high price to pay.
This is Howard Zinn in reverse. Imagine the indignation if not a museum, but a mere book or magazine article focused as exclusively on the negative aspects of Native American life as Zinn does on the dark side of the American experience. Just gimme some truth, indeed.
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