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WHAT'S LEFT
Submitted 4-5-03 (not published)
Just days before the beginning of the war with Iraq, I was invited
by a singer/songwriter acquaintance of mine to appear as part of
an artists' panel for an anti-war fundraiser she'd organized at
a hip alternative nightclub in Hollywood. The event was well attended
by the usual suspects: veteran protesters from the Vietnam era,
remnants of the women's movement, a sprinkling of new-left Green
Party people, and the odd transsexual anarchist (pardon the redundancy).
The format was left-wing loose. Those of us on stage were told
to jump in as the spirit moved, and I was taken aside beforehand
and encouraged to please, please feel free to lighten things up
whenever I felt them slipping off into dreariness or stridency.
But I was still a bit uncomfortable. This was clearly a gathering
of true believers, which is to be expected at any such fundraiser.
It proved to be an interesting comedic challenge. After a light-hearted
and meant-to-be-embarrassing singalong, the evening's first serious
pose was struck as one of the musicians onstage launched into his
freshly minted anti-war reggae/rap anthem, "Too Many Questions,
Not Enough Answers". Being someone with congenitally limited
quantities of both simplicity and sincerity, I knew I was on thin
ice before he'd finished the first verse. By the end of the song,
I'd decided on my first offering: "Y'know, that's the exact
opposite of how Fox News works."
Little did I know where this attempt at slow pitch softball would
lead. After roughly the amount of laughter the comment deserved,
one of the other musicians on stage, an aging folkie with a pack-a-day
baritone, launched into a screed about the media in general and
Clear Channel in specific, and how their greedy stranglehold on
radio playlists and concert venues was choking the creativity out
of the music business. He followed this diatribe with an angry and
angst-ridden tune he'd written about The Man.
I found myself wondering how many decades had passed since he'd
last been playlisted by any station over 50 watts, then quickly
reminded myself that while a dash of cruel truth is sometimes the
perfect comedy spice, rudeness almost always ruins the recipe, so
I settled for: "Hey, it's not all bad news. They've also contributed
to the destruction of hundreds of Dixie Chicks cds."
It turned out to be my, and the, only solid laugh of the evening,
which for me went a long way toward explaining just what has happened
to the energetic liberalism that was such an inspiration in my youth.
The left, my left, has lost its ability to laugh, especially at
itself. Nothing is more humanizing than laughter, not just at cutting
the powerful down to size, but in the opportunity it gives us to
re-examine our own assumptions. And yet this roomful of humanists
was depressingly humorless.
Years ago, when liberal first started to become the "L"
word, I looked it up in an old dictionary. The primary definitions
given were "fair", "open-minded", and "generous
of spirit". These are qualities that both project and produce
hope for a better tomorrow. Sadly, today more than ever, fear is
the coin of the realm in American politics, for both the right and
the left.
Given conservative's greater grasp of trading in all forms of currency,
and given that, historically, fear has always been the gold standard
of right wing politics, this is a game the liberals can't win. The
longer they try, the longer the politics of fairness, open-mindedness,
and generosity of spirit will remain in decline.
As for me, even though I know these are good-hearted people, and
that they are also my natural political allies, the next time I
get an anti-war fundraiser invitation (Iran? Korea?) I think I'll
pass. Fairness and generosity of spirit don't add up to funny, and
with open-mindedness clearly out of vogue, it's no place for comedy.
Besides, I've never seen the point of preaching to the choir, except
that it does momentarily stop them from singing.
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