On Wed, 6 Dec 2000, Gord Sellar wrote:
>
> Now now, you two. *THAT* fight is long over. :) You two packs of rabble
> jointly made a bloody mess out of the Eastern side of this continent the
> last time you got into this, and I don't intend to sit through it again. ;p
Hrrmph! [eyes shiftily swing from side to side] Yes, well then, sorry
about that....
> >Attack the institutions if you wish, but do it directly. My only point is
> >that something people cooked 50, 100, or 150 years ago in order to deal
> >with poverty isn't really a good symbol for the corruption of today's
> >two-party system. I can see why the analogy it tempting, but it's false.
>
> Marrrrrrrrrrrvin! :) I see what you are saying, and yeah yeah, I am
> reaching a little, but you're missing my focus. You keep bringing up the
> Electoral College, but that's not my focus. I reread my posts to make sure,
> and I didn't even bring it up. Sorry, if it seemed like I was implying
> election, but I wasn't. :) You have election on the brain, dude. But I
> understand, given the circumstances. To me, though, well, our election's
> over and yours lost my interest. I assume it's not yet been resolved? (I've
> been out of touch, writing a lot of thesis stuff.)
You're right, I do have election on the brain. In spite of doing my best
to avoid the news. Sigh. The best thing anybody has said about it so
far, IMO, is "Ok, so neither Gore nor Bush are president. I don't see the
problem."
Maybe its just a problem with my perception, of reading too much into your
posts, but there was something about the emphasis on irony (the repeated
"Ha!" that seemed to imply that you saw a direct connection between, say,
a sham pie and a sham democracy. But maybe I'm just too sensitive. :-)
> I think cars were closer to what I was getting at, or even better, the
> North American diet (of which I am a damn purveyor myself, argh!!) . . .
> it's that very innoucuous, well-meaning, and loving motivation that I am
> worried about, when things that are problematic get naturalized. Come to
> think of it, that's true in all cultures: clitorectomy and infibulation
> debates with Nicola years back come to my mind, for example. The love, the
> embrace of ritual, the defiance of crappy luck, all of that is something I
> find touching too . . . but lots of other things are motivated by the same
> love, definance, and goodwill, and have awful results. There, I think, is
> where the problem with the parallel is -- that the mock apple pie doesn't
> have awful results... It's effective at demonstrating how a sham can be
> erected for all the right reasons, all the reasons we value, love and
> family and so on, but it doesn't hurt anyone. Everyone eats the pie, at
> worst maybe you get a funny tummy for a day, and then life goes on. So
> you're right, there is a flaw with the analogy. Whereas our diet, or
> infibulation, or any number of other things are naturalized and produce
> awful results.
>
> So maybe the pie could be a starting place for discussing naturalization,
> and something that prevents one's audience from getting immediately
> defensive. Maybe my har har was a little too quick. Hypercritical I am,
> though I doubt it's gradschoolitis... prolonged celibacy? Can I use that as
> an excuse? Look what it does to priests! :/
Ok, I understand you point a little better, and I agree that the study of
how we come to embrace factually unhealthy things as signifiers of health
or rightness is fascinating, but the pie still isn't a very good starting
point, because nobody eats the mock pies anymore, at least nobody I've
ever met. AFAIK, nobody ate the bloody things unless they couldn't get
the indredients for a *real* pie. So the mock pie really isn't symbol at
stake, it's the *real* apple pie that's the symbol, if any. The mock pie
demonstrates our willingness to go out of our way to preserve and consume
the sentimental/symbolic food, but the mock pie isn't itself the symbol.
One could probably go a long way, though, by looking at the
"Americanization" or naturalization of apple pies, hot dogs, hamburgers,
etc., foods that are tasty but not very healthy and which get pushed on us
at every turn because they're "American" and it's somehow patriotic to eat
them on holidays--or worse, how it's unpatriotic not to.
Or how about the Americanization of circumcision thanks to Dr. Kellog's
efforts 100-odd years ago? It's interesting how this Jewish ritual of
purification was picked up as a way to discourage masturbation (yeah,
right!), thus allegedly encouraging Christian anti-sexual values (by
reducing temptation), and thus supposedly increasing the health and
patriotism of the body politic.
Hrm. Circumcising the body politic...great line, need to figure out what
it means.... A way of making sure the males are "all-American?" Strange.
> But . . . I'm still gonna make the pie for the next party I go to here, and
> if it makes me sick, I'm gonna retract the above paragraphs! :)
Frankly, I wouldn't touch the thing.
Marvin Long
Austin, Texas
