Laughing at the Lockdown

Is it the age we live in? Is it the fact that I'm getting old and the world has changed so much around me that being out of step is now the new reality?

You know I have a category I put things in when I come across something I can’t get my mind around. I call it the “Otto, hast Du Worte?” category, after my beloved aunt, Tante Frieda, from Berlin, who would turn to her husband, Otto, and ask, “Otto, do you have words?” when she ran into the latest evidence that we live in a mondo bizarro.

The latest bizarre world thing to come down the pike is the effort on the part of a bunch of German actors to satirize government efforts to control the Corona virus epidemic. 

That’s it. No kidding. Satirize efforts to keep people from dying in ever growing numbers. 

Why? Ah, that’s the question. Is it because, unlike the U.S., where most things get interpreted in black and white, Germany likes a more nuanced approach? That’s how I’ve been looking at Germany recently, as a place with a more sophisticated level of discourse than we’re working with, with the ability to take a variety of perspectives on things. That’s how defenders of the effort are explaining it. They’re twisting themselves into knots, saying, “It’s not that we don’t agree with the need to be cautious and wear masks and follow social distancing regulations so we don’t continue to have spikes in Corona outbreaks which tax our ability to care for new cases. It’s just that we think the government is too authoritarian, and we’re trying to generate more discussion, so that people suffering from the lockdown get their side of the story out there.”

The effort I’m talking about is the #allesdichtmachen movement, the brainchild of actor Jan Josef Liefers. “Allesdichtmachen” translates “Shut everything down.” Liefers was joined by 53 other actors and actresses who agreed to post a one or two-minute video in which they poked fun at the way the campaign to deal with the Coronavirus was being dealt with by the government and in the media. Two other hashtags have popped up which amount to the same thing: #niewiederaufmachen - “never open up again” and #lockdownfürimmer - “lockdown forever.”

Germany is plagued with their equivalent of dumshitrepublicanism in the form of their new rightwing political party, the AfD - the “Alternative für Deutschland” - Alternative for Germany Party. It started out in 2013 as a party to represent anti-EU sentiments, opposition to the euro, to immigration, to German-government bailouts to other EU countries, and has moved more and more to the right over time. It now encourages greater cooperation with Russia, and has managed to gather enough support to become the third largest political party in the country. It’s properly described as anti-Islam, anti-LGBT and it’s difficult not to view them as the “Make America Great Again” supporters of Donald Trump in a German setting. One of their stated goals is to “repudiate Germany’s culture of shame in regard to its Nazi past.” The AfD was delighted to find their “Hollywood” types coming out with an anti-government movement like “Shut Everything Down.” Strange bedfellows. Otto, hast Du Worte?

To be fair, the artists insist they want nothing to do with the AfD; they simply want to raise discussion. The old cliché comes to mind, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” as does the adjective “naive.” I hear that wonderful old admonishment, “Good Lord, stop it - You’re embarrassing yourself!”

The story doesn’t end with the would-be satirists. An opposition group to the “Shut Everything Down” movement has formed, comprised of people who work in the healthcare industry. Best example is probably somebody who calls herself “Doc Caro” on Facebook. She has come up with a counter-hashtag: #allemalneschichtmachen - which I would translate with “How about you come spend a shift with me sometime.” Come down out of your ridiculously out-of-touch security and have a closer look at what’s going on at the front lines, where people are having tubes shoved down their throats and dying, she’s saying.

Whether it’s the impact of Doc Caro and her colleagues, or whether it’s simply the number of Germans asking, “Otto, hast Du Worte?” the resistance to “Shut Everything Down” seems to be gathering steam. Fourteen of the original videos on the site have been taken down, according to the Wikipedia site on the phenomenon.

And what do Liefers and Company have to say about that? “Wonderful!” Just what we were after all along. Generating discussion on the subject, shedding light on it, bringing things out in the open.

I’m all for more discussion, and I’m willing to continue to see this in a positive light - as Germany being more nuanced about things than the U.S. And I understand, in theory, the argument that irony, sarcasm, satire and ridicule can often be more effective methods for dealing with stupidity and wrong-headedness than an overly-earnest frontal attack.

But Jeez, Louise, do we have to poke fun at people who take issue with child molesters? With people who want to tackle poverty?

Hard to know where to come down sometimes.

And at other times?

Not so hard.

Hunter Biden's Beautiful Things: A Memoir - a review

Hunter Biden's memoir, just out, arrived today and I read it in one sitting. Haven't done that in ages.              

Normally it's a race to see what gives out first, the eyes or the sitzfleish. But this was too compelling to put down.

Until Joe Biden was elected president, I showed only passing interest in the Biden family. I was a strong Bernie supporter and joined those who felt Biden was too bourgeois, too much of a business-as-usual candidate to fix what ails this country - the dumbed down electorate, the colossal inequity that stems from our history of racism and segregation, brought to a new level of awareness by the 45th president and his appeal to white supremacists. But since he has assumed office, I've become a convert. I think he and Kamala Harris are on the right track, and have given us reason to hope again that maybe surrendering to despair was not the only way to go.

If you're wondering how I could start a review of Hunter's book with an assessment of his father, let me ask you - isn't it obvious? Nothing Hunter might say or do can be separated from the fact that he's the president's son. Trump and his thuggish henchmen, Giuliani and the Alt Right thought they had struck gold when they discovered that Hunter was earning $50,000 a month working for a Ukrainian power company, and they thought they had uncovered a political goldmine.

So far, that story has been a dud.  Try as they might, the conspiracy mongers on the right have failed to turn up any dirt. There was a downside to his whopping big salary, though, according to Hunter. It  enabled him to afford a very expensive drug habit. The book is a blow-by-blow account of Hunter's descent into addiction and depravity.

You can read Hunter's story through the eyes of a scold, who believes that exposing such weakness and such dirt can only soil the reputation of Joe Biden.  Or you can view it as an American tragedy,  through the more sympathetic eyes of somebody aware of the extent of America's drug problem. I read it the way I think Hunter hopes most people will read it, as a warning to anyone who might be susceptible to addictions. It's a serious cautionary tale. You hear people say you have to hit bottom before you can expect to escape addiction. Hunter makes the case that for many the bottom is death; the problem is actually much worse than most are inclined to believe.

Hunter lost his mother and a sister in a car accident. He and his brother Beau were spared and the loss brought the already close brothers - only a year an a day apart in age - even closer. That Beau should develop brain cancer in his 40s should strike you as the cruelest twist of fate, and it's no surprise that such loss and fear that disaster could strike again could lead to despair and a "why bother to care about anything?" attitude.

Hunter describes his family as fiercely close and loving people - starting with his father - who bounce back from anything, and he readily admits that others have experienced much worse. How one responds to catastrophe seems to be as much a function of psychological disposition as experience with hard times. He makes no excuses for himself.

What comes through is a family dynamic which includes an unusual ability to express love and affection. The Bidens cry easily and openly. They are there for each other.

Hunter started with alcohol and moved at some point to crack cocaine. Seventy times he tried to escape his addictions and seventy times he failed. What saved him, he tells us, is a dea ex machina, a South African filmmaker named Melissa, whom he met and married a couple weeks later. The tale is a little hard to take seriously, but by the time you reach the end of the book - and the happy ending - you're worn thin by the endless relapses and begging for relief.

The cynic in me says this is all a bit much to be expected to believe. But although it's stranger than fiction, there seems to be no shortage of folks around ready to corroborate the story. So maybe it's all true. Nice Irish Catholic boy meets Jewish divorcee and has "shalom" tatooed on his arm to match hers, and she succeeds where 70 odd institutions have failed.

Could happen.

Beautiful prose. Hunter writes convincingly and powerfully.

Going with the flow vs. stanching the wound

 An ad for a new Apple Macintosh antivirus program found its way into my inbox this week and drove me up the wall: “Optimise (sic - British spelling) your Device (sic - capital D) to it’s (sic sic sic) Full Potential (caps on both words). I copied and pasted it into an e-mail which I sent around to friends under the subject title: “Aaaaaaaargh” - give or take an a.  “Look at that!” I wanted to say (but felt I didn’t need to). That phrase came to mind my friend Jerry came out with one time when we were in the army and he found everybody around him a bit of a strain: “Here I sit, surrounded by plebeians.” Loved that about Jerry. Had a giant heart. And a wonderful ability to outsnob the rest of us and do it with class.

The school ma’arm in me is at constant loggerheads with the descriptive linguist. On the one hand, I squirm at every misuse of “their” for “they’re” or “there,” and at the failure of people to distinguish between the third person singular neuter pronoun its and the conjunction* it’s, which is “it is” writ short.

(I meant to say "contraction" but lost my way after the first syllable. A useful reminder that when people lecture you on "writin' proper" you may need to keep your guard up.)

And on the other hand, I’ve had a lifelong academic career in language, literacy and culture - or “philology” as it was once called. And I know that when it comes to language, the Buddhists are right: the only constant in life is change. What to one generation is sloppy use of language is to the next generation simply the way things are said and written - no big deal. When I went to high school teachers would have a hissy-fit over a split infinitive. An A-paper could quickly become a B-paper if I should be so careless as to write “It’s important to never miss a chance” instead of “it’s important never to miss a chance…” These days, fussing over that distinction is just that: silly fussing.

I have a weekly zoom meeting with four near-and-dears. This week one of the topics that came up was the fact that one of us said she was uncomfortable with the use of “they” in the singular.

I spotted what some might call an inclination to be “conservative” about language use” and immediately switched to school-ma’arm mode to stress what I believe is an important distinction to be made between sloppy, undisciplined language change and change that is defensible.

English, like French and other European languages, has a history of moving plurals into the singular as a way of expressing politeness, but also because speakers simply found the distinction to be no longer worth making. We once had thou and thee for second-person singular and ye and you for second-person plural, but over time we’ve decided, collectively, that distinguishing between singular and plural and between nominative and accusative (objective) cases isn’t worth the effort. We let the pronoun you serve all four functions.

French did something similar, as did other Germanic and Romance and Slavic languages. They kept the singular-plural (tu - vous) distinction, but began using the plural form in the singular as a means of putting a bit of distance between speaker and hearer and keeping tu for intimate connections. German went one step further: they began using the third person plural (i.e., “they”) as a “polite” way of addressing a person in both the singular and the plural, writing the pronoun with a capital letter when it refers to “you” and leaving it in lower case when it means “they.” “Möchten sie eine Tasse Kaffee?” is “Would they like a cup of coffee” and Möchten Sie eine Tasse Kaffee?” is “Would you like a cup of coffee?” In the spoken language, there is rarely any ambiguity, since the question is pretty much always directed to “you” and not to “them.”

When our consciousness was raised back in the 60s about the effects of using the masculine pronoun to represent men and women both, we started saying “he or she” where once we said only “he.” But that has proven too cumbersome and in reaching out for a better solution, we’ve pretty much settled on using “they” to mean “he” or “she” or “he or she,” he/she,” “(s)he,” etc. On precisely the same pattern as the transfer of “you” from plural to singular.

An obvious solution, and a much less cumbersome way of bringing women out of second-class status than the German practice of virtually always using both masculine and feminine forms of nouns in the plural when speaking publicly. “Bürger” is the German word for “citizen” - singular masculine. The feminine form is “Bürgerin” and the plural forms are Bürger (no change from the singular) and “Bürgerinnen,” respectively. No modern-day politician who values their career would be caught saying “Bürger” to mean “all citizens, male and female” as was routine only a generation or two ago. These days, the universal practice, if you want to say, “That applies to all citizens,” is to say, “Das gilt für alle Bürgerinnen und Bürger,” - and by the way, use the feminine form first.

There is language change, and then there is language change. My mother used to sign my report card, “Mrs. John S. McCornick” and think nothing of it. It wasn’t like in India, where women needed their husbands’ permission to go to the movies, but they did need their approval to get a credit card. And we’ve marked the evolution of our consciousness of sexism by language change.

But what about using “it’s” as a third-person singular pronoun, parallel to “his” and “hers”? To me that’s a horse of a different color. That strikes me as undisciplined. It gives off a smell. It’s like writing tuesday with a small t. Language conventions have a function. As a writing teacher I used to explain to students that writing Tuesday with a capital T is not just a question of “correctness.” It’s that when you don’t do it, you grab the attention of your reader, and take it off the subject at hand. “Why is this person doing something unconventional?” It is pragmatically self-destructive, in other words, and not merely “dumb.” e.e. cummings and bell hooks chose to write their names all in lower-case letters to make a point. I don’t remember now what that point is - if I ever knew. But these are harmless eccentricities, in any case, and not show-stoppers, as writing tuesday with a small t or leaving out the r in Febuary is. 

Here’s where I get all authoritarian, in other words. OK, so putting an extra r in February requires some effort. Get over it. Just do it.

I have a whole bunch of things that get under my skin when it comes to language use which no doubt are signs of the modern American language in transition. Less people gives me a belly ache. It’s fewer people - people are countable and I feel inclined to put people who say “less people” in the same category as people who eat Wonder Bread.

Irregardless is a walking canker sore. A double negative. It took me forever to learn that one “pores” over books - one doesn’t “pour” over books. But I learned to make the distinction. And since I did, I figure you all can jolly well learn that “they are” when mushed together becomes “they’re” and not “there” or “their.

In this day when everybody and their cousin Jack has an opinion to express on the internet and sees no reason to distinguish between the apostrophe-s of the possessive and the no-apostrophe-s of the plural, I feel a sense that the world is going to hell. It’s like watching abusive parents go at their kids - you want to urge congress to pass a law. Nobody should be allowed to have children who don’t immediately put their well-being front and center. Nobody should be allowed to own a dog who doesn’t shower it regularly with affection. Nobody should be allowed to write a sentence like “I’m going to the party with two other girl’s” without at least a night in jail. And the plural of walrus, by the way, is walruses, not walrus’es, not walrus’, and not walrus’s. Learn the damn form.

So listen up, Apple. Your marvelous new antivirus program may be the best thing to come down the pike in years, and I may be shooting myself in the foot by refusing to install it, but until you get your shit together, ain’t no way you’re going to persuade me to become a customer.

I’ve been duped by many a silver-tongued devil.

But no way I’m going to be taken in by a lazy mush-mouth.