The Coltan Miners’ Slaughter: the Congo Holocaust(s) for Absolute Beginners

The Coltan Miners’ Slaughter: the Congo Holocaust(s) for Absolute Beginners
by Lorette C. Luzajic

We talk about a lot of atrocity in the past tense. Slavery and witch burnings and the holocaust are tidily behind us, and so it’s safe to introspect about our evil forebears and how we’re not like them. We think we’re doing pretty good: the only problems left in the world are the war in Iraq, the sprawling of Wal Mart, and the economic repercussions making it harder to afford Playstations.

So you may be surprised to learn that never in history has slavery been more widespread. You may have caught the film Hotel Rwanda and cried like a baby when the hotelier tells his wife that when danger comes, she should jump off of the roof with all the children. That would be a more pleasant ending than by rebel machetes. But you may not know that there is a holocaust in the Congo, a genocide bigger than the Nazi exterminations, and one that is taking place today.

I was walking with a friend with whom I seldom see eye to eye. Usually, I don’t need to agree with someone to get along with him or her, but what came out his mouth was unbelievable. I offhandedly mentioned something about violence against women, shamefully having been recently made aware of the situation in the Congo, where women (and men and boys) are being raped as terrorism. Stunned at his apathy, I said, “There’s a genocide going on there right now.”

To my amazement, my pal said, “That’s what happens when you let Africans run a country.”

There are a few dozen problems I have with that statement, including the implications of “let.” I was gobsmacked, And I was feeling superior because I now knew the holocaust was happening, though had I not picked up that small-circulating women’s politics magazine at the coffee shop, I might still be in the dark today. Said Africans seldom make the big dailies- a few tiny paragraphs after the Who Wore What pages hardly register when you’re talking about a genocide. Genocide.

“Actually,” I said, “that’s what happens when you let North American multinationals run the world. It’s all about mining.”

My friend thought this was bullshit, that it was all about rebel tribes, to which I retorted, “Looks like you better learn to read.”

It was an unpleasant exchange that soured our evening. Usually, we agree to stay off topics that incite our respective furies. I’m used to conservative philosophy, having been raised by new-earth-creationist-inerrancy fundies who know “these people” are paying the consequence of sin. In contrast, this particular pal was a liberal nutter.  I didn’t bother asking if it would be okay for someone to bang at this friend’s door, barge in, torture him, and make off with any diamonds or rubies that happened he happened to be growing in his backyard. I already knew the answer- that somehow, that would be “different,” a simplistic rendering of a scenario I just shouldn’t worry my pretty little head about.

It is simplistic, yes. But accurate nonetheless. The Congo is home to untold riches of natural resources, and home to most of the world’s coltan. Most of us have heard of emeralds but not coltan. Just as the Spanish fled to South America to kill the heathens and help themselves to the beauty booty, today the multinationals are helping themselves to the coltan. The only real difference is that instead of getting their own hands dirty, they’re using tribal politics and corrupt governments to fuel sick massacres so that people like my pal can blame it all on black people.

As Cindy Lauper sings, “it’s the same old fucking story.”

But it has nothing to do with us, right? What is coltan anyways? We’ve never even heard of it, so we’re definitely not wearing it, right?

Aye, there’s the rub. The reason we don’t know much about the situation in the Congo is because the psychopathic corporate kings don’t want us to know. There might be a dent in their profits. Because you and I are buying coltan all the time. Would you willingly buy something knowing another had been murdered for it, or had her uterus ripped out by machete? Maybe. Never seemed to stop anyone from buying cocaine. But then, maybe your cocaine didn’t kill anyone. Your coltan did, though. It absolutely did.

Columbite-tantalite is a magic metallic ore that turns into metallic tantalum after refining. This heat resistant powder can hold high electrical charges, making it vital to the creation of capacitors, which control current flow inside almost all electronic communication devices- you know, your cell phone, laptop, pager and gaming electronica.

The war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire, started in 1996. (Well, technically there are two wars. One was from 1996 to 1997. Then, in 1998 the war continued.) Six million people have lost their lives.

Let me say that again- six million people have lost their lives.

Starvation, disease, rape, torture and murder cause 45 000 deaths each and every month.

The war is indeed a very complex web of alliances and betrayals, of historical feuding, of poverty, of government corruptions, of tribal conflicts, of rebel militia, of mutiny, of land ownership, of diamonds, other natural resources, and wars within wars.

The war implicates a mish mash of alliances that seemingly change on a daily basis, a testament to the instability of east Africa, a legacy with many origins.  Foreign militia such as Uganda and the post-genocidal Rwanda pay themselves by trading off diamonds, timber, and coltan from east Congo. Considering Rwanda has no coltan of its own, it is surprising that the tiny country is earning hundreds of millions of dollars from the ore. All countries deny participating in the coltan black market, making a convenient conspiracy of silence. There are other valuable minerals, too- gold, silver, copper, zinc, uranium, magnesium and more.

Land where coltan might exist is simply seized and mines are set up, and families who live there are simply cast out or else raped, tortured and killed. Rebel thieves, who sell their wares to the countries who use coltan- us- have torn apart the gorgeous national parks, decimated the lush forests, and poisoned the environment. Congolese who participate willingly in mining can make 50 bucks a week, instead of the national Congo average salary of about ten bucks a month. Still, with so many sick, maimed, orphaned and homeless, starvation has meant hunting endangered species like elephants, for food. The gorilla population in some parks has been cut in half. Virunga National Park’s hippo population has gone from nearly 30 thousand to under 1000.

Sexual violence in the Congo is considered the worst in the entire world. Amnesty International reports that ALL of the armed forces involved in the Congo war have committed rape. In the tens of thousands, from children to grandmothers, women have been raped.

If this alone were not disgusting enough, the creativity with which these monsters employ their degradation tactics is beyond belief. Many girls are taken into captivity as sex slaves for one or more soldiers. This can last a few days or a few years. Little girls are taken and FORCED INTO COMBAT, as well as acting as “wives” for combatants. Many children and women are gang raped by 20 men, and many have had been rape victims on numerous, different occasions. Women are raped publicly in front of their helpless captive family, and often forced to perform live sex shows to entertain the rebels. These sex shows may include being forced to perform sex acts with their own fathers or sons.  Women are frequently raped with machetes- yes, chopped up- and with sticks, broken bottles, hot peppers, rusty nails, rifles, and knives. Sometimes they are shot in the vagina.

The motivations for such depravity are humiliation, intimidation, and the cessation of fertility (genocide.) Rape is punishment for noncompliance, and it is simply entertainment that clearly expresses that women are playthings and nothing more. There is no punishment for rape because literally every one is doing it.

Sexually transmitted diseases are rampant, including HIV and AIDS. But there are barely any hospitals in the Congo, not many doctors, and no money for patients to pay them with. Which means no one can afford to go. Many bleed to death, die of reproductive complications, STDs, and infection. Then there’s exile, humiliation, depression, post traumatic stress disorder, flashbacks, pregnancies by the enemy, and nightmares.

Then there’s a little matter of child labour. Children form a significant part of the workforce in Congo mines. Children also work for the various armies, including in combat.

The consequences for anyone who opens their mouth about the situation in the Congo are also a little inconvenient.

Mattias Söderberg, a campaign officer for DanChurchAid work in DRC Congo writes online, “It can be dangerous to ask questions.” He notes that the organization’ former partner, Heritiers de la Justice experienced assassinations. Silence is golden.

It can’t get much worse, but it does. As terrifying as life is for the Congolese, it’s even worse, as usual, for the Congolese natives. Homer mentioned a tribe of dwarves living south of Ethiopia, called Pygmies in Greek mythology. But the pygmies are not mythical dwarves- they are the original forest dwellers of the Congo and beyond. There are pygmy tribes all over the world. It’s considered somewhat but not terribly pejorative to say “pygmy” not because it emphasizes their short stature, but because they are not one kind of people. Just in the Congo, there are numerous tribes, such as the Mbenga, the Mbuti, and the Twa.

There are many theories why pygmy people are shorter on average than other groups of people, ranging from vitamin d deficiency to evolutionary adaptation to adolescent reproduction in history. But the most popular theory of all is that pygmies are not humans, an opinion sadly shared by other Congolese and by rebel groups, not to mention many Christian missionaries.

The Congolese pygmies are old-world hunter-gatherers who love the equatorial forests. They are a peaceful lot, preferring their own way of life without imposing it on others. Their carbon footprint is pretty much nil, and they survive on game and forest plants, sometimes trading with other groups nearby who farm. Some of the Congolese pygmy tribes, but not all, appear to have the oldest bloodlines we know of. This ancient indigenous beauty should be a source of pride for all of us, not some sick assumption that they are subhuman.

The forest dwellers are highly intelligent people who know the secrets of the rainforest intimately, familiar with its dangers, paths, plants and so on. They are skilled hunters and trackers. Though they have never taken up arms in any of the Congo conflicts, their superb knowledge of their surroundings is very useful to other Congolese, rebel militia, and more. So the pygmy people are kidnapped and used as guides. Furthermore, the rainforests are being decimated to unearth more coltan mines, leaving tribes homeless or dead. Historically, they have been kept as pets. Still, these are nicer fates than the frequent alternatives: sex slave, human mule, or food.

Yes, in addition to being raped, tortured, decapitated, or enslaved, the pygmies are being hunted for sport and for food. The cannibalization of these groups by rebel forces is justified because they are meat, not human beings. There is a literal meat market selling pygmy pork. And yes, this is happening today, not millennia ago. Today.

While pygmy hunters justify their actions by pointing out that monkey is familiar game in the Congo, they also hold bizarre beliefs that the sex parts of pygmies will imbue them with magical superpowers.

The London-based Minority Rights Group has been gathering evidence of rape, mass murder and cannibalism, appealing to the International Court of Justice to charge those responsible with war crimes or crimes against humanity. Individuals may do the hunting, but there are also groups like The Erasers who hunt, feast, then erase the forest and set up coltan mines.

That’s an awful lot of bang for your buck, now, isn’t it? Cutting down one of the world’s largest rainforest isn’t great for our oxygen supply or global warming. Genocide and destruction of the land is a foolish thing to close our eyes on when the Congo has the agricultural capacity to feed everyone in the world for the next quarter century. So why are the inhabitants starving to death? Why are they eating each other?

It always comes down to money. I feel sick every time I answer my cell phone. I didn’t know when I bought it. Can we live in a world without cell phones? Computers? Video games?

I need mine. I’m not willing to go without it, but now that I know I’ve been an unwitting accomplice to crimes against humanity, to rainforest destruction and hippo extinction, to cannibalism and gang rape, I want to take responsibility. I want multinational corporations to take responsibility, too, and start telling the truth about war. The kind of racism that still passes for truth here has kept us “minding our own business” with no knowledge of our complicity in atrocity.

The friend I mentioned earlier who made a very racist comment about black people not being able to run a country was merely reiterating the kind of theology we are puppeteered with. And while there is no doubt that African groups, like European groups, Asian groups, Middle Eastern groups and all groups, are historically shattered by conflict, that’s not the whole story. I doubt my friend is aware that much of Rwanda’s and next-door Congo’s tribal distress are inheritances of Belgium’s colonial plundering. The Congo region and all that was in it was “given” to the King of Belgium as a gift, creating a perpetual turmoil ever since.

Indeed, the situation we’ve got is a little bit of a déjà vu. For some reason, we decry the inhumanity of Hitler, yet have never heard of the Congo’s previous holocaust. The tyrant King Leopold the second murdered around TEN MILLION people (1885 – 1908). Leo took and ran the Congo as a business venture, wanting the profits from its rubber and ivory resources. He studied the colonial trades of the Spanish in Latin America as inspiring models.

“The real reasons for the ongoing war in the Congo is described in great detail in several United Nations Security Council Expert Reports, make clear that war and massive civilian deaths in the Eastern Congo since 1996 have little, if anything to do with “tribalism,” “ethnicity,” or even the “Rwanda genocide.”  But, rather, have everything to do with the rape of the Congo’s resources by the militaries of Rwanda and Uganda and their local surrogates,” writes by Prof. Peter Erlinder at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10815. “According to three separate UN Security Council Reports, issued between 2001 and 2003, war on the Congo began when Uganda and Rwanda made common-cause with local Congolese leader Laurent Kabila, and other Congolese elites, to control the vast resources of the Eastern Congo in 1996. The UN Reports show that that since, the 1996 invasion and a second invasion in 1998, Rwanda and Uganda have become the major trading centres for diamonds, precious metals and other natural resources that are not found in either country…but which exist in great quantities in the Congo.”

Massive corporations justify their participation in the massacre with the old standard: “they should be happy they have jobs.” Indeed, the mess is so huge and poverty and disease so widespread, that the argument often resonates as reasonable. Yet the root of most of the unrest, violence, poverty, displacement, orphaning, rape, and joblessness is mining. The people have become dependent on it- especially the people who don’t even live in the Congo yet wish to profit from it.

So what can I do if I’m not willing to throw away my cell phone? Throwing it away after the fact will mean that millions died in complete vain, rather than dying so you can check every thirty three seconds if that hottie texted you yet.

The coltan boycott may be too late- it’s already all here in our stuff. It’s no coincidence that we didn’t hear about this mineral for the past decade as cell phones and laptops became part of every day life, from veritable inexistence into staples of our existence, making a few honchos rich at the cost of millions of lives.

But you can indeed refuse to buy more of this shit. Do you really want a fancier phone now, knowing a baby got raped with a broken bottle to get it to you? Buy secondhand. Buy from companies who refuse to use Congo coltan. Though coltan is rare in other parts of the world, and will cost you more, it won’t cost you your life so do the right thing.

Manufacturers respond quickly to your money. Withhold it, making clear why you’re giving it somewhere else. If we all promise our dollars to Congo-clean companies, more companies will follow suit. Activist Maurice Carney told Alternatives.ca that we should all call our electronics manufacturers and ask whether they buy Congo coltan or mining, otherwise do business in Congo. He said it’s not just about refusing to use coltan- huge companies can pressure the Congo government to reform it’s closed eye policies, and come up with a system that benefits the country instead of benefiting Rwandan rapists and the American elite.

Recycling cell phones and electronics seems inconsequential, but the extra effort may mean an acre of rainforest or a life saved. If you invest in stocks, take care that your mining investments or other investments are not bloody by researching the sources of your stocks, as well as other investments your company may make and business it may do. Refuse to earn money on death.

You can also campaign in support of the Congo Conflict Minerals Act 2009, urging your politicians to stand up for it. The Act would be a great step forward in demanding disclosure from companies that use blood minerals, including stocks. In addition, it calls for ways to reinvent the Congo resource system as humane and beneficial to the victims in the aftermath of this genocide.

You can support Friends of the Congo financially or by spreading the word. Head to http://friendsofthecongo.org/friends/index.php to find about the projects they do for the sick, impoverished, orphaned, and raped. They have excellent resources online to help you understand the histories, and why it matters.

You can also visit http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/ to find ways to help support and empower Congo’s rape victims and other women.

Or check out Breaking the Silence’s cool Congo week. They’ve got some great projects we can help out on. http://congoweek.org/english/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=104&Itemid=101 Friends of the Congo team up with the Association of Widows to help out poor ladies who’ve witnessed their husband’s decapitations or impalings. They help rape victims and families. Another really important project we can help with is with RENEC. “RENEC is made up of institutions from diverse sectors of the Congolese society: youth/students, religious, women’s groups, grassroots civil society groups, environmental groups and labor coalitions. RENEC provides education and training to the

forest pygmies

Congolese population regarding their civic responsibilities in a newly democratic society. Also, RENEC builds the capacity of grassroots organizations seeking to provide social, human rights and civic support to the people of the Congo.”

A great resource for getting started is  http://www.congoglobalaction.org.

I’m going to be picking up a copy of King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild, which is apparently an amazing, readable account of the Congo’s problems at the turn of last century. The book has garnered criticism from Belgium for not being objective enough, and from reviewers who feel Leo was simply an opportunist who was passive when everybody else suddenly started killing each other over the wares he insisted were his own. I’ll continue reading after that, to get a better understanding of the complex web of conflict.

Congo has one of the darkest histories of any part on earth, and yet up until a few months ago I knew nothing about it at all except for a vague recollection of Michael Crichton plague novels when I worked for Chapters. I’m quite interested in Africa and even took a couple of courses in university on it, but my impressions about the specifics were vague. How can this be when this war is much huger than the one in Iraq, much more current than the Second World War?

Indeed, the war in the Congo (which has “officially” ended, by the way, which is a farce) is also called the African World War. But it’s not just Africa. It IS a world war. You and I are players in it. Our countries are massive contributors. All developed nations and their citizens who own technology are part of this world war, and we deserve to know more. Any war that involves heavyweight players like the United States, Japan, China, all of Europe, and most African countries is a world war no matter how you spin it.

It is imperative now that we know, to choose not to participate in the war. And perhaps, to choose to help the world work toward the healing of this precious part of our world.

The Congo is a land we must cherish and share. We have no choice. Maybe you’re a real creep and don’t actually care about the Pygmies or about someone raping grandmothers and babies.

But The Congo isn’t just about weird jungle diseases and tribal massacres over superstition and so on that don’t really affect you. That forest is the world’s crowning jewel of our oxygen, curing us of over a billion tons of carbon emissions per year. We can’t live without it.

Hidden Dangers of Soy

Reading Dianne Gregg’s  Hidden Dangers of Soy

www.hiddensoy.com

The toxic reality of soy is becoming less and less controversial and more and more obvious as fact the globe over.

The soy bean has been touted as the healthiest food on the planet, but few people know that this was the result of massive campaigns from Big Soy, who have never had our best interest at heart.

Consider that soy’s first western bonanza was as vegetable oil. Margarine. You got it- hydrogenated fats, now known to be safe at zero levels of consumption only. Once upon a time, soy told us that soy infant formula was better than breast milk!

Soy is a potent estrogenic- causing havoc in men’s bodies (and women’s.) Soy protein is an isolate which is the waste product of soy oil manufacture. Soy contains chemicals which leach vital minerals out of your body. Soy foods suppress thyroid and pancreas function.

But aren’t Asians healthier?

Asian soy is fermented, a traditional art which was developed for the express cause of making a toxic food edible. The fermentation process neutralizes some of the poisons. The Japanese don’t eat nearly as much soy as we assume- they eat a lot of raw fish and pork. The Chinese also eat a lot of pork, and more soy than the Japanese. They have much higher rates of thyroid and pancreas cancers than we do. Soy contains aluminum and hexane.

And it’s also one of the most common allergens we know of.

Dianne Gregg did not know about her soy allergy until she began eating a great deal in hopes of a better menopause. Like all of us, she had heard about the wonderful benefits of soyfoods. She began gaining weight but assumed it was natural aging.

One evening she had a soy burger for dinner and the next day found herself weak, anxious, and vomiting on the bathroom floor. Her blood pressure was dropping steadily and the emergency nurses realized that she was in anaphylactic shock.

Dianne Gregg nearly died.

Later she discovered that soy is a common allergen. She removed it completely from her diet and went back to her usual slim weight and her health was completely rejuvenated.

Dianne realized that even if you are not “allergic” to soy, consuming quantities of unfermented soy foods is hazardous to your health.

To help us, she wrote The Hidden Dangers of Soy.

As a thyroid patient, I’ve long cut soy out of my diet and I’ve written quite a bit about the hazards of this un-food which is not even healthy for cattle to consume. (One of the reasons for our sick livestock is that our food is fed with soy, which causes major illnesses and infections in cattle.) But even though I’m already well versed on the dangers, I found Dianne’s book helpful because she helps me find the hidden sources of soy in my diet.

Nearly everywhere you see the words “vegetable oil” without specifying what vegetable, you can assume it is soy. Fast food meat is stretched with soy filler. Many donuts use soy oil. And you thought it was the sugar! Well, it is, but no one assumes sugar is good for you, and goes out of their way to eat it for better health. Many breads contain soy flour in addition to other flours.

Dianne reminds us to ask at restaurants that our food be cooked in oils of our choosing. Even a simple dish might contain soy oil. It’s in ice cream. It’s in most packaged foods.

You’ve really got to read the labels, even if you don’t suspect anything. Canned tuna often contains soy. Most chocolate contains it. Most commercial sauces do, too. Mixed bean sprouts may have soy. Veggie burgers or nature dogs are not so natural- they are made with leftover sludge, treated with hexane, and served up as heart healthy ‘no cholesterol’ meat substitutes. This is not real food.

Protein bars and protein shakes usually contain the most toxic forms of soy.

Miso, natto, tamari, tempeh, may be traditionally fermented, but if bought in North America, use extreme moderation as fermenting process is usually not complete.

Dianne conveniently lists the many names of soy, which include: edamame, shoyu, sobee, soy grits, textured vegetable protein, and more.

She lists specific cautions where we should be especially vigilant to read labels: unspecified sources of “plant protein,” emulsifiers, bulking agents, shortenings, thickeners, starches, lecithin, and MSG probably contain soy.

Many vitamin and supplement products contain soy filler. Ironically, many thyroid medicines contain it, too (soy has huge effects on thyroid damage, even in small amounts.)

The soy controversy is a real source of contention, unfortunately, for many vegetarians who rely on it as their main protein source. So many trusted nutritionists and gurus discount the evidence piling up all over the world for the great soy con. Because of high emotions and personal ethical decisions to avoid killing, sadly many are playing right into the hands of an industry that is even filthier than factory farming. Soy is not a cottage industry of healthy, happy peace loving hippies- it is among the most massive industries, and destroying more rainforests than cattle. There is increasing evidence pouring in that one of the major reasons for the major health crises of our century- cancer, diabetes, and heart disease-is the fact that we are eating several hundred times more “vegetable oil” than we did in the 1900s. Soy oil is ubiquitous, and it seriously disrupts our balance of omega fatty acids. It is also heavily processed. There is a very real possibility that soy oil is as guilty- or guiltier- than sugar in wrecking havoc on our health. Because soy is a potent hormone disruptor, its deadly implications are vast.

The difference, of course, between sugar and soy is the snake oil salesman. No one believes cigarettes or soda are good for their health. They may choose to indulge. They may get addicted. But we know ice cream is not going to cure our prostrate cancer, and we wouldn’t feed cola to our babies.

Thank you so much to Dianne for sharing her story. You may find some of your health symptoms in her book, or prevent them. You’ll learn how to do your detective work to keep soy out of your diet. Most fascinating are the dozens of testimonials from others who got sick on soy. It’s a book you don’t want to miss.

Order it now at Amazon.

i’m still here

Dear Readers,

I’m a bad blogger. I should write short, frequent bits to keep you amused and coming back for more. Instead I write lengthy pieces and then go on holiday for months at a time.

Sorry. I haven’t disappeared. In fact, I’m working so hard that I have had no time to post anything. I’ve got three amazing projects that are coming your way  soon- all of them very nearly finished. So forgive me for not staying in better touch.

But you can stay in touch with me, too. Do so by ordering a copy of Weird Monologues for a Rainy Life (irreverent ramblings from the end of the world.)  Yes, you’re going to have to keep up because the sequel is launching this fall. And so is the world’s most amazing book about Michael Jackson that I’ve been editing- featuring fifty incredible writers.

After that, there’s a little surprise, something rare- a few short fiction stories that I hope you’ll enjoy.

As ever, keep sending your letters. I love them!

And find some time to listen to a bit of Son House before porch weather disappears.

luv u

xo

The Illiteracy of Kanye West

Yes, it’s old news to everyone else, but I’ve been trying to moderate my celebrity gossip addiction. So I just heard the news that Kanye West can’t read.

I mean, that’s the only reason I can think of that anyone would go out of their way to act as if non-readers were smarter. Plus, it explains why the ‘book’ he put out was a lot of blank space and used confusing, poorly organized language. Most of all, it would explain why the guy is so arrogant and moronic and full of himself and repugnant: he REALLY IS stupid.

“I am not a fan of books,” he said. “I would never want a book’s autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life.”

There are so many things wrong with this- but we’ll point out how he doesn’t want “a book’s autograph” just because it’s kind of funny.  I would also like to know how he might actually glean information from conversations, because he’s the only one he lets speak during any given exchange.

I’m all for ‘living real life.’ I totally get that- nothing compares to experience and action. However, it’s sometimes hard to learn about different places and different eras in history and different people without reading. For example, none of us know enough about the holocaust in the Congo that is still happening. Have you heard of it? Six million have died- yes, by holocaust I meant holocaust. It would be wonderful if Kanye headed over there to personally experience the massacre and mass machete rapes desecrating the peoples. Then he could write songs about it and send the proceeds to help, doing something useful for a change.

It would also be hard to get information about ancient Egypt or the Inquisition by talking to people. I doubt time travel is one of  Kanye’s oft professed superpowers.

It’s especially wonderful that a successful role model for African Americans would let this demographic know that literacy efforts are overrated. Forget books, forget school- get experience from real life. That will be rad for millions of black kids, doing cool hands on stuff with Mom and Dad and the neighbours. But for others, well, real  living means crack and guns and the like. But yeah, we gotta keep it real.

I’m embarrassed to say I like a few songs. Not much gets me on a treadmill, I’ll admit it. But Stronger on repeat gets my blood pumping. I know the man gets miffed after every award show, claiming it was rigged if any of the many better artists had a chance. But he definitely gets the prize for Best Gym Bunny Song. It’s only real competition is “Fergalicious.”

Just because I’m a bibliophile, this statement ranks number one in Statements that Confirm my Suspicions that Kanye West is an Asshole. But there are competitors. Here are a meagre few of the long list:

“Now I can let these dream killers kill my self esteem-or use my arrogance as steam to power my dreams!!!”

“If I was more complacent and I let things slide, my life would be easier, but you all wouldn’t be as entertained. My misery is your pleasure.”

“If it wasn’t for race mixing there’d be no video girls. Me and most of our friends like mutts a lot. Yeah, in the hood they call ‘em mutts.”

“I realize that my place and position in history is that I will go down as the voice of this generation”

“I’m a pop enigma. I live and breathe every element in life. I rock a bespoke suit and I go to Harold’s for fried chicken. It’s all these things at once, because, as a tastemaker, I find the best of everything. There’s certain things that black people are the best at and certain things that white people are the best at. Whatever we as black people are the best at, I’m a go get that. Like, on Christmas I don’t want any food that tastes white. And when I go to purchase a house, I don’t want my credit to look black.”

“I don’t even listen to rap. My apartment is too nice to listen to rap in.”

“To use someone is necessary. What’s negative is to misuse, overuse or abuse somebody. To use is necessary. If you can’t get used, then you’re useless.”

The Man Who Wasn’t There- the Disappearance of Michael Jackson

The last few days it’s become apparent that I’ll never get tired of replaying Michael Jackson’s Will you be There? The orchestral, gospel swell in this hymn of heartbreak and hope has long made it one of my favourites. But the number of times I’ve blasted it in the five days since MJ died borders on obsession. Maybe it’s the voice over that makes it feel like he is right here, talking with me- “In my darkest hour, in my deepest despair, will you still care? Will you be there?”

This underrated song showcases some Michael’s strongest vocals ever, building into full throttle, when he belts in scorching anguish, “Lift me up, lift me up…I get lonely sometimes, I get lonely…” The biggest celebrity in all of history was quite possibly the loneliest person who ever lived, an irony we will never wrap our heads around.

“I’m so confused, will you show to me you’ll be there for me?”

Most stars will be fucked up in ways that we will not, just as our peculiar neuroses will unlikely be the worries of Madonna. Child stars have their own little-girl-lost syndromes that few seem able to escape, even if their star was fleeting before the crash. Those who have gone on to become the biggest stars in the constellation of popdom live in a bizarre prison of abject isolation. Even as they are constantly surrounded with masses and outpourings of love and celebration, they have nothing of their own concrete, discreet identity on which to draw the strength to be taken from, watched, idolized, scrutinized.

For Michael, there was never anywhere to hide- since he could talk, he was charming the world with his cherub’s face, seducing the world with love songs and disco. In the man’s own words, he was a veteran by the time he hit puberty.

If you thought about it, you’d probably observe that your most lonely times aren’t when you are, in fact, alone, but when you feel misunderstood by your spouse, adrift from your friends. True or false, when you perceive they don’t want you or see what you are about, if you don’t feel their unconditional love, it doesn’t matter if the whole damn family is right beside you at dinner. It doesn’t matter if you have fifteen men asking you to marry them. My favourite spiritual writer and my teacher Thomas Moore wrote, “We may think we’re lonely because we have no friends, when the fact is we have no relationship to ourselves.”

This man from whom so much was taken, so much demanded, never turned on his fans. He always expressed his love for us, so long as we were outpouring love and not spewing hate. He loved us back until he cracked, and started to unpeel. Quite literally, as his featherweight body took up barely any space on this planet. The real Michael’s face was also disappearing. Everyone has always said it was about him not wanting to be black, or not wanting to be a man. Give me a break- Michael had no problem with being black. Saying, for the record, that he was proud, wasn’t just lip service. Many of his idols were black. The bleaching of the skin business was about far more than blackness, it was way more than skin deep. Seriously, what Oreo or drag queen ever tried to look like that?

What he experienced was way beyond racism, self-directed or otherwise. It was the feeling that he was a ghost, the feeling that he didn’t even fucking exist. One of the most eccentric people of all time, he became another iconic irony- for most eccentrics are not tortured, tormented people. They are totally content with themselves, indeed, so strong in their identity, that they truly don’t give a flying fig if their unusual habits aren’t socially sanctioned, or whether or not anyone sees them. There’s no need for validation.

Eccentricities that torment or haunt a person, that interfere with their functioning, may appear similar on the surface, yet their repercussions to the individual are very different. These we blanket as “mental illness” and no one would argue whether Michael Jackson was mentally ill. Michael Jackson was both- both eccentric and insane. It wasn’t owning a bunch of llamas or a bag of bones that made him mentally ill. It was his falling apart, coming undone, his fifty years of disappearing even as he was the most looked at, talked about man of this century, maybe ever.

No, this was another kind of plastic surgery sickness, a man whose mangled, artificial, paranoid, melting, self-destructing, disappearing insides were matched by his wrapping. This wasn’t just a simple drama of gay or straight. Or even, as one friend suggested, a woman who thought she was born into the wrong body. It’s not about black or white. It’s about a man perhaps more missing, more absent than anyone has ever been, and absent in public for all to see. For who is Michael Jackson? His guess is as good as mine.

Yet here’s a man who never stopped giving. He gave so much, he gave it all away. He performed with everything he had. He gave his money to make others happy or healthy. He did nothing on a small scale. Though his perceptions were absurd, and he had no idea about anything normal, he gave from a place of bewildered and devoted innocence. A vast naivety. He was totally clueless of the real world. He did not have adult emotions. His friendships were extremely eccentric, yet fiercely loyal.

“In my darkest hour, will you be there?” Two years after Dangerous was released, the first accusations of child molesting shocked the planet. By 2005, Michael was a character in science fiction. He wasn’t even real. Traipsing around the planet in a burka and Mardi Gras masks, hoping to be invisible, he shielded himself, too, with any drug that could numb the pain. I don’t think that the public persecution he endured, naked, exposed, terrified, in front of the whole damn world, was fair.

Even if he was guilty, I don’t think it was fair, not nearly. Grisly, extravagant serial killers are given far more discretion and dignity, even as they sit on the electric chair. We gleefully crucified this man, and that is sick whether he was as innocent as Jesus or not.

Michael just wanted to Heal the World, make it a better place, for you, for me, for the entire human race. He promised I’ll Be There. He said I Just Can’t Stop Loving You. He sang with pure and honest conviction, You Are Not Alone. (Another day has gone, I’m still all alone…) He encouraged us to Keep the Faith, don’t let nobody bring you down- you can climb the highest mountain…all you need is the will to want it and a little self esteem… He dedicated an album to his young friend, yes, one of the children, who was stabbed to death because he was black. He gave so much, and the nature of the beast meant we wanted more. And that’s completely normal, we tear down our idols in order to divide them into relics we can all have a piece of, there is simply not enough to go around, and yet after death, there is- like the old days of human sacrifice, the victim, sometimes complicit victim, becomes a god. He transcends his body through his memory, through her imagery, art, music.

But no celebrity or public figure was ever put on the trial of the century in this way, and nor were any criminals. In comparison, Karla Homolka was handled with fucking kid gloves by the court and the media, too, even though she appeared on video in full regalia of guilt. Though she murdered several young women and raped more, she now walks the streets somewhere, disguised and protected, with children of her own. What the fuck?

Nobody likes a child molester. But like vultures, we descended on a defenseless man. He begged us, “Please keep an open mind and let me have my day in court.” He wasn’t asking much of us. An alleged victim said, after reaching adulthood, that persecuting Michael Jackson ruined his life. He never said anything about the trauma of being raped ruining his life. He had to be cajoled, drugged, forced by his father before he finally mumbled that something untoward had taken place. Makes me think it never happened Yet Michael was forever after guilty in our eyes.

After all, he paid the family out, probably thinking it would make things easiest on the child. The kid was, after all, was being subjected to a public circus Michael knew all too well. Mikey wasn’t mature or sophisticated to see what repercussions this would have, WHAT IT WOULD LOOK LIKE. And so it was, that the public- the only thing that Michael Jackson ever had, turned on him.

No wonder the man who wasn’t there developed a persecution complex, became increasingly suspicious, paranoid, fearful, insane. He became a parody of himself.

The point is, no scandal has ever assassinated a celebrity the way this pedophile witch- hunt did. Britney Spears held her kid hostage for hours in the bathroom while she had a psychotic break, and it happened before our very eyes. Yet who wasn’t rooting for her after, for Britney to get better? To get the help she needed?

Some Michael fans made it very clear they believed he was innocent. Some turned away and let him have the privacy he needed. Some deferred judgement. But overwhelmingly, we turned on him. We shouted out “pedophile” instead of praying that he’d get help. We tirelessly ridiculed and derided him in popular culture at every possible chance we had. At some points he was as unpopular as he had been popular.

After the 1993 payoff incident, we somehow hoped every consecutive creation he’d make would suck. And sometimes we said it did, even if it didn’t. Some of us started to say ridiculous things like he had never really did anything for music, anyways. That we had never liked him. And so an endless barrage of greatest hits and number one albums flooded forth, with Michael desperately trying to remind us that we loved him, right, we loved him, remember?

In the public’s endless hunt for the ‘real Michael’ it was easy to forget the obvious- artists communicate through their work. He’d been telling us from the beginning. It was there all the time. From the very first solo album, Off the Wall, full of shiny disco, came the first revelations: It’s too high to get over, too low to get under, you’re stuck in the middle, and the pain is thunder, you’re a vegetable, and they hate you, you’re just a buffet, and they eat off you…

And of course, we meet Billie Jean again on Thriller- “the kid is not my son.” Michael has endless songs about the voracious maw of woman, the backstabbing bitch out to get him- Billie Jean, Dirty Diana, again on Blood on the Dance Floor, where Susie has literally tried to kill him. But these songs are no vindication of women- they are personifications of the violence he felt, the vulnerability and exposure.

And also Stranger in Moscow: How does it feel, how does it feel, when you’re alone, when you’re cold inside?

And Who Is It? “I am the damned, I am the dead, I am the agony inside the dying head, this is injustice, woe unto thee, I pray this punishment would have mercy on me…I can’t take it ‘cause I’m lonely…”

Or Morphine: “This won’t hurt you, before I put it in, close your eyes and count to ten…close your eyes and drift away…put all your trust in me…morphine …Demerol, oh God, he’s taking Demerol… “

They Don’t Really Care About Us: “I’m tired of bein’ the victim of hate, you’re raping me of my pride…all I wanna say is they don’t really care about us…”

His final solo studio album showed him at his most vulnerable and tragically desperate. In my mind, this album was way underrated, mainly because of the Jackson Freak Show that was overriding his work, but the lyrics were indeed, “full of grandiose desperation. It’s an excruciatingly self-referential place, worsened further by its namesake’s unmatched controversies and weirdnesses.” (Rolling Stone).

Where are the people who accused me? The ones who beat me down and bruised me? (Unbreakable)

And the very strange Thriller-esque lyrics to Threatened, featuring Rod Serling! This is judgement night, execution, slaughter, the devil, ghosts, this monster is torture, You can be sure of one thing, that’s fate, a human presence that you feel is strange, a monster that you can see disappear, a monster, the worst thing to fear.

During the struggle, they will pull us down, please, please, let’s use this chance to turn things around…together we’re invincible…(Invincible)

Lyrics from Privacy were loud and clear: Stop maliciously attacking my integrity. Ain’t the pictures enough, why do you go through so much, To get the story you need, so you can bury me? You’ve got the people confused, you tell the stories you choose, you try to get me to lose the man I really am…

Some of us might ask, well, then, why the hell wouldn’t a person so traumatized get out of the public eye? Britney, Michael, can’t they afford a private island? Must they court the paparazzi? Even Diana has been accused of masterfully manipulating them, getting high off of their presence. The answer is, perhaps. Maybe. But what if that is all someone has known? We stay in our shitty jobs. We stay with men who beat us. We keep smoking cigarettes or worse habits. We live in the town we were born in. We keep our religion of birth, most of the time. There was never a moment that Michael Jackson was anyone or anything else but ours, ours to worship or to humiliate as we chose.

In Marilyn Monroe’s words, “I knew I belonged to the public, because I had never belonged to anyone or anything else.”

The excesses of drugs and surgeries and exercise couldn’t fix anything, couldn’t mask a man becoming invisible in the most visible ways. On the eve of another comeback, a
comeback that acted as a plea for us to forgive him, him who may well have done nothing at all, the exhausted, emotionally bankrupt, mentally and physically ill Michael Jackson died. Whether it was drugs or anorexia or his heart that killed him, no matter- it was part of a longer process.

I find it all fucking heartbreaking. And though Princess Diana died because the driver had been drinking, we felt forever as if we had hounded her to death. But we didn’t learn. Because it’s okay to hound a child molester to death, to torment and torture a freak of nature, eyes without a face. He became hardly human. We drove Michael deeper and deeper into himself, but there wasn’t anyone there so there was nowhere to go. And so, he disappeared.

by Lorette C. Luzajic

www.thegirlcanwrite.net

The King is Dead: June 26, 2009

The King is Dead: June 26, 2009

by Lorette C. Luzajic

It doesn’t feel real. I can’t stop crying.

Few in my generation can imagine life without Michael Jackson, no matter what we thought of him. Now we will have to: the King of Pop was not invincible after all. I’d never ever thought about Michael Jackson dying, except for a panic that he might commit suicide during the infamous trials. Not long after hearing the news, I realize I am woefully unprepared for this. It doesn’t matter that I’ve never even met the man: I am experiencing intense grief, and I will go through a full-fledged mourning process, along with millions of others. I’m barely over Princess Di’s departure, for crying out loud- just so not ready for this

Michael Jackson was a tragedy and a comedy played out before our eyes, laid out before us in sacrificial theatre that for him was all too real. He was one of the first child stars, one of the first megastars, and as a megastar the King of Pop has no peers but the King. Rivals Britney, Madonna are really his heirs- as is hip-hop, and an endless array of other entertainment and creativity.

MJ is an enigma we will never know and always try to: he is one of the most eccentric figures of all time. While the celebrity world is not exactly devoid of anorexia or plastic surgery or sexual ambiguity, the extremism of Michael’s bizarre obsessions will forever remain puzzling. That he transformed himself from a lithe, feline, hot as hell black man into a horror-film configuration showed just how much difficulty he had being human.

He’s black, he’s white, he’s human, he’s alien, he’s gay, he’s straight, he’s bisexual, he’s asexual, he’s male, he’s female- Michael’s extremist disconnection to every aspect of his body was peculiar, considering how pivotal it was in his entertainment. The dancer’s impossible choreography became the foundation for everything after in pop video and beyond. Could anyone even dance if he hadn’t shown us how? And yet the power that changed the world was clearly something he was dissociated from. He literally melted before our eyes, tore himself into alien angles with an angry scalpel, while hiding behind ma Queen Elizabeth’s skirts. At first we wondered if the surgeon had been an unfortunate choice, but as the years went by, we realized that he obviously wanted to look like a fucking freak. We were embarrassed for him, repulsed. And yet, many of us could never hate him. I always loved him, and I’m so not alone. I just can’t stop loving you- even as you unravel.

From his days as a child entertainer, the pressures that surrounded Michael were extraordinary- and he has in common with other child megastars some of the crushing fragility and inabilities to become wholly realized adults. His idol poor Judy Garland was hooked on speed by the time she was ten- thanks to Mommie Dearest who wanted to assure Judy could don’t-stop-til-they-got-enough without getting tired. Later, Brit-Brit would crash and burn and take her children hostage more or less on national television, her identity both validated and vanishing before a thousand cameras. There is no end to the desperate neediness, vanity, the excess, the addiction, the cheap shots at love that cyclone through Hollywood and her cousins.

But only one celebrity ever made it into the furthest wing of Neverland’s lunatic asylum, where he’s roamed the grounds in his bizarre military getup and bandages, accompanied by man’s best friends- his llamas and his monkeys. Here, in this out-of-this-world world that no one else resided in, he was a strange disciplinarian who denied his body proper nourishment his whole life, at first covering his asceticism by the usual guise: vegetarian apologetics. Light as a feather, the bag of bones grilled himself through endless routines and repetitions, working harder than anyone in showbiz, except perhaps, Madonna, who eats. And though he denied his flesh its most basic necessities, he lavished luxurious longevity fantasies on himself with weird oxygen machines and reported cryogenics.

In this storybook nightmare world of roller coasters and purged peas, he could never have a regular stab at family life.During the umpteen trials, courts heard tapes of Michael discussing how he was a virgin until 32 years old. Instead, he briefly married Elvis’s daughter and fathered three children with an ordinary woman and an unknown one, none of whom are in the picture. The King named them all Prince Michael, except the daughter, Paris Michael.

Despite the increasing disappearance of his face and body, Michael’s massive entertainment persona still meant millions of women throwing themselves at his feet. And millions of gay men had helped make him a superstar, sprinkling Michael’s fairy dust, glittering magazine pages and runways and stages the world over. Michael could have had anyone he wanted- and some say he did.

I’ve always been Team Innocent simply because it’s obvious Michael’s an easy target for every scam artist alive. He had no defenses, his money was a joke, he had no idea what the fuck was going on and very little ability to function in the real world. His detractors always mumble “crazy” “freak” “nut job” “insane” and all I can say is “exactly.”

A fragile recluse, totally delusional- I mean, freaks come out tonight. You may as well just step up and ask him for a few million and save your kiddies having to remember their speeches in court. Indeed, the first time around, kid’s dad was famed for his promises to get a few million out of Michael, who had turned down some of his entertainment ideas.

I do know that anyone at all could be a child molester, and yet I’ve always thought it’s way too easy to blame Weird Michael than to blame the much more likely unsuspected man in bed beside you.

Michael’s fumbling adolescent sexuality and helpless self-hatred didn’t make him a poster child for pederasty in my eyes, not nearly as much as those secretive, angry men who were never a hit with the ladies, men with a sense of entitlement, men with too much testosterone spilling in every direction. Yet regardless of what will come out of this closet postmortem, anyone can see that Mikey was weirdly obsessed with his missing childhood, trying desperately to fix for every other kid what he himself lacked. Heroically or otherwise, to go along with all those cheeseball Heal the World and Have You Seen My Childhood lyrics, MJ’s philanthropy to kiddie cancer wards and other children’s charity is unsurpassed. Though most of his life he refused interviews altogether, letting scandal ooze up every which way through the cracks in his fragile psyche, he spoke loud and clear to his accusers in a 2003 interview with Ed Bradley.

“It’s people with a dirty mind that think like that. I don’t think that way. That’s not me,” he said. “I wanted to have a place that I could create everything that I never had as a child. So you see rides, you see animals, there’s a movie theater. I was always on tour traveling, you know, and I never got a chance to do those things. So I compensated for the loss… we have busloads of kids who don’t get to see those kids, they come up, sick children, and enjoy it.”

It may have been Mikey’s razor sharp lawyers who got him acquitted over and over. But then again, on dozens of charges, verdicts of innocent, innocent, innocent, innocent, innocent, innocent- I started to see a pattern. All I could see was flimsy evidence. There was the unquestionably inappropriate practice of slumber parties, yes, with a gaggle of underage boys. But it’s also probably true that Michael himself was sexually underage, despite his dog years, and absolutely clueless about decorum. I confess that I camp out by the fireplace with my nephews and niece at holiday time, and if anyone thought Auntsie Ret was up to no good, I would think they were truly disturbed. But there’s nothing for greedy parents to cling to with me- what, sue me for a bunch of used books and a few rhinestone belts?

Some things, by the way, were skimmed over by the bloodthirsty press- the maid who saw him showering with young boys admitted she’d been paid to say so- and the first child to accuse him steadfastly refused to do so until his parents drugged him with a powerful hypnotic drug. This case may have paved the way for later accusations, seeing ‘easy money’ written all over a dead man walking.

Interestingly, Jordy Chandler allegedly sued his own father a few years ago for physical and psychological abuse. Now in his late 20s, accusing MJ on Dad’s greedy behalf has ruined his life.

(Mary A. Fisher’s in-depth GQ Magazine story in 1994, Was Michael Jackson Framed? was sadly glossed over, yet remains a luminary piece of reporting. It’s reprinted here: http://www.allmichaeljackson.com/wasmichaeljacksonframed.html)

Though thousands of child molesters will never be brought to justice, there are also countless cases of false accusations and fake recovered memories that have ruined the lives of innocent men. Many have been driven to suicide. It may well be that our relentless thirst for blood, flogging this fragile entertainer endlessly over the years, was the final nail in his coffin. It may not be guilt that drove him to sleeping pill and narcotics addiction, to increasingly weird ailments and appearances, to more dramatic starvation, to delusions and further slicings and dicings. It takes an incredibly strong man to deal with even a small community’s condemnation of kiddie diddling. But this man, not a strong one, was known as a child molester in front of the whole wide world. His semblance of reality was so frail, in fact, that he wore his pajamas to court during his 2005 trial, and performed outside of the courthouse for the masses, dancing atop of his car.

And then, the final indignity- on the eve of MJ’s giant, sold-out, megatriumph show-you-all comeback, he dies instead, leaving some speechless and others, like me and Madonna, sobbing. He’s dead, and my childhood is flashing before my eyes. Japey and I listening to Thriller in the laundry room where my parents couldn’t hear us (in our fundie family we couldn’t listen to rock’n’roll.) And year after year, no matter how far Billie Jean faded into the past, it was the one song that could get everyone onto the dance floor, a DJs standard lure if the crowd was unresponsive.

Then there were those underrated moments, sadly lost in the pathetically simpering lyrics of a defenseless child defending himself- too many songs about them not caring, I’m invincible, you can’t get to me, they destroyed me- moments no one noticed amid the trial hysteria, moments buried in Invincible- where silky R and B made luminous his gorgeous falsetto. We’ll always love the disco, and we’ll always love Beat It and now the motorcycle jacket from the video will go for zillions on eBay and I’ll kick myself for losing mine in the early ‘90s.

But somehow most of the world missed out on one of his most brilliant moments, a surprisingly mature and dark Give In To Me. And the sick, sweaty sex in the Billie Jean mash-up with Biggie- that Billie Jean rhythm layered behind “Fingers in your mouth, open up your blouse, pull your g-string down south, wow,” can’t help getting me all hot and bothered, bringing MJ into adulthood for a brief moment, even though Biggie’s light has also gone out. And the unparalleled gospel anthem Man in the Mirror would be perfect for the Mississippi Mass Choir- or the Soweto choir, maybe, to perform at his funeral. And as if Adam Lambert stealing the Rolling Stone cover from the actual idol winner Kris Allen weren’t enough, his cover of Black or White I predict will be a megaseller.

But then there were those other moments of music, like In The Closet, where it seemed MJ had no idea of the double entendre that had been the story of his life- and so he played the fool for us yet again.

The media circus was unleashed yesterday, and I’m a part of it, too. We all are- it is the age we live in. It’s not all bad, either- it allows us to mourn together, and to celebrate lavishly the larger than life life of one of the greatest entertainers of all time, now and forever. Once again, the day after, his albums are again in the top spots of the charts. We will be fortunate enough to share in the memorials, too, and to hear unreleased songs, to find out what Britney and Simon Cowell have to say, and hopefully even Obama- who could play Thriller-era Michael in a movie. His music will blast from every store and many churches and from music television and iTunes, surrounding the world with We Are the World. Shrines will spring up in every nook and cranny of the planet.

But the media will also, as always, dance with the devil, who writes her paycheque- and that devil is us. Michael Jackson has joined Marilyn and Kurt and Judy and Jim and Diana in a vast pantheon of human sacrifice. Was he sick? Did Michael overdose? Was he a drug addict? Did he die of a broken heart? Was it heart failure? Did he starve to death? Did we do it? Did he do it to himself? Was it suicide? And the answer is one we all know: yes.

Camille Paglia at ROM- Religion in Hollywood

Camille Paglia is exhausting. Whether running to and fro from the dictionary or simply trying to keep up with her passion, she’ll wipe you out. In all my years of university, lectures, courses, conversations, and time spent hobnobbing in various book circles and coffeehouses, no one and nothing has taught me to think vigorously the way this woman has.

Paglia rose to infamy with her shocking treatise on Western culture, Sexual Personae, way back in 1990. The sweeping history of art, sex, biology, religion, and paganism offended just about everyone, but two decades later, feminism is slowly conceding that Camille’s been right all along: sex is dangerous, dirty, and dark, and extremely hot. A woman’s best shot isn’t prudery and naivety, but an arsenal of historical knowledge about archetypes, war, prostitution and art. Camille said out loud what the simpering victim mythos of the men suck feminist brigade  knew but couldn’t face: that history is what it is, that biology is what it is, whether or not we like it or think it’s pleasant. Our only hope for personal and political empowerment is to face reality.

Last night the guerrilla scholar left a sold-out audience at the Royal Ontario Museum half mesmerized and she did try our patience- lecturing for two solid hours. The topic was religion in old Hollywood, merging two of Camille’s favourite subjects, and we got a jam-packed history of Christian paganism from dawn’s early light through until  20th century cinema.

She’s the feminist who loves sex, the lesbian who loves men- but this lady doesn’t swing either to the left or to the right- she’s carved out a roost for herself quite apart from the masses. She harshly critiques the left for their artless, sexless humanism- man cannot live by bread alone, after all. She critiques the right for any notions of theocracy- the separation of church and state is vital for an evolved civilization. She’s an atheist who vigorously defends religion- how can we interpret culture if we don’t understand culture? Stories from religion are culture’s fabric- the journey, the hero, the dark night of the soul.

It was fascinating stuff. Twenty-four hours later I’m still taking it all in. My admiration for Ms. Paglia knows no bounds, and I’ve studied all of her books carefully. I confess she stretches the limits of my neural plasticity- intellectually, I’m afraid I’m something of a lightweight. But there’s nothing wrong with growing new brain cells, and I’ve underlined umpteen copies of Sexual Personae to death. I’ve read every poem she has referred to and tried to understand it if I didn’t. Or just to feel it- Paglia knows for sure the cerebral is not always as valuable as the sensual.

I’m indebted to Camille as a writer. Many of my approaches to popular culture as mirroring archetypes of the pagan pantheon are clearly influenced by her thinking. She’s not the only one to put this together- Christians have been burning art, music, literature for two millennia for the same reason. But that flexibility she gives us to escape elitism and leave the classroom to experience life in the body, below, with the masses, is utterly liberating. She exalts the popular and participates in its rituals. I’ve come to see so much of history, ironically, by being so present.

Now, many argue with Ms. Paglia and I would contend that there’s no point because she will out-shrill you with bigger words, more obscure quotes from yet another thing you’ve meant to read but never have. It’ll just be embarrassing. In my humble opinion, those who object are just making fools of themselves. So instead, just keep an open mind even when she gets your ire up. Agree to disagree, and be open to learn.

The first time I got this impression was way back in a Playboy interview. It was the mid-90s and I was all in a dither over the more controversial portions of some of her essays. Those were the days when I thought shaving my legs was oppression. Riled up. Who did this lady think she was, saying women weren’t artists because they couldn’t ejaculate? I was infuriated. I knew the true reason women weren’t artists or inventors or doctors or anything else was because they were stuck with the bloody babies.

Camille had said some stuff about obsessive behaviour breeding both the great art and the most troubling serial killers. We didn’t have a lady Mozart because we didn’t have a lady Jack the Ripper. And I was outraged along with most everyone else. I couldn’t for the life of me understand what she was talking about.

But I came around, all right. I mean, what’s not to get? The moment of revelation for me was reading her comments on Germaine Greer’s idea that you don’t get great women artists very often because “you don’t get great art from mutilated egos.” And then Camille said that actually, you ONLY get great art from mutilated egos. And it was so obvious. How could Germaine Greer possibly think that- when every artist is a total whack job, ever, especially the best? As an artist myself, I know that in the gut. I know it my bones, in the dark nights of my deepest obsessions and turmoil, in my most sexual and alive and dark parts.

Clearly, Camille was going to hit us over the head with the obvious for years to come.

And since then, I’ve dreamed of meeting her face to face, but as Playboy said, she is harder to get a hold of than the President. I’d been at a lecture once before, but last night I was determined to deliver copies of my books to her. I was second in line at the signing. I didn’t know what to expect, but as Camille signed my book, I handed her my present. She was gracious but aloof, racing with adrenaline from the lecture, petite and charming and volcanic. Her handwriting was large, with flourish, as I suspected it might be. Thank you, my mistress, for teaching me how to think. I have a long way to go, but we’ve come a long way, baby.

If you like art, literature, madness and interesting people, you’ll love Lorette C. Luzajic’s books. Her first book is “The Astronaut’s Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos.” Her second is “Weird Monologues for a Rainy Life (Irreverent Ramblings from the End of the World.)” Her poetry and her collected blogs, musings, reviews, memoirs, notes, eulogies, requiems, interviews, profiles and more are both devastating and hilarious romps through one woman’s wild mood swings. Lorette proves that there’s life after death, even for manic-depressives. “Think Courtney Love meets Margaret Atwood,” says Donnarama, Toronto’s premiere performance artist.

Visit the author’s link at Amazon to order your copies today!

Self Indulgent Hogwash

Weird Monologues for a Rainy Life (irreverent ramblings from the end of the world)
Lorette C. Luzajic’s new book launches this month

Do-it-yourself diva Lorette C. Luzajic launches her second book, Weird Monologues for a Rainy Life (irreverent ramblings from the end of the world.)  It’s a book about everything- a compendium of 390 pages of reviews, manifestos, requiems, opinion columns, tributes, gossip, and even some academia. And this is part one- the sequel, Dendrite Pandemonium: Hits, Misses, and Random B-Sides will follow later this year.

Lorette’s a journalism graduate who found more success being herself as a freelancer, and she writes seven columns and various news stories or profile pieces through her market base, www.thegirlcanwrite.net. A quick google will get you enough reading for the rest of your life, and some artwork, too.

Lorette’s fans are as diverse as her work. “Think Courtney Love meets Margaret Atwood,” says Toronto’s premier female impersonator Donnarama. Meanwhile, bestselling author of Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore, finds her “imaginative, witty, blessedly free of normal logic, surprising, profound.” Then again, she’s got plenty of detractors, like financial consultant Clarens M, who called her work “self indulgent hogwash.”

Lorette joined forces with designer Gonzalo de Cardenas to create an unusual book, illustrated by Caroline Bacher with cover art by Iaian Greenson. The result is a stand-out product that looks pretty cool on your coffee table- or, as Lorette suggests, the back of your loo.  “The whole idea of this book was to combine a range of my stories, blogs, musings, reviews, and so on, from all over the map, in a way that spanned my wild mood swings, the ups and downs, the embarrassing and the brilliant.” she says. “The extremes of the things I’ve been through touch chords with the life experiences of my readers- I tend to laugh and cry a lot. That I often feel vulnerable, naked, over-revealed kept me from writing down the bones for too long- there’s always an element of self-censorship and it just doesn’t get to the heart. The minute I stopped fearing this exposure was the moment I started to grow as a writer. Symbolically, this is me naked, messy, crazy, everybody’s sister.”

Indeed, Lorette writes candidly about the stuff we all wrestle with but don’t want to admit- grief, addiction, madness, spiritual uncertainty, the creative struggle, self doubt, health. Titles include Headbanging on Ketamine, The Perpetuation of Human Sacrifice Traditions in Popular Culture, For Women Who Love Men Who Love Men and the Women Who Love Them, and The Million Dollar Maybe. With trademark twisted humour and an insistence on reading signs into every possible aspect of human life, Lorette C. Luzajic pulls some skeletons out of the closet and polishes them up for public display.

Handymaiden Editions, 2009
http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Lorette%20C.%20Luzajic&page=1

The Miracle Whipped Trickster: Eminem coming May 19

The Miracle Whipped Trickster: Eminem coming May 19

I’m sorry that Bobby won’t be with me to usher in the new Eminem CD next Tuesday. We had so much fun cranking King Mathers’ tongue-twisting lexicon while vacuuming or making pancakes (among other things.)

I hadn’t really given Marshall a fair chance until then- I was just never dude enough to swallow the pejorative bitter brew. But then fate brought me an even hotter mess than me, with biceps and abs I’ll never ever forget, and suddenly the white hip hop look was fever pitch in my mind, as  Bobby bopped through the house drumming Em’s beat with two wooden spoons against his knees.

Needless to say, it wasn’t long before I saw what I’d been missing, and dissing. Eminem made my manic periods look like Snow White’s long slumber- and he was comedic, pure genius. The stories were intricate, detailed, fuelled by the most satisfying and sometimes shocking rhymes, clicking into place like puzzle pieces, a Rubik’s cube. He rhymes sounds and syllables and similars and words he makes up as he goes along. He’s quick on his feet, that’s for sure. The man has a way with words.

This was circa Curtain Call, and I refused to believe the curtain had been called. I didn’t think he would stay behind the scenes, though he said he was through. As much painful energy as centre stage might take, I knew he’d heal from grief, madness, rehab, whatever and the rhymes would start spinning right round baby. As an artist, one of the world’s most brilliant, he’d be driven to work again, and not just in production. The scars of stardom, childhood, poverty, riches, white trashiness, divorcing Kim twice- shit, it’s a lot… the kid worked his ass off through it all. Then it was white heat rocket into superstardom. The greatest rapper in the world, period. That’s what everyone was saying. How do climb out of that? Where do you go from there?

Even while tragedy is tearing apart the average family with none of the pressures of Detroit and superstardom, people are whispering about Eminem’s recent opening up about his drug addictions. Okay, let me get this straight- people are SURPRISED?  You didn’t figure this out for yourself before? There’s no way a man could talk that fast unless his mind raced a thousand times faster than yours or mine. And that would drive you crazy. And crazy people take drugs. And so do normal people. And people who lose their closest beloveds to suicides and murders and drugs take drugs.  And crazy people who also happen to be rock star and genius and white trash and rapper, a rapper who sings about drugs on a regular basis- what, none of this gave it away?

“I was born with a tick in my brain, yeah fucked in the head- is he nuts? No, he’s insane.” It won’t get any more clear than this- but I’m afraid Em’s audience is even dumber than he already thinks.

Well, Bobby didn’t make it, and that is a hole in my heart that will never heal over. But Eminem did make it, and I’ve got my tacky-ass faux-diamond big backward E around my neck, in case anybody was unsure I’m a fan, but also just to decorate a memory of a tragic but stunning love. Not everyone can make it through this life alive, but Bobby got me hooked on Eminem and I’m ready to shake my booty in his memory to the badass beats as soon as they hit the airwaves.

Now everyone knows Eminem couldn’t get famous until he spewed out on purpose the shadiest shit he could think of, which says way more about his audience than it did about him. He called that alter ego Slim Shady, the persona of an insane white man who was bad, mad and dangerous to know, to quote Lord Byron’s lover.

So what’s with Nick Cannon getting his panties in a bunch because Marshall raps about Mariah? I know, I know, it’s not all that nice to call someone a whore, it isn’t. But in rap’s theatre of the absurd, is Eminem supposed to be the only player who doesn’t use foul language about bitches and hos? Every celeb who has ever made the tabloids is fair game in these rap attacks. Now, if Nick had just said “Yo, pipe down on my woman,” fine.

But he wrote this:

“A mediocre (at best) Eminem record that sounds like it was written in 2001,” Cannon blogged. “At first, I thought it was old material that had been dug up from when dude ‘fantasized’ about having a pretend fling with Mariah. … But all of a sudden I hear my name in the verse! My first reaction was like, ‘This is his new shit? Wow, that’s too bad.’

Okay, thing is Nick, I didn’t even know you were a rapper until this hit my Perez-radar. So thanks to Em for putting you on the map for me.  I thought you were Mariah’s boy toy, and wondered why a rich babe like her couldn’t choose someone hotter.

Then I looked you up on Wikipedia and found out you had a #46 hit. And you sang something about being a new cat on the block, being bigger then Elvis. I listened to two numbers on iTunes and thought it must be 1982- no, I’m serious…and what’s this Nickleodeon business? The Pops don’t like me number was kind of cute, I confess, but nowhere near the mastery of tongue twisting rhyme, or the depth and breadth of mister white bread emmie.

It’s fine to stand up for your wife- but it’s just not entirely wise for a not so big shot producer to talk down about the work of a serious big shot rapper/singer/songwriter/producer. You know, the cunning linguist who has won more than 100 prestigious awards for his music, including an Oscar.

Anyhow, while I was on Limewire I thought I’d see if I could get lucky and find the verboten Mariah number. It was just my luck that the net was leaky at that moment and soon I was blasting one of Eminem’s nastiest and best vernacular jungle gyms. On top of the witty explosion of rhymes matched perfectly to the beat, the backdrop to this mad rap is bagpipes, and some kind of Mirwais-y production noise that moves your feet against your will.  This number’s a mind-bending bundle of tumbling rhyme, maybe one of his best…sorry, “illest.”

I don’t know about the rest of the album, but Bagpipes is a long way from Nick L. Odeon’s kiddie-cinema-popcorn heap.

“Locked in Mariah’s wine cellar… all I had for lunch… was red wine more red wine and Captain Crunch… red wine for breakfast and for brunch… ms. hello kitty satin bedspread with satin funk… You can be a permanent fixture …in my lyrical mixture…I’m the miracle-whipped trickster…”

Oh, dear, and then darling Nikki  started babbling on about how dissing the Butterfly Effect was racist, ‘cause Mariah is the same racial mixture as our President Barack Obama, you see.  It’s just…arrogant….to pull the racism card for the little skinny white boy from Detroit who braved the mean streets with nothing but his quicksilver wit and then won the respect of the biggest and best black men in rap and hip hop music because, in their words, not mine, he is the best there.

Sexist, no doubt about it, but not racist. Shit, how about: what a clever, awesome song, but my wife’s not a whore. Even Elton John is man enough to take a diss but not me, so can you rewrite that totally-ill-Grammy-written –all-over-it number without my wife’s number?

I had wondered if the climate toward the new album would mix near-religious devotion with snide and fickle snickering about the washed up addict man, with no regard for the man behind the mask’s private pain and right to recluse. Because people are quick to fickleness, screaming sell-out even if their shopping bags are stuffed with chart toppers.

But now I predict something different entirely: what will happen next is Bagpipes from Baghdad will go onto  become one of Eminem’s most massive hits, pervading the airwaves until kingdom come,  in no small part to Mariah’s jealous two-“hit” wonder.

Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

Botero’s Beautiful Horses: a few notes on Jan Conn’s new collection of poetry

Jan Conn, poet, biologist.

It is Jan’s biography, I believe, that makes her work completely different from anyone else’s, that gives layers to her words that we can unravel. She writes with the vivid imagery of Latin America fuels Isabel Allende’s genius, yet the fact that she is a scientist drives all of the mysteries within her words. These mysteries meld ancestral spirits into the cells and veins and wings of vines and birds and dust. Conn is a nouveau alchemist of sorts, knowing transformation is indeed the stuff of cellular biology, the very thing that will save ecology if we can. As a scientist, she spends her time chasing mosquitoes, and it is this attention to the smallest of things that brings ours to the big ones. Conn does sweat the small stuff, for it is the very stuff of life.

And if life is made up of atoms and of cells and molecules, literature is made of up of alphabets and words, funny black marks on a page or stone tablet that magically record the way we see the sky, the way we feel anger, the way we make love or go mad. Conn takes us to “the fable of pink, the agony of yellow.” We visit rooms “crammed with blue statuettes of the dead.” We are transported to a world with guavas and saffron and copper-winged chameleons and antelopes and alligator skulls.

“The Henry Moore bronze/resembles a reclining chacmool/ on whose chest fresh hearts were laid.”

The ancient mythology of the Americas, all fury and magic and hotheaded passion and sacrifice, and she brings these potions and powders and temples and mermaids and warriors and virgins and volcanoes into the unruffled cool of Canada. It is strange and sublime to hear a scientist tell us with conviction that the gods are alive.

Jan Conn
Botero’s Beautiful Horses
Brick Books
www.brickbooks.ca

Lorette C. Luzajic is the author of poetry collection The Astronaut’s Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos, and of Weird Monologues for a Rainy Life (Irreverent Ramblings from the End of the World). Both are available through amazon, or through her site, www.thegirlcanwrite.net.