Literary Clusterfucks 2013

all i said is that i find his response to race war k funny which is it irrefutably is

tbh mordy i'm curious as to why you seem to take such umbrage at people taking umbrage, is it like a personal crusade of yours to eradicate politically correct namby-pambyism or

Feminist Mom Falls Head Over Heels for Marlboro Man, January 3, 2013
By James R. Holland "Author, Photographer, Photo... (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Feminist and the Cowboy: An Unlikely Love Story (Hardcover)
"It was 2010. I was forty-one years old and a single mom to a preteen boy. I was a (recovering) journalist and reformed Ivy Leaguer, happily making a living as a writer of commercial fiction, but with no personal life to speak of...I mention all of this to somewhat lessen the blow to my ego of admitting that I, hoping to meet a real-live man-person, had joined an online dating site. Okay? I admit it. Let's move on." Thus begins this fascinating and funny memoir. The humor in the book grabs the reader's attention right from the beginning of the book. Her descriptions of the liberal and progressive, metro-sexual men she met and dated on the site are a riot. Just one example follows:

"There was the well-known blogger for the Democratic Party who tweeted about women's rights but was addicted to hard-core pornography and wanted nothing more than to spray his man-juice on a woman's face as she knelt before him in a suit." Many of her other dates turned out to be even more weird than this infamous Democratic blogger. Of course, many of the people on any kind of dating website are probably just as crazy.

Sample titles of the 336-page book's 30 chapters include "The Cowboy Reaches Out: Second Date With The Cowboy: Girl's Night Out: A Word About Feminism: The Answering Machine Doesn't Lie" and "The Come-To-Jesus Meeting."

"This distant older conservative cowboy was chock-full of grammatically intact wiseassery. It made no sense. There weren't any smart conservatives, right? Everyone I'd ever gone to Columbia University with or worked with in newspapers back east knew the hard-and-fast rule: Conservatives were stupid! Or evil! There was no other kind. Period." Wiseassery--the writer obviously knows how to turn a phrase to keep her writing moving right along.

After she told this guy off and forgot about him, the author then goes on to confess that her Cowboy was everything a woman could possibly want. But she is obviously so attracted to this rancher whom she admits is more handsome than any movie actors including Brad Pitt, that it seems impossible the match will survive. Actually, her description of her cowboy will remind most readers of Brad Pitt and some of his roles.

"Liberals have this idea that all conservatives are crazy, on the fringe, he said. That's why I prefer the term traditionalist to conservative, because most of us aren't neocons; we're just people who like traditional values. I also don't want to see liberals disappear off the face of the earth, because you guys are the conscience of humanity. We make the hard decisions that you guys won't, but we need you there to remind us to be human."

This book is amusing and full of good humor; it also has some very serious subject matter. It was fun to watch the feminist and her parents gain new insights into the relationships between men and women.

"Until we as a culture can teach men to be real men, there's no use in any woman submitting to most of the sorry-ass men out there, he said. You can't advocate women taking a more traditional role if men aren't doing what they need to be doing."

"I have no doubt, as I sit here to write this, that I will be on the receiving end of a lot of grief once this book comes out. I have no doubt that I will be seen as the enemy by many in the women's movement. I will be seen as espousing something that many people fear will set women back a couple hundred years. I also know enough by now, having been a newspaper reporter for a decade and a novelist for that same amount of time, to understand that some people will want to fight, no matter what you say to them. I used to be one of those people. I know that there are some people for whom I will always be the bad guy, no matter how I explain myself."

This is a very amusing and enjoyable read and the reader will be sorry when it ends because it is an unfinished story and the reader can only guess what will happen in the future. Will the love story between the author with her bumper sticker "I hate FOX News" and her conservative, macho rancher boy friend continue? You'll have to read the book to find out and even then the story may not have a real ending. This affair between two movie-star beautiful people, but total opposites, seems doomed to have an unhappy ending. Frankly, this reviewer would not have put up with the control the Cowboy seemed to demand for more than a couple of passionate love-making sessions.

There are certain to be former friends from the author's sisterhood who will feel this whole story was intended only to gin up the gossip mill, introduce her to a wider book audience and to get her a mountain of free publicity for this and her other books.

tbh mordy i'm curious as to why you seem to take such umbrage at people taking umbrage, is it like a personal crusade of yours to eradicate politically correct namby-pambyism or

i'm not really at war with pc namby-pambyism. i just hate the self-righteous pieties that certain ilx posters bask in.

it ought to be pointed out that more ppl think i'm an asshole than believe you started a racewar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jr9hPbYmBo

"Everyone I'd ever gone to Columbia University with or worked with in newspapers back east knew the hard-and-fast rule: Conservatives were stupid! Or evil! There was no other kind. Period."

Rings false imo

it ought to be pointed out that more ppl think i'm an asshole than believe you started a racewar.

i can safely cosign this sentiment.

why does that phrase push jon's button so hard guess i'll never know

"Everyone I'd ever gone to Columbia University with or worked with in newspapers back east knew the hard-and-fast rule: Conservatives were stupid! Or evil! There was no other kind. Period."

Rings false imo

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Friday, January 11, 2013 12:04 PM (1 second ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

those famously conservative adverse publications the wall st journal and the washington post

i'm not really at war with pc namby-pambyism. i just hate the self-righteous pieties that certain ilx posters bask in.

― Mordy, Friday, January 11, 2013 11:03 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you know what i can't stand around here? people not naming names.

jon/via/chi

which people aren't naming names?

I shall write a book about how I love all of you, then publicize it by speaking of my hate.

curse you, Alisa Valdes, for turning us against each other

my not naming names is not a function of my passive-aggressiveness but rather a rare display of minimal restraint

we should sue her blog xp

hasn't she been through enough?

she needs a strong message board to show her the way

I was about to change my display name to "Juan, check yr cousin" and then I thought about it for a second

ned this is all yr fault

let's have a literary clusterfuck thread, he said

typo for literal clusterfuck

Ned, my sincere apologies for derailing your thread. I've made a request in another thread to address my issue.

Come, let us set aside our differences and celebrate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyvkNDtW7Lw

I have often thought of ILX as an alluring but ultimately abusive cowboy lover

w/o the sexual gratification

i hope

no judgement

I started turning this thread into an erasure poem, but I only got this far:

Beginning to think maybe a rolling thread might be
as complicated and volatile as the cowboy

damn I just actually read this shit

Beginning to think maybe a rolling thread might be
as complicated and volatile as the cowboy

damn I just actually read this shit
together we'll break these chains of love

a+

don't give up
don't give up

together jonchi and mordy break these chains of love

(dunno what that means, it just rhymed good, lol)

Also, I finally read her whole letter to the Los Angeles Times. It's a worthwhile read. It's much better than her detractors give her credit for. Here's the full text:

TO: Supervisors and selected colleagues of Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

FROM: Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, staff writer

This is my resignation from the Los Angeles Times. My reasons for leaving the Times range from the personal to the political, but in the end it is all political. Even the personal. The following are my reasons for leaving.

Reason 1

I came to this newspaper as part of something called the "Latino Initiative." At the time, I was not awake enough as a person to understand the horror of such a thing. I was not enlightened enough to realize that in the name of "diversity" the newspaper was committing an atrocity.

Now I am.

In the process of covering so-called "Latino" issues, I have stumbled upon a simple and disturbing fact: There is no such thing as a Latino. I have also seen this newspaper -- and most others -- butcher history and fact in an attempt to create this ethnic group.

When the Los Angeles Times writes of "Latinos" it often characterizes them as brown. It happens several times a week, usually. Most people in this area accept this interpretation. I do not. After all, my Navajo cousins from New Mexico are often approached on the street and spoken to in Spanish. They don't speak Spanish. They are brown, and, I am sure, would "look" Latino to most of my colleagues at this newspaper. But recent colonial history dictated they be born north of the Mexican border. They, like most of the people we call Latinos at this paper, are Indians. . . .

After extensive study of history, I believe "Latino" -- as used in the Los Angeles Times -- is the most recent attempt at genocide perpetrated against the native people of the Americas. I also posit this new genocide is far more dangerous than the old fashioned murder and relocation efforts.

Now, we simply rob people of their heritage, and force a new one upon them.

They are no longer Indians, with a 30,000 year claim to these lands; they are now immigrants, and "Latinos." . . .

By referring to the brown Indians in the U.S. who happen to come from Spanish speaking nations as "Latinos" we eradicate their ethnicities entirely, and pin to them a new set of stereotypes and expectations that in most cases simply do not fit. By perpetuating the myth that Indians who bear Spanish surnames are simply "Latino" -- and that Latino does not refer to anyone else -- we also deny Indians from Latin America a natural kinship to American Indians. DNA testing and blood type have shown most of the "brown" people in the Americas -- whether they live in Montana or Mexico City -- are descended from a small band of people who came here from Asia tens of thousands of years ago. Yet the Times has convinced itself and the general public that there is a "Latino" race of brown people, separate from this nation's Indians. It's idiotic. . . . When I attempted to write a commentary about the animated film The Road to El Dorado in order to address its misrepresentation of the genocide committed by the Spaniards against the native people of the Americas, I was told by the film editor my comparisons to the German holocaust were unjustified. (By some estimates, the Spaniards killed 10 times more people than the Nazis did -- most of it documented in the Spaniards' own journals.) He told me "holocaust" was too strong a word to use when talking about American Indians, and told me the word pertained only to the German holocaust. Any dictionary would have shown him that "holocaust" refers to any genocide committed against any people. The Los Angeles Times is located in perhaps the nation's largest Indian city, yet we deny there are Indians here. . . .

I am now carrying a child whose father is a Native American. His ancestors hail from the U.S. Southwest and from Northern and Central Mexico. I cannot in good conscience work for an institution that denies my child's inheritance to this land. I will cringe to see my child labeled "Latino" or "Hispanic" by virtue of a colonial last name and a brown skin color. I can no longer pretend to believe in the existence of "Latinos" when common sense and logic and an understanding of history point out there is no such thing, especially not in the way the Times uses the word.

Reason 2

Race. . . . Every day the Los Angeles Times runs an article about races of people the dominant class consider to be "other": Blacks, Asians, Latinos. Even as several other newspapers and news magazines make strides towards thinking of "race" in a new way, the Times is stuck in an outdated modality. The Miami Herald and the New York Times now make an effort to state regularly that "Latinos" may be of any "race"; while not an ideal portrayal of humans, in my opinion, it is still light years ahead of the racialist view of "Latinos" perpetuated by the Los Angeles Times.

To me, it is telling that the Times rarely, if ever, writes of those people categorized as "white" while identifying them by "race" for the heck of it. While we endlessly profile "Asian" authors and "Black" celebrities, we never classify the "white" people we write about as "white" unless they have committed a hate crime, or are being compared in a poll or study to "others." . . .

I cannot continue to lend my brain and efforts to an institution that so readily and shamelessly discriminates, stratifies and needlessly classifies people based upon what I -- and many social and physical scientists -- believe to be a false paradigm.

I love my salary. My benefits. I love the prompt response I get from people when I call and say I am a writer with the Los Angeles Times. But I do not love any of these things enough to sell my soul any longer in order to get them. I have tried to inspire change and enlightenment from within the newspaper, and have been met with confusion and snickers at best, and fierce opposition at worst. So, as long as the Los Angeles Times paints a daily portrait of the nation in terms of race, I cannot work there.

Reason 3

Lack of support. At risk of sounding boastful, I can say I am regarded among my peers an excellent writer. Yet I do not feel I have been embraced at the Times for the talents I have. In fact, I feel an effort has been made in some instances to squash the one thing that sets me apart in this field: my voice.

Daily, I read columns by people who are simply not smart enough or talented enough to write them. . . . I read about these people's personal lives, the foibles of their children, their narrow and uninspired views on race and ethnicity -- and nowhere do I find Los Angeles, or the nation, or the world, nowhere in this newspaper's columns do I find insight, or epiphany. . . .

I am not an idiot. And I know a hopeless battle when I face one. To stay at the Los Angeles Times and hope that my talent and ability and accomplishments will be fairly acknowledged and rewarded is unrealistic. This newspaper continues to reward mediocre men while insisting outstanding women jump through more and more hoops before ever getting similar reward. To stay under such circumstances would be to set myself up for failure and battle, two things I am no longer interested in. . . .

Reason 4

Mortality. How does the cliche go? Life is short.

At 31, expecting my first child, my life has suddenly come into brilliant focus. Since I was 15 years old I have written in my diaries of my dream: To write novels and live in the mountains outside of Albuquerque. For 16 years this dream has never changed. . . .

Is it vain to say I was born to write? To say journalism, daily journalism, has nearly beaten the innocent sort of love for the craft from me?

I wrote my first poem at 8, my first short story at 9. I stumbled onto journalism because writing was the only thing I did well enough to be paid to do it. And now, every time I write a profile of a celebrity who doesn't need the publicity, simply because that's how things are done, or every time I write about record sales or the Grammy awards or "Latino" artists, I pimp the very most sacred part of me.

Will I get paid to write novels? Maybe. Maybe not. But at this time in my life, I would rather get paid to do something completely unrelated to writing -- say, wait tables -- and write for the pleasure of it, than to be paid to write the way the dominant class believes I should write, about a world I don't see but they do.

So, one month from today, I will no longer work for the Los Angeles Times. I will work for my conscience, my soul, and my heart, and my child. If that means I live in a small room in the back of my father's house, so be it.

I will be happier there, writing my truth in "fiction," than I am here, writing your truth in "fact."

i'm not sure what there is to like about that letter.

525,600 leeeeetterrrs

By perpetuating the myth that Indians who bear Spanish surnames are simply "Latino" -- and that Latino does not refer to anyone else -- we also deny Indians from Latin America a natural kinship to American Indians. DNA testing and blood type have shown most of the "brown" people in the Americas -- whether they live in Montana or Mexico City -- are descended from a small band of people who came here from Asia tens of thousands of years ago.

I'm pretty dumb sometimes and this isn't my field but that idea has never occurred to me and is v interesting.

Once you remove most of the florid language, she makes some solid points about race and gender.

Some of this might be sour grapes aimed at editors who made non-biased decisions about her writing. Some of this is likely valid.

i thought the word latino comes from latin america, ie a place where latin romance language (spanish, portuguese + french) are primarily spoken

(By some estimates, the Spaniards killed 10 times more people than the Nazis did -- most of it documented in the Spaniards' own journals.)

Even assuming she only means "Jews killed in the holocaust" (6 million) and not "people killed in the holocaust" (something like 11 million), and not "Innocent people killed by the Nazis during WWII" (I don't even know how many) -- that gives you 60 million indians "by some estimates" killed by the Spaniards. Most estimates of the entire Indian population of the Americas at that time are not that high.

The U.S. Government has defined Hispanic or Latino persons as being "persons who trace their origin [to] . . . Central and South America, and other Spanish cultures."[12] The United States Census uses the ethnonym Hispanic or Latino to refer to "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race."[13] The Census Bureau also explains that "[o]rigin can be viewed as the heritage, nationality group, lineage, or country of birth of the person or the person’s ancestors before their arrival in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latino

xxxp To the extent that that is true, it's also a post-colonial imposition of language & culture and then of naming, in that it erases the ppl and culture and language that were there before...which were the same people and their culture and language who lived on the US side of the then-non-existent border, which if I understand this stuff was the Hopi and pueblo peoples (iirc "anasazi" is considered an insult).

Latino points to Spain and Portugal. I can understand why people of Native American descent are unhappy with the name.

The United States was formed by English speaking former British citizens. For obvious reasons, we don't refer to American-born citizens as Anglos.

I take that back. I forgot we're a part of the Anglosphere.

a lot of people from those spanish speaking countries dont even speak spanish as their first language, latino in that sense is a sloppy bullshit term, but so is cultural holocaust

the skin color type hierarchies that exist within these cultures is a lot more of a problem than english speakers using the word 'latino'. people either have a good grasp of the history of the region or don't, and people who don't aren't gonna be making assumptions based on the etymology of the word 'latino'.

i dont even speak latin

like the fact that the language is called 'spanish' is actually a lot more problematic because some people actually confuse latin america and spain as places...that exist... the word latino? who cares. you either know why there's a huge skin color spectrum in south america or you don't.

Rolling Afro-Latin music thread 2013 < good thread despite the cultural genocide title