This post is about inanities. I
am drawing its content from my Inanities File, which I began in the 1960s and
continued into the mid-1980s, at which point I lost interest in it. Maybe the world’s inanities so overwhelmed me
that I couldn’t keep up. At any rate, I
stopped collecting inanities, though every three years or so I would get out
the file, peruse its contents, and chuckle, or shake my head in disbelief, or
get indignant or angry. And now I am
publishing a selection of the file’s contents, for viewers to react as they
wish. They may find these items inane,
or they may not; it’s a matter of personal perspective. And one’s reaction to an inanity can vary
widely, from laughter to scorn to indignation to fury to bafflement.
But what is an inanity? Obviously, something that is inane. But what does “inane” mean? Off the top of my head, I would say
“supremely silly.” But to firm up my own
definition, I have consulted that authority of authorities, Webster’s International Dictionary, 2nd
ed., a ponderous tome that sits on my desk gathering dust, since it requires
such an effort to access it. Its
definition of inane: “Without contents; empty; esp., void of sense or
intelligence; silly; characterless.” I
have no quarrel with this, but I especially emphasize “silly.”
Inanities from my file
So here are some items from my Inanities
File, taken from newspapers and magazines of the time, items in my mail, a
concert program, a wrapping from airline food, whatever. Some are peculiar to the 1960s or a bit thereafter,
others could be of any age.
· From the East
Village Other of Nov. 15-21, 1968, a statement by poet and ex-convict John
Sinclair, manager of a guerrilla rock band and founder of Trans Love Energies,
an artists’ commune: “… Our program is
cultural revolution through a total assault on the culture which makes use of
every tool, every energy and every media we can get our collective hands
on…. We are free mother country madmen
in charge of our own lives and we are taking this freedom to the kids of
America … and … these kids are READY! …
BE FREE, goddammit, and fuck all them old dudes, is what we tell them, and they see that we mean it. … We demand total freedom for everybody! And we will not be stopped until we get
it. We are bad…. WE ARE THE SOLUTION.” Following this long
tirade comes a program that includes the end of money; free food, clothes,
housing, dope, music, bodies, medical care – free everything; and finally,
since leaders suck, all power to the people!
· From the New
York Times of October 22, 1970: “The
ordinary white bread that most Americans eat every day was described by a
scientist here as being so low in nutritional value that laboratory rats living
on it for 90 days died of malnutrition.”
 |
| If it can starve rats, what will it do to you?ElinorD |
· From the New
York Times of May 29, 1976, accompanying a photo of a hefty senior
manipulating a hula hoop: “Young at
heart: Belle Sommers competing in the Hula Hoop competition during the Senior
Citizens Olympics at Piedmont Park in Atlanta Thursday. Other events included an ugly-face-making
contest and a balloon race.”
· From The Village
Voice of January 3, 1977, citing reviews of a new album of the Ramones,
four leather-jacketed youths looking very macho and very tough in the
accompanying photo: “Ramones is a
classic” – Rutgers Daily Targum; “El
Stinko garbage of the worst kind” – Dayton
Journal Herald; “The last time I was insulted by something as bad as the Ramones
was when Mary Hartman shot her husband in the crotch with a bow and arrow” – The Drummer, Philadelphia; “Indeed
awesome.” – Performance Magazine; “The
worst of New York punk bands.” – Washington
Post; “Music to sniff glue by.” – Marty Packin, Asbury Park Press; and many more.
· From a book review in the New York Times Book Review of March 14, 1976, quoting from the work
in question: “his cadaverous – but not unhandsome – visage.”
· An ad in I don’t know which New York City newspaper,
date uncertain: WE HAVE 560,000
INDIVIDUAL NAMES WITH COATS OF ARMS…. IS YOUR NAME LISTED HERE? THE CHANCES ARE 98% IN YOUR FAVOR THAT WE
WILL BE ABLE TO RESEARCH AND FIND A COAT OF ARMS BEARING YOUR NAME…. GET A DOCUMENTED COAT OF ARMS ON YOUR
CHECKS…. AVAILABLE ONLY AT FRANKLIN NATIONAL BANK.
 |
Yours? Erlenmeyer |
·
From the New
York Times of March 3, 1969, dateline Philadelphia, March 22: “Bubble gum has blown up into big business in
the United States. Americans are chewing
about $100-million worth of it each year, according to Edward L. Fenimore,
president of the Philadelphia Chewing Gum Corporation of nearby Havertown. Sales
and consumption have more than quintupled in the last 10 years, and there is no
sign of a let-up, Mr. Fenimore says.”
· The list of ingredients on a 1-ounce package of
Rachel’s Cookies, presumably acquired during air travel, date uncertain:
“Bleached and unbleached wheat flour, chocolate chips (sugar, chocolate liquor,
cocoa butter, dextrose, lecithin), high fructose corn syrup, vegetable
shortening (partially hydrogenated) soybean and cottonseed oils with mono- and
diglycerides added), sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup, soybean oil, molasses,
natural and artificial flavors, whey, dried whole eggs, food starch-modified,
baking soda, salt, lecithin, baking powder (sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium
bicarbonate, corn starch, monocalcium phosphate), enzymes.”
· From an article on the Committee on Public
Doublespeak’s awards in The New York
Times of November 28, 1974: the award for Educationese, given to Donald Jay
Willower, professor of education at Pennsylvania State University, for the
following: “Yet, the most basic problems that arise in connection with knowledge
utilization may be those that stem from the social and organizational character
of educational institutions. A few
university adaptations already have been highlighted. Public schools display a myriad of normative
and other regulatory structures that promote predictability, as well as a host
of adaptive mechanisms that reduce external uncertainties.”
· From the same source, a doublespeak award to Colonel
David E. Opfer, former air attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Pnom Penh, Cambodia,
for his complaint to reporters: “You always write it’s bombing, bombing,
bombing. It’s not bombing. It’s air support.”
· From a Pete Hamill column about New York State Senator
Seymour Thaler, inspecting Knickerbocker
Hospital with an NBC TV film crew in tow, in the New York Post of May 13, 1967:
“We ended up visiting the ward, and with the TV crews gone, Thaler’s
indignation was waning. He went into a
room and stared at a strange totem-like device that resembled a large parking
meter. It was used for washing
bedpans. ‘Does this thing work?’ Thaler
asked, pulling the handle. It flushed
all over the front of his suit.”
· From a letter signed by Timothy Leary and delivered to
the Los Angeles Free Press, reprinted
in The Phoenix, a Boston weekly, of September
26, 1970: “Brothers and sisters, this is
a war for survival…. Ask the wild free animals, they know it…. You are either
part of the death apparatus, or you belong to the network of free life….
Listen, Americans, your government is an instrument of total lethal evil. Remember the buffalo and the Iroquois!...
Resist privately; guerilla invisibility…. Resist biologically; be healthy …
breed. Arm yourself and shoot to live….
To shoot a robot genocidal policeman is a sacred act…. Total war is upon us. Fight to live or you will die. Freedom will live. Timothy Leary. WARNING:
I am armed and should be considered dangerous to anyone who threatens my life
and freedom.”
· From an article about a Frenchman who won the lottery
in France and was beset by a horde of money-seekers, in The New York Times Magazine of May 7, 1967: “The prizewinner for sheer inventiveness or
bizarre misfortune … was an elderly fellow who asked for a loan to pay his
legal fees, for he had fired a joyous shotgun blast in the air during a wedding
celebration and unfortunately had slain one of the bride’s relatives.”
· From a summary of the plot of Mascagni’s opera Iris, in a program for I don’t know what
concert by Licia Albanese: “The action …
takes place in Japan. Iris, the beautiful
young daughter of the blind Cieco, is abducted to a place of pleasure by Kyoto,
a procurer, and Osaka, a wealthy rake.
She is driven mad by the experience and throws herself from the window
into a sewer. Halfway between life and
death, she bemoans her own sad destiny, asking why … why? … The rising Sun greets the dying Iris, and
she hails her only salvation, the God of Day.
She sinks into a field of blossoms and becomes one with the flowers.”
· From a 1985 brochure that came in the mail: “Once again the Mystery School calls us to
take the Journey of Transformation in which we leave behind our little local
life for a time and pursue Great Life and Great Time. We train to become stewards of the process by which evolution enters into time and the wasteland
is greened…. I welcome you to the Once and Future School. Jean Houston”
· From an article, dateline Rajneeshpuram, Ore., Sept.
21, in the New York Times of
September 22, 1985: “The desert commune here that recruited homeless people
from around the country last year, in what some local residents said was an
effort to stack the voting in local elections, is once again in turmoil. A key leader has departed, and a string of
allegations against her is being investigated by six law-enforcement agencies. Indicative of the tremors that have rocked
the community was an offer last night by its spiritual leader, Bhagwan Shree
Rajneesh, to give all but one of his 90 Rolls-Royces to his 5,000 disciples as
a gesture of appreciation.”
Commentary
 |
| Timothy Leary, arrested in 1972. Not armed enough, it would seem. |
Some of the above items require no comment; others
do. Sometimes the writer is aware of the
inanity, and sometimes not. The first
one by John Sinclair and the letter by Timothy Leary are examples of the raw,
violent edge of the late 1960s and early 1970s:
We are wild, we are free, we are bad, we are good, we are the solution,
join us or you are part of the problem, and down with everything and everyone
one else! This attitude, characteristic
of fiery twentysomethings, lacks compassion and understanding, and above all
it lacks any appreciation of ambiguity.
If you don’t grasp at least a little bit the significance of ambiguity,
you will never understand the world we live in, its complexities, its
inconsistencies. As for Leary (1920-1996), his advocacy of psychedelic drugs earned him repeated confrontations with U.S. authorities and landed him in jail more than once. His life was too complicated, too turbulent, to summarize here.
At the time of the statement I knew
nothing of John Sinclair and Trans Love Energies. I now learn that he had been serving a 9½ to
10-year sentence in Michigan for possession of two joints of marijuana (his
third offense), but was released by a court ruling in 1971, coincidentally just
after a gigantic concert on his behalf that included speeches by such stellar
activists as Allen Ginsberg, John Lennon, and Yoko Ono. The statement itself expressed the credo of Sinclair’s
White Panther Party, an imitation of the Black Panther Party.
 |
| Wayne Dabney |
And today?
John Sinclair is now an old dude himself and looks like someone’s grandpa. He is
still affiliated with Trans Love Energies, now a medical marijuana dispensary
in Detroit, one of many such outlets open in Michigan despite a legal challenge
to their operations. I suspect that he
has softened and found ways to work within the system, which, for better or for
worse, persists in spite of his and others’ youthful ravings. As proof of my surmise, I note that as far
back as 1979 he donated his papers to the Michigan Historical Collections of
the University of Michigan, where they are available for research, which is a
kind of consecration.
In perusing the ingredients of Rachel’s
Cookies, I find no less than seven mentions of sugar in one form or
another. But I’m no nutritionist. How many do you find? Also four chemicals that I know nothing
about. Which is why, after reading
enough of these labels, I stopped eating airline food.
The Educationese example of Public Doublespeak
reminds me of an education manuscript I once edited that referred to “the young
verbal beings”; I changed this to “the kids.”
The last two items are examples of the
soft, gooey edge of the 1960s and later – the New Age side of it. The program of the first involved nine sessions and a
tuition of $2,000. Jean Houston, Ph.D.,
is a New Age high priestess, a “pioneer in work as a behavioral scientist
emphasizing latent human capacities.” A
photo shows a woman in her forties with long dark straggly hair wearing a tunic
with a sash, her arms extended, her head bent, with a very intense look. I had heard her on station WBAI and was
struck by her remark, “We’ve got to make peace sexy.” Like it or not, war, with all its horrors, is
sexy, so she made sense to me. Result: a
poem entitled “Peace” that I sent to her.
She liked it, read it to her followers, and invited me to come do the
same at one of her lectures. Since I
would have had to pay a hefty admission fee, I chose not to. As for Transformation in nine sessions at
$2,000, that too I declined to undertake.
But cursory online research shows that she’s a native of Brooklyn, still
alive and active, with many books to her credit.
The last item, on the commune in Oregon,
is a reminder that lofty ideals don’t always work out (ambiguities again). The commune, by the way, was located on a
64,000-acre property, and its disciples enjoyed a 12-hour-a-day,
seven-day-a-week work pace, for which they got $10 a week plus room and
board. To reduce the threat of AIDS,
kissing was forbidden among members, though they could dance in the disco into
the wee hours. The guru accused the
departed leader of trying to poison him and his doctor, dentist, and
housekeeper (that’s a lot of poison!). Flanked
by two machine gun-toting guards, he was reported to be sharing his revelations
with followers, and later took a spin in one of his Rolls-Royces, while a
security helicopter hovered overhead.
 |
| His red-robed followers greet the guru as he drives by in the ashram. Samvado Gunnar Kossatz |
 |
| The guru's mug shot, 1985. Oregon Department of Corrections |
The preceding was all I knew about the
guru and his ashram when I read the news item; it hardly suggested life in an
idyllic setting, and made me marvel at what seekers of truth and enlightenment will put up with. Now, preparing
this post, I learn that soon afterward the commune collapsed, allegations of
serious crimes by the guru and his followers surfaced, and Rajneesh fled. When his jet refueled in North Carolina, he
was arrested and tried back in Portland on charges of immigration fraud, which
resulted in his deportation. What became
of his 90 (some say 93) Rolls-Royces I have yet to ascertain.
Inanities today
They abound.
For Doublespeak, how about these:
· the Patriot Act
· collateral damage (unintended civilian casualties
caused by military action)
· Operation Just Cause (our 1989 invasion of Panama)
· Operation Enduring Freedom (our 2001 invasion of
Afghanistan)
· Operation Iraqi Freedom (our 2004 invasion of Iraq)
Admittedly, the word
“patriot” turns me off, not because of its meaning but because of the way it is
used or misused, and because of those who use it. And what a lot of operations we have
launched, presumably for self-protection!
But why labor the obvious?
 |
| Operation Iraqi Freedom |
For me, the supreme inanity of recent
memory occurred off San Diego on May 1, 2003, when our forty-third president
landed in a jet on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which had just returned from combat operations
in the Persian Gulf. With TV cameras
rolling, he emerged in a flight suit and posed for photos with the ship’s
crew. Later, having doffed the flight
suit to appear in presidential garb, he addressed the crew and announced the
end of major combat operations in Iraq, with a sign MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
clearly visible. All of which was too
stagy, not to say premature, since years of guerrilla warfare lay ahead.
 |
| No. 43 in a flight suit. Contrary to the belief of some, he didn't pilot the plane. |
Another recent inanity: Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s comment on the
wave of looting that erupted in Iraq immediately after the fall of Saddam
Hussein, looting that U.S. troops did nothing to stop: “Stuff happens.” In war, indeed it does.
On a more modest note, I must state that
the inanity of Rachel’s Cookies – if “inanity” is the right word – is repeated
endlessly in processed foods today. This
becomes a problem for me in the holiday season, since Bob and I get gifts of
chocolates and other goodies that have a long paragraph in tiny print of
ingredients that include the same toxic mix of sugar under various names and
numerous chemicals with long, unpronounceable names – the very stuff that I
emphatically don’t want in my body.
And these are well-meant gifts from the nicest people. What to do?
Once, not without a few pangs of guilt, we simply discarded a box of
high-quality chocolates without devouring a single one. More often we compromise, eating only one or
two of the delicious but suspect items a day.
But this year we have received a rare bounty of these goodies and have
yet to decide how to cope. Will strength
of will win out, or will we succumb to temptation? All of which brings us far from inanities, I
confess. But maybe the ingredients in
chocolates and other delicacies don’t really constitute inanities at all. Maybe today I wouldn’t classify them as
such. Temptation, yes, and a risk to
one’s health and well-being, but maybe not inanities at all.
 |
| Temptation. Sujit kumar |
And how about gurus and ashrams
today? At my health food store I found a
glossy brochure advertising courses by various persons under the auspices of
the Integral Yoga Institutes, founded by His Holiness Sri Swami Satchidanandaji
Maharaj, whose photo shows a benign-looking white-bearded guru reminiscent,
alas, of Rajneesh. And, to heighten the
parallel, he has a “dynamic Yoga community” named Yogaville in Virginia. Is this a replay of the Rajneesh
misadventure? Well, the courses offered
range in price from $25 to $80, which seems reasonable. And I can’t dismiss cavalierly their content:
Yoga (I do it myself), health, nutrition, laughter meditation, detoxification,
and the like. So I’ve looked into the
matter a bit.
Online research tells me that
Satchidananda (1914-2002) was an Indian spiritual master who gained fame and
followers in the West during his time here in New York, where he settled and
became a U.S. citizen. He was the
opening speaker at the famous Woodstock festival of 1969 and included Allen
Ginsberg among his disciples. He
believed that we all should realize our spiritual unity and live together
harmoniously through optimal health, disciplined mind and senses, a sharp
intellect, a strong will (so useful in resisting chocolates), a heart full of
love, and a life of peace, joy, and bliss.
So who could argue with that? No
inanity here. And there’s no mention of
Rolls-Royces, not even one. Yes, my
health food store, which breathes the spirit of his teachings, is out to net
some coin, but I don’t begrudge them that, no, not even if pies that I could
get for $15 in the greenmarket were going there, on Christmas Eve, for
$19. (They were on sale at half price
the day after Christmas.) After all, the
West Village is a high-rent district. So
I’ll continue to shop there, though the courses and the promised delights of
Yogaville don’t tempt me.
Coming soon: Famous New York Murders; Andy Warhol: Genius
or Fraud?; the hierarchy of thieves in nineteenth-century New York. Sounds a bit lurid, doesn’t it? Not intended.
Happy New Year to all! May 2014 bring you joy and fulfillment, with or without gurus, with or without inanities, and with or without chocolates.
Happy New Year to all! May 2014 bring you joy and fulfillment, with or without gurus, with or without inanities, and with or without chocolates.
©
2013 Clifford Browder
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