My Take on the First Presidential “Debate”

There was a moment on last night’s episode of The Office that I thought was one of its best in years. New employee Nelly tricks new manager Andy into thinking he’s related to Michelle Obama. This leads to the conclusion on the part of Oscar and other members of the office staff that someone in Andy’s family must have owned slaves. It turns out they transported them from Africa. Unsurprisingly, this leads to a few tense moments between Andy and black employee Darryl, who first tells Andy “it’s not a big deal,” but then gets annoyed at Andy’s insistence on trying to “act black,” by using slang and adopting an accent, in order to seem more hip and make up for the sins of his fathers. Near the end of the episode, Darryl retreats to the company warehouse where he tells confidant Jim that he “just can’t do this anymore.” It’s unclear exactly what “this” is, but Darryl seems to imply that it has at least something to do with the ambient racism that permeates the office, and ironically, somewhat disturbingly, provides some of the comic relief for the show’s viewers. Part of the humor of The Office is that it’s playing with double standards and stereotypes, and its characters’ tendency towards confirmation bias, Darryl is saying he wants to get away from all that, even though he plays along sometimes, but in the long term, it has him in knots.

As I watched the replay of Wednesday night’s debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, I wondered if the reason why the president performed so badly was because he was feeling like Darryl. Here is the most powerful man in the world being mocked for living in the White House and using Air Force One, being ever so subtly reminded that he’s the “food stamp president,” having to respond to Mitt Romney’s outright lies and obfuscations as though they had anything to do with the economic, military, and political problems the country is facing.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Obama’s performance in the debate was bad, and I think he should be held accountable for that, but I also think Romney should be held accountable for what he was saying during the debate and how he was saying it. For instance, the more I think about it, the more I’m disturbed by this comment, directed at Obama during an otherwise innocuous exchange over policy, “As president, you’re entitled to your own house and your own airplane, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.” This was clearly one of Mitt’s much-publicized “zingers,” which his campaign staff bandied about in the run-up to the debate. You don’t just come up with a comment like that off the top of your head (or at least Mitt Romney doesn’t), especially not in the context in which it was delivered. The comment is kind of stupid on its face since every president since Teddy Roosevelt has been entitled to those things and all politicians manipulate facts to their advantage, and it’s definitely not the type of thing that’s going to win over any Obama voters. So why did Romney say it? What was he really saying and who was he trying to impress?

Clearly, Romney is playing with the contemporary political status of the word “entitlements.” What he’s suggesting is that Obama is like the people in Romney’s 47%. He hasn’t really earned his office, but he thinks he’s entitled to it, presumably for the same reason that, say, Scott Brown thinks Elizabeth Warren is entitled to her office, because she identified herself as Native American when she applied to Harvard, as a minority, and therefore in Romney’s and Brown’s eyes, a self-described “victim.” According to people like Romney, Brown, and their constituency, many if not most of whom benefit from entitlement programs themselves (public education, Medicare, highways, police and fire services, etc.), people like Warren, Obama, and the 47% think the U.S. owes them something. At least, this is the rhetoric behind Romney’s “zinger.”

How easy is it for Mitt Romney to say these things, and how callous, to tell a thoroughly self-made man, Obama, to stop feeling “entitled” to the political office he so mightily, so improbably earned. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is a man whose father was the governor of Michigan and the president of the American Motor Company, a man from perhaps the most privileged background one can enjoy in the U.S. He belongs to a church that up until 1978, when he was 31 years old, the same age I am now, did not allow black members, and still doesn’t allow women to occupy places of power. (The latter, at least, is part of the reason I’m no longer Catholic.) You’d think that he could understand why Obama might feel entitled. After all, he’s worked pretty damn hard to get where he is. Romney probably worked hard too, but he steadfastly refuses, to his own detriment, by the way, that he had a headstart in the first place, that he might owe the little people who helped him get where he is something in return. In fact, his wife says we need to be more grateful that he’s even deigned to reward us with his presence on the Republican ticket in the first place. This is the ugly rhetoric at the core of the Romney campaign, and it’s not that different from the defenses that Andy on The Office offered of his slaveholding ancestors and contemporary peers in the American elite. The episode was obviously meant to satirize contemporary political discourse over racial identity.

Of course, I know that Romney was just playing politics, that an insouciant cut at Obama’s sense of entitlement was not intended to come off as racist or discriminatory, that he probably didn’t even write this particular “zinger” himself, but his entire debate performance was fueled by such a contempt for Obama as a man, and the American people as voters, that it’s really depressing that very few pundits I’ve read are calling him out for it. Sure, the New York Times and other publications have done a good job of covering the lies and half truths promoted by both candidates, and at least one blogger has done a good job of analyzing the basic dishonesty of Romney’s overall debate strategy, but as far as I’ve seen, no one has connected these lies and obfuscations to Mitt Romney’s own sense of entitlement, which is the direct result of his privileged background, and not just his hard work or personal accomplishment, as in the case of Obama. It’s as though we as the public have grown tired ourselves of the double standards and stereotypes to which Obama is subjected.

Mitt Romney started the debate last night with dog whistle insults of China; shout outs to the ecologically negligent clean coal constituency in West Virginia, an infamously racist state; and a reminder to the president that more people are on food stamps now then we he took office, a result less of Obama’s policies than those of his predecessor George W. Bush, who Romney more or less wants to emulate. Although I resented it, I sympathized with Obama’s lackluster response to these asinine and borderline offensive comments. I didn’t blame him for feeling worn down by four years of Republican resistance and lies, by Mitt Romney’s audacious mid-debate shifts in policy and opinion. Just imagine how Obama would be treated had he pursued the same strategy? Wednesday night’s shitshow was not really a “debate,” it was an extended commercial, a farce, and I got the feeling that Obama, like Darryl on The Office, just didn’t want to play the game anymore, and maybe for similar reasons. I can’t say I blame him, but like Samuel L. Jackson and Jon Stewart, I hope he wakes the fuck up, because the new Mitt Romney, who is pretending to be a centrist, like Obama, is even more threatening because of it.

On Paul Ryan, Conservatism, and Blindness

As this article from Salon.com does a good job of explaining, Paul Ryan basically embodies everything that is hypocritical and corrupt about the Republican party and the politically powerful in the U.S. more generally in 2012. How did he get that way? Besides the death of his father at a young age, with which I deeply sympathize, Ryan seems to have lived nothing short of a charmed life. He grew up relatively wealthy in Janesville, WI, a “city of parks.” He was class president and prom king. His family was prominent in business and local politics, and he had his college education paid for by the federal government, in the form of Social Security payments after his father’s death. I have no doubt that Ryan would have returned those payments for even one more moment with his father, but why would someone, coming from these circumstances, then want to take such benefits away from someone else in similar straits? What happened to make Paul Ryan so discontent? Why doesn’t Ryan want to do everything he can to ensure that his friends and neighbors, his future generations get the same benefits?

These questions fascinate me because Ryan and I come from such similar backgrounds. We both have Irish last names. We were both raised Roman Catholic. (I no longer practice.) He was born in a small Midwestern city. I was born in an exurb of Philadelphia. Although neither of us can reasonably be considered “working class,” we have working class roots. His grandparents started a construction company, mine worked in the war industries. We were both class presidents of our high schools. I went to two good colleges and have attended grad school, in large part on federally subsidized loans. According to Wikipedia, we both like Led Zeppelin and Rage Against the Machine. He roots for the Packers, I root for the Eagles. I have no doubt that at certain points, in certain ways, Paul Ryan worked harder than me. He might have partied a little less, and that, along with his headstart, is probably why he’s more successful than me, but why should that extra bit of hard work and success make him stingier now? At what point did he decide that he was entitled to opportunities that others weren’t? Why doesn’t he think rich people should have to cooperate with the government in order to maintain a social safety net, whereas I’m perfectly happy to see my tax dollars go to work for the poor, the elderly, the mentally ill? Where did it all go so horribly wrong?

Presumably, if Ryan was reading this, he’d say I’ve gotten him all wrong. He is trying to help people. It’s just that he reads the situation differently. He might say, “We need to destroy society in order to save it,” or maybe, a la Margaret Thatcher, “Society doesn’t even really exist in the first place. It’s a liberal delusion.” He’d say that he’s opposed to Social Security, Medicare, and food stamps (even though he benefited from at least one of them), not because it isn’t right to help other people in need, but because Social Security and Medicare are the wrong way to provide that help. But how can he draw that conclusion when he received exactly that form of help himself?  What turns someone into a Paul Ryan?

I’ll never really know the answer to this question, but comparing it to my own experience, I imagine that Ryan’s first stirring of neo-liberal resentment probably occurred exactly at the moment he became most dependent on the government. Perhaps when he banked that first Social Security check. At that moment, it might have occurred to him that he hadn’t really earned all of the perks that come along with being born white, male, and rich. That someone along the line had to help him along, bursting the bubble of his entitlement and his privilege. I imagine how powerless he might have felt at that moment, and how ashamed. I’ve been there. But whereas for me the shame that goes with discovering one’s privilege has made me more humble, it appears to have fed Ryan’s callousness, his corruption, his bloodlust.

Apparently, Ryan was radicalized in college by Richard Hart, a professor, who impressed him with the writings of Ayn Rand and the economics of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. Surely, this is also part of the story, but I imagine the groundwork for this exchange was laid much earlier. I read The Fountainhead in high school too, and for the first three hundred pages, I swear, I was a convert. But then I couldn’t resist the urge to help someone up off the basketball court in gym class or give a homeless person a dollar, and I realized that however sound Rand’s Objectivism might be in theory (it’s not, by the way), it certainly doesn’t work in practice. In fact, my flirtation with conservatism in high school was pretty intense. I never liked Bill Clinton, probably as a petty form of rebellion against my parents, who loved him, and actually rooted for Bob Dole in 1996, but by college I set off on the more traditional path of the youthful libertine, which in my case, has extended into my adult years. Yet for Ryan, and apparently a lot of other young, mostly white American men and women, some of whom I grew up with, that path was never an option. Instead of Che Guevara, Martin Luther King, Jr., or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, they chose Rand, Reagan, and Friedman. Why? Is there anything romantic about these figures? How can Ryan listen to Rage Against the Machine and still be a Republican or at least not question some of the right-wing pieties he has come to represent? What isn’t he hearing? It’s almost as though Ryan and I are two different types of human being. That one or the other of us lacks some faculty, either for empathy or analysis. I’m pretty sure I’m the one that’s right, but how can I know?

As I was thinking about these questions, I came across this tidbit from the Wikipedia page about Ryan’s hometown, Janesville, where he got his start and where he’s still the acting congressman:

A tree that once stood in downtown Courthouse Park was the site of a lynch mob that hanged a convicted murderer in 1859.^[8] In 1992, television journalist Geraldo Rivera was arrested for battery after an altercation during his coverage of a Ku Klux Klan rally in Janesville.^[9] The location of a related cross burning in 1992 is now “Peace Park” with a playground and a peace pole, said to be the world’s tallest at 52 feet.^[10]

A cursory Internet search suggests that the lynching mentioned might not have been racially motivated (not sure why it’s then being called a “lynching”), but the KKK rally obviously was. I hear these facts and I wonder how Janesville is dealing with them, how many of its citizens even know about them. I wonder how the U.S. considers itself a civilized nation when crosses are being burnt in 1992, the year Ryan turned 22 and I turned 12. That same year Ryan went to Washington, D.C. not to tamp out the flames of racial resentment, but to stoke them. Somewhere along the line he was deadened to the horror of his own history. Paul and I are entitled to some things. Blindness isn’t one of them, but somewhere along the line he got the impression that it was.

“Young Adult”

I actually liked this movie more than I thought I would. Based on the previews, I was expecting an apologia for the baby-making industry with the none-too-clever moral, “Successful people who move to the city are all unhappy.” That is, in part, what the movie’s about, but its vitriol is also more democratic, targeting not only the main character, played by Charlize Theron, but most of those around her. Nobody, it seems, is really happy in the movie, and in the end, Theron’s character has just as good a chance for happiness as anyone else, which I thought was fair. The film modeled, for me, a certain mode of “getting over it” that I thought was believable and instructive. I’m not sure if that makes the film apolitical or profoundly narcissistic, but I enjoyed watching it and would recommend it to others.

Tops and Bottoms

When I read this story about Obama inviting the Republicans to Camp David for a weekend retreat, I can’t help but wonder about the emotional dynamics that are shaping these talks. Since Obama entered office, the Republicans have expressed nothing but rage, impertinence, and disrespect towards his presidency and his policies with some of them accusing him of being a socialist, a secret Muslim, and an enemy of the state. How are these charges coloring Obama’s exchange with the Republicans? How much might the implicit racism, sexism, and resentment that colors their worldview be impacting these discussions? It’s strange to think that the racism of the U.S.’s leaders is going ruin the anti-racist impulses on the part of its people that put Obama into office in the first place. It’s hard for me to think of another time in U.S. history when that’s happened (when the racist will of the leaders have trumped the anti-racism of the people; U.S. citizens are usually blithely racist), although perhaps my account of history is ideologically colored, filled with blind spots.

Raising the Debt Limit

The consequences of a default on the U.S. debt would be catastrophic, but a majority of U.S. voters apparently prefer it.

This preference has a utopian quality. It expresses the people’s will to smash the state, to break free from the paternalistic hold of a totalitarian government. But, it is also a very dangerous desire.

The majority of U.S. voters prefer economic collapse because they’ve been convinced by elite propaganda that this will create more economic opportunities for them in the future, but this probably isn’t the case. It is more likely to create a short-term economic disaster that would disproportionately affect the middle and working classes and possibly lead to violent social and political fallout (e.g. hate crimes, political assassination, etc.).

The desire for failure on the part of middle and working class workers in the U.S. is fueled by their resentment for racialized minorities, who they believe benefit disproportionately from social welfare programs. It is also fueled by a misguided belief in meritocracy, that the white middle and working classes still “count” in the U.S. from the point of view of the corporate elites and that through hard work and persistence they can achieve greater economic and social rewards. One need only glance at the trends in U.S. wages and wealth inequality since 1968 to see that this is just not the case. Although it is unclear whether default will benefit anybody, it will almost definitely not benefit the poor or working classes in the short or medium term and will much more likely benefit the current elites who still hold the keys to military power, natural resources, and securities in the long term. To agitate in favor of default would be to sell one’s birthright for a mess of pottage.

Such a desire might also be appealing from an anarcho-Marxist, i.e. revolutionary point of view, however deceptively. Nowadays, well-intentioned leftists seem to mistake catastrophe for revolution, something that Marx, for one, never had in mind. Instead, in the short term, leftists should support raising the debt ceiling, but only in support of a state working towards a more just, egalitarian, and democratic political arrangement. As leftists we need to have hope that at least some members of the power elite posses the desire to see this change take place. Otherwise, we are in for many more years of suffering by the people who deserve it least, the poor and working classes, and the continued flourishing of a corporate elite whose greed and callousness seem to expand day by day.

Chris Hedges

A friend of mine posted an essay by Chris Hedges today on Facebook.

Here was my response:

This is a moving essay, although his complaints about culture seem to assume a rather simplistic model of cultural reception. For instance, in my opinion, the reality TV that he mentions, “Jersey Shore,” “The Apprentice,” and “The Jerry Springer Show” (does anybody watch that anymore?), are not a transparent indicator of the oligarchy’s disdain for the poor, but an expression of their viewers’ drive towards their own destruction. These people may be middle class, not poor, which still supports his point, in a way, but my inner-Zizek tells me that in order to dissuade people from this destructive behavior (globalization), we need to understand their enjoyment of it a little better (and possibly with more respect).

Also, I hate to say this because I fear that people will jump down my throat for it, but I think that Democrat-bashing, while deserved, is still dangerous in the current political climate, and I say this as an independent socialist who has only voted for the Democrats twice (Obama and Tom Perriello). To take just one example, what is happening to Bradley Manning should serve as an indication to Democrats of their party’s complicity with the corporate state, but for the worst off in the U.S. (LGBTQ people, Arabs and Muslims, other minoritized populations and immigrants who are also often poor, women in need of reproductive health services), the Democratic party constitutes a thin blue line between survival and annihilation, and it seems irresponsible of Hedges to dismiss that. Even Chomsky (in his latest interview with Amy Goodman) suggested that, in swing states, U.S. voters are going to be forced to choose Democrats in the next election, no matter how much they might want to do otherwise. You will be voting for the possibility of glacially slow, incremental change, and against the possibility of revolutionary terror at the hands of right-wing neo-fascists. (I think Chomsky uses the term “paleolithic dinosaurs.”) I’m inclined to agree with the linguist.

All Virginia hip-hop tonight on my radio show!

I’ll be spinning all Virginia hip-hop tonight from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. with DJ Shazbot on WTJU 91.1 FM, Charlottesville as part of our rock marathon. You can listen on-line anywhere in the world on-line (wtju.net). If you live in Charlottesville and love WTJU; or if you support hearing funky, fresh, informative hip-hop on the radio; or if you simply support truly independent radio (no commercials, no playlists), please call in a pledge or donate on-line (434 924 3959).

The Morning After

It could have been because I came down with some sort of flu, but the day after the recent mid-term elections I felt sick…and cheated. When I voted for Barack Obama, it was the first time I voted in a U.S. election at any level—local, state, or federal. Until that point, I had been so highly disaffected by U.S. politics that I didn’t think voting was worth my time, and indeed would serve as a tacit endorsement of a government that I despised because of its sexism, its homophobia, its racism, its ownership by corporations, its militarism, and its neo-colonist, neo-imperialist policies. In the few prior elections in which I might have voted (Bush v. Gore, Bush v. Kerry), I lived in states so far to the left at that time that they didn’t need my vote anyway (New York and Illinois), and not voting at all made it easier to maintain my façade of defiance. To me, the U.S. is despicable; my not voting was my way of voicing that sentiment—in silence.

But I voted for Obama anyway, because I bought into the message. I read his book Dreams from My Father, and I thought, This is a guy who speaks my language. He understands how bad it is. He’s conversant with dissidents. He’s dabbled in radicalism. He’s complex. He’s autonomous. I’m gonna vote for him. And even today, after Obama has more or less extended Bush-era military policies and in some cases worsened them, and reacted to the crisis of capitalist accumulation by listening to the very people that created it in the first place, I still support the man, but I do so with a knot in my stomach and the feeling that I’ve been taken for a ride.

I still appreciate the dialectical significance of Obama’s victory with regards to race relations in the U.S. that many “old New Leftists” (like Nader and Chomsky) underestimate. Obama’s election energized previously dormant segments of the U.S. population, like African-Americans and young people, and even though this new energy has not had strong results in the policy arena, it still burns brightly and in a way that it didn’t, and maybe couldn’t have, without the charisma of Obama to spark it. Also, I think that our country is better off with Barack Obama and Joe Biden as president and vice-president than John McCain and (perish the thought) Sarah Palin. Obama entered the White House during a crisis of epic proportions, and his way of dealing with it has been flawed, but I take some heart in the fact that if McCain had been elected, things might’ve been a hell of a lot worse. Shit, if McCain had been elected we might already have declared all out war on Iran abroad, and further scapegoated Hispanic immigrants and Muslims at home.

What makes me angry right now is Obama’s refusal to stand up for himself. On the day after the election, I was sickened to hear that he described himself as “humbled” by the result. Considering the economic climate in which the election took place, he should have said, “Is that all you got?” What’s frankly more shocking than the Republican “wave” is the fact that they weren’t able to take over both houses of congress. They did it in 1994, why not 2010?

To my mind, the right wing and left wing responses to Obama have been similarly galling. In spite of myself, I can’t understand the right wing’s resistance to Obama as anything less than racism. Besides healthcare reform, George W. Bush did every bad thing Obama ever did with the economy and the military, and we never saw the populist upswing against him that we have witnessed against Obama. What’s the difference between the two? Brown skin. Furthermore, an apparent sticking point for the right wing, Obama’s healthcare legislation, is a similarly vexing racial proposition. Healthcare reform is something all working people should favor, and it seems to me that the only reason to resist it is the fear that someone “less deserving” than you will receive better care than you, and the only way to imagine these “less deserving” people is to buy into the fantasy that most of the poor are merely lazy, when in reality, most poor people in the U.S. today work multiple jobs for starvation wages under constant threat of incarceration for behaviors that many of their racial “betters” get away with all the time. Another plurality of the working poor don’t even have legal status. No matter how you cut it, the belief in the laziness of the poor is a racist one that goes back at least until the days of U.S. slavery and probably beyond. It seems nothing less than obvious that it is these racist fantasies that have fueled the populist elements of the Tea Party movement, and contaminated the sphere of civic discourse to such an extent that casually racist statements that were at least frowned upon before Obama’s election have suddenly become acceptable again, for instance, the racist discourse about Obama’s religion, the threats to burn the Koran, or the uproar over the Park51 project. Even if many independents moved back to the right during the mid-term election, I suspect that it was less out of principled disagreement with President Obama than it was out of a desublimation of racist feelings that had been tamped down during Obama’s spectacular campaign.

(For people who opposed the recent health care legislation at the level of policy, because they thought it should have done more or done the same thing in a different way, I sympathize. I am extraordinarily disappointed with the details of the legislation. But I think that it’s important to recognize just how complicated a coalition between right wing racists and health corporations made the legislative process. Obama and the Democrats certainly made tactical mistakes, but on balance, I think they at least tried to do more harm than good, and made difficult political choices that absolutely had to be made. If not then, when?)

The left wing, however, hasn’t been much better, especially “old New Leftists” like the ones that populate my profession (academia), and public intellectuals like Nader, Chomsky, or Tariq Ali. To me, it has seemed as though many of these leftists, as well as many more run-of-the-mill leftist friends, suddenly became radical communists overnight. As someone who has identified as a radical communist for most of his adult life, I can vouch for the fact that this ideology was not shared by most of my peers and colleagues before Obama’s election. The night after Obama’s election it was as though he was expected to initiate a cultural revolution on par with the most radical Maoist fantasy. Anything short of declaring an end to all foreign wars, the abolition of police powers and prisons, the nationalization of banks and oil, and the adoption of a single-payer healthcare system seemed inadequate. I think that it’s marvelous that Obama’s election enabled these fantasies. I would have encouraged all leftists to hold them before his election, and I encourage us to embrace them after he leaves, but I think that it’s at least disingenuous to judge him by his inability to achieve them. With figures like Nader, Chomsky, and Ali, I sympathize. They’ve been on the frontlines for a while now, and they’ve earned the right to fantasize. But for the average left-leaning person who became radicalized overnight, I think we owe Obama a bit of a wider berth.

In the end, the reason why I feel so shitty isn’t the fact that the Democrats lost. I disagree with Democrats just as much as I disagree with Republicans. And it’s not because I’ve become disenchanted with Obama, although I’m very close. (The more I think about his foreign policy, especially, the more the grinning visage of Larry Summers pops into my head, the more disgusted I get.) What upsets me the most a few days after the election is a feeling of hopelessness and frustration that I haven’t felt since the darkest days of Bush. I feel lonely, and I resent the fact that Obama tricked me into feeling like I was part of something in which I never believed in the first place, the U.S. state.

Memory of a “Free” Festival

This past Saturday I had a ticket to the free festival at the Merriweather Post Pavilion courtesy of my friend Jason Kirby. Thanks, Jason.

(I’m not printing the name of the event’s sponsor so as not to give them any further publicity.)

I’m usually very leery about events like this one, but I went for a few reasons. One, the price was right. Two, Pavement was booked to play as part of their reunion shows. And three, I thought that seeing Ludacris, T.I., and M.I.A. wouldn’t be a waste of my time. So I graciously accepted Jason’s offer.

The concert more or less lived up to my expectations, which were never very high in the first place. The general vibe of the concert was tedious. You couldn’t help but feel as if you were part of the cast for a big mobile phone commercial. Corporate memorabilia dominated the venue’s stage design, and every phase of the concert’s multimedia “experience” was calibrated to conscript you in the ad campaign. Roving camera crews broadcasted images of concertgoers wandering the grounds back to audiences waiting for the next act. Video screens encouraged concert viewers to post their pictures, tweets, and texts on-line so that they could be concatenated into a media narrative of a pseudo-event taking place somewhere between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Of course, the music press and media agencies have faithfully bit, closing the feedback loop on a promotional strategy that was probably a hell of a lot cheaper than a national ad campaign. Why not trick the newspapers into doing it for you?

The main selling point of the concert is that it was free, but it really wasn’t. The free tickets only got you as far as the lawn for most of the headlining acts, and an utterly confusing ticketing system forced concertgoers to shift sightlines and positions from uncomfortable seat to dusty lawn and back several times throughout the day. Many concertgoers actually paid for their tickets, at least $125 a pop, to wait in long lines to see their favorite bands play truncated sets. The fact that the concert wasn’t really “free” didn’t escape the attention of at least two acts—Pavement, and Matt and Kim—both of whom addressed its crassness during their sets. Of course, the venue also charged ridiculous prices for food and, I assume, memorabilia. I didn’t actually check the memorabilia prices. 24 oz. cups of Budweiser sold for $8 and a soggy, flavorless sandwich cost me $9. It wouldn’t have been hard for the sponsors to have allowed concertgoers to pack their own lunch, and it would have been closer to the spirit of an event that was supposed to be free for all involved and dedicated to charity.

Since Ludacris was scheduled at the same time as Pavement, and T.I. had to back out because of legal issues, my only rooting interests at the concert ended up being for M.I.A. and Pavement. I also caught most of Joan Jett’s set and a snippet of LCD Soundsystem’s. The first was kitschy and the latter merely boring. I actually like some of LCD Soundsystem’s music, so I was ready to enjoy their set, but they had nothing going. Sure, some of their songs had good grooves, but randomly banging on a timbale does not count as improvisation, and James Murphy can’t sing, so I don’t really get what the performance was supposed to do for me that the record hasn’t already.

Pavement’s set was predictable. Malkmus was acting like an idiot and Steve Kannberg can’t really sing anymore. He used to be my favorite in the band, a perpetual underdog, but I’ve developed serious reservations about what he ever contributed, and Preston School of Industry kind of sucked. It was fun to sing along to the songs, which I still love, and they played two that I wasn’t necessarily expecting—“Here” and “Two States.” But there was little doubt that the band was going through the motions, collecting a paycheck. It’s kind of an insult to their legacy that they don’t even seem to be making an effort to do anything creative on this tour. Malkmus has improved as a guitar player, but that almost made it more painful to see him fake his way through songs that are obviously too “easy” for him. If old fans really like Pavement for being Pavement, I think they would have appreciated new interpretations of the old tunes—a punk rock “Stop Breathing,” “Two States” as a ballad, “Here” as power pop. Why not try it? It’s sustained Dylan for 40 years and I still think he’s interesting. It’s tragic to see indie rock bands who staked their reputation on deflating rock star poses cash in the second time around on simpleminded authenticity. Maybe the band will surprise me and do something exciting after this tour, but I doubt it.

M.I.A.’s performance was fine for the opposite reasons. The music sucked, but at least she put on a show. Halfway through the set she admitted that it was “confusing,” and I walked away with the impression that it was intentionally so. I don’t think she was trying to gain any fans by performing “Steppin Up” from her new album in front of back up dancers dressed in day-glo accented hijabs, fooling around with day-glo colored electric drills. The song is dissonant on the album, and she didn’t back off in concert. M.I.A. has recently criticized pop stars like Lady Gaga for the simplemindedness of their presentation and I couldn’t help but think she was trying to do something more challenging, more “difficult” in this performance. Whether or not it was successful is another matter. I think it might have pissed off some people, and at the end of Saturday’s concert I didn’t exactly mind that.

All in all, the concert left me asking what rock n’ roll is “for” anymore. It certainly isn’t “fun” unless your idea of fun is drinking overpriced beer, eating shitty food, getting your ass covered in dust, and your shoes covered in piss. Or at least the Web 2.0 corporate variant of it isn’t, which shouldn’t have surprised me very much in the first place.

Gibson Acknowledges the “Inception” Link

Here.