Wow, That is Scathing: New Hampshire Edition

Excerpt from Henry Allen's 1988 essay on New Hampshire:

New Hampshire is a fraud.

Which is to say that behind that idyll of white-steepled, sleigh-belled, town-meeting, republican-with-a-small-R America lurks a much realer and hidden New Hampshire — the souvenir hustlers, backwoods cranks, motorcycle racing fans, out-of-state writers, dour French Canadians and tax-dodging Massachusetts suburbanites who have conspired as New Hampshire has conspired for two centuries to create an illusion of noble, upright, granite-charactered sentinels of liberty out of little more than a self-conscious collection of bad (if beautiful) land, summer people, second-growth woods full of junked cars and decaying aristocracy, lakes howling with speedboats, state liquor stores that are open on Sundays and the most vicious state newspaper in America — the Manchester Union Leader, which recently greeted the birthday of Martin Luther King by describing him as a Communist dupe.

They sell the rest of the country maple syrup, lottery tickets and Yankee sagacity the way Indians on reservations sell moccasins, bingo and environmental wisdom. They never shut up about how closemouthed they are. They beat you rich and they beat you poor. They do this by taking a Calvinist pride in the riches from the high-tech boom in the southern part of the state, and then asssuming the smugness of Thoreau in defending the poverty of the swamp Yankees and shack people living back in the woods with yards full of mean dogs and broken snowmobiles. They exhibit the ethics of Switzerland and the shrugging shabbiness of New Jersey.

Or as Emerson wrote: “The God who made New Hampshire taunted the lofty land with little men.”

The question is not who they think they are, to be holding us hostage every four years with their presidential primary. Instead, who do we think they are, to let them get away with it, this white, tight and right smidgen of a place, this myth-mongering bastion of no-tax/no-spend conservatives with no minorities to speak of and a total of .43 percent of the American people? As Thomas Jefferson said, after New Hampshire town meetings had attacked his Embargo Act, “The organization of this little selfish minority enabled it to overrule the union.”

Happy New Hampshire Primary!

Have You No Shame, New Yorker? Pt. 2

Remember the last installment of this, where I gave examples from New Yorker profiles where the writers had fairly unflattering things to say about the individuals featured in the piece? Well, here's some more!

*Rankin is thirty-eight, six feet tall, and broad in the beam. He has a high forehead and wears large eyeglasses, which together give the appearance that he is always about to ask politely if you've got a minute.

*In Baylor's lab-coated corridors, he wears designer jeans and square-toed ankle boots, and walks with a bounce in his step that's suspiciously close to a strut, like Pinocchio heading off to Pleasure Island.

*On the outskirts of Oxford lives a brilliant and distressingly thin physicist named David Deutsch... In the half-light of the winter sun, Deutsch's house looked a little shabby. The yard was full of what appeared to be English ivy, and near the entrance was something twiggy and bushlike that was either dormant or dead...His thinness contributed to an oscillation of his apparent age between nineteen and a hundred and nineteen. (He's fifty-seven.) His eyes, behind thick glasses, appeared outsized, like those of an appealing anime character. His vestibule was cluttered with old phone books, cardboard boxes, and piles of papers.

*A hefty fellow of fifty-four -- with a face as round and frank as a full moon, set off by scholarly spectacles...

But this cute cover makes up for it, right?

*Zadran, who is in his late sixties, is an extraordinary-looking man, with a face like something devised by a Claymation animator. At the meeting, he wore a black turban topped with a flamboyant cloth fan and trailing a yard-long train. He has a horizontal stripe of eyebrows dyed jet black, a great proboscis, a handlebar mustache, and bassetlike jowls. His ears are massive, resembling dried apricots loosely attached to the sides of his head.

*For those whose picture of [Clarence] Thomas remains frozen at the time of his confirmation hearings, in 1991, the Justice is today a startling sight. His jet-black hair has gone almost completely white. He has gained a great deal of weight. (An injury long ago ended his days on the "highest court in the land," the basketball court on the top floor of the Supreme Court building.) His gait is weary, and he looks older than his sixty-three years.

*Nilekani has a round face, as if reflected in the back of a spoon, and the wry, detached manner of someone so taken by visions of the future that the present seems too mundane to merit his full attention. Although he is often persuasive, he is not always eloquent; sentences often fall away to phrases like "the branding thingy." He is known as a great salesman, but he sells softly, blithely, by making it seem almost an imposition to have to explain the benefits of his product.

*Mountainously built, with a broad face surrounded by a mossy underbeard and rootlike dreadlocks, Lanier has an imposing presence that nonetheless comes off as oddly fluttery. He tends to talk in breathless bursts, and he often defuses his inflammatory remarks by allowing his voice to rise into a register that is more often reserved for talking to pets or small children. This can give listeners the impression that he is lecturing to a three-year-old while walking up a steep hill.

Oh No He Didn't!

Here is a funny unaired sketch from this past week's Saturday Night Live episode with Tina Fey.

It's pretty "Oh snap!"

Have You No Shame, New Yorker?

In a lot of different profiles featured in The New Yorker, the writer often describes something about the subjects' physical appearance. The physical descriptions often do not have anything to do with the article -- they're not necessary other than creating a mental picture for the reader. I have come across several articles where the descriptions are not very flattering. In fact, I often find myself thinking, "Ouch! They probably didn't need to include that..." It also makes me think that I never want to be featured in a New Yorker profile (ha!) because lord knows what they'd say about me.

Here are some examples I've culled:

*McLaughlin is tall and large, but his head seems small for his frame, like a child's on a grown up's body.

*The Defense Minister was casually attired in a T-shirt, sweatpants, and flip-flops. He coughed in a compulsive way, as if he had a nervous tic... He had a high-pitched giggle, which broke out at odd moments throughout the evening.

*At seventy-six, she has the flowing gray hair and cheery vigor of a cyclist in a Centrum Silver commercial.

*He's short and round-faced, smiles a lot, and displays two cute rabbit teeth as he tells you how ridiculous the health-care system is and how he plans to change it.

[These are all from the profile on Guillermo del Toro. The writer couldn't have mentioned del Toro's weight enough in the article...].
*I heard a heavy shuffling sound: del Toro, who at the time weighed more than three hundred pounds, was coming from a back room. (As Doug Jones observes, "Guillermo doesn't pick up his feet when he walks.")
Del Toro gave me a genial slap on the back, his hand like a bear paw."
*Del Toro wore black sweatpants, a black T-shirt, and an unzipped black hoodie, all of which had been laundered so many times that they had faded into clashing inky shades. He had large ice-blue eyes, round glasses, and the rubbery cheeks of a kindergartner. An unruly brown beard, touched with gray, grounded him in manhood. A film of perspiration on his forehead trapped strands of hair that were supposed to be combed to the side.
*We pulled into Ribs U.S.A., a frayed established on Olive Avenue. Del Toro ordered ribs and a lemonade, along with a redundant appetizer of "riblets." He told me that each of his notebooks was "an art project in itself"...I opened up his current notebook, which included sketches for "The Hobbit", while he put on a plastic bib bearing the inscription, "I <3 RIBS."
*At the restaurant, del Toro had trouble squeezing into the booth; he had gained weight in Wellington.
*Del Toro had transformed his own silhouette. He had lost twenty-seven pounds in three weeks, after undergoing sleeve-gastrectomy surgery. "They take three-quarters of your stomach out and throw it out!" he said. "I feel great." That day, he had eaten a light lunch with his daughter Mariana, and in an elevator they had played a family game: Guillermo aimed his belly and crushed her, gently, into a corner. In Spanish, she lamented, "This game won't be fun when you're no longer fat."
*Del Toro was pallid, and it did not look as if he had continued losing weight: he was still wearing black sweats. He went into the kitchen and rummaged through the freezer. "Want a popsicle?" he said, taking one for himself. His lips were soon stained red.

*Ibrahim, who is squat and round, with a flat nose, bulging eyes, and a shiny bronzed head...

*Denton is tall and rangy, and has a famously large head that sits precariously on a thin neck and narrow shoulders, leaving the impression of an evolved brain that is perhaps a little too conscious of its pedestrian context. He looks perpetually unshaven, with gray stubble complementing his close-cropped, receding hair, which he teases casually forward.

*Morse is a middle-aged man with gray hair who looks like the prototypical Beltway wonk: rumpled, self-effacing, mildly preppy and sensibly shoed.

Wow, That Is Scathing (Xenophobic Edition)

Hosts of a popular car program on BBC TV are in trouble for making offensive comments about Mexicans on their program.  They were discussing the Mexican sports car, the Mastretta, and one host said, "Why would you want a Mexican car? Because cars reflect national characteristics don't they? Mexican cars are just going to be lazy; feckless; flatulent; overweight; leaning against a fence, asleep, looking at a cactus, with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat."

Ooookaaaay. In addition to being offensive, that got strangely specific at the end. How many Mexicans has he actually come across that were sleeping against a fence, wearing a poncho, while looking at a cactus? And how could the Mexican be looking at a cactus if he's asleep?

And flatulent?

The hosts also described Mexican food as "refried sick"...which, it must be said, is actually leaps and bounds above English cuisine, which is "stodgy sick slathered in gravy." (Two can play this game!)

Definitely bags used for holding fluids for a vaginal cleanse

Another host said they won't get any complaints about their comments because the Mexican ambassador is too lazy to complain. He said, "At the Mexican embassy the ambassador's going to be sitting there with a remote control like this....", as he slumped down in his chair, pretending to snore.

The ambassador, of course, did complain.

And what I don't understand is where this negativity is coming from? How much experience do these hosts actually have with Mexicans -- let alone, lazy ones? The Mexican population in London is not terribly big, and I'm guessing the largest percentage of Mexican-born people in London are students. And if they're not students, and they've traveled all the way to London to work,  they're probably working their asses off. And if the hosts are just generally talking about all Mexicans in Mexico, well, then they're obviously completely unaware of that population of people, too. The hosts are obviously just falling back on xenophobic stereotypes. Sad.

Wow, That is Scathing...

I was sorting through some articles today and I came across this National Post piece I had on the ten most overrated Canadian authors. I meant to write about this piece a few months ago, but for some reason I forgot about it. And I don't know how I could have possibly forgotten about it because it's Canadians getting mean. Nothing is better! And not only is it Canadians getting mean, it's Canadians being mean towards other Canadians! You don't see that often. Especially in the arts. It seems like Canadians tend to rally around Canadian artists because, well, they're Canadian. "He's Canadian, you know?" or "She's one of us", they proudly proclaim. I'm reminded of when the U.K.'s high commissioner to Canada between 1981 and 1984 said that Canadians had limited talent and that:

"Anyone who is even moderately good at what they do -- in literature, the theatre, skiing, or whatever -- tends to become a national figure. And anyone who stands out at all from the crowd tends to be praised to the skies and given the Order of Canada at once." (Now that's scathing!) 

I don't really agree with the statement, but it points out the idea/belief that Canadians have a tendency to loyally support their Canadian artists.

Well, fuck that, says Alex Good and Steven W. Beattie, the authors of this Overrated Canadian Authors list.

First they explain the parameters of their list, and they even provide a biting comment right off the bat! "The rules of the game were pretty simple. We considered living authors only. Some established track record was required (breathe easy, Vincent Lam, your time has not yet come)."

And then the claws really came out.

[My emphasis added below]

On David Adams Richards:

"Richards is a good example of an author, like the retirement-age Brits mentioned by Josipivici, who has kept at it long past his best-before date."

On Anne Michaels:

"Stuffed to the gills with abstruse metaphoric language and self-conscious, sonorous prose...[These books] are prime examples of Canadian fiction that is solipsistic, humourless, and alienating. Michaels' novels are emblematic of what gets lauded as great writing in this country: florid syntax married to heavy themes, often having to do with some combination of war, loss, and memory. They're the All Bran of CanLit: books that people read because they think they're good for them, not out of any expectation of pleasure of enjoyment."

[P.S. Someone obviously needs to get these guys a thesaurus...]


On John Ralston Saul:

"What followed was a slide into increasingly vague, unconvincing, and repetitive exercises in nationalist myth-making. Leading, inevitably, to his editorship of Penguin's dismal Extraordinary Canadians series, many of whose authors seem to have been culled from this list. Is there a Family Compact of bad writing in this country?"

On Douglas Coupland:

"In a seemingly endless series of twee commentaries on our post-postmodern, brand-obsessed age, Coupland has delighted in lampooning consumer culture by tossing into his work everything from cutesy line drawings to the 8,363 prime numbers between 10,000 and 100,000 -- all as if Kurt Vonnegut had never put pen to paper. What Coupland's apologists miss is that his lazy prose is every bit as self-conscious as that of Anne Michaels or Michael Ondaatje: he merely plays to the lowbrow end of the spectrum." 

On Erin Moure:

"She also demonstrates why people have taken to avoiding poetry so studiously. Cryptic without being particularly interesting, stricken with various political and linguistic theories, and barren of the sort of grace one typically looks to poetry to provide, it's all too easy to take a pass on."

On Jane Urquhart:

"The adjective reviewers and critics most often apply to Urquhart's writing is "lyrical," which should be sufficient in and of itself to secure her a place on this list...Urquhart, like many of the writers here, would do well to bear in mind Ray Robertson's admonition about "the literary value of not being boring."

On Michael Ondaatje:

"Surprise! What credibility would a list like this have if it didn't include the absurd figure of Michael Ondaatje, our very own poet laureate of pretentious, purple prose, our king of cliche, a sorcerer who has improbably managed for decades now to pass off his distinctive brand of inert slop as somehow being possessed of a "literary" value only detectable by prize juries, time-serving academics, and a handful of supine reviewers. It would all be laughable if not for the catastrophic effect the grotesque inflation of his reputation has had on Canadian writing..."

On Joseph Boyden:

"And did no one notice that the Manhattan sections of Through Black Spruce read as if the author had researched them by watching reruns of America's Next Top Model?"

On M.G. Vassanji:

"...Vassanji, aside from his comically stilted diction, is oblivious to the notion of a novel being informed by any personal sense of style. There are people writing prospectuses for mining companies who have more feel for the language. It's doubtful one could find an interesting sentence anywhere in his work. Further proof -- as if any more were needed! -- that prize juries in this country have a lot to answer for."

On Yann Martel:

"[Life of Pi] owes more than a little to Brazilian writer Moacyr Scilar's comic novel Max and the Cats (Martel may be the first institutional CanLit star of the Internet generation, where the line between appropriation and plagiarism is perilously blurry). He followed that up with the misguided Holocaust allegory Beatrice and Virgil, a book that became a bestseller despite savage reviews in the U.S. and Britain (Canadians critics, as if their wont, were more polite)."

Wow, That is Scathing...Pt. 2

Vanity Fair's Andrew Wagner on Joanna Newsom's new album Have One On Me (which is a 3-disc album):

Does anyone really want three discs of Joanna Newsom? Have One On Me is like listening to the Pride and Prejudice book-on-tape while driving on I-94 through Indiana and Illinois with NPR's Jonathan Schwartz riding shotgun. It's long (3 discs!), sad, depressed, flat, antiquated, boring, and runs the risk of making you nod off at the wheel and die. All this against a beige backdrop flanked by decaying industrial towns. I mean, three discs?

Wow, That is Scathing...

David Denby, a film critic for The New Yorker magazine, on the following movies:

"Brothers": The script feels mechanical and obvious, and, except for Gyllenhaal, the movie is disastrously miscast. Maguire's Sam is humorless and odd-looking in his high-and-tight military haircut even before he goes away, and Portman, an elfin, improbably pretty thing, is unconvincing as a former cheerleader and young mother of two; they don't set off the dimmest of sparks in each other.

"It's Complicated": Is Nancy Meyers ("Something's Gotta Give") the squarest person ever to make a movie? This new embarrassment helps make the case. Meryl Streep, reduced to giggling, fumbling, gossipy ordinariness for the first time in her career... She has an affair with her husband who left her ten years earlier, played by Alec Baldwin, who comes off as hyperaggressive, dull, wet, and fat. At the same time, Streep flirts with her architect, played all milquetoasty by Steve Martin. The characters are upper-middle-class people who act like TV's lower-middle-class people.