What is keeping me awake tonight 1: Adam Sternbergh

A few weeks back, on a listserv that I currently have no good reason to subscribe to, let alone read, someone posted a link to the Stuff White People Like blog. As a response, today someone posted a link to Adam Sternbergh’s recent critique of that blog. A link in that article led me to Sternbergh’s March 2006 piece about 30-somethings who have only sort of grown up. This eventually led me to look into the archive of his work at NY magazine, where I found a few articles about gentrification in New York and the weirdness of the whole “neighborhood X is the new neighborhood Y,” especially now that it’s been going on for over a decade.

Now I’m awake partly because 1) Although I’m glad to see a thoughtful contribution to a conversation outlining the distinctions between good and bad “edgy” comedy, I think he’s missing something about SWPL: He only glosses the fact that many people, including several that have posted comments on the blog, have pointed out that the people that actually like the things listed are “a very specific demographic sliver of left-leaning, city-dwelling white folk–in other words, people like me,” who “have previously been trapped and tagged alternately as yuppies, or Bobos, or (by yours truly in New York magazine) grups.” He sort of brushes this critique aside and adds his own, which is that nothing that is a truly cutting satire is ever accepted by the satirized as great entertainment; rather, white people laugh at SWPL only because it makes them “feel superior” (to?).

Aside from the fact that I might disagree that no true satire is acceptable to the satirized (I think Slavoj Zizek’s Welcome to the Desert of the Real! has an example of a rock band who became very popular in ethnic-conflict-torn Yugoslavia by enacting negative stereotypes about their own people), I do agree that SWPL doesn’t feel the least bit offensive, and is rarely funny. (I wonder how the laughter in response to SWPL would land on the coordinates of Diane Davis’s taxonomy?)

But I think that there’s something else going on besides a feeling of superiority. And it’s related to the simpler critique about the inaccuracy of the “White People” in the title. Basically, it seems like SWPL also allows this “very specific demographic sliver of left-leaning, city-dwelling white folk,” Bobos, grups, whatever, to be thought of as the group that defines whiteness…. This, of course, adds to… or maybe even accounts for the feeling of superiority… possibly even answering my asswholly-parenthesized question above. The “White People” described on the blog can feel superior to other people who happen to share the former’s skin tone and possibly ethnic roots because the latter are “not really white.”

partly because 2) Ugh… all I can think about lately is growing up and growing up too late and not really ever growing up.

partly because 3) Reading about the socio-economic-cultural-lifestyle-realestate dynamics of the NY metro area makes me totally anxious, in both the giddy/excited sense and the puke-y/run-for-your-life sense. Sternbergh has one article about Jersey City and one about Red Hook, a “remote” part of Brooklyn; both of these are places we’ve talked about moving. In those two articles he seems to be developing this argument about how gentrification has gotten ahead of itself (post-gentrification, obviously) and now no longer happens in stages (artsies with cheap cafes and bars-> hipsters with boutiques and fancier restaurants-> investors with developers’ plans and construction equipment-> totally rich people). Now, since the boom-to-come is so expected, the artsies and the developers land at the same time… Why do I care? I guess I’m trying to figure out at what point I’m supposed to be the one to move into the neighborhood….

partly because 4) My blog is now not only not-posted-to; it is also about neither math nor rhetoric.

Being right 1, Being wrong/Other r (current tally)

Today, Theresa said these words to me: “You’re right. I agree with you.” She seems to think she may have said these words to me before, but I’m fairly certain this was the first time. It’s not that I feel like I’m competing with her to see who’s right more often. Instead, I’m competing with myself. I’m not sure exactly how many times I’ve been something other than right.

Anyway, the context of her declaration was as follows: I was talking to her on the phone and looking at her website, which she just finished updating. Somehow, we started talking about her allergic reaction to anything that seems really cool, especially when that anything is also part of the art world. I said what I usually say when we have this conversation and, for some reason, it didn’t seem to bomb like it usually does.

Our relationship(s) to the cool (let’s call it) is one of our most common discursive (not mathematical) topoi. When we address this topic, Theresa inevitably mentions that, for the most part, I do not suffer this allergy because I have a disease that prevents it. I generally take this as a sort of veiled threat and respond with one or two defensive statements, which generally lead the conversation to an abrupt conclusion.

This time, however, she confronted her allergy in action and wondered aloud if she should just get over it and embrace the allergen. I told her, again, that the cool is part of the game and that, with this in mind, she–anyone, really–could embrace it without essentializing it. This is what I always say, more or less, but as every rhetorician and giddy schoolgirl knows: it’s not what you say; it’s how you say it.

Since I strive to talk exclusively by quoting only extremely popular movies and tv shows, I usually convey the aforementioned message about the cool by saying, you’re putting the pussy on a pedestal, but this time I said it’s all in the game. Oddly enough, Theresa seemed to like the latter version even less than the former and insisted that I never use that phrase again. Nevertheless, she approved of “it’s part of the game” and told me that I was right and that she agreed with me.

Naming things 2: Loving Words and Numbers

Ok. I’m about to change the name of the blog again.

As I do so, I am letting go of the current name, Loving Words and Numbers: Forget(s) Eats Shoots and Leaves. I don’t know what exactly the book (is that what it was) Eats Shoots and Leaves was about, but I have the general idea that it has something to do with the ambiguity in the meaning of the title phrase. So, what was in a name:

1. I like ambiguities like that but recognize that this is lame, so I wanted to imitate and outdo that title with the title of my blog.
2. I also haven’t read Baudrillard’s Forget Foucault, but have thought that was a great title for a number of years. This was another imitation but not really intended to outdo.
3. Ok, I have to face the fact that I can support the claim that I “outdid” Eats Shoots and Leaves.
4. I apparently have love on the brain, since this was the second title involving love.
5. Ir-regardless, I do love words and numbers.

It’s the act that counts (bland)

Well, it’s almost Halloween, which means that the Christmas season has just about begun.  Sometime during this season of giving, you will probably hear the following wonderful cliche, especially if you are as bad at giving gifts as I am: “It’s the thought that counts.”

I love cliches of all kinds, but over the past few years, this one has come to bother me because, I think, unlike most cliches, this one is not true.  Not only is it not true, the (false) claim it makes masks an important theoretical insight: It’s the act that counts.

I often think about gifts to get people.  I spend as much time thinking about it as I spend thinking about a lot of less important things.  Often, I can’t think of something good enough, but the thought is there, nonetheless.  Other times I do think of something really good, but I don’t get it because of cost, circumstances, the fact that the potential recipient is not a very close friend of mine, etc.  If it were the thought that counts, then I’d have a high score indeed.  But I know, and people who know me would surely agree, that I am a big loser at the an-economic competition of gift-giving.

People only say “It’s the thought that counts” when a gift has been given.  The gift can be bad.  In fact, it usually is bad when the phrase is called for.  And the point of the utterance is to de-emphasize the badness of the gift.  The point is that something good or positive has taken place between the gift giver and receiver, even though the gift sucks.  For some odd reason, we feel it necessary to move from the bad gift to the purity and goodness of the thought.  The intention, I suppose, is what we’re trying to get at and approve of.

But let’s face it, despite all the “best intentions,” when I (or anyone in a similar situation) neglect to actually give a gift, it does not “count.”  In the situation of gift giving, you thoughts or intentions, though maybe meaningful on some level, do not count.  This is also the only way to explain why people (my spouse, et. al.) constantly advise me to stop obsessing over the perfect gift and just give something–it doesn’t matter what.  You can give a bad gift and something will be counted.

But what is counted?  It’s clearly not the object.  The object is overlooked and often gotten rid of–in the trash, the back of the closet, the Goodwill donation dumpster, or re-wrapped to continue its life as a bad gift.  It’s not the intention/thought since, as I said, the thought is often there but goes uncounted in the absence of an actual gift.  It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the origin of the gift or how it was obtained; bad gifts, in this way, cut across all the assorted/sordid alienations of capitalism, alternately being expensive and gaudy, cheap and chintzy, lovingly but poorly baked, and assiduously knitted in horrendous colors.  It doesn’t seem to be about the source of the gift at all, since a bad gift that counts can come from a family member, a friend or lover, a social service organization, Santa or any other mythical being.

The only thing left, as far as I can tell, is the act, the empty form and content-less ritual of giving.