The Breakfast Table

Fanning Lame Ideological Fire

Boys,

I’d like to offer the first obligatory God-Bless-“The Fray” shootout. Although as Jim Hoberman noted last year, that place can be insane. I’ll see how I feel about the mark-ups come Wednesday. Andy, you’ve taken things to another level, invoking the problem of campus censorship. David Horowitz is an interesting practical problem that should not be solved with theory. Although from a polemical standpoint, the dude has missed his era. He’s so “Phil Donohue.”

What chafes me about guys like Horowitz, with their revisionist agendas and unkempt facial growth, is that they fan such lame ideological fire. Not that ideas are fads, but the “don’t blame whitey” retaliation against African-Americans seeking slave reparations is tired. So is the search for the reparations, one could argue. But if talk shows are our daily news on some level, then perhaps we should take a cue from Ricki-Jerry-Raphael and try to get these people makeovers. Ideological, cosmetic, whatever.

When it comes to discussing race and racism now, it really can be done without going there. I can see the show titles now: “You May Think Reparations for Blacks Is a Bad Idea for Blacks–and Racist, Too, but I’m Still Banging Your Wife” or “Too Political, Too Soon?” Horowitz, though, is good for college campuses, places where time evolves in dog years, allowing for students to spend most of their time honing the art of outrage. I say this as a black guy whose best conversations on race in America never had anything to do with slavery. They were about the Sturm und Drang of where the hell to sit in the frigging dining hall and the essentialist stress of being the only Negro in an Af-Am lit class, and the inexhaustible implications of such scenarios. Welcome, I suppose, to the Ivy League, but then: Welcome to America.

(I always get a little wistful when kids sit around and mist themselves over ‘80s teen director John Hughes. It doesn’t perplex me so much as it makes me wonder why a black sense of humor has yet to find its way into the American high school, then onto the page or to the screen with that kind of impact. There was some early ‘90s rap that comes pretty close.)

Somewhat related is all this ongoing “Clinton comes to Harlem” talk. I think more people would rather talk about that than Horowitz. It’s minty-fresher territory. There’s a fine piece in this month’s Washington Monthy that lays out a beautiful narrative analysis of “America’s First Black President” and his new home. I find the relationship fascinating. How could he be blacker than Jesse Jackson? And less white than Eminem? Someone like Charles Burnett, Oliver Stone, or even Spike Lee really ought to take another wack at Primary Colors and try to lay all the wonderful, horrible, socio-racial, and sexual complexities. To my mind, his blackness is a question mark, but there is a sense of displaced triumph in the throngs of Harlemites who herald his arrival. Better yet, will he appear in an Outkast video? Not because he wants to make reparations, boys, but because he’s so fresh and so clean.

Hearts,
Wesley