pantoum's Diaryland Diary

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EPISTOLARY EROTICISM, THE RICH, AND THE ARTLESS

335.

Susie Bright just sent a long (offline) reply to the comment I left on her blog this morning. She is so freakin� cool!

I had to reply after reading about her experience on a �pushing the envelope� writers panel at the LA Festival of Books. What fool would put her and Karen Finley and Dennis Cooper�legitimate visionaries who have actually pushed the envelope and encouraged us to think and fuck and gasp and experience the world in new and profound ways and been censored and spit upon by Jesse and those other clinching-their-butt-cheeks-together-as-hard-as-they-can puritans as a result�on a panel with the milquetoast let-me-flaunt-my-riches-and-good-looks-as-my-bona-fides-�cause-there-ain�t-nothing-else-of-substance-here late late night television host Craig Ferguson (a man who is so enlightened that he actually sums up sex as an act between �one man and one woman� in between berating feminists)?

I have a hard time believing that any organizer read the panelists� biographies before assembling this crew, unless they just wanted to watch a privileged white man perform the man show in front of these writers.

Anyway, I wrote

Susie Susie Susie, of course visionaries such as you and Karen and Dennis�people who speak the truth about their passions and insights despite the puritanical would-be censors out there who wish to sledgehammer you into their tiny one-man-one-woman straitjackets�balked at this vacuous icon of the lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous set who actually possesses the arrogance to enter a roomful of writers and visionaries and hold up his WEALTH and ignorant views as his bona fides.

It's the cultural landscape of the moment, hon. Our boy emperor celebrates his ignorance on a regular basis and his fans applaud him for it. The Christianists are trying to force ignorance into our schools and silence dissent. And the super-rich are the only people worth a second glance in a landscape where people watch Donald Trump fire people for sport.

You got caught up in a clash of cultures, had every reason to expect a substantive discussion/analysis in a place where you expected people to still value ideas. But instead, you got blindsided by Richie Rich and his adoring fans who think that his money and looks validate him.

Given our political climate, I'm a little surprised you weren't placed on a panel with some so-called intelligent design expert asserting that he's the one really pushing the envelope.

Sorry you had to endure that crap amongst your own clan.

BTW you said Dennis is one of the best 4-5 American writers alive. Who are the others?

And speaking of money and queer sex, Kate Clinton said last night that she woke up dreaming that Suzie Ormans was going down on her. She also said our boy emperor gives new meaning to the term �unattended luggage.�

Loved, loved that show!

Complacent, over-monied right-wing jabberers. They�re just as ubiquitous and just as annoyingly useless as the wanna-be Maoists back in the mid 1970's who did their level best to remind us that personal fulfillment and artistic expression were politically incorrect and counter-revolutionary. Popular politics invariably spawns a host of trend-riders just as surely as a damp basement spawns mildew.

That�s an apt comment someone else left on Susie�s blog.

And it is cold outside�weird for May in the southland�so I walked across campus to the gym with rock hard nipples.

Not much time for insight right now because I was too busy this weekend with the concert and performance and all that. And now I'm having dinner with Farmgrrl and Rosa tonight. Hope to get home early enough to write a real entry in between reading messages from the four new women who have started writing to me after reading my ad on Craigslist. Alas, none of them make my heart go pitter-patter enough to even meet them for coffee. Good for the ego though, I reckon.

Mo bettuh latuh, peeps.

2:54 p.m. - 2006-5-8

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