theatre

[My Blogrolling account has lapsed. A new arts blogroll is to come.]

The camel's nose under the tent of the First Amendment. Flag burning. Who can be for that? Certainly not me.

My parents, survivors of Dachau, always reminded us kids as we grew up, "this is how it starts." You only give up this one liberty. You only stop Communists, Jews, or homosexuals.

There's a famous experiment. Throw a frog into boiling water and it reflexively leaps out. But put a frog into water whose temperature is slowly raised and it remains there calmly as it cooks to death.

Freedoms are never surrendered over nothing. It is ALWAYS for a "good reason," don't you know. We tighten security. We hold people without a writ of habeas corpus, we torture prisoners, we prevent people from burning the flag. The frog hardly feels the heat.

Many who burn the cross want to keep others from burning the flag. Why?

What if I burned the stars-and-bars? What if I burn the flag of the Lone Star State? What if I burn the flag of France? What if I burn the flag of the State of California? The PTA? What if I burn a t-shirt with a flag image on it?

What if I burn a copy of the United States Constitution? - Far more important than the flag!

What is the act of burning? What if I spit on the flag? What if I fail to stand at the assembly when it is paraded by? What if I fail to sing the national anthem? What if I make up silly words while singing the anthem.

What if I dissent?

If I yell, "set the flag on fire!" in a crowded theater, am I endangering those there?

Can I spit but not burn? Can I trample, but not burn? Can I fly the flag in bad weather or without lighting at night - like so many wingnuts do - yet escape punishment?

When will cross burning be banned by a constitutional amendment?

When will lynching be banned by constitutional amendment?

To parody "W," "ya see, our enemies hate the freedoms we have in America. They hate the idea that we are free to express ourselves. Our boys are dying over there for the freedoms we have. Ya see...."

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the signs said, The words of the prophets
are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls.
And whisper'd in the sounds of silence.

The burning question is - Why is it the people who start out against burning flags end up burning people? The daughter of Dachau survivors wonders.

Some more (not so original, not so profound) thoughts on the fragile male ego....

It strikes me that today (as opposed to the days of my union-activist grandmother), where there are more objective measures, equal opportunity seems more likely (with a few obvious exceptions, like school and college athletics, despite Title IX). It's harder to measure equality in those intangible areas, like how one is regarded by others in the workplace; how one's individual evaluation leads (or doesn't lead) to promotion; just how fairly ones pay reflects ones contribution to the company. It's a fact, for example, that women make less money than men. But it's a harder case to make that this is a result of discrimination in pay (which exists, but has enough exceptions for men to hide behind in denial) or discrimination in job opportunities in higher paying positions (which exists, but is more vague and even harder to prove).

Ultimately, though, the privilege enjoyed by men is driven largely by the sexual paradigm of the penetrator and the penetrated, connected with disparities in physical strength and cultural norms of behavior where men are allowed and expected to be aggressive towards others while women most definitely are not.

It's not about individuals, though there are horrid ones. It's not about each and every man, for most men are not consciously abusive or malicious. It's about a culture that trains the men and women from young age, and then sizes up and measures men and women by different standards. As a result, feminist is not a politically correct term of self description -- to the point that it's called "the f-word" -- and women who break the "good girl" norm, in all walks of life from housewife/mother to outrageous pop star, are treated with suspicion, hostility, abuse and worse. Meanwhile, men who grope women are elected governor, men accused of rape attack the woman (again) in public and in the courtroom with impunity, men who sing and rap about "bitches" who need to be smacked, raped and worse win Grammy Awards, and men who attack women who dare have careers, opinions and senses of personal sovereignty are praised for their "moral values."

I remember a moment in college studying August Strindberg. One of his plays (I think it's The Father, but I'm not sure; forgive me, it's the holidays and I'm away from my references) is all wrapped around the man's uncertainty whether the woman's child is his. All the drama in the play, in the world revealed in this play, built upon his fears, and his need to bottle up the woman in his control so that he can be certain of his parentage. (Henrik Ibsen held up another very clear mirror to these things in Hedda Gabler and Doll's House.) The fragile man seems to be unable to truly love a woman. Any wonder why the divorce rate is so high these days?