Telos Press

Richard Rorty, 1931-2007

Richard Rorty, the leading American philosopher and heir to the pragmatist tradition, passed away on Friday, June 8.

He was Professor of Comparative Literature emeritus at Stanford University. In April the American Philosophical Society awarded him the Thomas Jefferson Medal. The prize citation reads: “In recognition of his influential and distinctively American contribution to philosophy and, more widely, to humanistic studies. His work redefined knowledge ‘as a matter of conversation and of social practice, rather than as an attempt to mirror nature’ and thus redefined philosophy itself as an unending, democratically disciplined, social and cultural activity of inquiry, reflection, and exchange, rather than an activity governed and validated by the concept of objective, extramental truth.”

At the awards ceremony, presenter Lionel Gossman celebrated Dr. Rorty as an advocate of “a deeply liberal, democratic, and truly American way of thinking about knowledge.” Dr. Rorty’s published works include Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Consequences of Pragmatism (1982), Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1988), Objectivity, Relativism and Truth: Philosophical Papers I (1991), Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers II (1991), Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth Century America (1998), Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers III (1998), and Philosophy and Social Hope (2000).

Sahl’s Last Punchline

by Paul Krassner

June 8, 02007

Mort Sahl is now 80 years old. He was a pioneer in stand-up comedy. He broke through the tradition of jokes about airplane food, Asian drivers and frigid wives, instead sharing his wit and insights about political hypocrisy, racism and monogamy. On June 28, there will be a tribute to Sahl–a benefit for the Heartland Comedy Foundation with tickets ranging from $100-$200–at the Wadsworth Theater in Brentwood. The roster of performers includes Bill Maher, Jay Leno, Paula Poundstone, Woody Allen (on tape), Richard Lewis, Albert Brooks, David Steinberg, Kevin Nealon, David Brenner, Shelley Berman, Jonathan Winters, Drew Carey and Jack Riley; Larry King will emcee. For information: (213) 365-3500 or ticketmaster.

I first met Sahl in 1953 when he was a guest speaker in a course I was taking at the New School for Social Research. I was inspired by his satirical approach to serious issues. “Every word I do is improvised,” he once told me. “I don’t rehearse anything. I start it on stage.” In the beginning, though, he would write key words on a rolled-up newspaper, which became his trademark prop. In 1960 he wrote jokes for presidential candidate John Kennedy, and Sahl’s picture graced the cover of Time magazine in August during the conventions. When Kennedy was killed in 1963, Sahl endangered his career and was blacklisted as a result of becoming an associate of New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison in his investigation of the JFK assassination.

In 1967, I was a guest on Sahl’s TV show, which had been dealing outspokenly with contemporary controversies, so when his option wasn’t renewed ostensibly because of a low rating, there was much suspicion. But Sahl also had a nightly radio show and asked his listeners to write in to KTTV. By the time 31,000 letters arrived, the channel’s executives had conveniently discovered another rating service and the option was renewed.

On the program, Sahl had a blackboard on which he wrote things in chalk like “We Demand Faith in the Future,” and the audience applauded faithfully. He wanted to have a mock trial on the show as a preview of the Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal, and he asked me to return and act as defense attorney. He wanted me to actually defend war criminals such as Lyndon Johnson, Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara. I agreed to do it, but the mock trial never took place. My plan had been to plead insanity.

This September, Sahl will teach a semi-weekly course in critical thinking at Claremont McKenna College. He continues to perform occasionally. At McCabe’s, he observed that, during the Republican debates, when the candidates were asked who didn’t believe in evolution and a few raised their hands, and Sahl pointed out that, “If you watched the debate, you wouldn’t believe in evolution either.” Sahl’s targets have always included liberals and conservatives alike. As a news junkie, his material still has a sharp point of view, as opposed to so many current comedians who rely on easy-reference jokes about celebrities.

However, a friend of mine was recently having his caffeine fix at a Starbucks in Los Angeles. He happened to be seated right near Mort Sahl and recounts the following incident. A young woman who had just finished her coffee stopped to chat with Sahl. It was apparent that they knew each other. Then, as she started to leave, Robert Blake walked in. Sahl, loyal to his buddies, had been the only one to visit Blake when he was in jail. Now, Sahl said to the young woman, “Do you know my good friend, Bob Blake?” Blake looked at her and said to Sahl, “She looks like a very nice person. She looks like she sleeps well at night.” Sahl paused for a couple of seconds, then said to Blake, “Well, she’s got a clear conscience.” And then there was a moment of awkward silence.

from: George Billis Gallery (L.A.)

ARTIST STATEMENT

I am not a landscape painter. My goal is not to depict the way light plays on treetops, but I do want to get inside to see the rings of the tree, explore the structure of roots and branches, understand the bark. Lately, I’ve been using maps to find my way. I was seduced by these obsolete weathered pages–their elegant lines revealing eons of geological shifts and erosion–all translated by human mind and hand. The risk I was taking and the implied violation inherent in putting my first marks on the antique paper was bracing. It brought drawing back into my paintings, erased the horizon line, and provided me with a ground on which to excavate and impose images. As if I am walking through nature with a magnifying glass and a telescope, I find cells, mushrooms, thunderheads; pebbles, cliffs, continents.

I tilt these flattened lands into the frontal plane and then I seek routes and valleys back into space. I’m hoping for vertigo. There is no one way to lose my balance. I follow a river with ink. I clog a harbor with oil paint. The name of a town or mountain might require something more literal–Rabbit Hills, Burning Spring. After the Fall of 2001, I found I needed to erect buildings out of the grid work of the maps. I could no longer avoid the human presence in my work or continue to invent a pastoral universe.

When I was 8 years old, I’d lie on my stomach in my bedroom and draw with colored pencils in ring bound sketchbooks. These drawings (now yellow with age) are full of monsters, winged beings, organic machines with gears and tendrils and bolts of electric current. Drawing on these old topographic maps with their sepia mazes returned those lost shapes and memories to me and provided me with a new framework for painting, a way to navigate space.

Amazing SELFKISS photo-montages by Pupsam aka David Puel and Thomas Libé.

The gay news media have been tracking for several days now the story that Bush’s nominee for Surgeon General is subject to the kind of religious mania faith which convinces him that homosexuality is a curable condition. I thought that the mainstream US press would quickly pick up on it and expose the man’s unsuitability for such a responsible position. Shoulda known better, right? At the time of writing ABC have covered the story in detail, the NYT looked at some of the gay reaction, while the Washington Post and USA Today have failed to pick up on it at all.

Via Raw Story:

On Thursday, ABC News reported that President Bush’s nominee for surgeon-general, Dr. James Holsinger, may be in trouble because of his “homophobic statements.”

In 1991, Holsinger wrote a paper on “Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality” for the United Methodist Church, in which he argued that homosexuality is unnatural and unhealthy. As reported in The Nation, “Holsinger argues that male-female ‘reproductive systems are fully complementary’ because ‘anatomically the vagina is designed to receive the penis.’ The remainder of his paper is a graphic account of the ‘delicate’ rectum which is ‘incapable’ of ‘protection’ if ‘objects that are large, sharp, or pointed are inserted’ into it.”

“Gay rights groups are outraged,” reports ABC, adding that Holsinger also helped found a church that promises to “‘cure’ gays of their sexual orientation,” a claim that major medical organizations dispute.

“A confirmation fight is exactly what the administration does not need,” says commentator David Gergen. “There has been a growing criticism of the administration favoring ideology over competence and this nomination smacks of that.”

Adding to Holsinger’s problems, ABC concludes, the committee which will consider his nomination is chaired by Senator Ted Kennedy, a supporter of gay rights, and includes among its members presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Chris Dodd.

Senator Obama (D-IL) released the following statement Thursday morning, “America’s top doctor should be a doctor for all Americans, and so I have serious reservations about nominating someone who would inject his own anti-gay ideology into critical decisions about the health and well-being of our nation.”

“As with other nominees, I will listen to the testimony of Dr. James Holsinger, but this Administration must know that the United States Surgeon General’s office is no place for bigotry or ideology that would trump sound science and good judgment,” Obama’s statement continued.

From the NYT:

As president of the Methodist Church’s national Judicial Council, Holsinger voted last year to support a pastor who blocked a gay man from joining a congregation. In 2004, he voted to expel a lesbian from the clergy. The majority of the panel voted to keep the lesbian associate pastor in place, citing questions about whether she had openly declared her homosexuality, but Holsinger dissented.

Yes, there’s still eighteen months of despicable bullshit like this to get through.

JC

Of Walking In Ice
Munich – Paris, 23 November – 14 December 1974
Werner Herzog
Publisher: Free Association

“Our inaugural title: the diary of filmmaker Werner Herzog, unpublished in the US since 1978. A modern-day Odyssey, this text follows filmmaker Werner Herzog as he treks through an endless blizzard to save a dear friend from her near-fatal illness. It is filled with philosophical absurdities, humanistic rantings, and poetic descriptions of every snowflake fallen and blister endured during his three-week-long quest. This is an uncompromising Herzog in his own words.”

English
June 2007
Softcover, 5 x 8 in
112 pages
ISBN 978-0-9796121-0-7

$25 (+ $5 S&H) usa
$25 (+ $10 S&H) intl

Artist unidentified. Northeastern United States, possibly Maine c. 1860. Wool appliqué and embroidery on wool, 112 x 158 in.

Attributed to Elvira Curtis Hulett (c. 1805–1895). Probably Hancock, Massachusetts c. 1890–1895. Wool, 50 in. diam.

In Arthur No. 9, Dave Catching invited us into his kitchen and shows us how to make New Orleans Soul Red Beans, Rice and Corn Bread. We’re still using his recipe at Arthur HQ! Bless Dave Catching, a true American in the finest sense of the word.

Click here to buy advance tickets.

Tomgram: How Permanent Are Those Bases?

The Great American Disconnect

Iraq Has Always Been “South Korea” for the Bush Administration

By Tom Engelhardt

Finally, the great American disconnect may be ending. Only four years after the invasion of Iraq, the crucial facts-on-the-ground might finally be coming into sight in this country — not the carnage or the mayhem; not the suicide car bombs or the chlorine truck bombs; not the massive flight of middle-class professionals, the assassination campaign against academics, or the collapse of the best health-care service in the region; not the spiking American and Iraqi casualties, the lack of electricity, the growth of Shia militias, the crumbling of the “coalition of the willing,” or the uprooting of 15% or more of Iraq’s population; not even the sharp increase in fundamentalism and extremism, the rise of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the swelling of sectarian killings, or the inability of the Iraqi government to get oil out of the ground or an oil law, designed in Washington and meant to turn the clock back decades in the Middle East, passed inside Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone — no, none of that. What’s finally coming into view is just what George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, the top officials of their administration, the civilian leadership at the Pentagon, and their neocon followers had in mind when they invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003.

But let me approach this issue another way. For the last week, news jockeys have been plunged into a debate about the “Korea model,” which, according to the New York Times and other media outlets, the President is suddenly considering as the model for Iraq. (“Mr. Bush has told recent visitors to the White House that he was seeking a model similar to the American presence in South Korea.”) You know, a limited number of major American bases tucked away out of urban areas; a limited number of American troops (say, 30,000-40,000), largely confined to those bases but ready to strike at any moment; a friendly government in Baghdad; and (as in South Korea where our troops have been for six decades) maybe another half century-plus of quiet garrisoning. In other words, this is the time equivalent of a geographic “over the horizon redeployment” of American troops. In this case, “over the horizon” would mean through 2057 and beyond.

This, we are now told, is a new stage in administration thinking. White House spokesman Tony Snow seconded the “Korea model” (“You have the United States there in what has been described as an over-the-horizon support role… — as we have in South Korea, where for many years there have been American forces stationed there as a way of maintaining stability and assurance on the part of the South Korean people against a North Korean neighbor that is a menace…”); Defense Secretary Robert Gates threw his weight behind it as a way of reassuring Iraqis that the U.S. “will not withdraw from Iraq as it did from Vietnam, ‘lock, stock and barrel,'” as did “surge plan” second-in-command in Baghdad, Lt. General Ray Odierno. (“Q Do you agree that we will likely have a South Korean-style force there for years to come? GEN. ODIERNO: Well, I think that’s a strategic decision, and I think that’s between us and — the government of the United States and the government of Iraq. I think it’s a great idea.”)