by Jarett Kobek
20. They’ll get right on that...
Advice to young men: for easy love, build a time machine, volunteer for first Obama campaign and bring a copy of Everything is Illuminated.
(the former)
chapter twenty-five
There used to be a chapter in this space. It wasn’t very good.
The intention was a fine one.
But in the end, the chapter was terrible. So it’s gone.
THE CHAPTER did contain a few things of note.
Like a description of Thanksgiving as a holiday in which America celebrated the genocide of its indigenous peoples through the gathering of extended families for a meal during which young people were made to feel awkward by their elders expressing thoughts of casual racism and homophobia.
Like an exploration of the word homophobia, and how it literally, in the Greek, meant the opposite of its intent.
There was also some discussion of how homophobia derived from the word homosexual, which was an awkward mishmash of Latin and Greek invented by an Austrian named Karl-Maria Kertbeny.
The joke was that if the Twentieth Century had taught the human race anything, it was to avoid words invented by Austrians.
There was also a discussion about the class-based distinctions between the sizeable number of Americans who’d sublimated their unfulfilled sexual urges into gluttony.
The people who’d sublimated their unfulfilled sexual urges and had money were called foodies. Everyone else was called a fat fucking slob.
There was the suggestion that Southeastern Massachusetts was a region which, in times of international crisis, ensured that the world would never be without someone to paint FAGGOTS on the side of a mosque.
There was a discussion of how Clarence Thomas, a Supreme Court Justice with a lot of eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis, had been accused of sexual harassment by his underlings before his elevation to the court.
This discussion pivoted on the fact that Thomas was a devotee of Ayn Rand, and each year, his incoming crop of legal clerks came to his house, where he forced them to watch the film adaptation of Rand’s The Fountainhead.
The frisson of this discussion derived from the juxtaposition of Thomas’s history as a person known for practicing the art of sexual harassment and the presence, in both the mandatory film and the novel, of a rape scene.
Here’s Ayn Rand in a letter dated June 5, 1946, describing the rape scene to Waldo Coleman: “But the fact is that Roark did not actually rape Dominique; she had asked for it, and he knew that she wanted it.”
THE PROBLEM with removing the chapter is that it served as the ideological heart of the book. It was where everything tied together.
The whole thing revolved around Adeline’s decision to tweet about a woman named Paula Deen, who, for a while in the Summer of 2013, was the scandal of the moment.
The reasons for the scandal were: (1) Paula Deen was famous and she didn’t have any eumelanin in the basale stratum of her epidermis. (2) Paula Deen was deponed in a sexual harassment lawsuit, where she freely admitted her use of the word %&$#?@.
Paula Deen appeared on television, where she offered food-based pornography for foodies and fat fucking slobs. She was grotesque, but that wasn’t unusual. Everyone on television was grotesque.
%&$#?@ was a word which encapsulated America’s terrible history, and the country’s brutal dealings with its minority populations. %&$#?@ in particular carried the connotation of the raw deal and genocide that America had enacted on people like Jeremy Winterbloss and all of his relatives with eumelanin in the basale strata of their epidermises.
ANYWAY, IN THE DELETED CHAPTER, Adeline debates whether or not to tweet about %&$#?@ and racism.
This is after the Buzzfeed article had doubled her followers on Twitter, lowering her WaNks Index Score to 0.73.
IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, racism, like any formation of the human mind, was a useful product. Racism allowed for more advertisements.
The protesting of racism on social media was another formation of the human mind. It too was a useful product. It too allowed for more advertisements.
The system was perfect and self-contained. It was content neutral. It was designed to enhanced and induce inflamed human emotions.
On the Internet, you could be right. On the Internet, you could be wrong. You could love racism. You could hate racism. It didn’t matter.
In the end, everything was just money.
THE SUM TOTAL EFFECT of Paula Deen admitting her use of the word %&$#?@ was this: she made money for Google. She made money for Facebook.
She made money for Twitter. All of these companies were founded and run by White people.
THE CHAPTER also contained a list of characters in this book who harbored racist opinions and thoughts. It was a list of every character in this book. Welcome to America.
THERE WAS ALSO the suggestion that %&$#?@ served as a helpful device amongst educated White people for distinguishing themselves from uneducated White people.
The idea, which was not stated with much clarity, was the saying of %&$#?@ conveyed an impression that the speaker didn’t believe that the goal of any civil society was the inclusion of all its members and the extension of opportunity all of its peoples.
Again, the chapter missed its mark by not extending the argument to its logical end-point.
It didn’t suggest that most educated White people, by virtue of their interaction with consumer electronics built by slaves, demonstrated that they didn’t believe in inclusion or fairness or justice. Fifty years ago, they had been ignorant in their unexamined racism and now they were ignorant in their unexamined anti-racism. They could switch back at any time. Expressing concern about racism was a new religion and focusing on language rather than political mechanics was an effortless, and meaningless, way of making sure one was seen in a front-row pew of the new church. They prayed not from any hard earned process of thought or genuine faith but because failing to bow and scrap before the shibboleths of the moneyed political Left might hurt their job prospects.
And poor job prospects meant less money to buy consumer electronics built by slaves.
THERE WAS ALSO SOME DISCUSSION about how people were still saying %&$#?@ as much as ever, but now they employed a euphemism to indicated %&$#?@. This euphemism was The N-Word.
When the opposing attorney deponed Paula Deen, he didn’t ask her if she had said %&$#?@.
He asked her if she had said The N-Word.
ANYWAY, THE CHAPTER’S FATAL FLAW was that it couldn’t tie these ideas together. They were wispy threads of an unwoven tapestry.
ANOTHER FLAW OF EQUAL SIGNIFICANCE was that this chapter didn’t link America’s treatment of its minorities with the comic book industry’s treatment of people like Jack Kirby, and finally, with the way that the Internet preyed on the gullible, asking them to create content based on inflamed emotion for the sake of serving advertisements.
Jeremy Winterbloss’s ancestors were enslaved on the basis of their ability to provide free labor. The fruits of this labor were never shared with Jeremy’s ancestors. His ancestors were property. Property can’t own other property.
The American comic book industry had paid its employees for their labor but stole its fruits. Jack Kirby lost ownership of his creations, which were worth billions of dollars.
It was the greatest theft of intellectual property in history.
With the Internet, people produced reams of intellectual property over which they had no control. If you sent a message to someone on Facebook, Facebook owned that message for all time, and used it as the pretext for serving advertisements. Your expressions of outrage about Paula Deen and %&$#?@ made money for Mark Zuckerberg and his investors.
THE CURIOUS THING was that Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and Blogspot, a media platform owned by Google, were the stomping grounds of self-styled intellectual and social radicals. It was where they were talking. It was where, they believed, the conversation was shifting.<
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They were typing morality lectures into devices built by slaves on platforms of expression owned by the Patriarchy, and they were making money for the Patriarchy. Somehow this was destroying the Patriarchy.
So there’s always hope.
THE ILLUSION OF THE INTERNET was the idea that the opinions of powerless people, freely offered, had some impact on the world. This was, of course, total bullshit and based on a crazy idea of who ran the world.
The world was not run by its governments. The world was not run by its celebrities.
The world was run by its bankers. The world was run by its investor class. The world was run by its manufacturers. The history of human destiny was money, the men who controlled it, and nothing more.
Money, a measure of humiliation, was the only thing that mattered.
The illusion of opinions, freely offered, was encouraged because it made money for bankers. It made money for investors. It made money for manufacturers, who enslaved the citizens of far off nations to build the devices required for the free offering of opinions.
The one thing that freely offered opinions did not do, at all, was change the world. Opinions were only more words, only more shit that someone somewhere made up, and words were grease in the gears of capitalism.
Words were lubrication for a complex process that, every forty years, replaced one group of men who talked like they had paper assholes with another group of men who talked like they had paper assholes. Jarvis Cocker was right all along. Cunts really are still running the world.
WORDS WERE NOT POWER. Take it from a professional writer. The only place where words have power are scrawled on a bathroom wall.
The only effect of the words of powerless people on the Internet was to inflict misery on other powerless people.
When you need to defeat the hand, make the fingers attack each other.
Divide and conquer.
ANYWAY, ADELINE DID IT.
She tweeted about %&$#?@.
At last, she had learned how to use the Internet.
chapter twenty-six
J. Karacehennem was in Denmark. He was a foreign writer in residence at Hald Hovedgaard, an old manor house built during the Eighteenth Century.
It was nice but boring. The other foreign writers were delightful. The Danish women writers were all lovely. None of the Danes had a hint of eumelanin in the basale strata of their epidermises.
The Danish male writers were horrible, except for Ole Tornbjerg, a crime writer who wrote books with his wife. Ole Tornbjerg was lovely.
Late in his visit, J. Karacehennem would meet Jussi Adler-Olsen, who had mastered the art of writing Scandinavian crime fiction, a subgenre in which squalid tales written by secular humanists reaffirm the Christian doctrine of original sin.
Jussi-Adler Olsen’s crime novels were translated into countless languages and were huge sellers everywhere.
Jussi Adler-Olsen said that he’d sold 900,000 books in English.
J. KARACEHENNEM was waiting for a local bus. He was going to the nearby town of Viborg. Viborg was one of the oldest cities in Denmark. It was very boring but had an atmospheric medieval section and an excellent cathedral boasting some very gaudy frescoes.
THE BUS STOP was located across the street from the manor house in which J. Karacehennem was staying.
As J. Karacehennem waited for the bus, Brane Mozetič, a Slovene poet without much eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis, walked out of the manor house. Brane Mozetič rushed over to the bus stop.
The bus pulled up.
J. Karacehennem and Brane Mozetič sat together.
They talked about the weather. They talked about Denmark.
Brane Mozetič said to J. Karacehennem, “Tell me, you are from California?”
“I used to live in Los Angeles,” said J. Karacehennem, “I moved to San Francisco. So I guess I’m from San Francisco. Los Angeles feels more like home.”
“San Francisco,” said Brane Mozetič. “Do you know Kevin Killian?”
chapter twenty-seven
Adeline received a text from Jeremy Winterbloss. He was coming into the city. Adeline texted back.
She suggested that they meet at Coffee to the People.
Coffee to the People was in the Haight.
The Haight was one of the last places in the city with an actual mix of the social classes. There were rich people, there were middle class people, there were poor people.
All wandering half-dazed. Navigating crappy stores packed with hippie kitsch. Everything was covered in a layer of filth.
Coffee to the People was on Masonic. Adeline thought there might be some collectivist ideology embedded in the cafe. She wasn’t sure. It could’ve been just a name.
She took the N-Judah over to Cole. She didn’t pay her fare. She had lived in San Francisco for sixteen years and never paid, not once, for the N-Judah.
JEREMY WAS SITTING on a couch when Adeline arrived. The cafe had a few people but it was quiet. It was always quiet.
“Darling, are we staying or should we go for a walk?” asked Adeline.
“Let’s stay,” said Jeremy.
“Have you ordered?”
“Not yet,” said Jeremy.
ADELINE AND JEREMY stood in line behind an old hippie. The old hippie took his time. The old hippie asked questions and pontificated about his lactose intolerance and his almond allergy.
Adeline examined the display cases with all of the baked goods.
“Look, darling,” said Adeline to Jeremy, “They have both a cupcake and a pastry.”
Jeremy ignored her.
“NOW, MISTER J.W. BLOSS, why ever have you visited our fair city?” asked Adeline as they sat down. “I do believe that when last I gazed upon your grim visage, you stated sans ambiguity that you found the general airs of this particular environment to be an intense toxicity.”
“I’m here because of you,” said Jeremy.
“Moi?”
“You’ve got to stop tweeting.”
“’Swounds! Strewth! What sayest thou, sirrah? Dost thou forget t’was on thine very own recommendation that I adopted the fine art of tweeting?”
“You can’t just go around tweeting about the word %&$#?@.”
“Darling, did I give offense?”
THERE WAS ADELINE. Her son was the child of a Persian father. Her son with eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis, marking him as something other than a member of the social construct of the White race. Her son whom she has witnessed struggle with his racial identity.
She was tweeting the word %&$#?@.
She knew that people on Twitter would freak out. She knew that people on the Internet would freak out. That’s the whole purpose of the Internet. Freaking out and making money for other people. Why not Adeline?
She never imagined that Jeremy would care. She hadn’t even given it a thought.
Adeline was from the 1990s, when confrontational aesthetics were all the rage.
Many artists had become very interested in confronting racism, and, in particular, a subset of eumelaninless artists used the word %&$#?@ in their confrontations of the social order.
The problem is that the aesthetics of the 1990s weren’t only confronting the oppressors of the Patriarchy. They were also confronting people who had, in their day-to-day lives, been called %&$#?@.
And many of those people didn’t have a lot of interest in the difference between a peckerwood in the back of a pick up truck and a pointed critique from SoHo.
“THAT BULLSHIT has been part of my life for years before I met you and it’ll be around until the day that I’m dead and gone,” said Jeremy. “That’s not the problem.”
“What ever then is the problem?”
“When you go around tweeting about the word %&$#?@, people think of me. I’m the one who gets the emails from Scholastic. People come and find me. Everyone knows we’re friends. We’ve worked together for decades. They want to hear what I have to say, and my interest in bein
g your Negro Spokesman is less than zero, Adeline. Negative balance. I’ve got much better things to do. I’m exhausted. I’m tired. I want to live my life without cleaning up your mess.”
Jeremy reached into his pocket. He took out his phone. His phone was an iPhone. The iPhone had changed everything.
He stroked the glass of his iPhone and opened up GMail, Google’s free e-mail service that served targeted advertisements based on the content of individual user’s messages.
“Look,” he said, passing the phone to Adeline.
Every email was from a journalist asking about Adeline.
JEREMY REALLY DID have better things. He was busy.
He was freelance writing for a few video game companies and he was still working in comics, doing work for DC on a reboot of Wild Dog.
WILD DOG was a comic book property created by Max Allen Collins and Terry Beatty in the 1980s, when Adeline and Jeremy both lived in New York City.
There was a crack cocaine epidemic linked to a meteoric rise in crime. The CIA, which had funded the good novel, had also funded the crack cocaine epidemic and the meteoric rise in crime, both causing unfathomable suffering for people with eumelanin in the basale strata of their epidermises.
The comics industry responded to the rise in crime by creating anti-hero vigilantes. These anti-hero vigilantes were different than Spider-Man, a property created by Steve Ditko, or Superman, a property created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. The new anti-hero vigilantes had no superpowers beyond indignant Whiteness and a willingness to murder.
