Just how bad was the looting of Iraq's museum and archaeological sites? According to Salon's experts, many ancient artifacts have come home, but the looting continues.
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Among the many unintended and unforeseen consequences of the U.S. occupation of Iraq that began five years ago this week was the wholesale looting of Iraq’s museums and archaeological sites. Iraq has been called the cradle of civilization. Starting with the Sumerian civilization, which more than 5,000 years ago produced what may be the world’s first examples of writing and math, the area centered on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and known as Mesopotamia has been home to a succession of cultures — Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian. Many believe southern Iraq was the site of the biblical Garden of Eden. But within weeks of the first American airstrike, the cradle of civilization had been robbed. Baghdad’s National Museum of Iraq, among the globe’s premier repositories of antiquities, was ransacked over the course of a week in April 2003. Statues were dragged down the steps, artifacts six millennia old were carried off in plastic bags. American soldiers were not dispatched to protect the museum until the thieves were long gone.
It was partly in response to media queries about the unimpeded looting of Iraq’s cultural heritage that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld uttered the infamous and cavalier rejoinder, “Democracy is messy.” Five years after the sacking of Iraq, we decided to ask the experts how bad it really was, how many priceless antiquities have come back to their homeland, and what, if anything, has changed about the Bush administration’s approach to protecting Iraq’s history.
On behalf of Salon, Brian Rose, professor of archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania and president of the Archaeological Institute of America, conducted a round table with Donny George Youkhanna, former chief of antiquities for the Iraqi government and director general of the National Museum of Iraq; Cori Wegener, an associate curator at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts who, as a major in the U.S. Army Reserve, was called up in 2003 and sent to Iraq to assess the damage to the museum; and Micah Garen, a documentary filmmaker, photographer and journalist who went to Iraq shortly after the invasion to document the looting of archaeological sites. Youkhanna, who is known as Donny George in the West, was forced to flee Iraq in 2006 and is now a visiting professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Wegener is presently president of the U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield, which was formed in 2006 to protect cultural property worldwide during armed conflict. Garen, who wrote a book about his experience as a hostage in Iraq called “American Hostage,” is working on a feature-length documentary about the looting. The round-table participants spoke by phone on Friday, March 14.
– Mark Schone, Salon
Rose: We’re here to assess what’s actually happened in Iraq, especially involving cultural property, five years after the inauguration of the war in Iraq. I wanted to turn first to Donny George, who was then the director general of the National Museum of Iraq. What was it like when you stepped into the museum right after the looting?
George: Oh my god, Brian. You’re bringing up the worst memories I have in mind, really. It was as if a hurricane had hit the whole building and the rooms and the galleries and the storerooms from inside. Imagine. A hurricane on the inside of a museum and the storerooms and the administration areas. It was exactly like that. It was terrible. Over 120 doors in the administration areas were completely destroyed. And a lot of furniture appeared to have been taken away. But our problem was with the antiquities. Some of the materials that were displayed and still displayed at the gallery were taken away, such as the Warka Vase. And some of the cultural material from the galleries there. But we could not then, in those very early days, could not check what had happened to the storerooms because we did not have electricity in Baghdad. It was completely in the dark. We did not have enough fuel to start our generators. But afterward, when we went into the storerooms that were in the basement of the museum, those were another tragedy. The looters had gone into some places, it looked like they knew what they were looking for, in some places they got the smallest and most precious material. Those were the cylinder seals and a good [amount] of jewelry. From there, they took over 5,000 cylinder seals and as I said, [jewelry] too.
Rose: Cori Wegener, you were actually there on the ground in Iraq. To what extent was the U.S. military aware of how much had been looted from the museum and how endangered Iraq’s archaeological sites were?
Wegener: When I arrived on May 16, 2003 — so kind of well after — Col. Matthew Bogdanos and his team were already there, and by that time they had realized that everything was not gone but that it was still quite a bad situation. [Bogdanos, a Marine reservist, organized a team of American troops to protect the museum and recover Iraqi antiquities.] And they were still trying to get a handle on the potential for inventories using some of the old card systems that had been ransacked and overturned. And using log books that many objects had been logged into. But we still didn’t know the full extent of the looting at that time, because we didn’t have a comprehensive inventory to go by. And also, many of the storage areas that Donny mentioned, some of those objects hadn’t been inventoried when they were brought into the museum because the staff hadn’t been able to work at full operating power under the sanctions they were under. So it was a really difficult situation to figure out, about what exactly had been looted and what the numbers were. As far as the archaeological sites go, that was not a huge issue in those early days and it was only later when we did the helicopter flyovers that you have John Russell’s excellent photos of the looting of the sites.
Rose: And I have to say from the point of view of the Archaeological Institute of America, we really didn’t know what to do when this had all first developed, when the museum had been looted, when we became aware that the archaeological sites were being looted with great rapidity. The archaeologists, not just in the U.S., but also in the world were, in a sense, running around in a confused way. The archaeological institutes hadn’t really collaborated with each other. And most of us hadn’t collaborated with the military in the past. So we didn’t have the kind of guide or the established mechanisms for interfacing with the military and lending our expertise. It was something we tried to correct in the meantime. But in the beginning, I’m afraid, our responses were not as rapid or as adept, as expert, as we would have liked them to be.
Micah Garen, you were also on the ground in Iraq and you had an occasion to actually speak to some of the looters who were active in looting archaeological sites or perhaps in looting the museums.
Garen: I was there for a period of about eight months total, between early June 2003 until August 2004, and we met and spoke with everyone. So we spoke with people in the military, people who were involved in looting, people in the Iraqi police, people with the museum. We got this incredibly detailed picture of it, and we actually were able to film a lot of what was going on, which is what we’re working on now for a documentary. But I’d like to say first off that the U.S. military knew exactly what the problem was back in June of 2003 with the looting at the sites. And the reason I know that is because I personally presented a colonel in the U.S. Army back in June of 2003 with a series of images of the looting, and the New York Times broke the story, front page, on May [23], 2003. So there’s no question that the issue was very prevalent. It was just a question of priorities. And it was very clear that protecting archaeological sites was not a priority. And I think that was the problem and continues to be the problem.
… We were on the ground for four months down in southern Iraq in the Dhi Qar region and al-Qadisiyyah region, and there was absolutely no effort in the time we were there for the U.S. Army to send patrols out to protect the archaeological sites. The only group that was doing that was the Italians. And the Italians — it was entirely by virtue of the commanders who were on the ground. So when you had a very good commander who really cared and understood, because Italy has a long history of caring about its culture, he would send three or four patrols a week and the looting would stop. When you had a commander who didn’t care, the patrols would stop and the looting would come back.
We were filming 200 looters a night working at sites such as Umma, which are some of the most important sites in the world. And they were just digging with impunity. They were actually just walking around. People were selling cigarettes to the looters. They had electrical generators, lights going on all night. One helicopter patrol, literally, we went on one helicopter, a little four-seater helicopter, and it was simply just a tour of the sites, that scared away looters for three days. Just the presence of one helicopter. There were dozens of helicopters at the [Coalition] air base in Nasiriyah, for the entire four months we were there, and that was the only patrol.
When you speak to soldiers individually, people really care. But it doesn’t mean anything unless it’s a policy at the highest level. Unless at the highest level of the administration and the Army, there’s a mandate that says we need to spend X dollars to protect the cultural heritage of Iraq and we need to do regular patrols, nothing happens.
Wegener: I have to say, it’s not just at the highest levels of the Army. The civilian-manned element of our government has to have that priority and translate that down to the military. Because it has to come from the highest levels in the Department of Defense and not just the Department of the Army, but the highest levels. And that’s the really important part, because that’s what’s going to make it a mandate.
George: I want to add something about this issue exactly. I was there all the time, and one of the first times when I started having contact with the American administration in Iraq, with the American liaison officers, I offered to them that I would give them the best way to protect the archaeological sites. To contact our inspectors … in every province we have an inspector of antiquities who actually has maps, who knows the archaeological sites in his province, who knows all the details of what’s happening there. I gave lists of the names and the telephone numbers of everybody covering the whole country to the cultural section in the U.S. Embassy. And to some of the liaison officers, I said, this would be the best way to go and contact your civilian affairs sections of the Army, contact these people, and they will guide you and tell you how to protect these sites there. But as Micah has said, it was not a priority. I was always faced with the subject, “Yes, we have the priority of security, the water, the electricity. Protecting the archaeological sites is not our priority now.”
Rose: Donny, there were a lot of different estimates on how much was actually lost from the museums at the time of the looting. Some estimates were over 100,000 artifacts. If you had to estimate how much was lost, what would you say now?
George: Well, finally, I can say that first, the number that was taken over the very first few days, “over 170,000 objects were looted from the museum,” was incorrect. This was a mistake. In those days, as I said, we did not have electricity. We could not see the storeroom. How could we estimate that number? So we were always saying, “We don’t know that. We have to check.” But after some time of checking, I would say that we have lost, even though our checking is not finished yet, over 15,000 objects have been taken and looted from the Iraq museum [National Museum of Iraq]. And all with the efforts of the American MPs, and the law enforcement all over the world and the law enforcement in Iraq, we have got, I would say, 50 percent of those back. Some 4,000 are actually back in the museum now, and the others are seized by Jordan and Syria and the United States and Spain and Italy and Holland. So it will make the number, with the ones we know about and that have been seized, almost 50 percent.
Rose: One reads now that much of the most significant material stolen from the museum has been returned. Are there still a lot of significant objects that were stolen from the museum that have not yet been found?
George: Well, yes. Some of the great masterpieces have come back, but we still are missing some wonderful pieces. Especially the Ivory Plaque that came from Nimrud, discovered … by Sir Max Mallowan. It’s what we call “The Lioness and the Nubian.” It’s a beautiful piece, covered in gold in some parts and inlaid with precious stones in some other parts. This one was taken and has not come back. Again, there are some heads of statues, some very important ones, from the city of Hatra, and that’s an interesting city, 200 B.C. to 200 A.D. We have a good number of those heads of statues that were taken and are not back. And together with a lot of smaller items. But these are the most significant materials that were looted and have not come back yet.
Rose: When looted art is actually seized at the borders, let’s say it’s seized at U.S. Customs, what happens to it then? Is it repatriated to Iraq immediately? Where does it go?
George: In fact, when I was in office [as Iraq's chief of antiquities], I was always contacted by these people. I always said, thank you very much, send us documents about these things, and keep them there. It’s not a good time to bring these things back to Iraq or to the Iraq museum. And this is the case, there are still a good number of Iraqi antiquities that sit in the storerooms in New York, and one of the major objects that was taken from the Iraq museum — that is, the statue of a Sumerian king, Entemena — was found in the customs bay. They had seized it but they have delivered it to the Iraqi embassy, and it’s sitting now in the Iraqi embassy in Washington. It’s not the right time to take these things back to Baghdad. But they’re all documented, and the Iraq museum knows everything about these seized materials.
Rose: Who actually do you think is selling the artifacts? How is it that the material actually gets out of the country?
George: This is one of the reasons that [I believe] it was an organized crime. It was not … just normal Iraqis came and looted the museum. Yes, there were some who looted, but in the very first weeks, materials started surfacing in Europe and the United States. So it must be, 100 percent, that it was an organized crime. The other evidence we have found, I myself have found, that in the galleries of the museum, those who went inside the galleries were well-prepared to go inside and get materials, and these must have connections that have taken material outside the country. Now, I’m not fearing anytime that this material may end up in one of the museums, because I know that museums all over the world would not do that. But, my fear is that this material would go to some special private collectors who will just dump the material, keep it for their own sake, just to keep for 20 years. It’s a money investment.
Rose: Micah, when you were talking with people, to the average Iraqi in the streets, did the subject of these precious antiquities, the loss of archaeological sites, the loss of cultural heritage, often come up in the course of your conversations?
Garen: We would ask people on the streets what they thought about it, because we thought it was a fairly esoteric issue that they might not be concerned with. But literally, with people who made maybe a thousand dollars a year, who lived in complete impoverishment, almost all of them universally said, “This is a terrible thing. This is our heritage.” The problem is that they’re facing such enormous problems. Clearly, they couldn’t do anything [other] than say how they felt about it.
I think one of the big challenges with the looting, which really dates back to 1991 or ’93, following the first Gulf War — and this is the looting of the archaeological sites and not the museum — but as the south became impoverished with the sanctions, that’s when the opportunity for looting came up. And as well, Saddam was losing power in the south, so the area became ripe for the possibility of this organized crime. So the looting really did start to take off in the ’90s and went through various periods of time. Even Donny George was involved in trying to do salvage explorations to try to combat this. But during that period, it was up and down depending on the security situation. And Elizabeth Stone, interestingly, has done a study of the patterns of the looting over the past 10 years that she just recently published, and it shows that one of the strongest periods of looting was just prior to the war, in the year leading up to the war. So as all the attention started focusing on the war, the security situation became very weak in the south, and that’s when, right up to the period starting the war, when the looting really became very concentrated and heavy.
Rose: Micah, when you were talking about the looting at the sites and observing the looting, it sounded almost as if when you visited particular archaeological sites, the looters could take note of you and then continue looting.
Garen: It is extremely dangerous. And we actually only went with patrols when one of the inspectors of antiquity from Nasiriyah would go out on patrol or the Italians would go. It was far too dangerous. So what we did, we actually trained Iraqi cameramen who, over a period of months, could actually get close enough to film this. And they would start maybe a mile away and you’d just see tiny lights in the distance at night and they’d sort of work up their courage and get closer and closer. But it was far too dangerous for us to ever do that ourselves. So that’s how we got the images and the information.
Rose: Cori, from your perspective, when you were there, was there much discussion about whether the sale of artifacts was being used to fund the insurgency or fund al-Qaida in Iraq?
Wegener: Not as much at that time. I think it wasn’t until after I had left, which was March 2004, that I really started to notice news stories about that and that that was a possibility. As I said, I was really pretty much focused on the museum for my part of the mission there.
Garen: I think this is an important point about the link between looting and terrorism, and I know that that was made in a New York Times Op-Ed piece, but we were actually the ones that discovered that potential link. We never published it. We were freelancing for the New York Times. We never wrote a story about it because there’s no proof. And I think it was a bit of a red herring. You see slogans in support of the Madhi Army scrawled all over the archaeological sites, and stuff like that, but the connection was never a direct connection.
In other words, the looting was happening prior to the war, and the looting was happening after the war, and the looting was really about poverty and money. And whatever someone’s political agenda was at the moment, it wasn’t as if people were saying, “Ah, we’re going to go out and loot and get money and then fight the Coalition.” There were rumors of that, but there was never any proof of that, and I think that’s a very politically charged thing to say, because it has very strong political implications when you say that looting is about terrorism. But it’s not. Looting is not about terrorism. It’s about money. It’s a criminal activity. It’s like the drug trade. I just want to make sure that’s understood for the record.
Rose: I think that’s an important point. People often have a sense of looters as romantic characters, someone like Lara Croft or Nicholas Cage in “National Treasure.” These are people who sell guns and drugs and women and children and antiquities for one reason, which is to make money. And I know Matthew Bogdanos has told me a number of times that when they were on patrol in the region of Afghanistan with all the caves, they would frequently find drugs and guns and antiquities all together. It’s part of a major money-making operation with no great love for aesthetics in evidence on the part of any of the looters.
Rose: During face-to-face conversations with the looters, have any of them tried to justify their actions?
Garen:It took months and months to try and arrange something in a safe way, but we were finally able to interview somebody that was involved in the looting, and this person was absolutely the opposite of what we thought. We thought this was going to be some very frightening individual criminal, and [this person was] a very well-educated man with children, and it was a complete shock. The person justified the actions by saying, “We have no money.” And at the same time, I should point out that a lot of people in the streets in Nasiriyah and Fedra, who you would speak to about the looting, when we would ask that question, Is anyone justified? people who are incredibly impoverished, a lot of them would say, “Absolutely not. I’m impoverished and there’s no justification for it.” Everyone sort of makes that moral decision at some point, but the pressure on these people living in abject poverty with families — and they’re literally just a few miles from these incredibly precious and valuable archaeological sites that aren’t being protected — it’s a very strong temptation for them.
Rose: Donny, I know that archaeological sites throughout the country have been severely damaged. If you had to point to two or three that were far more damaged than any of the others, would you be able to do it?
George: Yes, the site that Micah has mentioned, Umma — that’s the ancient Umma, the modern name is Jokha. It’s a very important site from the Akkadian period and toward the end of the third millennium B.C. This site is eight square kilometers, and this site, I would say, from seeing the aerial photos, has almost completely been dug. Imagine around eight square kilometers completely dug. Every single mound in that city has been dug with thousands of picks, and this site has produced thousands and thousands of clay tablets with cuneiform inscriptions that are flooding markets in the United States and in Europe. This is a very important site for humanity, for the field of archaeology, for science, but it’s completely destroyed by these thousands of picks. There’s the site next to it, Um al-Aqarib, that I myself have dug. It is again one of these sites that is so heavily looted. That site is around five square kilometers. And the site of Isin, where the German expedition had worked there. The site of Larsa, the French expedition, had been looted, but not heavily. … Most of the very important Sumerian sites in the south are always targeted, as everybody is mentioning, even this moment we are speaking.
Rose: Donny, if you were to describe the museum now, five years after the beginning of the war, how does it look?
George: Well, one thing is that all the traces of destruction have gone out. Thanks to actually money coming from the State Department and donated from the Packard Foundation, we could really have the whole thing, we could have our staff back. The staff is back, but the matter is that we only have 50 percent of the staff that comes to the offices, and it’s because of the security situation. They cannot risk, and this is a system that I started when I was there in 2006, and they’re continuing doing that. This is one thing. The other thing is that the museum, in fact, is closed. It’s not as it was mentioned in some of the media: Oh, they’re open. No, it’s only that we’ve opened some of the galleries, to continue the work that I stopped when I closed the museum in May 2006. We have opened those galleries to continue the work of the Italians to refurbish the lighting systems in the Assyrian Gallery and some of the material in one of the large Islamic galleries. And that is all. We have not opened the storerooms. The museum is not open to the public. Maybe some VIPS can see into those two galleries from the back door. Nothing else. Otherwise, it’s still an attention area, the museum is behind Haifa Street. Sometimes, when I was there, we even received a Katyusha rocket in the gardens of the museum. So it’s a critical situation for the museum. It’s not ready for opening at all.
Rose: If you were to hazard a guess as to when you think the museum will open again, would you even attempt a guess at that?
George: My idea about that is that the museum should be the last place, the last building that can be opened for the public after everything is secured in the whole country. Because the country now is going through a very delicate situation of security. So I believe that the museum is not a place that can be opened now. The museum is a very soft target. The museum receives visitors, children, families, different kinds of people, so it is a very soft target, and it can never be opened in this situation. Until everything is completely safe, 100 percent, in the whole country, I believe it’s not a wise decision to reopen the museum.
Rose: Cori, when you speak to the troops today or even when you speak to people in the Bush administration, what do you find the attitude is toward the cultural heritage of Iraq? Have you noticed a change over the years since the beginning of the war?
Wegener: Yes, definitely. I think particularly when you’re talking to civil affairs units, who have the primary responsibility for dealing with civilian affairs issues — and cultural property is one of those issues — they have a real hunger to learn more about the culture. They’re very interested in learning about the important aspects that need to be protected there still. A lot of them aren’t as aware of the looting at the archaeological sites and the problems that that brings. These units go to various parts of Iraq and take on responsibilities for their areas. They’re anxious to learn who the people are, who the Iraqis are who are in charge of cultural property in those areas, what significant cultural sites are in their area of responsibility. I think it was a very good lesson for everybody to understand the importance of cultural heritage. Seeing the crisis that that caused, the looting of the Iraq museum and the public outcry, was definitely a wakeup call.
Rose: I have to say, when I do archaeological briefings at the bases, and in fact I just did one at Fort Bragg, I’ve rarely seen such an interested group of people. Far more interested, with far better questions than any of my students at the University of Pennsylvania. These people are hungry for information about cultural heritage in a way that initially surprised me.
Rose: Donny, what is the attitude of the current Iraqi government toward the protection of the archaeological sites and cultural heritage and museums of Iraq?
George: I am sorry to say that the field of antiquities is not getting that much attention from the government. I’m very sorry to say that. One of the things is that they have cut off the budget for the patrolling police that I have started. Police that belong to the antiquities and who are patrolling the archaeological sites. They are cutting the budget for the fuel for the cars. They do not provide them with extra cars. They do not provide them with weapons needed for patrolling the archaeological sites. And this is a tragedy. It’s not something big. They can just raise the budget so they can get fuel and go and protect the archaeological sites. In practice, our police have been doing an excellent job when they do have fuel, when they go patrolling. They could stop the looting of the sites. But it’s not happening anymore now. It’s because of the budget. they do not provide the state board of antiquities with enough budget to support this kind of police for patrolling the sites.
Rose: So in the course of the last year, would you say the lootings have increased exponentially as a consequence of that?
George: Yes, now the looters know a lot … I think they even know that those patrol police don’t have enough budget for their fuel. Or even if the patrolling police would come to one place, they would move to the next province, which they would know they don’t have enough cars to patrol all their sites. It’s just a kind of, if you stop them here, they will move here. If you stop them, if you go after them. So the idea is that they do not have enough patrolling police, enough cars to stop the looting in the whole country. It’s just patches here and there, and it’s not enough really.
Garen: I have … talked to different people in the administration, and I always try to talk about the issue of the looting. If the question is, What is the [attention] to this issue in the administration? it’s the same as it was five years ago, which as far as I can tell, is none. No interest. That’s just a dead-end for me. And I think numbers speak louder than anything else. And the entire budget for protecting the museum and the archaeological sites in the period when I was in Iraq was $2 million. And that budget came as a donation of $1 million from the Packard Humanity’s Fund and $1 million from the State Department. Now when you think today that the budget for the Iraq is $16 billion a month, there’s still no budget for protecting archaeological sites five years later.
Rose: Cori, in the course of your conversations with officials, do you have the same sense as Micah?
Wegener: In some respects, with certain people … I think that we’re all aware of this, because we’re in this community that pays attention to these issues, but on a greater scale, in the U.S. government, it’s kind of not an issue. And when you raise awareness, and when I go to give talks to public groups and at museums, etc., as well as our military training, when I show these photos of the looting and where these vast areas look like craters of the moon where the looters have dug up antiquities, they’re shocked and amazed and don’t really understand that yes, this is going on as we speak, and I always use those terms. We’re sitting here in this auditorium, and as we speak, this is happening in Iraq at over 10,000 archaeological sites that we know of, that are registered. I think there does need to be quite a bit of awareness-raising about this issue.
Rose: We should add that there are a few new programs that have been developed in the wake of the war. One by AIA and another by the U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield, of which Cori serves as president. And then there are a few more in addition. We now go to military bases in the U.S. and actually give briefings on the archaeology of Iraq and Afghanistan, the cultural heritage, on preservation, to the troops that are about to be deployed. So what we’ve been trying to do is to create a greater sense of cultural awareness on the part of the military. We’ve done this at a number of bases: Fort Bliss, Fort Bragg, Fort Drum, the list goes on and on. So, it’s certainly something we’ve been trying to work on as extensively as we can. But as I said at the beginning, there was no type of interface between archaeologists and officials involved in cultural heritage and the military, which we now hope will be corrected.
By way of conclusion, I could say that certainly now the archaeologists and the military have the basis for a good working relationship that they didn’t have before. And there certainly is a far greater level of awareness of Iraqi culture throughout the world. But of course, as you’ve all said, looting continues at an increasingly rapid pace, and we still have a considerable distance to go before the plundering of the history of this area is ameliorated in any way. But I want to thank all of you for being part of this conversation.
A passport to utopia
The satirical NSK State movement was founded in socialist Yugoslavia in 1984. It has now opened four embassies
A few years back (2003 to be exact) I wrote a story in Print on The NSK State, created in 1992 by the Slovene arts collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK), which included the groups Laibach, IRWIN, Noordung, New Collectivism and the Department of Pure and Applied Philosophy. Their trope was needle-sharp parody of Communist and Fascist symbols and language.
NSK was founded in Ljubljana in 1984 as socialist Yugoslavia began to return to prewar borders and age-old ethnic disputes. As an art and satire movement The NSK State is conceived as a utopia, which has no physical territory and is not identified with any existing national state. It is inherently transnational and describes itself as “the first global state of the universe.” It issues passports to anyone who is prepared to identify with its founding principles and citizenship is open to all regardless of national, sexual, religious or other status. It now has several thousand citizens across numerous countries and all continents.
The NSK State has opened temporary Embassy and Consulate events in Moscow, Ghent, Berlin and Sarajevo. And earlier this month they issued passports at MoMA (Mezzanine, The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building). MoMA states:
Organized in conjunction with the exhibition Print/Out, Print Studio is an interactive space that explores the evolution of artistic practices relating to the medium of print.
Originally founded by a collective of artists, musicians, and philosophers, the NSK State in Time (Neue Slowenische Kunst) came into being in 1992 shortly after Slovenia’s independence from the Yugoslavian federation. This declaration of existence was accompanied by the issuing of passports at various temporary embassies which operated alongside NSK exhibitions and events. Led by the Slovenian artists’ collective IRWIN, Print Studio will host IRWIN, NSK Passport Office, New York for three days and issue a limited number of passports. A concurrent series of presentations, discussions, screenings and a culminating NSK State Citizens’ Congress offers a forum to engage the public with ideas central to the NSK State and what it means to be a citizen of this state in time.
A limited number of passports will be printed during IRWIN’s NSK Passport Office, New York.
The “Time for a New State” billboard below is in Lagos where approximately 4000 citizens only have NSK passports (Thanks to Mirko Ilic).
Copyright F+W Media Inc. 2011.
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“The Fault in Our Stars” and “There Is No Dog”: Not kids’ stuff
Two new young adult novels are smarter, better-written and more emotionally complex than most adult fiction
Why should you, an adult, bother with a novel intended for an audience aged 14 to 18? If you’re among the ever-growing adult readership for YA (young adult) fiction, you’re probably not even asking that question anymore. And no doubt John Green, whose most recent YA novel, “The Fault in Our Stars,” became a bestseller on Amazon even before he finished writing it (pre-orders were enabled when he settled on a title), doesn’t especially need readers with the legal right to vote. But if you were to skip “The Fault in Our Stars” — or another new novel, by YA luminary Meg Rosoff, “There Is No Dog” — because you assume that such books are less intelligent, well-written or emotionally complex than their adult counterparts, you would be most miserably mistaken.
Both of these novels ask questions as difficult as those posed by any serious writer: Why do we suffer, why must we die, and what meaning can be found in any of it? More important, they are not afraid to respond to these questions unflinchingly. These books are often — very often — funny, but they aren’t frivolous. I can think of a dozen acclaimed contemporary adult novelists who blunder through this territory, wallowing in sinkholes of sentiment, tangling their narratives in thickets of saccharine fabulism. It makes no sense that the maudlin goo that is “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” should be classified as a work for adults, when “The Fault in Our Stars,” a far more mature rumination on the same themes, is regarded as a children’s book. Likewise, why should grown-ups be subjected to the cutesy “The Life of Pi” while teenagers get to revel in an astringent fable like “There Is No Dog”?
“The Fault in Our Stars” is told in the first person, with the sort of fresh, irreverent voice that inevitably gets compared to Salinger’s Holden Caulfield. This story, however, comes from a character infinitely more appealing than Holden. Her name is Hazel Lancaster, and she is dying. The thyroid cancer that will eventually kill her is being held in abeyance by an experimental drug, but she still needs an oxygen tank, and she spends a lot of time worrying that she’s an emotional “grenade” for her parents. “There is only one thing shittier than biting it from cancer when you’re 16,” she observes, “and that’s having a kid who bites it from cancer.” She’d prefer to limit the damage.
And yet, who could help but love her? Certainly not Augustus Waters, a survivor of osteosarcoma with a replacement leg he calls Old Prosty. The two meet at a support group, where they are suitably skeptical about the inspirational mottoes and the covert competition to end up among the 20 percent who’ll still be alive in five years. A tender, bookish, wisecracking romance ensues, fueled in part by the couple’s shared enthusiasm for a novel, “An Imperial Affliction,” Hazel’s favorite, yet something she mostly “can’t tell people about, one of those books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.”
“An Imperial Affliction” ends in the middle of a sentence, and while Hazel thinks she knows why, she still wishes she could find out what happens to its characters. The author, who has written nothing else, lives reclusively in Amsterdam. The two young people hatch a plan to visit him and extract the answers to Hazel’s questions. It’s a quest complicated by the difficulty of traveling with oxygen tanks and prosthetics, but enabled by the sort of favors Hazel sardonically refers to as “cancer perks.” There will be grenades, but not in the places where you expect them.
The sparkling, satirical “There Is No Dog” extrapolates from a clever premise: If this world — “not just full of suffering” but “full of perversity, of things that go horribly wrong more or less at random. For the hell of it” — has a creator, the only deity messed up enough to have made it must be a teenage boy. His name is Bob, and he’s petulant, self-absorbed and hormone-addled. Most of the actual work gets done by the middle-aged Mr. B, a put-upon administrative second banana who spends his time frantically trying to limit the damage caused by Bob’s moods and negligence.
Bob got punted this job (“miles off the beaten track in a lonely and somewhat run-down part of the universe”) by his feckless mother, Mona, who won it in a celestial poker game. His initial efforts at creating light consisted of “fireworks, sparklers and neon tubes that circled the globe like weird tangled rainbows,” all of which Bob regarded as “very cool” even though they didn’t work. (The functional aspects of the solar system were executed by Mr. B while Bob napped.) Creating humanity in his own image (“one big fat recipe for disaster”) is this creator’s crowning misdeed and results in a long history of Bob falling in love with mortal women, an emotion whose agonizing ups and downs trigger bizarre weather and other natural disasters. “There is No Dog” begins just as a lovely assistant zookeeper named Lucy comes to Bob’s amorous and catastrophic attention.
Rosoff gets an impressive amount of mileage out of what might otherwise seem like a joke. This is largely due to a lively extended cast of characters who include Lucy’s mother, the dispirited vicar who pines for her, Mona’s terrifying poker buddy and his thoughtful daughter, Estelle. There’s also Bob’s neglected pet (“I don’t ignore him! Just last night I made him bring me some food!”) the Eck, an endearingly hapless “penguiny” creature, the last of his kind, in danger of being eaten by Estelle’s father.
It’s debatable whether Rosoff’s shrewd, trim prose might not occasionally fly just over the heads of teen readers. (Lucy’s mother is memorably described as “having the air of an expensive pony — sturdy, alert and well-groomed.”) But it’s rather thrilling to know that stylists of her caliber have dedicated themselves to writing for young readers, and that it doesn’t even seem to occur to her to pander to them. Not much in today’s culture inspires hope for the future — or at least not credibly so — but I count the knowledge that so many teenagers read and love books like “The Fault in Our Stars” and “There Is No Dog” as one of the bright spots.
Laura Miller is a senior writer for Salon. She is the author of "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia" and has a Web site, magiciansbook.com. More Laura Miller
Ricky Gervais: My conscience never takes a day off
In a Salon exclusive, the comedian answers critics, explains his hilarious new HBO show, and talks "Office" sequels
Warwick Davis and Ricky Gervias in "Life's Too Short"
Ricky Gervais is not listening to those who say he should pick on someone his own size.
“Life’s Too Short,” which begins next Sunday on HBO, is a mockumentary that follows Warwick Davis, a real-life showbiz dwarf with a very real small-man syndrome. Like David Brent on “The Office” and Andy Millman on “Extras,” Davis suffers a mean case of self-delusion, even as his career tanks, his wife leaves him and a massive unpaid tax bill comes due. He compares himself to Martin Luther King Jr., while also talking about the importance of his dignity, all while falling out of his SUV or asking strangers to press doorbells he can’t reach.
It’s painfully and excruciatingly funny, yet in early episodes, at least, Davis is an extraordinarily likable Napoleon. In an interview last week, Gervais insisted that the show is not making fun of Davis or little people. And in a wide-ranging discussion that might surprise some after his controversial and sometimes mean turns hosting the Golden Globes, Gervais says that comedy and humanity can’t be separated. “Comedy is about empathy,” he says. “Comedy is about the blind spot, comedy is about rooting for them, comedy is about flawed characters.”
You have a tradition of writing and playing characters who are dangerously self-deluded, who can’t see the blind spots everyone else notices right away. “Life’s Too Short” follows a dwarf actor who not only says he wants to be the Martin Luther King Jr. of little people, but believes that if anyone takes offense at that, he points out that he’s never seen a black person shot out of a cannon before. Was part of the challenge for you making it both OK to laugh at a dwarf in these circumstances, but also somehow humanizing him so completely?
Well, the thing is, we wanted to make it clear that we weren’t laughing because he was a dwarf. There’s nothing mildly amusing about that. He doesn’t have to be a dwarf at all, really. It’s that he’s got small man complex. He’s conniving, manipulative, pretentious. When he falls out of his car, we’re laughing at him because he chose a car that’s not right for him. Way too big for him. And he was just saying, “I carry myself with dignity.” It’s about getting his comeuppance.
So, we want people to see the difference between a show that exploits little people and a show that shows exploitation of little people, and this is clearly in the latter. And Warwick is so likable, we had to make him into a little Hitler to feel that you could laugh at him and want him to get his comeuppance. Because despite everything, he’s drenched in humanity.
You’re right, we had to make sure people knew that they were allowed to laugh. And there will still be people that aren’t sure – around England there are people saying, “Oh, why is it funny that he’s caught in a cat flap” [trying to get back into a house after his wife changes the locks]. It’s funny if anyone gets caught in a cat flap. How is that not funny? [Warwick] is a fantastic physical actor. He’s like Chaplin or Harold Lloyd or something. So we’re going to exploit that. And I mean that in the sense of exploiting his skills, as opposed to exploiting his height, which we don’t. And if people think that a dwarf actor is not allowed to do slapstick, that’s their prejudice. How dare they say that Warwick Davis can’t do slapstick in case someone might think that we’re just laughing at him because he’s a dwarf falling over, as opposed to all the other reasons.
Some people might think that’s convenient: You get to make the joke about the dwarf falling over, after all, and immunize yourself from criticism. Or are people just too quick to take offense?
Some people believe it’s their job. And what you’ll notice is, it’s always someone taking offense on someone else’s behalf. You know? It’s always the person saying, I’m not a dwarf myself, but I find that offensive. It’s crazy. You see that all the time. And I’ll tell you why, it’s because whenever you do something slightly taboo, or contentious, or you’re dealing in any irony or satire, people mistake the subject of the gag with the target of the gag. You can tell a joke about race, without it being racist. You can tell a joke about disability, without it being disabilist. And I have done it all my career. David Brent (Gervais’ character in “The Office”) felt uncomfortable around people of difference.
So he goes up to a black man in “The Office” and assures him “I love Sidney Poitier.”
Right, clearly we’re laughing at him not knowing how to behave. When he grabs the girl in the wheelchair and says, “I’ll take her down the stairs,” because he wants to be seen helping out on camera. And when Gareth says, “Well, the disabled should be tested to make sure they are claiming benefits and they’re really disabled. Stick pins in their legs, or something like that.” We’re laughing at their stupidity. And, let’s not forget, people like that exist. People like that exist.
As cynical as people think I am with the subject matter I deal with and the flawed characters I show, I’m a romantic. There’s always hope in my characters and there’s always hope in my shows. And there’s nothing more exhilarating than redemption. Forgiveness is very important as well. I like to take an absolute asshole, and show him the error of his ways, and have him say sorry. Who can’t forgive when it’s a genuine apology.
What humanizes them is that gap between the way they see themselves — the aspirations they have, who they hope to be — and the person they really are.
That’s a staple of British comedy. It’s always about the blind spot. It’s always that we’re laughing at the difference between how David Brent sees himself and how the rest of the world sees him — particularly with middle-aged, midlife-crisis males. Men as boys, men who never grow up — the man wants to be cool and loved. And Warwick’s a branch of that tree really. He wants to be thought of as the Martin Luther King of little people. He’s not and he never could be. And he doesn’t really care about dwarf rights; he cares about himself. He exploits dwarfs, he takes all the best jobs for himself. [In a later episode] he goes on the board of the Small People’s Society – he’s the deputy president, but he wants to be president. That’s what annoys him more, he wants to be president. So he’s more worried about being top dog – he doesn’t care about their rights. In fact, one episode he’s there and there are a lot of little people there, and he’s trying to recruit them to be human bowling balls. And the president says, “I don’t think this is the right forum for that,” and he says, “This is the perfect forum, it’s full of dwarves, isn’t it?” He’s like David Brent: He thinks he’s going to try to fight sexism and racism, but he doesn’t really know how to. Because he’s a bit sexist and racist himself.
And yet, on some level, we’re all a little afraid that we have some David Brent in us, aren’t we?
We see ourselves in them, of course we do. We look at David Brent, and everyone, it’s fundamental — everyone is worried about their reputation. David Brent wasn’t a bad person at all. People say, “Oh, nasty boss from hell, bastard.” He wasn’t any of those things. His worst crime is he made the mistake of confusing popularity with respect … But the downfall of society will be people just wanting to be famous. And everyone is now. Everyone on Twitter is a broadcaster. TV shows are obsessed about what people say on Twitter. It’s bizarre. Just make the show!
I use Twitter as a bit of a social experiment. I’m working on a show at the moment, so I do the odd tweet to see what happens. And I think people might think I’m schizophrenic cause I’m playing a few different characters now and again because I’m trying to see the reaction. It’s fascinating what comes back.
What can you share about the characters?
It’s a new sitcom set in an old people’s home and it’s about the forgotten — everyone’s forgotten. Just like all sitcoms, when it comes down to it, it’s them against the world. It’s a family. It’s all these arbitrary people who didn’t know each other, and they’re in there now because they’re in the last years of their life. And it’s about the people who help them, who themselves are losers and have their own problems. It’s about a bunch of people with nothing, but making the most of it, and they’re together.
It’s a show about kindness. Kindness is more important than anything else. Kindness is more important than intelligence, than success, than rewards, everything. Kindness is the most important thing. And it’s about that. So, it’s a very good experiment for me, Twitter. Because you see the absolute worst and best in people.
It’s interesting that you use the word “kindness,” because that’s exactly what Tom Hanks accused you of not being when you hosted the Golden Globes last year.
Right, “He used to be a tubby, kind comedian.” “And neither of those things he is now.”
Were celebrities genuinely offended at your jokes, or was it all a game to generate attention?
No, no, they weren’t. A couple of people said that people were, so that goes into legend. But who was really offended by it, you know? And the other thing is that I’m not going out to hurt people’s feelings and embarrass them; I’m going out to make people laugh. But I also have to make a decision as a comedian – do I pander to the 200 people in the room, or the 200 million people watching at home?
There were critics this year who expected an edgier performance.
I started with a backlash. If you’re going to stand up there, and you’re going to say what’s on your mind, and you’re going to take contentious subjects head-on, as many people are going to hate you as love you. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. I cherish the gasps as much as the cheers. And the groans as much as the laughs. I look at it in Darwinian framework. I’m going to do what I do – not so much proudly, but because I have to do this – and I’ll either survive, or I don’t. And so be it.
Seeing as it’s televised, there’s no doubt about it. If you just want a sycophantic back-slapping session, by all means, but don’t put it on telly, because there’s nothing in it for us watching at home. There’s nothing in it. Winning awards is the most boring thing to watch you’ll ever imagine, so I try to make it a spectator sport. So that was doing my job as a comedian, I think. Two, whatever you say, someone will claim it’s offensive. And to that I say, offense is taken, not given. It’s up to you whether you’re offended. And I’ll add one more thing: Just because you’re offended, doesn’t mean you’re right.
If people are offended, they certainly have a funny way of showing it — Sting, Liam Neeson and Johnny Depp are all among the celebrity cameos on “Life’s Too Short.”
Well, I understand why they do that now. Because I’ve had a taste of my own medicine recently when I did “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” When you play a twisted version of yourself, you realize that the more awful you are, the more armor you wear, in a way, because you’re saying, “Oh, I can’t be like this, because that’s too mad, it’s too terrible.” And so, it’s sort of like you build a credibility shield.
There’s a line in the first episode of “Life’s Too Short” when you’re doing an excruciating improv session with Liam Neeson and he makes an awkward AIDS joke. You and Steven Merchant both try to talk him out of it. Neeson asks, well, why can you do it? You both just shrug. Well, why can you do it?
Because I know what I’m doing. And I know the real target of the joke every time. I’m not one of these people that thinks comedy is your conscience taking a day off. My conscience never takes a day off. I can justify everything I’ve done. I can tell anyone why that joke is justified comedically. Comedy is an intellectual pursuit – as soon as you bring real emotions into it, it stops being comedy and starts becoming rallying. I’ve seen comedians go out there and go, “Why are there so many immigrants?” and get a round of applause. And I go, well, where’s the joke? That’s not a joke; you’re just with like-minded bigots. And the reason why a real racist joke isn’t funny, why an actual racist joke isn’t funny, it’s not because it’s offensive. It’s because it’s not true. It’s based on a falsehood. As soon as someone says, “Why is it that Mexicans always …” I’ll say, well, they don’t. That’s not true. I’ll stop you there. You can’t go on. The punch line’s irrelevant to me now, because the premise is false. So, as I said, I can justify everything I do. And that’s why I can do it. And the fact that there’s anyone in the world that gets it, makes me know that it’s gettable. If everyone in the world said, “That joke’s terrible,” I’d have to go, “Wow, I’m the only person in the world that thinks that works.” But that doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen at all. It’s the opposite. Ninety-nine percent of the people say that’s fine and 1 percent say you can’t say that. Well, watch me.
Do you have a line you won’t walk over? Or a Potter Stewart-sense of when a joke has gone too far?
I’ll tell you how I find that line myself. My own sense of morality. And that’s the problem with offense, it’s not right or wrong, it’s personal. It’s feelings, and feeling are personal. I’ll give you an example. I did a stand-up show and I played this non-reconstructed character who gets everything wrong. I say things like, “Steven Hawking. They say he’s a genius, but he’s not. He’s pretentious.” So it’s me getting stuff wrong, I’m the idiot. “I saw a documentary about this little Indian girl. She had to walk 12 miles every day just to get water. She should move.” It’s things like that. It’s getting it all wrong. I made jokes about famine, the Holocaust, cancer, AIDS, everything. Right? And I got a letter saying, we enjoyed the show, but we didn’t appreciate the jokes about the Holocaust. And I wanted to go, but you enjoyed the jokes about AIDS and famine? That’s your thing, and everyone’s got a thing. But it’s personal.
You studied philosophy for several years. How did that shape your perception of how comedy works?
I think there’s a similar train of thought with a joke: start with a real premise and take it through to its logical conclusion. There’s a flowchart of choices, and there’s a certain scientific method to comedy. Where, experimentation, the proof’s in the pudding. Particularly with stand-up. The audience picks your best jokes for you. It’s an evolution. The jokes are the genes, and it’s the survival of the fittest.
My first love’s always been sort of science and nature, and the arts, in equal proportions. It’s myth that if you’re a logician or you’re an atheist you can’t appreciate the beauty of nature. It’s a total myth. It makes it more beautiful to me that it was random events. I don’t see the problem in it. I just did this show with Richard Dawkins, it’s about the meaning of life and everything. My bit was “Well, if you’re an atheist, what’s the meaning of life for you? What do you get out of it? What’s the point of living?” And I just listed them: It’s friends, family, loved ones, a decent job of work, making a difference and creativity.
Right — things you can actually do in this life, without waiting for the next one.
I think religion was born, really, out of a certain spirituality. But the two are very different. Spirituality is a personal thing and there’s nothing wrong with that. If that helps you, thinking a superior being created the universe in six days and he loves you — if that gets you through and you do good things in his name and not bad, then good for you. I think the Dalai Lama said, ask me my religion, my answer is kindness. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t think they’re right, I don’t think there is a God, and I don’t think they are going to go to heaven. But whatever gets you through, whatever makes you kinder, is fine by me.
Then there’s religion, which is a different kettle of fish. Now these are people who are arguing over whose God’s right and are killing people in the name of it. They’re stoning people to death for believing in the wrong God. That’s what I’ve got a problem with. I don’t think there is an afterlife, and what’s strange about even the kindest people among religious folk is they often say things like, “Well, if you think that this is all there is, then what’s the point?” Which is such a strange thing to me — because that’s why I cherish every moment more. Because it’s not going to last forever. And who wants to live forever, really. Fuck all. Terrible. Terrible idea.
Lastly: We live in such a nostalgic, reunion culture. And yet you’ve really never gone back and revisited these shows. They’ve had really well-defined lives and no matter how popular or influential they’ve become, you’ve probably resisted millions for another “Office” special. Why not show us where David Brent is now?
Because they’re important to me. They’re really important to me. And I’ve seen people let me down in the past by doing a series too often, one too many times. I think they should survive in their own world, and that’s it really. And also, it begs the credibility a little bit if a fake documentary team is still hanging around Slough for 10 years. I think one of the reasons for the success of “The Office” was the realism. I think that’s what resonated. Because nothing comes close to real life. It’s like how art tries to emulate the beauty of nature, and sometimes it nearly, nearly gets close. Well, sometimes comedy and drama create the excitement of real life, and the closer you can get to it, the better you’ve done. You can have the greatest movie of all time – you can be watching “The Godfather” at home – and if there’s a screech of tires and a shout of the neighbors you’re at the window, because real life wins.
Lessons of a very sexy pirate costume
When I took the job at the bar, I looked down on it -- and the women who worked there. But I had so much to learn
The job description had me at “wear a pirate costume.” A sexy pirate costume, for the very sexy pirate-themed bar on Bleecker Street. The fact that the bar promised hundreds of dollars a night for selling people shots sounded quite all right, too.
I grappled for a few moments over what anyone would find sexy about an eye patch. It implied my eyeball had been gored in a fearsome bayonet fight with a British grenadier. I asked the manager whether I should look for a parrot. She was not charmed.
But by God, I was. I’d grow up on a steady diet of country club sandwiches and tennis lessons, and this was what I came to New York for: to do odd things, and see interesting people. People who went to pirate bars, for fun. I had been a model for art classes, but I had never been a pirate. I kept thinking of the Dorothy Parker poem “Song of Perfect Propriety” where she wrote:
I should like to strut and curse
Among my blackguard crew . . .
But I am writing little verse
As little ladies do
There would be time for a little verse years later, once I doffed my absolutely hilarious eye patch. Before I went in for my first day, I received a list of rules on ways to be a good shot girl. The first was:
Make up: Black mascara, lip-gloss, GLITTER around your eye.
Dress code: short black skirt and heals [sic].
So by “pirate” they meant “shiny eyed slattern with a rare gift for healing.” Like Mary Magdalene, maybe. Other tips just made me think that selling shots was going to be a weird, weird job.
Some people have fun eating from their own hands. Do not force feed anyone!
It had not occurred to me that I would deliberately force shots down people’s throats, though, years later, I find it hard to watch any romantic couple feeding one another without thinking, “Some people have fun eating from their own hands!”
But I imagined the women working at the bar would take such a list seriously. After all, women who make a living peddling shots weren’t going to be smart. They wouldn’t see the humor in any of this. I assumed my co-workers would be girls who spoke very, very slowly and thought that Puccini was a type of pasta. To their credit, I also imagined they’d have great hair, and I double-conditioned accordingly.
I was in love with my own incongruity — being a poetry-spouting college graduate in a pleather miniskirt. And I loved this notion of doing something at which I was entirely unsuited, and which seemed to go so much against my personality. I would never have said it at the time, but I very much believed I was above being a fun-loving pirate wench selling shots. I had read Meno and lived in cardigans and went to museums for fun.
I was a terrific little snob who thought she knew everything, and subsequently, I was about to learn a great deal.
As soon as I started, I realized I had no idea what I was doing. Fortunately, the other cocktail waitresses were quick to make suggestions. My first night on the job, a fellow shot girl offered practical advice. “You have to be a little cold,” she explained. “Make them feel like you’re doing them a favor by letting them buy shots.” But it’s difficult to maintain a Queen of Sheba demeanor while trying to rub globs of green glitter out of your eyes. Instead I became a level of friendly you typically only see at Disneyland, if Disneyland reeked of vomit and spilled appletinis. I doled out shots as people in cartoon costumes offer hugs. The manager would point out that I wasn’t being sexy enough, which was surprising, because I was wearing 6-inch heels and less clothing than I ever had.
It quickly became clear that I was not the first literate person to don a miniskirt. Sometime during that first week, I was hiding in the backroom reading Margaret Atwood. I was sitting on the counter next to baskets of party mix because my feet hurt, which they did for the entirety of my shot-selling career. One cocktail waitress swept in, asked what I thought of Atwood’s novel “Oryx and Crake,” did a tricky little analysis where she compared it to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” mentioned some other female dystopian writers I’d never heard of, and then went out balancing a tray of shots on one hand.
As ridiculous as it sounds, that was the first time I became aware that clever people are buried in every nook and cranny of life. It is astonishing that no one pointed this out to me sooner. The girls working at the bar — they were so bright. Another shot girl had a journal that she filled with poetry that was — that rarest of all rare things — crisp and clean and very, very good. This was never a bar where everyone knew your name, but the cocktail waitresses came to know one another’s reading lists, and pitch letters, and audition schedules extremely well.
Of course, we were all there for the money. Shots were sold starting at $3 — the bar received a dollar, the shot company another one and then one for the girl. But once you realized how comically overpriced $3 is for a shot, it’s just as easy to sell them for $4. A customer once suggested I try selling them for $5 and see what happened.
Taking price variations into account, and often considerable tips, and the fact that if you were good you could expect to sell around 100 shots in a six-hour evening, the money was — well, it was the kind of money that teachers in America really ought to make. Periodically, I compare how much I made on an hourly basis as a shot girl to what I make at a job that doesn’t require eye glitter and fishnets, and, barring the possibility that there is a job opening for “wildly corrupt dictator,” I think the result will depress me for the rest of my life.
I don’t mean to make the bar sound friendlier or more glamorous than it was. A great many customers were precisely the kind of people that you would expect to find at a pirate bar buying shots at 2 in the morning. Bottoms got grabbed. Bodies got groped. One customer rolled in nearly every night, wearing a pair of Ray Bans. One of the waitresses always served him while loudly humming “I wear my sunglasses at night.” I wondered aloud if he ever noticed that he was being mocked through Corey Hart’s soothing sounds, and the waitress laughed and said, “Oh, I just do it for me.”
And that’s when you realize that everyone — not just me and my superiority — knows they’re too good for this sort of job.
One night, an older woman came into the bar. I can’t imagine why; I suspect it wasn’t the beer pong. She was one of those very elegant ladies who put their hair up with bobby pins instead of elastic and wore a perfectly cut black dress. I assumed she was lost. She smiled, and gave me $100 and said, “You know, I used to work in a bar when I was younger. It won’t last forever.”
She was right, of course. It’s been years since I’ve been in that bar. But even now I cannot go into a bar or a restaurant without scanning the waitress’ shoes to see if they look comfortable. Every time anyone says something slightly dismissive to a cocktail waitress I am immediately, instinctively on her side, as if we were members of a blood-bonded clan.
I think about that older woman often, usually when I am pinning up my hair. I hope that, like her, I will not forget that strange period in my life, especially as I move past it. I think of the girls in the bar when I am — as I still am — too quick to dismiss people. When I am about to write someone off for their choice of eye shadow, I remember that they might be a fellow Atwood reader, and I wonder if she and I are in the same boat. Once in a while they are, and if that makes me feel slightly less special, it also makes the world seem much less lonely.
And in that way, the lady was quite wrong. Those times, and those alliances with a blackguard crew: Thank goodness, they do last forever.
America’s failed promise of equal opportunity
To achieve a truly fair society, we need to look to Lincoln, not Jefferson
Americans are increasingly aware that the ideal of equal opportunity is a false promise, but neither party really seems to get it.
Republicans barely admit the problem exists, or if they do, they think tax cuts are the answer. All facts point in the opposite direction. Despite various tax cuts over the past 30 years, not only have income and wealth inequality dramatically increased, but the ability of individuals to rise out of their own class has declined. Social stagnation is increasingly the norm, with poverty rates the highest in 15 years, real wage gains worse even than during the decade of the Great Depression, average earnings barely above what they were 50 years ago, and more than 80 percent of the income growth of the past 25 years going to the top 1 percent. In fact, since 1983, the bottom 40 percent of households have seen real declines in their income and the same goes for the bottom 60 percent when it comes to wealth. We know what the economic status quo does: It redistributes upwards.
Despite the ambiguity of their goals, the Occupy protests have made one point abundantly clear: The mainstream Democratic alternative is paltry stuff. For the most part, Democrats disagree that tax cuts and deregulation are the solution, and instead argue that the state should be used to guarantee equal opportunity. For instance, cheap, publicly available education, job training and affirmative action are all justified on the grounds that each American should have the skills to compete and the labor market should treat everyone equally.
Yet, the two parties differ only on means, not ends. While Republicans profess a more abiding faith in a self-regulating economy, Democrats believe carefully tailored state interventions are needed to ensure equal opportunity.
The question becomes: Equal opportunity for what? For both parties, opportunity basically means a market-oriented ideal where individuals are given the chance to fight over a limited supply of high-status jobs. As it turns out, the end that each party agrees on is largely same: the equal opportunity to become unequal.
Most Democrats and Republicans share a commitment to an inegalitarian, early 21st-century version of social mobility first articulated in the United States by Thomas Jefferson. In a famous letter to John Adams, Jefferson argued that there is a “natural aristocracy amongst men” who are marked by “virtue and talents.”
According to Jefferson, the natural aristocracy was “the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society.” He distinguished this natural aristocracy from the “artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents.” The latter won its power through circumstances and laws that protected the privileges of birth – like laws of primogeniture, or hereditary political positions. Jefferson’s view was seemingly egalitarian: Inherited status, wealth or power is undeserved. But at its heart, this view – let’s call it meritocracy – remained deeply inegalitarian. It favored a society in which the majority were deferential to, even subject to, the power and authority of the naturally talented few.
Republicans and Democrats each pay tribute to this Jeffersonian vision of meritocratic decision-making and political leadership. If anything, Democrats are often even more intent that Republicans in promoting expert authority and professional management.
More generally, both parties agree that equal opportunity means the equal opportunity to rise into the few positions of social power and prestige, or perhaps more broadly, into the economically secure, high earning professions. Call them the 20 percent who control 67 percent of the income and, even more importantly, 85 percent of the wealth.
The apparent egalitarianism of the meritocratic society is a thin veil indeed. The reality of rising poverty and declining social mobility underscores that in practice our “meritocratic” order is hardly fluid. Rather than individuals easily entering and exiting the upper classes based on personal skill, professional status has become an inherited privilege – reproduced from one generation to the next.
But even at its purest, stripped of race or sex-based barriers to advancement and in a setting of fluid inter-generational change, the meritocratic ideal is still aristocracy by a different name. After all, meritocratic success is a zero-sum game. Professional respectability and high-status positions are inherently exclusive domains. For every one person who rises into the top 20 percent, there are four others who by definition fail to make it. In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the 20 occupations projected to grow rapidly over next decade, just five require an associate’s degree or more. Just two require a doctorate or professional degree (hat tip Doug Henwood). As a model for society, Jefferson’s “natural aristocracy” does not challenge the permanence of social hierarchy, but instead seeks simply to rearrange its membership.
Still, there is another possible interpretation of equal opportunity that we can look to. Just before the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln articulated an alternative account of economic improvement: “The prudent, penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, saves surplus with which to buy tools or land, for himself; then labors on his own account another while… [This] is free labor.”
Lincoln imagined social mobility as the transition from dependence to independence, or in his terms, from wage-labor to free labor. An economy consistent with this idea had to be organized so that everyone could become economically independent. One person’s success was not another’s failure, because ideally everyone could rise together. Moreover, this was an ideal of freedom applied not just to politics but to economics. The thought was that a person ought to be free from domination in all spheres of life. As Corey Robin recently put it, Americans have a “visceral hostility to – individual forms of domination.”
This Lincolnian vision is truly egalitarian and highlights precisely what is troubling about the current crisis of social mobility. The problem is not just that we do not to live up to the ideal, but that the underlying ideal is hierarchical, and fails to grasp the way in which we ought to be making it possible for everyone to escape relations of dependence and control.
Today we barely know how to make sense of Lincoln’s vision of social mobility. The thought is not entirely foreign — it haunts our economy in the dream of self-employment or workers cooperatives. But mainstream debate has too quickly accepted Jefferson’s theory, the meritocratic ideal, and argued only about how to realize it. By focusing primarily on the means of social mobility we put the cart before the horse. We argue about the social and economic policies that promote equal opportunity before we figure out what kind of opportunities are important in the first place.
A change in perspective forces us to look differently at wealth and income inequality, and social stagnation. If what we care about is economic independence for all, then we have to think not just about the (very important) topic of wage levels, but above all about social power.
Making such power broadly available rests on two key elements. First, individuals have to possess enough material and cultural resources to be secure from potential destitution. And second, they must have opportunities to make decisions about the most important economic and political issues.
So, minimally, expanding the social power of most Americans means investing in programs like universal health care, which secure citizens from the vicissitudes of nature and the market. But it also means going beyond the politics of social welfare in order to ensure that workers have control over their own activities.
Employees must not only be able to provide for their basic necessities, but also to shape the terms of their work. This latter — equally fundamental — goal is a major reason why “the primary economic objective of the Democratic Party” for decades was once the commitment to full employment. The purpose behind guaranteeing everyone a job was not simply to provide Americans economic security; it was to elevate the overall bargaining power of employees. In an America wherever everyone could find work, employees would have infinitely more control over the structure and rules of the workplace. The shadow of this idea still lingers in proposals like the Employee Free Choice Act and public works programs.
Ultimately, if the market is doing such a bad job at supplying employment in which most Americans can enjoy real economic independence, then it may well be time to look elsewhere. Progressives have a responsibility to think again and more expansively about ideas like workers’ cooperatives and how to promote broader democratic control over investment (for instance, by restructuring corporate governance). Experimentalism should be the order of the day, not cautious reaffirmation of tired nostrums.
But instead, the consensus, bipartisan framework of social mobility primarily offers a language of elite advancement, rather than a vision for widespread independence and social power. This means that what makes equal opportunity such a mirage is more than just a failure to institute the right policies or to live up to society’s basic principles. We are facing a failure of principle itself. Recent events give us at least some hope that this failure can also become an opportunity to reimagine what equal freedom means in America.
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