McCain's Masturbation and White Trepidation About "That One"

Nashville, TN: October 8: To the audience here at Belmont University it was clear who is Presidential ("that one"/que l'un, Barack) and, in lieu of an exegesis of what was routine (habituel) speeches, it is worth noting both candidates are left handed which is to say they are, in the physiological sense, leftists (gauchistes).

One observes McCain's compulsive scribbling as an attempt to "glyph" or to graph/graft his Being onto its own Legal(ity) Pad, as if to summon a Presence of self that eludes him in the torrent of Obama's calm yet drowning eloquence. One might even say, qua Freud and Lacan, that McCain's lefty scribbling on his "pad" (bloc) as Obama spoke was a gesture of onanism, a retreat (se recroqueviller)into masturbation-as-self-inscription, defiling the law of attention to which the debate demands he be (orally and aurally) centered.

One is startled (one might say blanched) by certain commentators' post-debate hints (sous-entendre) that the polls which show Obama in a commanding lead might be flawed because Obama is black: here we (viewers of the election) find ourselves voyeuristically peeking (s'imaginer) behind the voting booth curtain to see if on November 4 2008, Joe Six Pack (who, in this theory, lies to pollsters by saying he will vote for Obama while secretly lusting toward whiteness) trepidatiously moves a phallic-finger (note here on the campaign "stump" the ubiquity of Obama's erect finger vs. McCain's more claw-like yet flaccid fingering: impotent gesticulations of McCain's shoulders re-placing a virile pointing) toward Obama only to pull back, and, in a spasm (frisson) of atavistic racial animus, commits suicide against his interests (health care, economic stability, peace) by pressing a voterly button that subjugates (s'évanouir) his reason in/to the white-haired, white transcendent (and indifferent) GOD/GOP/GO[O]D.

Guy Goes to the Grand Ol Opry

Nashville,Tennessee:October 7: Ahead of tonight's debate, I was taken on a tour of the venerable country music hall The Grand Ol Opry. Its majesty was moving to me. I felt myself at the heart of something unique in America. We stayed for a special luncheon with three kind Nashville public servants--Office T.E. Cooper, of the Nashville Police Department, Monsieur Hank Collins, Head of Building Management for Downtown Nashville and Madame Emily Freeman, Director of Tourism for Greater Nashville--to discuss the presidential race. First they offered me a primer on country music which was instructive in de-naturing this concept of "maverick" [dissident, non-conformiste, franc-tireur] As usual, while my entry above has been translated by my interns, I leave the snippet of our conversations below pure.

Guy: Let me begin by asking if you mind, is this 'country music', first why this this word 'country" used?

Hank Collins: Well, it's just a figure of speech there, Guy, meaning rural-like, music of itinerant farmers and such, people of the land. Not MTV cartoon types like that one hooked up with Nicole Kidman. I mean, I get these kids just out of Vanderbilt law buying up high rise condos near Victory Park, and they put posters on the wall from the old days of country and it kind of makes me laugh.

Guy: Ah, rural, ah oui. In France they ask me, is this Bush music, country music, conservatives?

Emily Freeman: Bush music? [big laughter] That is a big misconception, Guy. This is music about real people having real problems and really we who listen to country music don't pay no mind to politics when it comes down to it.

Guy: What about this Mark Anthony song with lyrics, I read, to you: "America's seen the wayward hearts/And opened up her shores/ Said if you live by the law of the land
You could not ask for more./But her resources are fadin'/She's on the verge of goin' bust/From those that we've let cross her lines/And abuse her sacred trust."

Emily Freeman: Oh Guy, please that Mark Anthony doesn't represent country music, please, he's just a new baby on the block trying to make a name for himself.

Hank Collins: And don't even get me started on the Dixie Chicks, that isn't country anymore than Dr. Dre is gospel music.

Guy: And what of Johnny Cash? He was not liked by Nashville as it showed in the tour museum?

Office Cooper: In my book, Cash was the only true country. Man knew how to keep it real and not get caught up in whether the folk here in Nashville were liking him or not.

Guy: But he wrote of criminals, no, and you are police? So how does this fit?

Office Cooper: All them great country artists had trouble with booze and drugs. Waylon Jennings, Carl Perkins, hell, even Hank Williams got busted a time or two for DUI. And who's going to question Hank Williams credibility? So don't you go back to France misrepresenting country by these johnny-come-latelys, you here?

Guy: So to be true country musician one must be what McCain calls outlaw 'maverick'? [much laughter ensues]

Emily Freeman: Guy, ain't no mavericks in this country anymore, haven't you been bopping round long enough to see that? I mean, we talk about mavericks you have to go back to like T.E. was just sayin', Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, hell even I was just watching Cool Hand Luke, ole Paul Newman who just died. There you're talkin' mavericks. McCain, well, I don't want to discuss politics it'll spoil our digestion.

Hank Collins: Now he's war hero, that McCain, I give him that. And he's got my vote. Obama going to bring his Indonesian and shady Chicago Resko real estate guy and that terrorist hippie Ayers into office and we don't need that. But maverick? McCain? Palin? These two wouldn't know a ranch hand from a monkey's hand.

Guy: And you, Ms. Freeman how will you vote?

Emily: I like Biden a lot, I must say, but right now, I ain't saying. And I disagree with Hank, I don't think Obama is a terrorist. I'll wait and see tonight.

Guy: And you, Office Cooper?

Office Cooper: Are Hank Williams and Johnny Cash on the ticket?

Bidenian Trauma, Palinesque Insouciance

St. Louis, Missouri: October 3: We witness in this debate a thesis and anti-thesis. First an aura of gritty self-protection (Biden) and then an aura of glib attack (Palin); Biden withholding his rage with Brando-esque restraint against George W Bush, McCain's ignorance of Shiites and Sunnis and the horrific deaths of his wife and children in a car accident. In contrast, Palin resorts to Reaganesque carcaictures about evil foreigners, nuclear buttons and white flags of surrender, delivering these motifs in a flirtatious yet B-Movie flippancy. Thus again we see the duality of America: the Bidean traumas: Edward Hopper paintings, Arthur Miller's tragedies, Martin Scorcese films, the angry grimace of Sean Penn, The Betty Ford Clinic, and, on the other hand. the Palineqsue: escapist fantasies of Norman Rockwell, Broadway musicals, Steven Spielberg films, the confident grin of Tom Cruise's face, Disneyland.

Guy Attends Reception at William Faulkner's Rowan House, University of Mississippi

Oxford, Mississippi: September 28 I most enjoyed a post-debate reception in Rowan Oak, the final home of the great American master William Faulkner, where I mingled with members of the Humanities Departments of the University of Mississippi, who spoke openly and suspiciously, that duality (causal et paranoïde) so uniquely American. I confess, at times during the cocktail chatter, my mind wandered to the words of the great American master whose ghost inhabits this house, and what he said in his Discours de Suède: It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. With that I transcribe, untranslated, some of my evening's transactions.

Professor A.C. (Art History): So Mister Language-Dock, are you a fan of any American authors besides Faulkner? I mean, I know you French are obsessed by late work of Faulkner, Charles Bukowski and by Jackson Pollock but we had some artists too who weren't drunks, surely you must be aware of our expansive pedigree in the South, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Maya Angelou, for instance?

Guy: Of this Flannery person I have heard. But we say in France of this so-called postwar Southern Gothic, that they read Camus and think they know the abyss. As for Maya Angelou, this is she of "I Know Why the Cuckoo Clock Sings"?

Professor G.J. (English Dept): Guy, if I may, let's change the subject. Would you agree that French theory is a negative influence on careful reading in America? Our English majors tend to get their heads filled with half baked notions from feminists and people like Lacan and fail to pay diligent attention to the text. And, not that I can read a word of his nonsense, but did you know Jacques Derrida?

Guy: I do not know the level at which you understand or not to understand what you call "French theory." There is no "French theory," if I may say. Non!! As for feminists, asking a Frenchman if he is feminist is like asking a Marxist if he invests in hedge funds. And this "diligent reading," the matronly fussiness of your word choice, diligent, betrays an anal retentive power fantasy, as you suggest that reading a text is diligent, like cleaning one's kitchen. This I cannot concur. As for Derrida, I took a train ride with him once to Lyon in 1995. He was what you say bloqué in la salle de bain.

Professor G.H.I (French Dept.): Stuck. In the men's room. [embarrassed laughter]

Guy: Ah oui! Yes, stuck. Derrida was stucked and as I was immersed in re-reading my favorite novel, Light in August, by your grand maestro, I did not realize my conféré's fâcheuse. It took several train agents to release him from this toilet room. Jacques and I spoke about this incident many times and on his deathbed gave me a manuscript. It is still not fully translated but it is all about shitting. It is called in English The House Out.

Professor G.H.I. (French Dept): The Outhouse. [more embarrassed laughter ensues] But it is a brilliant book! A study of eschatology, privacy and bathroom door locks.

Professor H.G.J (History Dept): Guy, why is that your French writers, and here I am thinking of Hugo, of Zola, of Sartre, of De Beauvoir and many other greats, were so engaged by history while here in America our writers ignore history?

Guy: First the ones you name are third-rate writers. Or what we call écrivaillons.

Professor G.H.I (French Dept): He means hacks.

Professor K.P (History Dept): My Word! Sartre was a hack? Hugo?

Guy: History, if I may, is an invented construct, an out house, to continue with this trope from Derrida. It is involved with shit yet isn't the material of shit. Et puis, history contains what we refuse and therefore it stinks. A writer is not one to contain but to be of substance. Here I refer you to the scene in "Barn Burning" in which the father wipes the shit off his boots on the rug of Major De Spain. That scene is worth 10,000 Victor Hugos.

Professor F.D.I.C (Philosophy Dept): Guy, are there any logical positivists left in la belle patrie of Descartes? Or have you have you all drank the deconstructive Kool-Aid?

Guy: I do not know what this expression which I have heard drink the cool ade.

Professor G.H.I (French Dept): This is from Jonestown massacre, suicide collectif. The leader urged his followers to drink poisoned "Kool Aid." C'est un boisson poudreux. The expression means to drink Kool Aid is to lose your personal judgment, perdre la tête, marcher à l’aveuglette.

Guy: Ah, oui oui. Well, non. Alors we do not have such disgustive powder drink in France. As for logic. Well of course we have logic. Logic is all, indeed, you and I, we owe our salaries to logic. But we know that the world is a madhouse, yes? And logicians and academics like ourselves are what you say, wardens, and only your maestro Faulkner showed us how mad we are. This is why we have absinthe and why here in American you have what you call "reality TV."

McCain-Dédain

Oxford, Mississippi: September 27: To not look [détourner d'Obama] is to try [faire une expérience] a denial [rejeter] of the presence of truly [empirique] present-other (candidate), suggesting, as the cringing [s'irriter de Obama] body of McCain did here more than once during the non-debate [vide de sens] in Mississippi, that McCain attempts to un-name [effacer] Obama from this page of history against a recognition [une conscience] which his very aversion underscores much like the post-Jim Crow South, no longer able to deny via law denies with eyes cast away. So even the atheist, in his aversion to God's presence in that very denial [renier] voices his latent fantasy that a transcendent God lurks [persister]. Alas, we might conclude from this syllogism (in the land o' grits and Southern secession) that McCain's averted eyes [like the South's denial of the Union] as his body tenses and shudders [Mississippi burning] registers in that disdain [avec dédain] the awe-full [accablant] black transcendent presence he dares not face at the other podium, qua, Barack Hussein Obama.

American Idioms Part One: Election Vocabulary for my French Readers

Chicago: September 25: On the eve of the first presidential debate, en route to Mississippi, I pause here in Chicago, this friendly, teeming American city not quite cosmopolitan, still ruggedly and rOundly "O" and "A"-enunciating Midwestern in spirit ("Sears" conjuring the venerable Great Plain department store; "Tower" conjuring that black glassy imperial majesty), Hancock Tower, Soldier Field, this is a town of "poltical machines" and animals Bears, Bulls, Cubs, as I sit in a Rush Street tavern called Shenanigans, a "sports bar" (yet another American oxymoron, suggesting a voyeuristic relationship to sports is somehow itself sporty: as if beer were athletic), being served by a cornflower blonde femme bartender named Lindsay who hails from Madison, Wisconsin ("I dropped out of University of Michigan Law when I realized being a lawyer in this country is only a little less worse on your self-respect than prostitution, no disrespect meant to good old Eliot Spitzer") and as she serves me another plein verre of awful, watery California Merlot, I tap out here a few translations for my French countrymen, les bons mots of American election jargon:

swing voter= c'est un homme (or une femme) indécis au subjet d'Obama ou McCain: this very popular American, whom I have never met, is said to exist and to decide the fate of American elections in "swing" states. I think "swing voter" means an American white man of about 55 years old who drinks Miller beer, lives in Ohio and likes college football, trudges to Home Depot on Saturday mornings, owns The Complete Sopranos DVD, keeps a .45 revolver in his workroom, hates his daughter's lazy boyfriend, listens to Howard Stern, does not have a U.S. passport, is not sure if he will vote for Obama because Barack is black. Paradoxically, this word "swing" once meant something erotic, in the 1970s, an American bourgeoise excitée...un nouceur.... ou, il couche à droite et à gauche

Main Street=Rue de Moyen: a long street in the center of the business district of small towns, now extinct, which featured a movie theater, a local bank, a pool hall, a hardware store, a grocer, a haberdashery, a beauty parlor, and good old common sense, in which neighbor-pedestrians bid each other "Good morning," and asked after the health of pets, or elderly relations, or brides to be. Main Street has been destroyed by global capitalism, thus, as politicians praise Main Street they conceal the open secret that no such place exists, as now most Americans live in suburban housing developments a few acres behind the miles-long strip malls that line old state highways.


"drill, baby, drill"= McCain-Palin cri du guerre à forer un puits de pétrole, l'industrie pétrolière: this earth-rape mantra was repeated at Republican convention, led by Sarah Palin, "drill" word in English has phallic sexual overtones, not lost on the thousands who repeated Palin's eroto-fascist summoning to strip bare the North American continent to feed "hungry" automobiles. Americans of late like to vote for oil business people: Bush, Cheney, Palin.


"liberal pussy"=Le dénigrement, blesser Obama supporters, une mauviette... l'equivalent en anglais d'argot francais, "chatte"' This is a neo-fascist threat of emasculation and public castration which conservative Americans launch against a man who dislikes torture, supports the Bill of Rights and claims Bush stole the 2000 election. I found out, during my reportage on the Democratic primary, that many Americans think we French are "liberal pussies" because of Hitler's conquest of France: see my Pennsylvanian post from spring

"mainstream Democrat"= un politique tiède, passable, sans émotion violente, comme ci comme ca, un lâche: a title given to Democrats who prefer to to do nothing except get elected. Once elected, they follow Ronald Reagan and Bush I & II policies and in the process create the policies which they run against in order to get re-elected. Bill Clinton was so. And Hillary. Most are pro-Iraq War, pro-Israel, pro-death penalty, pro-corporation.

Dollar-Apocalypse: Ben Franklin, Karl Marx, Nouriel Roubini

He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money. -Benjamin Franklin




Wall Street's stockholders and CEOs are rescued by their State. Chairman Mao is reinvented in the Calvinist (and Michel Foucault-look-alike) Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and the "general election" finds its candidates McCain and Obama without speech [rester muet], muted, out-of-language, eclipsed by that entity named on TV "a real issue that Americans care about" (with its implicit acknowledgment that the election revolves around simulacra, viz, the week's 'real issue that Americans care about' the exception to standard faux-issues-that-Americans do-not-care-about, ie, lipstick, pig, moose, kindergarten sex ed, etc).

I observe how the paranoiac American/Puritan mentality about the coming Apocalypse meets its maker in the "shocking" failure of the (post-God-is-dead, post-Berlin-Wall) new God and His Edenic perfection named "free markets around the world."



One must heed [faire attention] my European confrère Dr. Nouriel Roubini whose Jewish-Iranian-Turkish-Italian pedigree singles him out as an eloquent, polyglot Atheist which also earned him (until this week) the derisive nickname [nom de rue] "Doctor Doom" among blind, earnest Anglo-American "Believers" who even this week still seek The Second Coming of Christ (Henry Paulson, Harry Reid, W. Bush, the "dedication of the American worker"). Roubini's prophetic specificity, his naming of the abyss-as-abyss is a marked contrast to the CNBC/Anglo-American/Wall Street Believers' with their religious, mystical rhetoric of entering "uncharted territory" and "a confusing, dangerous time" (ie, Rapture, End Times)

Democracy is a form of government that cannot long survive, for as soon as the people learn that they have a voice in the fiscal policies of the government, they will move to vote for themselves all the money in the treasury, and bankrupt the nation.-Karl Marx