One of the problems that psychological homogeneity presents is the validity of the message from a flawed messenger. This is a deeper question than the validity of advice from people accidentally or coincidentally placed in the public eye, like the political advice of a baseball pitcher or the economic advice of a sociologist--although politics tends to create these questions too. But a democracy often has to evaluate opinions of people thrust upon it less by chance than by malice and its resulting notoriety. Somehow the opinions of terrible people get to be taken seriously by the society.
Do we need to know Ted Kaczynski's opinions on industry and the environment? After anonymously bombing strangers' homes, maiming and killing randomly, does one get to continue on commenting in a sphere only peripherally related to one's felonies? After all, Nietzsche had syphilis and we take his musings seriously. Or should we declare a kind of statute of limitation on public utterances. Perhaps you should be able to offer opinions seven years after a felony and seven years before a diagnosis of mental disease.
The source of the Sally Heming's story was James Callender. Callender was an alcoholic Scot. He was driven from England after writing an attack on George III. In America he wrote anti-Federalist attacks on Hamilton (perhaps at the behest of Jefferson). He wrote that John Adams was a British spy and that Washington personally robbed the army treasury. One of his famous attacks was that John Adams imported two mistresses from Europe, one French and one German, but returned the German. (Adams said he was flattered but it was believed an angry German vote cost Adams the Pennsylvania vote in his first election.) He died bankrupt.
William S. Burroughs was one of the three seminal writers of the Beat Generation, the other two being his friends Kerouac and Ginsberg. He came from a productive family and had a small trust fund. In New York he became interested in the local demimonde and drugs. Soon he was dealing drugs and living with the city's thieves and drug dealers. Herbert Huncke was one of these worthies who was a thief, drug user and murderer, killing a shopkeeper with Burroughs' gun. Lucien Carr whose son, Caleb Carr, wrote "The Alienist" fled to their house after stabbing his tutor and stalker David Kammerer to death. He married Joan Vollmer and the two, birthed from this lovely environment, went on the road to explore cheaper places to live, take and sell drugs and enjoy the trust fund. While in Mexico he shot her in the head. (There is debate over the circumstances as if they mattered.) His major work," Naked Lunch," was published as a result of the anti-censorship cases of Joyce' "Ulysses". One might wonder how in God's name Burroughs could be mentioned in the same paragraph as James Joyce or could be seen as anything but a criminal. But one need only read one of his literary creations : "If civilized countries want to return to Druid Hanging Rites in the Sacred Grove or to drink blood with the Aztecs and feed their Gods with the blood of human sacrifice, let them see what they actually eat and drink. Let them see what is on the end of that long newspaper spoon." Heavy.
No comments:
Post a Comment