Homecoming
By Richard Oxman
11 March, 2004
Selvesandothers.orgThis week I was involved in preparing for a possible meeting with Harold Pinter, one of the 20th century’s greatest playwrights. My idea is to set up a second "British Invasion." [1] To wit, since Blair isn’t listening to the majority of British citizens, there’s a basis for gathering British citizens --experiencing taxation without representation vis-a-vis the Iraqi war-- and having them come over here to protest. Led by Biggies.
John Calder, the legendary, very politcally-active English publisher [2], has agreed to help me connect with well-known writers et. al. in an effort to force The Powers on these shores from storing up any more trauma for foreign territories. British subjects should not have to pay so much for so much horror, and be restricted to mobilizing in the streets of London.
Wanting to avoid a simple gathering/happening (the importance of size and volume notwithstanding), I am attempting to organize a new kind of Tea Party. And my mind has wandered to many thoughts respecting Pinter’s Homecoming. Which I will touch upon...following a slight digression.
In On The Justice of Roosting Chickens, Ward Churchill provides a definitive rundown of how Americans have not used the Nuremberg Trials as a point of departure for viewing U.S. crimes. Ward has drawn parallels between U.S. atrocities and nazi n’ere-do-wells in a number of works...but he hasn’t gone far enough.
We have been involved in much worse than anything the Third Reich had a hand in, a gas chamber enveloping. By any standard of measurement, the numbers of unnecessary, unconscionable deaths we have caused --through bombing, banking and betrayal-- far exceeds Hitler’s wildest dreams of devastation. If we were a tv show, we’d be Decadent #1. Despicable Uno. Degenerate non pareil.
Many people who’ve had a hand in this, like the Bush family, are easy targets, easily exposed by the so-called courageous, confrontational alternative media in America. Other low-profile genocidists, like School of the Americas booster, Jimmy "I like sweaters and walking down Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day" Carter, take their positions down in the Memory Hole...unnoticed on the dark Dantesque rungs of American Hell (by virtually ALL media outlets here)...but complicit as hell, nonetheless.
Peanut farmers and Penis-centered presidents just don’t make the kind of good bad boy copy that oil magnates do. And the follow-through respecting that...contributes to our collective delusions.
And speaking of contributions, let’s look at Dennis Miller, liberal-turned-conservative, and defender of...nay, cheerleader for Bush and the war in Iraq. The NBC talk-show host --in the midst of his show’s supposedly funny news segment-- asserted recently that "Iranians stink." He qualified the statement by clarifying that he didn’t mean Iranians who live in America. But...with a photo of a kneeling cleric behind him...he repeated thrice --in various ways-- that Iranians overseas smell bad. He didn’t go as far as saying "therefore they should be removed from the face of the earth." However, anyone following the U.S. threats being made today...and the increasing need to demonize Iranians as wild stinkin’ Injuns of a sort...knows what Miller’s reportage amounts to...in real terms.
From a 2004 Bernard Weinraub New York Times report we find the following from Miller: "’People say I’ve slid to the right,’ Mr. Miller said in his office at the NBC Studios in Burbank, speaking in his rat-a-tat-tat style. ’Well, can you blame me? One of the biggest malfeasances of the left right now is the mislabeling of Hitler. Quit saying this guy is Hitler,’ he said, referring to Mr. Bush. ’Hitler is Hitler. That’s the quintessential evil in the history of the universe, and we’re throwing it around on MoveOn.org to win a contest. That’s grotesque to me.’" [3]
This on the eve of his show’s Grand Opening. Well, he’s left...an opening for me.
In a WWll-related online source concerned with "Verdicts and Sentencing of Major War Figures" I found the following Nuremberg-related information about German radio commentator Hans Fritzche:
"Fritzche was active as a radio commentator and later became the head of the Wireless News Service for the Reich Government. He was in charge of the Media when anti-semitic messages were printed. The tribunal found, however, that he did not hold any positions that gave him control over the decisions to wage war or the crimes against humanity, and he was therefor acquitted of all charges." [4]
Well, although no Eichmann...and certainly no Walther Funk [5], I submit that Hans was guilty of something. And ditto ditto ditto for our beloved Miller.
Darling Dennis, of course, was one of the first on the "ban Ward" bandwagon, and --as per his comments above-- it is clear that he’s incapable of drawing parallels between Hitler and the Neocons, let alone acknowledging our superiority in the Realm of Abominations.
Nevertheless, cute and cuddly as he may be to some Extreme Americans, his complicity is as clear as Carter’s. Complicity in genocide...for starters.
The Powers’ Machine cannot function without the likes of his contributions.
And that is just part of the reason why I’m working day and night to bring people of conscience in arts, politics, etc. from abroad over here...to disrupt...what can be interfered with. Dennis may be low on the political totem pole, but we can carve his painted misrepresentations to bits if we can’t bite off Bush’s ear like a manical Mike Tyson. Which is what I’m holding myself back from doing.
Nevertheless, we can bloody what bloody-well can be bloodied...to draw upon the expressive words of our...Magna Carta cousins. And we should. We must. Our "Homecoming" demands it.
Which brings me back to Harold and his The Homecoming. [6]
In Pinter’s play, to quote Penelope Gilliatt, we find: "the swaying of violent people as they gain minute advantages. A man who does the washing-up has the advantage over a man sitting in an armchair who thinks he can hear resentment in every swilling tea-leaf. The member of a married couple who stays up late has the advantage over the one who goes to bed first. A father has the advantage over his children as long as he can make them think of their birth and not let them remind him of his own death: the sons are condemned to ruminate interminably about what happened the night they were made in the image of those two people...." [7A]
To borrow from the jargon of tennis, Advantage U.S. For now.
If we can manage to get the likes of David Hare, Tam Dalyell and Glenda Jackson to San Francisco for the gayest of bashings [7B] and Delightful Teacup Toasting...well, I leave it to your imagination...what can be wrought on this nation. Such a Mad Tea Party could not be constituted with French intellectuals, artists or politicians. It would be --for obvious reasons-- too easy to dismiss the efforts. But...The Brits?
Our allies? No taxation without representation? A different story there, I’d say.
It’s a dream theme to die for. And die we may...with or without this Homecoming in Reverse ambition. This perverse necessity.
But to return to Pinter’s Homecoming, we find more than one..."homecoming."
Teddy is a character who’s been to America, and his return is a literal homecoming for the family on stage. His new wife, Ruth [8], however, experiences a truer homecoming, if you will. To wit, she comes home to herself, to all of her potential...as a woman. What she comes home to is, admittedly, not very pleasant. But it’s necessary for more than just dramatic reasons. When I saw the American premiere at New York City’s Music Box in ’67, audiences squirmed --as they consistently do-- watching the lacerating return.
Hugh Nelson, in charge of drama at McGill University in Montreal the last I heard, once told me that in Pinter’s world --just as in the case of Sophoclean tragedy (Remember Oedipus?)-- the human truth will inevitably out. Ibsen’s fatal universe bears out the same truth about this all too human truth.
And America’s advantage will be taken away, one way or another. The truth will out. Chickens will roost with or without Godot.
There is a question though. We can wait for Dennis Miller to come around. We can wait to see if the March 19th Circle Dance bears sufficiently significant fruit. We can console ourselves with the thought that Rome wasn’t brought down in a day...as we play with our consoles. We can even hedge our bets, and trust that Harold Pinter will rise above his recent, exhuasting recovery from cancer...and head over here to chop some heads off.
Does someone really need to lead us? Does anyone need to arrive at this pregnant stage?Methinks not. Not if you know that the descendants/successors of Winston Churchill have gone too far and/or that Ward Churchill did not go far enough in characterizing some of us as "little Eichmanns." [9]
As difficult as it may be for each reader personally, I trust that each of us knows what we have to do to prepare for our individual homecomings.
Richard Oxman, currently reviewing his shortcomings in prep for the big Homecoming in Reverse, just got word that he’s gonna be published soon. A lot good that’ll do without the reader getting to work. Free tickets for the San Francisco Bash can be had by contacting him at [email protected].
Notes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------[1] The first, of course, was lead by John, Paul, George and Ringo. No leaders needed this time ’round the Radical Roundabout.
[2] Part ll of my recent interview with him (See http://www.selvesandothers.org/the_...) should be available on audio at www.selvesandothers.org shortly.
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/a...
[4] [ http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/pro...
[5] One of Hitler’s economic advisors --with great excuses-- found guilty at Nuremberg.
[6] We’ve got to start somewhere, and the March 19th plans afoot in this country seem like anything but a start. Rather they seem like a step back to a false sense of solidarity. See Derrick O’Keefe’s silly Seven Oaks Magazine piece which tries to console readers with the notion that Rome wasn’t brought down in a day...as if we had all the time in the world. It’s time for "progressives" to get hep to the fact that the small-time benefits and cozy false sense of solidarity that’s created by "marking" the anniversaries of our abominations are going nowhere. Fast. See http://www.haroldpinter.org/politic... and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_polit... to see why I’m starting with Pinter and Dalyell.
[7A] This note is just to make absolutely certain that the reader knows my playing with words here has zero to do with gay bashing.
[7B] See Penelope’s "Achievement from a Tightrope" at http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/p.... That whole site is quite a trip.
[8] Although their marriage was reportedly disintegrating at the time, Vivien Merchant, Pinter’s partner until the late 70s, gave one of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen as Ruth. She’s passed on, bless her, but interested readers can easily see her in DVD’s of Alfie (the orginal with Michael Caine), Hitchcock’s Frenzy and more.
[9] Some readers may need to have it pointed out that these words have zero to do with criticizing Ward Churchill.
