Piecework

PLAYBOY,

January 1993

ENDGAME

I.

As this dreadful century winds down, its history heavy with gulags and concentration camps and atom bombs, the country that was its brightest hope seems to be breaking apart.

All the moves toward decency, excellence, maturity, and compassion have been made. They seem to have come to nothing. Everyone talks and nobody listens. Boneheaded vulgarians are honored for their stupidity. The bitterly partisan debate on the crime bill in the U.S. Senate is remembered only for Al D’Amato’s rendition of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” The Christian Coalition commandeers the Republican state convention in Virginia, and among the slogans on the wall is one that says WHERE IS LEE HARVEY OSWALD WHEN AMERICA REALLY NEEDS HIM? The American social and political style has been reduced to the complexity of a T-shirt. Outta the way, asshole: Give us gridlock, give us Beavis and Butt-head, give us room, man, give us respect, and get outta my fuckin’ face!

We are approaching Endgame, the moment when the chessboard is clear and victory is certain. Victory over everybody. The reduction of the opposition to rubble.

American civil society, long founded on the notion of “from many, one,” e pluribus unum, is being swept away by a poisonous flood tide of negation, sectarianism, self-pity, confrontation, vulgarity, and flat-out, old-fashioned hatred. Politics is an ice jam of accusation and obstruction, the hardest vulgarians honored for their cynicism, its good men fleeing to tend private gardens. Pop culture both feeds and reflects the larger society, and as evidence of collapse, it is chilling. Snoop Doggy Dogg and Al D’Amato have triumphed over Wynton Marsalis and George Mitchell. Good taste lies up the block with an ax in its back.

Day and night, from millions of car stereos and boom boxes, gangsta rappers and skinhead semi-demi-quasi-neo-Nazis give the nation its most persistent, defining soundtrack. Some call for the killing of cops, the raping and abandonment of ho’s and bitches, the battering of whites or blacks or one another. Rob the weak, they croon. Stomp the soft. Rap videos are pathetic fantasies of force and power, visual tributes to the cult of the Big Gun and the Big Dick. There is no past and no future, only the eternal American present tense. Suburban white kids happily buy the CDs and lean into the lash. There is no room in the music for lyricism, melody, or wit. The only acceptable human emotion is rage.

The fake, the illusion, the performance, are everything. The truth? Hey, buddy, I got your truth, right here. At The 1994 MTV Video Music Awards, Michael Jackson walks on with his bride, the daughter of Elvis Presley. They hit their marks. They engage in a rehearsed kiss. Jackson whispers some clumsy joke about how nobody thought this would last: marriage as Special Material. They get a standing O. Of course. Nobody mentions that Jackson had to pay an estimated $20 million to settle a child-molestation rap in California. Hey, man, lighten up. The man’s got a multimillion-dollar career to save! Who cares if we’re watching a big press-agented lie? He paid for his sins. Cold cash. Now he’s redeeming himself with access. And if he acts as if he wants redemption, that is redemption.

So shut up, asshole, and listen to Roseanne deliver her spontaneously written opening remarks: “I’m not upset about my divorce. I’m only upset I’m not a widow…” Pay attention to Kennedy. You know, the veejay. Look what she’s doing. She’s standing behind New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, sucking off the microphone! Is that hip or what? You know the gag. Kennedy is a right-winger, man. That’s why Roseanne said she saw Kennedy backstage and “she asked me to leave because she was blowing Rush Limbaugh.” But Kennedy doesn’t take any crap. Later on, she tells the audience: “I was backstage giving Rush Limbaugh a hummer. That’s a [simulates fellatio] in case you guys didn’t know… I have to concede to Roseanne. He said that she gives a much better blow job. So the Prozac’s working.” But here comes Roseanne right back: “I would like to respond to Kennedy. I’m no longer on Prozac, bitch. Rush Limbaugh told me you swallow.”

God bless America.