The Invisible Library

The first Presidential Debates will be held next week, September 30th, in Miami, and will be moderated by Jim Lehrer. They will be aired on ABC at 9pm Eastern. The parameters have just been revealed, and to anybody who’s tracking the decline of democracy, they hold no surprises. There will be no extemporaneous questions from the audience. Everything will have been submitted beforehand. Candidates are not allowed to ask each other questions, but can pose rhetorical ones. And then some silly business with the size of the podiums (podia?)…

But none of that matters, because Americans will not watch. Because, inevitably, there will be something more “exciting” on another channel. Maybe Baseball. Maybe Survivor. Maybe reruns of Frasier. Whatever it might be, John Q. American is more likely to seek escape than to wallow in this inevitable swamp of circumlocution, however historical it may be this year. And I understand him. I really do. I, myself, can only stand a certain amount of politicking before my central nervous system begins to hum unpleasantly and my attention span begins to carpet-wiggle like a petulant puppy. So I get you, John Q. I am you.

So what can the candidates do to snare my interest?
Well, here are some (very silly) suggestions:

1) FX: If it is logistically impossible for the candidates to arrive at the Debates having crawled out of the wreckage of a spectacularly crashed airplane, to realize they are the only survivors, and for John Kerry to deliver a distressed George W. Bush’s baby, then at least occasionally one of them should look over his shoulder and whisper in a frightened voice: “If you hear anything…run…”

2) Melodrama: George Bush should confront Kerry with the confession that he has been sleeping with his wife, and the two of them have taken out a huge life insurance claim on the New Englander, only to have it lapse when Theresa fell down a well and emerged an amnesiac who only speaks in riddles. Kerry should weep violently and throw the podium at a wall.

3) Game Show: The candidates should be forced to eat horse anus while trying to balance on a Corvette that is suspended ninety feet in the air and covered in French fry grease. The first candidate to get in the car, punch a button which releases the car from suspension, and land in the back of a moving flatbed is the new President.

4) Mature: Kerry should seduce Bush in French, threaten to spank him roughly on the bottom, and make him sit aimlessly for seven minutes while he braids his eyebrows. Bush mutters shyly that he’s “always wanted a Boston Browjob.” Theresa and Laura engage in Sapphic domination on a king-sized bed suspended from the ceiling. Elephant-on-Donkey action only for those with Closed-Caption.

5) Superhero/Action: Bush and Kerry must join forces to defeat a steroid-inflated Jim Lehrer and his army of robot clones. Kerry bores Lehrer into stupefaction while Bush manages to convince him, in simplified and ardent language, that breathing is “for terrorists.”

6) Comedy: Kerry and Bush argue over whose mother-in-law is the most annoying. Kerry makes a shocking and hilarious admission that he is routinely forced to take “ketchup baths”. Kerry wins.

7) Indie: Bush’s cocaine problem is driving he and Kerry apart. They decide to drive to New Mexico so Bush can dry out. Kerry finally comes to grip with Bipolar Disorder and begins a 12-Step program to wean himself off Afrin Nasal Spray. Special appearance by Dick Cheney’s daughter as the token lesbian.
Religious: Seven hours of Bush being slowly and mercilessly tortured by Kerry and specially-assigned interrogators from the Anti-Defamation League who wear black leather executioner masks with the Star of David emblazoned on them. (This will only be aired on Fox.)

9) Fantasy: The Balrog, freshly freed from the Mines of Moria by the black magic of Saru-Cheney, chases Kerry around the stage while Bush mourns in melancholic delirium for his dead son who is not really dead, and, in fact, never existed. George Stephanopoulos must take the One Ring to Mount Doom, and in the process of wrestling with Anne Coulter, loses a finger.

10) Cinema Verite: Cameras follow Bush and Kerry without pause the day leading up to the Debate. Kerry spends most of it playing Battlefield: Vietnam on his X-Box. Bush visits the Elders of Zion and sacrifices thirteen minority children. Just before the convention, the two Bonesmen thumb-wrestle for the Presidency, as is dictated by the tenets of that Secret Society. The debates are a sham, as usual, each candidate’s real goal to push his favorite alcoholic beverage. Kerry: Miller. Bush: Budweiser. Lehrer: Absinthe with laudanum.

In the sad event that nothing this exciting happens, then I will watch anyway, because it is important, is quite possibly the most important election of our lifetimes, and will very likely decide the fate of Democracy in the Middle East.

Unless Junkin’ is on. I love that show.

Demotic regimes demand that we forget, and therefore they brand books as superfluos luxeries; totalitarian regimes demand that we not think, and therefore they ban and threaten and censor; both, by and large, require that we become stupid and that we accept our degradation meekly, and therefore they encourage the consumption of pap. In such circumstances, readers cannot but be subversive.

-Alberto Manguel, A History of reading

Today, I am just a subversive reader. But one day, I hope to be counted among the great dissenters of the age. I want to be an author.

More than that, I hope, one day, to have one or more of my books banned. Any self righteous group will do. It would mean as much to me to be on the torch list of some pea-brained Baptist Ranter as the watch-list of some overheated tyrant. I’m looking at you, Crisco Johnny. (Or is your new name Mr. 5000?)

It’s an odd thing that being banned has become a badge of honor. You really aren’t assured literary greatness until someone puts a fatwa on your head, or at the very least, wants to use your book as kindling (which is far better than the hack’s fate: having their brick of a tome used as a doorstop). That having your work banned is a surefire way to greatness should be a signal to the dunderheads that they’ve failed. “Ban our books all you like, that will just ensure that your children read them,” is the clear message. But they keep at it. Every new Harry Potter book is added to the list, as well as some old favorites that keep getting chowderheads in a twist, or give some Unreconstructed Southern Lady the vapors.

Usually books are banned by Christian or Muslim Fanatics¹ who are simply in a huff over the author’s audacity at publishing a book that doesn’t take the inane fairy tales found in the Bible and the Koran at face value. We all get a good laugh at their ignorance and superstition, mainly because these fools have long since lost their power over our minds. The Enlightenment has worked, in at least this regard: we are slowly but surely becoming less superstitious. At least most of us. And the ones that aren’t are often times merely laughed into a marginal existence, self publishing their little harangues², unless they posses the private fortune gleaned from fleecing other morons. Then we end up with the likes of Pat Roberts, Luis Farrakhan and David Duke, who have, through the power of Capitalist Entitlement, forced their presence and opinions on the media, and thus onto our minds, whether we want them there or not.

In the last century, we saw an increase in politically motivated censorship, but it often had the same fanatical zeal attached to it that was exclusively the domain of religious censorship of previous ages. Before the Nazi book bonfires or the Stalinist library purges, offended Marms of Public Opinion would simply cluck their tongues and demand the offending manuscript be bowdlerized. Unless they were Monarchs, then they imitated the Popes of the day and grew purple with indignation. The result was either to invent ingenious torture devices like the Guillotine or Anal Pear, or to counter the offending ideas by hiring propagandists with silver tongues batshit between their ears to stand up and chant merrily what the powers that Be Want to hear, common sense be dammed. And so the literary ancestors of Anne Coulter and Michelle Malkin go back to France and England, notions that would drive both woman up the wall if they weren’t already over the moon, puttering under their own steam.

This is something that has long baffled me. Why do such degenerate nincompoops like Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader get air time while thoughtful, credible folk with merely unpopular ideas get ignored? Is it simply that Money + Connections = Legitimacy? I don’t have an answer, I just want to ask the question.

And really, that’s all we aspiring authors can hope for, to have our questions heard and the possible answers debated in the public square. If we have to stay up late nights arguing with jackasses who light their mental fires with our books, then so be it. At least someone is still reading us, even if they don’t or won’t understand.

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1. Anyone else ever notice that Jewish groups, even the ultra orthodox ones, don’t ban books? My theory is that this is because of the importance placed on scholarship in Jewish culture. Maybe I’m wrong and there are irate Rabbis, twirling their yamukahs in rage over some poor soul’s Talmudic interpretations, but I get the impression they prefer spirited debate to gasoline and matches.

2. Except when Regnary Publishing picks them up.