NORMALIZING JUDGMENTS CAN REALLY PISS ME OFF

OESTERHOUDT STRIKES

It astounds me how much material I can mine from newspapers. Every story is rife with hidden biases. Every perspective is jilted. Every judgment is faulty--at least from particular angles. My writing, too, is faulty from particular angles. But newspapers "disseminate information on a large scale." They even claim to publish "the truth." I make no such claim. I am just a lonely Nietzschean in a categorical world. My facts are my perspectives, no more. To say anything else would be presumptuous at best.

Yet I am not writing to attack factual inaccuracies in news reporting. Rather, I write to illustrate the ubiquitous, subtle value judgments that underlie even the most innocuous articles.

Last week, for instance, the New York Post ran a brief article about the new "Limelight Mall" that opened in the old Episcopal church on 6th Avenue. See N.Y. Post, May 8, 2010 at p. 6. For New Yorkers, this is a seismic shift. Beginning in 1983, a notorious nightclub called "Limelight" operated in the space. It closed down a three years ago. It remained vacant. People thought the building was falling apart. They thought it was ugly. Actually, they never liked it much when it was a nightclub, either. People used to have sex, do drugs and dance there.

But now it's a high-end shopping mall. You can't hang out with lascivious nocturnal denizens in the Limelight anymore. You can't get lost in Byzantine mazes searching for chance encounters there. Nor can you dance away the night to the techno beat. No, now the Limelight has regular business hours. And rather than offering New York nightlife, now it peddles $400 dog collars, custom soaps and Petrossian caviar.

This is Bloomberg New York at its finest. Out with fun. Out with uniqueness. In with drab, revolting commercialism. In with chain stores, banks and luxury boutiques. It makes me want to vomit.

Yet the New York Post voices its values by praising the transformation at Limelight. Although the staff writer does not directly say that a boutique mall is better than a nightclub known for rollicking Epicurean license, she uses a surrogate to make the judgment for her. Specifically, she quotes a 30-year-old lawyer with a 7-month-old daughter who came down to check out the new shops. The lawyer said: "It's fabulous. It was really a dump before."

Wait a minute. What could a 30-year-old lawyer possibly know about what the Limelight was 20 years ago? She was 10 years old back then. She probably didn't even live in New York. The Limelight has been closed for three years. That means she was 27 when that happened. Kids usually graduate law school at 25, which means that for three years before that, she probably never set foot in a nightclub, let alone assessed whether the Limelight was a "dump." Even assuming she did have the time, most law students don't go to places like the Limelight; such indulgence might reflect poorly on their character applications for bar admissions.

In all likelihood, this lawyer moved to New York very recently and rented an apartment in the neighborhood at some obscenely inflated rent. She had a job waiting for her, then popped out a kid. She probably noticed that the church was unoccupied. She probably also noticed that the other buildings in the area housed nice little restaurants and shops, so the church looked "run down" by comparison. So when a boutique mall opened in her neighborhood, she probably thought to herself: "How consistent! Just what I expected for my block! Now I can get caviar!"

This is revolting value imposition. Who the hell is this little lawyer to say whether the Limelight was a dump? She could never have gone to the Limelight in its heyday. She was studying contracts and torts during its last years in operation. She merely heard about the Limelight and immediately concluded that a boutique mall is better than a nightclub. That is a value judgment. And it reflects allegiance to quiet bourgeois comfort. The Post endorsed that judgment.

Screw her. I think boutique malls are dumps. I'll take the nightclub.

Alas, she made the paper, not me.

Thus spoke Oesterhoudt.

JOHN MAYER IS A FUCKIN' ASSHOLE, PURE AND SIMPLE

OESTERHOUDT STRIKES - FOR THE THROAT

I've never liked John Mayer. I always branded his music vacuous, unimpressive, pretentious, lightweight, bourgeois-pleasing, chart-serving rubbish. And I knew from day one that he was no reclusive "shy boy" type. I knew that was all just a lady-luring façade. As the tabloids now routinely report, Mayer is no "in-bed-by-10" sort of dude. He's more an "in-bed-with-10-chicks-by-10-the-next-morning" sort of dude. So all that whispery, faux romantic, breathy, oh-I'm-so-sweet, honey-dipped, bedhead lyricizing all amounts to a big stinking heap of hypocritical bullshit.

Having written my opening paragraph, you can see I have a bias against him. I won't conceal that.

But I'm not writing today to player-hate John Mayer. After all, there are plenty of men out there who would want to be in John Mayer's lady-killing shoes right this minute. They sling dirt at him just because they are envious. To be clear, I'm not envious. There are other things about John Mayer beyond romantic prowess that really repel me. The kiss-and-tell womanizing and the ignorant suburban pretentiousness pale in comparison to his much more substantial misconceptions about social realities in the United States.

Many others have already written about Mayer's recent interview in Playboy magazine. I will recount it in order to show that John Mayer is just an opaque asshole, pure and simple.

During the interview, Mayer fielded this question: "If you didn't know you, would you think you're a douche bag?" In response, Mayer said: "It's like I come on very strong. I am a very…I'm just very. V-E-R-Y. And if you can't handle very, then I'm a douche bag. But I think the world needs a little very. That's why black people love me."

Wait a minute. Just wait a goddamn minute. Black people love you? What the hell is going on here? What is this white man from Fairfield County, Connecticut talking about? Does he really think that African-Americans in any way identify with him? Isn't it enough that he copied their musical forms and passed them off as his own? I suppose John Mayer thinks--as many breathtakingly naïve white hipsters do--that it is "cool to be black." And somehow his imitation of black musical forms entitles him to adoration from those "cool black people." In other words, Mayer thinks that being "loved by black people" means you're "cool."

This is beyond embarrassing. It is insulting.

John Mayer's cultural experience could not be more different from the average black American's cultural experience. John Mayer grew up in Connecticut's wealthiest county. I know what it's like there: I grew up three counties over: Most people's biggest worry is whether to buy a new Range Rover or a Volvo. And there aren't many black people around, I can tell you that.

Mayer's parents were comfortable bourgeois. He went to college. He didn't even go into debt for it. He never wanted for anything. He did not suffer discrimination or abuse. His biggest challenge was dealing with suburban angst, for which he took Xanax pills. He achieved remarkable commercial success by copying blues musicians, even though nothing in his background even remotely compares to what original bluesmen endured in the segregated South a hundred years ago. Sure, maybe John Mayer's "baby left him (ie, Jennifer Aniston, Jessica Simpson, etc.)." But that transitory woe hardly compares him to 1920s black musicians, who not only lamented losing their girlfriends, but also struggled to escape lynch mobs and scrape a living working on a railroad in Arkansas or something. Put simply, John Mayer doesn't know shit about the blues with his well-situated Connecticut ass.

Yet it doesn't end here--not even close. Mayer went on to say that black people love him so much that they gave him a "hood pass." In the Playboy interview, he clarified what he meant: "And by the way, it's sort of a contradiction in terms, because if you really had a hood pass, you could call it a nigger pass…[] I said, 'I can't really have a hood pass. I've never walked into a restaurant, asked for a table and been told, 'We're full.'"

Oh no he didn't. Oh yes he did. He said it. He not only said it. He said it publicly. This is the same guy who claims that "black people love him." Well, from John Mayer's perspective, I suppose it really doesn't matter. He gets to be cool like a black guy without the attendant complications, like being turned away from restaurants because you're black. Nope, he doesn't need to worry about that. On stage, he can be a brother. But off stage, he can just be another rich white cocksucker from Fairfield. Oh, double standards… how very convenient they can be when they work for you.

Inconsistencies bother me in any intellectual endeavor. True, it is hard to escape inconsistencies in life. We are all wracked with contradiction and conflict. I have my own contradictions. But the smugness in John Mayer's strikingly inconsistent positions about race really makes my blood boil. After all, Mayer has made his career imitating black musical forms. He owes African-American culture everything for his success. If it weren't for soul, R&B and the blues, he wouldn't have anything to play. He styles himself "just another black guy." He relishes adoration from black audiences. He touts his "hood pass." But then he turns around and remarks that he never has to suffer the same social handicaps as his black "heroes." And he likes it that way.

Worse, in the Playboy interview, he even said: "My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I've got a Benetton heart and a fuckin' David Duke cock."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think many black people would "love" any white man who favorably mentions David Duke in any context. And this is the maddening thing about John Mayer's racial inconsistencies. On the one hand, he owes black Americans everything and "loves" them. On the other hand, he uses the term "white supremacist" to describe his sexual life. Now, everyone is entitled to their sexual tastes. But favorably invoking white supremacy in any context is a bit problematic for a man who claims that black people love him. And it is even more troubling for a man who has made a fantastic career commandeering black musical forms. My conclusion: Once again, John Mayer is just an asshole, plain and simple.

John Mayer swiftly apologized for his statements--in a bite-sized Twitter sentence, no less. He explained that "he should not have used the word" during the interview, remarking that it is impossible to "intellectualize it." Yet Mayer missed the point. The fact that he used the word "nigger" in the Playboy interview is only symptomatic of a much larger issue, namely, his simplistic and self-contradicting positions about race in the United States. John Mayer needs to understand this more than most white Americans, because John Mayer makes his money imitating black music. While many white Americans routinely get away with casual racism, Mayer cannot. He cannot have it both ways. He cannot both be a hood hero and a white supremacist. Despite his contention that "black people love him," he coarsely generalizes about black Americans just as much as the most ignorant white teenage rap wannabe: They're "cool." They're "hip." It's "cool to have a hood pass."

And once again, he does not end there with the generalizations. First, he said that "black people love him" because he is "very." That puzzled the interviewer. But a little interpretation makes clear that Mayer was just stereotyping. "Very" is an adverb that means "more than usual." There is "black," and there is "very black." It intensifies the adjective. John Mayer said that "black people love him" because he is "very." Very what? Simply "very," meaning "living intensely, excessively, recklessly, thoughtlessly, frolickingly." In other words, living "more than usual." Mayer's statement, then, implies that all black Americans live this way; and that's why they love him. He lives "very." He lives "black." This is gross stereotyping.

I am not going out on a limb here. John Mayer truly feels this way. Consider what he said later in the interview: "What is being black? It's making the most of your life, not taking a single moment for granted. Taking something that's seen as a struggle and making it work for you, or you'll die inside. Not to say that my struggle is like the collective struggle of black America. But maybe my struggle is similar to one black dude's."

So now John Mayer--a wealthy white Connecticut suburbanite--is an authority on the meaning of black identity in America? This is so stunningly condescending it's funny. But then you realize it's not funny at all, because this guy actually believes he understands black Americans because he can imitate their guitar-playing. It is simply ludicrous for John Mayer to even suggest he knows a thing about the "collective struggle of black America," let alone to compare his "struggle" (whatever that is… maybe bagging some dancer chick on tour) to "one black dude's."

No matter what he says, John Mayer has not faced struggle in his life. Worrying whether a song about pillows makes the Pop Top 10 does not qualify as a "struggle." By contrast, battling to overcome the pernicious historical legacy of slavery--all the while contending with rampant poverty, educational inequality, discriminatory treatment, unequal housing, violence, broken homes and crime --is a "struggle."

John Mayer is no hero. He's an arrogant, self-righteous, fake, low-frequency imitator who knows nothing about racial realities in the United States. That really bothers me. Every American must come to terms with racism. Our Nation's racial conflict will never end; it stains the land. But there is a way to address it respectfully and a way to address it irresponsibly. John Mayer not only addresses it irresponsibly; he also profits from it. Then he gloats about how wonderful it is to be white and rich in America. So he gets the best of both worlds: Cool like a black guy; privileged like a white guy. Plus he gets all the white chicks and never has to wait for a table in a trendy restaurant.

All this makes him a straight-up asshole in my book.

And this is not slander. This is just an opinion about a nauseating public figure. But it really doesn't matter, because you can't slander anyone with truth.

ART : TASTE, POPULARITY, DISCOVERY, FAME...WHAT DOES MERIT HAVE TO DO WITH IT?

AN ESSAY

What makes art great? Is it the color? The brushstroke? The imaginativeness? The originality? Does effort help? Is there some checklist to follow? Can you learn how to create great art? Or are great artists merely “chosen,” as if by fate? Why does a van Gogh sell for more than some unknown artist from the same era with a comparable style? Why are Basquiat’s dribblings worth more than an unknown artist from the same era who generated similar dribblings? In other words, what makes “great art” so special?

There is no way to objectively answer these questions. In fact, they are profoundly troubling. I am sure that art historians and university professors can lecture me on the myriad reasons why a Picasso is “better” and “worth more” than “lesser known” artists’ works from the same period. But I reject all attempts to objectively qualify art. Art has nothing to do with objectivity. And artists achieve fame because someone discovers them, not because they have “objective talent.” “Great art” did not become “great” because of some magical gift in the artist. Rather, it became “great art” because influential people liked it at the time and vigorously promoted it. Ironically, these influential people have never been artists, nor have they lived artists’ lives. Mostly, they have been bourgeois liberals with enough spare money to buy paintings, then yap about them to their bourgeois friends at wine-drenched gallery openings.

Art appeals to taste. Everyone has different tastes. While many people share tastes, no one can rightfully assert that their taste is better than another person’s. One person likes Limburger cheese. Another does not. One person likes pop art. Another hates it and doesn’t even consider it “art” at all. There is no way to objectively measure “artistic value,” because “artistic value” is a taste question; it is in the eye of the beholder—or perhaps, we should say, the tongue of the taster. Art represents an individual’s expression through imagery. Some will call it beautiful. Others will call it ugly. If enough people call it beautiful, they might make it famous. But maybe they won’t. The viewer is not bound to do anything. Viewing art is subjective; and the viewer is the ultimate judge. There is no objective standard: People either like your art or they don’t.

Art goes nowhere without viewers and their reactions. Once art appeals to a certain person’s taste, he might become enthusiastic about it. If he is a bum, it won’t matter. A bum doesn’t have influential friends or money to buy paintings. But if he is a lawyer, doctor or philanthropist, the possibilities grow. Well-heeled bourgeois know other well-heeled bourgeois. They talk to one another. They spend money together. They go to art auctions. If a rich dentist sees a painting he considers “fantastic,” he might tell his securities broker friend about it. The friend may agree, then tell his father, a retired banker with disposable income. In this way, art becomes “popular” among people in a position to make it “famous.” Once art achieves some popularity, promoters get involved. They spread the word even more, leading undifferentiated viewers to look at the art. “Wow,” think these new viewers. “If this painting is so popular, it must be good.” More and more people buy prints. The prints become famous.

Popularity, then, is a prerequisite for “greatness.” What begins as the fickle taste judgment of an individual bourgeois becomes the kernel for “great art.” Artists themselves have no power over reactions to their work. They simply live at a particular moment in time, express their feelings in visual form, then present their works. They cannot control whether they become popular. If Jean-Michel Basquiat had lived during van Gogh’s time, his works may not have generated as much buzz as they did in New York in the 1980s. And if Picasso were born in 1981, his works may not have generated as much buzz in Paris as they did because he was born in 1881. Artists become popular because they are born into particular times and places. Certain tastes exist at those times and in those places. Their work appeals to those tastes. When enough “influential people” become enthusiastic about their work, artists become famous. And once artists are famous, people start using the word “great” to describe them. Enough people like them. Enough people find their work beautiful. Yet they did not intend these results. The artist just went about his business. Fate blessed him with admirers who happened to find his work beautiful. He had no power to influence whether people would like him. They just did.

Some great artists got lucky during their lifetimes. Others did not. No matter whether they achieved fame before or after death, they never orchestrated it. In fact, most artists start off poor, wretched and despised. Artists do not “fit in” because they do not find “traditional work.” In western society, that is a sure way to attract scorn, both from society at large and from one’s own family. Picasso lived in an unheated Parisian flat when he was 20. Van Gogh bumbled aimlessly around Holland and Belgium, earning virtually nothing. Basquiat illegally spray-painted New York City subway trains; he was a “vagrant.” These were not “successful men.” They were outcasts, men who did not belong. They did not find “traditional employment” because they had larger things on their minds. They did not follow the “traditional life program.” According to bourgeois mythology, they should have come to ruin. Yet in each case, they became wildly famous. Why? Because some well-placed people liked their art, bought it, promoted it and made it popular. Gertrude Stein patronized and promoted the young Picasso. Andy Warhol patronized and promoted the young Basquiat. And numerous local bourgeois patronized and promoted van Gogh, although his fame did not mature until after he died.

But what made these men so special? Surely there must have been other tramps with artistic ability who simply did not have the good fortune to run into Gertrude Stein or Andy Warhol. If artists become famous because their work appeals to “influential tastes,” then blind luck plays a role in their success. After all, it is a matter of pure chance whether an “influential person” encounters a future “great artist.” Perhaps there have been other Picassos throughout history, but no wealthy barons saw their paintings in time. This is a disheartening thought. Yet I cannot escape it because “great art” depends on discovery. If some “influential person” does not discover an artist, no one will ever know about his genius. He will just die; no one will remember him. In fact, no one ever learned about him in the first place. In this sense, merit and genius have less to do with “great art” than good fortune. Picasso, Basquiat and van Gogh had sufficient merit to appeal to influential people’s tastes. But they also were lucky enough to have been discovered by the right people. Bums did not discover them. Bankers, lawyers, aristocrats, princes and wealthy dentists did. That is why we hail them as “geniuses” today. And that is why their paintings cost millions each.

“Great artists” owe their fame to their handlers. Fame, notoriety and popularity do not depend on intrinsic merit. They depend on others’ judgments. A person is not famous because he is intrinsically “the most talented” or “the smartest.” He is famous because enough people know about him. It is about numbers. If enough people know about you, you are famous. If they know about you because you supposedly create “great art,” then you are a “famous artist.” That does not mean that you are “intrinsically talented.” It simply means that your work appeals to many people’s tastes. To achieve fame, it is all about knowing the right people. Picasso, Basquiat and van Gogh luckily encountered people who had the power to effectively spread the word about them. Their work happened to please the right people’s tastes, and these people, in turn, told their friends about the art. Like wildfire, their popularity took off. Did their talent have anything to do with it? Perhaps. But talent alone did not lead to fame. Influential people did, along with their influential social networks. Put simply, “artistic talent” (if such a thing exists in the abstract) without discovery is like gold buried beneath the ocean floor—it is worthless. Only a determined miner can realize its potential. And the miner is the handler, not the artist. Without a handler and a promoter, the artist—talented or not—lies buried.

For all these reasons, I am deeply suspicious about assertions that certain art is “great.” When I look at art, I engage in an individual inquiry. I let art affect my own tastes. My tastes are my own; no one else controls them. I don’t care what art critics or professors say. If it pleases my tastes, I like it. If it doesn’t, I don’t. In many cases, I like art that has been labeled “great.” But I don’t like it because someone else told me it was great. I like it because my own tastes happen to match the majority’s. In essence, I remember that art is about subjective taste, not objective merit. And I remember that most art in famous museums or at Sotheby’s is only there because some wealthy promoter happened to really like it a long time ago.

All these things should deeply bother an artist. If I were an artist, I know they would bother me. After all, artists express themselves, no matter what people expect from them. They live dangerous, risky, unconventional lives. Yet no matter how powerful or meaningful their expression, they have no control over their popularity. They must surrender their fate to the subjective tastes of bourgeois art collectors and patrons, who all lead lives categorically different from the artist’s rebellious existence. Artists do not decide whether a millionaire banker likes their brushstrokes or paint splashes. The banker likes what he likes; it is not for the artist to say. The banker may hate the painting and walk out. Or he may fall in love with it, tell his colleagues about it, make the artist rich and attract an art museum’s attention.

What did the artist have to do with these reactions? Nothing. His “artistic ability” merely provided an opportunity for an “influential person” to react. But the power to react resides in the “influential person.” And fame does not result without a precise chain of lucky events that begins with discovery. Merit does not trigger this chain of lucky events. Merit merely provides an opportunity to appeal to an influential person’s tastes. That is only the first step toward fame—and possible “greatness.”

For better or worse, “greatness” in any endeavor depends on fame. No man is great if no one knows about him. Fame, in turn, depends on many lucky events, including the identity of the person who makes the initial discovery. “Great art” is great because the right people liked it at the right time. It is “great” because enough people who liked it were enthusiastic enough to promote it to others. Did the artist influence these reactions? No. He just painted what he saw in his mind. He expressed himself. He did not “make himself great.” Others did that for him. And they only did it because he appealed to their tastes, not because he had some magical talent that entitled him to greatness. In this light, “artistic ability” is at best overrated and at worst irrelevant. Put simply, “artistic greatness” derives from historical accident and dominant taste judgment, not self-revealing abstractions.

If Picasso had not encountered Gertrude Stein, he would have struggled on, alone and unknown. And if van Gogh’s paintings did not appeal to some wealthy patrons in Amsterdam, no one would ever have known about him, either. Their talents would simply have evaporated into the vastness of time and human experience, like so many others we never discovered. In sum, when it comes to “artistic greatness,” promotion and luck beat natural talent any day.