Always Politically Incorrect [by Walter Carey]

My thanks to Stacey Harwood and David Lehman for inviting me to blog my thoughts from time to time. . . . . I am proudly contrarian. You tell me the conventional wisdom and I will instinctively take the opposite position. . .For example I believe that a good cover story is "Can Men Have it All?". . and the next time I hear the words "double standard" I am going to say "how come elite schools like Wellesley and Bryn Mawr can stay single sex?". . .The new SI swimsuit issue is on the stands, fans. . .I love porn... In a New York elevator the other day I heard a woman, in her young 20s, say to a slightly older woman "Thanks for femsplaining that" and then both of them laughed as if I wasn't there . .I spent an hour trying to rhyme that line and came up with "Do these jeans make my ass look fat?" . . .If you were the NY Review of Books and your cover announces an essay on "The New Populism," would you illustrate it with (1) a caricature of a bespectacled Harvard professor who became a US Senator from Massachusetts, or  (2) a young black man in a hoodie, or (3) a couple of guys pulling on a beer at a truck stop, or (4) Taylor Swift? . . .I believe that a true intellectual prefers John Ford to Jean-Luc Godard . . . A fake intellectual attacks Woody Allen for not making movies about black people. .  .I like the line in a movie where a pompous executive apologizes to the employeees he is firing and asks them what else he can do and somebody answers, "You can die". . . I don't remember which movie. . . Maybe some reader will know . .Fuck the Olympics. -- Walter Carey

Comments

[barton keyes]

Go, Walter. Can't tell you how glad I am you exist. You remind me of an old friend of mine, Walter Neff, another contrarian. Taylor Swift? Up In the Air, with George Clooney? Who else but us knows Godard is more sentimental than Ford? Or wonders how "yin-yang" manifests itself in places like Bryn Mawr? I don't care, either, whether Woody Allen makes movies about black people; on the other hand, did the Wood Man really make his seven-year-old daughter get naked and pull her knees up to her chin and allow him to put his face near her stomach and breathe in and out? That's the part of Dylan Farrow's letter that rings true. And very disturbing, contrarians though we be. Are we sure we know how WA got his nickname? I'm going to light a cheap cigar right now, and hope like hell you're blogging all week. Welcome.

[Walter Carey]

Thank you, Barton. . .Your name rings a bell, have I read your work some place?. . .I read an article in one of the hoity toity papers about Willa Cather. It said she was a real bitch. It illustrated with quotes from her letters. All her attitudes were wrong. Man, they was offensive. And you know what? I like her more for it! -- Walter

[Jim Valvis]

I thought I was the only one.