4/21/2009, 6:57 p.m. PDT
Saturday, April 25, 2009
ANNOTATED INAUGURAL SPEECH.
ANNOTATED INAUGURAL SPEECH.
Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address
Following is the transcript of President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address, as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions:
PRESIDENT BARACK Thank you. Thank you.
CROWD: Obama! Obama! Obama! Obama!
My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.
I thank President Bush for his service to our nation...
(APPLAUSE)
... as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.
Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.
The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebears, and true to our founding documents.
So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.
That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.
OUR COLLECTIVE WHAT? FAILURE?? I FAILED HOW?? I FAILED TO MAKE HARD CHOICES??? I WAS SUPPORED TO PREPARE THE NATION FOR A NEW AGE, AND FAILED??
Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.
OH. AND I FAILED TO MAKE THESE HARD CHOICES, PREFERING TO LOSE JOBS, SHATTER BUSINESSES, LET SCHOOLS FAIL, SQUANDER ENERGY AND STRENGTHEN OUR ADVERSARIES. I FAILED, AND CONTRIBUTED TO THREATS TO OUR PLANET. PARDON ME. I'M NOT USUALLY THIN SKINNED, BUT DIDN'T YOU JUST SAY THAT OUR BADLY WAKENED ECONOMY IS THE CONSEQUENCE OF OUR COLLECTIVE FAILURE. SOME COLLECTIVE FAILURE TO MAKE HARD CHOICES. SOMEHOW,.... WAIT A MINUTE. OH I GEET IT.IT SOUNDS GOOD.
These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land; a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.
MY CONFIDENCE ISN'T SAPPED ACROSS OUR LAND. AGAIN WITH YOU TELLING ME HOW I FEEL? I HAVE NO IDEA IF THE NEXT GENERATION MUST LOWER ITS SIGHTS. I HOPE NOT. BUT I DON'T HAVE A CLUE. ITS' ONE THEORY. THAT OUR SIGHTS WERE PERMANENTLY TOO HIGH AFTER WORLD WAR II, AFTER THE GREAT DEPRESSION ENDED AND IT LOOKED LIKE THE AMERICAN DREAM WAS POSSIBLE, A PERMANENTLY PROSPEROUS NATION, WITH A LIGHTER DRUDGERY LOAD FOR ALL. COITENLY ONE THEORY IS THAT SUCH HIGH HOPES ARE SILLY. ALL HOPE AND NO REALITY.
Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real, they are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met.\
THEY WILL BE MET. SURE HOPE SO. HAVE MY DOUBTS.
(APPLAUSE)
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.
WHAT??? WHEN DID I CHOSE FEAR, CONFLICT AND DISCORD. WAS THAT THE CHOICE WE MADE IN NOVEMBER. FEAR VS HOPE, UNITY OVER DISCORD?? AND UNITY BEAT DISCORD. HOPE BEAT FEAR. ALTHOUGH TO BE HONEST NEARLY FIFTY PERCENT OF US VOTED FOR CONFLICT, DISCORD AND FEAR.
On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.
SURE. AN END TO FALSE PROMISES AND POLITICAL STRANGULATION. I HAVE HEARD THAT BEFORE. PROCLAIM AN END TO BUSINESS AS USUAL, AND THEN FACE THE FACTS.
WE HAVE COME TO PROCLAIM AN END TO THE PETTY GRIEVANCES AND FALSE PROMISES ETC ETC. YEAH YEAH, SURE KID. AND PIGS CAN FLY. NO REALLY, THEY CAN. IN FACT, A WHOLE FLOCK OF 'EM JUST FLEW OVER.
We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.
RIGHT. JUST LAST WEEK I SET, NO WAIT A MINUTE. THE TIME HAS COME TODAY, NOT, LIKE FIFTY YEARS AGO. OR DURING THE CIVIL WAR. ABE LINCOLN WAS SO VERY CHILDISH. LUCKY NOW, WE CAN GROW UP FINALLY. NOT LIKE WINSTON CHURCHILL OR ARISTOTLE, THOSE CHILDISH LITTLE INFANTILE UN GROWN UP TYKES. PSHAW. NO SIR. TIME TO GROW UP.
The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.
YEAH, I REALLY FEEL SORRY FOR DUTCH PEOPLE, OR THOSE MEAN SPIRITED FRENCH AND ENGLISH GUYS WHO DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT ANY GOD GIVEN PROMISE THAT ALL ARE EQUAL. ALL ARE EQUAL. SURE, BUT SOME ARE EQUALLER THAN OTHERS. DESERVE A CHANCE TO PURSUE THEIR FULL MEASURE OF HAPPINESS. GOD I HATE THOSE RUMANIANS AND CHINESE WHO NEVER GIVE ANYONE A CHANCE TO BE HAPPY. THOSE AWFUL TURKS AND JAPANESE, WHO HAVE NO GRASP OF OUR NOBLE IDEA, PASSED ON FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION.
(APPLAUSE)
THANK YOU.
In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less.
It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame.
OH THAT PATH. THE ONE CHOSEN BY FINS AND TURKS AND ALBANIANS AND ITALIANS. THOSE HORRIBLE CHILDISH PEOPLE WHO PREFER LEISURE OVER WORK AND SEEK ONLY THE PLEASURES OF RICHES AND FAME. NO SIR. WE WORK HARD TO MAKE OUR NATION GREAT. NOBODY ELSE DOES THAT.
Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.
BULL FUCKING CRAP ON A STICK. RATHER.... I MEAN, THE NON DOERS THE ONES WHO DON'T MAKE THINGS, THE ONES WHO DON'T TAKE RISKS, THOSE SHITTY PEOPLE, WELL THEY ARE NOT AMERICANS. THEY ARE NOT LIVING A LIFE WORTH LIVING. THE LONG RUGGED PATH TOWARDS PROSPERITY AND FREEDOM... THAT HAS BEEN THE WORK OF THE WONDERFUL RISK TAKERS AND DOERS AND MAKERS OF THINGS. NOT LLIKE THOSE FILTHY LAZY ITALIANS WHO DON'T DO ALL THAT WONDERFUL STUFF TO TREAD THE WEARY WAY UP THE LONG RUGGED PATH TOWARDS PROSPERITY AND FREEDOM. AMERICA, WE DO THAT, NOBODY ELSE DOES. WE ARE SO GREAT.
AND HERE COMES THE REAL BULLSHIT.
For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.
FOR US?? BULLSHIT. THE ENDURE THE LASH
AND THE WHIP
AND PLOWED THE HARD EARTH
AND TOILED IN SWEATSHOPS
AND SETTLED THE WEST
AND PACKED UP THEIR FEW WORLDLY POSSESSIONS AND TRAVELED ACR4SSS OCEANS
FOR US
FOR US.
For us, they fought and died in places Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sanh.
Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life.
A WHOLE FLOCK OF 'EM FLEW OVER THAT TIME. PIGS. FLYING PIGS.
They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.
NO THEY DIDN'T.
This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished.
STANDING PAT?? I DIDN'T STAND PAT. I DIDN PROTECT NARROW INTERESTS. I DIDNT PUT OFF UNPLEASANT DECISIONS. WHEN DID I DO THAT. WHO IN THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT. WHAT ARE YOU SAYING. IT DOESN'T MEAN A GODDAMNED THING.
But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions -- that time has surely passed.
Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.
(APPLAUSE)
THANK YOU AND GOOD NIGHT.
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done.
The state of our economy calls for action: bold and swift. And we will act not only to create new jobs but to lay a new foundation for growth.
We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.
We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality...
(APPLAUSE)
... and lower its costs.
AND HARNESS THE FLYING PIGS. DON'T FORGET THEM. A RAW SOURCE OF ENERGY.
We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.
All this we can do. All this we will do.
APPLAUSE SIGN.
Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done, what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose and necessity to courage.
SURE KID. SURE. FREE MEN AND WOMEN. NOT THE SHACKLED MEN AND WOMEN ON FOREIGN SHORES WHO DON'T HAVE OUR CONSTITUTIION, OUR BRAVE ANCESTORS, OUR ENERGY AND INVENTIVENESS AND.. OH FUCK YOU.
What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long, no longer apply.
YES THEY DO. THE GROUND HAS NOT SHIFTED BENEATH ANYONE. NO LONGER APPLY. WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN. LAST NOVEMBER WHEN WE VOTED AGAINST FEAR AND DISCORD.
The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works, whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.
RIGHT. AND WE DON'T KNOW THE ANSWER. NOBODY DOES.
Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.
SURE. JUST A SMALL MATTER OF MEASURING WHETHER IT WORKS OR NOT. NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE. GREAT IDEAS FROM A GREAT MIND.
And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched.
But this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.
THAT;'S A BIG JUMP FROM THE MARKET SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL AND A NATION RULED BY GREEDY PEOPLE WHO FAVOR ONLY THE PROSPEROUS. QUITE A JUMP. THIS SPEECH IS WOBBLING BADLY. INTO FOOLISH LLIES.
The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart -- not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.
(APPLAUSE)
OR ARE IT?
BUT HERE COMES THE WORST PART. THE CHOICE BETWEEN MY SAFETY AND MY IDEALS?? SAFETY FIRST. I GOT KIDS, PETS, INVESTMENTS AND A VERY STRONG LOVE OF LIFE. DON'T YOU JEOPARDIZE MY LIFE FOR FREEDOM OF SPEECH OR DUE PROCESS. DUE PROCESS SET THE DECAPITATOR O.J. BACK ON THE STREETS.
As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.
LINCOLN SUSPENDED HABEUS CORPUS IN THE CIVIL WAR. ARGUE ALL YOU WANT. I REJECT IDEALS OVER SAFETY. AND SO WOULD ANY SANE PERSON. MAYBE THERE' S SOME ROOM FOR ARGUMENT. BUT SORRY, YOUR FRIENDS ALL LAUGHED BEHIND YOUR BACK WITH IRONIC AND COMIC DISAPPROVAL WHEN THEY HEARD YOU EXPOUSE IDEALS OVER SAFETY. IT'S LAUGHABLE.
Our founding fathers faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations.
EXPANDED BY THE BLOOD OF GENERATIONS. OR SOMETHING,.
Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.
SAFETY OR EXPEDIENCE.
APLAUSE.
And so, to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born:
AND MY BROTHER IS IN JAIL FOR POSSESSION, AND I WON'T GO HIS BAIL BECAUSE I AM A NARROW MINDED FUCK...
know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more.
AND READY TO PUT OUR LIVES ON THE LINE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS. WELL, MOST OF US FEEL THAT WAY. ER, DON'T WE?
(APPLAUSE)
THANK YOU
Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.
I AM A MAN OF NO CONVICTIONS.
They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use. Our security emanates from the justness of our cause; the force of our example; the tempering qualities of humility and restraint. AND PUTTING CIVIL RIGHTS BEFORE PERSONAL SAFETY.
We are the keepers of this legacy, guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort, even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We'll begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people and forge a hard- earned peace in Afghanistan.
LEAVE IRAQ TO ITS PEOPLE. THEY CHOSE SADAM HUSSEIN. THAT';S HOW THEY ARE.
With old friends and former foes, we'll work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat and roll back the specter of a warming planet.
We will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense.
WHAT WAY OF LIFE. USING THREE QUARTERS OF THE WORLD'S RESOURCES TO COOL OUR HOMES AND HAVE WIDE SCREEN TV'S..
And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that, "Our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."
I COITENLY HOPE SO. BECAUSE JUST MAYBE THOSE GUYS ARE DESPERATE AND CRAZY.
(APPLAUSE)
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.
YOU AND YOUR HERITAGE. WE AIN'T WEEK LIKE OTHER COUNTRIES. NO SIR. WE ARE STRONG. THANK GOD WE HAVE A HERITAGE OF STRENGTH, NOT WEAKNESS. I FEEL SORRY FOR THOSE COUNTRIES FOUNDED ON WEAKNESS.
We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.
THAT'S REALLY NOT SO GOOD WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT.
And because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
HURRAY FOR US.
To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.
To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.
NO. YOUR PEOPLE ARE JUST ALL MESSED UP.
To those...
(APPLAUSE)
WOW. A MOMENT OF ZEN.
To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.
OR, WAIT, CLING TO POWER THROUGH CORRUPTION, SILENCING DISSENT, WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY. YOU MEAN LIKE THE MAFIA, OR CHINA OR IRAN, OR, OR. THIS PLACE?
(APPLAUSE)
THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.
NO WE DON'T.
And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.
RELATIVE PLENTY. WHAT DOE S THAT MEAN. AND, NO WE ARE NOT GIVING UP OUR COMFORTS TO SAVE THE WORLD.
As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages.
WHISPER THROUGH THE AGES. THE DEAD CRY OUT FOR REVENGE. FOR PATRIOTISM. FOR A NEW INFLANGEMENT OF THE THE PERIOUS BOONDANGLES THAT PERSIST TO UNARREST THE FUTURITY OF TODAYS GREATNESS.
We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service: a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves.
OH SHIT. NOT PUBLIC SERVICE. I WORK HARD FOR THE MONEY.
And yet, at this moment, a moment that will define a generation, it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.
NO.
For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies.
RIGHT NO MORE NARROW EVADING OF UNPLEASANT CHOICES. NO MORE EASY NARROW DISLOYAL LAZY SHIT. TIME TO DO FOR YOU COUNTRY, NOT WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOURSELF OF WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR YOU.
It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break; the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours.
It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.
THIS IS THE WORST THING I EVER HEARD.
Our challenges may be new, the instruments with which we meet them may be new, but those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old.
These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.
What is demanded then is a return to these truths.
NO MORE BEING DISLOYAL OR UNPATRIOTIC, OR INTOLEERANT, UNFAIR, OR LAZY OR DISHONEST OR COWARDLY. TIME TO RETURN TO HONESTY AND HARD WORK, RETURN. GIVE UP YOU LAZY DISHONEST COWARDLY WAYS.
What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.
we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, WHAT DUTIES DO I HAVE TO THE WORLD OR MY COUNTRY. AND WHAT DUTIES TO MYSELF HAVE I FAILED TO ADDRESS. A NEW ERA OF RESPONSIBILITY, A RECOGNITION THAT WE HAVE DUTIES TO OURSELVES.
A NEW ERA OF RESPONSIBILITY??? A RECOGNITION THAT WE HAVE DUTIES TO OURSELVES?? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? WHAT DUTIES TO THE NATION HAVE I SHIRKED BEFORE THIS NEW ERA OF RESPONSIBILITY??
JUST TELL ME THAT. GIVE ME ONE GOOD EXAMPLE. WHAT DUTIES DO I HAVE TO THE WORLD OR MY COUNTRY. AND WHAT DUTIES TO MYSELF HAVE I FAILED TO ADDRESS. WHAT IN THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND.
This is the price and the promise of citizenship.
WHAT. DUTIES TO MYSELF, MY COUNTRY AND THE WORLD.THAT I HAVE SHIRKED UNTIL THIS NEW ERA OF RESPONSIBILITY?? THAT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE. NONE OF THIS MAKES ANY SENSE.
This is the source of our confidence: the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.
GOD?! I DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD. I DON'T TAKE MY MARCHING ORDERS FROM GOD TO SHAPE AN UNCERTAIN DESTINY. THAT IS NOT THE SOURCE OF OUR CONFIDENCE. YOU JUST WANTED TO SAY HIGH SOUNDING PHRASES, LIKE
THIS IS THE PRICE AND PROMISE OF CITIZENSHIP.
THIS IS THE SOURCE OF OUR CONFIDENCE.
SHAPE AN UNCERTAIN DESTINY.
LOWER YOUR STANDARDS. THIS IS PURE CRAP.
This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed, why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall. And why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.
NOT THE BLACK THING. LOOK. I NEVER PARTICIPATED IN NOT SERVING BLACKS AT RESTAURANTS. THAT WAS A SOUTHERN AMERICAN THING. DON'T PIN THAT ON ME. AND WHO CARES IF YOU'RE BLACK. I CARE THAT YOU CAN STAND UP THERE AND LIE.
(APPLAUSE)
So let us mark this day in remembrance of who we are and how far we have traveled.
MUSIC UP...
In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river.
The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood.
At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:
"Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it."
WHILE HALF THE NATION FLED TO CANADA, FIGURING BRITAIN COULDN'T BE THAT BAD. WHO CARES.
America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words; with hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come; let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.
Thank you. God bless you.
(APPLAUSE)
And God bless the United States of America.
(APPLAUSE)
AND I'M SORRY FOR ALL THE CRAP I JUST SAID. THEY MADE ME DO IT.
AND I'M NOT FUNNY. I'M JUST VERY PISSED OFF AT THIS CRAP.
Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address
Following is the transcript of President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address, as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions:
PRESIDENT BARACK Thank you. Thank you.
CROWD: Obama! Obama! Obama! Obama!
My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.
I thank President Bush for his service to our nation...
(APPLAUSE)
... as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.
Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.
The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebears, and true to our founding documents.
So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.
That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.
OUR COLLECTIVE WHAT? FAILURE?? I FAILED HOW?? I FAILED TO MAKE HARD CHOICES??? I WAS SUPPORED TO PREPARE THE NATION FOR A NEW AGE, AND FAILED??
Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.
OH. AND I FAILED TO MAKE THESE HARD CHOICES, PREFERING TO LOSE JOBS, SHATTER BUSINESSES, LET SCHOOLS FAIL, SQUANDER ENERGY AND STRENGTHEN OUR ADVERSARIES. I FAILED, AND CONTRIBUTED TO THREATS TO OUR PLANET. PARDON ME. I'M NOT USUALLY THIN SKINNED, BUT DIDN'T YOU JUST SAY THAT OUR BADLY WAKENED ECONOMY IS THE CONSEQUENCE OF OUR COLLECTIVE FAILURE. SOME COLLECTIVE FAILURE TO MAKE HARD CHOICES. SOMEHOW,.... WAIT A MINUTE. OH I GEET IT.IT SOUNDS GOOD.
These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land; a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.
MY CONFIDENCE ISN'T SAPPED ACROSS OUR LAND. AGAIN WITH YOU TELLING ME HOW I FEEL? I HAVE NO IDEA IF THE NEXT GENERATION MUST LOWER ITS SIGHTS. I HOPE NOT. BUT I DON'T HAVE A CLUE. ITS' ONE THEORY. THAT OUR SIGHTS WERE PERMANENTLY TOO HIGH AFTER WORLD WAR II, AFTER THE GREAT DEPRESSION ENDED AND IT LOOKED LIKE THE AMERICAN DREAM WAS POSSIBLE, A PERMANENTLY PROSPEROUS NATION, WITH A LIGHTER DRUDGERY LOAD FOR ALL. COITENLY ONE THEORY IS THAT SUCH HIGH HOPES ARE SILLY. ALL HOPE AND NO REALITY.
Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real, they are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met.\
THEY WILL BE MET. SURE HOPE SO. HAVE MY DOUBTS.
(APPLAUSE)
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.
WHAT??? WHEN DID I CHOSE FEAR, CONFLICT AND DISCORD. WAS THAT THE CHOICE WE MADE IN NOVEMBER. FEAR VS HOPE, UNITY OVER DISCORD?? AND UNITY BEAT DISCORD. HOPE BEAT FEAR. ALTHOUGH TO BE HONEST NEARLY FIFTY PERCENT OF US VOTED FOR CONFLICT, DISCORD AND FEAR.
On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.
SURE. AN END TO FALSE PROMISES AND POLITICAL STRANGULATION. I HAVE HEARD THAT BEFORE. PROCLAIM AN END TO BUSINESS AS USUAL, AND THEN FACE THE FACTS.
WE HAVE COME TO PROCLAIM AN END TO THE PETTY GRIEVANCES AND FALSE PROMISES ETC ETC. YEAH YEAH, SURE KID. AND PIGS CAN FLY. NO REALLY, THEY CAN. IN FACT, A WHOLE FLOCK OF 'EM JUST FLEW OVER.
We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.
RIGHT. JUST LAST WEEK I SET, NO WAIT A MINUTE. THE TIME HAS COME TODAY, NOT, LIKE FIFTY YEARS AGO. OR DURING THE CIVIL WAR. ABE LINCOLN WAS SO VERY CHILDISH. LUCKY NOW, WE CAN GROW UP FINALLY. NOT LIKE WINSTON CHURCHILL OR ARISTOTLE, THOSE CHILDISH LITTLE INFANTILE UN GROWN UP TYKES. PSHAW. NO SIR. TIME TO GROW UP.
The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.
YEAH, I REALLY FEEL SORRY FOR DUTCH PEOPLE, OR THOSE MEAN SPIRITED FRENCH AND ENGLISH GUYS WHO DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT ANY GOD GIVEN PROMISE THAT ALL ARE EQUAL. ALL ARE EQUAL. SURE, BUT SOME ARE EQUALLER THAN OTHERS. DESERVE A CHANCE TO PURSUE THEIR FULL MEASURE OF HAPPINESS. GOD I HATE THOSE RUMANIANS AND CHINESE WHO NEVER GIVE ANYONE A CHANCE TO BE HAPPY. THOSE AWFUL TURKS AND JAPANESE, WHO HAVE NO GRASP OF OUR NOBLE IDEA, PASSED ON FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION.
(APPLAUSE)
THANK YOU.
In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less.
It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame.
OH THAT PATH. THE ONE CHOSEN BY FINS AND TURKS AND ALBANIANS AND ITALIANS. THOSE HORRIBLE CHILDISH PEOPLE WHO PREFER LEISURE OVER WORK AND SEEK ONLY THE PLEASURES OF RICHES AND FAME. NO SIR. WE WORK HARD TO MAKE OUR NATION GREAT. NOBODY ELSE DOES THAT.
Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.
BULL FUCKING CRAP ON A STICK. RATHER.... I MEAN, THE NON DOERS THE ONES WHO DON'T MAKE THINGS, THE ONES WHO DON'T TAKE RISKS, THOSE SHITTY PEOPLE, WELL THEY ARE NOT AMERICANS. THEY ARE NOT LIVING A LIFE WORTH LIVING. THE LONG RUGGED PATH TOWARDS PROSPERITY AND FREEDOM... THAT HAS BEEN THE WORK OF THE WONDERFUL RISK TAKERS AND DOERS AND MAKERS OF THINGS. NOT LLIKE THOSE FILTHY LAZY ITALIANS WHO DON'T DO ALL THAT WONDERFUL STUFF TO TREAD THE WEARY WAY UP THE LONG RUGGED PATH TOWARDS PROSPERITY AND FREEDOM. AMERICA, WE DO THAT, NOBODY ELSE DOES. WE ARE SO GREAT.
AND HERE COMES THE REAL BULLSHIT.
For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.
FOR US?? BULLSHIT. THE ENDURE THE LASH
AND THE WHIP
AND PLOWED THE HARD EARTH
AND TOILED IN SWEATSHOPS
AND SETTLED THE WEST
AND PACKED UP THEIR FEW WORLDLY POSSESSIONS AND TRAVELED ACR4SSS OCEANS
FOR US
FOR US.
For us, they fought and died in places Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sanh.
Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life.
A WHOLE FLOCK OF 'EM FLEW OVER THAT TIME. PIGS. FLYING PIGS.
They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.
NO THEY DIDN'T.
This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished.
STANDING PAT?? I DIDN'T STAND PAT. I DIDN PROTECT NARROW INTERESTS. I DIDNT PUT OFF UNPLEASANT DECISIONS. WHEN DID I DO THAT. WHO IN THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT. WHAT ARE YOU SAYING. IT DOESN'T MEAN A GODDAMNED THING.
But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions -- that time has surely passed.
Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.
(APPLAUSE)
THANK YOU AND GOOD NIGHT.
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done.
The state of our economy calls for action: bold and swift. And we will act not only to create new jobs but to lay a new foundation for growth.
We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.
We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality...
(APPLAUSE)
... and lower its costs.
AND HARNESS THE FLYING PIGS. DON'T FORGET THEM. A RAW SOURCE OF ENERGY.
We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.
All this we can do. All this we will do.
APPLAUSE SIGN.
Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done, what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose and necessity to courage.
SURE KID. SURE. FREE MEN AND WOMEN. NOT THE SHACKLED MEN AND WOMEN ON FOREIGN SHORES WHO DON'T HAVE OUR CONSTITUTIION, OUR BRAVE ANCESTORS, OUR ENERGY AND INVENTIVENESS AND.. OH FUCK YOU.
What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long, no longer apply.
YES THEY DO. THE GROUND HAS NOT SHIFTED BENEATH ANYONE. NO LONGER APPLY. WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN. LAST NOVEMBER WHEN WE VOTED AGAINST FEAR AND DISCORD.
The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works, whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.
RIGHT. AND WE DON'T KNOW THE ANSWER. NOBODY DOES.
Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.
SURE. JUST A SMALL MATTER OF MEASURING WHETHER IT WORKS OR NOT. NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE. GREAT IDEAS FROM A GREAT MIND.
And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched.
But this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.
THAT;'S A BIG JUMP FROM THE MARKET SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL AND A NATION RULED BY GREEDY PEOPLE WHO FAVOR ONLY THE PROSPEROUS. QUITE A JUMP. THIS SPEECH IS WOBBLING BADLY. INTO FOOLISH LLIES.
The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart -- not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.
(APPLAUSE)
OR ARE IT?
BUT HERE COMES THE WORST PART. THE CHOICE BETWEEN MY SAFETY AND MY IDEALS?? SAFETY FIRST. I GOT KIDS, PETS, INVESTMENTS AND A VERY STRONG LOVE OF LIFE. DON'T YOU JEOPARDIZE MY LIFE FOR FREEDOM OF SPEECH OR DUE PROCESS. DUE PROCESS SET THE DECAPITATOR O.J. BACK ON THE STREETS.
As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.
LINCOLN SUSPENDED HABEUS CORPUS IN THE CIVIL WAR. ARGUE ALL YOU WANT. I REJECT IDEALS OVER SAFETY. AND SO WOULD ANY SANE PERSON. MAYBE THERE' S SOME ROOM FOR ARGUMENT. BUT SORRY, YOUR FRIENDS ALL LAUGHED BEHIND YOUR BACK WITH IRONIC AND COMIC DISAPPROVAL WHEN THEY HEARD YOU EXPOUSE IDEALS OVER SAFETY. IT'S LAUGHABLE.
Our founding fathers faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations.
EXPANDED BY THE BLOOD OF GENERATIONS. OR SOMETHING,.
Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.
SAFETY OR EXPEDIENCE.
APLAUSE.
And so, to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born:
AND MY BROTHER IS IN JAIL FOR POSSESSION, AND I WON'T GO HIS BAIL BECAUSE I AM A NARROW MINDED FUCK...
know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more.
AND READY TO PUT OUR LIVES ON THE LINE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS. WELL, MOST OF US FEEL THAT WAY. ER, DON'T WE?
(APPLAUSE)
THANK YOU
Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.
I AM A MAN OF NO CONVICTIONS.
They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use. Our security emanates from the justness of our cause; the force of our example; the tempering qualities of humility and restraint. AND PUTTING CIVIL RIGHTS BEFORE PERSONAL SAFETY.
We are the keepers of this legacy, guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort, even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We'll begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people and forge a hard- earned peace in Afghanistan.
LEAVE IRAQ TO ITS PEOPLE. THEY CHOSE SADAM HUSSEIN. THAT';S HOW THEY ARE.
With old friends and former foes, we'll work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat and roll back the specter of a warming planet.
We will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense.
WHAT WAY OF LIFE. USING THREE QUARTERS OF THE WORLD'S RESOURCES TO COOL OUR HOMES AND HAVE WIDE SCREEN TV'S..
And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that, "Our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."
I COITENLY HOPE SO. BECAUSE JUST MAYBE THOSE GUYS ARE DESPERATE AND CRAZY.
(APPLAUSE)
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.
YOU AND YOUR HERITAGE. WE AIN'T WEEK LIKE OTHER COUNTRIES. NO SIR. WE ARE STRONG. THANK GOD WE HAVE A HERITAGE OF STRENGTH, NOT WEAKNESS. I FEEL SORRY FOR THOSE COUNTRIES FOUNDED ON WEAKNESS.
We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.
THAT'S REALLY NOT SO GOOD WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT.
And because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
HURRAY FOR US.
To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.
To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.
NO. YOUR PEOPLE ARE JUST ALL MESSED UP.
To those...
(APPLAUSE)
WOW. A MOMENT OF ZEN.
To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.
OR, WAIT, CLING TO POWER THROUGH CORRUPTION, SILENCING DISSENT, WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY. YOU MEAN LIKE THE MAFIA, OR CHINA OR IRAN, OR, OR. THIS PLACE?
(APPLAUSE)
THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.
NO WE DON'T.
And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.
RELATIVE PLENTY. WHAT DOE S THAT MEAN. AND, NO WE ARE NOT GIVING UP OUR COMFORTS TO SAVE THE WORLD.
As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages.
WHISPER THROUGH THE AGES. THE DEAD CRY OUT FOR REVENGE. FOR PATRIOTISM. FOR A NEW INFLANGEMENT OF THE THE PERIOUS BOONDANGLES THAT PERSIST TO UNARREST THE FUTURITY OF TODAYS GREATNESS.
We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service: a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves.
OH SHIT. NOT PUBLIC SERVICE. I WORK HARD FOR THE MONEY.
And yet, at this moment, a moment that will define a generation, it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.
NO.
For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies.
RIGHT NO MORE NARROW EVADING OF UNPLEASANT CHOICES. NO MORE EASY NARROW DISLOYAL LAZY SHIT. TIME TO DO FOR YOU COUNTRY, NOT WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOURSELF OF WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR YOU.
It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break; the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours.
It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.
THIS IS THE WORST THING I EVER HEARD.
Our challenges may be new, the instruments with which we meet them may be new, but those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old.
These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.
What is demanded then is a return to these truths.
NO MORE BEING DISLOYAL OR UNPATRIOTIC, OR INTOLEERANT, UNFAIR, OR LAZY OR DISHONEST OR COWARDLY. TIME TO RETURN TO HONESTY AND HARD WORK, RETURN. GIVE UP YOU LAZY DISHONEST COWARDLY WAYS.
What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.
we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, WHAT DUTIES DO I HAVE TO THE WORLD OR MY COUNTRY. AND WHAT DUTIES TO MYSELF HAVE I FAILED TO ADDRESS. A NEW ERA OF RESPONSIBILITY, A RECOGNITION THAT WE HAVE DUTIES TO OURSELVES.
A NEW ERA OF RESPONSIBILITY??? A RECOGNITION THAT WE HAVE DUTIES TO OURSELVES?? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? WHAT DUTIES TO THE NATION HAVE I SHIRKED BEFORE THIS NEW ERA OF RESPONSIBILITY??
JUST TELL ME THAT. GIVE ME ONE GOOD EXAMPLE. WHAT DUTIES DO I HAVE TO THE WORLD OR MY COUNTRY. AND WHAT DUTIES TO MYSELF HAVE I FAILED TO ADDRESS. WHAT IN THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND.
This is the price and the promise of citizenship.
WHAT. DUTIES TO MYSELF, MY COUNTRY AND THE WORLD.THAT I HAVE SHIRKED UNTIL THIS NEW ERA OF RESPONSIBILITY?? THAT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE. NONE OF THIS MAKES ANY SENSE.
This is the source of our confidence: the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.
GOD?! I DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD. I DON'T TAKE MY MARCHING ORDERS FROM GOD TO SHAPE AN UNCERTAIN DESTINY. THAT IS NOT THE SOURCE OF OUR CONFIDENCE. YOU JUST WANTED TO SAY HIGH SOUNDING PHRASES, LIKE
THIS IS THE PRICE AND PROMISE OF CITIZENSHIP.
THIS IS THE SOURCE OF OUR CONFIDENCE.
SHAPE AN UNCERTAIN DESTINY.
LOWER YOUR STANDARDS. THIS IS PURE CRAP.
This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed, why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall. And why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.
NOT THE BLACK THING. LOOK. I NEVER PARTICIPATED IN NOT SERVING BLACKS AT RESTAURANTS. THAT WAS A SOUTHERN AMERICAN THING. DON'T PIN THAT ON ME. AND WHO CARES IF YOU'RE BLACK. I CARE THAT YOU CAN STAND UP THERE AND LIE.
(APPLAUSE)
So let us mark this day in remembrance of who we are and how far we have traveled.
MUSIC UP...
In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river.
The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood.
At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:
"Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it."
WHILE HALF THE NATION FLED TO CANADA, FIGURING BRITAIN COULDN'T BE THAT BAD. WHO CARES.
America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words; with hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come; let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.
Thank you. God bless you.
(APPLAUSE)
And God bless the United States of America.
(APPLAUSE)
AND I'M SORRY FOR ALL THE CRAP I JUST SAID. THEY MADE ME DO IT.
AND I'M NOT FUNNY. I'M JUST VERY PISSED OFF AT THIS CRAP.
JUST TOO STUPID
WHY SOME THINGS ARE JUST TOO STUPID TO PAY ATTENTION TO. LIKE THIS PIECE OF SHIT.
Smoke and Mirrors: Violence, Television, and Other American Cultures
Smoke and Mirrors: Violence, Television, and Other American Cultures
By JOHN LEONARD
The New Press
Read the Review
Introduction:
Why Are We Meeting
Like This?
In the summer and fall of 1993, like Sumer warrior kings, daubed with sesame oil, gorged on scapegoat, hefting swords and hurling anathemas, the attorney general of the United States, a tripleheader of headline-hungry senators and a noisy cohort of underemployed busybodies in the private sector--social scientists, tabloid columnists, antidefamation pressure groupies, religious sectarians--stormed Burbank, California, as if it were Waco, Texas. According to Janet Reno, Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, Daniel Inouye, Paul Simon and the moralizing coalitions to which they pandered, we hurt one another because of...television! From a ziggurat in fabled Ur, Fritz warned readers of The New York Times: "If the TV and cable industries have no sense of shame, we must take it upon ourselves to stop licensing their violence-saturated programming."
Never mind that Fritz himself voted against the Brady Bill to restrict the sale of handguns. (Guns don't kill people; television does.) WHAT IN THE FUCKING HELL HAS THAT GOT TO DO WITH ANYTING. GUNS AND TELEVISION KILL PEOPLE YOU STUPID LYING FUCKING BASTARD.
the talking heads--a professor here, a producer there, a child psychologist and a network veep for program standards--couldn't even agree on what they meant by "violence." (Is it only bad if it hurts or kills?)
THAT'S STUPID. OF COURSE THEY DISAGREE. THEY ARE FULL OF SHIT. JUST LIKE YOU.
Hollings and Inouye were co-sponsors in the Senate of a bill to ban any act of violence on television before midnight
SO THEIR BILL IS STUPID AND WRITTEN WRONG.
Networks couldn't sell their millions of pairs of eyes to advertising agencies EVEN THAT ISNT TRUE. NOBODY KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ADVERTISINT. EH THEY JUST KNOW IF THEY STOP, THE COMPETITION MIGHT CATCH UP. IT COULD ALL BE A HOAX. THERES NO WAY TO MEASURE IT. OUTSIDE OF REAL TIME DRAMA LIKE NEWS AND SPORTS, EVERYTHING ELSE HAS BECOME TEN TO FIFTY PERCENT TIVOED BY THE TOP THIRTY PERCENT OF CONSUMERS. LIE TO ME ABOUT THAT IF YOU WANT, YOU MIGHT EVEN FOOL ME OR INTIMIDATE ME, BUT FUCK YOU.
Nor on which was worse, a "happy" violence that sugar-coats aggressive behavior or a "graphic" violence that at least suggests there are consequences. (How, anyway, does TV manage somehow simultaneously to desensitize but also exacerbate; to sedate but also incite?) Nor were they really sure what goes on in the dreamy heads of our cabbage-patch children as they crouch in the dark to commune with the tube, while their parents, if they have any, aren't around. (Roadrunner? Beep beep.) Nor does a "viewer discretion" advisory apply to cartoons and soaps, pro hockey (white men beating up on one another), pro basketball (black men beating up on one another), Sarajevo or Oklahoma City.
SO THAT'S IT. YOU'RE RIGHT AND I'M WRONG. ALL THAT VIOLENCE HAS NO EFFECT. THE KIDS ARE STRONG, AS EISNER OF POST MODERN DISNEY SAID, FORGETTABLY. BUT IT IS A VILE STATEMENT. WHAT IN THE FUCK DOES ANYONE KNOW ABOUT THE MIND. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Bob Dole jumped on the sex-and-violence ban wagon with an attack on the vampire media elite, and William Bennett, former secretary of virtue in Ronald Reagan's Caligari cabinet, assigned himself to trash patrol among the blabbermouth Geraldos. Upon the signing into law of the 1996 Telecommunications Bill just in time for Valentine's Day, the front page of The New York Times reported an agreement among the four major networks to establish their very own ratings system, since PG, R and X seemed to work so wonderfully well for the Motion Picture Association of America. Simultaneously, without a single hearing to educate itself on the intricacies and intimacies of Internet, Congress voted in the Communications Decency Act to ban from cyberspace speech that was otherwise publishable in books, magazines and newspapers. Off-color? Not on our line. Hardcore? Not in our software.
WOW. COMEDY. THAT'S. REALLY FUNNY. NOT IN OUR SOFTWARE. DON'T GO THERE.
And suddenly Napoleon shows up on Northern Exposure frozen like a Popsicle, while Chris reads Proust on the radio. Or Law & Order decides to mix up the World Trade Center bombing and the Branch Davidian firestorm, to suggest that not all terrorism is fundamentally Islamic. Or Roseanne is about joblessness and lesbianism as well as bowling. Or Picket Fences has moved on from elephant abuse and gay-bashing to euthanasia and the Supreme Court. Or,
OK I GET IT, NOBODY HAS A SOLUTION, AND YOU USE THAT TO SOMEHOW PROVE THERE IS NO PROBLEM.
Violence, television, culture and America are all lots more complicated. A friend of mine, a professional musician, attributes the recent quadrupling of young females who have chosen in our schools to learn to play the saxophone to the fact that the cartoon character Lisa plays one on The Simpsons.
HE'S RIGHT, AND THE SAME GOES FOR A CRIME BY COPYCAT. THAT'S PROOF ENOUGHT FOR ME, BUT FUCK YOU, YOU DONT SEE IT. LOOK CLOSER. GIRLS PLAY SAXAPHONE, AND HOW MANY BOYS SNEAK OUT AND GO DOWNTOWN TO HAVE AN ADVENTURE??? NO MATH POSSIBLE THERE, BUT DON'T YOU THINK IT'S LIKELY.
OF COURSE YOU DO, BUT YOU'RE A CLASSICAL CONSERVATIVE, WHO KNOWS THAT DARWIN RULES, AND THAT MOST OF YOUR CHILDREN CAN BE BOUGHT OFF WITH ALLOWANCE AND WITHHOLDING, AND THE ONES WHO DON'T WILL AT LEAST HAVE GOOD CARE IN LIFELONG RREHAB AT THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND A YEAR, CHICKEN FEED TO THE WEALTHY. SO FUCK YOU.
WHILE THE POOR CAN'T, WHICH IS WHY THEY STINKS. THE POOR I MEAN.
sex-and-violence ban wagon
HEY, CLEVER. BAN WAGON. GET IT.
Those of us who suspect that a V chip will be about as helpful in reducing violence in the society as student uniforms are likely to be in reversing the decline of the public schools find ourselves in a strident minority.
WELL, GUESS WHAT, DEGLAMORIZING KIDS WORKED. ASK ANY TEACHEER ABOUT THE LONG RANGE EFFECTS OF UNIFORMS. IT WORKS AND CONTINUES TO WORK. AND IF YOU EXPERI=MENTED AND HAD ALL SAXIPHONE RELATED SIMPSON SHOWS REMOVED, I WILL FUCKING BET YOU SAXIPHONE SALES WILL GO DOWN AGAIN.
IDIOT. ADVERTISING EFFECTS, BUT DRAMA DOESN'T?? OF COURSE YOU ARE LYING. I FORGOT WHAT A CREEPY CONSERVATIVE ANTI HUMAN ETHIC YOU REPRESENT. \
ANOTHER DUMB ARGUMENT;
JAPANESE watch more television than we do (and you should also see their snuff movies and pornographic comic books), but their per capita rate for murder and rape is little league compared to ours.
AND BY THE WAY. THAT MIGHT NOT EVEN BE TRUE. MAYBE THEY WATCH LESS TELEVISION THAN WE DO, I MEAN, REALLY, WATCH. MAYBE THEY WATCH LIGHTLY AS A CULTURE, WHILE WE WATCH FULL BORE. EVER THINK OF THAT.
IN ANY CASE, FUCK YOU.
It is as preposterous to believe that all entertainment is hypodermic, directly injecting bad ideas into the innocent bloodstream of the passive masses, as it is to pretend that all behavior is mimetic and that our only models are Eliot Ness or Dirty Harry. What about Mr. Rogers and Jessica Fletcher? Every fifties sitcom celebrated the two-parent nuclear family, and the divorce rate soared. The most popular program in the eighties was The Cosby Show, and race relations have never been worse. Until 1996, every television movie and every episode of a dramatic series that ever contemplated capital punishment ended up opposing the death penalty, yet a bloodlust rose throughout the nation and we're happily back dispensing divine justice. Why, after so much M*A*S*H every week for seven years in prime time and every night in reruns ever since, aren't all of us tree-hugging wiseguy pacifists?
directly injecting bad ideas into the innocent bloodstream of the passive masses... SEE THAT'S A FALLACY, FALSLY DESCRIBING OUR ARGUMENTS TO BE ALL OR NOTHING. NO, WE HAVE A LOT OF NUANCES HERE. AND CLAIMING OUR POINT OF VIEW IS NOT NUANCED IS A GOOD HARVARD TRICK, BUT IT IS A TRICK FOR THE DUMBEST GUY ON THE JURY. SHAME ON YOU. NONE OF US ARE MAKING ANY SUCH BLANKET CLAIMS.
\
SO GO AHEAD, FUCK YOURSELF.
THAT IS JUST WRONG. NICE TRY. YOU ARE GOOD. BEST ARGUER AT HARVARD LAW. SO IT DOESN'T MATTER AS LONG AS YOU WIN. every night in reruns ever since, aren't all of us tree-hugging wiseguy pacifists? FUNNY, BUT YOU CAN'T MEASURE IT. LOOK AT THE SURGE OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AFTER COSBY.. YOU DON'T KNOW. SERIOUSLY, YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.
GUESS WHAT, THEIR TV STINKS. IT IS SILLY. WATCH IT SOMETIMES. THEY HAVE NO MORE TALENT FOR DRAMA THAN FOR MUSIC. ALL DERIVATIVE AND, INNEFECTUAL. AND, PLUS, THE JAPANESE ARE SO INSULAR AND MONOLITHIC, THEY ARE JUST.... LOOK, I DON'T WANT TO ANSWER THAT ONE PRETTY GOOD ARGUMENT. BUT THE DIFFERENCE IN CULTURES... NO LET ME TRY ANOTHER "ARGUMENT".. I DON'T CARE. IT EFFECTS AMERICANS, NOT JAPANESE. SO, THAT ISN'T ENOUGH TO BE A PROOF. IT'S IMPRESSIVE, BUT THE SAXAPHONE THING DOESNT GO AWAY.
Nor were they really sure what goes on in the dreamy heads of our cabbage-patch children as they crouch in the dark to commune with the tube, while their parents, if they have any, aren't around. (Roadrunner? Beep beep.) Nor does a "viewer discretion" advisory apply to cartoons and soaps, pro hockey (white men beating up on one another), pro basketball (black men beating up on one another), Sarajevo or Oklahoma City.
YOU CALL THAT AN ARGUMENT. ROAD RUNNEER. BASKETBALL IS NOT A BEAT DOWN, THAT IS RARE.
WHAT IN THE HELL KIND OF COCKAMAMIE ARGUMENT IS THAT. IT STINKS TO HIGH HEAVEN. FUCK YOU. CREEP. JERK. YOU DONT HAVE A CLUE. THIS IS JUST PROPAGANDA.
Those of us who suspect that a V chip will be about as helpful in reducing violence in the society as student uniforms are likely to be in reversing the decline of the public schools find ourselves in a strident minority.
Everybody else seems to agree that watching television causes antisocial behavior, especially among the children of the poor. That there is more violent programming over the air now than there ever was before. That Beavis and Butt-head inspired an Ohio five-year-old to burn down his family trailer. That in the crepuscular blue gray cathode glow we have spawned affectless toadstools, serial triffids, and cannibalistic rapist-killers. OF COURSE WE AGREE. IT STANDS TO REASON. AND DONT EXAGGERATE FOR EFFECT. TRIFFIDS, AFFECTLESS, CANNABLIISTIC, PLEASE. SPARE ME. CREPUSCULAR GLUE GRAY CATHODE GLOW. WOW, YOU SHURE KNOW A LOT. BUT FUCK YOU ANYWAY. IT'S ALL LIES.
WE CANNOT MEASURE ANY OF THIS, BUT BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD DIDNT EXIST FORTY YEARS AGO, AND SHOULD NEVER HAVE EXISTED BECAUSE OF THEIR POTENTIAL ROTTEN EFFECTS, POTENTIAL, AND SUSPECTED. AND WE TRIED EVERYTHING TO MAKE IT GO AWAY, BUT THE TREE HUGGERS, ER FREEDOM FIRST AMMENDMENT SHIT HEADS HAD THEIR WAY, AND THE POOR, YES THE POOR WERE DAMAMGED., AND INSTEAD OF BECOMING COMPETITION FOR OUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS, REMAINED IN THEIR FILTH. YES, I BELIEVE THAT. AND YOU DONT, AND WHO KNOWWWHO'S RIGHT.
I JUST THINK ALL THAT SHIT HAS A DAMAGING EFFECT ON THE POOR, AND THAT IS JUST FINE WITH EDMUND BURKE AND THE CRAZY ANTI EGALITARIAN FUCKHOLE CONSERVATIVES THAT LET THIS SHIT INTO THE AIRWAVES... YES, TO KEEP THE POOR DOWN.
HELL, THAT'S SO PREPOSTEROUS I DON'T EVEN THINK IT MAKES SENSE. BUT THEN AGAIN, IT HAS TO BE SAID.
AND FOR A MOMENT, LOOK AT THE VIDEO OF THE PLANE DISAPPEARING INTO THE TWIN TOWER, LIKE IT WAS MADE OF PUDDING. AND WONDER WHAT HAS TO BE CONTENANCED, CONSIDERED, IF NOT BELIEVED.
BUT THAT ASIDE, THIS ARTICLE IS STILL FULL OF CRAP.
In fact, except for hospital shows, there is less violence on network TV than there used to be.
RIGHT. ANOTHER CLAIM I'M SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE.
Because of ratings, sitcoms predominate. And the worst stuff is Hollywood splatter flicks on premium cable, which the poor are less likely to watch. Everywhere else on cable, not counting Court TV, home shopping and the perpetual-motion loop of Ted Turner's westerns, and not even to think about blood sports or Pat Robertson, the fare is wholesome to the verge of stupefaction: Disney, Discovery, Learning, Family, History, Nashville, Nickelodeon.
Smoke and Mirrors: Violence, Television, and Other American Cultures
By JOHN LEONARD
The New Press
Read the Review
Introduction:
Why Are We Meeting
Like This?
In the summer and fall of 1993, like Sumer warrior kings, daubed with sesame oil, gorged on scapegoat, hefting swords and hurling anathemas, the attorney general of the United States, a tripleheader of headline-hungry senators and a noisy cohort of underemployed busybodies in the private sector--social scientists, tabloid columnists, antidefamation pressure groupies, religious sectarians--stormed Burbank, California, as if it were Waco, Texas. According to Janet Reno, Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, Daniel Inouye, Paul Simon and the moralizing coalitions to which they pandered, we hurt one another because of...television! From a ziggurat in fabled Ur, Fritz warned readers of The New York Times: "If the TV and cable industries have no sense of shame, we must take it upon ourselves to stop licensing their violence-saturated programming."
Hollings and Inouye were co-sponsors in the Senate of a bill to ban any act of violence on television before midnight. Never mind whether this was constitutional, nor what it would do to the local news. Never mind that Fritz himself voted against the Brady Bill to restrict the sale of handguns. (Guns don't kill people; television does.) Never mind, either, that in Los Angeles that August, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, in front of six-hundred industry executives and a live CNN audience, the talking heads--a professor here, a producer there, a child psychologist and a network veep for program standards--couldn't even agree on what they meant by "violence." (Is it only bad if it hurts or kills?) Nor on which was worse, a "happy" violence that sugar-coats aggressive behavior or a "graphic" violence that at least suggests there are consequences. (How, anyway, does TV manage somehow simultaneously to desensitize but also exacerbate; to sedate but also incite?) Nor were they really sure what goes on in the dreamy heads of our cabbage-patch children as they crouch in the dark to commune with the tube, while their parents, if they have any, aren't around. (Roadrunner? Beep beep.) Nor does a "viewer discretion" advisory apply to cartoons and soaps, pro hockey (white men beating up on one another), pro basketball (black men beating up on one another), Sarajevo or Oklahoma City.
Momentarily, after the election of a guns-and-God Republican Congress in 1994--a Keystone Khmer Rouge pledged in its slash-and-burn Contract on America to cleanse Phnom Penh of every pointy-headed intellectual with a tutu in his closet, every parasitic lowlife painter who ever suckered a dime from the National Endowment, every third-world wetback here to steal a job and every child who was ever "difficult," not to mention their welfare mothers, crackhead fathers, shyster lawyers and other inconvenient codependents who ought instead to be growing rice and eating fish paste in the boondocks--the focus of tube-bashing switched from networks and cable, where "hidden persuaders" were accused of exploiting our vulgar appetite for blood and semen, to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, where "liberal elitists" were alleged to promote their ulterior agenda of multiculti/feminazi/gay-pride/socialized-medicine/performance art. But by late spring 1995, Bill Clinton had recovered enough initiative to endorse a "V" chip with which worried parents could zap their children prior to unhealthy programming, and, that summer, language actually mandating such zap technology when the manufacture of new TV sets was inserted into the Telecommunications Bill by both houses of Congress. By August, Fritz and friends were in full cry again about the "family hour." That fall, warming up for the presidential politics of 1996, Bob Dole jumped on the sex-and-violence ban wagon with an attack on the vampire media elite, and William Bennett, former secretary of virtue in Ronald Reagan's Caligari cabinet, assigned himself to trash patrol among the blabbermouth Geraldos. Upon the signing into law of the 1996 Telecommunications Bill just in time for Valentine's Day, the front page of The New York Times reported an agreement among the four major networks to establish their very own ratings system, since PG, R and X seemed to work so wonderfully well for the Motion Picture Association of America. Simultaneously, without a single hearing to educate itself on the intricacies and intimacies of Internet, Congress voted in the Communications Decency Act to ban from cyberspace speech that was otherwise publishable in books, magazines and newspapers. Off-color? Not on our line. Hardcore? Not in our software.
Those of us who suspect that a V chip will be about as helpful in reducing violence in the society as student uniforms are likely to be in reversing the decline of the public schools find ourselves in a strident minority. Everybody else seems to agree that watching television causes antisocial behavior, especially among the children of the poor. That there is more violent programming over the air now than there ever was before. That Beavis and Butt-head inspired an Ohio five-year-old to burn down his family trailer. That in the crepuscular blue gray cathode glow we have spawned affectless toadstools, serial triffids, and cannibalistic rapist-killers.
In fact, except for hospital shows, there is less violence on network TV than there used to be. Because of ratings, sitcoms predominate. And the worst stuff is Hollywood splatter flicks on premium cable, which the poor are less likely to watch. Everywhere else on cable, not counting Court TV, home shopping and the perpetual-motion loop of Ted Turner's westerns, and not even to think about blood sports or Pat Robertson, the fare is wholesome to the verge of stupefaction: Disney, Discovery, Learning, Family, History, Nashville, Nickelodeon. Since his Ohio trailer wasn't even wired for cable, the littlest firebird must have got his MTV elsewhere in the dangerous neighborhood. Besides, kids have played with matches since at least Prometheus. (I burned down my own bedroom when I was five years old. The fire department had to tell my mother.) And far from sitting at home like lumps of Spam, "narcotized by hegemonic manipulations of symbolic reality," as an academician put it, more Americans than ever before go out to eat in restaurants, see films, plays, and baseball games, visit museums, travel abroad, even jog. Even when we are watching TV, we do something else at the same time. While our kids play with their Quicktime software, Adobe Illustrators, Vidicraft CCU 120 Commercial Cutters and Domark Virtual Reality Toolkits, the rest of us eat, knit, smoke, dream, read magazines, sign checks, feel sorry for ourselves, think about Hillary and plot shrewd career moves or revenge.
Actually watching TV, unless it's C-SPAN, is usually more interesting than the proceedings of Congress--or what we read in hysterical books like Jerry Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, George Gilder's Life After Television, Marie Winn's The Plug-in Drug, Neal Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and Bill McKibben's
The Age of Missing Information. Or what we'll hear at panel discussions on censorship, where rightwingers worry about sex and leftwingers worry about violence. Or at symposia on "The Apocalypse Trope in Television News" and seminars on "Postmodern Transgressions, Gender-Bending and Unkindness to Small Animals in Heavy Metal Music Videos." Or lolling around the academic deep-think tank, trading mantras like "frame analysis" (Erving Goffman), "fake realism," (T.W. Adorno), "processed culture" (Richard Hoggart), "waning of affect" (Fredric Jameson), "social facsimile" (Kenneth Gergen), "violence profiles" (George Gerbner), "iconography of rooms" (Horace Newcomb), "narcoleptic joy" (Michael Sorkin), "glass teat" (Harlan Ellison) "thalidomide" (Robert Bly) and "masturbation" (Michael Arlen, Allan Bloom, David Mamet). Down among the mad hatters of critical theory, you'd think the looking glass was somehow entropic, a heat-death of the culture.
Of course, something happens to us when we watch television. Networks couldn't sell their millions of pairs of eyes to advertising agencies (at an amazing $40,000 for every second of the 1996 Super Bowl) nor would those agencies buy more than $150 billion worth of ad space and commercial time per annum if speech did not somehow modify behavior. But what happens is usually fuzzy, and won't be greatly clarified by lab studies, however longitudinal, of habits and behaviors isolated from the larger feedback loop and echo chamber of a culture full of gaudy contradictions. We are at least as imprecise in front of our talking furniture as Heisenberg was uncertain contemplating quanta. It is as preposterous to believe that all entertainment is hypodermic, directly injecting bad ideas into the innocent bloodstream of the passive masses, as it is to pretend that all behavior is mimetic and that our only models are Eliot Ness or Dirty Harry. What about Mr. Rogers and Jessica Fletcher? Every fifties sitcom celebrated the two-parent nuclear family, and the divorce rate soared. The most popular program in the eighties was The Cosby Show, and race relations have never been worse. Until 1996, every television movie and every episode of a dramatic series that ever contemplated capital punishment ended up opposing the death penalty, yet a bloodlust rose throughout the nation and we're happily back dispensing divine justice. Why, after so much M*A*S*H every week for seven years in prime time and every night in reruns ever since, aren't all of us tree-hugging wiseguy pacifists?
And while the brief of this book is less than imperial, it's worth noting a few discrepancies abroad. Japan is the only country in the world where they watch more television than we do (and you should also see their snuff movies and pornographic comic books), but their per capita rate for murder and rape is little league compared to ours. Some Indian critics earlier this decade sought to blame the surge in communal violence on a state-run television series dramatizing the Mahabharata. But many of the same critics had earlier blamed a fatwa-afflicted Salman Rushdie for subcontinental bloodletting, as in Bangladesh they recently sought to pin the rap on novelist Taslima Nasrin. (Since Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu, and Indira by her Sikh bodyguards, and Rajiv by Tamil separatists, maybe organized religion causes violence, in Belfast as well as East Timor.) No one blames German TV for neo-Nazi skinhead violence against Turkish migrant workers. Nor does anyone blame Lucille Ball for what Idi Amin did to Uganda, even when an entire video library of her sitcoms was discovered in the palace vault after he was deposed. Czech TV deserves partial credit for the Velvet Revolution, but not as much as Havel or Gorbachev. Though the mullahs in Iran complain about Baywatch by jiggle relay from the Great Satan, and the Ministry of Culture in Vietnam has banned videotapes of American TV programs as well as copies of Paris Match containing a photograph of model Naomi Campbell's bare breasts, Teheran and Hanoi are no more fun now than they were in the days of SAVAK and Ho. (There is, as a matter of fact, more pornography and less violence against women in Holland than anywhere else in the western world, while the exact opposite is true in Thailand.) And while Yugoslavia's disintegration may have been encouraged by hate television in several of the republics, we also know from the remarkable novels of Milorad Pavic that behind the eyes of every Serb there has been, for seven centuries, a rerun of the Battle of Kosovo, where the Ottomans died in Lazar.
But nobody normal watches TV the way attorneys general, congressmen, symposiasts and McKibbens do. McKibben and his friends taped 1,700 hours of television, on a single 24-hour day, on all 93 channels of a Maryland cable system. He spent six months watching all this tape, after which he took an Adirondacks hike. And then he wrote his book, explaining that television dumbs the Republic. What a guy. The rest of us must be less thrilling.
For instance: In a March, 1993, episode of Homicide, written by Tom Fontana and directed by Martin Campbell, Baltimore police detectives Bayliss (Kyle Secor) and Pembleton (Andre Braugher) had twelve hours to wring a confession out of "Arab" Tucker (Moses Gunn), for the strangulation and disembowelling of an eleven-year-old girl. In the dirty light and appalling intimacy of a single claustrophobic room, with a whoosh of wind-sound like some dread blowing in from empty Gobi spaces, among maps, library books, diaries, junkfood, pornographic crime scene snapshots and a single, black, overflowing ashtray, these three men were as nervous as the hand-held cameras, as if their black coffee were full of amphetamines and spiders; as if God Himself were jerking them around. Pembleton, who is black, played Good Cop. Bayliss, who is white, played Bad Cop. Then, according to cop torque, they reversed themselves. This bearded "Arab," a fruit peddler whose fiancee dumped him, whose barn burned down, whose horse died, was attacked for his alcoholism, his polygraph readings, his lapsed Baptist church-going and his sexuality. About to crack, he struck back. To Pembleton: "You hate riggers like me 'cuz you hate the inner nigger...you hate being who you really are." To Bayliss: "You got your dark side and it terrifies you...You look into the mirror and all you see is an amateur." Finally, the cops got a confession, but not to the murder of the girl to whom "Arab," as if from the prodigal riches of Africa, had given peaches and pomegranates and an avocado: "I never touched her, not once." Yet this Adena was indeed "the one great love" of an old man's otherwise wasted life.
You may think the culture doesn't really need another cop show. I would personally prefer a weekly series in which social problems are solved through creative nonviolence after a Quaker meeting by a collective of vegetarian carpenters. But in a single hour that March, for which Tom Fontana eventually won the Emmy he deserved, I learned more about the behavior of fearful men in small rooms than I had from any number of better-known movies and serious plays and modern highbrow novels by the likes of Don DeLillo, Mary McCarthy, Alberto Moravia, Nadine Gordimer, Heinrich Boll and Doris Lessing.
This was an accident, as it usually is when those of us who watch TV like normal people are startled in our cool. We leave home expecting for a lot of money to be exalted, and almost never are. But staying put, wishing merely for a chortle or a pipe dream, suspecting that our cable box is just another bad-faith credit card enabling us to multiply our disappointments, we are ambushed into sentience. And not so much by "event" television, like Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage, originally a six-hour miniseries for Swedish TV; or Zeffirelli's 1984 Easter mass in Rome for Italian TV; or Marcel Ophuls's The Sorrow and the Pity, conceived for French TV; or Werner Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz, commissioned by German TV; or from Britain The Singing Detective and The Jewel in the Crown. On the contrary, we have stayed home on certain nights to watch TV, the way on other nights we will go out to a neighborhood restaurant, as if on Mondays we ordered in for laughs, whereas, on Fridays, we'd rather eat Italian.
And suddenly Napoleon shows up on Northern Exposure frozen like a Popsicle, while Chris reads Proust on the radio. Or Law & Order decides to mix up the World Trade Center bombing and the Branch Davidian firestorm, to suggest that not all terrorism is fundamentally Islamic. Or Roseanne is about joblessness and lesbianism as well as bowling. Or Picket Fences has moved on from elephant abuse and gay-bashing to euthanasia and the Supreme Court. Or, on Mystery, there is enough static cling between Inspector Morse and Zoe Wanamaker to hydroelectrify the Yangtze. On The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, no sooner has Indy finished consorting with Bolsheviks and Hemingways than he is being advised on his sexual confusions in Vienna by Dr. Freud and Dr. Jung. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on Showtime! David "Masturbation" Mamet on TNT! Norman Mailer wrote the teleplay for The Executioner's Song, and Gore Vidal gave us Lincoln with Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Todd. In just the last decade, if I hadn't been watching TV, I'd have missed Tanner '88, in which Robert Altman and Garry Trudeau ran Michael Murphy for president; A Very British Coup, during which socialists and Mozart took over England; My Name Is Bill W. with James Woods as a founding father of Alcoholics Anonymous; Roe v. Wade with Holly Hunter as a Supreme Court case; The Final Days with Theodore Bikel as Henry Kissinger; Common Threads on the AIDS quilt; No Place Like Home, where there wasn't one for Jeff Daniels and Christine Lahti, as there hadn't been for Jane Fonda in The Dollmaker or Mare Winningham in God Bless the Child; those two home movies on America's second Civil War, Eyes on the Prize; Sensibility and Sense, with the astonishing Elaine Stritch in Richard Nelson's post mortem on Mary McCarthy, Lillian Hellman and Diana Trilling; Separate but Equal, with Sidney Poitier as Thurgood Marshall; Seize the Day, the Robin Williams riff on Saul Bellow; Mother Love, with Diana Rigg warming up for the Medea she'd bring to Broadway; High Crimes & Misdemeanors, Bill Moyers' special on Irangate and the scandal of our intelligence agencies; Sessions, in which Billy Crystal used Elliott Gould to bite psychoanalysis in its pineal gland; not only Mastergate, Larry Gelbart's deconstruction of the Reagan-Babar text, but also Barbarians at the Gate, his sendup of vulture capitalism; Daughters of the Dust, Julie Dash's painterly meditation on Gullah culture off the Carolina coast; The Boys of St. Vincent, about the sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests of Canadian orphans; a Caine Mutiny Court Martial set by Robert Altman on a basketball court; a half-dozen Prime Suspects; plus Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, Bette Midler's Gypsy, Graham Greene, Philip Roth, John Updike, Gloria Naylor, George Eliot, Arthur Miller, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Paul Simon and Stephen Sondheim. Not to mention those hoots without which any pop culture is as tedious as Anais Nin--like Liz Taylor in Sweet Bird of Youth, the Redgrave sisters in a remake of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, and the loony episode of The X-Files in which a turbanned cult of vegetarians was blamed for kidnapping and terrorizing farm-town teenagers who turned out to have been doped with alien DNA disguised as bovine growth hormone.
What all this television has in common is narrative. Even network news--which used to be better than most newspapers before the bean counters started closing down overseas bureaus and the red camera lights went out all over Europe and Asia and Africa--is in the story-telling business. And what do we know about narrative? Well, we know what German novelist Christa Wolf told us in Cassandra. "Only the advent of property, hierarchy, and patriarchy extracts a blood-red thread from the fabric of human life...and this thread is amplified at the expense of the web as a whole, at the expense of its uniformity. The blood-red thread is the narrative and struggle and victory of the heroes, or their doom. The plot is born." And we also know what Don DeLillo told us in Libra: "There is a tendency of plots to move toward death.... the idea of death is woven into the nature of every plot. A narrative plot no less than a conspiracy of armed men. The tighter the plot of the story, the more likely it will come to death."
In other words, either the Old Testament or the Iliad was the first western and the Mahabharata was no less bloody-minded. Think of Troy and Masada as warm-ups for the Alamo. This frontier sex and violence stuff runs deep--from Hannibal, to Attila, to El Cid, to Sergio Leone. What all westerns have always been about is clout, turf, sexual property rights and how to look good dying. So, too, can the typical movie-of-the-week and miniseries be said to derive comfortably from the worldview of antiquity: from Ovid or Sophocles. At least since the marriage of Cadmus to Harmony, abduction and rape were not only what gods did constantly to mortals, but also the principal form of East-West cultural exchange in the ancient world, with Europa and Io and Medea and the Argonauts, poor Helen stolen, first by Theseus and later on by Paris of Troy, Ariadne in Argos and Naxos and Persephone in the underworld. But so far nobody in Congress or the Justice Department has suggested a Brady Ban on myth and legend.
Because I watch all those despised network TV movies, I know more about racism, ecology, homelessness, gun control, child abuse, AIDS, gender confusion and rape than is dreamed of by, say, Katie Roiphe, the Joyce Maynard of Generation X, or than Hollywood ever bothered to tell me, especially about AIDS. Because I've followed many of my favorite series over months, years and even, in reruns, decades, I have a lively sense of just what television has been trying to tell us about common decency, civil discourse and social justice. I am not one of those newspaper or magazine critics who think they're better than TV and should really be writing about something more important--the theater, say, or foreign policy--and who bring to their drudge a condescension like a prophylactic. Nor am I one of those swinging postmodernists who wear Heidegger safari jackets, Foucault platform heels, Lacan epaulets and a Walter Benjamin boutonniere to every faculty meeting as if it were a Paris Commune, for whom TV is a convenient opportunity to assert that the Enlightenment was a lie; that causality, continuity, history and morality are delusions; that such "master-narratives" as scientific progress, class struggle and the Oedipus complex are bankrupt; that books, films, comic strips, advertisements, TV programs and even authors themselves are "socially constructed" compost heaps of previous texts, at best unwilling stooges and at worst bad-faith purveyors of a "dominant discourse"; and that the rest of us, readers and watchers, are likewise each the helpless vector of forces we can't even locate much less modify, stuck in spectacle and juxtaposition, "life-styles" and language games, allegory and aesthetics. In my opinion, long before postmodernism, there had always been the blues. And on retro television, the Enlightenment is far from dead. Like the parent of any child, TV behaves as if we could assuage those blues. This book is about what we actually see on television, how we go about seeing it, why we'd want to and whether the meanings we attach so feverishly to our spectatorship are accurate, much less interesting. I argue that TV, however much a creature of the fastbuck media monopolies and quarterly-dividend greedhead crowd, is full of surprising gravity and grace; that where it departs in any significant way from the tenacious norms of the pop culture that long ago preceded it and still today surrounds it, those departures have been open of mind and generous of heart if also wishful and naive; and that we'd actually be a kinder, gentler, healthier nation if in fact we embraced the scruples and imitated the behaviors recommended by most entertainment programs--more welcoming of diversity and difference, more impatient with the routine brutalities of a master class and a mass society, more of a community than an agglomeration of market segments and seething sects.
We were a violent culture before TV, from Wounded Knee to lynching bees, with a bloodier labor history than most any other nation in the industrialized world. Slave rebellions, railroad strikes, mountain blood feuds, night riders, vigilantes, and, from 1830 on, urban mobs rioting against Negroes, Catholics, Jews, Chinese, abolitionists and the draft...the Knights of Labor and the Ku Klux Klan...the Haymarket riot, the Homestead strike, Harlan County and the Black Hole of Ludlow...Rangers, Pinkertons, Jayhawks, Blacklegs, Flatheads and Slickers...Liberty Boys, Molly Maguires, Regulators, White Caps, Bald Knobbers, Know Nothings, Copperheads...Tulsa, East St. Louis, Cincinnati, Detroit, Harlem, Newark and Watts...the Ghost Dance Wars and the Mountain Meadows Massacre...Hell's Angels and Black Panthers...Attica and Altamont. Before television, we blamed our public schools for what went wrong with the little people, back when classrooms weren't overcrowded, in buildings that weren't falling down, in neighborhoods that didn't resemble Beirut, and whose fault is that? The A-Team? We can't control guns, or drugs; and two million American women are annually assaulted by their male partners, usually in an alcoholic rage; and three million children under the age of three, one quarter of our infants and toddlers, grow up each year in poverty without adequate adult supervision, intellectual stimulation, a decent diet or health care. Whose fault is that, Miami Vice? The gangbangers menacing our city streets aren't home watching Cinemax. Neither are the psychopaths who make bonfires in our parks of our homeless, of whom there are another million, a supply-side migratory tide of the deindustrialized and dispossessed, angry beggars, refugee children and catatonic nomads, none of them traumatized by Twin Peaks. (They were traumatized instead by down-sizing light manufacturers and utilities companies, by the flight of capital to third-world sweatshops and by baby tycoons in the real estate racket who wanted their neighborhoods for condo conversion.) So cut Medicare and kick around the Brady Bill; sacrifice music appreciation, arts education, chess clubs and computer classes at P.S. 69, so that property taxes will never go up on those summer homes from which, in letters to Janes and Fritz, we animadvert TV movies about Amy Fisher and commercials for killer sneakers. But children who were loved and protected long enough to grow up liking themselves as adolescents and young adults, in a society where schools prepared them to find jobs with a particle of meaning, wouldn't riot in the streets. Ours is a buck-grubbing, status-grabbing, commodity-obsessed tantrum-yoga culture that measures everyone by his or her ability to produce wealth, and morally condemns anyone who fails to prosper, and blames its own angry incoherence on the very medium that faithfully reflects these appalling values. Why not wrathful gods, recessive genes or Arab terrorists? The Mafia, the zodiac or the elders of Zion? Probability theory, demonic possession, original sin? Alien abduction! Madonna! Tofu! And, of course, the Designated Hitter in American League baseball.
In the Great Depression year of 1933, there were 9.7 homicides per 100,000 Americans, an all-time high until the 1990s, when--after a doubling in two decades of teen joblessness--the murder rate reached 10 per 100,000. Can it be that poverty contributes to violence? TV certainly thinks so. It's suspicious too of war, since the far-off killing fields are such excellent training for the unlicensed violence of everyday life. How odd that while the rest of the popular culture still loves war, in comic books, country music and Rambo movies, on series television since the late-sixties demise of Combat and Rat Patrol, what war has looked like is M*A*S*H and China Beach. When a reporter like Michael Herr went to Vietnam, as if Dante had gone to hell with a cassette recording of Jimi Hendrix and a pocket full of pills, he found our first rock and-roll war, some "speeding brilliance" and "all the dread ever known." A black paratrooper told him, "I been scaled, man, I'm smooth now." "Disgust," wrote Herr, "was only one color in the whole mandala, gentleness and pity were other colors, there wasn't a color left out. I think Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods." When a novelist like Robert Stone went to Vietnam, he found "cooking oil, excrement, incense, death...the green places of the world on fire...a kind of moral fascination." One character explained: "When I decide what happened, I'll decide to live with it." When moviemakers Michael Cimino, Francis Ford Coppola, Oliver Stone and Brian De Palma went to Vietnam, they found a splatter-painted Jackson Pollock mandala--streaks of brilliance, trickles of dread, childhood, hell and Joseph Conrad. And when network television went to Vietnam, what it found was China Beach--a dream ward where the wounded went after the jungle. In the jungle were the ghosts: unknowable history. On the beach, if the wounded were lucky, there was music and booze and they would be patched up by the black Irish nurse McMurphy (Dana Delany). Or they would buy the services of K.C. (Marg Helgenberger). If they weren't so lucky, they met Beckett (Michael Boatman), a dark prince of body-bags. On China Beach, as in any community beseeching an absent God, they had learned to live with what happened through pagan ritual. When Miss America refused to visit them, they staged their own mock beauty pageant. When Dr. Richards's stateside ex-wife remarried, they staged a "black unwedding," part Templar mystification, part Viking burial and part Wagnernian bonfire. When McMurphy was captured by the Viet Cong and forced to operate on the enemy, in a candlelit underground tunnel, we saw suddenly in those catacombs something like a sacrament. And they took the war with them wherever they went after Vietnam, to biker bars and Republican conventions and an Indian reservation, where McMurphy stopped drinking; to Hong Kong, where K.C. disappeared into her money, after the fall of Saigon and the parcel-posting of her child; to Montana, where Dodger found God in a converted school bus; and finally, all of them, after a reunion to mourn the loss of their innocence, their youth, faith, purpose, intensity of feeling and vanished community, after circling and staring and stuttering their emotions, after posing for snapshots and hiding in lavatories and singing a strange anthem and fighting off flashbacks that arrived like seizures, color-saturated, as if the past were modern art and the future merely television--to the black marble wall of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.
A medium capable of China Beach, M*A*S*H, St. Elsewhere, Northern Exposure, Homicide and The X-Files has less to be ashamed of than many of its critics do, and most of its competition. Nor has it taught us how to hurt each other.
Violence, television, culture and America are all lots more complicated. A friend of mine, a professional musician, attributes the recent quadrupling of young females who have chosen in our schools to learn to play the saxophone to the fact that the cartoon character Lisa plays one on The Simpsons. After more than a quarter century of writing about the medium, it is my strong feeling that--except by accident, and in conjunction with various other fevers of the swampy moment, complicated by the vessel of desires and desperations we bring to our watching as individuals and social subsets, compounded and confounded by power relationships and interlocking monopolies in the commodity culture that X-Files FBI agent Fox Mulder has so memorably called a "military-industrial-entertainment complex" and in the larger society of which that complex is a nervous component, a dependent ward and a fax machine--television is not a Pandora's box, an hallucinogen, an erogenous zone, a Leninist plot, Prozac or the dark side. Partly a window and partly a mirror, and allowing for the messy software in our own systems as we sit down to process what we see, TV more resembles a household pet, like a loyal retriever, or a kitchen appliance, like a microwave oven, a vacuum cleaner, an Exercycle or a night-light, as well as a department store and amusement park. We gather like Druids to partake of blue magnetic light, in various states of readiness. We are at times just curious: an Oscar or a Super Bowl. We are at times compelled: a Watergate or Berlin Wall. We may hope, at exalted moments like a moonshot, and on dreadful occasions like an assassination, to experience some virtual community as a nation--message center mission control, Big Neighbor and electronic Elmer's Glue-All. But more often we go to television because we're hungry, angry, lonely or tired. And TV will always be there for us, a twenty-four-hour user-friendly magic muffinmaker, grinding out narrative, novelty, empathy and distraction; news and laughs; snippets of high culture, remedial seriousness and vulgar celebrity; a place to celebrate and a place to mourn; a circus and a wishing well.
Smoke and Mirrors: Violence, Television, and Other American Cultures
Smoke and Mirrors: Violence, Television, and Other American Cultures
By JOHN LEONARD
The New Press
Read the Review
Introduction:
Why Are We Meeting
Like This?
In the summer and fall of 1993, like Sumer warrior kings, daubed with sesame oil, gorged on scapegoat, hefting swords and hurling anathemas, the attorney general of the United States, a tripleheader of headline-hungry senators and a noisy cohort of underemployed busybodies in the private sector--social scientists, tabloid columnists, antidefamation pressure groupies, religious sectarians--stormed Burbank, California, as if it were Waco, Texas. According to Janet Reno, Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, Daniel Inouye, Paul Simon and the moralizing coalitions to which they pandered, we hurt one another because of...television! From a ziggurat in fabled Ur, Fritz warned readers of The New York Times: "If the TV and cable industries have no sense of shame, we must take it upon ourselves to stop licensing their violence-saturated programming."
Never mind that Fritz himself voted against the Brady Bill to restrict the sale of handguns. (Guns don't kill people; television does.) WHAT IN THE FUCKING HELL HAS THAT GOT TO DO WITH ANYTING. GUNS AND TELEVISION KILL PEOPLE YOU STUPID LYING FUCKING BASTARD.
the talking heads--a professor here, a producer there, a child psychologist and a network veep for program standards--couldn't even agree on what they meant by "violence." (Is it only bad if it hurts or kills?)
THAT'S STUPID. OF COURSE THEY DISAGREE. THEY ARE FULL OF SHIT. JUST LIKE YOU.
Hollings and Inouye were co-sponsors in the Senate of a bill to ban any act of violence on television before midnight
SO THEIR BILL IS STUPID AND WRITTEN WRONG.
Networks couldn't sell their millions of pairs of eyes to advertising agencies EVEN THAT ISNT TRUE. NOBODY KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ADVERTISINT. EH THEY JUST KNOW IF THEY STOP, THE COMPETITION MIGHT CATCH UP. IT COULD ALL BE A HOAX. THERES NO WAY TO MEASURE IT. OUTSIDE OF REAL TIME DRAMA LIKE NEWS AND SPORTS, EVERYTHING ELSE HAS BECOME TEN TO FIFTY PERCENT TIVOED BY THE TOP THIRTY PERCENT OF CONSUMERS. LIE TO ME ABOUT THAT IF YOU WANT, YOU MIGHT EVEN FOOL ME OR INTIMIDATE ME, BUT FUCK YOU.
Nor on which was worse, a "happy" violence that sugar-coats aggressive behavior or a "graphic" violence that at least suggests there are consequences. (How, anyway, does TV manage somehow simultaneously to desensitize but also exacerbate; to sedate but also incite?) Nor were they really sure what goes on in the dreamy heads of our cabbage-patch children as they crouch in the dark to commune with the tube, while their parents, if they have any, aren't around. (Roadrunner? Beep beep.) Nor does a "viewer discretion" advisory apply to cartoons and soaps, pro hockey (white men beating up on one another), pro basketball (black men beating up on one another), Sarajevo or Oklahoma City.
SO THAT'S IT. YOU'RE RIGHT AND I'M WRONG. ALL THAT VIOLENCE HAS NO EFFECT. THE KIDS ARE STRONG, AS EISNER OF POST MODERN DISNEY SAID, FORGETTABLY. BUT IT IS A VILE STATEMENT. WHAT IN THE FUCK DOES ANYONE KNOW ABOUT THE MIND. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Bob Dole jumped on the sex-and-violence ban wagon with an attack on the vampire media elite, and William Bennett, former secretary of virtue in Ronald Reagan's Caligari cabinet, assigned himself to trash patrol among the blabbermouth Geraldos. Upon the signing into law of the 1996 Telecommunications Bill just in time for Valentine's Day, the front page of The New York Times reported an agreement among the four major networks to establish their very own ratings system, since PG, R and X seemed to work so wonderfully well for the Motion Picture Association of America. Simultaneously, without a single hearing to educate itself on the intricacies and intimacies of Internet, Congress voted in the Communications Decency Act to ban from cyberspace speech that was otherwise publishable in books, magazines and newspapers. Off-color? Not on our line. Hardcore? Not in our software.
WOW. COMEDY. THAT'S. REALLY FUNNY. NOT IN OUR SOFTWARE. DON'T GO THERE.
And suddenly Napoleon shows up on Northern Exposure frozen like a Popsicle, while Chris reads Proust on the radio. Or Law & Order decides to mix up the World Trade Center bombing and the Branch Davidian firestorm, to suggest that not all terrorism is fundamentally Islamic. Or Roseanne is about joblessness and lesbianism as well as bowling. Or Picket Fences has moved on from elephant abuse and gay-bashing to euthanasia and the Supreme Court. Or,
OK I GET IT, NOBODY HAS A SOLUTION, AND YOU USE THAT TO SOMEHOW PROVE THERE IS NO PROBLEM.
Violence, television, culture and America are all lots more complicated. A friend of mine, a professional musician, attributes the recent quadrupling of young females who have chosen in our schools to learn to play the saxophone to the fact that the cartoon character Lisa plays one on The Simpsons.
HE'S RIGHT, AND THE SAME GOES FOR A CRIME BY COPYCAT. THAT'S PROOF ENOUGHT FOR ME, BUT FUCK YOU, YOU DONT SEE IT. LOOK CLOSER. GIRLS PLAY SAXAPHONE, AND HOW MANY BOYS SNEAK OUT AND GO DOWNTOWN TO HAVE AN ADVENTURE??? NO MATH POSSIBLE THERE, BUT DON'T YOU THINK IT'S LIKELY.
OF COURSE YOU DO, BUT YOU'RE A CLASSICAL CONSERVATIVE, WHO KNOWS THAT DARWIN RULES, AND THAT MOST OF YOUR CHILDREN CAN BE BOUGHT OFF WITH ALLOWANCE AND WITHHOLDING, AND THE ONES WHO DON'T WILL AT LEAST HAVE GOOD CARE IN LIFELONG RREHAB AT THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND A YEAR, CHICKEN FEED TO THE WEALTHY. SO FUCK YOU.
WHILE THE POOR CAN'T, WHICH IS WHY THEY STINKS. THE POOR I MEAN.
sex-and-violence ban wagon
HEY, CLEVER. BAN WAGON. GET IT.
Those of us who suspect that a V chip will be about as helpful in reducing violence in the society as student uniforms are likely to be in reversing the decline of the public schools find ourselves in a strident minority.
WELL, GUESS WHAT, DEGLAMORIZING KIDS WORKED. ASK ANY TEACHEER ABOUT THE LONG RANGE EFFECTS OF UNIFORMS. IT WORKS AND CONTINUES TO WORK. AND IF YOU EXPERI=MENTED AND HAD ALL SAXIPHONE RELATED SIMPSON SHOWS REMOVED, I WILL FUCKING BET YOU SAXIPHONE SALES WILL GO DOWN AGAIN.
IDIOT. ADVERTISING EFFECTS, BUT DRAMA DOESN'T?? OF COURSE YOU ARE LYING. I FORGOT WHAT A CREEPY CONSERVATIVE ANTI HUMAN ETHIC YOU REPRESENT. \
ANOTHER DUMB ARGUMENT;
JAPANESE watch more television than we do (and you should also see their snuff movies and pornographic comic books), but their per capita rate for murder and rape is little league compared to ours.
AND BY THE WAY. THAT MIGHT NOT EVEN BE TRUE. MAYBE THEY WATCH LESS TELEVISION THAN WE DO, I MEAN, REALLY, WATCH. MAYBE THEY WATCH LIGHTLY AS A CULTURE, WHILE WE WATCH FULL BORE. EVER THINK OF THAT.
IN ANY CASE, FUCK YOU.
It is as preposterous to believe that all entertainment is hypodermic, directly injecting bad ideas into the innocent bloodstream of the passive masses, as it is to pretend that all behavior is mimetic and that our only models are Eliot Ness or Dirty Harry. What about Mr. Rogers and Jessica Fletcher? Every fifties sitcom celebrated the two-parent nuclear family, and the divorce rate soared. The most popular program in the eighties was The Cosby Show, and race relations have never been worse. Until 1996, every television movie and every episode of a dramatic series that ever contemplated capital punishment ended up opposing the death penalty, yet a bloodlust rose throughout the nation and we're happily back dispensing divine justice. Why, after so much M*A*S*H every week for seven years in prime time and every night in reruns ever since, aren't all of us tree-hugging wiseguy pacifists?
directly injecting bad ideas into the innocent bloodstream of the passive masses... SEE THAT'S A FALLACY, FALSLY DESCRIBING OUR ARGUMENTS TO BE ALL OR NOTHING. NO, WE HAVE A LOT OF NUANCES HERE. AND CLAIMING OUR POINT OF VIEW IS NOT NUANCED IS A GOOD HARVARD TRICK, BUT IT IS A TRICK FOR THE DUMBEST GUY ON THE JURY. SHAME ON YOU. NONE OF US ARE MAKING ANY SUCH BLANKET CLAIMS.
\
SO GO AHEAD, FUCK YOURSELF.
THAT IS JUST WRONG. NICE TRY. YOU ARE GOOD. BEST ARGUER AT HARVARD LAW. SO IT DOESN'T MATTER AS LONG AS YOU WIN. every night in reruns ever since, aren't all of us tree-hugging wiseguy pacifists? FUNNY, BUT YOU CAN'T MEASURE IT. LOOK AT THE SURGE OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AFTER COSBY.. YOU DON'T KNOW. SERIOUSLY, YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.
GUESS WHAT, THEIR TV STINKS. IT IS SILLY. WATCH IT SOMETIMES. THEY HAVE NO MORE TALENT FOR DRAMA THAN FOR MUSIC. ALL DERIVATIVE AND, INNEFECTUAL. AND, PLUS, THE JAPANESE ARE SO INSULAR AND MONOLITHIC, THEY ARE JUST.... LOOK, I DON'T WANT TO ANSWER THAT ONE PRETTY GOOD ARGUMENT. BUT THE DIFFERENCE IN CULTURES... NO LET ME TRY ANOTHER "ARGUMENT".. I DON'T CARE. IT EFFECTS AMERICANS, NOT JAPANESE. SO, THAT ISN'T ENOUGH TO BE A PROOF. IT'S IMPRESSIVE, BUT THE SAXAPHONE THING DOESNT GO AWAY.
Nor were they really sure what goes on in the dreamy heads of our cabbage-patch children as they crouch in the dark to commune with the tube, while their parents, if they have any, aren't around. (Roadrunner? Beep beep.) Nor does a "viewer discretion" advisory apply to cartoons and soaps, pro hockey (white men beating up on one another), pro basketball (black men beating up on one another), Sarajevo or Oklahoma City.
YOU CALL THAT AN ARGUMENT. ROAD RUNNEER. BASKETBALL IS NOT A BEAT DOWN, THAT IS RARE.
WHAT IN THE HELL KIND OF COCKAMAMIE ARGUMENT IS THAT. IT STINKS TO HIGH HEAVEN. FUCK YOU. CREEP. JERK. YOU DONT HAVE A CLUE. THIS IS JUST PROPAGANDA.
Those of us who suspect that a V chip will be about as helpful in reducing violence in the society as student uniforms are likely to be in reversing the decline of the public schools find ourselves in a strident minority.
Everybody else seems to agree that watching television causes antisocial behavior, especially among the children of the poor. That there is more violent programming over the air now than there ever was before. That Beavis and Butt-head inspired an Ohio five-year-old to burn down his family trailer. That in the crepuscular blue gray cathode glow we have spawned affectless toadstools, serial triffids, and cannibalistic rapist-killers. OF COURSE WE AGREE. IT STANDS TO REASON. AND DONT EXAGGERATE FOR EFFECT. TRIFFIDS, AFFECTLESS, CANNABLIISTIC, PLEASE. SPARE ME. CREPUSCULAR GLUE GRAY CATHODE GLOW. WOW, YOU SHURE KNOW A LOT. BUT FUCK YOU ANYWAY. IT'S ALL LIES.
WE CANNOT MEASURE ANY OF THIS, BUT BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD DIDNT EXIST FORTY YEARS AGO, AND SHOULD NEVER HAVE EXISTED BECAUSE OF THEIR POTENTIAL ROTTEN EFFECTS, POTENTIAL, AND SUSPECTED. AND WE TRIED EVERYTHING TO MAKE IT GO AWAY, BUT THE TREE HUGGERS, ER FREEDOM FIRST AMMENDMENT SHIT HEADS HAD THEIR WAY, AND THE POOR, YES THE POOR WERE DAMAMGED., AND INSTEAD OF BECOMING COMPETITION FOR OUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS, REMAINED IN THEIR FILTH. YES, I BELIEVE THAT. AND YOU DONT, AND WHO KNOWWWHO'S RIGHT.
I JUST THINK ALL THAT SHIT HAS A DAMAGING EFFECT ON THE POOR, AND THAT IS JUST FINE WITH EDMUND BURKE AND THE CRAZY ANTI EGALITARIAN FUCKHOLE CONSERVATIVES THAT LET THIS SHIT INTO THE AIRWAVES... YES, TO KEEP THE POOR DOWN.
HELL, THAT'S SO PREPOSTEROUS I DON'T EVEN THINK IT MAKES SENSE. BUT THEN AGAIN, IT HAS TO BE SAID.
AND FOR A MOMENT, LOOK AT THE VIDEO OF THE PLANE DISAPPEARING INTO THE TWIN TOWER, LIKE IT WAS MADE OF PUDDING. AND WONDER WHAT HAS TO BE CONTENANCED, CONSIDERED, IF NOT BELIEVED.
BUT THAT ASIDE, THIS ARTICLE IS STILL FULL OF CRAP.
In fact, except for hospital shows, there is less violence on network TV than there used to be.
RIGHT. ANOTHER CLAIM I'M SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE.
Because of ratings, sitcoms predominate. And the worst stuff is Hollywood splatter flicks on premium cable, which the poor are less likely to watch. Everywhere else on cable, not counting Court TV, home shopping and the perpetual-motion loop of Ted Turner's westerns, and not even to think about blood sports or Pat Robertson, the fare is wholesome to the verge of stupefaction: Disney, Discovery, Learning, Family, History, Nashville, Nickelodeon.
Smoke and Mirrors: Violence, Television, and Other American Cultures
By JOHN LEONARD
The New Press
Read the Review
Introduction:
Why Are We Meeting
Like This?
In the summer and fall of 1993, like Sumer warrior kings, daubed with sesame oil, gorged on scapegoat, hefting swords and hurling anathemas, the attorney general of the United States, a tripleheader of headline-hungry senators and a noisy cohort of underemployed busybodies in the private sector--social scientists, tabloid columnists, antidefamation pressure groupies, religious sectarians--stormed Burbank, California, as if it were Waco, Texas. According to Janet Reno, Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, Daniel Inouye, Paul Simon and the moralizing coalitions to which they pandered, we hurt one another because of...television! From a ziggurat in fabled Ur, Fritz warned readers of The New York Times: "If the TV and cable industries have no sense of shame, we must take it upon ourselves to stop licensing their violence-saturated programming."
Hollings and Inouye were co-sponsors in the Senate of a bill to ban any act of violence on television before midnight. Never mind whether this was constitutional, nor what it would do to the local news. Never mind that Fritz himself voted against the Brady Bill to restrict the sale of handguns. (Guns don't kill people; television does.) Never mind, either, that in Los Angeles that August, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, in front of six-hundred industry executives and a live CNN audience, the talking heads--a professor here, a producer there, a child psychologist and a network veep for program standards--couldn't even agree on what they meant by "violence." (Is it only bad if it hurts or kills?) Nor on which was worse, a "happy" violence that sugar-coats aggressive behavior or a "graphic" violence that at least suggests there are consequences. (How, anyway, does TV manage somehow simultaneously to desensitize but also exacerbate; to sedate but also incite?) Nor were they really sure what goes on in the dreamy heads of our cabbage-patch children as they crouch in the dark to commune with the tube, while their parents, if they have any, aren't around. (Roadrunner? Beep beep.) Nor does a "viewer discretion" advisory apply to cartoons and soaps, pro hockey (white men beating up on one another), pro basketball (black men beating up on one another), Sarajevo or Oklahoma City.
Momentarily, after the election of a guns-and-God Republican Congress in 1994--a Keystone Khmer Rouge pledged in its slash-and-burn Contract on America to cleanse Phnom Penh of every pointy-headed intellectual with a tutu in his closet, every parasitic lowlife painter who ever suckered a dime from the National Endowment, every third-world wetback here to steal a job and every child who was ever "difficult," not to mention their welfare mothers, crackhead fathers, shyster lawyers and other inconvenient codependents who ought instead to be growing rice and eating fish paste in the boondocks--the focus of tube-bashing switched from networks and cable, where "hidden persuaders" were accused of exploiting our vulgar appetite for blood and semen, to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, where "liberal elitists" were alleged to promote their ulterior agenda of multiculti/feminazi/gay-pride/socialized-medicine/performance art. But by late spring 1995, Bill Clinton had recovered enough initiative to endorse a "V" chip with which worried parents could zap their children prior to unhealthy programming, and, that summer, language actually mandating such zap technology when the manufacture of new TV sets was inserted into the Telecommunications Bill by both houses of Congress. By August, Fritz and friends were in full cry again about the "family hour." That fall, warming up for the presidential politics of 1996, Bob Dole jumped on the sex-and-violence ban wagon with an attack on the vampire media elite, and William Bennett, former secretary of virtue in Ronald Reagan's Caligari cabinet, assigned himself to trash patrol among the blabbermouth Geraldos. Upon the signing into law of the 1996 Telecommunications Bill just in time for Valentine's Day, the front page of The New York Times reported an agreement among the four major networks to establish their very own ratings system, since PG, R and X seemed to work so wonderfully well for the Motion Picture Association of America. Simultaneously, without a single hearing to educate itself on the intricacies and intimacies of Internet, Congress voted in the Communications Decency Act to ban from cyberspace speech that was otherwise publishable in books, magazines and newspapers. Off-color? Not on our line. Hardcore? Not in our software.
Those of us who suspect that a V chip will be about as helpful in reducing violence in the society as student uniforms are likely to be in reversing the decline of the public schools find ourselves in a strident minority. Everybody else seems to agree that watching television causes antisocial behavior, especially among the children of the poor. That there is more violent programming over the air now than there ever was before. That Beavis and Butt-head inspired an Ohio five-year-old to burn down his family trailer. That in the crepuscular blue gray cathode glow we have spawned affectless toadstools, serial triffids, and cannibalistic rapist-killers.
In fact, except for hospital shows, there is less violence on network TV than there used to be. Because of ratings, sitcoms predominate. And the worst stuff is Hollywood splatter flicks on premium cable, which the poor are less likely to watch. Everywhere else on cable, not counting Court TV, home shopping and the perpetual-motion loop of Ted Turner's westerns, and not even to think about blood sports or Pat Robertson, the fare is wholesome to the verge of stupefaction: Disney, Discovery, Learning, Family, History, Nashville, Nickelodeon. Since his Ohio trailer wasn't even wired for cable, the littlest firebird must have got his MTV elsewhere in the dangerous neighborhood. Besides, kids have played with matches since at least Prometheus. (I burned down my own bedroom when I was five years old. The fire department had to tell my mother.) And far from sitting at home like lumps of Spam, "narcotized by hegemonic manipulations of symbolic reality," as an academician put it, more Americans than ever before go out to eat in restaurants, see films, plays, and baseball games, visit museums, travel abroad, even jog. Even when we are watching TV, we do something else at the same time. While our kids play with their Quicktime software, Adobe Illustrators, Vidicraft CCU 120 Commercial Cutters and Domark Virtual Reality Toolkits, the rest of us eat, knit, smoke, dream, read magazines, sign checks, feel sorry for ourselves, think about Hillary and plot shrewd career moves or revenge.
Actually watching TV, unless it's C-SPAN, is usually more interesting than the proceedings of Congress--or what we read in hysterical books like Jerry Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, George Gilder's Life After Television, Marie Winn's The Plug-in Drug, Neal Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and Bill McKibben's
The Age of Missing Information. Or what we'll hear at panel discussions on censorship, where rightwingers worry about sex and leftwingers worry about violence. Or at symposia on "The Apocalypse Trope in Television News" and seminars on "Postmodern Transgressions, Gender-Bending and Unkindness to Small Animals in Heavy Metal Music Videos." Or lolling around the academic deep-think tank, trading mantras like "frame analysis" (Erving Goffman), "fake realism," (T.W. Adorno), "processed culture" (Richard Hoggart), "waning of affect" (Fredric Jameson), "social facsimile" (Kenneth Gergen), "violence profiles" (George Gerbner), "iconography of rooms" (Horace Newcomb), "narcoleptic joy" (Michael Sorkin), "glass teat" (Harlan Ellison) "thalidomide" (Robert Bly) and "masturbation" (Michael Arlen, Allan Bloom, David Mamet). Down among the mad hatters of critical theory, you'd think the looking glass was somehow entropic, a heat-death of the culture.
Of course, something happens to us when we watch television. Networks couldn't sell their millions of pairs of eyes to advertising agencies (at an amazing $40,000 for every second of the 1996 Super Bowl) nor would those agencies buy more than $150 billion worth of ad space and commercial time per annum if speech did not somehow modify behavior. But what happens is usually fuzzy, and won't be greatly clarified by lab studies, however longitudinal, of habits and behaviors isolated from the larger feedback loop and echo chamber of a culture full of gaudy contradictions. We are at least as imprecise in front of our talking furniture as Heisenberg was uncertain contemplating quanta. It is as preposterous to believe that all entertainment is hypodermic, directly injecting bad ideas into the innocent bloodstream of the passive masses, as it is to pretend that all behavior is mimetic and that our only models are Eliot Ness or Dirty Harry. What about Mr. Rogers and Jessica Fletcher? Every fifties sitcom celebrated the two-parent nuclear family, and the divorce rate soared. The most popular program in the eighties was The Cosby Show, and race relations have never been worse. Until 1996, every television movie and every episode of a dramatic series that ever contemplated capital punishment ended up opposing the death penalty, yet a bloodlust rose throughout the nation and we're happily back dispensing divine justice. Why, after so much M*A*S*H every week for seven years in prime time and every night in reruns ever since, aren't all of us tree-hugging wiseguy pacifists?
And while the brief of this book is less than imperial, it's worth noting a few discrepancies abroad. Japan is the only country in the world where they watch more television than we do (and you should also see their snuff movies and pornographic comic books), but their per capita rate for murder and rape is little league compared to ours. Some Indian critics earlier this decade sought to blame the surge in communal violence on a state-run television series dramatizing the Mahabharata. But many of the same critics had earlier blamed a fatwa-afflicted Salman Rushdie for subcontinental bloodletting, as in Bangladesh they recently sought to pin the rap on novelist Taslima Nasrin. (Since Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu, and Indira by her Sikh bodyguards, and Rajiv by Tamil separatists, maybe organized religion causes violence, in Belfast as well as East Timor.) No one blames German TV for neo-Nazi skinhead violence against Turkish migrant workers. Nor does anyone blame Lucille Ball for what Idi Amin did to Uganda, even when an entire video library of her sitcoms was discovered in the palace vault after he was deposed. Czech TV deserves partial credit for the Velvet Revolution, but not as much as Havel or Gorbachev. Though the mullahs in Iran complain about Baywatch by jiggle relay from the Great Satan, and the Ministry of Culture in Vietnam has banned videotapes of American TV programs as well as copies of Paris Match containing a photograph of model Naomi Campbell's bare breasts, Teheran and Hanoi are no more fun now than they were in the days of SAVAK and Ho. (There is, as a matter of fact, more pornography and less violence against women in Holland than anywhere else in the western world, while the exact opposite is true in Thailand.) And while Yugoslavia's disintegration may have been encouraged by hate television in several of the republics, we also know from the remarkable novels of Milorad Pavic that behind the eyes of every Serb there has been, for seven centuries, a rerun of the Battle of Kosovo, where the Ottomans died in Lazar.
But nobody normal watches TV the way attorneys general, congressmen, symposiasts and McKibbens do. McKibben and his friends taped 1,700 hours of television, on a single 24-hour day, on all 93 channels of a Maryland cable system. He spent six months watching all this tape, after which he took an Adirondacks hike. And then he wrote his book, explaining that television dumbs the Republic. What a guy. The rest of us must be less thrilling.
For instance: In a March, 1993, episode of Homicide, written by Tom Fontana and directed by Martin Campbell, Baltimore police detectives Bayliss (Kyle Secor) and Pembleton (Andre Braugher) had twelve hours to wring a confession out of "Arab" Tucker (Moses Gunn), for the strangulation and disembowelling of an eleven-year-old girl. In the dirty light and appalling intimacy of a single claustrophobic room, with a whoosh of wind-sound like some dread blowing in from empty Gobi spaces, among maps, library books, diaries, junkfood, pornographic crime scene snapshots and a single, black, overflowing ashtray, these three men were as nervous as the hand-held cameras, as if their black coffee were full of amphetamines and spiders; as if God Himself were jerking them around. Pembleton, who is black, played Good Cop. Bayliss, who is white, played Bad Cop. Then, according to cop torque, they reversed themselves. This bearded "Arab," a fruit peddler whose fiancee dumped him, whose barn burned down, whose horse died, was attacked for his alcoholism, his polygraph readings, his lapsed Baptist church-going and his sexuality. About to crack, he struck back. To Pembleton: "You hate riggers like me 'cuz you hate the inner nigger...you hate being who you really are." To Bayliss: "You got your dark side and it terrifies you...You look into the mirror and all you see is an amateur." Finally, the cops got a confession, but not to the murder of the girl to whom "Arab," as if from the prodigal riches of Africa, had given peaches and pomegranates and an avocado: "I never touched her, not once." Yet this Adena was indeed "the one great love" of an old man's otherwise wasted life.
You may think the culture doesn't really need another cop show. I would personally prefer a weekly series in which social problems are solved through creative nonviolence after a Quaker meeting by a collective of vegetarian carpenters. But in a single hour that March, for which Tom Fontana eventually won the Emmy he deserved, I learned more about the behavior of fearful men in small rooms than I had from any number of better-known movies and serious plays and modern highbrow novels by the likes of Don DeLillo, Mary McCarthy, Alberto Moravia, Nadine Gordimer, Heinrich Boll and Doris Lessing.
This was an accident, as it usually is when those of us who watch TV like normal people are startled in our cool. We leave home expecting for a lot of money to be exalted, and almost never are. But staying put, wishing merely for a chortle or a pipe dream, suspecting that our cable box is just another bad-faith credit card enabling us to multiply our disappointments, we are ambushed into sentience. And not so much by "event" television, like Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage, originally a six-hour miniseries for Swedish TV; or Zeffirelli's 1984 Easter mass in Rome for Italian TV; or Marcel Ophuls's The Sorrow and the Pity, conceived for French TV; or Werner Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz, commissioned by German TV; or from Britain The Singing Detective and The Jewel in the Crown. On the contrary, we have stayed home on certain nights to watch TV, the way on other nights we will go out to a neighborhood restaurant, as if on Mondays we ordered in for laughs, whereas, on Fridays, we'd rather eat Italian.
And suddenly Napoleon shows up on Northern Exposure frozen like a Popsicle, while Chris reads Proust on the radio. Or Law & Order decides to mix up the World Trade Center bombing and the Branch Davidian firestorm, to suggest that not all terrorism is fundamentally Islamic. Or Roseanne is about joblessness and lesbianism as well as bowling. Or Picket Fences has moved on from elephant abuse and gay-bashing to euthanasia and the Supreme Court. Or, on Mystery, there is enough static cling between Inspector Morse and Zoe Wanamaker to hydroelectrify the Yangtze. On The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, no sooner has Indy finished consorting with Bolsheviks and Hemingways than he is being advised on his sexual confusions in Vienna by Dr. Freud and Dr. Jung. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on Showtime! David "Masturbation" Mamet on TNT! Norman Mailer wrote the teleplay for The Executioner's Song, and Gore Vidal gave us Lincoln with Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Todd. In just the last decade, if I hadn't been watching TV, I'd have missed Tanner '88, in which Robert Altman and Garry Trudeau ran Michael Murphy for president; A Very British Coup, during which socialists and Mozart took over England; My Name Is Bill W. with James Woods as a founding father of Alcoholics Anonymous; Roe v. Wade with Holly Hunter as a Supreme Court case; The Final Days with Theodore Bikel as Henry Kissinger; Common Threads on the AIDS quilt; No Place Like Home, where there wasn't one for Jeff Daniels and Christine Lahti, as there hadn't been for Jane Fonda in The Dollmaker or Mare Winningham in God Bless the Child; those two home movies on America's second Civil War, Eyes on the Prize; Sensibility and Sense, with the astonishing Elaine Stritch in Richard Nelson's post mortem on Mary McCarthy, Lillian Hellman and Diana Trilling; Separate but Equal, with Sidney Poitier as Thurgood Marshall; Seize the Day, the Robin Williams riff on Saul Bellow; Mother Love, with Diana Rigg warming up for the Medea she'd bring to Broadway; High Crimes & Misdemeanors, Bill Moyers' special on Irangate and the scandal of our intelligence agencies; Sessions, in which Billy Crystal used Elliott Gould to bite psychoanalysis in its pineal gland; not only Mastergate, Larry Gelbart's deconstruction of the Reagan-Babar text, but also Barbarians at the Gate, his sendup of vulture capitalism; Daughters of the Dust, Julie Dash's painterly meditation on Gullah culture off the Carolina coast; The Boys of St. Vincent, about the sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests of Canadian orphans; a Caine Mutiny Court Martial set by Robert Altman on a basketball court; a half-dozen Prime Suspects; plus Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, Bette Midler's Gypsy, Graham Greene, Philip Roth, John Updike, Gloria Naylor, George Eliot, Arthur Miller, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Paul Simon and Stephen Sondheim. Not to mention those hoots without which any pop culture is as tedious as Anais Nin--like Liz Taylor in Sweet Bird of Youth, the Redgrave sisters in a remake of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, and the loony episode of The X-Files in which a turbanned cult of vegetarians was blamed for kidnapping and terrorizing farm-town teenagers who turned out to have been doped with alien DNA disguised as bovine growth hormone.
What all this television has in common is narrative. Even network news--which used to be better than most newspapers before the bean counters started closing down overseas bureaus and the red camera lights went out all over Europe and Asia and Africa--is in the story-telling business. And what do we know about narrative? Well, we know what German novelist Christa Wolf told us in Cassandra. "Only the advent of property, hierarchy, and patriarchy extracts a blood-red thread from the fabric of human life...and this thread is amplified at the expense of the web as a whole, at the expense of its uniformity. The blood-red thread is the narrative and struggle and victory of the heroes, or their doom. The plot is born." And we also know what Don DeLillo told us in Libra: "There is a tendency of plots to move toward death.... the idea of death is woven into the nature of every plot. A narrative plot no less than a conspiracy of armed men. The tighter the plot of the story, the more likely it will come to death."
In other words, either the Old Testament or the Iliad was the first western and the Mahabharata was no less bloody-minded. Think of Troy and Masada as warm-ups for the Alamo. This frontier sex and violence stuff runs deep--from Hannibal, to Attila, to El Cid, to Sergio Leone. What all westerns have always been about is clout, turf, sexual property rights and how to look good dying. So, too, can the typical movie-of-the-week and miniseries be said to derive comfortably from the worldview of antiquity: from Ovid or Sophocles. At least since the marriage of Cadmus to Harmony, abduction and rape were not only what gods did constantly to mortals, but also the principal form of East-West cultural exchange in the ancient world, with Europa and Io and Medea and the Argonauts, poor Helen stolen, first by Theseus and later on by Paris of Troy, Ariadne in Argos and Naxos and Persephone in the underworld. But so far nobody in Congress or the Justice Department has suggested a Brady Ban on myth and legend.
Because I watch all those despised network TV movies, I know more about racism, ecology, homelessness, gun control, child abuse, AIDS, gender confusion and rape than is dreamed of by, say, Katie Roiphe, the Joyce Maynard of Generation X, or than Hollywood ever bothered to tell me, especially about AIDS. Because I've followed many of my favorite series over months, years and even, in reruns, decades, I have a lively sense of just what television has been trying to tell us about common decency, civil discourse and social justice. I am not one of those newspaper or magazine critics who think they're better than TV and should really be writing about something more important--the theater, say, or foreign policy--and who bring to their drudge a condescension like a prophylactic. Nor am I one of those swinging postmodernists who wear Heidegger safari jackets, Foucault platform heels, Lacan epaulets and a Walter Benjamin boutonniere to every faculty meeting as if it were a Paris Commune, for whom TV is a convenient opportunity to assert that the Enlightenment was a lie; that causality, continuity, history and morality are delusions; that such "master-narratives" as scientific progress, class struggle and the Oedipus complex are bankrupt; that books, films, comic strips, advertisements, TV programs and even authors themselves are "socially constructed" compost heaps of previous texts, at best unwilling stooges and at worst bad-faith purveyors of a "dominant discourse"; and that the rest of us, readers and watchers, are likewise each the helpless vector of forces we can't even locate much less modify, stuck in spectacle and juxtaposition, "life-styles" and language games, allegory and aesthetics. In my opinion, long before postmodernism, there had always been the blues. And on retro television, the Enlightenment is far from dead. Like the parent of any child, TV behaves as if we could assuage those blues. This book is about what we actually see on television, how we go about seeing it, why we'd want to and whether the meanings we attach so feverishly to our spectatorship are accurate, much less interesting. I argue that TV, however much a creature of the fastbuck media monopolies and quarterly-dividend greedhead crowd, is full of surprising gravity and grace; that where it departs in any significant way from the tenacious norms of the pop culture that long ago preceded it and still today surrounds it, those departures have been open of mind and generous of heart if also wishful and naive; and that we'd actually be a kinder, gentler, healthier nation if in fact we embraced the scruples and imitated the behaviors recommended by most entertainment programs--more welcoming of diversity and difference, more impatient with the routine brutalities of a master class and a mass society, more of a community than an agglomeration of market segments and seething sects.
We were a violent culture before TV, from Wounded Knee to lynching bees, with a bloodier labor history than most any other nation in the industrialized world. Slave rebellions, railroad strikes, mountain blood feuds, night riders, vigilantes, and, from 1830 on, urban mobs rioting against Negroes, Catholics, Jews, Chinese, abolitionists and the draft...the Knights of Labor and the Ku Klux Klan...the Haymarket riot, the Homestead strike, Harlan County and the Black Hole of Ludlow...Rangers, Pinkertons, Jayhawks, Blacklegs, Flatheads and Slickers...Liberty Boys, Molly Maguires, Regulators, White Caps, Bald Knobbers, Know Nothings, Copperheads...Tulsa, East St. Louis, Cincinnati, Detroit, Harlem, Newark and Watts...the Ghost Dance Wars and the Mountain Meadows Massacre...Hell's Angels and Black Panthers...Attica and Altamont. Before television, we blamed our public schools for what went wrong with the little people, back when classrooms weren't overcrowded, in buildings that weren't falling down, in neighborhoods that didn't resemble Beirut, and whose fault is that? The A-Team? We can't control guns, or drugs; and two million American women are annually assaulted by their male partners, usually in an alcoholic rage; and three million children under the age of three, one quarter of our infants and toddlers, grow up each year in poverty without adequate adult supervision, intellectual stimulation, a decent diet or health care. Whose fault is that, Miami Vice? The gangbangers menacing our city streets aren't home watching Cinemax. Neither are the psychopaths who make bonfires in our parks of our homeless, of whom there are another million, a supply-side migratory tide of the deindustrialized and dispossessed, angry beggars, refugee children and catatonic nomads, none of them traumatized by Twin Peaks. (They were traumatized instead by down-sizing light manufacturers and utilities companies, by the flight of capital to third-world sweatshops and by baby tycoons in the real estate racket who wanted their neighborhoods for condo conversion.) So cut Medicare and kick around the Brady Bill; sacrifice music appreciation, arts education, chess clubs and computer classes at P.S. 69, so that property taxes will never go up on those summer homes from which, in letters to Janes and Fritz, we animadvert TV movies about Amy Fisher and commercials for killer sneakers. But children who were loved and protected long enough to grow up liking themselves as adolescents and young adults, in a society where schools prepared them to find jobs with a particle of meaning, wouldn't riot in the streets. Ours is a buck-grubbing, status-grabbing, commodity-obsessed tantrum-yoga culture that measures everyone by his or her ability to produce wealth, and morally condemns anyone who fails to prosper, and blames its own angry incoherence on the very medium that faithfully reflects these appalling values. Why not wrathful gods, recessive genes or Arab terrorists? The Mafia, the zodiac or the elders of Zion? Probability theory, demonic possession, original sin? Alien abduction! Madonna! Tofu! And, of course, the Designated Hitter in American League baseball.
In the Great Depression year of 1933, there were 9.7 homicides per 100,000 Americans, an all-time high until the 1990s, when--after a doubling in two decades of teen joblessness--the murder rate reached 10 per 100,000. Can it be that poverty contributes to violence? TV certainly thinks so. It's suspicious too of war, since the far-off killing fields are such excellent training for the unlicensed violence of everyday life. How odd that while the rest of the popular culture still loves war, in comic books, country music and Rambo movies, on series television since the late-sixties demise of Combat and Rat Patrol, what war has looked like is M*A*S*H and China Beach. When a reporter like Michael Herr went to Vietnam, as if Dante had gone to hell with a cassette recording of Jimi Hendrix and a pocket full of pills, he found our first rock and-roll war, some "speeding brilliance" and "all the dread ever known." A black paratrooper told him, "I been scaled, man, I'm smooth now." "Disgust," wrote Herr, "was only one color in the whole mandala, gentleness and pity were other colors, there wasn't a color left out. I think Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods." When a novelist like Robert Stone went to Vietnam, he found "cooking oil, excrement, incense, death...the green places of the world on fire...a kind of moral fascination." One character explained: "When I decide what happened, I'll decide to live with it." When moviemakers Michael Cimino, Francis Ford Coppola, Oliver Stone and Brian De Palma went to Vietnam, they found a splatter-painted Jackson Pollock mandala--streaks of brilliance, trickles of dread, childhood, hell and Joseph Conrad. And when network television went to Vietnam, what it found was China Beach--a dream ward where the wounded went after the jungle. In the jungle were the ghosts: unknowable history. On the beach, if the wounded were lucky, there was music and booze and they would be patched up by the black Irish nurse McMurphy (Dana Delany). Or they would buy the services of K.C. (Marg Helgenberger). If they weren't so lucky, they met Beckett (Michael Boatman), a dark prince of body-bags. On China Beach, as in any community beseeching an absent God, they had learned to live with what happened through pagan ritual. When Miss America refused to visit them, they staged their own mock beauty pageant. When Dr. Richards's stateside ex-wife remarried, they staged a "black unwedding," part Templar mystification, part Viking burial and part Wagnernian bonfire. When McMurphy was captured by the Viet Cong and forced to operate on the enemy, in a candlelit underground tunnel, we saw suddenly in those catacombs something like a sacrament. And they took the war with them wherever they went after Vietnam, to biker bars and Republican conventions and an Indian reservation, where McMurphy stopped drinking; to Hong Kong, where K.C. disappeared into her money, after the fall of Saigon and the parcel-posting of her child; to Montana, where Dodger found God in a converted school bus; and finally, all of them, after a reunion to mourn the loss of their innocence, their youth, faith, purpose, intensity of feeling and vanished community, after circling and staring and stuttering their emotions, after posing for snapshots and hiding in lavatories and singing a strange anthem and fighting off flashbacks that arrived like seizures, color-saturated, as if the past were modern art and the future merely television--to the black marble wall of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.
A medium capable of China Beach, M*A*S*H, St. Elsewhere, Northern Exposure, Homicide and The X-Files has less to be ashamed of than many of its critics do, and most of its competition. Nor has it taught us how to hurt each other.
Violence, television, culture and America are all lots more complicated. A friend of mine, a professional musician, attributes the recent quadrupling of young females who have chosen in our schools to learn to play the saxophone to the fact that the cartoon character Lisa plays one on The Simpsons. After more than a quarter century of writing about the medium, it is my strong feeling that--except by accident, and in conjunction with various other fevers of the swampy moment, complicated by the vessel of desires and desperations we bring to our watching as individuals and social subsets, compounded and confounded by power relationships and interlocking monopolies in the commodity culture that X-Files FBI agent Fox Mulder has so memorably called a "military-industrial-entertainment complex" and in the larger society of which that complex is a nervous component, a dependent ward and a fax machine--television is not a Pandora's box, an hallucinogen, an erogenous zone, a Leninist plot, Prozac or the dark side. Partly a window and partly a mirror, and allowing for the messy software in our own systems as we sit down to process what we see, TV more resembles a household pet, like a loyal retriever, or a kitchen appliance, like a microwave oven, a vacuum cleaner, an Exercycle or a night-light, as well as a department store and amusement park. We gather like Druids to partake of blue magnetic light, in various states of readiness. We are at times just curious: an Oscar or a Super Bowl. We are at times compelled: a Watergate or Berlin Wall. We may hope, at exalted moments like a moonshot, and on dreadful occasions like an assassination, to experience some virtual community as a nation--message center mission control, Big Neighbor and electronic Elmer's Glue-All. But more often we go to television because we're hungry, angry, lonely or tired. And TV will always be there for us, a twenty-four-hour user-friendly magic muffinmaker, grinding out narrative, novelty, empathy and distraction; news and laughs; snippets of high culture, remedial seriousness and vulgar celebrity; a place to celebrate and a place to mourn; a circus and a wishing well.
Sun Tzu
SUN ZI
1. Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance
to the State.
2. It is a matter of life and death, a road either
to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry
which can on no account be neglected.
3. The art of war, then, is governed by five constant
factors, to be taken into account in one's deliberations,
when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field.
4. These are: (1) The Moral Law; (2) Heaven; (3) Earth;
(4) The Commander; (5) Method and discipline.
5,6. The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete
accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him
regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.
7. Heaven signifies night and day, cold and heat,
times and seasons.
8. Earth comprises distances, great and small;
danger and security; open ground and narrow passes;
the chances of life and death.
9. The Commander stands for the virtues of wisdom,
sincerely, benevolence, courage and strictness.
10. By method and discipline are to be understood
the marshaling of the army in its proper subdivisions,
the graduations of rank among the officers, the maintenance
of roads by which supplies may reach the army, and the
control of military expenditure.
11. These five heads should be familiar to every general:
he who knows them will be victorious; he who knows them
not will fail.
12. Therefore, in your deliberations, when seeking
to determine the military conditions, let them be made
the basis of a comparison, in this wise:--
13. (1) Which of the two sovereigns is imbued
with the Moral law?
(2) Which of the two generals has most ability?
(3) With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven
and Earth?
(4) On which side is discipline most rigorously enforced?
(5) Which army is stronger?
(6) On which side are officers and men more highly trained?
(7) In which army is there the greater constancy
both in reward and punishment?
14. By means of these seven considerations I can
forecast victory or defeat.
15. The general that hearkens to my counsel and acts
upon it, will conquer: let such a one be retained in command!
The general that hearkens not to my counsel nor acts upon it,
will suffer defeat:--let such a one be dismissed!
16. While heading the profit of my counsel,
avail yourself also of any helpful circumstances
over and beyond the ordinary rules.
17. According as circumstances are favorable,
one should modify one's plans.
18. All warfare is based on deception.
19. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable;
when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we
are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away;
when far away, we must make him believe we are near.
20. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder,
and crush him.
21. If he is secure at all points, be prepared for him.
If he is in superior strength, evade him.
22. If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to
irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.
23. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest.
If his forces are united, separate them.
24. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where
you are not expected.
25. These military devices, leading to victory,
must not be divulged beforehand.
26. Now the general who wins a battle makes many
calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought.
The general who loses a battle makes but few
calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations
lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat:
how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention
to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.
[To Chinese text |To Top]
II. WAGING WAR
1. Sun Tzu said: In the operations of war,
where there are in the field a thousand swift chariots,
as many heavy chariots, and a hundred thousand
mail-clad soldiers, with provisions enough to carry them
a thousand li, the expenditure at home and at the front,
including entertainment of guests, small items such as
glue and paint, and sums spent on chariots and armor,
will reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day.
Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000 men.
2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory
is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and
their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town,
you will exhaust your strength.
3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources
of the State will not be equal to the strain.
4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped,
your strength exhausted and your treasure spent,
other chieftains will spring up to take advantage
of your extremity. Then no man, however wise,
will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.
5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war,
cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.
6. There is no instance of a country having benefited
from prolonged warfare.
7. It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted
with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand
the profitable way of carrying it on.
8. The skillful soldier does not raise a second levy,
neither are his supply-wagons loaded more than twice.
9. Bring war material with you from home, but forage
on the enemy. Thus the army will have food enough
for its needs.
10. Poverty of the State exchequer causes an army
to be maintained by contributions from a distance.
Contributing to maintain an army at a distance causes
the people to be impoverished.
11. On the other hand, the proximity of an army causes
prices to go up; and high prices cause the people's
substance to be drained away.
12. When their substance is drained away, the peasantry
will be afflicted by heavy exactions.
13,14. With this loss of substance and exhaustion
of strength, the homes of the people will be stripped bare,
and three-tenths of their income will be dissipated;
while government expenses for broken chariots, worn-out horses,
breast-plates and helmets, bows and arrows, spears and shields,
protective mantles, draught-oxen and heavy wagons,
will amount to four-tenths of its total revenue.
15. Hence a wise general makes a point of foraging
on the enemy. One cartload of the enemy's provisions
is equivalent to twenty of one's own, and likewise
a single picul of his provender is equivalent to twenty
from one's own store.
16. Now in order to kill the enemy, our men must
be roused to anger; that there may be advantage from
defeating the enemy, they must have their rewards.
17. Therefore in chariot fighting, when ten or more chariots
have been taken, those should be rewarded who took the first.
Our own flags should be substituted for those of the enemy,
and the chariots mingled and used in conjunction with ours.
The captured soldiers should be kindly treated and kept.
18. This is called, using the conquered foe to augment
one's own strength.
19. In war, then, let your great object be victory,
not lengthy campaigns.
20. Thus it may be known that the leader of armies
is the arbiter of the people's fate, the man on whom it
depends whether the nation shall be in peace or in peril.
[To Chinese text |To Top]
III. ATTACK BY STRATAGEM
1. Sun Tzu said: In the practical art of war, the best
thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact;
to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is
better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it,
to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire
than to destroy them.
2. Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles
is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists
in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
3. Thus the highest form of generalship is to
balk the enemy's plans; the next best is to prevent
the junction of the enemy's forces; the next in
order is to attack the enemy's army in the field;
and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.
4. The rule is, not to besiege walled cities if it
can possibly be avoided. The preparation of mantlets,
movable shelters, and various implements of war, will take
up three whole months; and the piling up of mounds over
against the walls will take three months more.
5. The general, unable to control his irritation,
will launch his men to the assault like swarming ants,
with the result that one-third of his men are slain,
while the town still remains untaken. Such are the disastrous
effects of a siege.
6. Therefore the skillful leader subdues the enemy's
troops without any fighting; he captures their cities
without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom
without lengthy operations in the field.
7. With his forces intact he will dispute the mastery
of the Empire, and thus, without losing a man, his triumph
will be complete. This is the method of attacking by stratagem.
8. It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten
to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one,
to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army
into two.
9. If equally matched, we can offer battle;
if slightly inferior in numbers, we can avoid the enemy;
if quite unequal in every way, we can flee from him.
10. Hence, though an obstinate fight may be made
by a small force, in the end it must be captured
by the larger force.
11. Now the general is the bulwark of the State;
if the bulwark is complete at all points; the State will
be strong; if the bulwark is defective, the State will
be weak.
12. There are three ways in which a ruler can bring
misfortune upon his army:--
13. (1) By commanding the army to advance or to retreat,
being ignorant of the fact that it cannot obey.
This is called hobbling the army.
14. (2) By attempting to govern an army in the
same way as he administers a kingdom, being ignorant
of the conditions which obtain in an army. This causes
restlessness in the soldier's minds.
15. (3) By employing the officers of his army
without discrimination, through ignorance of the
military principle of adaptation to circumstances.
This shakes the confidence of the soldiers.
16. But when the army is restless and distrustful,
trouble is sure to come from the other feudal princes.
This is simply bringing anarchy into the army, and flinging
victory away.
17. Thus we may know that there are five essentials
for victory:
(1) He will win who knows when to fight and when
not to fight.
(2) He will win who knows how to handle both superior
and inferior forces.
(3) He will win whose army is animated by the same
spirit throughout all its ranks.
(4) He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take
the enemy unprepared.
(5) He will win who has military capacity and is
not interfered with by the sovereign.
18. Hence the saying: If you know the enemy
and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a
hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy,
for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will
succumb in every battle.
[To Chinese text |To Top]
IV. TACTICAL DISPOSITIONS
1. Sun Tzu said: The good fighters of old first put
themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then
waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.
2. To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our
own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy
is provided by the enemy himself.
3. Thus the good fighter is able to secure himself against defeat,
but cannot make certain of defeating the enemy.
4. Hence the saying: One may know how to conquer
without being able to do it.
5. Security against defeat implies defensive tactics;
ability to defeat the enemy means taking the offensive.
6. Standing on the defensive indicates insufficient
strength; attacking, a superabundance of strength.
7. The general who is skilled in defense hides in the
most secret recesses of the earth; he who is skilled in
attack flashes forth from the topmost heights of heaven.
Thus on the one hand we have ability to protect ourselves;
on the other, a victory that is complete.
8. To see victory only when it is within the ken
of the common herd is not the acme of excellence.
9. Neither is it the acme of excellence if you fight
and conquer and the whole Empire says, "Well done!"
10. To lift an autumn hair is no sign of great strength;
to see the sun and moon is no sign of sharp sight;
to hear the noise of thunder is no sign of a quick ear.
11. What the ancients called a clever fighter is
one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.
12. Hence his victories bring him neither reputation
for wisdom nor credit for courage.
13. He wins his battles by making no mistakes.
Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty
of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is
already defeated.
14. Hence the skillful fighter puts himself into
a position which makes defeat impossible, and does
not miss the moment for defeating the enemy.
15. Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist
only seeks battle after the victory has been won,
whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights
and afterwards looks for victory.
16. The consummate leader cultivates the moral law,
and strictly adheres to method and discipline; thus it is
in his power to control success.
17. In respect of military method, we have,
firstly, Measurement; secondly, Estimation of quantity;
thirdly, Calculation; fourthly, Balancing of chances;
fifthly, Victory.
18. Measurement owes its existence to Earth;
Estimation of quantity to Measurement; Calculation to
Estimation of quantity; Balancing of chances to Calculation;
and Victory to Balancing of chances.
19. A victorious army opposed to a routed one, is as
a pound's weight placed in the scale against a single grain.
20. The onrush of a conquering force is like the bursting
of pent-up waters into a chasm a thousand fathoms deep.
[To Chinese text |To Top]
V. ENERGY
1. Sun Tzu said: The control of a large force
is the same principle as the control of a few men:
it is merely a question of dividing up their numbers.
2. Fighting with a large army under your command
is nowise different from fighting with a small one:
it is merely a question of instituting signs and signals.
3. To ensure that your whole host may withstand
the brunt of the enemy's attack and remain unshaken--
this is effected by maneuvers direct and indirect.
4. That the impact of your army may be like a grindstone
dashed against an egg--this is effected by the science
of weak points and strong.
5. In all fighting, the direct method may be used
for joining battle, but indirect methods will be needed
in order to secure victory.
6. Indirect tactics, efficiently applied, are inexhaustible
as Heaven and Earth, unending as the flow of rivers and streams;
like the sun and moon, they end but to begin anew;
like the four seasons, they pass away to return once more.
7. There are not more than five musical notes,
yet the combinations of these five give rise to more
melodies than can ever be heard.
8. There are not more than five primary colors
(blue, yellow, red, white, and black), yet in combination
they produce more hues than can ever been seen.
9. There are not more than five cardinal tastes
(sour, acrid, salt, sweet, bitter), yet combinations
of them yield more flavors than can ever be tasted.
10. In battle, there are not more than two methods
of attack--the direct and the indirect; yet these two
in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers.
11. The direct and the indirect lead on to each other in turn.
It is like moving in a circle--you never come to an end.
Who can exhaust the possibilities of their combination?
12. The onset of troops is like the rush of a torrent
which will even roll stones along in its course.
13. The quality of decision is like the well-timed
swoop of a falcon which enables it to strike and destroy
its victim.
14. Therefore the good fighter will be terrible
in his onset, and prompt in his decision.
15. Energy may be likened to the bending of a crossbow;
decision, to the releasing of a trigger.
16. Amid the turmoil and tumult of battle, there may
be seeming disorder and yet no real disorder at all;
amid confusion and chaos, your array may be without head
or tail, yet it will be proof against defeat.
17. Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline,
simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness
postulates strength.
18. Hiding order beneath the cloak of disorder is
simply a question of subdivision; concealing courage under
a show of timidity presupposes a fund of latent energy;
masking strength with weakness is to be effected
by tactical dispositions.
19. Thus one who is skillful at keeping the enemy
on the move maintains deceitful appearances, according to
which the enemy will act. He sacrifices something,
that the enemy may snatch at it.
20. By holding out baits, he keeps him on the march;
then with a body of picked men he lies in wait for him.
21. The clever combatant looks to the effect of combined
energy, and does not require too much from individuals.
Hence his ability to pick out the right men and utilize
combined energy.
22. When he utilizes combined energy, his fighting
men become as it were like unto rolling logs or stones.
For it is the nature of a log or stone to remain
motionless on level ground, and to move when on a slope;
if four-cornered, to come to a standstill, but if
round-shaped, to go rolling down.
23. Thus the energy developed by good fighting men
is as the momentum of a round stone rolled down a mountain
thousands of feet in height. So much on the subject
of energy.
[To Chinese text |To Top]
VI. WEAK POINTS AND STRONG
1. Sun Tzu said: Whoever is first in the field and
awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight;
whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle
will arrive exhausted.
2. Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on
the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him.
3. By holding out advantages to him, he can cause the enemy
to approach of his own accord; or, by inflicting damage,
he can make it impossible for the enemy to draw near.
4. If the enemy is taking his ease, he can harass him;
if well supplied with food, he can starve him out;
if quietly encamped, he can force him to move.
5. Appear at points which the enemy must hasten to defend;
march swiftly to places where you are not expected.
6. An army may march great distances without distress,
if it marches through country where the enemy is not.
7. You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks
if you only attack places which are undefended.You can
ensure the safety of your defense if you only hold
positions that cannot be attacked.
8. Hence that general is skillful in attack whose
opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful
in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.
9. O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you
we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible;
and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands.
10. You may advance and be absolutely irresistible,
if you make for the enemy's weak points; you may retire
and be safe from pursuit if your movements are more rapid
than those of the enemy.
11. If we wish to fight, the enemy can be forced
to an engagement even though he be sheltered behind a high
rampart and a deep ditch. All we need do is attack
some other place that he will be obliged to relieve.
12. If we do not wish to fight, we can prevent
the enemy from engaging us even though the lines
of our encampment be merely traced out on the ground.
All we need do is to throw something odd and unaccountable
in his way.
13. By discovering the enemy's dispositions and remaining
invisible ourselves, we can keep our forces concentrated,
while the enemy's must be divided.
14. We can form a single united body, while the
enemy must split up into fractions. Hence there will
be a whole pitted against separate parts of a whole,
which means that we shall be many to the enemy's few.
15. And if we are able thus to attack an inferior force
with a superior one, our opponents will be in dire straits.
16. The spot where we intend to fight must not be
made known; for then the enemy will have to prepare
against a possible attack at several different points;
and his forces being thus distributed in many directions,
the numbers we shall have to face at any given point will
be proportionately few.
17. For should the enemy strengthen his van,
he will weaken his rear; should he strengthen his rear,
he will weaken his van; should he strengthen his left,
he will weaken his right; should he strengthen his right,
he will weaken his left. If he sends reinforcements everywhere,
he will everywhere be weak.
18. Numerical weakness comes from having to prepare
against possible attacks; numerical strength, from compelling
our adversary to make these preparations against us.
19. Knowing the place and the time of the coming battle,
we may concentrate from the greatest distances in order
to fight.
20. But if neither time nor place be known,
then the left wing will be impotent to succor the right,
the right equally impotent to succor the left, the van
unable to relieve the rear, or the rear to support the van.
How much more so if the furthest portions of the army are
anything under a hundred LI apart, and even the nearest
are separated by several LI!
21. Though according to my estimate the soldiers
of Yueh exceed our own in number, that shall advantage
them nothing in the matter of victory. I say then
that victory can be achieved.
22. Though the enemy be stronger in numbers, we may
prevent him from fighting. Scheme so as to discover
his plans and the likelihood of their success.
23. Rouse him, and learn the principle of his
activity or inactivity. Force him to reveal himself,
so as to find out his vulnerable spots.
24. Carefully compare the opposing army with your own,
so that you may know where strength is superabundant
and where it is deficient.
25. In making tactical dispositions, the highest pitch
you can attain is to conceal them; conceal your dispositions,
and you will be safe from the prying of the subtlest spies,
from the machinations of the wisest brains.
26. How victory may be produced for them out of the enemy's
own tactics--that is what the multitude cannot comprehend.
27. All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer,
but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory
is evolved.
28. Do not repeat the tactics which have gained
you one victory, but let your methods be regulated
by the infinite variety of circumstances.
29. Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its
natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards.
30. So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong
and to strike at what is weak.
31. Water shapes its course according to the nature
of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works
out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing.
32. Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape,
so in warfare there are no constant conditions.
33. He who can modify his tactics in relation to his
opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called
a heaven-born captain.
34. The five elements (water, fire, wood, metal, earth)
are not always equally predominant; the four seasons make
way for each other in turn. There are short days and long;
the moon has its periods of waning and waxing.
[To Chinese text |To Top]
VII. MANEUVERING
1. Sun Tzu said: In war, the general receives his
commands from the sovereign.
2. Having collected an army and concentrated his forces,
he must blend and harmonize the different elements thereof
before pitching his camp.
3. After that, comes tactical maneuvering,
than which there is nothing more difficult.
The difficulty of tactical maneuvering consists
in turning the devious into the direct, and misfortune into gain.
4. Thus, to take a long and circuitous route,
after enticing the enemy out of the way, and though starting
after him, to contrive to reach the goal before him,
shows knowledge of the artifice of DEVIATION.
5. Maneuvering with an army is advantageous;
with an undisciplined multitude, most dangerous.
6. If you set a fully equipped army in march in order
to snatch an advantage, the chances are that you will be
too late. On the other hand, to detach a flying column
for the purpose involves the sacrifice of its baggage
and stores.
7. Thus, if you order your men to roll up their
buff-coats, and make forced marches without halting day
or night, covering double the usual distance at a stretch,
doing a hundred LI in order to wrest an advantage,
the leaders of all your three divisions will fall into
the hands of the enemy.
8. The stronger men will be in front, the jaded
ones will fall behind, and on this plan only one-tenth
of your army will reach its destination.
9. If you march fifty LI in order to outmaneuver
the enemy, you will lose the leader of your first division,
and only half your force will reach the goal.
10. If you march thirty LI with the same object,
two-thirds of your army will arrive.
11. We may take it then that an army without its
baggage-train is lost; without provisions it is lost;
without bases of supply it is lost.
12. We cannot enter into alliances until we are
acquainted with the designs of our neighbors.
13. We are not fit to lead an army on the march
unless we are familiar with the face of the country--its
mountains and forests, its pitfalls and precipices,
its marshes and swamps.
14. We shall be unable to turn natural advantage
to account unless we make use of local guides.
15. In war, practice dissimulation, and you will succeed.
16. Whether to concentrate or to divide your troops,
must be decided by circumstances.
17. Let your rapidity be that of the wind,
your compactness that of the forest.
18. In raiding and plundering be like fire,
is immovability like a mountain.
19. Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night,
and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.
20. When you plunder a countryside, let the spoil be
divided amongst your men; when you capture new territory,
cut it up into allotments for the benefit of the soldiery.
21. Ponder and deliberate before you make a move.
22. He will conquer who has learnt the artifice
of deviation. Such is the art of maneuvering.
23. The Book of Army Management says: On the field
of battle, the spoken word does not carry far enough:
hence the institution of gongs and drums. Nor can ordinary
objects be seen clearly enough: hence the institution
of banners and flags.
24. Gongs and drums, banners and flags, are means
whereby the ears and eyes of the host may be focused
on one particular point.
25. The host thus forming a single united body,
is it impossible either for the brave to advance alone,
or for the cowardly to retreat alone. This is the art
of handling large masses of men.
26. In night-fighting, then, make much use of signal-fires
and drums, and in fighting by day, of flags and banners,
as a means of influencing the ears and eyes of your army.
27. A whole army may be robbed of its spirit;
a commander-in-chief may be robbed of his presence of mind.
28. Now a soldier's spirit is keenest in the morning;
by noonday it has begun to flag; and in the evening,
his mind is bent only on returning to camp.
29. A clever general, therefore, avoids an army when
its spirit is keen, but attacks it when it is sluggish
and inclined to return. This is the art of studying moods.
30. Disciplined and calm, to await the appearance
of disorder and hubbub amongst the enemy:--this is the art
of retaining self-possession.
31. To be near the goal while the enemy is still
far from it, to wait at ease while the enemy is
toiling and struggling, to be well-fed while the enemy
is famished:--this is the art of husbanding one's strength.
32. To refrain from intercepting an enemy whose
banners are in perfect order, to refrain from attacking
an army drawn up in calm and confident array:--this
is the art of studying circumstances.
33. It is a military axiom not to advance uphill
against the enemy, nor to oppose him when he comes downhill.
34. Do not pursue an enemy who simulates flight;
do not attack soldiers whose temper is keen.
35. Do not swallow bait offered by the enemy.
Do not interfere with an army that is returning home.
36. When you surround an army, leave an outlet free.
Do not press a desperate foe too hard.
37. Such is the art of warfare.
[To Chinese text|To Top]
VIII. VARIATION IN TACTICS
1. Sun Tzu said: In war, the general receives
his commands from the sovereign, collects his army
and concentrates his forces
2. When in difficult country, do not encamp. In country
where high roads intersect, join hands with your allies.
Do not linger in dangerously isolated positions.
In hemmed-in situations, you must resort to stratagem.
In desperate position, you must fight.
3. There are roads which must not be followed,
armies which must be not attacked, towns which must
be besieged, positions which must not be contested,
commands of the sovereign which must not be obeyed.
4. The general who thoroughly understands the advantages
that accompany variation of tactics knows how to handle
his troops.
5. The general who does not understand these, may be well
acquainted with the configuration of the country, yet he
will not be able to turn his knowledge to practical account.
6. So, the student of war who is unversed in the art
of war of varying his plans, even though he be acquainted
with the Five Advantages, will fail to make the best use
of his men.
7. Hence in the wise leader's plans, considerations of
advantage and of disadvantage will be blended together.
8. If our expectation of advantage be tempered in
this way, we may succeed in accomplishing the essential
part of our schemes.
9. If, on the other hand, in the midst of difficulties
we are always ready to seize an advantage, we may extricate
ourselves from misfortune.
10. Reduce the hostile chiefs by inflicting damage
on them; and make trouble for them, and keep them
constantly engaged; hold out specious allurements,
and make them rush to any given point.
11. The art of war teaches us to rely not on the
likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness
to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking,
but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.
12. There are five dangerous faults which may affect
a general:
(1) Recklessness, which leads to destruction;
(2) cowardice, which leads to capture;
(3) a hasty temper, which can be provoked by insults;
(4) a delicacy of honor which is sensitive to shame;
(5) over-solicitude for his men, which exposes him
to worry and trouble.
13. These are the five besetting sins of a general,
ruinous to the conduct of war.
14. When an army is overthrown and its leader slain,
the cause will surely be found among these five
dangerous faults. Let them be a subject of meditation.
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IX. THE ARMY ON THE MARCH
1. Sun Tzu said: We come now to the question of
encamping the army, and observing signs of the enemy.
Pass quickly over mountains, and keep in the neighborhood
of valleys.
2. Camp in high places, facing the sun. Do not climb
heights in order to fight. So much for mountain warfare.
3. After crossing a river, you should get far away
from it.
4. When an invading force crosses a river in its
onward march, do not advance to meet it in mid-stream.
It will be best to let half the army get across,
and then deliver your attack.
5. If you are anxious to fight, you should not go
to meet the invader near a river which he has to cross.
6. Moor your craft higher up than the enemy, and facing
the sun. Do not move up-stream to meet the enemy.
So much for river warfare.
7. In crossing salt-marshes, your sole concern
should be to get over them quickly, without any delay.
8. If forced to fight in a salt-marsh, you should
have water and grass near you, and get your back
to a clump of trees. So much for operations in salt-marches.
9. In dry, level country, take up an easily accessible
position with rising ground to your right and on your rear,
so that the danger may be in front, and safety lie behind.
So much for campaigning in flat country.
10. These are the four useful branches of military
knowledge which enabled the Yellow Emperor to vanquish
four several sovereigns.
11. All armies prefer high ground to low and sunny
places to dark.
12. If you are careful of your men, and camp on hard
ground, the army will be free from disease of every kind,
and this will spell victory.
13. When you come to a hill or a bank, occupy the
sunny side, with the slope on your right rear.
Thus you will at once act for the benefit of your soldiers
and utilize the natural advantages of the ground.
14. When, in consequence of heavy rains up-country,
a river which you wish to ford is swollen and flecked
with foam, you must wait until it subsides.
15. Country in which there are precipitous cliffs
with torrents running between, deep natural hollows,
confined places, tangled thickets, quagmires and crevasses,
should be left with all possible speed and not approached.
16. While we keep away from such places, we should
get the enemy to approach them; while we face them,
we should let the enemy have them on his rear.
17. If in the neighborhood of your camp there should
be any hilly country, ponds surrounded by aquatic grass,
hollow basins filled with reeds, or woods with thick
undergrowth, they must be carefully routed out and searched;
for these are places where men in ambush or insidious
spies are likely to be lurking.
18. When the enemy is close at hand and remains quiet,
he is relying on the natural strength of his position.
19. When he keeps aloof and tries to provoke a battle,
he is anxious for the other side to advance.
20. If his place of encampment is easy of access,
he is tendering a bait.
21. Movement amongst the trees of a forest shows that the
enemy is advancing. The appearance of a number of screens
in the midst of thick grass means that the enemy wants to make us suspicious.
22. The rising of birds in their flight is the sign
of an ambuscade. Startled beasts indicate that a sudden
attack is coming.
23. When there is dust rising in a high column,
it is the sign of chariots advancing; when the dust is low,
but spread over a wide area, it betokens the approach
of infantry. When it branches out in different directions,
it shows that parties have been sent to collect firewood.
A few clouds of dust moving to and fro signify that the army
is encamping.
24. Humble words and increased preparations are signs
that the enemy is about to advance. Violent language
and driving forward as if to the attack are signs that he
will retreat.
25. When the light chariots come out first and take
up a position on the wings, it is a sign that the enemy
is forming for battle.
26. Peace proposals unaccompanied by a sworn covenant
indicate a plot.
27. When there is much running about and the soldiers
fall into rank, it means that the critical moment has come.
28. When some are seen advancing and some retreating,
it is a lure.
29. When the soldiers stand leaning on their spears,
they are faint from want of food.
30. If those who are sent to draw water begin
by drinking themselves, the army is suffering from thirst.
31. If the enemy sees an advantage to be gained and
makes no effort to secure it, the soldiers are exhausted.
32. If birds gather on any spot, it is unoccupied.
Clamor by night betokens nervousness.
33. If there is disturbance in the camp, the general's
authority is weak. If the banners and flags are shifted
about, sedition is afoot. If the officers are angry,
it means that the men are weary.
34. When an army feeds its horses with grain and kills
its cattle for food, and when the men do not hang their
cooking-pots over the camp-fires, showing that they
will not return to their tents, you may know that they
are determined to fight to the death.
35. The sight of men whispering together in small
knots or speaking in subdued tones points to disaffection
amongst the rank and file.
36. Too frequent rewards signify that the enemy is
at the end of his resources; too many punishments betray
a condition of dire distress.
37. To begin by bluster, but afterwards to take fright
at the enemy's numbers, shows a supreme lack of intelligence.
38. When envoys are sent with compliments in their mouths,
it is a sign that the enemy wishes for a truce.
39. If the enemy's troops march up angrily and remain
facing ours for a long time without either joining
battle or taking themselves off again, the situation
is one that demands great vigilance and circumspection.
40. If our troops are no more in number than the enemy,
that is amply sufficient; it only means that no direct attack
can be made. What we can do is simply to concentrate all
our available strength, keep a close watch on the enemy,
and obtain reinforcements.
41. He who exercises no forethought but makes light
of his opponents is sure to be captured by them.
42. If soldiers are punished before they have grown
attached to you, they will not prove submissive; and,
unless submissive, then will be practically useless.
If, when the soldiers have become attached to you,
punishments are not enforced, they will still be unless.
43. Therefore soldiers must be treated in the first
instance with humanity, but kept under control by means
of iron discipline. This is a certain road to victory.
44. If in training soldiers commands are habitually
enforced, the army will be well-disciplined; if not,
its discipline will be bad.
45. If a general shows confidence in his men but always
insists on his orders being obeyed, the gain will be mutual.
[To Chinese text|To Top]
X. TERRAIN
1. Sun Tzu said: We may distinguish six kinds of terrain,
to wit: (1) Accessible ground; (2) entangling ground;
(3) temporizing ground; (4) narrow passes; (5) precipitous
heights; (6) positions at a great distance from the enemy.
2. Ground which can be freely traversed by both sides
is called accessible.
3. With regard to ground of this nature, be before
the enemy in occupying the raised and sunny spots,
and carefully guard your line of supplies. Then you
will be able to fight with advantage.
4. Ground which can be abandoned but is hard
to re-occupy is called entangling.
5. From a position of this sort, if the enemy
is unprepared, you may sally forth and defeat him.
But if the enemy is prepared for your coming, and you
fail to defeat him, then, return being impossible,
disaster will ensue.
6. When the position is such that neither side will gain
by making the first move, it is called temporizing ground.
7. In a position of this sort, even though the enemy
should offer us an attractive bait, it will be advisable
not to stir forth, but rather to retreat, thus enticing
the enemy in his turn; then, when part of his army has
come out, we may deliver our attack with advantage.
8. With regard to narrow passes, if you can occupy
them first, let them be strongly garrisoned and await
the advent of the enemy.
9. Should the army forestall you in occupying a pass,
do not go after him if the pass is fully garrisoned,
but only if it is weakly garrisoned.
10. With regard to precipitous heights, if you are
beforehand with your adversary, you should occupy the
raised and sunny spots, and there wait for him to come up.
11. If the enemy has occupied them before you,
do not follow him, but retreat and try to entice him away.
12. If you are situated at a great distance from
the enemy, and the strength of the two armies is equal,
it is not easy to provoke a battle, and fighting will be
to your disadvantage.
13. These six are the principles connected with Earth.
The general who has attained a responsible post must be
careful to study them.
14. Now an army is exposed to six several calamities,
not arising from natural causes, but from faults
for which the general is responsible. These are:
(1) Flight; (2) insubordination; (3) collapse; (4) ruin;
(5) disorganization; (6) rout.
15. Other conditions being equal, if one force is
hurled against another ten times its size, the result
will be the flight of the former.
16. When the common soldiers are too strong and
their officers too weak, the result is insubordination.
When the officers are too strong and the common soldiers
too weak, the result is collapse.
17. When the higher officers are angry and insubordinate,
and on meeting the enemy give battle on their own account
from a feeling of resentment, before the commander-in-chief
can tell whether or no he is in a position to fight,
the result is ruin.
18. When the general is weak and without authority;
when his orders are not clear and distinct; when there
are no fixes duties assigned to officers and men,
and the ranks are formed in a slovenly haphazard manner,
the result is utter disorganization.
19. When a general, unable to estimate the enemy's
strength, allows an inferior force to engage a larger one,
or hurls a weak detachment against a powerful one,
and neglects to place picked soldiers in the front rank,
the result must be rout.
20. These are six ways of courting defeat, which must
be carefully noted by the general who has attained
a responsible post.
21. The natural formation of the country is the soldier's
best ally; but a power of estimating the adversary,
of controlling the forces of victory, and of shrewdly
calculating difficulties, dangers and distances,
constitutes the test of a great general.
22. He who knows these things, and in fighting puts
his knowledge into practice, will win his battles.
He who knows them not, nor practices them, will surely
be defeated.
23. If fighting is sure to result in victory,
then you must fight, even though the ruler forbid it;
if fighting will not result in victory, then you must not
fight even at the ruler's bidding.
24. The general who advances without coveting fame
and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only
thought is to protect his country and do good service
for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom.
25. Regard your soldiers as your children, and they
will follow you into the deepest valleys; look upon them
as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you
even unto death.
26. If, however, you are indulgent, but unable to make
your authority felt; kind-hearted, but unable to enforce
your commands; and incapable, moreover, of quelling disorder:
then your soldiers must be likened to spoilt children;
they are useless for any practical purpose.
27. If we know that our own men are in a condition
to attack, but are unaware that the enemy is not open
to attack, we have gone only halfway towards victory.
28. If we know that the enemy is open to attack,
but are unaware that our own men are not in a condition
to attack, we have gone only halfway towards victory.
29. If we know that the enemy is open to attack,
and also know that our men are in a condition to attack,
but are unaware that the nature of the ground makes
fighting impracticable, we have still gone only halfway
towards victory.
30. Hence the experienced soldier, once in motion,
is never bewildered; once he has broken camp, he is never
at a loss.
31. Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and
know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt;
if you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your
victory complete.
[To Chinese text|To Top]
XI. THE NINE SITUATIONS
1. Sun Tzu said: The art of war recognizes nine varieties of ground:
(1) Dispersive ground; (2) facile ground; (3) contentious ground;
(4) open ground; (5) ground of intersecting highways;
(6) serious ground; (7) difficult ground; (8) hemmed-in ground;
(9) desperate ground.
2. When a chieftain is fighting in his own territory,
it is dispersive ground.
3. When he has penetrated into hostile territory,
but to no great distance, it is facile ground.
4. Ground the possession of which imports great
advantage to either side, is contentious ground.
5. Ground on which each side has liberty of movement
is open ground.
6. Ground which forms the key to three contiguous states,
so that he who occupies it first has most of the Empire
at his command, is a ground of intersecting highways.
7. When an army has penetrated into the heart of a
hostile country, leaving a number of fortified cities
in its rear, it is serious ground.
8. Mountain forests, rugged steeps, marshes and fens--all
country that is hard to traverse: this is difficult ground.
9. Ground which is reached through narrow gorges,
and from which we can only retire by tortuous paths,
so that a small number of the enemy would suffice to crush
a large body of our men: this is hemmed in ground.
10. Ground on which we can only be saved from
destruction by fighting without delay, is desperate ground.
11. On dispersive ground, therefore, fight not.
On facile ground, halt not. On contentious ground,
attack not.
12. On open ground, do not try to block the enemy's way.
On the ground of intersecting highways, join hands
with your allies.
13. On serious ground, gather in plunder.
In difficult ground, keep steadily on the march.
14. On hemmed-in ground, resort to stratagem.
On desperate ground, fight.
15. Those who were called skillful leaders of old knew
how to drive a wedge between the enemy's front and rear;
to prevent co-operation between his large and small divisions;
to hinder the good troops from rescuing the bad,
the officers from rallying their men.
16. When the enemy's men were united, they managed
to keep them in disorder.
17. When it was to their advantage, they made
a forward move; when otherwise, they stopped still.
18. If asked how to cope with a great host of the enemy
in orderly array and on the point of marching to the attack,
I should say: "Begin by seizing something which your
opponent holds dear; then he will be amenable to your will."
19. Rapidity is the essence of war: take advantage of
the enemy's unreadiness, make your way by unexpected routes,
and attack unguarded spots.
20. The following are the principles to be observed
by an invading force: The further you penetrate into
a country, the greater will be the solidarity of your troops,
and thus the defenders will not prevail against you.
21. Make forays in fertile country in order to supply
your army with food.
22. Carefully study the well-being of your men,
and do not overtax them. Concentrate your energy and hoard
your strength. Keep your army continually on the move,
and devise unfathomable plans.
23. Throw your soldiers into positions whence there
is no escape, and they will prefer death to flight.
If they will face death, there is nothing they may
not achieve. Officers and men alike will put forth
their uttermost strength.
24. Soldiers when in desperate straits lose
the sense of fear. If there is no place of refuge,
they will stand firm. If they are in hostile country,
they will show a stubborn front. If there is no help
for it, they will fight hard.
25. Thus, without waiting to be marshaled, the soldiers
will be constantly on the qui vive; without waiting to
be asked, they will do your will; without restrictions,
they will be faithful; without giving orders, they can
be trusted.
26. Prohibit the taking of omens, and do away with
superstitious doubts. Then, until death itself comes,
no calamity need be feared.
27. If our soldiers are not overburdened with money,
it is not because they have a distaste for riches;
if their lives are not unduly long, it is not because they
are disinclined to longevity.
28. On the day they are ordered out to battle,
your soldiers may weep, those sitting up bedewing
their garments, and those lying down letting the tears run
down their cheeks. But let them once be brought to bay,
and they will display the courage of a Chu or a Kuei.
29. The skillful tactician may be likened to the
shuai-jan. Now the shuai-jan is a snake that is found
in the ChUng mountains. Strike at its head, and you
will be attacked by its tail; strike at its tail, and you
will be attacked by its head; strike at its middle,
and you will be attacked by head and tail both.
30. Asked if an army can be made to imitate the shuai-jan,
I should answer, Yes. For the men of Wu and the men
of Yueh are enemies; yet if they are crossing a river
in the same boat and are caught by a storm, they will come
to each other's assistance just as the left hand helps the right.
31. Hence it is not enough to put one's trust
in the tethering of horses, and the burying of chariot
wheels in the ground
32. The principle on which to manage an army is to set
up one standard of courage which all must reach.
33. How to make the best of both strong and weak--that
is a question involving the proper use of ground.
34. Thus the skillful general conducts his army just
as though he were leading a single man, willy-nilly, by
the hand.
35. It is the business of a general to be quiet and thus
ensure secrecy; upright and just, and thus maintain order.
36. He must be able to mystify his officers and men
by false reports and appearances, and thus keep them
in total ignorance.
37. By altering his arrangements and changing
his plans, he keeps the enemy without definite knowledge.
By shifting his camp and taking circuitous routes,
he prevents the enemy from anticipating his purpose.
38. At the critical moment, the leader of an army
acts like one who has climbed up a height and then kicks
away the ladder behind him. He carries his men deep
into hostile territory before he shows his hand.
39. He burns his boats and breaks his cooking-pots;
like a shepherd driving a flock of sheep, he drives
his men this way and that, and nothing knows whither he
is going.
40. To muster his host and bring it into danger:--this
may be termed the business of the general.
41. The different measures suited to the nine
varieties of ground; the expediency of aggressive or
defensive tactics; and the fundamental laws of human nature:
these are things that must most certainly be studied.
42. When invading hostile territory, the general
principle is, that penetrating deeply brings cohesion;
penetrating but a short way means dispersion.
43. When you leave your own country behind, and take
your army across neighborhood territory, you find yourself
on critical ground. When there are means of communication
on all four sides, the ground is one of intersecting highways.
44. When you penetrate deeply into a country, it is
serious ground. When you penetrate but a little way,
it is facile ground.
45. When you have the enemy's strongholds on your rear,
and narrow passes in front, it is hemmed-in ground.
When there is no place of refuge at all, it is desperate ground.
46. Therefore, on dispersive ground, I would inspire
my men with unity of purpose. On facile ground, I would
see that there is close connection between all parts
of my army.
47. On contentious ground, I would hurry up my rear.
48. On open ground, I would keep a vigilant eye
on my defenses. On ground of intersecting highways,
I would consolidate my alliances.
49. On serious ground, I would try to ensure
a continuous stream of supplies. On difficult ground,
I would keep pushing on along the road.
50. On hemmed-in ground, I would block any way
of retreat. On desperate ground, I would proclaim
to my soldiers the hopelessness of saving their lives.
51. For it is the soldier's disposition to offer
an obstinate resistance when surrounded, to fight hard
when he cannot help himself, and to obey promptly when he
has fallen into danger.
52. We cannot enter into alliance with neighboring
princes until we are acquainted with their designs. We are
not fit to lead an army on the march unless we are familiar
with the face of the country--its mountains and forests,
its pitfalls and precipices, its marshes and swamps.
We shall be unable to turn natural advantages to account
unless we make use of local guides.
53. To be ignored of any one of the following four
or five principles does not befit a warlike prince.
54. When a warlike prince attacks a powerful state,
his generalship shows itself in preventing the concentration
of the enemy's forces. He overawes his opponents,
and their allies are prevented from joining against him.
55. Hence he does not strive to ally himself with all
and sundry, nor does he foster the power of other states.
He carries out his own secret designs, keeping his
antagonists in awe. Thus he is able to capture their
cities and overthrow their kingdoms.
56. Bestow rewards without regard to rule,
issue orders without regard to previous arrangements;
and you will be able to handle a whole army as though
you had to do with but a single man.
57. Confront your soldiers with the deed itself;
never let them know your design. When the outlook is bright,
bring it before their eyes; but tell them nothing when
the situation is gloomy.
58. Place your army in deadly peril, and it will survive;
plunge it into desperate straits, and it will come off
in safety.
59. For it is precisely when a force has fallen into
harm's way that is capable of striking a blow for victory.
60. Success in warfare is gained by carefully
accommodating ourselves to the enemy's purpose.
61. By persistently hanging on the enemy's flank, we shall
succeed in the long run in killing the commander-in-chief.
62. This is called ability to accomplish a thing
by sheer cunning.
63. On the day that you take up your command,
block the frontier passes, destroy the official tallies,
and stop the passage of all emissaries.
64. Be stern in the council-chamber, so that you
may control the situation.
65. If the enemy leaves a door open, you must rush in.
66. Forestall your opponent by seizing what he holds dear,
and subtly contrive to time his arrival on the ground.
67. Walk in the path defined by rule, and accommodate
yourself to the enemy until you can fight a decisive battle.
68. At first, then, exhibit the coyness of a maiden,
until the enemy gives you an opening; afterwards emulate
the rapidity of a running hare, and it will be too late
for the enemy to oppose you.
[To Chinese text|To Top]
XII. THE ATTACK BY FIRE
1. Sun Tzu said: There are five ways of attacking
with fire. The first is to burn soldiers in their camp;
the second is to burn stores; the third is to burn
baggage trains; the fourth is to burn arsenals and magazines;
the fifth is to hurl dropping fire amongst the enemy.
2. In order to carry out an attack, we must have
means available. The material for raising fire should
always be kept in readiness.
3. There is a proper season for making attacks with fire,
and special days for starting a conflagration.
4. The proper season is when the weather is very dry;
the special days are those when the moon is in the
constellations of the Sieve, the Wall, the Wing
or the Cross-bar; for these four are all days of rising wind.
5. In attacking with fire, one should be prepared
to meet five possible developments:
6. (1) When fire breaks out inside to enemy's camp,
respond at once with an attack from without.
7. (2) If there is an outbreak of fire, but the enemy's
soldiers remain quiet, bide your time and do not attack.
8. (3) When the force of the flames has reached its height,
follow it up with an attack, if that is practicable;
if not, stay where you are.
9. (4) If it is possible to make an assault with fire
from without, do not wait for it to break out within,
but deliver your attack at a favorable moment.
10. (5) When you start a fire, be to windward of it.
Do not attack from the leeward.
11. A wind that rises in the daytime lasts long,
but a night breeze soon falls.
12. In every army, the five developments connected with
fire must be known, the movements of the stars calculated,
and a watch kept for the proper days.
13. Hence those who use fire as an aid to the attack show intelligence;
those who use water as an aid to the attack gain an accession of strength.
14. By means of water, an enemy may be intercepted,
but not robbed of all his belongings.
15. Unhappy is the fate of one who tries to win his
battles and succeed in his attacks without cultivating
the spirit of enterprise; for the result is waste of time
and general stagnation.
16. Hence the saying: The enlightened ruler lays his
plans well ahead; the good general cultivates his resources.
17. Move not unless you see an advantage; use not
your troops unless there is something to be gained;
fight not unless the position is critical.
18. No ruler should put troops into the field merely
to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight
a battle simply out of pique.
19. If it is to your advantage, make a forward move;
if not, stay where you are.
20. Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may
be succeeded by content.
21. But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can
never come again into being; nor can the dead ever
be brought back to life.
22. Hence the enlightened ruler is heedful,
and the good general full of caution. This is the way
to keep a country at peace and an army intact.
[To Chinese text|To Top]
XIII. THE USE OF SPIES
1. Sun Tzu said: Raising a host of a hundred thousand
men and marching them great distances entails heavy loss
on the people and a drain on the resources of the State.
The daily expenditure will amount to a thousand ounces
of silver. There will be commotion at home and abroad,
and men will drop down exhausted on the highways.
As many as seven hundred thousand families will be impeded
in their labor.
2. Hostile armies may face each other for years,
striving for the victory which is decided in a single day.
This being so, to remain in ignorance of the enemy's
condition simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred
ounces of silver in honors and emoluments, is the height
of inhumanity.
3. One who acts thus is no leader of men, no present
help to his sovereign, no master of victory.
4. Thus, what enables the wise sovereign and the good
general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond
the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.
5. Now this foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits;
it cannot be obtained inductively from experience,
nor by any deductive calculation.
6. Knowledge of the enemy's dispositions can only
be obtained from other men.
7. Hence the use of spies, of whom there are five classes:
(1) Local spies; (2) inward spies; (3) converted spies;
(4) doomed spies; (5) surviving spies.
8. When these five kinds of spy are all at work,
none can discover the secret system. This is called "divine
manipulation of the threads." It is the sovereign's
most precious faculty.
9. Having local spies means employing the services
of the inhabitants of a district.
10. Having inward spies, making use of officials
of the enemy.
11. Having converted spies, getting hold of the enemy's
spies and using them for our own purposes.
12. Having doomed spies, doing certain things openly
for purposes of deception, and allowing our spies to know
of them and report them to the enemy.
13. Surviving spies, finally, are those who bring
back news from the enemy's camp.
14. Hence it is that which none in the whole army are
more intimate relations to be maintained than with spies.
None should be more liberally rewarded. In no other
business should greater secrecy be preserved.
15. Spies cannot be usefully employed without a certain
intuitive sagacity.
16. They cannot be properly managed without benevolence
and straightforwardness.
17. Without subtle ingenuity of mind, one cannot make
certain of the truth of their reports.
18. Be subtle! be subtle! and use your spies for every
kind of business.
19. If a secret piece of news is divulged by a spy
before the time is ripe, he must be put to death together
with the man to whom the secret was told.
20. Whether the object be to crush an army, to storm
a city, or to assassinate an individual, it is always
necessary to begin by finding out the names of the attendants,
the aides-de-camp, and door-keepers and sentries of the general
in command. Our spies must be commissioned to ascertain these.
21. The enemy's spies who have come to spy on us
must be sought out, tempted with bribes, led away and
comfortably housed. Thus they will become converted
spies and available for our service.
22. It is through the information brought by the
converted spy that we are able to acquire and employ
local and inward spies.
23. It is owing to his information, again, that we can
cause the doomed spy to carry false tidings to the enemy.
24. Lastly, it is by his information that the surviving
spy can be used on appointed occasions.
25. The end and aim of spying in all its five varieties
is knowledge of the enemy; and this knowledge can only
be derived, in the first instance, from the converted spy.
Hence it is essential that the converted spy be treated
with the utmost liberality.
26. Of old, the rise of the Yin dynasty was due to I
Chih who had served under the Hsia. Likewise, the rise
of the Chou dynasty was due to Lu Ya who had served
under the Yin.
27. Hence it is only the enlightened ruler and the
wise general who will use the highest intelligence of
the army for purposes of spying and thereby they achieve
great results. Spies are a most important element in water,
because on them depends an army's ability to move.
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