The Interview Redux

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg should turn their talents to taking aim at the good guys like like Ai Weiwei or even Michael Moore, just to demonstrate to Kim Jong-un what democracy is all about. Can you imagine a scene where Michael Moore is captured coming upon some injustice in the automotive industry (Roger and Me) and gleefully commenting to his producer how the expose is going to fatten his wallet? Imagine Ai Weiwei provoking cops and then getting all the girls. Imagine an orgy in his Beijing studio with posters of his famous Fuck Off exhibit plastered across the walls. There are so many historic figures who would be ripe for parody from Gandhi, who was supposed to have tested his ability to control his desires, by sleeping next to naked young girls, (“Thrill of the chaste: The truth about Gandhi’s sex life,” The Independent, 4/7/10). Show him failing the test. And what about Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King and the Buddha? Turns out Buddha mind is dirty and that all along the Buddha has been undressing adherents in his head. In piece entitled “The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side,” (The Atlantic, 12/14), Mark Oppenheimer showed how life can easily mirror art in this very respect. What happens when good guys who don’t do things like hiring hackers to shut down major industries in their adversary's countries, get pissed? On a micro level take a look at the countroversy which occurred many years ago when the a writer for Lingua Franca actually pulled one on the editor of the more edgy Social Text, in the form of producing a nonsense paper that got accepted for publication. One would suppose that the deconstructionist crowd at Social Text didn’t like being the laughing stock. However, there were no death threats and no bookstores refused to carry the magazines. If anything the controversy probably drove up sales for two otherwise moribund publications one of which (Lingua Franca) no longer even exists.

Vanity Thy Name is Publication

There has always been a thriving industry of vanity publishing. Vantage Press was a well-known vanity publisher which even advertised in places like The New York Times Book Review. While you had to pay to be published  (instead of the reverse of normal commercial publishing where authors get paid for their work), you would be able to satisfy your ego and see your name in lights. Vanity publishing really was for the vain and particularly those who didn’t like to take no for an answer. Now the vanity idea has caught on in the rarefied world of academic and scholarly publishing. A recent article in the Times, “Scientific Articles Accepted (Personal Checks, Too), NYT, 4/7/13) is causing an uproar among academics and scientists who place great importance in peer reviewed journals. The Times quoted Steven Goodman, “a dean and professor of medicine at Stanford and the editor of the journal Clinical Trials,” as describing the phenomenon as “the dark side of open access.” Often times these open access journals or conferences are a con. “The scientists who were recruited to appear at a conference called Entomology-2013 thought they had been selected to make a presentation to the leading professional association who study insects, “ the Times reported, “But they found out the hard way they were wrong. The prestigious academically sanctioned conference they had in mind has a slightly different name: Entomology 2013 (without the hypen)." As may be obvious the possibilities are vast. Instead of The New England Journal of Medicine, you simply create The Southern New England Journal of Medicine. Instead of Nature you have NaTURE. Back in l996, there was a famous scandal in which a writer for a scholarly magazine called Lingua Franca perpetrated a hoax on the left leaning Social Text. The article, which parodied deconstructionist jargon laden prose, was a accepted by Social Text. The new value free form of vanity scholarly publishing is a deconstructionist utopia. In a universe where everything is relative, there is no right or wrong and all thinking is merely a product of its social context, there is no need for peer review. Let’s say you write a piece entitled “Adultery in the German Diet.” The auspicious and highly respected journal Foreign Affairs is mostly likely to turn it down, no matter how scholarly the research, but you’ll have no reason to despair that your hard work won’t be  rewarded. For a price you can simply have your article published in Foreign-Affairs.

War of the Worlds

Lingua Franca and Social Text, Hagler and Hearns, Nixon and Kennedy, Plato and Aristotole, Coleridge and Wordsworth, William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, Heraclitus and Zeno, light and dark, hot and cold—marriage in general. Whereas one commentator on the institution once said seemingly oppositional partners displace onto each other desirable attributes, such as reserve or gregariousness, it’s unfortunate that so many people grow to hate the differences they once loved, admired, and envied.

Hegel’s philosophy of history was based on the idea of opposition. Thesis, antithesis, and synthesis were the terms he used. In modern terms, Walmart and Amazon go to war and give birth to a new discount giant. What will be the synthesis of these two oppositional elements—Walzon? In the Enlightenment, the pessimism about human nature posited by Hobbes and the clearly idealistic vision of man portrayed by Locke coalesce in the framing of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights—checks and balances, the inalienable rights of the individual in the face of the democratic rule of the majority, all are products of two opposing views of human nature.

   

In the 20th century, communism lost out to capitalism, but historical progression created the curiosities of elites within the Politburo and the decline of class in the mercantile structure. But what are the new warring forces of our present age? Fundamentalism (in both its religious and political incarnations) versus globalism, literal versus abstract, uni- versus cyber-verse, e-mail versus snail mail (no contest). Then there are the oppositions that are still-born, like pre-op transsexuals who maintain both female and male gonads without fusing into a new creature.

Naturally those who analyze the market seek to discover the answer to such oppositions on a daily basis, considering that profits lie in the secrets of mergers and acquisitions. Will Citicorp continue as an unruly giant, or will it be forced to sell some of its divisions? Google has already triumphed over Yahoo, but will an emboldened adversary come to the fore, developing a new service called Houyhnhnm? Big- and small-world theories, special and general, relativity, quantum, and string—the war of the worlds continues.