The BBC Presents a New Dramatization of Orwell’s 1984, with Christopher Eccleston as Winston Smith

in Literature, Politics, Radio | February 15th, 2013


Like the idea of total­i­tar­i­an­ism, per­haps best artic­u­lat­ed by Han­nah Arendt in her post-war Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism, George Orwell’s post-war scruti­ny of repres­sive gov­ern­ments has become a sta­ple, catch-all ref­er­ence for pun­dits on either side of the polit­i­cal spec­trum, par­tic­u­lar­ly the con­cepts of dou­ble­s­peak, dou­ble­think, his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism, and the hyper-intru­sive Big Broth­er, all from the 1949 nov­el 1984. In fact, few adjec­tives seem to get deployed with more fre­quen­cy in urgent polit­i­cal dis­course of all kinds than “Orwellian.” But the name George Orwell, pen name of jour­nal­ist Eric Blair, hides an enig­ma: Orwell iden­ti­fied him­self explic­it­ly as a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ist of a par­tic­u­lar­ly Eng­lish bent (most notably in his essay “The Lion and the Uni­corn”), but his scathing cri­tiques of near­ly every exist­ing insti­tu­tion some­times make it hard to pin him down as a par­ti­san of any­thing but the kind of free­dom and open­ness that every­one vague­ly wants to advo­cate. That ambi­gu­i­ty is a strength; despite his stead­fast left­ist roots, Orwell would not be a par­ti­san hack—where he saw stu­pid­i­ty, avarice, and bru­tal inhu­man­i­ty, he called it out, no mat­ter the source.

The seem­ing con­tra­dic­tions and ironies that per­me­ate Orwell’s thought and fic­tion are also what keep his work peren­ni­al­ly inter­est­ing and worth reread­ing and revis­it­ing. He was a prob­ing and unsen­ti­men­tal crit­ic of the motives of pro­pa­gan­dists of all stripes, both left and right. Begin­ning in late Jan­u­ary, BBC Radio 4 launched a month-long series on Orwell, with the avowed­ly iron­ic name, “The Real George Orwell.” Part of the irony comes from the fact that Orwell (or Blair) once worked as a pro­pa­gan­dist for the BBC dur­ing WWII, and lat­er based the tor­ture area in 1984, Room 101, on a meet­ing room he recalled from his time there. His expe­ri­ences with the state broad­cast­ing net­work were not pleas­ant in his mem­o­ry. Nonethe­less, his for­mer employ­er hon­ors him this month with an exten­sive ret­ro­spec­tive, includ­ing read­ings and drama­ti­za­tions of his essays and jour­nal­ism, his semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal accounts Down and Out in Paris and Lon­don and Homage to Cat­alo­nia, and his nov­els Ani­mal Farm and 1984.

In this lat­est drama­ti­za­tion of Orwell’s most famous nov­el, pro­tag­o­nist Win­ston Smith is voiced by actor Christo­pher Eccle­ston, who has inhab­it­ed anoth­er key post-war char­ac­ter in Eng­lish fic­tion, Dr. Who (Pip­pa Nixon voic­es Julia). In a brief dis­cus­sion of what he takes away from the nov­el, Eccle­ston (above) draws out some of the rea­sons that 1984 appeals to so many peo­ple who might agree on almost noth­ing else. At the heart of the nov­el is the kind of human­ist indi­vid­u­al­ism that Orwell nev­er aban­doned and that he cham­pi­oned against Sovi­et-style state com­mu­nism and hard-right impe­ri­al­ist author­i­tar­i­an­ism both. Win­ston Smith is an embod­i­ment of human dig­ni­ty, cel­e­brat­ed for his strug­gle to “love, remem­ber, and enjoy life,” as Eccle­ston says. “It’s the human sto­ry that means that we keep com­ing back to it and that keeps it rel­e­vant.” Lis­ten to a brief clip of the 1984 drama­ti­za­tion at the top of this post, and vis­it BBC Radio 4’s site to hear parts one and two of the full broad­cast, which is avail­able online for the next year. When Europe and Amer­i­ca both seem rent in two by com­pet­ing and incom­pat­i­ble social and polit­i­cal visions, it’s at least some com­fort to know that no one wants to live in the world Orwell fore­saw. Despite his novel’s deeply pes­simistic end­ing, Orwell’s own career of fierce resis­tance to oppres­sive regimes offers a mod­el for action against the dystopi­an future he imag­ined.

For oth­er free, online read­ings of Orwell’s work, you can vis­it our archives of Free Audio Books, where you’ll find

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aldous Hux­ley Reads Dra­ma­tized Ver­sion of Brave New World

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy Dra­ma­tized in Clas­sic Audio

Also find major works by Orwell in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Watch Lambeth Walk—Nazi Style: The Early Propaganda Mash Up That Enraged Joseph Goebbels

in Comedy, Film, History, Politics, Video - Arts & Culture | February 14th, 2013

In a ter­rif­ic his­tor­i­cal prank that sent Nazi Pro­pa­gan­da Min­is­ter Joseph Goebbels storm­ing out of the screen­ing room, British min­is­ter Charles A. Rid­ley edit­ed togeth­er scenes from the film Tri­umph of the Will with the music from the musi­cal Me and My Girl to cre­ate a spoof that infu­ri­at­ed lead­ers of the Third Reich.

Lam­beth Walk—Nazi Style was released in 1941 to news­reel com­pa­nies. It was billed as “Schich­le­gru­ber Doing the Lam­beth Walk, Assist­ed by the Gestapo Hep Cats,” and lays the catchy tune against images of Hitler and Nazi sol­diers from Leni Riefenstahl’s sem­i­nal pro­pa­gan­da film.

The sto­ry goes that the par­o­dy enraged Goebbels to such an extent that he ran out of the screen­ing room, kick­ing at chairs and scream­ing obscen­i­ties.

“The Lam­beth Walk” tune was writ­ten for the 1937 musi­cal, about a Cock­ney boy who inher­its a for­tune and must leave behind his work­ing-class ways to become a gen­tle­man. Nazi par­ty offi­cials called the tune “Jew­ish mis­chief and ani­mal­is­tic hop­ping,” mak­ing it even fun­nier as the back­ground music for Nazi sol­diers parad­ing.

The name “Schich­le­gru­ber,” by the way, was also a dig at Hitler. It was the name of his mater­nal grand­moth­er, whose son Alois (Hitler’s father) was an ille­git­i­mate child. Oops!

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II

“The Duck­ta­tors”: Loony Tunes Turns Ani­ma­tion into Wartime Pro­pa­gan­da (1942)

Hitler Reacts to Take­down of Hitler Par­o­dies

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at .

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Nate Silver (Sporting a Cookie Monster T‑Shirt) Talks Serious Stats with Conan O’Brien

in Media, Politics | December 10th, 2012

Even if you hate or fear sta­tis­tics, you’ve sure­ly become more than aware in recent months of one par­tic­u­lar sta­tis­ti­cian: Nate Sil­ver. The young pro­fes­sion­al num­ber-crunch­er has made the news in a big way for a legit­i­mate­ly impres­sive sta­tis­ti­cal feat: pre­dict­ing the win­ner of all fifty states and the Dis­trict of Colum­bia in this year’s Unit­ed States pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. He came near­ly as close back in 2008’s elec­tion, pre­dict­ing the win­ner in 49 states. In between those coups, Time named Sil­ver one of the world’s hun­dred most influ­en­tial peo­ple, and the New York Times has giv­en their offi­cial impri­matur by host­ing his blog FiveThir­tyEight. Now he’s received what some would con­sid­er an even high­er hon­or: an invi­ta­tion to sit down with Conan O’Brien for the bet­ter part of an hour on Seri­ous Jib­ber-Jab­ber.

“Elec­tions are prob­a­bly the most dra­mat­ic moments in the his­to­ry of our coun­try,” O’Brien says to Sil­ver. “The­se’s a dan­ger,” he then dead­pans, “that you’re tak­ing the fun out of it.” We jumped on O’Brien’s new long-form inter­view web series last month, fea­tur­ing his con­ver­sa­tions with pres­i­den­tial his­to­ri­an Edmund Mor­ris and “com­e­dy mas­ter­mind” Judd Apa­tow. Sil­ver, the pro­gram’s third guest, per­fect­ly con­tin­ues its short but strong tra­di­tion of per­son­al­i­ties who bring both zeit­geist rel­e­vance and intel­lec­tu­al sub­stance. The choice also taps into a well of pub­lic curios­i­ty — a great many of us know of Nate Sil­ver with­out quite under­stand­ing why we do — and finds a reserve of goofi­ness to match O’Brien’s own. (If you doubt this, behold Sil­ver’s Cook­ie Mon­ster t‑shirt.) So think hard when you watch this con­ver­sa­tion about polit­i­cal echo cham­bers, media frag­men­ta­tion, data’s rela­tion­ship to instinct, and math­e­mat­i­cal mod­el­ing. But do feel free to laugh at the jokes.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Conan O’Brien Plays Char­lie Rose, Talks Pres­i­den­tial His­to­ry with Edmund Mor­ris

Celebri­ty Sta­tis­ti­cian Nate Sil­ver Fields Ques­tions from Data Wiz­ards at Google

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Ai Weiwei’s Parody of ‘Gangnam Style’

in Current Affairs, Music, Politics | November 23rd, 2012

Some­how this one slipped by me, and per­haps by you too. In recent weeks, Chi­nese dis­si­dent artist Ai Wei­wei post­ed a video par­o­dy­ing Gang­nam Style, the unex­pect­ed­ly mas­sive hit record­ed by the South Kore­an rap­per Psy. To date, the music video for Gang­nam Style has been viewed 792 mil­lion times on YouTube. That has to be some kind of record. And every­one has had fun riff­ing on it. The North Kore­ans have used it to mock rival South Kore­an politi­cians. And Ai Wei­wei seems to be tak­ing a shot at Chi­na’s rul­ing par­ty (you see the hand­cuffs, no?). Or maybe he’s just blow­ing off some steam.

Ear­li­er this month, the artist also pro­duced a new video titled “How to Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Remove a Shiny Screw with Chi­nese Char­ac­ter­is­tics From a Mov­ing Vehi­cle in Eigh­teen Turns.” The video, writes Hint­mag, fol­lows Ai Wei­wei “on a bus mak­ing its way through Beijing—notably pass­ing by Tianan­men Square—while lit­er­al­ly unscrew­ing a screw. It’s thought to be a state­ment on the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of Chi­na and the new 18th Nation­al Con­gress, which took office two weeks ago.” You can watch it right below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who’s Afraid of Ai Wei­wei: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

Ai Wei­wei and the Seeds of Free­dom

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Stanford “Election 2012” Course Draws to Close with a Post Mortem and Predictions

in Current Affairs, Politics, Stanford | November 18th, 2012

Worth a quick men­tion: Stan­ford’s Elec­tion 2012 course (pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned here) wrapped up with a post-mortem. It starts with Steve Schmidt, a for­mer John McCain and George W Bush advi­sor, giv­ing a fair­ly blunt assess­ment of where the Repub­li­can Par­ty stands right now. (The video above starts with his assess­ment.) Then Tom Stey­er, an asset man­ag­er, phil­an­thropist and envi­ron­men­tal­ist active in Demo­c­rat pol­i­tics, explains why Oba­ma’s vic­to­ry is the prod­uct of trends (not nec­es­sar­i­ly healthy ones) already seen in Cal­i­for­nia pol­i­tics for the past decade. And Simon Jack­man, a Stan­ford prof immersed in polling, shows why data mat­ters and Nate Sil­ver (538 blog) got things right.

The rolling con­ver­sa­tion is mod­er­at­ed by David Kennedy (Pulitzer Prize-win­ning his­to­ri­an), Rob Reich, and Jim Stey­er. We’ve pro­vid­ed YouTube links to the remain­ing lec­tures below. You can also find them on iTunes. Plus we’ve  cat­a­logued Elec­tion 2012 in our col­lec­tion of 550 Free Online Cours­es.

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Bertolt Brecht Testifies Before the House Un-American Activities Committee (1947)

in History, Politics, Theatre | November 12th, 2012

Ger­man poet, play­wright, and the­o­reti­cian, Bertolt Brecht—author of such famous works as The Three­pen­ny Opera (1928) and Moth­er Courage and Her Chil­dren (1938)—was a com­mit­ted Marx­ist who pro­posed a new the­ater to shat­ter what he saw as the com­fort­able mid­dle-class con­ven­tions of both trag­ic and real­ist dra­ma. His the­o­ry of “epic the­ater” under­lay his prac­tice, an attempt to shock audi­ences out of com­pla­cen­cy through what he called Ver­frem­dungsef­fekt (“defa­mil­iar­iza­tion” or “dis­tanc­ing effect”).

Brecht’s enor­mous influ­ence was felt not only through­out Europe, but also in the Unit­ed States, where he set­tled for a short time along with many oth­er Ger­man artists and intel­lec­tu­als flee­ing Nazi per­se­cu­tion. In 1943, Brecht col­lab­o­rat­ed with fel­low exiles Fritz Lang and com­pos­er Hanns Eisler on the film Hang­men Also Die!, his only Hol­ly­wood script, loose­ly based on the assas­si­na­tion of num­ber-two leader of the SS, Rein­hard Hey­drich.

Despite Brecht’s anti-Nazi activ­i­ties, in 1947 he was nonethe­less called before the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee (HUAC) and accused of writ­ing “a num­ber of very rev­o­lu­tion­ary poems, plays, and oth­er writ­ings.” HUAC, fueled by post­war Com­mu­nist and sub­ver­sive para­noia, inves­ti­gat­ed dozens of artists and pro­vid­ed the mod­el for Sen­a­tor Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunts of the 1950s. Brecht’s friend Eisler was also called to tes­ti­fy, hav­ing been denounced by his own sis­ter. Brecht was crit­i­cized by many for his appear­ance. As part of the “Hol­ly­wood Nine­teen,” a group of screen­writ­ers sub­poe­naed by HUAC, he was one of eleven who actu­al­ly appeared, and the only mem­ber of the group who chose to answer ques­tions. The remain­ing ten, includ­ing even­tu­al­ly black­list­ed writ­ers Dal­ton Trum­bo and Ring Lard­ner, invoked their Fifth Amend­ment rights against self-incrim­i­na­tion. But Brecht was also the only for­eign­er in the group, as he put it, a “guest” in the coun­try, and feared that his return trip to Europe would be delayed if he did­n’t coop­er­ate. After his tes­ti­mo­ny, Brecht wrote in a let­ter to Eisler:

“I see from some news­pa­per clip­pings that cer­tain jour­nal­ists thought I behaved arro­gant­ly in Wash­ing­ton; the truth is that I sim­ply had to obey my six lawyers, who advised me to tell the truth and noth­ing else. Not being a cit­i­zen either, I could no more refuse to tes­ti­fy than you could.”

Brecht’s tes­ti­mo­ny (excerpt above) has become some­what leg­endary. The man who invent­ed the the­ater of alien­ation turns this hear­ing into some­thing of a piece of the­ater. Brecht did not lie to the com­mit­tee; he denied offi­cial mem­ber­ship of any Com­mu­nist Par­ty, which was true. But his pol­i­tics were decid­ed­ly prob­lem­at­ic for HUAC. Instead of dis­cussing them direct­ly, Brecht gave answers that were often equiv­o­cal, iron­ic, or seem­ing­ly eva­sive, turn­ing (like Bill Clinton’s post-Lewin­sky tes­ti­mo­ny) on small mat­ters of def­i­n­i­tion, or mak­ing use of the ambi­gu­i­ties of trans­la­tion. For exam­ple, Chief Inves­ti­ga­tor Robert Stripling asks Brecht about a song enti­tled “For­ward We’ve Not For­got­ten” (from his play, The Deci­sion) then reads an Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the song. Asked if he had writ­ten it, Brecht responds, “No, I wrote a Ger­man poem, but that is very dif­fer­ent from this thing,” pro­vok­ing laugh­ter among the audi­ence. In response to the ques­tion about his “rev­o­lu­tion­ary” writ­ings, Brecht clev­er­ly responds: “I have writ­ten a num­ber of poems and songs and plays in the fight against Hitler, and of course they can be con­sid­ered there­fore as rev­o­lu­tion­ary, ‘cause I of course was for the over­throw of that gov­ern­ment.”

The com­plete tran­script of Brecht’s tes­ti­mo­ny is avail­able here, and an audio excerpt is online here. Brecht’s tes­ti­mo­ny is a fas­ci­nat­ing his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ment of a time when cen­sor­ship and polit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion were very much Amer­i­can activ­i­ties.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Bruce Springsteen Stumps/Sings for Obama: A Free Six-Song Set

in Current Affairs, Music, Politics | November 5th, 2012

Back in 2008, Bruce Spring­steen threw him­self vig­or­ous­ly behind Barack Oba­ma’s cam­paign. He played small con­certs on Oba­ma’s behalf, and then wrote on his per­son­al web site that Oba­ma “speaks to the Amer­i­ca I’ve envi­sioned in my music for the past 35 years, a gen­er­ous nation with a cit­i­zen­ry will­ing to tack­le nuanced and com­plex prob­lems, a coun­try that’s inter­est­ed in its col­lec­tive des­tiny and in the poten­tial of its gath­ered spir­it.” Fast for­ward four years, Spring­steen is back at it again, though per­haps with a few more reser­va­tions. This sum­mer, he told David Rem­nick, the edi­tor of The New York­er, that he admired Oba­ma “for the health-care bill, for res­cu­ing the auto­mo­bile indus­try, for the with­draw­al from Iraq, for killing Osama bin Laden.” But, on the flip side, he’s “dis­ap­point­ed in the fail­ure to close Guan­tá­namo and to appoint more cham­pi­ons of eco­nom­ic fair­ness, and .… an unseem­ly friend­li­ness toward cor­po­ra­tions.” [This is The New York­er para­phras­ing his con­cerns.] Aloud, he won­dered whether he could go out there again:

I did it twice because things were so dire.… It seemed like if I was ever going to spend what­ev­er small polit­i­cal cap­i­tal I had, that was the moment to do so. But that cap­i­tal dimin­ish­es the more often you do it. While I’m not say­ing nev­er, and I still like to sup­port the Pres­i­dent, you know, it’s some­thing I didn’t do for a long time, and I don’t have plans to be out there every time.

That was in July. But, fast for­ward to Octo­ber and Novem­ber, and we find the Boss stump­ing again for the pres­i­dent in swing states. Spring­steen appeared in Madi­son Wis­con­sin today (below) and Char­lottesville, VA on Octo­ber 23. You can watch the six-song acoustic set above, which fea­tures “We Take Care Of Our Own,” “For­ward, “The Riv­er,” “Promised Land,” “No Sur­ren­der” and “Thun­der Road.”

There’s not much that’s pos­i­tive about this cam­paign. Every day when you turn on the TV, we’re remind­ed of how spe­cial inter­ests have cor­rupt­ed our politic process, all with the bless­ing of the Supreme Court. But if there’s a sil­ver lin­ing to be found — a free set by the Boss — we’ll take it. Go out and vote tomor­row, no mat­ter which can­di­date you sup­port. And we’ll see you on the oth­er side.

 

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Filmmaker Errol Morris Gives Us “11 Excellent Reasons Not to Vote?”

in Current Affairs, Politics | November 1st, 2012

All through­out this inter­minably long pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cycle, which has been going on since at least 2010, I’ve had a laser-like focus on polit­i­cal news. You might even call it a death grip. Because I’m a pol­i­tics junkie. It’s a dis­ease, I know, I rec­og­nize I need help, and I’ll get it—after Novem­ber 6th. As a pol­i­tics junkie, I am sub­ject to a cer­tain severe irri­ta­tion: pro­found exas­per­a­tion with those myth­i­cal beasts called “unde­cid­ed vot­ers,” who are even more galling than third par­ty vot­ers are to hyper-par­ti­sans. “What?” I shout at the radio, when one of these cryp­to-zoo­log­i­cal crea­tures calls in. “You dream­ers, you obliv­i­ous block­head­ed dream­ers!” I shout, and oth­er things. Yes, in my mania, I’ve shout­ed these things at the radio, because how can peo­ple not have made up their minds months ago, been glued to inter­net news and opin­ion for hours, pored over minis­cule pol­i­cy details, destroyed their eye­sight, col­lapsed their spine under the weight of civic duty? How, indeed. But per­haps (and every pol­i­tics junkie fears this pos­si­bil­i­ty), the unde­cid­ed vot­ers aren’t idiots—perhaps they’re thought­ful, kind, trust­ing, tru­ly… dare I say it, inde­pen­dent….

Now with all of our weird vit­ri­ol direct­ed at the “unde­cid­eds,” preter­nat­u­ral­ly myopic junkies lose sight of a bloc with the pow­er to bend, break, or shat­ter the scales altogether—non-voters. In a nation that has expend­ed tril­lions of dol­lars, thou­sands of lives, and quite a lot of inter­na­tion­al good will to give oth­ers the right to vote in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, we make a pret­ty poor show­ing at the polls every four years, with rough­ly half of us declin­ing to exer­cise our fun­da­men­tal right to vote for our lead­ers. Think about that: half. Fifty per­cent of Amer­i­cans: when women only won the right in 1920 and after amend­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion. When African Amer­i­cans fought for a hun­dred years and only ful­ly won the right in 1965 with the Vot­ing Rights Act. These are significant–if sig­nif­i­cant­ly belated—achievements, and, to be sure, they’re the rea­son so many peo­ple trea­sure their vote as a pre­cious token of polit­i­cal auton­o­my. But non-vot­ers are an invis­i­ble enig­ma: no one talks much about the appalling­ly low turnout in this coun­try, except to men­tion it in pass­ing. So doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris (The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War), provo­ca­teur and social crit­ic, decid­ed to dis­cuss the issue with over 50 peo­ple under the age of 40. The result is the short film above, teas­ing­ly titled “11 Rea­sons Not to Vote?”

What Mor­ris found con­founds the faithful—the junkies scowl­ing into their micro­fiche read­ers. Non-vot­ers, and the unde­cid­ed, can take a larg­er view; as Mor­ris points out in his accom­pa­ny­ing New York Times essay, non-vot­ers not only com­ment on the fact that no major par­ty can­di­date has dis­cussed issues so many peo­ple care about—poverty, cli­mate change, the drug war, the dys­func­tion­al prison system—but non-vot­ers real­ize that if no one’s talk­ing, noth­ing will be done. Some of them may be cyn­i­cal, but many more may just­ly say they’re real­ists. Per­haps it’s us, the vot­ers, who are dream­ers.

The 11 rea­sons Mor­ris gives, with tongue lodged in cheek, are as fol­lows (with my explana­to­ry gloss­es in paren­the­ses):

  1. You can’t depend on demigods (Hint: politi­cians aren’t demigods, even when they seem so)
  2. Like jazz, apa­thy is an Amer­i­can art form (slack, an appro­pri­ate response to polit­i­cal fun­da­men­tal­ism?)
  3. Flori­da (deba­cle, year 2000)
  4. The Elec­toral Col­lege (does any­one under­stand this thing?)
  5. Missed entre­pre­neur­ial oppor­tu­ni­ties (one vote, one price)
  6. Poten­tial extra­di­tion (absen­tee bal­lot if under ren­di­tion?)
  7. Awk­ward fam­i­ly din­ners (vot­ing out of spite for fam­i­ly mem­bers)
  8. Traf­fic (acci­dents on the way to polls can­celed out by dat­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties at the polls)
  9. Forced analo­gies (warn­ing: involves foot­ball)
  10. Overzeal­ous advo­cates (car­rots and sticks)
  11. Mas­culin­i­ty is under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed (The Man: stick it to him)

I come away from Morris’s exer­cise sub­dued, not cured, but per­haps ready to wean myself away enough to look at why we make elec­tions mat­ter so much, when they seem to do so lit­tle for so many. That said, how­ev­er, I’m still going to vote. The com­ment that struck me more than any oth­er was this: “If you don’t vote, you can­cel your own vote.” Mor­ris replies, “that’d be stu­pid.” And it would be, I think, damn it all.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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