The Gilded Age on HBO - scrapes off the gild to reveal plywood

Madison Square Park, photo by Sarah Sarai

I am most unhappy with the first episode of "The Gilded Age," a Julian Fellowes-written jam which is very silly and very white. My HBO subscription ends in a few hours, so this was my farewell and no problem there. 

This first-of-the-series episode is a fitting send off (to the demise of my subscription).  There were many complaints with HBO's The Wire - that it was a white writer's impression of a black city (Baltimore) and a black struggle (Baltimore). That is my perspective of "The Gilded Age" - that it is very very very white and remarkably uninventive in being so. Despite the one young black woman who is a struggling writer. Perhaps her struggle will be representative of the times but why bother representing those times? Why use the history of racism as an excuse to further racism? 

And why such a pallid portrayal of the nouveau riche? Hallelujah and thank you, lord, two great and interesting actresses brightened the screen. Christine Baranski as an old school white lady richie rich. And, briefly so far, Audra McDonald as the mother of Baranski's new secretary. (There is no situation or script on God's earth that could not be bettered by Baranski and/or McDonald.) 

The plot is pallid. Carrie Coon, an actress I dislike (her expressionless face creeps me out - has done so since Fargo [the t.v. show], is the striver in this series. A monied wife who has a house built on Fifth - across from Central Park - as her Cape Canaveral to launch herself into old New York society. Her architect is the great Stanford White but apparently his name means nothing to the first families of New York. New York has always had snobs spinning its social circles with a circus clown's panache. And, yes, snobs are delightful when they are Baranski aided by some of the mustachio twirling men in the series. 

In the final scene of Episode 1, the Carrie Coon character, an arriviste, insists she's going to make the snobs of New York admire her or come to her parties. THAT's the issue? Sounds like a Father Knows Best episode with Kitten scrunching her 10-year-old face to reveal gumption. It would work better if Reese Witherspoon were the pushy broad determined to get through Harvard Law. 

I live in NYC and it is mundo snob-o-licious. It is awful here, in fact, IF you harbor a desire to fit in. Which I stupidly did. Because there are no accommodations for weirdos like me (a simple country lass with no money and a quick tongue). I'll talk about that sometime when my thinking portions are up to par. 

'The Great Mute Who Is Almighty' & 'The Shiny You Have Missed' - 2 prose poems now in Unbroken

from The Met Museum collection

'The Great Mute Who Is Almighty' & 'The Shiny You Have Missed' - two prose poems - are on Unbroken. 

Thanks to editors Dale Wisely, Howie Good, and Laura Gregory for selecting these two and for a sophisticated presentation.

I wrote about Julian Bond's chance encounter which enabled the first all Black delegation from Georgia to participate in the Democratic Convention on this blog. Here. (Re: The Great Mute Who Is Almighty). Read both poems.

Dear White People: Yesterday I Told You We Are White - Guess What - Another Day and Still White. Deal with It.

What I forgot to mention when chatting myself up yesterday* on the topic of whiteness was that a particular white person, Frank Bruni, who pens Op-Eds, has moments of pain in the ass-ness.

He's also a writing prompt. His NYT op-ed this weekend, I'm a White Man. Hear Me Out, prompted me to barf. Or almost. He begins with this whine. (A whine should be an orchestral instruction.) 

I’m a white man, so you should listen to absolutely nothing I say, at least on matters of social justice. I have no standing. No way to relate. My color and gender nullify me, and it gets worse: I grew up in the suburbs. 

Waaaaaaaah! What a coy maiden he is. But wait! He's gay! And from ye olden times, when it was tougher to be queer. I'm older than he is, from when it was tougher to be a dyke. And? You know who was from oldener times? Oscar Wilde. Imprisoned. Shamed. Despised. But so eternally loved.

So I wanted to reference one of Bruni's idiocies parading as insight and argumentation. He quotes black writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, who wrote, Losing My Cool.

“My black father, born in 1937 in segregated Texas, is an exponentially more worldly man than my maternal white Protestant grandfather, whose racism always struck me more as a sad function of his provincialism or powerlessness than anything else. I don’t mean to excuse the corrosive effects of his view; I simply wish to note that when I compare these two men, I do not recognize my father as the victim.”

A quotation which Bruni uses as EXHIBIT A, if the court please! He maintains that because a black man, Williams exalts his father and because black people who do not have the limiting disease of racism, everyone should pity Bruni who does have that limiting disease. 

Of course white people know suffering and learn to transmute it in fire, in which souls are purified. But so what. Bruni states, "My gayness no more redeems me than my whiteness disqualifies me." Ahhh. He's a walking embrace of all mankind, that Frank. I wonder what a logician would say about his reasoning which goes like this: That person has welts because he was beaten. But I hurt too, Ma, and much of MY hurt bubbles in the shallow hole of my not having been beaten. Am I not a man?

Odd and distasteful, Bruni's argument is EXHIBIT B. 

I suggest that  when we accept who we are under the pretty big umbrella of being human, we won't hate difference because we'll see connecting threads
and the beauty and accept our limitations. It's not easy, I agree. One of the wisest bits of advice I ever heard was from a lover: Learn to take your lumps, Sarah. BRUNI!!! Learn to take your lumps, you poor sodden fool with your meagre NYT op-eds.

*Yesterday's post. Click.

Dear White People: We're White. Deal with It.

I've been seeing op-eds and postings by white people about our whiteness. White-like-me people are holding forth that our skin color doesn't define us. That they are the other kind of white person, not the frustrated, angry, slow-thinking KKK member, but the enlightened type of white person, who has known sufferings and tribulations. And loves Aretha. I have thought the same thing at times, about my whiteness, that because I have had a hard time because I'm not a stereotypical, Vogue model-worthy white woman, or even a reasonably competent and attractive woman who navigates life any too well. I'm not white white, am I? Hello, me?!? Swedish and Russian and white all over.

I won't bother with white-people pleas of having suffered as much as black people, because that is plain old dumb ass. The dyke-iest dyke and the queenliest queen, if white, has an easier time of it -- riding the subway, working, renting an apartment -- than a black counterpart.

Is it possible for white people to suffer? Do we have to prove our humanity? Yes, to the former. Yes, to the latter, although that yes is a bit wry. We BETTER demonstrate empathy and kindness. As for pain and suffering, jeeze, watch an opera, read some great literature. Sorrow and suffering, suffering and sorrow. Anna K. didn't throw herself under a train because she was looking forward to a picnic at the dacha the next day. History, the kind with nonfictional characters, is nothing more but the record of the ruling class ruling, screwing, cheating, enslaving the majority of people. Rapes, betrayals, jealousies, theft, murder, war. Feudal it was and feudal it still is. Do billions love religions because of ice cream socials in the basement after services? That would suffice for me, but, no. It's because religion at its best offers comfort. Why do we need comfort? Because we suffer. White or black, yeah, we all suffer.

But, fellow white folk. It's been different for us and that is a hard pill to swallow, an uncoated pill requiring a full glass of water to get down.  I understand why it may feel unfair and even why it may be unfair, a little, a bit. What else is unfair? Racism. Institutionalized mean-ass racism. Being the black guy delivering mail in a corporate office and getting hate looks from the Partners. Being the only black person in the drug store or business or small town. Being afraid day in and and day out that some asshole white person will choose to not feel their sorrow, but take out their frustration on a random black person or simply model their horrid shallowness by causing damage.

Yes, women know some of that fear. We do. We know institutionalized privations. And, yes, gay people, too. But that's how we now define ourselves? As victims? Uh. Have we white folk lived through over four hundred years of unrepentant cruelty and good old American meanness? We really have to bite the bullet and stop whining that we do participate in the very thing that has been despised for over 400 years in this country -- blackness and ethnicity. Do we envy black people? If we have any sense, we do. But envy is such an invalidating emotion. In this so important issue we have to acknowledge that we are different, an idea that runs contrary to good will-thinking of we're all the same and God loves us all the same. God does, God doesn't. In this minute, white people are different from black people. Like the rich are different from the most of us. Deal with it.

With Y as an Absence of Pain #fiction

A story I wrote is in print or virtual print. Check out the latest issue (#17) of Cleaver Magazine to read "With 'Y' as an Absence of Pain." 

Thank you. It takes so long to write one story and then, poof, it's up and out, a dandelion shred blowing.

With 'Y' as an Absence of Pain

On Bob Dylan and the current plague of self-love: dudes, we all suffer

Father and son.

I'm keeping this short. There some was mention of being chosen for a Nobel on Dylan's website. My hunch is that a caretaker of the site did that, not Dylan. I further hunch that Dylan told the underling to remove the acknowledgement, however minimal it was. Okay, so there's that. The Academy's phone call to Bob has not been returned.

PEN asked an odd slew of writers the organization apparently respects for their opinion about Bob Dylan being awarded a Nobel. Most of the comments, even the favorable ones, were uninteresting. So to sum up the Nobel's sense of being snubbed and the idiotic outrage over Dylan as a literati, I have one teeny idea.

Just because you like me doesn't mean I have to like you. Just because the Nobel Committee likes Bob Dylan doesn't mean he has to like the Nobel Committee. As for those comments on the PEN site, on the prize, WHAT? Amy King (who was one of those asked to respond), Dylan didn't write "inspiring and motivational songs." His songs have inspired some, motivated others. There's a difference. This is one prize, one year. If anyone assigns it power, that someone is not me. Everyone, these days, is enchanted with their own suffering, so enchanted they can't see anyone else's. Everyone is so enchanted with their own success they can't acknowledge anyone else's.

In a recent car trip I listened to another writer talk about the suffering she has endured as result of being Persian. Her sufferings are legit. But when I mentioned the kind of institutional, four hundred year-plus "sufferings" of my nieces and nephews, who are black in America, she had nothing to say. She tried to match them. Everyone is competing. Few people are willing to recognize the enormous gifts they are given. I am so tired of the self-love and love of self in this country and certainly among writers in this country. It's become small and mean and territorial.  That's all I have to say. For now.

We won't be able to simply 'move on' from Frump - we'll have to re-educate our boys & girls - they've been listening

I just watched Michelle Obama's speech at a New Hampshire rally. My reaction? Damn, it's good to feel moral again, to hear decency praised, to know someone has their eye on our children.

As Frump has been uglifying America, I've worried about women's lives being under constant threat of verbal and physical assault. That's always a worry but my fears were situated front and center as Frump ranted and raved. What I appreciate about Michelle Obama's speech is its reminder -- women and girls - girls - are at risk. Michelle Obama reminds me is that girls and boys - boys - are at risk. They are watching us watching Frump as he brags about sexually assaulting women.

I grew up hearing pops of rage from my father and a strange hysteria from my mother. Some of the troubles and defects of my life reflect childhood fear. I'm not complaining. I'm just saying (as they just say).

But I never heard one generic insult hurled at women or men or girls or boys. I don't remember hearing one racial insult. My mother once expressed her worries about the Pope. She was raised by Swedish Lutherans who were die-hard Protestants, nationally trained during their late-1800 childhoods to fear Catholics. And as I write this I realize that my mother's bit of prejudice effected me and was something I had to work through. Mom expressed her prejudice once, maybe twice. That's it. And yet if affected me.

The only country or nationality I heard demeaned in my family household was Poland. "The Poles were worse than the Germans," my parents said, referring to Polish treatment of Jews during WW II. My Christian mother was more virulent on the topic than my father.

Those minor generalized assaults (I'm not talking about the general discord and rage in our household) had an impact on me. That being the case, WHAT is the impact of Donald Frump's horrid and incessant racism and sexism. He's not going to be President but we STILL have to undue his damage to the American psyche.

We won't be able to simply 'move on' when Hillary is in the White House. We will have to address the New Ugliness. Racism and sexism weren't Frump's creation but gave those ugly attitudes a platform, a microphone, a frenzied audience.

We are faced with a huge catch-up of American morality and American decency. The past few years have also highlighted our racism and our dangerous addiction to guns. And they have also made it seem - seem - acceptable to make ugly horrifying comments about women and girls. Boys have been listening. They need to be told Frump was wrong. Girls need to be told Frump is wrong. Start speaking out.

Letter Sent to Yale Univ. About Naming a Building After Calhoun

[Emailed 5.31.16] 
Dear all:  Thank you for open access to the museums. I've Metroed up from NYC for Yale's remarkable collections now and then, to thrill in the work. I am disappointed, however, that Yale is racist, promotes racism, aggressively stands by racist personages who shame the U.S. How else to interpret naming a building after Calhoun. This action is wrong; plain-out, straight-ahead wrong. Not especially because New Haven is a town with many Black people, although that fact doesn't strengthen Peter Salovey's immoral decision. I don't threaten but I do my part to objcct to this Trumpish celebratory sneering at this country's attempts to pursue the experiment of equality.  Two articles. (1) James Baldwin's NYT review of Roots; 1976. (2) James W. Loewen's "10 Questions for Yale's President." My reason for the latter needs no explanation. As for Baldwin - he informs Salovey that Salovey "need[s] the moral authority of ... former slaves, who are the only people in the world who know anything about ... [Salovey] and who may be, indeed, the only people in the world who really care anything about [him]." I suggest no person of merit or discernment gives a crap about Salovey. Me? I very much dislike shoddy thinkers. True, I'm no one of any importance and have minus-zero wealth. But I do not want anyone I love to have more struggle in their life for any reason and certainly not because a "leader" with lackluster thinking skills is willing to cause harm because he doesn't understand what harm is. I ask you to resist naming so much as a shed after a man who caused so much pain. We don't erase Calhouns from history but we don't celebrate them.

Most sincerely,

Sarah Sarai

emailed 5.31.16

to: (many are in charge of helping to organize "gifts" to Yale)

ziba.kashef@yale.edu, karen.peart@yale.edu, james.shelton@yale.edu, elizabeth.connollymartell@yale.edu, michael.cummings@yale.edu, william.hathaway@yale.edu, joan.oneill@yale.edu, lynn.andrewsen@yale.edu, julie.braverman@yale.edu, donna.consolini@yale.edu, martha.woodcock@yale.edu, margo.tucker@yale.edu, patricia.pedersen@yale.edu, cynthia.mariani@yale.edu, ellen.lewis@yale.edu, melissa.rollenhagen.cristal@yale.edu, anthony.violano@yale.edu, james.hackney@yale.edu, gail.briggs@yale.edu, james.ebert@yale.edu, pamela.wesley@yale.edu, jill.westgard@yale.edu, jonathan.holloway@yale.edu, peter.salovey@yale.edu

The above illustration is one of the less heart- and gut-wrenching visuals of slavery.