— On Assholes

Selected beauties from Kanye (see here, for the full compendium of 2013 foolishness).

“If I were to write my title like going through the airport and you have to put down what you do? I would literally write ‘creative genius’ except for two reasons: Sometimes it takes too long to write that and sometimes I spell the word ‘genius’ wrong. The irony.” November 18, Bret Easton Ellis Podcast

“It’s only led me to complete awesomeness at all times. It’s only led me to awesome truth and awesomeness. Beauty, truth, awesomeness. That’s all it is. “June 16, New York Times

“So the next day I went to the studio with Daft Punk, and I wrote ‘I Am a God,’Cause it’s like, yo! Nobody can tell me where I can and can’t go. Man, I’m the No. 1 living and breathing rock star. I am Axl Rose; I am Jim Morrison; I am Jimi Hendrix.” June 19, W Magazine

Here is Louisa Kamps, writing for Elle magazine (here):

In his erudite and streetwise Assholes: A Theory (Doubleday), UC Irvine political philosophy prof Aaron James looks at the consequences of income inequality and reminds us how, for millennia now, philosophers have been grappling with the moral challenges of treating other humans decently. James, an avid surfer, became interested in the subject when he realized that a certain prototypical surfer—Lance, he calls him, rather nicely—can be found on every great swell around the world. Lance has “decided that he should have almost any wave he wants,” and when “people see him paddling for a wave, they should realize that he is the regular, that he’s the better…surfer, and that this wave is therefore his wave.” Even if somebody is already up on it, Lance takes “his” wave. As “other surfers are ‘burned’ in this way”—flicked

Zach Dorfman offers a lovely discussion, sounding themes of dignity, in the LA Review of Books, here.  Here’s the first bit:

YOU KNOW HIM, I PROMISE. He is difficult to avoid — especially, it seems, in our great urban centers. Curiously, the tonier the ZIP code, the more he seems to multiply like some droning, infuriating ungulate. He is the person who weaves through three lanes of traffic suddenly, without signaling. He is the person who sits near you at a movie theater and proceeds to take a phone call in the middle of the feature. He is

Where the “sucker” is defined as one who fails to stand up to an asshole, on behalf of cooperative people (or him or herself), when this appropriate and necessary.  The sucker is thus complicit in the asshole’s assholery, even if not necessarily an asshole him or herself.

It can be hard to tell when someone is a sucker so defined, because it can be hard to tell when standing up to an asshole is appropriate and necessary.  Much of the time, we should just blow of an asshole and let the frustrations go, and it can be a tough call when it would be productive and right to take on the fight.  Assholes succeed by exploiting this zone of uncertainty.  Because cooperative people disagree about when and when not to resist the asshole, they often turn on one another, making the assholes work easier for him.

Alas, in Boehner’s case, the case seems relatively clear cut.  With global financial catastrophe in the cards, with stakes that don’t get too much higher, it is fair to say that he’s well beyond the zone of uncertainty.  Taking a stand for the public good is now necessary (and possible, since Boehner merely has to allow a vote on the House floor, which will settle the issue with a significant bi-partisan majority).  So Boehner probably isn’t an asshole.  But in this case, being a sucker may be as bad or worse.

For lack of support, Berlusconi has simply backed down in his plan to topple the Italian government (see Here).  If it can happen in Italy, could it possibly happen in the US, in the gov. shutdown/debt ceiling crisis, before the suffering mounts and all hell breaks loose in global markets?  Let us hope and pray…

This time not from the mouth of babes, but from God’s representative on Earth himself, Pope Francis, here:

“Heads of the church have often been narcissists, flattered and thrilled by their courtiers… The court is the leprosy of the papacy.”

The church is instead “a community” of people, priests and bishops who “are at the service of the people of God,” especially the poor, the old and the young “crushed” by unemployment.  “The most serious of the evils that afflict the world these days are youth unemployment and the loneliness of the old.”

“Clericalism should not have anything to do with Christianity.”

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Or, rather, there is a gathering consensus to the contrary, it would seem, as Cruz takes a valiant stand for self-aggrandizement, at the risk of global economic meltdown.  A chorus of critics is emerging, even within the GOP (on the eve of a government shut down and possible failure to raise the debt ceiling).  We shall see if DC politics has exhausted its resources for asshole management, after having largely let them run wild.  Needless to say, it would be nice if the experiment weren’t so enormously consequential, for the country and for the world.  Let us hope and pray…

Larry Summers withdraws, and will not be Fed chairman, despite the backing of the most powerful man in the world.

I’m thinking Rodman is actually not a colossal ahole for praising and befriending Kim Jong-Un and publicly throwing the imprisoned American under the bus, all while cursing American officials, because, you see, he is in fact a patriotic CIA operative, who is merely gaining enough favor with the N. Koreans to nudge them to release the American over drinks.  Or maybe not…

I’m kidding.  Baseball fans seem quite certain that Yankee Alex Rodriquez is indeed an asshole.

Plus, what with all the drugs and lying and arrogance, even that venereable institution of journalistic objectivity, The New York Times (er, I mean, Post), says so, on this cover page.