Is It Wrong to Talk About Michelle Obama's Body?

Talking Heads: Born Under Punches (courtesy of Captain Crates)
Remain In Light (Sire, 1980)

No synopsis for this article (eff that/read this one wholly):


AlterNet article by Tamura Lomax, RH Reality Check. Posted November 22, 2008:

A recent Salon article declared 'First Lady Got Back.' Does the piece tap into racist assumptions about black women's sexuality?

The recent cacophonous chorus surrounding Michelle Obama's derriere is undeniably troubling. Yet, to be quite honest, it is also strangely gratifying to me. I recently read Salon's feature piece "First Lady Got Back." Taken aback by the implicit oxymoron between the words, "First Lady" and "Got Back," I sat for hours pondering all that this cluster of words signified. For instance, what does it mean to place "first lady," which designates a "respectable" social position, with "Got Back," a sexist epithet coined by rapper, Sir Mix-a-Lot, in his hot song, "Baby Got Back," in the early 90's? And, what does it mean to inscribe these words onto the body of our very first African American First Lady?

The deployment of both "lady" and "back" can be viewed as problematic. First, discourses about mythologized "ladies" didn't initially include black women. A "lady" was a woman or wife who innately possessed such virtues as delicacy, piety, beauty, politeness and gentleness. Black women, who were not seen as "ladies," "women" or wives, were historically not privy to such designation. Historically speaking, this was a term reserved for white women. And let me just say upfront, this was not necessarily a compliment. As I understand it, "lady" was just as imprisoning as the more derogatory terms used for black female slaves -- just in a different way.

Secondly, there is a long history of discourses regarding harmfully reductive views of black women's "backs." Black women have been pathologized and objectified because of their "backs," which, by the way, come in all shapes and sizes just like those of other men and women. Sir Mix-a-Lot's hit song, "Baby Got Back," was only the tip of the iceberg. The cultural chorus regarding black women's bodies, particularly their fragmented backside, had been singing for centuries. Sir Mix-a-Lot simply joined in. Or did he?

To be sure, the mass production of "Baby Got Back" via radio and television took ongoing essentialist discourses about black female hyper-sexuality to new dimensions. The constant reproduction of the gyrating images became a source of social studies on black female sexuality. This was obviously deeply problematic. However, as stereotypically reductive as this song and video was, in its own way, it also celebrated black women's bodies. Sure, this so-called celebration reproduced every stereotype about black female sexuality possible. And, by fetishizing black women's privates, reduced them to mere objects, namely their butts. This was absolutely damaging. However, it also did something else. Through the process of representation (via video imaging), which presented black women's butts as evidence of stereotypical difference (regarding black female sexuality), many black women, including myself, strangely found a sense of pride in our bodies, specifically our butts. Thus, while Sir Mix-a-Lot (and others) reassigned mythical legacies to our behinds, some black women were re-imagining themselves as subjects with beautiful bodies.

However, it is important to realize that this was not everyone's experience. Nor was it likely the experience of those like Sir Mix-a-Lot who commodified black women's bodies for his own use and enjoyment. Nor is it likely the experience of many of those who have joined in the chorus regarding Michelle Obama's butt. Deployment of terms such as "lady" and "back," without some sort of critical analysis is irresponsible at best, particularly in reference to black women. Even if Obama's butt makes us beam with pride every time her beautiful body sashays center stage, we cannot ignore the effects of the obvious "blackening" of the already historically brimming noun, "lady," when placed together in a title like "First Lady Got Back." There are serious implications to consider here, namely the pathologization of our first African-American "First Lady."

In short, if we are not more careful in our utilization of language and not more forthright in our criticisms of the language of others, we run the risk of reinforcing historical ideals of black female sexual savagery at the highest level. This is very dangerous. So, if Michelle Obama's body makes us proud, why not shape our enthusiasm with a critique of the status quo, which continues to treat her as an object by fragmenting her to her parts? Obama is a subject -- more than a body, and, more than a butt. Inscribing her with words without carefully evaluating their operation first is beyond distressing. It is death dealing. Not just to her, but to all women.


+Luddite In Chief l Why Barack Obama Should Keep His BlackBerry: Slate

Idaho Students Chant l 'Assassinate Obama'

CLD PRSS

Madison County, Idaho was once dubbed "the reddest place in America" by Salon, but that didn't make it any less shocking when elementary school children allegedly started chanting "assassinate Obama" on the school bus.

Matthew Whoolery told KIKD News he found out about the chanting from his second and third graders, who had no idea what the word "assassinate" meant.


Rhetorical: Has Obama become an effigy at the behest of elementary school students or are school children, as they often do, mimicking their parents who joke (?) with race and terrorism? For this I request that the Phantom Band chime in: No More Fooling (courtesy of Bumrocks). WTF??!!!

Killer Mike on Sean Bell

Per XXL's print magazine of Sept. 2008: The Year of POLITICS & BULLSH#T:

Killer Mike was asked the following question regarding the April 25, 2008 acquitytal of the three NYPD officers involved in the 2006 shooting death of Sean Bell:

What was your logical and emotional reaction when you heard about the acquittals?

I wish them death, and I hope they get cancer, and I hope it's incurable, and I hope their family has to watch them die a slow death. That's my natural reaction, seriously.

Video: Obama Faces Racism in West Virginia

“...Yankee do it ethic…”

In other racist Obama news:

Obama sock monkey: thesockobama.com is hosted by Binkley-Toys.com.

Per Binkley Toys:

“We are a ‘Work For Hire’ custom manufacturer. We do not own the property you are referring to so we cannot comment on the intent of the creators of that product. … I don’t believe there would be any negative intent behind their product and I am sure that they can enlighten you on their thinking.”

The Sockobama Co., LLC is registered in Utah as a Limited Liability Company.
The owners are David J. Lawson and Elizabeth A. Lawson, residents of West Jordan, UT.

Per webmaster update – the newest version of their website – reads:

AN APOLOGY

We are very apologetic to all who were upset by our toy idea.
We will not be proceeding with the manufacturing of this toy.
Thank you.

GD

+Plunderblund: Racist Obama Doll
+City Room l New York Times Blog: ‘Assassination’ Artist Is Questioned and Released
+The Real News Network: Official Site

Kevin Powell: The Sean Bell Tragedy

I Am Sean Bell

Below find excerpts of AHH: Kevin Powell: The Sean Bell Tragedy, published Saturday, April 26, 2008 4:19 PM.

Kevin Powell is a Brooklyn, New York-based writer, community activist, and author of eight books.

... But I knew this verdict was coming. I have lived in New York City for nearly two decades and, before that, worked as a news reporter for several publications throughout the city’s five boroughs, and I cannot begin to tell you how many cases of police brutality and police misconduct I covered or witnessed, more often than not a person of color on the receiving end: Eleanor Bumpurs ... Michael Stewart … Amadou Diallo ... Sean Bell.

This is not to suggest that all police officers are trigger-happy and inhumane, because I do not believe that. They have a difficult and important job, and many of them do that job well, and maintain outstanding relationships with our communities. I know officers like that. But what I am saying is that New York, America, this society as a whole, still views the lives of Black people, of Latino people, of people of color, of women, of poor or working-class people, as less than valuable. It does not matter that two of the three officers charged in the Sean Bell case were officers of color and one White. What matters is the mindset of racism that permeates the New York Police Department, and far too many police departments across America. Shooting in self-defense is one thing, but it is never okay to shoot first and ask questions later, not even if a police officer “feels” threatened, not even if the source of that “feeling” is a Black or Latino person.

That is a twisted logic deeply rooted in the America social fabric, dating back to the founding fathers and their crazy calculations about slaves being three-fifths of a human being.

“I Am Sean Bell,” many of us chanted in the days and weeks immediately following his death. Yet very few of us showed up to the hearings after, and even fewer had the courage to question the vision, or lack thereof, of our own Black leadership who accomplished, ultimately, little to nothing at all. And very few of us realized that the powers-that-be in New York City have come to anticipate our reactions to matters like the Sean Bell tragedy: we get upset and become very emotional; we scream “No Justice! No Peace!”; we march, rally, and protest; we call the police and mayor all kinds of names and demand their resignations; we vow that this killing will be the last; and we will wait until the next tragedy hits, then this whole horrible cycle begins anew.

And a long as we have leadership, White leadership and Black leadership, mainstream leadership and grassroots leadership, that can do nothing more than exacerbate folks’ very natural emotions in a tragedy like this, we will never progress as a human race. … So many of us, especially us Black and Latino males, will continue to have a very nervous relationship with the police, even the police of color, for fear that any of one of us could be the next Sean Bell.

+Activists, Rappers React To Sean Bell Verdict: AHH
+Legislators Say Sean Bell Shooting Case Not Closed: Alternet

Person Kevin Powell

Right click for SmartMenu shortcuts

Political Jay-Z?

Ready for change?
Depends on the change(s).

The Last Poets: Black Woman
Right On! (Juggernaut, 1968)

+A Vote of Allegiance?

For the full article by DeNeen L. Brown, Washington Post Staff Writer from Monday, March 24, 2008; C01: Washington Post l Playahata

In the Obama-Clinton Battle, Race & Gender Pose Two Great Divides for Black Women

Woman has an ocean of wrongs too deep for any plummet, and the Negro, too, has an ocean of wrongs that cannot be fathomed. There are two great oceans; in the one is the black man, and in the other is the woman. . . . I will be thankful in my soul if any body can get out of the terrible pit."

-- Lucy Stone, 19th-century abolitionist and suffragist, after women were excluded from the 15th Amendment, which gave black men the right to vote.

The "isms" have once again been pitted against each other. Sexism or racism -- which ism is deepest? All things being equal, should a woman or a black man be lifted to the presidency? Which "first" is the imperative first?

The admonitions of white feminists urging black women to vote gender over race have cracked open a scab, a festering sore, that had crusted over the history of this country's competing isms. A scab that covered the lingering tension between some white feminists and some black women, with their dual historic burden of race and gender. It is black women, after all, who have faced both sexism and racism in their lives.

In the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, which ism goes first? Some women fear the question, say it is divisive, explosive, should never be asked. But it has been asked -- in the recent writings of feminists including Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan. The question is ripe, reeling under the surface, discussed with muffled outrage by black women grown weary of white feminists seeming to tell them what to do.

BTW
Eff that too…

Magic Negro: Brackish Curative Black Benevolence

Whodini: It's All In Mr. Magic's Wand (Prod. by Thomas Dolby)
From: Whodini (Jive, 1983)

Cold off the presses comes excerpts from LA Times, March 19, 2007, article: Obama the 'Magic Negro' by David Ehrenstein:
…it's clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the "Magic Negro."
The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. "He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist," reads the description on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro.
He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.
As might be expected, this figure is chiefly cinematic — embodied by such noted performers as Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith and, most recently, Don Cheadle. And that's not to mention a certain basketball player whose very nickname is "Magic."
…most white Americans, whose desire for a noble, healing Negro hasn't faded. That's where Obama comes in...
Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes. If he were real, white America couldn't project all its fantasies of curative black benevolence on him.

If you haven't yet read the An Open Letter to Oprah Winfrey by Saul Williams go get a late pass.

The Word of the Day for May 02, 2007 is:

brackish • \BRACK-ish\ • adjective
*1: somewhat salty
2a: not appealing to the taste b: repulsive

Example Sentence:
Water is often brackish and undrinkable at points where freshwater rivers flow into the sea.

Did you know?
When the word "brackish" first appeared in English in the 1500s, it simply meant "salty," as did its Dutch ancestor "brak." Then, as now, brackish water could simply be a mixture of saltwater and freshwater. Since that time, however, "brackish" has developed the additional meanings of "unpalatable" or "distasteful" - presumably because of the undrinkable quality of saltwater. "The brackish water that we drink / Creeps with a loathsome slime, / And the bitter bread they weigh in scales / Is full of chalk and lime." As this use from Oscar Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol" illustrates, brackish water can also include things other than salt that make it unpleasant to drink.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

*I met John "Ecstasy" Fletcher of Whodini in Harlem years ago (~1998) at a 106 and Park outdoor concert a week after they performed at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington DC, which I also attended. While talking with Ecstasy I mentioned that I attended their last performance as mentioned in the latter. Additionally, I praised Whodini's past work and lauded Larry Smith their producer for their Back In Black (Jive, 1986) album which featured: "Funky Beat"(co-produced by Whodini & Carter, D.Hutchins - whom I know nothing about), "One Love", "I'm A Ho" (co-produced by Jalil Hutchins of Whodini) and "Echo Scratch", (my favorite Whodini non-commercial release!)", who learned to play bass by listening to the late James Brown.
During my diatribe Ecstacy eyes dilated, his head nodded and he articulated, "ok, Ok, OK!" repeatedly - paralanguage profferring expositional respect relative my Whodini-based factualness.

Blending with Skin

Cold off the presses:

10 year old Chinese-English dictionary translation error blamed for “Ni&&er Brown” label describing shade of couch

Crayola’s efforts to dismantle racism

*Cold off the presses - dilatory in reporting, as I've been bee-beaver-busy
*Does Bush eat Rice?

Complexion Protection

Richard Pryor: Black & Proud & White Folks
From: Craps (After Hours) (Laff, 1972)

The Last Poets: Black Woman
From: Right On! (Juggernaut, 1968)

Meet America, anew, not her masquerade:

U.S. Army Recruitment Command at Ft. Knox, Ky., Sergeant Marcia Ramode, assigned to the Brooklyn, N.Y., recruiting office, in an email to Corey Andrew, gay, seeking to enlist:

“…Go back to Africa and do your gay voodoo limbo tango and wango dance and jump around and jump around and prance and run all over the place half naked there...”

Writer and performer, Victor Varnado, Black albino:

"Race and racism is so arbitrary," he says. "Sometimes people see me and they think I'm 'acting black.' Once, I was in a secondhand clothing store with one of my friends and commenting on the fashion, joking: 'I need baggy pants and long T-shirts what rappers might wear.' And this white woman came up to me and said: 'I really find what you're saying offensive.' And then I said, 'I'm black,' and she was like, 'OK. It's fine.' Then she walked away."
"Recently, somebody told me this horrible stereotype, that all Chinese people know kung fu," started a joke he told on Comedy Central's Premium Blend. "And I disempower stereotypes whenever I get the chance, so for the past six weeks I've been fighting the Chinese. And what I've found is that not all Chinese people know kung fu. But most of them will hit you anyway, because, let's face it, Chinese people are very irritable. Irritable people!
"Some people hear that joke and say, 'Victor, I'm disappointed in you, because you said you hate stereotypes, but you made this horrible stereotype.' That's what people have said, but most of those people are Haitians, so whatever! C'mon. Who listens to Haitians, right?"
And then he puts his hand to his forehead and raises two fingers, forming demonic horns, and laughs like Satan.
Commenting on Varnado’s Satanic satire Mike McGowan, president of NOAH, says that since 1960 there have been at least 68 films depicting albino characters as supernatural or evil. McGowan further comments: “To give the devil his due if you're looking to make a character visually stimulating, giving a character albinism is a quick and easy way to do it," he says. "But I think it is an overused literary device, by lazy writers. Research shows that if you look at the '80s, '90s, and first years of 2000, the use of this hackneyed device increases exponentially.”

Lastly, I wish to formally introduce you to the Mandingos

*I've had the fortune of having Abiodun Oyewole, of The Last Poets, as a family friend. He was a frequent visitor to my home when I was a child.

Memorably Theirs: Bernard McGuirk & Sal Rosenberg

As I mentioned in my eLibrary post I am a playahata hataboard member, thusly:

Don Imus, Duke Lacrosse, and the Imaginary Double Standard

by Gumby Dammitt

Okay, so I've been thinking on this whole situation involving Imus and the "unfortunate" remarks he uttered on his radio program that fateful day over a week ago. The wake turbulence that followed leading up to the Thursday, April 12th firing of the ancient shock jock was relentless. The aftershocks will be felt for a good while. White people, whether in minority or majority numbers, seem to be very offended that Imus' remarks drew such a 'heavy-handed' response. Many are shouting from their computers and telephones and book clubs that freedom of speech is under assault. Just check the comments on this AOL News website http://newsbloggers.aol.com/2007/04/12/imus-snaps-at-sharpton/ that has followed the story. They go on for pages and pages. Many of them blame Al Sharp ton or Jesse Jackson for Imus' fall. Imus himself, on the final broadcast before being canned by sponsors (yes, the SPONSORS fired him), wondered when Sharpton was going to apologize to the players from the Duke LaCrosse team. I'll go deeper into that later, but for now I'll identify it as a classic red herring used to further deflect blame for his situation away from himself. See, that's basically the bottom rung on the ladder from which Imus has fallen. He has yet to take ownership of the remarks that he uttered on his program. He has tossed blame everywhere he thought it would stick in order to somehow justify himself and cool the heat that was intensifying on his back. You all know what I'm talking about. It's primarily been the rising din about rappers' use of such language to defile women of color. It's been about how Hip-Hop is the true culprit here. Former ESPN Page 2 contributor Jason Whitlock has hollered it from his column at The Kansas City Star, saying that this is just another opportunity for "victimhood" that we need to resist. I've been observing this situation since it broke and no one has painted themselves as a bigger victim than Don Imus himself. And his minions have followed suit. Check the comments section at the link I listed above or any other story like it. The White martyr mentality is in tremendous effect. Now THERE is a victim mentality that needs to be resisted. Like Spike Lee said earlier today on Steven A. Smith's show, 'don't go slitting your wrists just yet white males, you're still in control.' The quote is hilarious, but only because of its truth. Don Imus makes sexist and racist comments and people decide that they're not going to accept that from him anymore. Sponsors pull out forcing his termination from MSNBC as well as CBS radio. Somehow, Imus has become the victim in the minds of so many white Americans, himself included. An apology was offered, after initial indignation at the notion of such a thing, but never a moment of self-accountability, never a second of contrition. Why? The answer is simple. Don Imus and others of his mindset believe that he really did nothing wrong. That's because when they're enjoying one another's company away from radio microphones and the prying eyes of television cameras this is how they speak. This is how they see people of color. Then when they catch heat they blame hip-hop music like they know it, when the truth of the matter is that their cronies in the music industry promote only one style of rap music and their children gobble up in large numbers. Maybe some white youths taste is more diverse, but to many of their parents, it all sounds the same. "30. I'm not a fan of Imus, but the double standard for Sharpton, Jackson, rappers and femanists etc. are getting out of hand. When will white males start saying enough is enough?" You see, that's disturbing and this strikes at the heart of my commentary. So many people, primarily white males, rail against what has been termed 'political correctness' and that's a very telling thing. When you really break it down the outcry is about the right to offend and to be offensive. It's about being able to say whatever comes to your mind without censoring yourself or thinking that you may offend someone with your words. It's about rolling back the clock to the 'good old days' when a white male could voice just how little he thought of you either through media or to your face without fear of repercussion. The fact is, if a group of people are offended by how you choose to depict them, and they tell you so, then you have some work to do on yourself, because at the end of the day it's got to be about personal growth. The friction appears when the offender resents the group they offended for voicing their displeasure with him (usually a him, but 'hers' have also been culpable). This is the problem that you have with not only Don Imus, but with especially his fan-base. He speaks to a very particular group of white males. The ones who feel somehow that they are under assault and are losing their treading in this society. Of course, these feelings are not based in reality. They are based in perception. Anyone who has observed the happenings of the world through the lens of history up to the present can clearly understand that perception tends to outweigh reality. As a result, this view dictates the avenue that any action takes, i.e.: anger at African Americans, Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, as well as the deflection of blame from Imus to the hip-hop community as a whole. "38. When are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton going to North Carolina to help the wrongly accused lacrosse players in getting their reputations back? - Paul Franco" "75. Ok Rev Jackson and the almighty Al Sharpton, now apologize to the Duke Lacross players that you accused! How is that college fund coming that you initiated for the poor black woman who was raped?? - Colleen" So here we come back to the Duke Lacrosse tie-in. How odd that the above comments and sentiments so eloquently make my previous point. Why, it's so convenient that were I the diabolical and unscrupulous type, I might have made them up just to suit my thesis, but they are very real sentiments snatched from an AOL News comments section. Here, both a white male and female cry the same foul, but why would Sharpton or Jackson need to apologize to any of the Duke players? This is ridiculous and disingenuous, as district attorney Mike Nifong is the man behind the Duke players' ordeal (along with a mentally unstable young woman). It was his ambition and desire to be re-elected to his position that spurred him to post a case without evidence due to it's powerfully sensational nature. Sharpton and Jackson called for justice in the Duke rape case. With all charges dropped against the players, I would say that justice was rescued from peril and served in due course. I would go further to wonder if these same individuals would begrudge the exonerated players who have declined to press charges against their accuser. In all actuality, Nifong manipulated both Sharpton and Jackson, so maybe he should apologize to them. "232. This fake outrage by the few black hypocrates who have the ear of there religious sheep use there voice to chant and spual crap agaist basicly a good man. Yet They don't seem to get that this 66 yr old man didn't get these words from a dictionary. These words came from the same race that they were used against... That don't make it right, but this outrages is so fake and blown out of proportion by these few hypocrates…" The beat goes on and on for many pages. The above comment was lifted from page seventeen. They mostly sing the same tune in varying degrees about how Sharpton and Jackson are the devil, Imus is a good man who said a bad thing, he's not a racist, etcetera. People make these sorts of statements all the time as if that's the long and short of it. No one ever stops to think about the sexist or the misogynist with a wife or a girlfriend (or both). There are plenty. Because it isn't confirmed that Imus goes about spewing racist, sexist commentary every waking moment of his life doesn't mean he's not a racist or capable of racism. The truth is that he caters to a large faceless population that harbor very real and very strong racist sentiments. And they love and value him because he feeds them a steady diet of targets to aim their perceptions at. He allows them to continue to live outside the lines of reality. And so now, the people who feel like they are good natured American citizens, but have that unmentionable something hiding in their belly, can rally to his defense and get off all the "black shit" that they have been trying to push down. And what's better is that they can do it anonymously via the internet without suffering any recourse. See, the truth is that while so many people decry political correctness and wail about black folks' or the hip-hop community's responsibility in all of this, they have forgotten about Imus' (nor should they forget about his producer, Bernard McGuirk or his other sidekick Sal Rosenberg). And while so many bemoan that the first amendment is under assault, they should realize that just as Imus has the right to free speech, his employers have the right to say that they will not stand by his words when they attack, and demean without provocation. It happened to Tim Hardaway and there wasn't any outcry. The N.B.A. told him that they couldn't have him as a representative of their league after the things he said about gay people. That is their right. Imus got the same treatment on April twelfth. It was 30 years in the making, but don't you dare cry for him. That man became a millionaire jockeying what he and his legions call shock. But the question remains: is it shocking because it's hateful and mean-spirited or the other way around? Either way, exactly when did the willful offending of entire classes of people at a time become funny? So somebody finally stood up to a man (and a mentality) that abused and offended the collective American psyche for some thirty years. Should he have been allowed to continue on his path? No, it just took three decades worth of rope for him to hang himself. Feel free to holla at me, gumbyd[at]playahata.com GumbyDammit! The views and opinions expressed herein by the author do not necessarily represent the opinions or position of Playahata.com.

Playahata
Interesting Quote of the Day
"Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave."
Frederick Douglass

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Pronunciation: 'ki[ng]k, So It Goes

Apropos…

In other unrelated news one of my favorite authors: Kurt Vonnegut, counterculture’s novelist, dies — below find article paraphrased excerpts:
The title character in his 1965 novel, “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine,” summed up his philosophy:
“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”
Mr. Vonnegut eschewed traditional structure and punctuation. His books were a mixture of fiction and autobiography in a vernacular voice, prone to one-sentence paragraphs, exclamation points and italics. Graham Greene called him “one of the most able of living American writers.” Some critics said he had invented a new literary type, infusing the science-fiction form with humor and moral relevance and elevating it to serious literature.
He studied for a master’s degree in anthropology at the University of Chicago, writing a thesis on “The Fluctuations Between Good and Evil in Simple Tales.” It was rejected unanimously by the faculty. (The university finally awarded him a degree almost a quarter of a century later, allowing him to use his novel “Cat’s Cradle” as his thesis.)
He was also accused of repeating himself, of recycling themes and characters. Some readers found his work incoherent. His harshest critics called him no more than a comic book philosopher, a purveyor of empty aphorisms.
In defense of his “recycling,” Mr. Vonnegut says, “If I’d wasted my time creating characters, I would never have gotten around to calling attention to things that really matter.”
During the Depression, the elder Vonnegut went for long stretches without work, and Mrs. Vonnegut suffered from episodes of mental illness. “When my mother went off her rocker late at night, the hatred and contempt she sprayed on my father, as gentle and innocent a man as ever lived, was without limit and pure, untainted by ideas or information,” Mr. Vonnegut wrote. She committed suicide, an act that haunted her son for the rest of his life.
He had, he said, a lifelong difficulty with women. He remembered an aunt once telling him, “All Vonnegut men are scared to death of women.”
“My theory is that all women have hydrofluoric acid bottled up inside,” he wrote.
His last book, in 2005, was a collection of biographical essays, “A Man Without a Country.” It, too, was a best seller.
It concludes with a poem written by Mr. Vonnegut called “Requiem,” which has these closing lines:
When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
“It is done.”
People did not like it here.

*Kink
*“So it goes” is one of many Zenlike words and phrases that run through Mr. Vonnegut’s books . "SIG" became a catchphrase for opponents of the Vietnam war

Hurt

In a week embedded with hurt eff, “keeping real” I’m “keeping it ‘hurt”’ – word-up baby-par/straight-jacket daddy-o.

Candi Staton: Too Hurt To Cry (Comp. by G. Jackson/R. Moore)
From: 12”?(Fame, 1971)

Susan Cadogan: Nice and Easy (Comp. by Lee “Scratch” Perry)
From: Hurt So Good (Trojan, 1975)

Nancy Halloway: Hurt So Bad
From: Hello Dolly/Paris 70’s (Concert Hall/Melodie en Sous-Soul, 1969/2002)

Little Wille John: You Hurt Me (Comp. by Darlynn/Kertis)
From: Sure Things (King, 1961)

*Both:

• ”word-up” and
• "straight-jacket”

verify veracity and gravity, while both:

• “baby-par” and
• “daddy-o”

are terms of endearment to emphasize familiarity with said audience – the reader(s) (you), yet in this case both conjunctions are used to stress the invectiveness of this “hurt” entry