These guys are from England, part MCLVII...

I think people tend to mis­un­der­stand exactly what it is that makes the Casey Kasem U2 rant, a bit of out­take fun that was ini­tially propag­ated by the satir­ic­al col­lagists Negativeland for their their lawsuit-inducing U2 EP of many years back, so thor­oughly admir­able. As adepts of out­take humor know, the vit­ri­ol was occa­sioned by copy Kasem had to read dur­ing the “America’s Top 40” intro, or maybe outro, to the pop­u­lar band’s big hit single “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” and said copy con­cerned itself with the giv­en names of lead sing­er Bono and gui­tar­ist The Edge. Kasem, des­pite using an assumed name for pro­fes­sion­al reas­ons him­self, bristled at hav­ing to deliv­er this expos­i­tion, and summed up his, and what he assumed to be every­body else’s, can’t-be-botheredness with the immor­tal obser­va­tion, apro­pos the gen­tle­men born Paul Hewson and Dave Evans, “These guys are from England and who gives a shit?” 

Now, a lot of people think that what’s funny is that EVERYBODY knows that U2 are from Ireland, not England, and that this makes Casey Kasem an out-of-touch know-nothing and the joke’s on him. If you’re one of the people who thinks that, you’re wrong, and the joke is in fact on you. Because say­ing “England” when maybe he should have been say­ing “Ireland” is in fact exactly what makes Kasem and his anger so AWESOME, because that’s pre­cisely how much he DOESN’T GIVE A SHIT. Are you fol­low­ing me? His defi­ance in the implac­able face of all that is not-give-a-shit-able about becomes prac­tic­ally magis­teri­al as a res­ult. And that’s one reas­on Kasem’s my man, and one reas­on I find myself mut­ter­ing, “These guys are from England…” sev­er­al times a day. And of course I blame the inter­net. You know? Like;  Juan Williams? Really? 

This is also one reas­on why I’ll nev­er be able to be a reg­u­lar writer for Salon, not that I’m ask­ing. And I bring this up not in order to pick a fight with my ami­able col­league Matt Zoller Seitz, but because I think the case in point, and the way he handles it, say some­thing maybe inter­est­ing about how inter­net pub­lic­a­tions work with respect to that old print work horse the “think piece.” I per­son­ally have always been at least slightly dubi­ous about the so-called “think piece” — I’ll nev­er for­get nod­ding vig­or­ously the first time I heard one of such things referred to as a “thumb­suck­er” — and one thing that’s note­worthy about the pro­lif­er­a­tion and rel­at­ive pro­duc­tion speed of the e‑zine and/or blogs and what not is their abil­ity to gen­er­ate think pieces about top­ics which may or may not bear a whole lot of think­ing about. In my own philo­sophy, the fact that Mel Gibson is not going to appear in a cameo role in the sequel to the very prof­it­able com­edy The Hangover does­n’t rate much more than a shrug, if I’m in a good mood. In a bad mood, it’s “these guys…” time again. In the world out­side of my philo­sophy, the news is a HUGE THING, for maybe the equi­val­ent of ten, or maybe Warhol’s fif­teen, minutes. And gen­er­ates a lot of what-does-it-all-mean con­sid­er­a­tion. Hence, Matt’s piece at Salon, in which the incid­ent, or non-incident, spurs some exam­in­a­tion per­tain­ing to Hollywood’s “double stand­ard on pub­lic dis­grace.” The piece is thor­ough, and arrives at a con­clu­sion that I can get behind pretty much 100%. And it would have nev­er in a mil­lion years occurred to me to write such a piece, and if an edit­or had assigned me such a piece, I likely would have resen­ted the assign­ment and tor­tured myself doing a shitty job of it. Because I’m lousy at gen­er­al­iz­a­tions. Matt can look at this Gibson/Hangover 2 thing and do a very sol­id job of link­ing it to any num­ber of oth­er incid­ents and poten­tial scen­ari­os and yok­ing them all to a thes­is. I look at it—if I look at it at all—and I see a case of a some­what entitled, righteous/self-righteous not-quite-mainstream star (that would be one Zach Galifianakis) get­ting a little huffy at hav­ing one of his no doubt more-tractable-than-he’d-willingly-admit “prin­ciples” being poten­tially viol­ated, and either hav­ing, or not hav­ing, enough Hollywood clout to get his pissy way and then be able to pat him­self on the back for it. And as it turns out, get­ting it. His pissy way, that is. And again…who gives a shit, as far as I’m con­cerned. I did­n’t much care for the first Hangover—it was­n’t so much the over­ween­ing crassness with the fake mor­al­ist non-cherry on top so much as it was the jokes just wer­en’t funny enough—and do not anti­cip­ate the pro­spect of see­ing a fol­lowup to it with any­thing resem­bling enthu­si­asm. (And here I recall Nick Tosches’ kick­er for a review he did of a volume of Raymond Carver’s ostens­ible poetry: “I was paid, albeit mod­estly, to linger amid these lines. I sug­gest that oth­ers await a sim­il­ar circumstance.”)

And I LIKE being lousy at gen­er­al­iz­a­tions. Not mak­ing gen­er­al­iz­a­tions is the rock upon which I build my church, so to speak. The church of being sparsely employed. (Kidding. I’ve actu­ally got a fair amount of work going these days.) But I do won­der: can we divide crit­ics and essay­ists into cat­egor­ies of big pic­ture explain­ers and minu­ti­ae dis­sect­ors? What’s this got to do with a fox and a hedge­hog, or white ele­phant art and termite art? Or is this less some­thing to do with writers’ habits of mind than the prerog­at­ives and con­cerns of assign­ing edit­ors? A close exam­in­a­tion of Matt’s piece actu­ally strongly sug­gests the lat­ter, as its conclusion—which I men­tioned being com­pletely sym­path­et­ic with — and its over­all mode of argu­ment­a­tion are rather at odds with the premises sug­ges­ted by the story’s head­line and deck. I said before that he yoked his examples to a thes­is, and that’s true, but by the end he’s at the very least cast­ing strong doubt on the thes­is’ valid­ity, which is pretty admir­ably nervy of him, I must say.