Movable Snipe: John Waters, Eco-Prigs, Pregger Fundamentalists, and Camille Paglia

To: Jonathan Ames From: Amanda Marcotte Subject: John Waters, Eco-Prigs, Pregger Fundamentalists, and Camille Paglia

Dear Jonathan,

I’ve been enjoying the more light-hearted tone of this exchange, so it saddened me to see that the first three of our assigned blogs had depressing content at the top of the page. Jewlicious’s top story was about two Palestinian kids who lost their mother when she killed herself and five others in a suicide bombing. The new content at The News Blog is all about Steve Gilliard’s continuing surgery issues. Gothamist has a terrible murder at the top. All of this is too fresh for a writer to really be irreverent about it.

And I really cherish irreverence. Last night, one of my major heroes of irreverence, John Waters, was on “The Daily Show” promoting his new show on Court TV about spouses who murder each other. I rarely turn on the TV to do anything but play video games when left to my own devices, but I may have to watch this show. The favored description for Waters’ output is that it’s “life-affirming”, and I whole-heartedly agree. It’s hard to see initially why a show that revels in spousal murder could be considered life-affirming, but as Waters said on “The Daily Show” last night, he really considers the show to be “pro-divorce”, which demonstrates why having a healthy sense of irreverence is an important feature of a truly life-affirming worldview.

You mentioned in your last letter that your only real political issue is the environment. Environmentalists (like feminists) have this rather unfair reputation of being overly reverent, sanctimonious types, and in my experience that’s simply not true. One would almost suspect that some conservatives in a think tank somewhere created this stereotype of environmentalists in an effort to get people to dislike them and therefore dislike their cause. There’s some truth to the idea that there’s some environmentalists who are prigs, but that’s probably true of any political movement you join. Even the movement to legalize drugs has its share of prigs, which is hard to believe if you consider that they are organized around the idea that everyone should chill out and get stoned legally once in awhile.

Environmentalists often have an irreverent streak, once you get to know them. It’s hard to avoid irreverence when the theory underpinning your work is that humans are, as you put it, a uniquely destructive animal, especially since environmentalists are trying to save the planet in part to save the lives of this uniquely destructive species. You get a sense of humor about that contradiction or you lose your mind and start wearing hemp in a self-punishing way, as the modern equivalent of the hairshirt.

The Revealer has no new posts up at the time I’m filing this letter. It’s too bad, because the blog is all about religion, so that means that 95% of their stories are about people doing illogical, ridiculous things. The other day, Kathryn Joyce of The Revealer emailed me and reminded me about this piece she wrote for The Nation about religious people doing ridiculous things. In this case, it’s about a bunch of white Protestants who have got it in their heads that God gets off on watching white men keep their wives permanently pregnant. They call themselves the Quiverfull movement, and yes, they spell it that way and it’s grating.

Which isn’t to say that most religious people are especially ridiculous. In fact, the definition of “mainstream” religion in my book is that the people who follow it understand the importance of keeping the ridiculous nature of religion under control.

Maud Newton hasn’t updated either, but she’s on route to Austin, so her ability to rip herself from her blog for a day is understandable. In her sidebar, I did catch a link to this column, a satire by John Warner of Camille Paglia’s writing that’s almost too accurate to be funny. That’s almost—it’s actually pretty damn funny, especially since the premise is that Paglia is coming out of retirement for the 5,000^th time in order to comment on the cultural and political importance of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, after almost losing her will to live after Anna Nicole Smith died. If you’ve managed to avoid Paglia’s writing so far, this column won’t make a good deal of sense to you, but if you’ve ever suffered even a paragraph of it in the past, this column will offer a humorous solace.

Sincerely,

Amanda

P.S. I do hope you enjoy your stay in Austin. Bring bug spray and a bottle of allergy pills. We try to pretend that we aren’t living in an area that’s one step up from a bog, but with global warming making steady inroads, that lie is getting harder to tell ourselves.