Tragedies should not be politicized; politics should be done at the right time, in the right way, conducted through the right channels. These nostrums and bromides are familiar; they are trotted out as reminders of the Right Way, the Virtuous Way, for those who protest, who engage in political struggle, who notice the events takingContinue reading “It’s Never The Right Time To Protest”
Author Archives: Samir Chopra
The ‘Lone Killer’ And The Mentally Ill World
The invocation of mental illness and lamentations over ‘the state of the American mental health system’ are an inevitable accompaniment to news stories about lone white gunmen who carry out massacres. (c.f. Charleston massacre.) With that in mind, the following wise remarks by Helen De Cruz are worth pondering: People are not just motivated byContinue reading “The ‘Lone Killer’ And The Mentally Ill World”
Black Lives Don’t Matter In Charleston
Gore Vidal once said that it was mighty convenient John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King had all been killed by loners, by curiously isolated killers, who just happened to not be part of a broader conspiracy. Same as it ever was. A lone gunman shot nine people in Charleston, South Carolina lastContinue reading “Black Lives Don’t Matter In Charleston”
A Sympathy Inducing Reminder Of Basic Human Wants
A few years ago, a young union organizer stopped by my office to talk with me about an upcoming campaign of activism directed at CUNY administration. As we spoke, I felt increasingly impatient. I didn’t need to be ‘organized’; my participation in the activities planned by the union was a foregone conclusion; this young manContinue reading “A Sympathy Inducing Reminder Of Basic Human Wants”
Passing For Pakistani And The Two-Nation Theory
I often pass for Pakistani. In my zipcode, 11218, once supposedly the most ethnically diverse in the US, it isn’t too hard. I speak Urdu, but perhaps more importantly, given Pakistan’s linguistic and ethnic demography, Punjabi; I am brown-skinned (but not all brown folk are alike for I, given my linguistic capacities, cannot pass forContinue reading “Passing For Pakistani And The Two-Nation Theory”
Thank God, Caitlyn Jenner ‘Looks Great’
The first transgender public figure whom I ‘encountered’ was Renée Richards–thanks to her landmark legal victory in the New York Supreme Court over the United States Tennis Association, which had denied her entry into the 1976 US Open, on the grounds of their supposed ‘women-born-women’ policy. (Richards–formerly Richard Raskind–had undergone sex reassignment surgery in 1975.) Shortly afterContinue reading “Thank God, Caitlyn Jenner ‘Looks Great’”
Kundera On Virtuous and ‘Timid’ Centers
In Immortality, (HarperCollins, New York, 1992, pp. 75) Milan Kundera writes: Goethe: the great center. Not the center in the sense of a timid point that carefully avoids extremes, no, a firm center that holds both extremes in a remarkable balance… There is something Nietzschean about the kind of center that Kundera has in mind.Continue reading “Kundera On Virtuous and ‘Timid’ Centers”
Jed Perl On The Supposed Necessity Of Doubt For Art
In the course of a ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes’ style review of a retrospective of Jeff Koons‘ work–staged at the Whitney Museum last year–Jed Perl writes: Dada—whatever its deficiencies, and the fact is that it produced relatively little enduring art—was part of a tradition of doubt about the possibilities of art that is woven deepContinue reading “Jed Perl On The Supposed Necessity Of Doubt For Art”
Crying For Anna Karenina
I’ve become a better, not worse, crier over the years. Growing up hasn’t made me cry less, now that I’m all ‘grown-up’ and a really big boy. Au contraire, I cry–roughly defined as ‘tears in the eyes’ or ‘lumps in the throat which leave me incapable of speech’ even if not ‘sobbing’–more. There is moreContinue reading “Crying For Anna Karenina”
‘Don’t Be Like Me’: A Parent’s Plea
Parents want their children to be like them; parents want their children to be better than them; and parents do not want their children to be like them. Despite Hobbes‘ shrewd remark that most humans are content with their congenital endowments of intelligence and talent, we are often quite aware of our shortcomings, intellectual andContinue reading “‘Don’t Be Like Me’: A Parent’s Plea”
Samir Chopra 