I Think You're Totally Wrong (19 page)

DAVID:
I like Chomsky's view that the United States is the freest country on earth, but that it's still incredibly flawed. Even if he often overshoots the mark, he's still a valuable voice.

CALEB:
I guess you see the obvious. Chomsky is half wrong. And in politics or religion “half wrong” equals “all wrong.” The U.S. needs criticism, but it's got to come from
a free agent, not Chomsky. He's become an intellectual demagogue.

DAVID:
I'd say he's pure demagogue. I just like how carefully and quietly and pseudo-respectfully he speaks, as if he's saying very normative things.

CALEB:
My problem with him is he misuses his authority. He's still the same guy who misread Cambodia, citing Western propaganda that only 8,000 people died. Chomsky's misreading directly influenced how leftist intellectuals approached Cambodia. Chomsky never adequately, as you like to say, “turns the arrow back upon himself.” And he's gotten progressively worse. After they killed Osama, Chomsky said, “Bin Laden's ‘confession' is like my confession that I won the Boston Marathon.” Talk about a perpendicular analogy. In 1967 Chomsky wrote “The Responsibility of Intellectuals.” He has failed to answer his own call.

DAVID:
I'm mainly fascinated by him as a presence.

CALEB:
“A presence”? That's it?

DAVID:
Listen, Caleb. You've done more things out in the world than I have, but I've figured out how to write about it in my own voice. I know how to place a jar in Tennessee. It's all I know how to do, but that, to me, is everything.

CALEB:
A jar in Tennessee?

DAVID:
Wallace Stevens.

CALEB:
It's not everything.

DAVID:
To me, it is.

CALEB:
If that's all you have, it's nothing.

DAVID:
That's because you don't have it.

CALEB:
That's a pretty dickish thing to say, don't you think?

DAVID:
You're right. I apologize. Let's agree to disagree. Let's take a break.

CALEB:
At the Philoctetes Center panel, you, Rick Moody, and John Cameron Mitchell couldn't get a word in because DJ Spooky just kept talking about nothing, saying shit like “The bizarre right-wing rescripting of reality is exactly what Hitler was doing: creating a notion of fear and terror as a narrative frame.” The moderator put a stop to it with an interjection about Freud and the vagina. Moody says, “Excellent point.” And they successfully change the topic.

DAVID:
I was supposed to be the moderator of the discussion, but—

CALEB:
It was a lively conversation.

DAVID:
I'd never met Paul Miller—that's DJ Spooky's real name, as you probably know—and he was a last-minute replacement for someone else. He's obviously smart and he talks a good game and he's—

CALEB:
He's no dumb-dumb, but he needs someone to tell him to shut up.

DAVID:
I should have just said, “Paul, thanks, but let's let other people jump in.” It was a conscious decision on my part: the whole room would have gone cold. If Rick Moody were talking too much, I would have said, “Rick, c'mon, give it a rest. You're talking up a storm.”

CALEB:
An ice storm.

DAVID:
Ha ha.

CALEB:
But you wouldn't say anything to Spooky?

DAVID:
Would you have?

CALEB:
I'd like to think so.

DAVID:
Endless blathering and name-dropping and never really saying anything. I wish I'd called him on it. I didn't.

CALEB:
I name-drop, I life-drop, I've done this, I've done that, but there's a time and place.

DAVID:
Because he's black, I just didn't feel comfortable shutting him down.

CALEB:
Speaking of which, what's this about you listening to hip-hop? I just can't see David Shields thundering down the road listening to N.W.A.—you know, Niggaz with Attitude.

DAVID:
You don't think I know who N.W.A. are!? You have a completely one-dimensional view of me. I like hip-hop as it enters my ears through my friend Michael and through Natalie. I don't pretend to seek it out.

CALEB:
Beer?

DAVID:
Sure.
(sound of beer bottle opening)
Amazing. That's an experienced beer drinker. I've never seen that.

CALEB:
Terry's not a fan of the wedding-ring bottle opener.

DAVID:
Why not?

CALEB:
She thinks it'll scratch up the ring. I say it's a symbol of devotion. Beer. Wife. Love.

CALEB:
What'd I do with the black pepper? You want some?

DAVID:
That's plenty. Thanks a lot. This sauce is very good. It's really delicious.

CALEB:
Thanks.

CALEB:
In
Elizabeth Costello
, Coetzee alludes to our treating animals similarly to the way Nazis treated Jews.

DAVID:
I'm not a vegetarian, but I wish I had the willpower. Coetzee says about
Eating Animals
, “Anyone who, after reading Foer's book, continues to consume factory farm products must be without a heart, or impervious to reason, or both.”

CALEB:
Ugh.

DAVID:
If you watch a documentary like—

CALEB:
It's a bunch—

DAVID:
If you watch how chickens are slaughtered, it should make you feel guilty. Don't you think it's cruel how animals are slaughtered, and yet we do it for our own convenience?
Do you not think there's a legitimate case to be made for vegetarianism?

CALEB:
We're omnivores. Animals suffer. That's what they do. They eat one another, battle the elements, starve. They're not cognizant the way we are. In a rich, liberal, educated society it's easy to be a “moral vegetarian,” but in Africa and Southeast Asia they don't eat animals because they can't afford to. Kids suffer mineral and iron and vitamin deficiency. And the brain can't develop without nutrients that meats provide. Pregnant mothers need meat, eggs, milk to help nourish their fetus, so poor people die or grow up malnourished as relatively prosperous vegetarians eat tofu and watercress and hijiki and organic tempeh and then tsk-tsk about meat being “murder.”

DAVID:
Do you try to eat from organic farms?

CALEB:
Terry is nuts about it; so is my dad. We eat free-range chicken, organic everything. All the vegetables we're eating tonight are locally produced. We avoid red meat because it's unhealthy.

CALEB:
When it comes to food, guns, abortion, I'm pro-choice. Smoking: it's your choice. I'm anti-cigarettes but pro-choice. Nobody's pro-abortion.

DAVID:
I think the pro-abortion side believes it can't keep compromising. The so-called pro-life movement's ultimate goal is to ban abortion completely.

CALEB:
There are those who fear if we ban assault rifles, we're going to ban hunting.

DAVID:
I tend to buy the pro-choice argument and I tend not to buy the pro-gun movement.

CALEB:
Guns we agree on, but no one's trying to ban them. The pro-choice, anti-death-penalty, moral vegetarian, though—what is such a person saying? That a fetus has less value than a convicted criminal or a chicken? Terry's friend Jenny and her husband stopped eating meat for moral reasons. Then Jenny had an abortion while she was going to nursing school. A couple summers ago we had a barbecue, and before they could grill their vegetables, they take a wire brush and start cleaning the grill so meat by-products won't pollute their vegetables. I tell Terry, “Chicken has more value than a human fetus?”

DAVID:
You have a distant, detached perspective on human foibles. You're good at that, I think. You're very logical.

CALEB:
Of course I didn't say anything. Jenny felt horrible, though. It messed with her mind. When she told her mother about the abortion, rather than offer consolation, she went ballistic, accusing Jenny of “aborting my grandchild.” Now they don't talk. And I think Jenny regrets her choice. So there's that.