Built Wieseltier Tough
Leon Wieseltier laments the continued existence of mediocre music in a post-Mumbai universe:
On the second night of the atrocity in Mumbai I was hungry for news and turned on CNN. What I got was John Legend moving himself, and the audience, at something called “A Celebration of Heroes,” with a revoltingly sanguine song. It is called “If You’re Out There,” and it is one of those grandiose Quincy Jones-ish anthems to an easy eschatology. I expect to hear it a lot around January 20, when all will be put right. “If you’re out there/ Sing along with me/ If you’re out there . . ./No more broken promises/ No more call to war/ Unless it’s love and peace that/ We’re really fighting for/ We can destroy hunger/ We can conquer hate . . .”: that is what I heard while the Taj was burning. As dumb as the Youngbloods in my day, except for its groove. When trouble comes, these souls will be useless. I reflect now on the beautiful reliefs at Jaulian, which defeated the hordes of the White Huns in the fifth century when the heat of the fires that were set to destroy them turned clay into terracotta and preserved them. Toughness is the condition of a gentle world. There are all kinds of people out there, and a great quantity of fire.
Those souls will be useless, but the world will call for the assistance of literary critics with incomprehensible prose and pretensions to foreign policy expertise?
35 Responses to “Built Wieseltier Tough”
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December 6th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Thank you for shitting on Leon Wieseltier. Man, what a pompous tool.
December 6th, 2008 at 10:08 am
we will
we will
wonk you, wonk you
December 6th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Yeah, but the lot of ya aren’t fit to comb out the great Critic’s shining white mane in the morning.
December 6th, 2008 at 10:56 am
I can’t believe LW dissed the Youngbloods. Guillotine!
December 6th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Isn’t Leon Wieseltier actually Camille LaPaglia in drag?
December 6th, 2008 at 11:21 am
“Short views!”
Write that on his forehead with a laundry marker.
December 6th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Fuck that pansy Legend. He’d probably play Osama’s daughter’s birthday party.
But when Al Qaeda sees Dragonforce coming, they’ll turn tail and run. Too bad these guys are British but ever since Metallica died America hasn’t been able to produce true Hessian freedom metal like we used to. We’ve been made weak by John Legend and Creed and that crap. But I’m confident that Wieseltier spends his evenings practicing Dragonforce licks for freedom.
On a cold winter morning in a time before the light
In flames of death’s eternal reign we ride towards the fight
When the darkness has fallen down and the times are tough alright
The sound of evil laughter falls around the world tonight
Fighting hard fighting on for the steel through the wastelands evermore
The scattered souls will feel the hell bodies wasted on the shores
On the blackest plains in hell’s domain we watch them as they go
In fire and pain now once again we know
So now we fly ever free, we’re free before the thunderstorm
On towards the wilderness our quest carries on
Far beyond the sundown, far beyond the moonlight
Deep inside our hearts and all our souls
So far away we wait for the day
For the lives all so wasted and gone
We feel the pain of a lifetime lost in a thousand days
Through the fire and the flames we carry on
As the red day is dawning and the lightning cracks the sky
We’ll raise our hand to the heavens above with resentment in their eyes*
Running back from the mid morning light with a burning in my heart†
We’re banished from a time in a fallen land to a life beyond the stars
In your darkest dreams see to believe our destiny this time
And endlessly we’ll all be free tonight
And on the wings of a dream so far beyond reality
All alone in desperation now the time has come
Lost inside you’ll never find, lost within my own mind
Day after day this misery must go on
So far away we wait for the day
For the lives all so wasted and gone
We feel the pain of a lifetime lost in a thousand days
Through the fire and the flames we carry on
Now here we stand with their blood on our hands
We fought so hard now can we understand
I’ll break the seal of this curse if I possibly can
For freedom of every man
So far away we wait for the day
For the lives all so wasted and gone
We feel the pain of a lifetime lost in a thousand days
Through the fire and the flames we carry on
Dude.
December 6th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Leon Wieseltier has very important hair.
December 6th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Forgive the liberal heresy, but why are Jews never the inappropriate victims?
After reading this about ten times I think I was able to pick out a vague hint of meaning, but only a hint. It helps to collapse some of the negations he’s managed to pack into 12 words. Is he saying that liberals believe Jews are always appropriate victims? What the fuck does “appropriate” mean in this context?
I think if you de-convolute the syntax, it just turns into silliness and whining. Good thing for him most people won’t bother.
December 6th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
I never thought that TNR would be able to replace that pompous gasbag Lee Seigel when he got fired for posing as a TNR subscriber and trash talking all the other commentators. It looks like Leon W is filling Seigel’s shoes!
December 6th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
I’m sorry, but did the kid with the blog and the undergraduate degree just refer to someone else’s “pretensions to foreign policy expertise?”
You may not find Wieseltier’s ideas to be compelling, but does that really mean we should dismiss as absurd the notion that a deep engagement with literature might provide some insights into human existence which have a bearing on foreign policy issues?
pollian
December 6th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Yes, Leon Wieseltier’s deep engagement with literature will save us all, but John Legend’s futile merrymaking is dangerously unserious.
December 6th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Dang, there goes Leon after the ethics of music
again! Like the second time in a month!
Doesn’t he remember that no one ever came back
out of those weeds in one piece? He’s starting
to sound like Adorno, except with some command
of language, but that will be the next thing to go.
December 6th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
I never cease to be delighted by the continual confusion between “tough” and “butch”…not as delighted as our enemies, unfortunately, but given how wide-spread the confusion and how amazingly pernicious it is, my sole recourse is the wonder and amazement characteristic of an encounter with what the Japanese call “kami”.
It’s like watching a two guys repeatedly punch each other in the shoulder.
December 6th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
You may not find Wieseltier’s ideas to be compelling, but does that really mean we should dismiss as absurd the notion that a deep engagement with literature might provide some insights into human existence which have a bearing on foreign policy issues?
But Yglz I thought you majored in philosophy? Aren’t you used to incomprehensible prose? Maybe it was all this crap.
December 6th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Whoops. To amend:
You may not find Wieseltier’s ideas to be compelling, but does that really mean we should dismiss as absurd the notion that a deep engagement with literature might provide some insights into human existence which have a bearing on foreign policy issues?
Yes.
December 6th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
I’m gonna disagree and say that the “grandiose Quincy Jones-ish anthems to an easy eschatology” is not only entirely comprehensible but the best phrase Leon has written in years…here’s a clue, kids: song title, 4 words; first word “We”, last word “World”–getting it yet?
(OK, so the rest of it’s crap…)
December 6th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Since when has W ever understood a single thing he has ever read? He doesn’t even understand what he writes himself.
December 6th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Pollian; “I’m sorry, but did the kid with the blog and the undergraduate degree just refer to someone else’s ‘pretensions to foreign policy expertise?’”
He gets it right. Yglesias is about the most pompous, conceited 28-year-old ass on the Net. He puts out a book – which nobody read – and thinks he’s a Pulitzer Prize winner and the founding member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Whereas the only foreign relations he really knows is some Spanish chick he balled in Harvard. And she dumped him.
December 12th, 2008 at 8:54 am
To the everyday movie fan, the name John Lasseter may not ring any bells. Yet in animation circles, he is legend. One of the founders of Pixar and now the chief creative officer at Disney Animation, Lasseter has directed such
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