Identity politics

Okay, so Mr. Obama's supreme court nominee is in the news, but my mind is really more on American Idol still. It is summer, y'all, and us teachers shut the brain down during the warm months. So in the spirit of not doing too much new thinking, I'm posting on the topic of Sonia Sotomayor and Adam Lambert.

Bear with me.

I kinda liked Adam Lambert a lot, as I mentioned before, and I enjoyed many of his performances this season (though just as many made me cringe). I figured him for a finalist on Idol and was cool with that, though he was just in my top 3. What never bothered me at all was his "possible" sexual orientation, because it's just not something that matters to me about singers.

But what did begin to bother me was the way that his "possible" sexual orientation became the only filter through which we, socially, were allowed to interpret him. Not surprisingly, as I mentioned before, that became a way of goosing the competition: guy next door versus guyliner, etc. If he wins or loses, we were told, it was a referendum on how tolerant or bigoted America is.

Well, whatever. That's just dumb.

But what did irk me a bit was when identity politics crept into the way we were supposed to experience his actual singing. Case in point, Adam sang a Gary Jules arranged version of an old Tears for Fears song called Mad World, which was to my mind the coolest thing I'd heard on Idol, ever. I loved it. But then I started reading entertainment journalists start to "interpret" his interpretation of the song. Particularly the lines:

Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me
No one knew me

Hello teacher
Tell me what's my lesson
Look right through me
Look right through me

And what they said was, "look, isn't this meaningful because this gay kid is singing about how hard it is to be gay in school, where it's very hard for gay kids to fit in...."

But, see, it was very hard for yours truly to fit in at school. I was very nervous, and I felt like no one knew me. I felt like my teachers looked right through me as if I wasn't there.

And I bet many or even most people felt that way at school sometimes. Growing up is really hard.

But now, this universal sense of anxiety and loneliness and walking the halls feeling unknown and unseen, this wonderful expression of hurt that could bring us all together in our shared experience, has been carved out and sent to the gay ghetto. It's a gay feeling. It's something gay singers and gay audiences could relate to. It's a political statement.

(Never mind that the song's writer and original performer is straight, married with two kids.)

Now what I notice is that that move makes me feel estranged from the whole thing. Where once, I could say, "this feeling I know, as probably everyone can know, of being a no one and feeling unimportant, so I relate to this song and this singer as human beings" now becomes, "I guess it's hard for those people to grow up, and I can kinda empathize, although I'm not one of them." The identity politics spin has moved me outside the song, outside the experience, and left me alienated where I might have instead had a real, human connection.

But real, human connections are between individuals, not identity groups. It's when you throw up the wall of identity politics that you make real human connection harder.

So that brings me to the news of the new supreme court nominee, Judge Sotomayor. I haven't seen enough of her yet to have formed much of any kind of judgment. But I distinctly remember a news article from about a week or ten days ago, where the headline and gist of the article were: "Obama had better pick Latina justice, hispanic groups demand." And I thought at the time, "are we slicing the pie that narrowly nowadays, where we can demand the sex and race of nominees without even having to know whom they are?" It just struck me as bizarre, and bizarre especially because justice is supposed to be blind, it's supposed not to observe the quality of persons but consider objectively their legal claims. But here was the implicit argument that a Latina woman would rule in a "latiny/feminine way." Ack.

All this talk about her "unique experience" seems to suggest that the law is merely an expression of life experiences. And maybe I'm totally wrong, but I'd like to think that a justice would rule according to the words of the statute and the words of legal precedents, not according to her unique personal experience.

In saying, as she did, that "there can never be a universal definition of wise," the implicit argument is that there are competing truths, depending on what your identity politics happen to be. "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Really? Because I would hope that regardless of your race or ethnicity or sex, you would reach a wise conclusion based on the universal qualities that make us human.

It's very unfortunate, I find, that someone as obviously qualified and brilliant as Sonia Sotomayor is not being "shopped" to the American people as just that, an obviously qualified and brilliant legal scholar.

I realize this is a bit rambling, but I just keep feeling like where I'd like to be drawn into supporting singers and judges and just anyone for their humanity and brilliance, I keep being told that everything is a kind of contest between race groups, sexual preference groups, genders, etc. And I don't know that putting a singer or a judge in an identity politics ghetto is good for them or for us.

from the ideal of judging people "not on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character."

I too don't know enough yet to judge. I've actually heard some positive things from folks concerned about abortion, that she seems to have ruled fairly in cases involving abortion politics. I did hear a commentator on NPR say, and I'm almost quoting,"She is the best Latina candidate. Of course, we're not talking about a whole lot of people."

So there's that.

I know Newt Gingrich has called her comment about being a Latina woman versus a white male racist. it might be, I'd need to nkow more context. To me, it depends on what she was actually saying: was she saying women of color make better judges than white men? Or was she saying that inevitably who are affects how we register information? I'm more comfortable with the latter, but it's still a source of concern for me.

And I see the connection of all of this to the Adam issue; it's part of that powerful move to fragment experience so that only certain groups have "ownership" over feelings of alienation and loneliness. Because I loved "Mad World" too--in fact, that whole album was all I listened to for a while,.

As a tangent, is "Sowing the Seeds of Love" not one of the best songs written post-80's by an 80's band? I like to listen to it three times in a row whenever it comes up on my mixed-tape-CD. I always take the lyrics and being really ironic, a tour through pop music that kind of makes fun of pop culture.

is really the best Beatles song the Beatles never recorded. Love that!

I've read some things from you today that shines bright light on your persona. Your depth of thought and analysis of situations and events with a touch of personal opinion has been a pleasure today. I just thought I'd pass that along despite the risk of patronizing.

goes far. I don't think he is as talented as Jeff Buckley but very capable. He is certainly the most interesting American Idol contender thus far.

I really don't mind the Supreme Court Nominee at all. I do note that qualified nominees such as Bork were skipped. But let's face it the Democrats got their just rewards for that act of decadence.

Something about not being under siege makes it easier for me to post thoughtfully.

isn't it ironic that into today's "progressive" world we seem to be be regressing back to tribalism. Group indentity is part and parcel to PAC's (poilitcal action groups). It is like the only way for individual to have power is to join the tribe.

Also, I like your point about the apparent lack of Universal Truth, this is lack is the very foundation of Progressivism. Another irony, the foundation is that there is no foundation.

I noticed that Adam sang with Queen, replacing the no deceased Freddy Mecury. hmmmm.....