Tag Archives: New Yorker

He who dies last wins

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Death & star trails

Death & star trails, originally uploaded by Midnight-digital.

An excerpt from "Mine Is Longer Than Yours," by Michael Kinsley in the New Yorker:

The government statistics on how people die are lavish and fascinating. Let’s forget for a moment that it’s a catalogue you can’t really shop from. And yet you also can’t put it down and say “No, thanks” to the whole thing. So what’s your pleasure? Or should I say, “Choose your poison”? In 2004, five thousand eight hundred people did choose poison, and suicide in general—the only option that you actually can choose—ranked eleventh among causes of death, with thirty-two thousand people casting their votes for it. Half of these people used guns. About twenty-one thousand people died of poisoning classified as “accidental” in 2004. That’s almost half as many as died in car accidents. Accidents in general ranked fifth, with a hundred and twelve thousand out of a total of 2.4 million deaths.

For me, reading this essay was like sitting down next to a stranger and striking up a conversation, and discovering first that the stranger was witty and erudite, then realizing that he’s a marvelous raconteur. I recommend you go read it for yourself.

This machine kills Fascists

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this_machine_kills_fascists

this_machine_kills_fascists, originally uploaded by ivalladt.

Strange coincidence:

On Wednesday, on his terrific blog about arts and culture in Venango County, Dittman posted a link to a t-shirt with a graphic of a guitar and the words "This machine kills fascists."

I thought, "Neat graphic. Don’t know what it means, but interesting."

Meanwhile: I subscribe to the New Yorker. Usually I get through each issue within two weeks of receiving it, but a few years ago I fell behind and a big pile built up. I’m gradually getting through them.

So it happened that today, I was reading — an article about Woody Guthrie.

Here’s the paragraph that connected the dots for me:

Once Hitler ventured into the Soviet Union and Stalin joined forces with the Allied powers, Guthrie became patriotic; he supported the United States’ involvement in the Second World War and pasted a hand-painted sign onto the front of his guitar: "This Machine Kills Fascists." He kept it there after the war, in reference to another target: the cultural power brokers who, in his view, oppressed folk artists by rewarding sleek professionalism.

I’ll guess that most people who reference this slogan — especially those who buy the t-shirt — are unaware of either of these meanings that Guthrie ascribed to it. To people today, it seems to mean that music can be a tool for striking back against the powers-that-be, especially governments but also corporations.

It’s good to remember what Guthrie originally meant when he painted this on his guitar, and to see the layers of meaning he and other people have added to it over the years.