Everyone knows who James Frey is. There have obviously been many a literary liar, but no one seems more special than Nasdijj. The LA Weekly dragged all his stinking, festering dirty laundry out into the open a week or two ago, exposing the best-selling Navajo memorist as an unhinged white man who used to write gay erotic fiction. (Haw.)
Now…part of me shrugs it off. Big fricken deal. White man poses as ‘other’ to gain fame, fortune, fortune cookies, anonymous sex with fans, whatever. It’s nothing new. You can put it in the same category as ‘lied about 40 acres and a mule’ or ‘these cholera-ridden blankets sure make me feel funny’ and of course ‘yeah, I’m Jewish but blackface actually makes me feel more comfortable’ (see: Al Jolson). And of course, this guy also did it and his book was long considered a classic of Native American literature until people discovered he too was fradulent.
Seriously. Everybody lies. The President is a liar. And I can say that no matter who is in office. Lying is part of life. But when you lie and then tell everyone you weren’t lying, and that everyone else is an IDIOT, then you lose all my damn sympathy. You start to look downright crazy Saddam-ish.
Here is “Nasdijj’s” blog, back online and full of insanity. He basically calls bloggers, who by the way, constitute EVERYBODY nowadays, a bunch of whining self-important chroniclers of the details of life…yet, uh, he is using a blog to spread his message and, yes, also whining about the details of his life. He spends most of his post telling his readers why they are morons, fools, cowards, why America sucks (yet, he lives here and enjoys his steady electricity and paved roads and many breakfast cereals).
Parts of his rant really piss me off. You know how sometimes you hear a bum screaming on the street…and if you hear him on the wrong day all his gibberish feels insulting and pisses you off even though you KNOW he’s just a crazy bum? I felt like that today reading Mr. Nasdijj’s blog. So enjoy.
What was hilarious about the muckraking of Nasdijj was that the people doing the feeding of the frenzy thought anyone in America gives a fuck. Most Americans could not tell you the name of the new Supreme Court justice. The typical American knows vaguely who Oprah is. The typical American thinks that George W. Bush is probably a nice guy.
How insightful. No one has ever thought these thoughts before! Did you write the movie Crash too? Also, people from the lower Crimea to remote areas of the African bushland know who Oprah is. Get over it. (By the way, that guy’s name is Samuel Alito and he hates my uterus.)
It is simply a lie to say that a story that is applicable to a culture or even a subculture or a subsubsubsubculture or a molecularly distant, tiny, miniscule, subatomic, barely related neighborhood of circling electrons, is owned lock, stock, and barrel by someone so self-important they OWN events common to us all. They simply don’t.
I think I’m going to let Native Americans do whatever the hell they want whether it involves publicly making fun of John Wayne or ripping people off in glitzy casinos. After decades of misrepresentation in Hollywood and mainstream popular culture, after genocide and national trauma enter into the picture, I’m not really going to attack them for simply wanting to own their own cultural products. You look pretty shitty for wanting a piece of someone’s pie when you probably have so much of your own pie to eat and sell for your own monetary gain. Yes, my friend, some people are territorial about their blood, their ancestors. If you felt any link to your own you’d understand.
Also, I’m tired of that whole ‘we’re all electrons and we are all made up of the same stuff’ new-age namby pamby. As far as I’m concered, I am me (not like Ashlee Simpson though) and you are you and I’m Asian and you are white and stay away from my family picture album!
You’ll notice that the New York Times didn’t want to touch this story (like everyone else did) with a ten foot pole. Imagine that.
Well, in between your impersonations of someone you weren’t, you may have noticed even those imminent folks at the NY Times were housing a liar in their midst. I doubt the people who created Jayson Blair want to even THINK about you for one second. Don’t pat them on the back simply because they ignored you.
But take a look at who is doing the finger shaking (bad, bad boy) and you might find that they are people who have enormous investment in the status quo of who has and who does not have a voice in the hierarchal social structures of the cave.
Um, I can understand you attacking major media syndicates owned by giant soulless conglomerates, but for my money, the LA Weekly is just a free pick up magazine that makes most of its money selling escort and plastic surgery ads. I’m sure ‘Kandy’ who is ‘ready for you’ and will ‘bring a friend if requested’ doesn’t give a shit about the status quo, your discussion of hierarchal social structures, or your obvious references to Plato. She thinks Plato is that green stuff her child is eating in daycare while she’s out workin’.
Alright, then his rant kind of goes into ‘cry me a river’ territory talking about Native American children he helped and raised. Okay, sure that’s admirable, but today I talked to a black person. Does this mean I’m automatically a scholar of the civil rights movement? It sure as hell doesn’t make me black either.
Babycakes, I have lived my whole dumb fuck life outside the structures of the cave. And the TRUTH is that most artists live this way — and I don’t really give a flying fuck, and the chances of my apologizing to some asshole with a blog are not good.
Who the fuck are you so angry at? Why don’t you link them up, expose them right back? Why are you such a coward even on your sad-sack blog? Even someone as low as Bill O’Reilly or Michelle Malkin will name names while raving. Also, I don’t think Van Gogh, as insane as he was, ever told people he was a graffiti artist from NYC. Mark Twain was a pen name but he never told people he was the Queen of Norway.
And, in closing:
I don’t give a damn where you are from. I am from EVERYWHERE. What is your life.
Feh, I liked that better when I saw the movie Zelig. I call bullshit on this guy! (Posted by Sherrie.)
