The Flavor of Suspicion

Study of Perspective - Essex and Delancey, Ai Weiwei, 2012

"I condemn these police from New York in the most general and sanctimonious of terms." - Wizard of Yale University Richard Hawkcloak

“We have an obligation, and it is to protect the very things that let Yale survive. The American Way of Life, sure, but also all the lawyers and financiers with Yale diplomas on their walls in Manhattan. Let’s not forget, Yale owes its clean toilets and Halal dining options to these people, and these people live and work in the places that terrorists love to blow up. I’d like to hear the university keep whining when half its endowment goes up in flames at the hands of one of its own precious diversity-boosters. It’s the same thing Ray and I keep having to tell the blacks and Latinos when they complain about the stop 'n' frisks: don’t you understand we’re just protecting you from yourselves?” - Michael Bloomberg

"You don't have to be a monster to be a monster." - Ray Kelly, The Third Jihad

"All snowflakes are unique, but 90% of them are terrorists." - Paul Browne, Deputy Commissioner of Public Information

“Like the way dolphins can tell when a woman is pregnant by bouncing sonar off the bones of the fetus, we can tell when a terror plot is afoot by the density and tenderness of bones in a halal restaurant’s half chicken entree. “ – David Cohen, Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence

"NYPD Undercovers Surf Internet, Eat at Restaurants All Day on Taxpayer Dime " - The New York Post

"My God, and the whole time I thought I was just writing secret shopper reports!" - undercover officer Paulie 'Whitesauce' Giordano

“Made out with a ‘Tara,’ nineteen-year-old nutrition major of Lebanese extraction, parents from Beirut. Contrary to expectations, her braces were not an obstacle.” – undercover report F389-4 on City College Muslim Student Association whitewater rafting trip

“Just goddamn delicious.” – undercover report R861-9 on Newark Chinese-Mexican-Halal Chicken Stand

"Police overreach doesn't go nearly far enough. If you want to impose your Will upon a captive population, you have to raise up the Collaborator as the only true meritocracy your Might allows." - Ed Koch

“Secret investigation? Why didn’t they just ask?” – Mark Zuckerberg

The Meat Parade and Other Tales of Extraordinary Madness

"I hate just about everyone who watches this goddamn meat parade. The Help was horseshit. Fuck you all. Hi Mom. Goodnight." - Octavia Spencer, 2012 Academy Award acceptance speech

"I fucked all the women. And most of the men. Thank you." - Jean Dujardin, 2012 Academy Award acceptance speech

"Who knew being a cunt could get you this far?" - Meryl Streep (as Margaret Thatcher), 2012 Academy Award acceptance speech

"I've worked with Scorsese, Allen, and Spielberg, but all those twerps never did nothin' for me. Thank you Stephen Daldry! You're the best thing since Bergman." - Max von Sydow, 2012 Academy Award acceptance speech

"I really wanted to capture the feeling of being a wannabe artist. I want to thank all of you for inspiring me. I think I made a movie that can make us all proud." - Woody Allen, 2012 Academy Award acceptance speech

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and totally righteous dinosaurs reigned supreme. And God said, 'Let there be magic hour,' and there was. I saw that the light was good and separated the light from the darkness. Then it meant something." - Terrence Malick, 2012 Academy Award acceptance speech

"Wait... you really watched my film? Jesus... I mean... Who knew? You guys actually watch all these films? Man... I really underestimated you guys. I mean... Wow! I never thought a film about a dance... You didn't know it was about Pina Bausch? Well yeah... it WAS in 3-D and I guess I understand how it sounds like an alcoholic beverage one might order in an American bar. Is that how you vote? Oh. [music plays]" - Wim Wenders, 2012 Academy Award acceptance speech

VI(OLAB)LE BODIES

“My Body is Unlimited.” – Newt Gin Ginch

“This shit is kicked.” – Diane Feinstein

“God’s love burns inside me.” – Solar Santorum, Bleach Ocean National Seashore

“I want so badly to exist.” - James Marsden, The Passion of James Marsden

“Burn out as hard and fast as you can.” – Willard Romney awarding the Medal of Baal, 2013 National Scout Jamboree

“Listening to Sigur Ros reminds me of what it was like not to have pubic hair.” – John Boehner on climate change

“Better to abstain than to sully.” – Lars von Trier

Joe Paterno to Keep Warm Phil Fulmer’s Double-Wide Bleacher Seat in Hell

“MARRY ME!” – spinster Jerry Brown

“I believe in Magick.” – Mage Santorum, anointing self with fetus elixir, the Gargoyle Debate

“Did you ever wonder how many rape victims you were descended from? It’s probably a lot.” – George Romney

“I believe in internet pornography because I believe in euthanasia.” – Ron Paul, Yonic Chasm, MT

“I never drink coffee at lunch. I find it keeps me awake in the afternoon.” – Ronald Reagan

“Sleep is a dress rehearsal for death.” – Michelle Houellebecq

Last Call at Playboy Mansion: The Kelsey Grammer Story
Starring Fred Thompson

“This is the goddamn Jazz Age of burger joints.” – Bill Clinton, opening of the Fulton Mall Shake Shack, Brooklyn

“I don't know why, I really thought he was above that kind of thing.” – Rob Lowe discussing Joseph Gordon-Levitt on The Ellen DeGeneres Show

"How many Penn State coaches does it take to screw in a light bulb?"
"Two. One to screw it in and one not to tell the police."
- Eli and Payton Manning, The Laugh Factory

“I’m not one of those guys likes to make love to his wife. I just like to put on a hazmat suit and probe her. You know, like in the Japanese videos.” – Eric Cantor, Congressional Milk Sauna

"What more beautiful and inspiring expression of the rejection of life is there, aside from suicide, than the rejection of sex, particularly by the young?" - Billy Graham, pony shopping in Birmingham

“What is the secret of Polish women? Where does their beauty come from? Where does it go?”
“They’re not beautiful. They’re sixteen.”
- Barack Obama and Jay Carney, Greenpoint, Brooklyn

“You have to admit, there is something to admire in a man who abandons any hope of happiness for himself and lives only for the multiplication of capital. ” – Paul Krugman, reluctantly, on David Koch

“This weather makes me want to die.”
“It’s just your emotions thawing.”
- the Ginch and Sean Penn, boating off an unseasonably warm Fire Island

"One day they will say of me, If only he had known what it was like to be loved, If only he had eaten more prunes..." – POTUS Barack Hussein Obama II to Portal Secretary Adm. Mike Mullen while idly fingering the Button

The Love System

Archbishop Dolan to Be Promoted to Cardinal at Bain Catholic

"Pull out? Not a chance." - Rob Lowe

"I don't know, I'm just worried we're too cock oriented."
"Cock oriented? This isn't just about Party Cock or yours or mine, damn it, John, this is about Every Cock." - John Boehner and Eric Cantor, Strategy Session

"Now if a parent somehow impregnates their child, that's just not the state's business." - Justice Samuel Alito to a public commode, Venice Beach

"We're all Catholic now!" - Older Unattractive White Men

"If only they made a Pill that could have stopped President Kennedy's roving hands." - an entire retired Brookline typing pool

"Contraception? Why, I just married an old rich man." - Wendi Deng

"We're at an important moment right now, we have to talk about our economic future, not divisive social issues."
"In a time of duress the issues of the day must be discussed with unceasing severity. You want to brush so-called 'social issues' under the table, while We are experiencing full scale and conspiratorial demasculization at an unprecedented rate. You weakly crow about economic issues, Governor, but my prescription is unitary. A license to female eroticisim degrades manufacturing, it degrades our men, and it degrades our souls!"
- Willard Romney and Rick 'the Dick' Santorum, the Sauna Debate

"Shouldn't we at least have a woman in this damn conversation?"
"No it isn't about that! It's about Freedom, they've been free enough. As a Catholic, Chris, I don't believe in or follow the Chruch's doctrine at all, but that doesn't mean I want to see it attacked."
- a sheepish Chris Matthews with E.J. Dionne, 'liberal'

All American.

"Quite possibly the greatest film performance of our time, Ronald Reagan's depiction of the young president-to-be in Warner Brothers' Mitt Romney: All American is sure to make even the hardest men of our generation weep uncontrollably for hours on end." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, 1940

Surf the Wall

Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov returns from another futile outing.

"I war you." - Vladimir Putin, Valentines Day

"Do not blame me because I saw clearer."
- Hosni Mubarak, last words (written)

"Are you the Gatekeeper?"
"I am for you, today."
- Barack Obama, trembling in the shadow of the Gate as he holds the hand of Xi Jinping

"It is with a humble and solemn tone that this Court does the unthinkable. We now institute the Doctrine of Legal Futurism."
- Chief Justice Roberts, The Last Free Peoples v. The Portal (2014)

"Eat the placenta!" - Sen. Rick Santorum at the Height of his Powers

"These legs were made for you and now they are closing forever."
- Mother

Too tall to go over
Too deep to go under
Too thick to go through
Too wide to go 'round
Too hard to break down
Ain't nothing you can do

Can't stay put or it'll get you
Can't run away or it'll catch you
Can't do anything at all
No, you can't escape the Wall

- David Allan Coe, The Wall Is a Friend of Mine

"If the failure of communism was a century-long dramatization of the Fall of Man, then we persist afterwards as something even less than animals, who are indeed superior to us for never having been foolish enough to walk on two legs." - Billy Graham, 'I Watched Every Bela Tarr Movie,' Slate

"Not brunch but void... not an airplane but a skymall..." - Jimmy Carter dreaming of Iceland in McCarren Park, Brooklyn

"Power exists to exercise and intensify itself. Capital exists to multiply. In this country, capital and power have simply found a mutually beneficial way to cohabitate. It is not necessary for the police to realize that all they do is wage a war on the poor on behalf of the rich, any more than it is necessary for you to realize that I listen to you fuck your boyfriend through the wall and jerk off." - a graduate student

"God is his own absence, a void in the world. His inexistence makes death possible and consigns all things to ruin. How do we respond to this? With the rabid desire to tear everything down, to euthanize this disgusting abortion of a world, and, since we cannot have transcendence, to enjoy the next best thing: the thrilling experience of intensity that accompanies destruction, destruction motivated by a desire not just to destroy things and lives, but to destroy the very way we make sense of things and lives and their destruction, to destroy worlds, to revenge ourselves against God." - Fyodor Dostoevsky, pissing sitting down

A Symphony of Regret

"A girl I went on one date with just pocket dialed me. When we first met things seemed promising, but on the first date, inexplicably, the chemistry just wasn't there. I haven't seen her since. Anyways, I answered her call, but on the other end there was only the sound of the phone rustling against her jeans. Truly this is the allegory of sexual happiness, of its impossibility." - Archbishop Timothy Dolan

“At first I thought, what crap. This is just like Young Adult: a woman is punished for failing at motherhood, cities are no place for families, choose between raising children and having a career, et cetera. Gradually, it became clear that We Need to Talk About Kevin is not another ‘bad mom’ movie, but a movie about ‘bad mom’ movies. The whole community shuns Tilda Swinton because she gave birth to a killer. But she was the only one who tried to warn them, the only one who ever saw her son for the monster he was. Male authority figures—her husband, her doctor—dismissed her concerns and told her that the problem lay not with her son but with herself, with her inadequacy as a mother. (This point would have been even more powerfully made if, instead of getting killed, John C. Reilly had simply left her.) At the end, when Tilda Swinton hugs her son, she is motherhood incarnate: despite everything—and this child has done everything—she loves him unconditionally. Society has no obligation to love monsters, and yet it would dehumanize us all if no one did. Who else can we ask to carry this burden but Mom?” – Casey Anthony

“Yeah, it’s a bummer, I thought I’d get to know you better, but, you know, can one person ever truly know another?” – Brian Williams, Soi Cowboy, Bangkok

"Once upon a time I was dating a virgin. I really cared for her, but I was getting frustrated with her refusals and tried pressuring her into sex. Tearfully she asked why having sex was so important to me. I could have said a lot of things. For example, I could have said that according to the theories of the 20th century, sex 'so important' to everyone, that the drive to sexual expression is perhaps the single most powerful force behind all human activity, the reason, at least from a management perspective, that your organism keeps getting out of bed in the morning even long after any trace of desire for the act itself is gone. I should have said that sex is like a language—no, it's like speech itself—a whole unique medium of human interaction, something you can express affection and seal bonds with, sure, but also something you can create friendships with, tell jokes with, say you’re sorry with, conduct economic exchanges with, hurt feelings and warp personalities with. And, as with speech, if you go long enough deprived of someone to ‘talk’ to, you go crazy. I could have said that for two lonely young people so powerfully drawn to each other not to have sex would be like two people stranded on opposite ends of a huge desert island finally running into each other and refusing to speak. But no. Instead I said the worst possible thing. The stupidest possible thing. Something that, even if it had been true—which it wasn't—would still have been wrong. 'Why is sex so important?' 'Because I love you.'" - Susan G. Komen

Sleeping With the Enemy

"Last night I went to a party for Robert Wilson’s new play The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, which stars Marina as herself and Willem Defoe and Anthony of Anthony and the Johnsons as some sort of conceptual entities—money I think, for what other concept could summon into being this  high-watt array of disparate hipstars with nothing in common, nothing save that they had all, separately, become improbably wealthy by making once-edgy art, an achievement that, upon further examination, may be the greatest. If money made a play about itself, it would be this.

Anyways, the party was held in a five story Manhattan townhouse with bedrooms that looked like Finnish saunas and a stairwell that had glass floors, white plastic stairs, a central elevator shaft of granite lined with white LED lights. This might have looked very cool in 1992, so I was disappointed to learn that it had only just been renovated. In other words, the lack of furniture was authentic. Throughout the different rooms were large photos of Willem, Marina, and Bob at rehearsal, lit by film lights set throughout the house. The effect was sometimes interesting, such as in one triptych where the shadow of a window frame cut an excellent diagonal across this Holy Trinity, or as in a photo of Bob directing from the audience, leaning thoughtfully forward in his seat, his face lit so sweetly by the film light, it was as though you were looking at the aura of your own admiration for him on the canvas.

I don’t think I’ve ever been surrounded by such a density of wealthy people, although I have attended a session of the United States Senate. Since there were not many people there my age or tax bracket, I spent most of the party getting hung over in real time on free St. Germain cocktails with the n to my +1, an old college buddy with an in to the Art World. We hung out with one of Marina’s many young acolytes and the acolyte's boyfriend, who, as fate should have it, worked for an NGO promoting open source culture. We all shared the same alma mater and joked about how alumni from my department who come back to campus to talk to students about their careers always begin with a mea culpa about how they used their degree in post-Marxist media theory not to overthrow capitalism but to become corporate media executives. 'It’s funny. Former communists make the best capitalists. Just look at Marina.' 'Or the Chinese Communist Party.' On the way home, my date spoke of Thomas Bernhard’s Woodcutters, and I was glad not to have read it. The faint reflection of my asshole in those five glass floors had been enough introspection for one night."
- James Franco, Gawker

Bela Tarr Films as Soccer Matches

Family Nest
Patriarchy 1 - Man 0

The Outsider
Society 1 - Man 0

Macbeth
Witches 1 - Man 0

Prefab People
Communism 1 - Man 0

Almanac of Fall
Colored Lights 1 - Man 0

Damnation
Mud 1 - Man 0

Satantango
History 1 - Man 0

Werckmeister Harmonies
Whale 1 - Man 0

The Man From London
Dubbing 1 - Man 0

The Turin Horse
Nietzsche 1 - Man 0

The Limits of Impossibility

"President Kennedy appeared before you all and denied that his faith made him anything more or different than the average American. I'm here to tell you all he was wrong, for we are greater than Americans of the Flesh, we serve the Great See and take our orders from first among the nations! Ego Sum Papa!" - Sen. Rick Santorum speaking to the Southern Baptist Convention to wild cheering for Inquisition and Patriarchy

"What's terrible about death is that it really is meaningless. People feel sad for a second, but the world goes on without you and generations follow happily ignorant of the fact that you ever existed. That's why the only real immortality lies in traumatizing as many people as possible so that you're never forgotten." - the Ginch

"I fucking drink elections!" - 'The New Mitt' pushing his son Tagg onto the living room carpet

"I'm sort of dissatisfied as my natural state of course, but I think of all the damn places and things, and I just gotta get whipped." - Ron Paul, Iniquity Peak, Colorado

“I’m talking about real creation. Ontological generation. We do not know what we are capable of. Break through one barrier and a new one emerges on the horizon. Only by imagining what lies beyond can we summon the will to penetrate, and only through transgression can we become more than what we are. Every crime makes new dreams possible. Yet, as time goes by, the archive of accomplished atrocities grows ever larger, and it becomes harder and harder to do anything original. The wall grows taller, more opaque, and the price for surpassing it dearer. That is why what I’m doing here is, yes, an artisanal triumph, a veritable master class in technique, but is really, above all, a victory of the imagination, of human freedom. I am an artist.” – Rick Santorum, Minnesota Institute for Vivisection

"HAW HAW HAW!"
"Mr. President, why are you laughing so?"
"Oh, I just had a vision of the world engulfed by fire."
- Barack Obama, Jay Carney, November 6, 2012, 11:23 p.m.

"Yeah it was fucked up, but not nearly fucked up enough." - New Gin Ginch on the Rape of Tampa Bay

A Missive on Reason's Passing

Dear Son Boy,

As you know your Ma and me visited with your sister in the western regions but too far south to reconnoiter with you all. And while we was there, Little Jen had foot ailments which occupied us in finding treatment. A blister festered and, while I have seen uglier wounds, the color and ooze disconcerted us. Your Ma is good with herbs and balms which eased the swelling and eventually the fever accompanying. Upon our return the weather has been gentler than we’d expect given for this time of year. Grampy is improved from the ague which struck him when you were holiday visiting but perchance may never be again what he was. He spends most days wrapped in a blanket staring out at the mountains muttering. Much of his babbling is about that cat and the brother he lost as a boy. I am unnerved spending more than a few minutes by his side. ‘Lonzo continues to urge another cat hunting trek. I think him reckless at times and counsel patience; he is afeared for the stock and yearns for revenge. ‘Lonzo says that cat is the devil’s disciple and not one of the Good Lord’s creatures. ‘Tween him and Grampy I am most unsettled in my mind and sleep.

Go in good grace,

Your Father

More Praise for The New Inquiry

At last, You're Lying makes the leap into semi-print! We wrote the back page of The New Inquiry's new digital magazine. Buy it so that we can demand a bigger fee next time. And now, enjoy the B-sides!

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"It's just taking me to the goddamn edge!" - Robert Reich

"True to form, the Cubs start out strong but blow it in the ninth." - Gawker Sports

"I'm drunk! I'm precarious!" - Meghan McCain

"We want your jobs!" - Occupy Wall Street

"Aki másnak vermet ás, maga esik bele." - Lásló Krasznahorkai

"Does your iPhone come with a panic room?" - a middle-class Brazilian

"Sarbanes-Oxley always made me think of the human anatomy non-Mormans call 'the taint.' Reading this reminds me of worse things." - Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-UT

"Yeah, I'd like to write you guys an article, but I'm mired in futile careerism." - a law student

"You mean you kids work all these low-wage jobs and your clubhouse has its own newsletter?!" - The New York Times

"I got my TNI check, it came with the latest New Yorker, I then searched the mail box in vain for menthols" - The Editors

"I'm a precariousaurus!" - Trig Palin

Portrait of the Artist as a Rookie Cop

"The photographs of Antonio Bolfo, a Rhode Island School of Design graduate and former NYPD patrolman who took artistic photographs while on the job, humanize both officers and civilians. So says the The New York Times. But is this true? And if it is, does it matter? As to the civilians: when a cop says 'cheese,' do you have any choice but to smile? And as to the cops, the Times seizes on the photographs of police officers relaxing on the roofs of New York City Housing Authority facilities as emblematic of their much talked about humanity.

'This is like a safe haven for them,' Bolfo tells the Times. 'Kind of like, collect their thoughts, talk to their loved ones, be people. Shed their police persona and relax a little bit.' It is a place forbidden to civilians. The intensity of the relief this seclusion brings the officers is inverse to their connection to the community. The more they are merely foreign occupiers, the more they enjoy the view, a view that the very residents of the buildings on which they so symbolically trod are not allowed to enjoy. It is just another of those petty asymmetries that separates them from us, the things they can do but you cannot, no different from the way they demand free coffee at diners, run red lights for no reason, illegally park their vehicles, make their friends’ tickets disappear, distribute their union cards to family members so they get preferential treatment, raise their voice at you on a whim, place their hands on you to 'guide' you to compliance with their instructions, slam you on the pavement for arguing with them, shoot your dog, break down your door and tear apart everything you own—no different than the way that Mr. Bolfo got to take photographs of police at work because he was an officer when today even journalists are arrested for doing their jobs.

But, no. Perhaps there is a difference. Most of the perks of being a police officer have to do with the wanton exercise their power over others or with the license to transgress with impunity. Let’s leave aside the oppression of residents that makes these rooftop reveries the exclusive privilege of NYPD and landlords, as well as the fact that officers go on roofs as often to spy on the streets below as to relax. For a brief interval, when officers go to the roof, they can unburden themselves of the continuous, tedious labor of suspicion. They do not have to squint, do not have to surveille, they can just... see. Let’s be honest, if the rooftops were public, they wouldn’t be nice anymore. They would be filthy, dangerous shitholes, just like the rest of the neighborhood. The many must be excluded so that the few may have the privilege of aesthetic contemplation. After all, isn’t that the way Art works?

The question is not whether Bolfo's photographs are anything more than highbrow cop porn, no different than the pastel portraits of the Twin Towers and the neon altars to the honored dead that stain the halls of every police building in the city. The question is, what makes the interloping, art school-trained social photographer, whose camera pins the poor against the walls of their abjection, any different from the cop? And if cops are people too, then why are they cops?"

- Ray Kelly, Artforum

An officer yells “I could have shot you!” at a 14-year-old who refused to drop a realistically painted water gun. Cops may pretend they are artists, or artists may pretend they are cops. But don’t let that kid pretend that he has a shot.