Lileks, I Will Not Be Ignored

[Found! One of our covert operatives in Minneapolis was dumpster-diving outside the offices of local free AltWeekly City Pages and located the first draft of Dennis Perrin's explosive exposé of James Lileks, buried under a pile of futon ads and Ted Rall strips - ed.]

James Lileks used to be content with writing about his toddler's toilet training. Then Iraq gave him the chance to become the state's Mr. Big Shot Lah-ti-da conservative, and think that he could blithely not return my voice messages.

by Dennis Perrin

Having posted his latest techno remix of the theme from Petticoat Junction and named his 15 All-Time Favorite Diner Stool Upholstery Patterns, James Lileks needed a breather from his popular blog, The Bleat. He'd refrained from commentary for most of December, and those desiring fresh Bleats were forced to settle for retro campy clip art and ironic wry captions, or perhaps campily ironic photo essays of wry Mall of America retro Googie stores. Then Saddam was yanked from a hole in Tikrit, causing the American media to go nuts. The dinner bell rang, and there was no way Lileks was going to miss out on the pavlovian salivating or a delicious plate of gloat-chili from Roger Ailes and the rest of the Gabby Hayes cookies on the media frenzy chuckwagon--especially since he'd been valiantly leading the operant-conditioning imperialist cattle drive from the B.F. Skinner Restoration Hardware comfort of his cozy Minneapolis craftsman bungalow war lab. See, Lileks? Two can play the pop reference game, even though I guess only one of us gets to be Mr. Big Internet Blog Star.

They got him! Or so they suggested, back in March. No one said it explicitly, but for a day we hoped. The troops were massed and poised; intel came in, off went the rockets. I remember watching video of flames licking the sky that night--best of all possible worlds, it seemed. The war hadn't even begun, and maybe the butcher was a pink smear on a shattered hunk of concrete. Not the case, as it turned out. Then came another decapitation attempt before the troops took Baghdad, and I thought the same thing: if only."Coalition forces have discovered a liver on a rebar, and are making DNA tests as we speak!" But he lived.

Yes, but since this "decapitation attempt" took place in a heavily populated civilian area, there were doubtless civilian casualties. And those "pink smears" likely the bone fragments of little adorable Gnatesque girls of no evident concern to Lileks -- hey, that's life wheb your BoBo Ba'athists 'burb had no ironic boomerang tables.

Having warmed up with this, Lileks went off, on a feral pop reference wilding spree, assuming what The Arab Street thought of the event, giving Saddam a Rorshacht test from his vast collection of vintage ink blots (his imperial Joyce Brothers doing a fill-in spot on a colonialist Mike Douglas show shtick), and projecting his faux-pseudo "ironic" Oh, isn't the U.S. just awful! neo reverse sarcasm routine on those who opposed the invasion. Because, you see, only a rabid America Hater could find something wrong with Bush's war. See Lileks? Now, that last sentence, now that's how you do ironic sarcasm. But hey, what would I know? Because you, Mr. Big Fargo Irony Man, you are the KING of the sarcasm UNIVERSE.

I've read all the nutball far-left sites worrying about the worrisome worries--does this help Dub? Was it all faked? Surely America will see that the man paraded before the cameras was a soy-based simulacrum cooked up in the Halliburton labs? It's amusing to troll the fevered swamps, but nothing they say matters in the end.

Here, Lileks was aping many of his apelike brethren in the warblogger primate house: He reduces all lefties into an easily digestible stereotype, as if a starry-eyed teen PETA activist is the same as University of Michigan Professor Starry Activist (who writes an informative, increasingly popular PETA blog of his own (www.teensunitedagainstbunnyslaughter.com); as if Molly Ivins and Michael Moore are representative of the web-savvy populists at MorbidlyObeseOverthrow.org. Being a long-term denizen of the American left myself (with time off during a few trumped-up stalking convictions), I can state with some authority that there are lefts of many creeds and moods, and you will find an amazing rainbow spectrum of diverse opinions as you surf from DemocraticUnderground.com to BartCop.com to MoveOn.com to SmirkingChimp to DailyKos to BushLied to TruthOut to IndyMedia to KarlRoveStoleMyRemoteControl. Well, bad example, but the point I'm trying to make here is that like all conservatives, Lileks is genetically incapable of not-stereotyping.

Lileks wasn't as bad as some of the keyboard warriors I'd read, but there was that gloat and strut, that preening and fawning, the unseemly dancing in the kitchen with his wife, as if Lileks had personally captured Saddam. The whole scene sickened me so that I had to put down my night vision goggles. (Lileks has written of dreams and fantasies where he kicks terrorist ass, and I was somewhat let down that he didn't sketch out a scenario where he grabbed Saddam by the beard and gave the Beast an Adam West Batman thrashing: "All right, you Mesopotamian ruffian, where are the WMD!?" SOCK! POW! "C'mon! Out with it, desert evildoer!" That's obviously some comedy GOLD, but does Mr. Bloggo Christ Superstar pay any attention to my killer story suggestions, even after 20 or 30 emails? Noooooo.)

Unlike most warbloggers, James Lileks has more mundane, even pacific, interests apart from oohing and aahing after every missile strike and masturbating to Soldier of Fortune. He has published a book of America's strangest recipes, The Gallery of Regrettable Food, along with several out-of-print anthologies taken from his syndicated lifestyle column. (He wrote a column for this paper in the late 1980s, and is apparently "too good" for us now, and insists on getting paid in his holy "money".) Despite that his work requires rudimentary literacy to consume, he has somehow gained popularity in the right-wing blogsphere. His prime soapbox at the moment is the Star Tribune's The Backfence, a column devoted to the Everyday Things that define Modern Life, as well as Other Topics like Coy Capitalization and Adorable Tykes.

This last item consumes Lileks quite a bit, for he and his wife have a beautiful young daughter he calls "Gnat." Lileks can't say enough about her. Her utterances and observations captivate him, and he spreads heart on sleeve when illustrating this. Here Lileks is genuine, caring, and warm, and as a father of two kids myself, I know the area quite well. In fact, my daughter is named 'Gnat' too, and last year I legally changed the name of my oldest to 'Jasper' and fitted him with a flea collar. Does that earn me any points in the stupid, unfair world of Internet Superstardom? Rotsa Ruck if you're not Big Boss Blogger Jimmie Lileks. All you'll get is a lousy $200 for 2000 words in a lame-ass mid-market AltWeekly fishwrapper that nobody reads except for the band listings and "Variations" personals.

But it's not The Backfence Lileks I'm concerned with here. That's his paying gig. (My 73 page opus magna on The Backfence will appear in the Spring 2004 edition of Picayune Minutiae Quarterly, "The journal that focuses on the things that torment me and I must inform you of," if I can renegotiate our last printing invoice from Kinkos) It's in The Bleat where one discovers what is truly on his mind. That, and also searching through his Tuesday garbage pickup.

First, the positive. The Bleat, born in 1997, is a handsome blog, its graphic design updated every week. Lileks has a sharp eye for pop-culture obscurities and, though long-winded, he can delight those like myself who know by heart the theme songs of Wally Gator and Ruff & Reddy, and my personal favorite, "Let's Stop Obsessin'" that I sang as a child during my weekly sessions with the school psychologist. He and I are roughly the same age, and shoe size (9 1/2 E), use the same brand of toothpaste (Crest Mint Gel Double Protection with Tartar Control) and as children we absorbed all those stray items--comic books, cartoons, classic advertising, neighborhood windows--that turn bright children into adult geeks. Lileks may disagree with this assessment, but I'd be willing to bet my collection of vintage 60's children's amphetamine prescription slips.

Lileks, as mentioned earlier, also devotes a good portion of his Bleats to daughter Gnat, whose every move is recorded for web posterity, and through whom Lileks filters much of this increasingly cruel world which seems to have room for only one Pop Culture Minneapolis Adorable SuperDaddy. This type of writing has its place, and as a father I would never question anyone who records another person's every move. Conversely, I would never go on and on as a father about my kids when writing about imperial war and political corruption. But that's me, as a father with children. For me, being a father means keeping one's kids out of it, even if your kids refuse to call you Da-dee in a cute Gnat-like way. Which brings us to the negative part of The Bleat: Lileks's unhinged demented views about the current warscape.

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 further darkened the already unattractive side of the American character, namely its jingoism. Like most everyone else, I was sickened by what happened that morning. I lived most of my adult life in New York City and know the terrain intimately. I have made wild, unabandoned love to many of the rock formations in Central Park; I can tell you the shale content of the soil substrata for the 42nd Street FDR on-ramp, and its deepest erotic turn-ons. I know 2 people who were directly affected by the attacks, and as a journalist I will refuse to testify against them. I supported the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, although I have to say the entire military business was a bit over-the-top for my taste.

I say all this because, since 9/11, those of us who question the Bush gang's motives and who try to place unfolding events in some kind of political/historical context have been jeered and hounded by those who've claimed 9/11 as a "crime." They anologically pelt helpless dissenters with the hypothetical debris of the methaphorical Twin Towers. They are the warbloggers, the creation of whom is yet another al Qaeda-sponsored crime. And also, their Ashcroft lackey police in Lilek's neighborhood watch patrol.

END PART I

Comments

[Wonderduck]

"...he has Iowahawk do it for him."

Hmmm... has anybody ever SEEN Iowahawk and Lileks in the same room at the same time?

[StarBanker]

Ouch! One more time Iowa and put a little stank on this one.

[Mahatma]

And I tried to be more serious about the attack. Excellent job! Your on my favorites list.

[monkeyboy]

"Hey Perrin whats that in your hands?"
"Oh, its my ass, Iowahawk handed it to me."
/Lileks

Superb

[Jasper]

Thank you.

This is gold. So many highlights.

" ...lived most of my adult life in New York City and know the terrain intimately. I have made wild, unabandoned love to many of the rock formations in Central Park;..."

"... Lileks has a sharp eye for pop-culture obscurities and, though long-winded, he can delight those like myself who know by heart the theme songs of Wally Gator and Ruff & Reddy, and my personal favorite, "Let's Stop Obsessin'" that I sang as a child during my weekly sessions with the school psychologist. ..."

"... "The journal that focuses on the things that torment me and I must inform you of," if I can renegotiate our last printing invoice from Kinkos..."

[spongeworthy]

"Picayune Minutiae Quarterly"? Why does that tickle me? I dunno, but it does. Maybe because I suspect it struggled out of the shell of a cheap beer hangover, struggled down the beach of travelers anomie and dodged the hungry boobies of a tempting nearby Flashdancers before finally making it's way out into the cool, welcoming waters of the blogosphere.

[Tongue Boy]

Aha, found you at last. Onto the "Favorites" with ye, matey.

[Tom Paine]

James Lileks is above such piffling assaults on him by lesser beings.

He would never stoop to responding to such low-grade attacks.

No - he has Iowahawk to do it for him!

Genius. Pure genius...

[Terry]

Well, fisking it would be a waste of time - but a parody is something else altogether.

Masterful, just masterful! I hope that someone gets a copy to the pinhead.

BTW - I wish that we could e-mail your individual articles. As it is, I have to cut and paste and pass them around by hand like samizdata - or am I risking a visit from the UffDa by admitting this?

I notice you didn't change this line, in which Perrin needs no help making a fool of himself:

"They are the warbloggers, the creation of whom is yet another al Qaeda-sponsored crime."

Curse the Internet and its facilitation of free speech that doesn't declare Bush and his cohorts to be Nazis!