Posted by Candidia Cruikshanks, CEO of Wealth Bondage
"Aren't you bound to learn more once you are a little less tied up?" David at Exquisite Safari's seems to think that he can get me to pitch his stupid travel schemes. My attorney will have David's balls for breakfast. Philanthropy starts at home, Sweetie, with royalties to yours truly.
Smoky Joe, JD, in Defense of Freedom
President Jackson on Indian Removal,
Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country, and philanthropy has been long busily employed in devising means to avert it, but its progress has never for a moment been arrested, and one by one have many powerful tribes disappeared from the earth. To follow to the tomb the last of his race and to tread on the graves of extinct nations excite melancholy reflections. But true philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one generation to make room for another. In the monuments and fortresses of an unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of the West, we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated or has disappeared to make room for the existing savage tribes. Nor is there anything in this which, upon a comprehensive view of the general interests of the human race, is to be regretted. Philanthropy could not wish to see this continent restored to the condition in which it was found by our forefathers. What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12 million happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?
Too long a quote. Had to cut it from The State of the Union, but I thought I would blog it here.
Posted by The Happy Tutor
Isn't that promising? Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy (EPIP) lists Wealth
Bondage, as well as Gifthub under their Resources: Philanthropy Blogs. Here we are, hidden in plain sight. Young grant makers, may I recommend Mr. Lohmann to your attention? Perhaps you could put him in a position to re-grant money, make program related investments, make micro-loans, or invent new forms of credit?
Posted by The Happy Tutor
On the recommendation of Inspector Lohmann, I have been reading James Scott, a Yale anthropologist who has himself read Bakhtin. Scott's conceptual framework is simple but powerful. Oppressor (Master) and oppressed (slave), both have their public and private transcripts. The public transcript is what historians study, the media covers, what ends up in the record books as the events, sights, sounds, spectacles, and stories of an epoch. The public transcript, of course, is written by the Oppressor. Now, both Oppressor and oppressed also have their private transcript, the conversations either group has out of earshot of the other. What Masters say about slaves behind the slaves back, or Philanthropists say about losers, is not really part of the public record. A certain decorum draws a veil, as the powerful meet in safe places to speak candidly. Yet, in the Big House, the servants do hear things, and stand like statues, mute and unseeing in their livery. They are not human. Their feelings need not be taken into account. What happens in the Big House stays in the Big House. Those house slaves who fail to follow that rule are sanctioned and replaced with those who know how the game is played. By the same token, the slaves have their own hush arbors, their own secret haunts where they meet far from the aptly named overseer's eyes and ears to tell their own stories. Yet, of course, such stories are dangerous. Better to speak in code, by telling stories of a Fox and a Rabbit. Scott makes clear that these cultures that butt up against each other in the public transcript, dominated by the ruling group, can continue for hundreds or thousands of years like this, in parallel. One is history; the other is largely lost to history. Yet, of particular interest are the crossover points, the crossroads, the thresholds and eruptions of the subaltern transcript into the dominant one. We see that in Carnival, Saturnalia, in folklore, myth, rumor, jokes, memes, folk music, rap and riffs that go from mouth to mouth without an author. What these have in common is that either the messenger or the message is disguised. Who can say where a joke started and who is responsible? In the house of rumor it is the winds who speak. In Carnival masks, as the dancers and party goers swirl into the streets, who can say who is whom or who said what? Alternatively, the hidden transcript can erupt through a priestess in a trance at Delphi, or through the mouth of a Fool, or in the words of a madman who knows not what he says, or it can arrive on the lips of a prophet whose head will soon be displayed on a sliver charger.
In the case of Mandela or Biko, the private transcript of a subordinate group, its healing stories, its self-respect and dignity, assert themselves in the public transcript, attempting to establish a new storyline, a new hero story, a new history and new and more open future. Such charismatic moments, not unlike the French Revolution, that so inspired Wordsworth ("Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive") are also fraught. Mandela went to prison but survived. Biko died like our dearly departed Author Function under the care of the Anti-Terror Torture Police who operated within the alternative procedures required to maintain ordered liberty in that oppressive state in that oppressive era. What the stories of Uncle Remus show is another ideal, another and less risky strategy for survival with some shred of dignity and self respect even within a position of constant humiliation: How to make do in the meantime, how to get by, hidden in plain sight, using "the weapons of the weak," as Scott calls them, including in our case blogs here in our hush arbor, or Dumpster, hidden in plain sight, not seen by the powers that be, but over-looked, not heard but over-heard, in the uneasy truce, or constant cold war, or guerrilla struggle, between transcripts public and private.
For me this conceptual grid, as over-simplified as it may be (since it includes only two groups when there are really so many levels and factions) finally explains a mystery on which I was called out years ago by Turbulent Velvet. He asked why I, as an egalitarian, was drawn to satires written by figures like Juvenal, Horace, and Swift who were quite clearly and conspicuously in the service of Empire and the religious and cultural traditions that supported Empire. Was I crazy? Now I think the mystery is solved. Satire is written into the public transcript, but subsumes and draws upon and cycles back and co-opts, the weapons of the weak. Swift, Rabelais, Erasmus, Dryden, Gay, Pope, and on and on down through Wilde were certainly more closely associated with Oppressor than oppressed, when it comes to rank, social position, social circles, education, beliefs, and way of life. Yet in their work the language of Carnival, language from below, the language of Dionysian revelry, of Beggars beneath a bridge, of Grub Street, of pickpockets, thieves, and prostitutes, of sexual energy, violence, gluttony, and scatology gets cycled back into the public record, but (as Bakhtin would say) "re-accentuated" to bear the stamp of the ruling group's ideology. As with dreams, and jokes, the imagery of elite satire is a condensation of contradictions, hence its explosive power, its danger, for it pulls both ways, towards the private and public transcripts of power and also towards the hidden traditions of the oppressed. The result can be called a safety valve, periodic release, or co-optation, or it can present itself with an alibi ("Just joking, Sir") but it can also open or presage a revolutionary moment, as it did with Swift, Dr. Johnson, and Voltaire. Glasnost and Perestroika may start with samizdat to be ratified later by an official decree when the movement from below has gone to far to be stopped.
So, Gifthtub, The World We Want, and Wealth Bondage - not hard to parse these on the story told above. Two languages, the smooth and candid language of established power, and the contorted language of humiliated peoples, enter the public transcript, in various ratios and measures: At Gifthub, as literal dominant speech, or as comedy; at The World We Want as managerial/promotional discourse written to, by and for the dominant giving class who imagine the world we want as a casual extrapolation of current dominant trends; and at dear old Wealth Bondage, more subversively in an ongoing but unlicensed Saturnalia open to all comers, out in the public square, like a Dumpster or public convenience on whose walls are scribbled the secret thoughts of an oppressed people in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. For us, members of the Dumpster Tong, no official holiday as yet has been declared. Some day, perhaps, we will have our Happy Tutor day, or Dumpster Day, much like the Fourth of July, to celebrate real Freedom - not the phony sort that we have now, ruled under the newly revised law by abduction, torture, and secret military tribunals, but the kind of political liberty on which this country was originally founded and for which so many brave people have already given their lives. In a democracy, the people are sovereign. They have no Decider, no CEO, no Emperor, no King, no President strutting about in Flight Gear and declaring Defeat to be Victory and Torture to be Freedom because he says so upon pain of reprisal. We do not take our opinions from the society of the spectacle. As concerned citizens, we reason with one another, and present our words as a gift to our fellow citizens, though disguised and displaced since Candidia is always listening and brooks no dissent from her dominant narratives of Domination termed Freedom.
Wealth Bondage is a dangerously ambiguous point of intersection, where the Dumpster butts up against the Corporate Head Quarters, for here Uncle Tom , the good house slave, the trusted advisor, who has heard the private transcript of the rich, the private protocols of philanthropists in their safe places, holds forth as Uncle Remus, telling preposterous tales of characters with funny names. In so doing, the Author Function, may he rest in peace, rules from the grave, like a good philanthropist. And perhaps like Biko his death will one day be honored with a peaceful day of Reconciliation where those who abducted him, and tortured him, are brought to justice and tried for War Crimes committed (legally under laws they passed for that purpose) in the War on Terror in which we lost our political liberties, before winning them back in peaceful struggle however long that takes, no matter what the price. But best always to keep the benefits high and the cost low. That is what satire, and carnival, my friends, are all about when they boil over into the public square as a Dumpster Dialogue. Grab a mask. Make your voice heard, but only in jest, parable and story. Why make it easy on those who wish us ill? Let them join us here on our own terms - those of a free people in Wealth Bondage. They too, the rich, the powerful, the think tank thinkers, all of you! Welcome! In your own chosen mask, tell us who you really are, and what you really think. We are all house slaves one way or another. Right? (No? My dear colleagues and fellow servants of wealth, please don't make me prove it from your public transcript, that would be painful for us both. You can ignore me, my colleagues, but I know you well and your story will be told - something about a Fox, maybe.) So, give it up, settle down, take a hit from the bottle of Thunderbird we pass around to confirm our fellowship. I do not judge you. You have done nothing I have not done worse and for less money. You think you are a whore? What about me? I have never pretended to be anything else. We do what we must in this hard world to get by. So, relax. We are all sinners here. We are delighted to have your company.
Posted by Candidia Cruikshanks, CEO of Wealth Bondage
My loyal servant at Gifthub had an exceptionally good year, increasing readership by 250%, to 1700 subscribers. Wealth Bondage has benefited from increased traffic and the good will generated by our involvement with such a high-integrity, public-spirited site. In his performance review, I granted the editor another annual subsidy and permission to use the Executive Washroom here at Wealth Bondage. He is such a good boy. I am thinking of putting him on MSNBC with Tucker Carlson. Wouldn't they be cute together?
Posted by The Happy Tutor
The World We Want like the Titanic is broken into decks, with the few above and the many below. With what will our good ship rendevous?
Posted by The Happy Tutor
I assume that you all are following the Author Function in his travels in the world of wealth bondage, inside its safe places, as Morals Tutor to America's Wealthiest Families, helping them experience the joy of giving. Who funds the progressive movement? I guess the alternative is that each of us as individuals "discover our own power to make good things happen" without funding from above. The only other thing I can think of would involve building a movement from the bottom up in concert with a few who might provide token funding.
As the distinguished speaker wraps up his presentation on The World We Want, the dowager, half deaf, turns to the waiter in his red monkey jacket and says, way too loudly, "Eh? Eh? What did he say, Sonny? What is the World We Want?" To which the waiter replies, "More coffee, M'am?"
Posted by The Happy Tutor
"Spawn of Soros," my article in the March issue of CRC's Foundation Watch newsletter, wondered who would get the millions of dollars being raised by George Soros and his friends to fund a liberal infrastructure separate from the Democratic party. Now we know: It's Harold Ickes. The friend of Hillary is setting up Data Warehouse, an $11 million state-of-the-art data base and search engine for collecting and organizing information on millions of voters who can be targeted to vote for Democratic candidates.
Soros is ticked-off at Democratic party ineptitude. His inaptly-named Democracy Alliance of mega-wealthy liberals was expected to fund new think-tanks and advocacy groups to wage a war of ideas. But apparently that plan is on hold. The 2006 elections draw near and it’s too late to develop new ideas when there are voter grievances to be tapped.
Also from CRC is an excellent article by Joseph Defeo (pdf) on Jeff Skoll's Participant Productions and related activist website, Participate.net More on the Soros funded Data Warehouse from the Washington Post. From a consumer standpoint, I am glad to see rich people competing for my vote through their proxies in DC. More promising is Skoll's social entrepreneurial efforts. He is building consciousness at the grassroots level, and making a profit, leading one hopes to more and more thought-provoking movies, rather than more broadcast style soundbites and targetted messaging by the interwoven DC elites of the putatively opposed proxy-parties of wealth. Well, back to work, Candidia has me licking stamps for John Kerry. You would think she was trying to make a mockery of democracy, but probably she is just trying to make buck.
Continue reading "Soros, Ickes, Skoll - New Model of Giving for Democracy" »
Posted by Candidia Cruikshanks, CEO of Wealth Bondage
That little piss ant, over at gifthub, calls himself my philanthropic consultant. Says his role is to "Reform the Morals of the Rich." What a joke. Who the fuck helped me set up Rooster Foundation: Crowing in the New American Century? I offered him $10 an hour and he went down on his knees and kissed my boots from the heel to the toe and back, slobbering. He would have worked for lunch money. He wants to impose his loser values on me? In his dreams. He will be lucky if I let him live. These philanthropic consultants are like Preying Mantis's. After we couple, I eat them for lunch. It is a hard cold world. The winners rule the losers, and the philanthropic consultants are the most pathetic of all. "How can we serve you Mistress Candidia?" "O Great Money Mistress! what a brilliant Vision you have of a Better World!" "O Mistress of all You Survey, how kind and generous you are!" They make me puke. What the fuck do they think I'm doing? Giving is just another stick to beat the poor. I'm giving to Rooster to make sure they are screwed but good. My hope is to add insult to injury, let the losers suffer and blame one another. That was my objective. And everything my gift consultant has done for me is quite strategic in achieving my vision. Now, he wants to crack wise? Pathetic.
Posted by Candidia Cruikshanks, CEO of Wealth Bondage
DK in IF: Daily Inspiration for Brand Planners and Creative Thinkers is so cute,
So is Phatgnat punk? I think so. Wealth Bondage obviously doesn't. Do I care? About as much as she cares about whether I care ;-)Smoky Joe, Sweetie: Get your spindly butt in here. I want this Phatnat on the payroll. Punk Brand Planner to the core. He doesn't even wear a tie! Wonder what he would charge to help us with our fucking image as a socially responsible Bondage Bordello? Can't be much. He may not be punk, but he sure sounds like a loser. Offer him $5 and a hot shower. I will go as high as $7.50 plus shower, shave and haircut. Forget it; the greasy hair is part of the image. Offer him $10 and be done with it. Brand Planner, the kid has balls. Tellimg me how to plan a fucking brand. I got my brand all over his face, shirt, hair, the whole fucking schtick is Wealth Bondage Brand. Well, I can always use another cute submissive: A creative thinker, my own personal punk. Bend over, Sweetie, Momma loves you.
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