Empirical Lyricist

February 16, 2017

Mr. Neil Portnow

OPEN LETTER

Dear Mr. Portnow:

My name is Victor Willis. I am the original lead singer of the Village People and writer of such iconic hits as, “Y.M.C.A.”, “Macho Man”, “In the Navy”, and “Go West”, along with my co-writer Jacques Morali. I’m also a voting member of the Recording Academy and I’m concerned that you are not being entirely candid about how the Grammy’s Album of the Year is decided. As you are already aware, the Grammys have a special committee to over-ride the voters. This committee was put in place after Lionel Richie’s album, “Can’t Slow Down” won the 1985 Grammys Album of the Year over Bruce Springsteen’s, “Born in the U.S.A.” Certain people (mostly white) were very upset about this and thought Springsteen should have won.

Soon thereafter,the Grammys instituted a special select committee t override the decision of Grammy voters in the event the select committee does not like who the Grammy voter has chosen for your top award.

Therefore, it seems you’re not being entirely candid when you suggest that Album of the Year is decided by Grammy voters, so, if we want more black awardees, join the Academy and vote. The truth of the matter is, Album of the Year as with a few other categories, is manipulated by the Grammys through this select committee and you know it. Simply put, if certain people at the Grammys don’t like who the voters have chosen, a Grammy committee will simple override the voters and subsequently select who they think should win. Like Adele, maybe?

Why won’t you reveal this secret committee to the public an exactly who’s on it? The question is how many African Americans are on that committee? You ought to come clean. And if there really is an issue of race, as some have suggested with respect to Album of the Year, could this select committee be the problem?

Best wishes,

PART I here.

If you are a dude and want to be an ally to women in comedy who are often made to feel uncomfortable and disrespected by other dudes in comedy, read the following questions and ask them of yourself. None of these individual acts are all that terrible, but all of them happening at once in a constant whirlwind of bro-iness (and posed fake male feminism) makes being a woman in the NYC comedy scene feel pretty shitty sometimes. 

So, we want you to look within and truly ask yourself the following: 

PART I: Am I Being A Fake Male Feminist?

Have I stopped and wondered if the movies, books, and TV shows that I like are harmful to women? Are the female characters in them actually real women, or are they two-dimensional things that seem to have been devised solely for my pleasure?

If I book an indie show, am I actively trying to book women? When I do book women, is it with the underlying hope that I can hit on them after the show? Do I make an effort to talk to/book/work with women in the community who I am not also attracted to?

Have I done anything more to support feminism than share articles and nod and smile at my female friends when they are upset? More specifically, what have I done to help women that wasn’t a public action that I’ve then attempted to receive some kind of credit for?

In reaction to the recent events surrounding sexual harassment/abuse in comedy, did I post about it on social media in order to seem like a nice guy, and with the secret hope that it will help me get laid because girls will swoon at what a great guy I’m being by taking time out of my day to talk about this?

Do I secretly roll my eyes at articles/blog posts of women calling out feeling uncomfortable or having experienced something disturbing? Am I rolling my eyes right now? Why? What inside of me makes me believe that they might be lying or exaggerating?

PART II: Have I Contributed To Bro Culture?

Have I tried to dismiss a conversation or turn it into a bit when a female teammate/collaborator was trying to speak to me seriously about something that was important to her, or something someone else in the community has done to make her uncomfortable?

Have I apologized to a female teammate/collaborator when/if I feel I’ve made her feel disrespected or uncomfortable? If not, why? 

Is my team all-male? Why?

How do I treat my female scene partners? Do I assume that she has to be playing a woman/wife/girlfriend/mother character before she’s revealed anything about her intentions?

How do I act when I portray a “woman” in a scene/sketch? What do I think is informing this decision?

Do I talk over my female teammates/collaborators when we discuss comedy (or anything else)? Do I interrupt them? Do I condescend to them or talk down to them?

Do I make fun of/look down on women in my community when they show emotion? Do I create a safe space for them to feel comfortable telling me anything, at any moment?

Have I said/thought in a negative sense that a female teammate/collaborator is “like a mom” at any point, whether it be when she is emailing the team or trying to organize something? Have I wondered if I would be having that same reaction if a male teammate/collaborator was saying the exact same words? 

Do the female members of my teams always proactively handle bookings/payments? If yes, have I thought about why? Have I proactively offered to step up and help? Have I ever seen any male on my team step up and help with these responsibilities? Have I become defensive when asked if I can help with these responsibilities? 

When my female teammates bring their friends/roommates/co-workers/etc to our shows, do I hit on them? Have I done this more than once?

When something my female teammate/collaborator says/does frustrates me, do I stop and think about if and how I would be reacting differently if it were one of my male teammates/collaborators?

PART III: And last, but certainly not least:

Did these questions make me uncomfortable? Did they make me angry? Why? 

Jamelle Bouie’s latest article on the Sanders campaign makes a flawed argument that provides a teachable moment on socialism. His argument is:

1) Sanders is not really a socialist, he is a Democratic (big D as in the party) candidate. 2) He is not unique as a Democratic candidate, which has a tradition of strong leftists in the primaries, if not the general election. 3) As a Democrat he, like those before him, falls short… 4) Because the yardstick of the Democratic party is one’s ability to appeal to many discontiguous demographic segments rather than any single uniting ideology.

I think that is not a bad argument, and point 4 in particular is sound, but it does miss almost all of what Bernie Sanders has said for the last several months and even decades before that and what socialists have said for a couple centuries. Here is a different argument:

1) Socialism is a political extension of the Marxist argument that economic relations are the fundamental driver of human society. 2) Sanders’ is a socialist, as evidenced by his focus on economic relations, even to a fault. 3) As a socialist he, like many of those before him, falls short… 4) Because the yardstick of socialism does not inherently account for other axes of oppression.

Before he started blundering on every question related to race, the main criticism of Sanders was that he was a one issue candidate. Yes; exactly; there is no purer expression of being a descendant of the Marxist tradition than always focusing on why money flows from hundreds of millions of people to hundreds of people. The policies that characterize a socialist state change with the times, and so it makes sense that Sanders doesn’t recommend the same ratio of wheat to alfalfa production as Trotsky or whatever Bouie’s litmus test for socialism is. The way in which a socialist analyzes society does not change. It remains fixed on economic relations. Like Bernie Sanders.

The simplicity of that analysis can become a bludgeon when it is used to diminish other axes of oppression. Saying that issues of race or gender or sexuality are less important than those of class is the plague of Marxism done wrong and Sanders, along with thousands of dreadlocked bros throughout America’s higher education system, has not done a great job of refuting that idea. The socialist argument isn’t that free college and single payer healthcare will make cops stop murdering black people, but that there are economic drivers behind that criminal justice system. Racism and racist violence are and have been profitable in America, and that, rather than some divinely inspired or biologically innate disposition to racism, is how we have gotten here. 

The socialist answer is not satisfying for people in a state as besieged by institutional oppression as America. Marxism offers a framework for understanding structural exploitation but not for particular events, not for their efficient causes and their intersectional tangle. Sanders has often lacked the nuance and empathy required to persuasively offer the socialist vision as amelioration for actual harms.

The Democratic party, on the other hand, offers no cosmology, no sense of why the past led to today or of the shape the future should hold. It will give or at least promise a series of bandaids for any problem that appears to endanger its candidates’ electability. That is its concept of “accountability” and if you dig a little deeper there too you find its concept of “the people.“ 

And yes to both the notice that the story fails the Bechdel test in a big way and the whole “Jefferson is bad because he owned slaves but we’re not going to address the rest of the Founding Fathers and their involvement in slavery” commentary. History has fashions just like everything else, and the current thing in [pop] history is to dump on Jefferson. Jefferson was a grade-A hypocrite on slavery, but he’s not significantly worse than the rest of the Founding Fathers. The trend will come around on him, and then Hamilton will look as dated as 1776.