Jay Fox - THE WALLS

“No, that's all right,” I respond.

“Regardless, I don't remember anything else about him in terms of fashion. He wasn't out to prove anything with his clothes.”

I have a new voice mail.

“I'm sorry if this seems a bit out of line, but I'm just curious: what happens if you find him?”

“If I interview him?” I ask. “I basically make a name for myself as a journalist. Also, there's a reward.”

He smiles. “An honest one.” He looks over to Scooter, who, by this point, has fallen asleep. Smoke from his cigarette drifts languidly from the ashtray like a weak faucet, reverse-tape. “One of the greats once said that journalism is a business; and, like all business enterprises, it knows neither laws nor good faith.”

“Who was that?”

“Balzac. If I remember the passage correctly, he goes on to say that newspapers don't create opinions — they flatter them.”

“That's a pretty cynical outlook.”

“Well, you always come off as cynical when you're considered an opinionated asshole. It's the reason why the white community, the black community, and the artistic community have all rejected me. The Japanese community…” He laughs. “Well, it's hard to be rejected when you're not even considered for acceptance.”

“What do you mean by that? Why have you been rejected?”

“No one likes to be criticized. The black community was terribly offended when I said that the leaders perpetuate a culture of victimization and self-loathing as opposed to a culture of empowerment. They disowned me when I said ghetto-fabulous is just a polite way of saying nigger rich, that rap culture's decadence represents one of the lowest forms of existence in any civilization thus far — that nigga's gotta get paid isn't much different than the Nuremberg credo of I was only following orders . And then there's the whole subject of rap stars essentially serving as pawns for different corporations because these corporations think black people are fucking stupid — that they'll buy anything so long as it's endorsed by one of their own. And you know what really fucking pisses me off? They're fucking right. The symbols of black power, within the ghetto anyway, all revolve around conspicuous consumption of designer good, which are virtually all owned by the same white people they claim to resent, hate, whatever.

“The feminist community rallied against me when I said they only fight against the most paltry examples of sexism because they have yet to establish a solid ethos, and, consequently, lack not only direction but an authentic community. They evidently didn't understand the irony of their actions when they launched their relatively large campaign against me. But I don't think it's sexist to point out the inadequacies of theory; I don't understand how anyone could, unless their accusation is just a defense mechanism — which it usually is. Seriously, though, if half of the elite within the feminist community think they are doing something intellectually stimulating by pointing out misogyny in nineteenth-century fiction, they really have nothing to offer. It's like showing racism in the same era. You have to be a child not to notice it. Yes, I understand the desire to map out a genealogy and all of that, and there are great books of postmodern and feminist theory — though the former almost necessarily encompasses the latter — that rely on doing similar things, but, at this point, every dipshit with a trust fund is writing a thesis on late-capitalism's hegemony over discourse in regards to x . It's intellectual masturbation.”

“You said you feel rejected by the white community. Why?”

“Well, there isn't really one community for any culture or social group in this country — with few exceptions. The so-called white community is no different — something that a lot of my black brethren refuse to consider. It's not limited to these, but when I think of white people, I think of people who belong to the corporate culture, to the redneck, proud-to-be-a-Bush-voter culture, and to the white, counter-culture crowd — which envelops the artistic community, as well as much of the music and entertainment industry — you know, those people who always say, Race doesn’t matter here,’ because I’m always the only brother floating around. Regardless, one could say that the only reason that the latter two, the hillbilly and the hipster communities, exist is because each community shares their own unique delusion when considering their relation to the former, which is hegemonic, monolithic, etcetera. The corporate culture is considered the dominant culture, but you will rarely find someone who believes that they are a part of it — there are not that many Patrick Batemans out there. The ultimate joke of it all is that every person is a part of it to some degree, even those who feel they don't belong to any particular sect of American culture — they think themselves just Americans. Now, these people, as well as the rednecks, don't really know anything about me. The other group I mentioned, the so-called artistic community, thinks I'm a conceited prick because I refuse to participate in the little enclave they've carved out of the media. I believe the exact wording I used in an interview a few years ago was: The group is not only narcissistic in the sense that it wants to go fuck itself, which I think it should do if it gets the chance, but in the sense that it's in the midst of drowning in its own hubris.

“I guess it's not that I feel rejected by every element of the white community, just some of them. I think it's more that I can never fit in completely because I'm not white. It's racist, but it's not like most white people want things to be that way. I mean, what's racist about it is that they want people like me to assimilate, even if they don't actively seek to change things one way or the other. All in all, they don't really care; they just accept that the status quo is normal, natural, and that others should follow suit. More importantly, the only time they seek to alter society or culture is when it most flagrantly contradicts its own tenets. They recognize and hope to eliminate racism in its most explicit forms, but they neither question nor abhor the more insidious elements, probably because they don't really notice them.

“The average white guy is a man who cannot be woken up. He is kept in a state of Denkverbot .” My curiosity is discernible. “It kind of means a prohibition of critical thought, though it may not have to be that strong of a word, depending on usage. Regardless, he, the average white guy, doesn't even notice that he's getting screwed, too. That's just how the mechanisms that operate in this society have been set up — keep people oblivious, cloaked in Maya's veil. And while he's not getting screwed as badly as women and people who aren't white, he, the average white guy, is beginning to realize that even his cut of the pie is diminishing. Less government does not mean more power to the people; it means more power to the corporations and the wealthy. Just look at the way the gap between the rich and the poor has expanded over the past thirty years. The obstacle, of course, is that no radical group will reach out to this huge demographic of white men who aren't rich and who aren't poor, who aren't smart and who aren't dumb, because, to radicalized people on the left, it's almost like conceding.

“But nothing is going to happen in this country until the people as a whole recognize that they are all suffering under the same system, and that — while the judicial and martial branches of the government are clearly sexist and racist, while misogyny and bigotry will never evaporate because of an atavistic orientation to the world that most white men unconsciously possess — the economic system — the system that determines virtually every aspect of an individual's life — is still primarily classist, and it is necessarily so.”