You are the murderer you seek This morning, I r…
You are the murderer you seek
This morning, I received ZNET�s update mailout. It contained the text to Eduardo Galeano�s eye-opening, and eye-popping, polemic about the brief coup in Venezuela. The email also linked to Arundhati Roy�s article about politics in Gujarat. You might know both authors from their novels. Both pieces are worth reading for the combination of intelligence and passion displayed, although personally, I don�t rate their novels.
Later that morning, as I opened Arts & Letters Daily, it struck me that not once has it mentioned Venezuela in its links. And the only time it gets close to mentioning the massive political issues arising from Roy�s article is when it approvingly quotes a smear piece in the bigoted magazine The Spectator: it calls her �a stupendously vain, preening, egotistical self-publicist�.
This is a curious anomaly for a site that prides itself on a knowledge-hungry approach to culture. �Truth hates delay� is its motto, coming from Sophocles� play Oedipus Tyrannus, as translated by Seneca, the Roman. Interestingly, Seneca probably translated it for a private audience because in his day, as in ours, tragedy was well out of fashion. The people wanted the Feelgood Factor only; nothing else. Arts & Letters policy of linking to shrill attacks on challenging art and thought is rather in keeping with the Roman Empire’s populist stance.
And in its hunger for the truth, such as that behind the tragedies of the day, it is also like Oedipus as he demands to know who killed Laius, his father, and so visited great plagues upon Thebes. Knowledge, he believes, will set him and his city free, just as Arts & Letters believe, no doubt, in the political good of knowledge. In response, an old shepherd comes along who witnessed Laius� murder. He doesn�t want to tell Oedipus the truth, but is threatened with torture if he refuses. He was told, no doubt, that �truth hates delay�. The Old Shepherd tells Oedipus: �You are the murderer you seek�.
However, Oedipus isn�t like Arts & Letters Daily and the entire Western media apparatus: he does not kill the messenger.
Other SpikeMagazine.com posts of interest:
- Snobbery hates truth
- Exit Arts & Letters
- Apes of wrath
- Corporate Killing I see the Queen Mother of pop…
- And then again
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