"A Poem for Dzhohkar"

Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.

Some former lower-tier singer or something wrote a poem supposedly about Dzhozkar Tsarnaev but which sounds suspiciously like an advertisement for herself-- that is to say, an expression not about the terrorist but about herself and her elevated sense of empathy.

I went off on this phenomenon yesterday on Twitter, noting that we are now in the Conspicuous Compassion Floor Exercise program of the Moral Peacocking Olympics.

Many statements during this phase must be discounted as to their false mention of external facts, such as terrorism. That is just a red herring. The real subject of these sorts of Look At Me And Be Amazed By My Empathy and Cleverness statements is, as usual, The Almighty I.

Palmer, whoever she is, doesn't want to talk about Dzhohkar; she wants to talk about herself. However, as there's a social penalty associated with Narcissism, many Narcissists have learned to make statements seemingly about external matters which in fact are actually all about The Almighty I.

Palmer doesn't have any empathy for Dzhohkar, and I say this because I rather doubt she has empathy for any human being. What she primarily has empathy for his herself, and her ego, and her need for validation, and her desire to separate herself from the Masses by scoring the natural but "obvious" and therefore "common" reaction to a slaughter -- the natural and common reaction that a mass murderer is a bad guy -- by peacocking around an uncommon attitude towards it.

The aristocrat demonstrates that he is not common by cultivating a different sense of taste, style, and manner than the common folk; these demonstrations are not chosen simply because they suit him, but specifically because they are different than those of the common masses he wishes to elevate himself above.

Thus Palmer is required -- if she's to demonstrate her un-Common-ness -- to seek out and adopt postures that are rejected by the Common, such as "Mass murderers deserve our empathy and love."

Making this more obvious is the fact that the thoughts that Palmer is supposed channeling from a 19 year old male gritty-banlieu immigrant Chechen terrorist sound suspiciously like the thoughts of a 30-something suburban-raised/urban-identifying white privileged American woman with arrested adolescent development disorder.

That is to say, much like the thoughts and scary-bad problems of Amanda Palmer herself. (Apparently Amanda Palmer's biggest problem is that she scammed fans out of $1.2 million for a Kickstarter project which couldn't possibly cost that much and is now unable to fully account for why she needs so much money to record an album.)

Anyway, here are bits of Amanda Palmer's troll-post, which is intended as a Celebrate Me for Being a Special Little Ultra-Empathetic Snowflake invitation.

I'm sure you'll have poetry of your own.

Note all the lines that sound suspiciously like the "problems" of an OCD/Narcisstic brittle-psyche artistic type who grew up in a wealthy country. I'm frankly shocked Palmer didn't mention how Dzhohkar was dogged his whole life by Negative Body Image received from Fashion Magazines.

you don’t know how it felt to be in the womb but it must have been at least a little warmer than this.

you don’t know how intimately they’re recording your every move on closed-circuit cameras until you see your face reflected back at you through through the pulp.

you don’t know how to stop picking at your fingers.

you don’t know how little you’ve been paying attention until you look down at your legs again.

you don’t know how many times you can say you’re coming until they just stop believing you.

you don’t know how orgasmic the act of taking in a lungful of oxygen is until they hold your head under the water.

you don’t know how many vietnamese soft rolls to order.

you don’t know how convinced your parents were that having children would be, absolutely, without question, the correct thing to do.

you don’t know how precious your iphone battery time was until you’re hiding in the bottom of the boat.

you don’t know how to get away from your fucking parents.

...

you don’t know how to tell the girl in the chair next to you that you’ve been peeking at her dissertation draft and there’s a grammatical typo in the actual file name.

you don’t know how to explain yourself.

you don’t want two percent but it’s all they have.

you don’t know how claustrophobic your house is until you can’t leave it.

you don’t know why you let that guy go without shooting him dead and stuffing him in some bushes between cambridge and watertown.

you don’t know where your friends went.

you don’t know how to dance but you give it a shot anyway.

you don’t know how your life managed to move twenty six miles forward and twenty eight miles back.

you don’t know how to pay your debts.

you don’t know how to separate from this partnership to escape and finally breathe.

I assume that last is a reference to Palmer splitting from whatever band she used to be in -- the Dresden Dolls or something.

How is this "for Dzhohkar"?

BTW, sometimes she looks like this:

Yoko Ono just called, she said she's owed royalties.

posted by Ace at 03:48 PM

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