In 1999 I wrote two short, topical essays a month for the Web site FEED. I thought, then, that I'd re-examine these pieces a year later to see what had been on my mind and to see if I still agreed with what I'd written. Here they are. Take a look at my 1999 Journal for this month, below, and join me in the Wicked Pavilion to discuss it.

This month, I revisit my final FEED journals. Join me in the Wicked Pavilion one last time to discuss my journals from January 1999 and January 2000.

January 6, 1999

On New Year's day, while you were lamenting your hangover, Michael Eisner was just starting to celebrate. On that date, less than a month after Castro deplored Mexican children for knowing more about Mickey Mouse than they do about their own history, Disney legally ensured that no artist of this generation will be allowed to offer the children of any country an unsanctioned vision of the Big Rat. That section of the Constitution which provides authors and artists exclusive rights to their intellectual property for a limited time has been quietly re-interpreted. "Limited" time, which since 1976 has been agreed to mean that copyrights held by corporations were good for 75 years, now means 95 years. Disney's 1928 animated short Steamboat Willie, starring the prototype for Mickey, will not pass into the public domain in 2003 as scheduled. Nor will Pluto become public property in '06; nor Goofy in '08; and so forth. Although those of us who toil in the fields of the mind like the sound of beefing up copyright laws, it's important to remember that what's good for Disney is always bad for you.

The Framers of the Constitution, who saw fit to provide Congress with the power to secure intellectual property rights for helpless artists, had the well-being of two kinds of creators in mind: living ones, for whom copyright provides economic incentive to be creative, and not-yet-living ones, whose ability to sample or re-interpret the artwork of previous generations ought not to be impeded. After all, Disney didn't have to ask permission of The Brothers Grimm to animate Cinderella or Snow White, or consult Victor Hugo for the rights to The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Disney's creations are inescapable elements of modern life, so why should artists now be denied access to Bambi or Dumbo?

To the Framers, 14 years seemed like about the right duration for copyrights. And although the work of 19th-century fabulists like Mark Twain is now owned by all of us, companies like Time Warner will continue to possess exclusive rights to Charlie Chaplin films and F. Scott Fitzgerald novels well into the next century thanks to behind-the-scenes lobbying on behalf of huge media conglomerates. When Disney gave large campaign contributions to Rep. Howard Coble (chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Arts and Intellectual Property), Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, and other potential co-sponsors of the legislation in question, they weren't looking out for the rights of artists living or still to come, but for the pseudo-rights of artists long dead and wholly incorporated. The fact that a walking corpse like Bob Dylan showed up to support the legislation only proves how little faith he has in his son Jakob's ability to produce anything of value; at least, he probably figured, an extended copyright would help put his great-great-grandchildren through college. Woody Guthrie is spinning in his grave.

In a paranoid business culture obsessed with preserving and enhancing the almighty brand, intellectual property experts like Dennis Karjala who tried to argue against the legislation (using increasingly quaint expressions like "the public good") seemed to be speaking a language that no one understands. In this age of sampling, pastiche, cutting-and-pasting, and recontextualizing, it's reasonable that an artist would want to remain on his own—like, well, a rolling stone. But there's always a chance that he'll just bleed into the complete unknown.

January 14, 2000

"War is not merely a political act," the Prussian military strategist Karl von Clausewitz argued, "but also a political instrument, a continuation of [foreign policy] by other means." This charming pronunciamento was deep-sixed recently by a high-ranking British official who questioned the very possibility of aggressive, war-based foreign policy in what he described as a "post-heroic, post-imperial, post-modern society." What we need now, suggested Robert Cooper, head of the Foreign Office's Asia department, writing in the intellectual journal Prospect a year ago, are fewer "romantic idealist theories of progress," and a lot more radical self-doubt. Countries like Great Britain and the United States, in other words, must start looking at their national identities and values as malleable phenomena that "need continually to be reinvented and rejustified." Has foreign policy gone existentialist?

Although Cooper did indeed refer to Camus in his essay, he did so only to justify his own frequent, and positive, use of the term "irony," by which he means something like the modesty that comes with self-awareness. "Provided it is tinged with humanity," he concluded, "irony is unlikely to be used to justify programs of conquest or extermination." Last month, The Economist concurred with Cooper, but only after its editorial confused Cooper's sort of modesty with a sarcastic acquiescence in the face of absurdity. As a result, The Economist inadvertently misused Cooper's essay to justify the world-weary posturing of British diplomats who perceive their duty to be "the management of decline."

The significance of this terminology mix-up was lost on Slate's Judith Shulevitz, whose column last week excoriated Cooper and The Economist alike for daring to suggest that irony is about anything but making fun of people who aren't part of your club. Shulevitz dismissed the claims of "philosophers who argue that the ironic sensibility is morally preferable." What these thinkers really mean by irony, she proposes, is tragedy, or "the tragic vision of the world": the sense of the radical contingency of life which gives rise to feelings of pity on behalf of one's fellow man. Clearly, Shulevitz has in mind someone like Richard Rorty, the philosopher whose much-read book Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity insists that irony allows us to face up to the contingency of our own most central beliefs and desires, and to "see strange people as fellow sufferers." Shulevitz is right: Rorty does sound more like a tragic vision than an ironic posture. So did The Economist, in misinterpreting Cooper's modesty as acquiescence, get it right after all?

If this definitional brouhaha leaves you bewildered, just imagine what the world will be like when ironists of different stripes—like Cooper, The Economist's editorialist, and Shulevitz—are responsible for making foreign policy decisions. Should the perspective which informs international relations in the future be diffident, sardonic, or empathetic? A little of each, perhaps. The advantage of ironikpolitik is that unflinching tragedy tends to degenerate—as in Shakespeare's King Lear, or Euripides' Electra—into savage farce. Cooper and Rorty recognize this. Despite their humanism, both thinkers resist the easy empathy which comes with the tragic view of life. "How can nations have a sense of purpose, destiny, or history when the dominant value is irony?" wonders Cooper. "Why stand for one's convictions if one knows they are only relatively valid?" demands Rorty. These questions can't be answered, they can only be lived—by humble, self-mocking, deeply caring ironists.