Sin

I’m reading a biography of Mae West along with the new book about the murder of Bishop Gerardi in Guatemala, which feels like just about the right mix for keeping sane. West was a Brooklyn girl and a product of the burlesque/vaudeville circuits that pre-dated movies and television, and the ambience described in the book feels closer to theatre in ancient Greece than our aloof electronic entertainment. But the tales of how she clawed her way to stardom are quite contemporary.

It’s curious to watch how she toyed with sexual innuendo and conquest in her roles and her public image, stirring both amused fascination and outrage. Although her movie career was pretty much crushed by the Hayes Code and the moralistic counter-Reformation that cooled Hollywood’s jets during the Depression and war years, West must have struck a deep chord among women finding their way into the working world and trying on new ideas about what women could be and do.

West was no avant-feminist because her only real cause was herself and her career. But she seems to have been quite genuine in expressing her puzzlement over all the fuss made about what people do in bed. Too bad she couldn’t take enough amused distance from her camp self to accept the role of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (which was offered to her). Imagine West behind the line, ‘I’m still big—it’s the movies that have gotten small!’

The book is entitled, It Ain’t No Sin. Speaking of which, Bishop Gerardi was the moving spirit behind the report on Guatemala’s 40-year nightmare of war and the human rights abuses committed therein, including massacres of whole villages by the Guatemalan armed forces. He was murdered in his garage two days after the report came out, and it’s no accident that Guatemala continues to occupy a lower circle of hell while many other Latin countries have clambered away from impunity toward some semblance of civilized politics. The Art of Political Murder by Francisco Goldman is part detective story, part lament for the capacity of a vicious elite to keep itself in power pretty much forever.

I wonder when the slaughter of 200 thousand Mayan villagers will merit a solemn pronouncement from Capitol Hill, busy denouncing what the Germans did in Europe or the Turks did in Asia. Not likely to happen any time soon since they’d have to explain Saint Ronald's support for one of its principal architects as just a regular guy ‘getting a bum rap.’

[Update] I wrote that last night, and lo and behold today’s paper says the House of Representatives is getting cold feet on denouncing Turkish genocide after all since the plans for conquest in Iraq come first. Isn’t that special?