>
>pms wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On the other hand I've always had this sore spot about people who
> > aggressively fulfill stereo-types. Conformity enhanced by marketing I
> > suppose. And propaganda.
>
>I have seen two walking Platonic archetypes in my life, both on the same
>trip . . .
Years ago my then girlfriend reported the following story: she was sitting in a Greenwich Village cafe with her mom, looking at a book of mediweval illuminations, and was trying to figure out what instrument someone in an illuminatuin was supposed to be playing. Is it a lute? her mom asked. Yes, she said, I think it's a lute. Let me see that! snarled the guy next to her, filthy black leather jacket, cutoff sleeves, oil-stained frayed jeans, tangled long hair and beard, a perfect looking motorcycle hoodlum. He gabbed the book, looked at it in disgust, tossed it back. No, it ain't a lute. I play the lute. It's a XXX (I forget what she said he said it was. She looked it up later, he was right.).
Almost 20 years ago, also, when I was in CWP/NDM and teaching at U-M, I had as a student an ultra-preppy blonde sorority sister, a Theta (Delta Kappa Theta, I think), blonde, pink fuzzy sweater, the works. She wrote a paper on Marx for me and found to her surprise that she agreed with him. What should I do, then? she said. Talk to me after grades are in, I said (she got a B). I was always a stickler for ethics. So I told her, after she was no longer a student of mine, what _I_ had done. Can I join, she said? I'll sign you up today if you like, I said. But, she said, can I stay in my sorority if I am a communist? she asked me. Do you like being in your sorority? I asked. Yes, she said. Organize it, I said.
She took over the sorority social action committee, used it as a base to to organize an all-campus group called Greeks for Peace, did Central AMerica and nuclear disarmament work, had about 150 members. She'd get up at rallies, wearing her Greek sweatshirt or her pink fuzzies, made up to the hilt, giggle, and give these awesome speeches. She'd start out by quoting the Theta statement of purpose about helping humanity. Everyone loved her. We couldn't even talk to those people, but they'd listen to one of their own. We had this huge continent of Greeks at our rallies for several years. I mean, huge, there were more of them than there were of us. They were enthusiastic, utterly reliable, very nice. She was a great. Got written up in a South End Press book on 80s campus activism. Married a comrade, divorced him or vice versa, ended up one West Coast being New Agey, I think. I saw her last in '99 when I was out in SF giving a talk.
jks
jks
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