I don’t think Beisadze’s book would get this man’s seal of approval.
It’s fun watching other countries fight a culture war, especially after ours ended so abruptly in a haze of rainbows and unicorns following the election of post-partisan uniter Barack Obama as our 44th President. Actually the left won by default since most Americans are so distracted with their iPads and American Idol, they couldn’t be bothered with confronting the squalid legacy of the 1960′s counter-culture much less roll it back. Oh sure, we talk a good game – “Purity Pledges,” “What Would Jesus Do,” “Protect the Unborn,” and all that – but Americans know what the real non-judgmental, Episcopalian Jesus would do: sex-up their seven-year-old daughters for some ghetto-fabulous bumping-and-grinding. For Americans, it’s an article of faith that exploiting their children will yield riches and a secure retirement. If you don’t believe me, go to a seance and ask Earl Wood.
The problem for parents is to make sure that the tricks their little seven-year-old princesses are doing for a dance competition doesn’t turn them into seventeen-year-old runaways turning tricks on a downtown street corner. Maybe this partly explains why in 21st century America, the “culture war” has morphed into a global “culture jihad” as every superficial celebrity, bureaucrat, and grievance group on earth looks to the United States to pimp them out for maximum media exposure: Follow Hugo on Twitter! Listen to Anwar al-Awlaki’s latest podcast from the Ground Zero Mega-Mosque in New York City! Watch the city of Paris burn on CNN while disenfranchised “youth” riot in the banileues! And finally read about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s early career as a magician and the time he pulled a Mahdi out of his hat during a performance for Iran-Iraq War child-soldiers who didn’t achieve martyrdom after rolling across minefields in blankets in his critically-acclaimed, heart-warming autobiography published by Knopf…
In the small country of Georgia, the first skirmish in their culture war is being fought over a book written by twenty-year-old Irakly Beisadze with a title so obscene that Russia Today refused to translate it into English. Ha! They don’t know their audience! I probably call my supervisors at work that word at least twenty times a night! Anyway, this “crisis” has supposedly become the topic du jour in Georgia, effectively paralyzing Georgia’s government as politicians passionately debate the merits of Beisadze’s book and what it means for Georgian culture. Alas, if only my blog could have this kind of effect on our government, we could use a break from the leftards’ destructive legislative fury.
Probably because I’ve become so jaded and disillusioned with the coarseness of contemporary American culture, I’m both baffled and amused over how such a minor point of departure as Beisadze’s book could supersede more important issues, like getting the State Department to finally realize that Georgia’s capital is Tbilisi and not Atlanta. Just getting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to fly into the right city for once would be, as Joe Biden would say, a big fucking deal.*
Georgia Factbox
The land that constitutes modern Georgia has been continuously occupied since the Stone Age, with the first Georgians appearing in history around the 12th century BC. A Eurasian country located in the Caucasus, Georgia’s location at the “center of the world” made it vulnerable to conquest throughout its history: The Romans first conquered Georgia in 66 BC followed successively by the Persians, Byzantines, Arabs, Mongols, Turks, and Russians. While Georgia’s rich and vibrant culture reflects the influences of their conquerors – the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and Russians in particular – Georgians eventually forged those various cultural strains into a nuanced and sophisticated national identity. In the 1st century AD, the Apostle Andrew converted Georgia to Christianity, thus making Georgia one of the oldest Christian civilizations in the world. Though Georgians maintain a fierce identification with this Christian heritage, Georgia nonetheless typifies the brutality of Caucasian mountain culture by the persistence of such ancient customs as the blood feud, which only began to abate during the Soviet period. It’s this nexus of Christianity and Caucasian culture that makes the Beisadze story so interesting.
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The Flag and Crest of GeorgiaAnyway, our tale begins with the aforementioned Beisadze and his book which is centered around a theme of incest and features two homosexuals performing oral sex on each other at a camp while the Georgian national anthem plays in the background. Aside from appealing to patriotic Georgian homosexuals who like to break-up the monotony of camping by going down on each other, the targeted demographic of Beisadze’s book escapes me. And who ever said that European values lack relevance in this day and age? While the rest of Europe is entering into economic austerity and learning Arabic in order to communicate with their new masters; nuanced, sophisticated Georgian aesthetes like Beisadze – seeing the financial success such depravity has had in Western Europe – are importing such profitable “Westernization” into the Caucasus backwater. No wonder they couldn’t beat the Russians.
However, unlike non-traditional Georgian authors, traditional Georgian citizens were outraged by this cultural degradation and immediately protested the book’s release. While the traditionalism and cultural conservatism of the Caucasus are legendary, it’s actually not surprising that even Georgia has some lefties who want nothing more than to destroy their society in the name of “free speech.” However, Georgians can look at the United States and find solace in the fact that despite such pornography having circulated for years here under the sobriquet of Noam Chomsky’s political theories, we have remained unaffected by such immature debauchery. Our strength lies in our tolerance and diversity! Just admire how great our culture is now! Ok, Georgia’s fucked. Anyway, I guess it was inevitable that Western “soft power” would eventually transform a wonderful, historically and culturally rich country like Georgia into Jerry Springer-esque snippets for international public consumption as a local television station invited both sides (liberals in support of the book and a group called Orthodox Fathers against it) into a studio to discuss their differences on air.
After the fists stopped flying, eight Orthodox Fathers were arrested for beating down the liberals in front of a live, studio audience. Beisadze went into hiding and the head of the Orthodox Fathers fled to Russia after each received death threats from the other’s supporters. Still it was a success overall. Modernizing the venerable Caucasian blood-feud into a more kinder and gentler digital format deserves “props.” While the successful reinterpretation of the traditional Georgian vendetta into talk show form with streaming internet video proves that societal evolution is possible even in the medievalist Caucuses! Also, while a televised ass-beating wasn’t what the producers were exactly expecting, it certainly helped the station’s over-night ratings. And by experiencing a full-blown culture war without actually experiencing any of the war, Georgia proves that it’s ready for Euro Zone integration! Woohoo!
I’m hoping that Georgia will reject – as one Georgian political analyst has accurately observed – these “European values” that have so culturally and spiritually sterilized Western Europe.
Either that or invite Chomsky for a joint book signing with Mr. Beisadze.
From Russia Today:The deeply Orthodox Georgian society is in turmoil over the release of a book depicting homosexuality. The scandal has seen liberal groups and religious representatives literally come to blows. One side says it wants to protect society, the other wants to preserve freedom of speech. Rocketing sales is one of the consequences. Gay book roils Georgia: |
* My pop-culture reference to Joe “Big Fucking Deal” Biden! Sweet!
[...] this post on the country of Georgia. Prior to stumbling across the Russia Today video detailing the controversy surrounding Irakly Beisadze’s book, I was only familiar with Georgia through its place on the periphery of political and cultural [...]