Posted by panch from pool0533.cvx25-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.218.23) on Wednesday, July 24, 2002 at 8:02PM :
We're a funny people. I think it comes from all this turn the cheek business...this institutionalized victimhood we're so proud of. There isn't anything in the world an Assyrian will tell you can be done about anything.
The only real crime we commit as Assyrians...is to stand up for ourselves...even fight back, when we have to.
People who advise me to , "let it go", don't realize how they help perpetuate this cycle. What would happen if every victim of abuse was urged to, "forget about it"...don't trouble yourself any more"..."get over it and move on"?
Wouldn't Nimrod love to give that advice...wouldn't Jackie and Atour? Weren't they hoping I WOULD move on and forget about it...forget about making Assyrian monuments...getting attention...raising the bar? Wouldn't even one of those cock-sucking priests like the children to "move on and forget about it"?
William Daniel died a bitter man, with people at the end counting the days until he did die, so they could have their planned memorial service for him. All of our artists...hell even our contractors and handymen and house painters and lawyers will tell you the same thing..."DON'T work with Assyrians!!!"
Why should it be like that? And why do we revile Jews for "sticking together"...though that isn't accurate either...but still we think it is...while we all KNOW you'll have only grief if you work with Assyrians.
It has to stop. You just can't tell someone to go work for several years, sink money into projects...and when they're gutted by one hysterical person with severe ego handicaps...say, "just forget about it". Forget about what...Justice...Fair Play....Keeping One's Word...Advancing or Heritage instead of constatly retarding it???
If we all keep forgetting about it...it wont be there any more. Or the only version of this Heritage left standing will be more of this kind of foolishness.
Should Rabel Shmuel ask next time for ZOWAAS permission before he selects his colors? Shall he check with the stupidist people we have because they'll be the ones least concerned about making idiots of themselves...shall the lowest common denominator among us prevail...because we've driven everyone else away...screaming in the night?
Should I just stand there and let a bank teller, a political hack...a short engineer...tell me how to make sculpture? And if I listen to them...how am I going to get on in the real world? You have any idea how long these three would last outside of the niche holes they've dug for themselves?
I love the irony of being the only artist to be kept from showing his work at the Federation convention this year...but being told that I am welcome to come....when the argument for keeping me out was that I am a troublemaker. Even Jackie addmitted that my work was "good". ...good enough for her to spend several thousand dollars on...and I was 'safe' enough to be at her home with her and to be asked to travel with her to Detroit...where I presume I would have been good enough for lots of things.
Now in Detroit it's my artwork that causes trouble...or did I just get demoted as an artist? And by the same short engineer. But sweetest of all is to be asked to be the only sculptor at the opening of an upscale gallery in Tucson...owned by a Jew.
And a wonderful man he seems too, from the conversations we've had. Now I wish I kept copies of all the critiques I got from the readers at aina and beth about the trashy and stupid works...all of them on Assyrian themes and subjects.
It isn't about me being "great". It's about how pathetic we are that we would even think of getting any satisfaction by driving any one of us down, or away, when we perceive the possibility of him or her rising higher than we are...and bringing him down so no one looks "better" than you do... or makes you look shabby by comparision. That's all this is about. And I ain't letting go of it...not for me, but because we can't have this be the standard those who follow will gauge their chances of success or just plain decent treatment by.
-- panch
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