From: aaiken@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (Andrew C. Aiken)
Subject: Latter-day anti-Locofoco sexism 
Keywords: egnilges
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 92 14:47:43 GMT

In <1992Jul27.230108.10941@Princeton.EDU> egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges) writes:

>What's a "lust for power others?"  Is a "power other" like a "power
>lunch", a spouse with a big income?  I doubt that that's what they want,
>or what you meant to say.  And you want me to shut up.  The Prez wants
>to shut MIA hecklers up.  Why don't you stop blithering about other
>people's motives and engage the substance of what Dworkin/MacKinnon
>say?  Why is it okay for Charles Perez to want Ed Nilges to shut up, but
>not okay for Dworkin to want pornographers to shut up?
>>

Why is it okay  ( According to legend,"okay" or "O.K." was Andrew Jackson's 
abbreviation for "oll korrekt" (all correct).  Andrew Jackson stood in
the Andrew Jackson room of the Andrew Jackson Convention Center.  Sunlight
fell through the skylights in thick shafts.  If we could have shut our ears,
the room would suggest a downtown cathedral.  But we could not.  The hecklers
came to protest President Jackson's inaction on the MIAs of the
War of 1812.  They chanted:

	You killed our sons!
	You dashed our dreams! 
	Why were you in New Orleans?!

Andrew Jackson pulled a pistol from the back of his pants.  He waved it in the
air for a moment but the heckling did not cease.  He then shot one of the
hecklers, a rather corpulent and annoying fellow.  The hecklers sent an 
Official Representative to the podium to speak with the President.  The
Official Representative asked Andrew Jackson through acrid smoke, "I presume
that you desire that we shut up and sit down?"  Jackson began shooting again,
this time at the door which led outside.  He emptied the gun.  A Locofoco
loyalist handed Jackson another gun.  Jackson emptied it into the door as
well.  Yet another gun was produced and emptied by Jackson.  The holes in the
door admitted light, and in the poorly lit room (the Locofocos tending to guns,
and not lighting)  one could read in the door the abbreviation "O.K.," as if
the holes were well-laid stars in the twilight, shining the Will of God.  The
Official Representative asked Jackson what "O.K." meant.  Jackson paused.
"Why, all correct, of course."  Feminist scholars have shown why Jackson
paused.  He was listening to Rachael, his wife, prompt him.  She was more
illiterate than even her husband.  Though the phrase did not seem apt to
Jackson, who had an honorary doctorate in Orthography from Harvard, he spoke it
nevertheless.  Rachael was eventually humiliated for her spelling, and left
Washington a compromised woman.  She died an early death because she could not
bear her shame.  I retell this story, which every schoolboy knows, only to 
remind the reader of the careful subtlety of Ed Nilges' brutal sexism.  He so
blithely uses the locution "okay," without a thought, it would seem in a less
faithful reading, to the long history of oppression that it signifies.  But
Nilges knows what he is doing.  He knows the structure of language, and is 
intimate with the contours of patriarchy.  Beneath the orotund rhetoric lurks a 
potent and hideous legerdemain.) for Ed Nilges to care, but not for me not to?


Andrew Aiken

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