"EVERYDAY" INNOCENCE

Buddy Holly: a nerdy knight of faith.

by Andy Nowicki

A corrupt age views innocence as an essential absence; that is to say, as a state of being “not guilty.” Since all ages are corrupt, to varying degrees, we never quite apprehend innocence for what it truly is: a positive presence.

Philosophy, after all, teaches that man’s telos is the Good; if this is so, then the condition of innocence can’t simply be dismissively consigned to the silly naivety of childhood, while “knowledge” and “wisdom” get to be associated with an individual’s embracing of the corruption that invariably attends maturity, thus demonstrating his complicity with that which spoils his innocence.

WE HATE BIG BROTHER

                                                        

                                                by Andy Nowicki

At the end of George Orwell’s 1984, hero and would-be revolutionary Winston Smith is tortured brutally by ghoulish government goons at the Ministry of Love. Following this ordeal, his will is utterly broken; he betrays his closest allies as well as himself; moreover, he learns to “love” Big Brother, the awful totalitarian entity who has made his life unbearably miserable. Winston himself gets absolutely nothing out of this bargain except a certain warped peace of mind and a perverse sense that he has in some way “done the right thing”:

COKE AIN'T IT

                           

                                                              

by Andy Nowicki

I’ll admit that I had an immediate, visceral, and startlingly profane reaction to the now notorious Coca-Cola advertisement broadcast during the Super Bowl, as my poor, patient wife can attest.

The commercial, as surely you must know by now, features “America the Beautiful” being sung in various languages while a dippy montage unfolds featuring breakdancing blacks, hijab-adorned Middle Eastern women, yarmulked men, loveably grizzled septagenarian Latino cowboys and adorable urban effeminates (with a few sparse hints of white, seeming-heterosexual suburbanites begrudgingly thrown in as if in afterthought).