Hans van der Kamp

My girlfriend works at a company called AMT Biopharma. Although the company is working on a highly revolutionary cure for a disease so rare that I keep forgetting the name, it is not a boring job.
Every other day some employee is upset, calling in sick or what have you.
A few days ago the black office manager, born in Gambia and raised in the UK, was treated badly by a Mr. A. Ribbink, board member.
My girlfriend is trying to find out what happened, but the matter seems to be a company secret and Anna John, the office manager, is so upset that she is unable to tell what happened. All we know is that Mr. Ribbink made a racist remark. One that is apparently so bad it cannot be repeated.

I strongly believe that every racist remark should be dealt with, but in the case of Anna John I do not see the point.
Just a few weeks ago she told a delivery boy that he was cute and invited him to undress himself, which he refused of course. The delivery boy was in his teens or early twenties and Anna is in her fifties.
I am not going to say that Anna is a peadophile, because that is a dangerous accusation these days, but that particular action was of a sexist nature and totally uncalled for.

So here we have a sexist blaming a racist. Sometimes life is complicated. What should we do? Stone the woman from Gambia for being a sexist? Or hang Mr. Ribbink for being a racist?

I think they totally deserve each other.

It seems that on all historical days in my lifetime I am either redecorating or moving. I was redecorating my apartment when the great Dutch Peace Demonstration (1981) took place in the streets around me. I was moving my belongings to a new apartment when Theo van Gogh was stabbed to death a few years ago. I could give you more examples like that. Today, November 4th very early in the morning I am preparing for yet another day of mixing cement, sanding and painting wooden beams etc. to expand and redecorate my new photo studio.

The Americans are still sound asleep, although I picture Barack Obama sitting up drinking hot coco. The man looked really tired in the last interview I saw tonight, but in a few hours America will wake up to face a historical election day. Whatever the outcome; this day will go down into history much like the moon landing or the day JFK got shot. One of those ‘where were you when it happened’ days.

Well, I do not very well recall the landing on the moon, but I think I can safely assume that my father was redecorating the house — Yes, he too was always redecorating.

Outside there is a thick early morning fog and I have a tremendous head ache of the paint fumes I slept in and I am a little dizzy because the dust circling me really does not help my COPD. A Leonard Cohen song is on repeat in my head.

Now you can say that I’ve grown bitter
but of this you may be sure
The rich have got their channels in
the bedrooms of the poor
And there’s a mighty judgment coming, but I may be wrong
You see, you hear these funny voices
In the Tower of Song — [ Complete lyrics here ]

I have been following the American Elections on Twitter, which I found was the quickest way to learn about the sense and nonsense of this election. I have heard the words ‘hero’ and ’socialist’ way too often and I have learned that the Dutch and the Americans are more alike than I thought. Both countries, not to be compared in scale or impact, have vast areas of land inhabited by hicks who are scared to death of Muslims and they cling to their phobia like flies on a turd.

It is often said modern societies are two class societies, where the middle class is slowly evaporating, leaving us with the rich and the poor. Actually I think we have passed that point, we now have a two class society based on information and disinformation. Those who are connected to the information stream and those who are not. McCain who does not know how to send an e-mail also ran a campaign that was not taking advantage of contemporary news outlets. With joker Palin on his side those same media crushed most of what he was trying to build and he was left with an audience of hicks, gun fetishists and racists. If there are enough of them in the US to give him the victory he wants still remains to be seen. Obama is in the lead of course, we all know that, but the US elections with their four to five hour waiting lines and legions of lawyers guarding against fraud and malfunction make this election into an event that reminds us of UN supervised elections in Third World countries.

Hopefully Obama’s Change Ideology will be put into effect in a country that seems to be run down by paper shredder bureaucrats and with a little luck we will see an America with less fear, less school shoot outs and most of all less war crimes, but despite the hope I sincerely feel — I still do not see how Obama, who wants more military forces in Afghanistan with an option of policing Pakistan’s borders, will truly better the position of the US globally.

As tough as it is to admit for Europeans that we were responsible for the Holocaust and by doing so indirectly caused instability in the Middle East decades ago, true peace in that region can only be reached through solving the Palestinian problem and this unfortunately cannot be done by supporting Israel as a military super power — blind to international conventions and human rights — just because one is focused on charming Jewish lobbyists in the US.

Even after 14 years, I still enjoy my Internet connection more than I ever enjoyed TV. Today I ran into a piece written by a feminist who thought it was time to defend Sarah Palin. She wrote the following;

<<<< I thought Americans would be proud of her nomination, whether we agreed or disagreed with her on the issues. Was I in for a shock. <<<<

This is the attitude that caused the downfall of feminism I guess. We are all supposed to be proud of women if they accomplish something and treat it as a miracle. Reminds me of a National Geographic documentary I once saw: "Look at that monkey cracking a nut with a stone!"

Give me a (US) female candidate who is not too shy to tell the world that she is a devout Christian *and* a lesbian, maybe then I will be impressed. Or a male politician admitting that he is gay without stepping down.

I am not going to flame this article, because I am sure the author means well. And I can also see that most of Palins texts are scripted by a campaign team, so there must be more to her than we get to hear and see. The main reason I post this entry, is because I want to keep the piece for reference in my archive: Voices of a dying breed.

You will find the article here:
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/currents/20081026_Palin_deserves_our_respect.html

Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests from Plexifilm on Vimeo.

Loyal Ameanet friend Norski aka Normano sent me a link to the above video and it made my day.
About a year ago, I guess, a friend asked me to see the Andy Warhol exhibit in Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum. I never liked brick and mortar museums very much and in particular that museum, because of the atmosphere — that all too familiar look in the eyes of Museum curators and staff. “What are you doing here? This is *our* exhibit!”
I may very well misinterpret their attitude, but the least one has to admit is that few museums give their visitors a warm welcome. Instead you feel like being checked in by airport security people. Why is it, I often ask myself, that those people devote their entire lives to the arts? Most artists I know are quite modest — with the exception of the trend hoppers or those who create media hypes for a living, of course.

Opposites attract, I know, but there must be more to it than that.

Since my friend had already visited the Warhol exhibit we skipped the paintings and silk screens and immediately headed for the space where multiple screenings of Warhol movies took place. I was in awe. Although I had seen much of the material more than once I felt I was in paradise. This is was all so well done and so unlike the normal frigid atmosphere of the Stedelijk Museum. In my enthusiasm I got bold and tapped a man wearing a museum tag on the shoulder. “What happened?” I asked him. “Did they fire the entire museum staff?”

I immediately regretted my remark when I saw the look on his face. It took him a few seconds but he actually managed to control his initial anger to inform me that this particular show was curated by a German guest curator. A woman and I forgot her name, which is stupid because I like to see more shows curated by her. Or better, she should be the next managing director of the Stedelijk Museum.

With all my charm I tried to make up for my clumsy remark and the museum stiff actually melted a bit and managed to produce a smile. A very museum like smile of a person who had studied the Mona Lisa too often and too long. But I had a field day — despite the fact that he kept following me the rest of the afternoon with a quality poll and a questionnaire to be filled in — both longer than your average tax form.

Those poor, delicate guardian angels of the Arts living in a world where populism is unstoppable, I thought on my way home. They must suffer immensely. You can almost taste their bitterness when they kick off yet another uncalled for comment with the remark: “There is nothing wrong with populism, but…”