PBS News Weekend on Sunday featured one of its occasional “Brief but Spectacular” segments, which often smuggle in left-wing perspectives under cover of a slightly wacky (for public broadcasting) presentation. This week’s bit of woke propaganda comes in the guise of a poet of the “queer life,” Adam Falkner.
Host John Yang introduced Adam Falkner as “a poet, musician, and educator. He describes the focus of his work as race, gender, queer life, and social justice. Tonight, Falkner shares his ‘Brief But Spectacular’ take on performing privilege and forgiveness.”
Oh, joy.
Falkner cannot quite forgive himself for being born a white man, which is apparently an inherently deeply privileged position, even in an egalitarian country like the United States. He’s against cultural appropriation and…poet Walt Whitman, for being white.
Falkner: The name of this poem is called “Let's Get One Thing Halfway Straight.” [Editor’s note: Strangled cat sounds ensue] “Said I would like to get/one thing halfway straight/I would like to get/one thing halfway straight /I have spent my entire life trying on costumes/because nobody told me I couldn't/and the stakes were never that high/which I have come to think is mostly what makes a white writer a white writer/the last time anyone referred to me by that name was exactly never/but that is also the point/I am a queer poet/I am a child of an addict/I am a masquerading white boy/my best friend died, and it was sad/and these are the stories I water into bloom.
“I am camp counselor, test cheat, choir boy, cipher rapper, scratch golfer, honor roll, pothead, point guard/and Whitman?/well, Whitman says very well, ‘You contain multitudes.’/But Whitman was a white writer, too/and the not-so-funny thing about spending a life proving you aren't something/is that any story you tell that isn't the story is just survival/or a brick for laying until the wall is high enough that you are safe inside/and one day you wake up and you say, my God, whose house is this?/who did I hurt to get here?/and is it too late/to call for help?”
Falkner resumes talking, in his normal speaking voice, but with the same self-flagellating spirit:
….Two themes that I think a lot about in my work are forgiveness and accountability. And in this poem, I'm trying to lift up some of the examples, I think, from my own life of what privilege is and how it shows up in the lives of a lot of white people, often subconsciously…But the question for me is more -- of the stories that I am most silent about, which ones are harming other people?
This liberal hairshirt interlude was funded in part by the financial services firm Raymond James.
A full transcript is below, click “Expand” to read:
PBS News Weekend
2/12/23
7:22:30 p.m. Eastern
Host John Yang: Adam Falkner is a poet, musician, and educator. He describes the focus of his work as race, gender, queer life, and social justice. Tonight, Falkner shares his “Brief But Spectacular” take on performing privilege and forgiveness.
Adam Falkner, Poet and Musician: The name of this poem is called “Let's Get One Thing Halfway Straight.”
Adam Falkner: “Said I would like to get/one thing halfway straight/I would like to get/one thing halfway straight /I have spent my entire life trying on costumes/because nobody told me I couldn't/and the stakes were never that high/which I have come to think is mostly what makes a white writer a white writer/the last time anyone referred to me by that name was exactly never/but that is also the point/I am a queer poet/I am a child of an addict/I am a masquerading white boy/my best friend died, and it was sad/and these are the stories I water into bloom.
I am camp counselor, test cheat, choir boy, cipher rapper, scratch golfer, honor roll, pothead, point guard/and Whitman?/well, Whitman says very well, “You contain multitudes.”/But Whitman was a white writer, too/and the not-so-funny thing about spending a life proving you aren't something/is that any story you tell that isn't the story is just survival/or a brick for laying until the wall is high enough that you are safe inside/and one day you wake up and you say, my God, whose house is this?/who did I hurt to get here?/and is it too late/to call for help?”
Falkner in normal speaking voice: I am a poet, an artist, and an educator. I grew up in the Midwest, and I am based in Brooklyn, New York. Two themes that I think a lot about in my work are forgiveness and accountability. And in this poem, I'm trying to lift up some of the examples, I think, from my own life of what privilege is and how it shows up in the lives of a lot of white people, often subconsciously.
And in that, how when we are confronted with the discomfort or the frustration of the reality that is unearned access or advantage in our lives, we often over-attach to other marginalized identities or stories or wounds that we hold. But the question for me is more of the stories that I am most silent about, which ones are harming other people?
So I'm often wrestling with those questions in my work and what it means for us to show up with forgiveness of our past selves and of each other, but also how do we hold ourselves accountable to still growing and learning and evolving and listening even when it's painful? My name is Adam Falkner, and this is my “Brief But Spectacular” take on performing privilege and forgiveness.
