Power stupefies

Watching events unfold in the Ukraine over the past few days I've been working over in my head a single question: Was there a specific moment in the last few years when former President Viktor Yanukovich said to himself, "Screw it, I'm going to go ahead and put in the pirate ship-themed dining room and start a private zoo. There's no way that could possibly come back to haunt me."

It is a moldy old saying that power corrupts, when it seems more precisely that power stupefies. Something about being a ruling oligarch makes you think there's no way you could ever be knocked off, and looking from afar, it is hard to believe anyone could be that deluded. It is probably a bit like winning lottery — everyone is convinced they aren't the guy who is going to go bankrupt in a few years after they win, but it keeps happening over and over again.

The Ukraine is a great case study in the ways things just don't change, and how patterns keep repeating in new and wonderful ways. So I watch thing with a very cynical eye, and chortle when I hear commentators in our stunningly earnest and ignorant American media declare, "Well Joe, I tell ya all this started in the 1930s with Stalin." (Only Americans are young enough at heart to say things like that).

I'm incredibly pessimistic about things because I've been following things there closely, and I remember the Orange Revolution. That last outpouring of popular unrest in the Ukraine was enough to scare Russia to its core, and convince Americans that the Ukraine was all set for the future and didn't need anymore attention. But as events unfolded, the new power structure revealed itself very quickly to be just as venal and greedy as the last one. To say, "they blew it" is an understatement. So the stunning events of last weekend were a real downer. I wish it were possible for the public persona of Yulia Tymoshenko to immediate skip from her heroic release from prison and go straight to the cheesy "Evita" theater spectacle featuring her hairdo. Too bad she's going to insist on proving how corrupt she is all over again — and perhaps someday the masses can take selfies in her gold-plated hot tub or with her vintage car collection.

With leaders like these there's not a lot to hope for. Yanukovich was a singular case, such a clown that even Russian is embarrassed to know him (I sincerely hope we someday find out that his tragicomic flight from the mobs included him dressing up as a nun and slipping out a hotel kitchen). But the opposition is reduced to Tymoshenko's flunkies, some nationalist groups that remind you just how scary the far right is in central and eastern Europe, and a celebrity boxer. If only it were just as easy as deciding between owing your soul to Russian oligarch or the German bankers.

The powerful act stupid because they don't believe things will change. At that level, you have to create such world views or you don't function. And I think the rest of us feel it too. All through last week, when the streets were on fire and the bodies were stacking up in the hotel lobbies, it felt like that feeling amped up to 11. How could this possibly end? how could anything change?

And then on the weekend, it did. Everything we will hear in the coming months will suggest that it was the only outcome possible, but of course it wasn't, and it certainly never felt that way as it happened. Scenes feel like they'll go on forever until they don't. Growing up I didn't believe in the possibility of a generation defining event like Pearl Harbor — I thought that right up to Sept. 10, 2011. It always comes as a surprise. Vladimir Putin and Jamie Dimon take note.

'She should just talk'

I have two thoughts about the sudden and sad passing of poet and writer Maggie Estep. I can't admit to having been a particular fan, but for those few years in the 90s, if you were an English major, you pretty much had to have an opinion about her and the entire downtown Gen X poetry slam thing.

First, if I knew back then just how fickle, fleeting, and rare pop culture's interest in poetry was going to be, I wouldn't have spent quite so much time making fun of it. Looking back, it's incredibly hard to believe that a) MTV was once a cutting edge and trend-setting cultural institution, and b) had a more than passing interest in the doings of Lower East Side poets.

While it was happening, while poets were appearing on television channels aimed at cool young people, I thought the barbarians were at the gates. To me, poetry was a Very Serious Thing. Artists like Maggie Estep were not only misappropriating the legacy of the Beat Generation, but were making poetry shallow, silly and — ugh — popular. Sure, it didn't last, but I would love to know how many readers and writers she inspired with her work. I can begrudge now that what she was doing was interesting in its engagement with technology, and awareness of the collision of cultures that the media environment at the time introduced to one another. And I think it was brave, in the sense that she had to put up with snobs like me laughing up our sleeves (but despite admitting all that, the weird cadences of "slam poetry" still drive me straight up the wall).

The second thing is that I'm grateful I got to spend a few minutes with that famous Beavis & Butthead clip, which Estep's obits note was one of the biggest audiences her work had. It's funny what happens when you grow up. In high school and college, I used to love the cartoons and put up with the commentary on videos. Now that you can watch the videos online, and the commentary pieces are unavailable because of copyright baloney, I realize just how absurdly insightful and hilarious those parts were. What I wouldn't give to find somewhere on the internet the original, unedited B&B's of my youth!