Textual Trimmings

  This, or an earlier version thereof, was originally written in reaction to Trump’s Stormy Daniels scandal. It was largely in response to a self-righteous CNN article that was more interested in virtue signaling and in depicting Trump as a licentious and uncivilized sexual freak than criticizing his policies. I have no interest, obviously, in defending “Trump sexuality,” but I felt the attack on Trump’s (in this particular case consensual) sexual misconduct serves to cast, by contrast, mainstream American   and imperial (sexual and non-sexual) misconduct as normative. I particularly worry about the civilizational, and potentially racial, aspect of this discourse, and of course about how the discussion concerning the private misconduct of people in power can divert attention from their public crimes (crimes in which they are partners with others who lead normative private and sexual lives but are equally criminal when it comes to their exercise of public power). I was recently remind

(I originally wrote this in early January 2018; a few days and it will be two years old. I never got around to publishing it.) Last December, as I listened to The Pogues’ “Fairy Tale of New York,” I realized that there is a chance I may not set foot again in Columbia, Manhattan, or New York. It was late December, but it wasn’t the jingle bells, the decorations, or the New Year’s festivities that made me nostalgic. It wasn’t even the emails from friends coming back home for the winter break. It took the melancholic footage of foggy and icy New York in an Irish song about lost dreams and broken hopes to do the trick. On November 18th, 2017, I was stopped by Homeland Security as I was on my way to New York to defend my dissertation at Columbia. After a lengthy and absurd interrogation, I was informed that my visa was being canceled and that I was being sent back to Egypt. Against my protestation, I was told that I should be grateful they were not deporting me, not because of anyth