There are times when an musician’s publicist, in trying to promote and sell their client, makes a series of aesthetic errors and thus paints a portrait of the said musician that is so vague, so corrupt, so scandalous that they end up getting fired or sued. Another scenario to consider is that there may be no manipulations of a publicist whatsoever besides putting out the actual image of the artist that he or she wants to be out there, blunt honesty, raw, bona fide red meat in an effort to connect with their audience. The potential error in that approach can be so hurtful to a person, when they read the reactions, when they see the “Rupert Pupkins” or the “Jesus complexes” who line up to meet them whenever and wherever they do/did their music. I don’t know what the case is with Cat Power on this publicist question but I have a few comments that may let her portrait come into focus a bit more. For her sake I hope the scenario is the former rather than the latter, but I have reasonable doubts… Cat Power is a lot like G.G. Allin. I guess in saying something like that I have a lot of explaining to do.
To get a little more in depth, I dare say more or less everyone knows that cutting yourself is an act synonymous with taking revenge on oneself. To cut oneself, to scratch oneself up, or smash bottles over one’s head (and the like) is an act of choosing your pain. Children act like this, they cry and in crying – cry harder. They get angry and cure that anger by refusing to be consoled. Lovers also, they get pissed at each other, and hurt the other, more and more, like ping pong… and in so punish the other and in that punish themselves. Some “classy” people walk into a smoke filled room somewhere sometime and feeling that they are in the midst of jerks, act like uber-jerks. Every insult honed into an uber-insult. They repeat in their static-heads all those phrases that hurt, humiliate and wound themselves. “I am so unintelligent.”… Like a broken record, repeating it over and over… a career. Covering songs that say to them that same thing, over and over. G.G. was quite overt when worshiping this mantra. He would go ballistic under the dogma of “what is worst is truest” which is a fallacy to the bone.
She cries “free!” and the entire troop of slaves look up from their work and march to the Knitting Factory to digest the tragic Shakespearian play. The play that makes a bed for Republican horror possible, it lays the proper self-image, a weak one drained of necessary heroisms needed so much now (yeah, 2003). The act is full of ill feelings, the telling oneself these lack of enthusiasms such as “I am ugly”, (and listening to the skip of the needle, the reaffirmations) the looking in the mirror and seeing “hideous”. Watching the concerts and reading the interviews… it is YOU spectator watching the show, not of music, but of collapse, and you in a helpless gesture offering your decisions, your support, or often (sadly) your troubled rejection of her act. Which hurts Cat Power as much as it does YOU. Granted, Cat Power may or may not intend to make the messed up ones more messed up; it really is up to you to see the form of what it is that she projects. Cat Power very well may not appreciate any citizen’s opinion since she is a gypsy. But when you stop living trapped in the moment, you realize that there is more to life, to art (which the gypsy knows only as – dreams) to history, to happiness (which the gypsy knows only as – pleasure) and you awaken.
And G.G. Allin God, I don’t know where to begin. A 6 ft something mammoth skinhead with prison tattoos who believes Rock N’ Roll is an outlet for criminal, outlaw behavior, calling figures such as Iggy Pop a “sell out” presumably for being not “real” enough. G.G. believed in destruction. His music too is sad, inhalants users would like it, ‘tis as scary as an ape gone wild at the zoo. Research can be conducted here. G.G. Allin is a physical trap. G.G. Allin died of a heroin overdose some 10 years ago in Manhattan.
For anyone who has not heard of, experienced or known Cat Power they should first realize that she is very talented; that is a given. Her music is a blend of old time religion, at times backed by the Dirty Three, touches of eastern psychedelica a la Kashmir, NYC-computer-jean-jacket-beats, a sad music that anyone who likes PJ Harvey would have to enjoy. I am not saying that she is a GAP ad band (like other jean jacket wearing bands famous or not playing GAP music nowadays) but it is for the crust of the underground archeology for sure. There is also a serious proletarian affect in her music, inhalants, David Lynch, country, New Orleans, New Folk, a three am emotion. Any and all research should be done here, and if you read half of the interviews found on that site you can better understand the rest of this piece. Cat Power’s music is a mental voyage. Cat Power is alive and living in Manhattan.

Him cutting himself is only half of the story; the important part is YOU watching him do it. And you do, you love it, it turns you on, dare I say it summons some deep ghost within you, one who haunts you and has for a long time. When G.G. is smearing his own mess on himself, so are you to some extent. The place where I feel the real mess lies is in the addiction, the worship, the letter-writing fanaticism, the groupies coven, the cult connected to this system of belief and the accusation that is put forth by this mentality.

For out of worshiping this sickness we perpetuate the Sickness. Argue away, but I feel that it is a regretful commentary on our society to imply that we are so empty, so void of happiness that we have to stoop to that experience. You Are Free, liberated in the empty space, and Cat Power I feel is no different. It is a matter of fact that nihilism is beautiful, so beautiful, in the same wonderful way that heroin is pleasurable, so pleasurable in reality that it will bind you and eat the core of life from your spirit faster than salt on a slug. The danger in Cat Power’s art is that it welcomes “I’m Shy” and “I’m getting old” and it creates worse moods out of bad moods. Who needs “My memory is failing” or more personally “I Don’t Blame You”? I, like Plato, feel that art of this nature does indeed influence people in a snake charming way. To me it is quite intimidating music if you consider it in the aforementioned way. And for so many people whose happiness relies only on simply saying YES for once, or saying for instance that it is OK to walk in the rain, since it makes you happy to be wet, and happy could be that it is NOT sunny every solitary day.

What of the metaphysics surrounding this belief system? All good hipsters know you the artist is free, and it is society who is nuts (another way of saying again, what is worst is truest). That plot is so easy to believe, it reminds me of my worst pretensions and errors, my worst mistakes. I say it is an acidic cliché and it also is the product of those who simply refuse to grow up, those who remain underdeveloped. Cat Power is a prisoner to her own personality. She lives in a van more often than most, in a rolling jail cell, a paddy wagon, in an illusion. But sincerely, and deep down, I don’t believe that Cat Power wants to be in that role. I’d imagine security would make her happier than living as a gypsy clinging to that timeless feeling of un-forgiveness. Instead she goes to sleep every night thinking a concept of freedom that distorts the beauty of civilization into some brittle plastic heap. To travel along worshipping a concept of progress that takes pleasure in rejecting responsibility and any conception of moral necessity. G.G. well, I guess no one knows what state he is in, be it ecstasy or nothingness, R.I.P. poor soul. Free? Unfortunately, these false ideas they left behind like breadcrumbs near a hungry seagull, if drummed into your head enough, have a sad way of coming true.
Epictetus said, a long time ago in an ancient tongue, “A black cat augurs happiness if you want it to.” And I say to all Cat Power fans, and myself included, I am great because I am happy and I am happy because I am great! I know Spinoza would agree with that… So the best thing one can do, instead of going to these shows and wallowing in it all, is smile and consider these madmen and madwomen as merely actors and actresses for your own play and if there is a tragedy SMILE, when there is not, at least understand why they are there doing their epic scenes.
And if it seems like I am a mere skeptic, I can offer a counter thesis to the one G.G. Allin and Cat Power (or their buffoon publicists grubbing for money) offer… Simply, in competition or cooperation of any kind, don’t drool along with the sobs, whimpering along as these folks do for a living, it is OK to feel bad for these poor souls, and I do. If you really insist on living out the acts of their play where THEIR tragic hero works out the answer to the questions of how and why THEY are their own worst enemy in this world, on this planet, in this time…go ahead, but you know in the end that a little love of thyself is what is needed… make your own mark, on your own terms, if it is sad, like Cat Power and G.G. Allin, so dazzling but nevertheless masochistic - so be it. But whatever it is that YOU have, make somebody's day, and let it be yours. To me that is worthy, the rest I believe is nothing but coffers for some breed of emotional crook. Lucky for publicists, and possibly these musicians of illness, emotional crooks have no choice but to buy the latest script, and attend the latest play forever stealing it away… 

Which one of the following provides the most serious criticism of the argument above?

 A. The passage overlooks the fact that a significant number of Cat Power fans are made to feel better at a live show of hers via catharsis?

B. The passage does not distinguish the harmlessness of Cat Power and the violent aspects of G.G. Allin.

C. The author assumes that a group will have a given attribute if each of its parts has that attribute.

D. The author has directed his argument against the character rather than against his/her claims.

E. It fails to present the argument of the opposing viewpoint.

You have exactly 1 minute to answer this question or you will never be accepted to Yale.