Slaying the Mother

I have been a tremendous fan of Camille Paglia's ever since, during Christmas break of my senior year, my grandfather gave me a copy of Sexual Personae. To say that it blew my mind would be to use the only cliché that remotely conveys what this book did for me. For the first time, I was reading an intellectual who feared no idea, from any source, who thought of the past in terms of the rythmns of the earth, and though thoroughly feminist, wrote about men and the male psyche with understanding, even sympathy. She gave voice to thoughts I had hesitated to express. Naturally I read her two essay collections, and her Salon column, and ate up every word. She has a sense of humor and a depth of learning that amazed me then and still impresses me. She was my guru.


I am far from her today. This is not because she is less funny, less learned, or less able to skewer the deserving on her blood-guttered pikes. It is a function of time. I'm older, and quicker to recognize a thinker's words as the product of someone else's inner monologue. I am not betrayed by disagreement. And I find much to disagree with her about today. They are as follows:




1. The War. Let us begin with her first words, when asked by a Salon's Kerry Lauerman about the war: "This Iraq adventure is a political, cultural and moral disaster for the United States." Is it now? How a political disaster? We haven't lost yet. How a cultural disaster? American culture hasn't yet been changed by the war, and I think the war has, contra the declamations of the chattering class, merely brought to light the cultrual differences between ourselves and the rest of the First World, rather than created them. How a moral disaster? In what perverse ethical calculus does removing Saddam Hussein from power and putting a democratic government, one less susceptible to using terror as a foreign policy tool, one less willing to build and trade in weapons of mass destruction, a moral disaster? Does Camille really want to compare the Iraqi deaths with those suffered at oh, Hiroshima?


This kind of yippy, contentless carping is precisely the kind of thing Paglia has been so good at denouncing in the past, and still makes a show of doing. Ah, yes, the CIA just didn't get that Saddam was acting out of Arab machismo, pretending to have WMD's. And all those Kurds obliglingly died because that's their culture! Or so I might be erroneously reading, because the old girl obligingly flip-flops and says that "Of course it was worth trying to get rid of Saddam -- but not by an obsessive-compulsive distortion of American foreign policy." So we can do it, as long as we aren't too interested in doing it. Or something. She goes on: "It had to be done through the slow, patient process of international diplomacy, to show that our interests weren't simply selfish, that it wasn't just a naked grab for oil."


That loud rythmic pounding you hear is me hitting my head against my desk. Leaving the annoyingly undead canard about blood for oil aside, has Paglia been sleeping underneath the University of the Arts library for the past twelve years? International diplomacy has had it's chance to dispose of Saddam, and they've preferred to let him stay, to placate the tyranny of the status quo and to keep the Arabs focusing their hatred on the "shitty little country" (Israel). Paglia makes no mention of the French motivations of French intransigence or the numerous historical failures of the UN to enforce international peace. It must all be our fault. Whose got the tunnel-vision again?




2. The Media. I'm going ease off the vitriol now, because Paglia's much better when she gets to the subjects of her competency. She's long been an appreciator of Rush Limbaugh, and sums him up justly, as a media critic, giving notice to his central skill as a commentator and his seeming slipping of late (it sounds a bit apocryhpal to me, but she's been listening to him with a great deal more diligence than I have. She gets the benefit of the doubt). It's safe to say you won't find any other Democrat treating Limbaugh as anything other than a hornèd beast deservingly cast down into the depths of the Inquirer with Bat-boy and J-Lo's secret fling.


I even felt the old thrill of recognition when she lambasted Sean Hannity, a blaring radio jackass who gives me a headache, whom I can't even say I agree with because he never says anything that has substance to be agreed with. While obviously I find nothing wrong with someone who offers a conservative Catholic voice, Hannity is not the man to do so. There is no gentility in him, no sense of fair play, no treatment of all men as his brothers (I'm pretty sure that's in the Catechism somewhere). Plus, he's a master of monotony. If you're looking to spice up a late-afternoon party, have your guests play the Sean Hannity Drinking Game. Whenever Sean says "typical liberal," drink once. Whenever Sean says "liberal media" drink twice. Whenever Sean has a rude shouting match with a liberal caller, chug. First one to pass out and be freed by unconsciousness from his nasal, AV-club voice wins.


But Paglia misses her true chance here. She portentously refers to Sean as Beaver Jr., it's-the-50's-all-over-again ("typical liberal" Hey, who said that?). She blames all this polarization on Clinton, and says he should have resigned (never mind that she joined the chorus of Clinton's-a-bad-boy-but-Ken-Starr-is-Torquemada crowd, as if that was going to convince Silly Billy to resign. If you want someone gone, you need to sound like you mean it. That's as true of Presidents as it of Third-World dictators).


From a woman who once came to an understanding of why the 50's were so protective (World War II, that is), I expected a bit more than an I-despair-for-the-future routine, which has become de rigeur for rabble-rousers of all political persuasions. So, let's see, what can possibly have come along to convince the American people that morality should be stricter, clearer, less weighed down by nuance...Gosh, I don't know. Have we been attacked recently? Denounce Hannity and his spiritual fellows on the left all you want, but understand that you need to address the issue that has helped him rise. We're still waiting for the complex, culturally nuanced response to 9-11 that the Left keeps assuming is obvious.




3. Ze Rock. Shifting gears once again, Paglia is better still when going after her favorite subject, pop culture. I've never been a Madonna fan. In fact I've always found her a tediously self-involved public figure who made idly pleasing but otherwise forgettable music. Reading Camille, who's one of Madonna's great hymn-writers, hasn't changed my mind, but it has made me think about how art and sound and commerce mesh. Madonna, to my mind, has become a star far more for her videos than her songs, which are pleasant enough on the first listen but irritating on repetition. And repeated they were. I grew up in the 80's, the period of Ms. Cuccone's ascendancy, and basically spent second through seventh grade watching MTV. Madonna was everywhere. Michael Jackson was everywhere. Hair metal was everywhere. Punk fire and blues soulfulness were nowhere. Camille still doesn't get grunge. Like many boomers, she thought it was a rebellion against the 60's, when it was against the 80's. And she still can't see anyone in the music industry today that is worthy of the true status of "star," as though this were an objective standard. She can only see Britney and company, when nobody except Britney ever believed her to be more than a Barbie doll. I would love to read Camille's take on a band with the influences, image, and pyschosexual internal dynamic of the White Stripes. But Camille wouldn't take them seriously, or just see them as a gimmick retro-act. Stars are made, not born. There's plenty of bands and artists that deserve stardom, Camille. Get to work.


Of course, she's far more interested in stars than I am. I'm a punk by loyalty, and punks prefer anti-stars. Camille never got this either; she's said the Velvet Underground was her punk band, and never saw anything in the Sex Pistols that wasn't in the Velvets. The disdain of first-generation punk towards the entire idea of pop stardom (Lou Reed was never hostile to that) seems to have passed her by, or been dismissed as unworthy of comment. Being as how most punk bands ended up either becoming pop stars or self-destructing (or, in the case of the Pistols, both), it's easy to say that this disdain was juvenile or false. But it doesn't dismiss the question of why a culture should have a role for humans to transform themselves into the kind of monsters that Paglia claims Madonna has become.




4. The Blogosphere. "Words, Words, Words!" So Hurricane Camille describes the majority of blogs, as though she were Hamlet surrounded by a sea of noisy Polonii. No flair have they, no style, no pop! They do not command the eye. They engage in incessant circles of meta-commentary, which has quickly disintegrated into bipartisan name-calling rather than arguments about ideas. Most bloggers aren't good writers, and no "major figure" has emerged from the blogosphere


She's right. And once again, she's missed the point.


The problem lies in the fact that Paglia cannot stop showing her colors as a "pop-culture baby". Television is her medium of choice, her connection to the world at large. She's done well in her writing to put forth the idea that television is a narrative shared by society at large, that it is the incessant womb-tomb of American culture. Where she and I part company is when she insists on making judgements about people based on television appearances. Television is our most powerful voice, that's true. It's also an incredibly superficial and myopic voice. Sophisticated folk can find powerful subtext in it. But most folks can't, or won't bother, and the fact that the intelligent have to refer to the subtext of television means that there can't be much to the main text.


Paglia doesn't recognize this as a flaw in her reasoning. She doesn't think that George W. Bush can possibly be a good president, because he looks bad on television. She sized up Bill and Hillary based on pre-packaged prime-time spots, and then was shocked (shocked!) when they turned out to be different people in real life. Likewise, I suspect her opinion of Rumsfeld is based on a superficial reading of his televised press conferences (he's "out of control"? Why? Because he believed the war should happen? Was Henry Stimson "out of control"?). Well, I may admit that television is "America's kingmaker," as Paglia put it long ago, but that doesn't mean I think it should be so.

The blogosphere is not about producing major figures. It's not about about producing high-level scholastic thought. It's about creating an alternative voice to television, which hypnotically induces a passive, one-way information flow. The blogosphere is two-way, three-way, every-way. There are no major figures; there are no voices that rise to prominence except by the power and intellect of the voice itself. There's a great deal of stupidity that passes itself off as clever in the valley of the blogs. But there isn't any that gets a free pass. Here's a perfect example of a pagan realm of combat and honor; "no law in the arena," as her last book, Vamps & Tramps, proclaims. Sure, it isn't a palace of wisdom yet. We have to traverse the road of excess first. Let's not give up before the genesis is over.




Sexual Personae states that every generation drives its plow over the bones of the dead. There is truth to this, and one central to Paglia's entire view of the universe. We must remember the reality that spawned us, or that reality will make us suffer for it. Paglia's generation, that saw everything through the lens of the the same flickering light, will one day be pushed aside by their children, who saw more than they ever wanted to see through a thousand openings. This will not happen because my generation is stronger, wiser, or deeper than hers. It will happen because they have had their time, and we must have ours. The Earth so demands. Reading Paglia today with a critical eye makes me think of how unfair this process is. But it isn't my process, and it will destroy me as pitilessly as it profits me now. So I must move on from my once guru, admire though I do. I have plowin' to do.

Meanwhile, Out In Left Field...

I broke boycott. I was at Walmart, and that thrice-damned and thrice-rocking Jet song "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" was attached to my mind, and they had the CD, Get Born, and it was $9.88. And I bought it. And it rocks my socks. They're as good as the Vines, and the Vines are vastly underrated by the American music-buying public. I'm gonna review them in more detail sometime this week, but in the meantime, the Strokes newie is out, and the floodgates are open. Boo-yah.

New Noise

Quite a weekend for the terrorists. Shootings, bombings, mayhem galore. Lots of death made. They're so good at that. I can imagine many thinking we ought to "rethink" (read: cut and run from) our role in Iraq. Can't do it, folks. That's what they expect us to do. They expect us not to be able to take it. They expect us to cry and find our wiggle-way out. We have to prove them wrong.


Perhaps these words sound childish to you. They are. Adults know that not every fight is worth fighting, that some fools who think wrong of you can be safely left to their foolishness. Children don't know that, because it isn't true for them: being thought a weakling or a fool in childhood invites being attacked, physically and verbally, by those who wish to prove that they aren't. It's a similar dynamic in prisons.


Now ask yourselves, who do our self-exploding Islamofascist brothers more resemble: sober adults or terrified children? How shall we deal with such?

Unlimited Supply! EMI!

EMI is going to sell their entire catalog online. Popular demand does have an effect. This could change things.

The Children Have to Go to School

I've been having a bit of a head-to-head with Skeptical as regards public education and the teacher's unions. I am continuing it here because the comment buttons are getting a little pokey loading up (Blogger's having code issues), and I think I want a higher word count. Morat wanted to know why conservatives abhor teacher's unions. I gave a couple of answers: a) their ever-willingness to embrace the new-and-hyphenated over the tried-and-true, b) their resistance to reforms such as school-choice, and c) they're mostly liberal and give a great deal of cash to the DNC.


He then asked me "Who would be a better choice to judge teaching methods than teachers and educators?" A reasonable question, but he also said that "Private schools have massively inflated success rates already (it's nice when you can have selective enrollment), and that tends to lead to laymen reaching stupid conclusions." This is a subject near-and-dear to my heart, both because I am a private school teacher and because I regard the Catholic schools I went to after 7th grade as having saved me from the hitherto miserable existence in the public warehouses. I was therefore overwhelmed with subjectivity, and shot back a bit snottily. I will say that anyone who thinks "selective enrollment" means we don't take in troubled kids or poor kids is very much mistaken, but I will then let it go.


My retort to Morat's question became "How about employers and the rest of society, who must deal with the end-product of education? Education serves a purpose to society at large, and that purpose is not to provide English majors with employment." Ho ho for me. Morat claimed this to be "non-responsive", and then addressed my first "conservative objection" to teacher's unions, asking "What's bad about educators pushing new methods of education?" That largely brings us up to speed.


First off, there's nothing wrong with new educational methods, in and of themselves. I am sometimes skeptical of the pace with which these methods are studied and adopted, but that is but a function of a free market in information. I also suspect an establishment of educational theorists and bureaucrats who need to justify their jobs, but I don't regard them as quite so malignant as most conservatives do, and not everything they do is re-inventing the wheel.


But a moment on my "non-responsive" response, as I think there may be something here. I think another reason conservatives mistrust the teacher's unions is because they detect more than a whiff of smug condescension in their public statements, on the order of only-we-know-what-is-good-for-the-children. The suggestion that the rest of society has valid input on how and what children should be taught is often met with disdain and mockery, or dismissed as irrelevant. As an example, we have the perennial go-round on the place of God in the classroom. In public schools, God's name is not mentioned, more out of litigation safety than hostility to Him. The idea that Christianity, being one of our central cultural monologues, should at least have mention in our schools is dismissed out of hand. That isn't their job, and they won't be burdened with it, and what kind of fanatic agenda do you have in mind? In fairness, more than a few religious fundamentalists are trying to turn the clock back to pre-Copernican days. But that's not the aim of all, and it's mere mental laziness to behave otherwise. Society deciding what it's children shall learn is not fascism, and educators are not freedom fighters. We cannot undo the past in 5th grade.


Culture wars aside, there is a deeper problem conservatives have with the teacher's unions that I did not previously mention, because it's not a problem of the teacher's unions so much as a problem with education overall, as practiced in modern America. Morat believes that standards should be set on a national level, but solutions should be left to local communities and schools. I agree with him, and so do most conservatives (inasmuch as they are willing to accede to any national role in education at all). The problem is that solutions will be national so long as funding is national (sound familiar?). Federal dollars are used as carrots and sticks to ensure acceptance of national standards. Layers upon layers of bureaucracy are required to oversee this system, and hoops upon hoops set for teachers and administrators to jump through. The process is overcomplicated, and will remain so as long as education money is funneled through Washington.


The problem isn't really private schools or public schools or charter schools or busing to schools. The problem isn't what gets taught in schools; the curriculum varies only in small ways, and generally over cosmetic issues. It's a problem of there not being enough schools, of schools designed to serve too many kids. Middle schools of 1,000 students devolve into hormonal warehouses, high schools of more than that number become gang and pregnancy farms. Children require adult supervision, and for input to be rationed out. We need to build more schools, so that every community has one.


This is going to cost a lot of money, and it isn't a silver bullet. Standards are going to have to be kept and maintained. But each community knows what its children need better than the Department of Education does. Each community should have the chance to set a school up to do that. That means each community should have the funds to do that, and that means letting them keep it.

Quote For the Day

Democracy is the premise that the common man knows what he wants and deserves to get it, good and hard.


-H.L. Mencken

Where are They?

I've been reading the Federalist Papers of late, and I haven't much progressed beyond the early Hamilton issues. In reading them, I have been struck by how easy Hamilton had it, in making arguments of how the Constitution would be of common benefit to the citizens of the Thirteen States. All he had to do was argue that unity and a strong central government would provide internal peace, prevent military exploitation at the hands of Eruopean powers (at one point, he declares that Europe, "by force and by fraud, has, in different degrees, extended her dominion" over Africa, Asia, and America, and calls upon the new United States to "disdain to be the instruments of European greatness!" Heady words), and make our internal and external commerce strong. Order, strength, prosperity: those were the subjects that mattered.


Today I found an interesting article about an upcoming book by Zell Miller, Democrat from Georgia, the archetypal "blue dog" Democrat. The article lists a number of oft-repeated problems that moderate-to-conservative have come to have with their party: too liberal, too value-neutral, too in-the-pocket of cultural special interest groups and out-of-step with "mainstream" America. I've heard such before, and you may have as well: people who say "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me." My father was a lifelong Minnesota Democrat who voted for Dukakis in '84 and Mondale in '88 but became a Bush Republican after three years in ultra-libby Northern California, watching New Left lunacy take over the party of Harry Truman. By the same token, Miller has decided not to stand for re-election in 2004, despite what would be an easy run. He's done.


Again, such has been heard before. We could easily chalk this up to the red-county, blue-county divide. But I wonder. It's been a long time since I heard anyone in the Democratic Party suggest that the priorities of the Federal Government were Order, Strength, and Prosperity, and the rest could be left to itself. Clinton almost said it, when he claimed that "the era of big government was over," but he didn't expand upon it, or say why the era of big government was over or should be over. No one believed he meant it, anyway. Since then, the Democratic Party has been About a great many things. They've been about prescription drug benefits for seniors, and affirmative action for minorities, and driver's licenses for illegal aliens, and about making a great noise about education, and about abortion. But not much Order, Strength, Prosperity. In fact, they seem to suggest we should be apologetic about having the latter two.


Observe my evil twin's discourse on the Partial Birth Abortion Ban. He makes it very clear that the law should not have been passed, because it will not stand to judicial review. Ergo, someone who voted for this law either a) is ignorant of what our constitution says, or b) knew that the courts would undo the law and voted for it for "political points" (is there a tally card? Are there Triple Sound Bite Scores?). It does not occur to him that those who voted for the law find PBA abhorrent, even if Howard Dean says there's no such thing, and felt the laws of the land should reflect such.


This is also, on the face of it, unsurprising. Abortion is the third-rail of the Democratic Party. The ethical issues pertaining to it are not to be discussed, and any attempt to do so is an attempt to undo Roe vs. Wade. Whether Roe vs. Wade was a sound decision or an unnecessary overreach of judicial power is not to be discussed, and any attempt to do so reveals one for a bigoted 1950's back-alley sexist boogey monster thing. It is not an issue. It is not a question. It is not to be doubted or reconsidered. It Is Law, and only barbarians fail to bow before it. Say ten "I-Support-A-Woman's-Right-To-Choose" before you go to bed to recieve absolution.


As my rhetorical pendulum swings back, I am forced to ask: What does this have to do with Order, Strength, and Properity? Not a blessed thing, and this is my point. Morat is annoyed at politicians slapping themselves on the back for striking down a practice that they'll likely never come in contact with. That's a fair enough position, even if I disagree with him on the practice. But all this politicking and folderol on what is the most personal of matters has happened precisely because in 1973 the Supreme Court declared this most personal of matters to be enscribed in the national law. The uterus is now everbody's business, and will be dealt with in the vain, rabble-rousing manner that the rest of public business is conducted in.


Hamilton did not restrict the aims of the national government to Order, Strength, and Prosperity because he thought all other things unimportant. Rather, he and Madison and Washington and the rest of the Founders thought all other things too important to be left to the political process. This is the reason our political wills are confounded by legistlature, presidency, and courts. The Founders knew that lust for power was a human failing, not a structural malady, and so set the pieces in play against one another. Government, to them, was a necessary tedium because it could protect Order, Strength, and Prosperity. Washington the man would never have wanted Washington the city to be talking about the goings-on in a woman's womb.


We fell from this path from a variety of motivations, and when I stoke the fires of my anti-Confederacy rancor I will discuss those motivations in full. For the moment, the issue-happy Democrats and the pork-happy Republicans should start considering what the real purpose of our government is. Their failure to do so will lead to many more Zell Millers walking away from party and process, and the best will be mute, and the worst will be full of passionate intensity.


My evil twin is right. Upholding the Constitution is everyone's job, and making the hard choices is what we send men and women to Washington to do. He and I would disagree about what hard choices should be made, of course. But that is what makes the choices hard.

Damn Yankees

I could come up with a lame excuse for not blogging, but my tolerance for monotony has never been high. Ka-ka happens, kay?


On the subject of sports, the New York Yankees just took the lead over the Florida Marlins, 2 games to 1. They'd lost the first game of the series much like they had to the Twins in the first playoff. It begins to appear that the result no baseball fan outside the Five Boroughs wanted to see -- the damn Yankees winning it all again -- will come to pass.


On the one hand, this is annoying to me. I basically stopped watching pro basketball during the period of the Jordan-Pippin Bulls because the result was a forgone conclusion from the season opener: Chicago was going to win. I had similar feelings toward the Joe Montana 49'ers. Dynasties make a game boring. The great thing about football these last few seasons has been the fact that no one's been able to really predict the team that's going to make it to the big dance and win it. And I'm not alone. Judging by the drop-off in ratings, most of the public agrees with me.


On the other hand, Yankee-hatred can be just as irrational as any other form of continuous anitpathy. Everybody seems to hate the Yankees, except for all the people that seem not to. I grumble and groan when the Yankees dominate baseball, but I secretly glory in it. They have a long tradition of winning, of strong play and aggressive determination (and lots and lots of money), and what is wrong with any of that? Why do the Yankees always win? Who knows...but when they are, it seems all is right with the world.

More Environmental Garbage

You know what you never hear about anymore? The spotted owl. Remember the spotted owl? Remember how upset all the activists got about this bird? Well, guess what: after walling off millions of acres and putting an end to 22,000 lumber jobs in the Northwest, the spotted owl is still declining, and likely to become extinct anyway. It's being pushed out of its habitat by the barred owl, which is apparently better suited to survive.


Meanwhile, the timber industry now imports a great deal of its wood from foreign countries that don't have such environmental restrictions. Yes, thanks to the Audobon society playing Gaia, the United States is importing wood.


I give up. Wake me when the Visigoths arrive.

So You Think You Know About Global Warming?

Jack Hollander, professor emeritus of energy and resources at Cal-Berkley, knows more than you do. He says in an article in the Wilson Quarterly that the "universal consensus" about it is a load of hooey. Here's my favorite quote, regarding the "melting ice caps" routine:

Before considering whether the ongoing sea-level rise has anything to do with human use of fossil fuels, let’s examine what science has to say about how global temperature change may relate to sea-level change. The matter is more complicated than it first appears. Water expands as it warms, which would contribute to rising sea level. But warming increases the evaporation of ocean water, which could increase the snowfall on the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, remove water from the ocean, and lower sea level. The relative importance of these two factors is not known.

But read the whole thing. It's a brilliant piece of careful sobriety, much needed in these mindless times.

Touché

This cartoon, on the subject of campus, intellectual diversity, says it all.

The Shamelessness of the Democrats

I always thought Tom Daschle was a laughable character, always looking befuddled in his pink ties and perennial expression of impotent concern. To me, he was clueless, not despicable. Now I'm not so sure. Listening to him stand before the Senate and say that Iraq should pay for its reconstruction out of its own oil revenues actually made me angry. Is he serious?


Let us catalog the reasons why this is an infuriatingly dumb idea:




1) We promised the Iraqis that their oil revenues would be used for their benefit. We've said it again and again, despite all the accusations that this is an imperialist venture to grab the oil supplies of a Middle Eastern nation. Would Daschle et al have us go back on our word? What purpose could that serve?


2) Everything we've done in Iraq thus far, if it hasn't completely endeared us to the Iraqi people, had demonstrated that we aren't barbarian franj coming to enslave them. We said we'd get rid of Saddam; we did. We said we'd get the place back up and running; we largely have. We said we'd set up a democratic government, we're delivering. Presenting them with a bill for our services is going to undo what goodwill we've managed to create in this crucial section of the Arab world. Again, what for?


3) Need we remind Daschle that there are still Baathists and terrorists in-country who are not happy with the way the war went? He may have noticed the American soldiers dying and the mosques and embassies being targeted. Saddling the fledgling Iraqi republic with war debt is all the political capital those monsters need to start talking to the people. Can you say "Versailles Treaty?" Knew you could.




And would someone explain what happened to the Democratic concern for the poor benighted Third-Worlders? Whence the call to seek out the "root causes" of terrorism in the oppression of distant peoples? Is Daschle really concerned with a lousy $87 billion (chump change next to what prescription drugs are going to cost us) over the fate of an entire nation?


I know, I'm getting myself all worked up over what is easily explainable. Daschle doesn't have to be, you know, consistent with his arguments, or concerned with the long-term fallout of his arguments. He's just a senator; why should he worry about some silly war on terrorism when there's a Big Bad Bush Beast to tear down? I should be more charitable to the man. He's only following the advice of the great ur-liberal, Walt Whitman, who wrote that "Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds," an argument which was and is the excuse for lazy minds.

Worth Considering

Gallup has polled Baghdad, and once again, the Iraqis want us to stay. They also say that our troops have behaved, overall, well. A solid majority said attacks on them were not justified.


It appears that the war hasn't ruined our reputation on this Arab street.

The Real Music Problem?

Last week in the Post's Outlook section Jeff How of Wired magazine describes a different threat to online music: The Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which according to Howe undoes the concept of "fair use." It's a compelling article, and makes a smaller argument couched in economic reality:

The major labels own scores of smaller ones, such as Elektra, Epic and Interscope, where much of the music is made, marketed and distributed. The people who work at the smaller labels, people I got to know while covering the music industry, are the ones now losing their jobs in droves, at least in part because of file sharing. They are not fat cats. They don't chomp cigars and relish caviar. They have much more in common with obsessed file sharers and the music lovers than they do with the lawyers and CEOs of the conglomerates they work for.

The terrifying (but unsurprising) thought this yields is that the music fan's online revolt might make it harder for scrappy indie acts to get signed and distributed. That means more Britneys, more 50-Cents. More mindless pop schlock.

All of which doesn't mean I'm ready to break boycott yet. I'm still angry at the labels for stupidly antagonizing music fans instead of investing in a new technology that could have revolutionized their businesses. But it does mean that perhaps we should start talking about the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and why it exists, and how we can secure the rights of the creator without destroying the rights of the user.

MTV Offering Online Music?

Could be huge.

Fantasia

I'm not going to comment, for the moment, on my evil twin's ideas regarding the UN, the War or the Plame affair (Treasongate? How original). But on the subject of Fantasy, he's spot on:

Here's a helpful hint to anyone writing fantasy. When it comes time to design a magic system, assuming you use one, please bear in mind the concepts of "balance" and "restrictions". There are times, and settings, for uber-powerful magic and mages, but for the most part magic shouldn't be the fantasy deus ex machina.

Aye! Some authors get so caught up in designing a system that they forget to write fiction about the interplay between characters. Fantasy novels are novels. Let them aspire to be such, or not bother.

Hi there.

Dropping in for a bit to comment on the Pope news on Drudge: The Pope may get the Nobel Peace Prize. And why? Because of his opposition to the Iraq war. I love this. The Vatican calls the WHO a bunch of liars regarding condoms and AIDS, they still won't give in and accept the positions on abortion, homosexuality, and such that all the cool kids have, but if you provide grist for the mill of anti-Bush terror appeasement, you're a brave world leader who must be rewarded.


I have the satisfaction of my suspicion that JP won't give a damn about the award. He'll send a functionary (maybe Ratzinger! Hee hee!) to pick it up while he's traveling someplace else, preaching to the people.

Submerged

I have a thousand things to do, and a minimum of time to do it in. Don't expect regular postings. This is the post-show catch-up.

All things Ah-nold

I really don't know what's funnier: the Republicans complaining about Democrats using a candidate's sexual past against him, or Democrats actually using a candidate's sexual past against him. So far, Arnie's been accused of nothing Clinton wasn't accused of, back when the Demmie's could barely manage to catch their breath in between loud declarations that a person's private life had nothing to do with their ability to govern. Sounds like a fresh plate of hypocrisy all around (although it's interesting that no one wanted to let loose the interesting allegations of Gray Davis' temper tantrums before now. I dislike this guy more with everything new I hear about him).


Okay, so let's say Arnold's been a bad boy, and let's watch everyone aside from NOW and Tom McClintock's supporters not care. This is California. This is Hollywood. Of the things Californians worry about, restoring sexual morality to the public sphere ranks right below sending the Dodgers back to Brooklyn, with apologies. And since, per Clinton, a famous man behaving boorishly to un-famous women counts as mere sexual morality, not a criminal act, this isn't anything that Arnold needs to worry about.


In a civilized society, behavior such as what Schwarzenegger is accused of would bar a man from showing his face in public, let alone appealing to the public for public trust. But to act as though the private man and the public man were the same man is now considered frightfully un-nuanced, even medieval. Arnold is the Republican front-runner in this race because he's got a past; that means he'll never make anyone in California feel bad about their lifestyle. As long as Davis is out, debt goes down, and businesses return, Arnold can do as he pleases when the cameras go off. The people have spoken.


Incidentally, I will be taking this opportunity to admit that I was wrong. McClintock did not cost the Republicans this election. In fact, were Arnold out, McClintock might very well beat Bustamante. And were I a California resident, he'd have my vote. He's got all of Davis' "experience" and none of his slavish devotion to state bureaucracies. But alas, there are those around him who are sincerely religious, and conservatively so, and that will cost him far more votes than all the breast-fondling in the world.

All things Rush

I was going to write today about how it saddened me that Rush took the rope offered to hang himself, how dumb it was to insert politics into sports. This morning's piece on Slate by Allen Barra has made me think again. I've enjoyed Barra's column in Salon for some time; he has a plainspoken realism that the best sports writers evince. He says that every word Rush said was true, that a) Donovan McNabb is a mediocre quarterback, and b) he is being puffed up because people want to see black quarterbacks do well. And Barra is no right-wing ideologue. Which is of course why he will get to keep his job.


I still suspect that McNabb's bogus reputation has as much to do with the need to sell him to Philadelphia fans who were livid when McNabb was drafted instead of Ricky Williams as to McNabb's race, but I'm willing to put credence in what Barra says. Sounds like Rush is being mau-maued.


As to the prescription drug thing, prudence demands that we await facts. I will say that if it is true, this could be far more potentially damaging to Rush' career. His listeners may not appreciate this one. But once again, let's hear the story.

Madness

Rush is down, Arnold is up, Arnold is down, Davis is dead, Davis is undead, Plame is CIA, no she isn't, yes she is, outing her is illegal, no it's not, Karl Rove did it, no he didn't, the war is being lost, the war is being won, et cetera ad infinitum.




In a day or two, when the facts congeal, I'll sound off about all of this. Not now. Now is the time of the hyenas; always howling, always out for blood.

Words of Wisdom

When moving to make friendly with a dog that is barking at you from behind a fence, always check for that "Beware of Dog" sign.


Shut up.

I = Da Newie Rock's Slave

The Strokes are releasing "Room on Fire" on Oct. 28th. Guh....RRRR...

Oh, hell. I'm buying it.

Tybalt, you Rat-Catcher...

Skeptical Notion has added me to his blogroll. As one might guess, he was as shocked to discover his "evil twin," as I was, but added me in a show of good-sportness and a professed need for ideological balance. I salute you, good sir. I enjoy nothing so much as a chivalrous opponent. Mayhaps we can get an email debate going for the benefit of our readership.

...Will you Walk?

Romeo and Juliet closes this weekend, I am sad/glad to say. Glad because I could use the free time; sad because the show has been an unqualified triumph, and I will miss it. I will mark the occasion with a few thoughts on the character I have played, Mercutio.


I'll start with the trendy: No, I don't think he's gay, or at least, not explicityly so. One is free to read homoerotic longings into the character's lines if one so desires, his seeming misogyny and affection for his young friend leaves such a possibility open. Since I've gotten the role, everyone else in the cast has made a point of assuming that Merc was a card-carrying GLAAD member, mostly to annoy me. I have only myself to blame, for getting annoyed about it. To my mind, playing an ambiguous character as "gay" immediately takes all the complexity away from him; it's an instant plot point. No matter what facets you add, the gayness sticks out like a pink thumb, becoming the explanation for all his motivations and actions. Blame our politicized attitudes towards sexuality, but there it is. I don't mean to suggest that gay characters (and certainly not gay people) have no complexity, but I think ambiguity should remain ambiguous.


Instead, my Merc became the Poet-Solipsist. He is the only character in the play for whom the Capulet-Montague feud is a matter of complete irrelevance; his rank as the Prince's kin puts him outside its purview, and unlike his cousin Paris, he has no intention of getting in. He regards the conflict as beneath his attention: "By my heel, I care not." If Mercutio can be said to be interested in anything, it is Freedom. He drinks when he wants to, parties when he wants to, mocks whomever crosses his path, and fights to put fighters in their place, not to be a Fighter. His concern for Romeo is that his obsession with Young Love will make a slave of him. The bulk of the Queen Mab is aimed at mocking the illogical unconcious that Romeo is so taken with. For the end of that speech, my director and I decided to make Merc come completely unglued; I decided that he speaks from experience, having shagged his share of Rosalines, perhaps leaving one pregnant, to meet a dark fate. Guilt and self-mockery thus overwhelm him; when he says "This is the hag/when maids lie on their backs/that presses them, and learns them first to bear/making them women of good carriage," the hag he means is at once the mythical Mab, the idea of Love, and himself.


But what, you say, of his duel with Tybalt? The Tybalt of our show was determined not to play him as the Black Knight of the Capulets, an inveterate bastard who loves no one and deserves his death at Romeos hands. In our reading of the script, we saw Tybalt as a Capulet-by-Marriage, who must constantly prove his loyalty to la famiglia. His dislike of Romeo is casual, but to his mind, decisive: Romeo broke the rules by crashing the Caps' banquet, he deserves punishment. In this fashion, Tybalt serves as the archetype not for the Villian, but for the Warrior.


That duel with Mercutio thus becomes a duel for Romeo's soul: will he be a Poet or a Warrior, a Laugher or a Fighter? Mercutio loses, both his life and his struggle, and Tybalt wins, though his victory devours him. The fact that Merc only dies because Romeo, eager to protect his friend's life from the Prince's death-to-duelists decree, steps in and leaves him open to a half-hearted thrust by Tybalt that Merc could easily have countered, but compounds the tragic irony. In seeking to protect his bon vivant friend, Romeo kills him, and makes himself the Death-Dealer, who takes Tybalt, Paris, and ultimately Juliet with him.


So that's our show, wounds coming from wounds leading to wounds, until the flowers die and everyone wakes up to a winter morn.

My Dear Wormwood

I have been reading The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis' twisted renderings of reverse theology. Hence, I have been laughing. At myself. Very hard. I wonder if I have a demon on my own shoulder. I will call him Suckblow. Get thee, behind me, thou infernal wanker!

God is Mocking Me...

And well do I deserve it. A friend of mine showed me this blog. I shudder at the similarities. Same idea, stared the same month, same color scheme until a few weeks ago. But he likes Howard Dean and Paul Krugman (He also manages to blog multiple posts a day on a regular basis...this stamina o'erwhelms me...)


So it appears I have a nemesis. What the hell, let's link him!

While we're in Schadenfreude Mode...

I enjoyed thoroughly the news that Tom Green's show was cancelled. I can't stand him. He's always been a annoying doofus with a one-joke schtick, but his talk show demonstrated that he basically has no sense of humor. I refer to the chainsaw incident, wherein Jesse James Dupree of Jackyl took a chainsaw to Tom's Desk.







He's a lumberjack...and he's okay....


I can't say that I would enjoy a hair-band refugee doing damage to my set, either. But then I haven't made a career of vandalism-and-other-public-disturbance as entertainment. The fact that he couldn't even maintain a professional demeanor for the rest of the program shows what a useless diva he truly was, and is. Carson, Letterman, or Leno would have laughed it off while the cameras ran and fumed afterwards. Tom has no such acting ability to fall back on. He will not be missed.

Barbara Streisand and I Agree on Something!

Her music.

Speaking Up

I tend to avoid commentary on the daily political ups and downs; most of the peckings and squabblings that make up a given day's "Political Roundup" are so frivolous as to be unworthy of any serious person's attention, and the rest are but the punditocracy rehashing old arguments. When a decision is made, a platform revealed, or a war launched, then I pay attention. Everything else is tedious.


However, today it occurred to me that the President has dropped down to a 50% approval for the first time since he's been in office. And why? Because the folks are getting jittery about the war, and the opposition is getting noisy. I cannot remain silent.


All of this comes of people with no knowledge of history, of how wars are fought, of how guerrilas are defeated. The key idea is patience. It doesn't happen overnight. The best way to beat guerrilas is to keep them occupied while you gradually improve the administration and daily lives of the majority of the citizenry. If you can cut them off from foreign sources of supply, all the better, but showing yourself to be an improvment over the guerrilas is the key thing. We have done so. Poll after poll of Iraqis has shown that they worry more about us leaving too soon than staying too long. As long as we continue to demonstrate commitment to Iraqi independence, to training and setting up police, border guards, soldiers, and bureaucrats, we aren't going to turn the people against us.


The question for now is, are the American people going to have the stomach for that? All I can say is, We'd Better. Withdrawing from Iraq before the Iraqis are capable of governing (and defending) themselves would be a disaster beyond counting. The terrorists (Baathist or Islamic) would soon undo the fledgling Iraqi republic, and declare their movement impervious to the worst the West could do. They'd declare us weaklings and cowards, unable to maintain a sustained struggle. If you think world opinion is against us now, just wait to see what would happen then.


Now is the time to recommit ourselves to a long and difficult struggle that must be won. Now is the time to stare the enemy in the eye and say You Will Not Bury Us, and mean it. Now is the time to stop flagellating ourselves for every human misery in the world; we did not cause them. Now is the time to dedicate as much of our blood and treasure as we can to mitigating those miseries, and destroying those that propagate them.


Go ahead and hate Bush if it makes you feel better; despise him for an inarticulate, cliché-spouting scion of privelege if your sense of superiority means so much to you. But recognize that he, faults and all, is our leader in a time when leadership is what is needed. And that, if the ability to make decisions and the will to see them through is of any value, we've had worse leaders. Focus on the good that can come of bringing democracy to the Middle East. Yes, it CAN work, the people there WANT DESPERATELY for it to work; so why can't we all work towards that goal, and pay the fascists and nihilists no more heed than the scope of a rifle requires?


I used to be quite taken with the writings of Ayn Rand; her clear sense of morality and sharp criticisms of the power-lust of the Left impressed me greatly. Now I am more critical of her work: the bell-ringing monotony of her fiction, her acidic disdain for spirituality or even simple kindness, her set-piece characters. Yet Rand, through the process of her writings, did uncover a useful truth: a civilization dies when it forgets why it lives, when it no longer cares to defend itself. Those of you who would criticize the current administration, who would shriek in fear at its War on Terror, need to come up with a viable alternative. Otherwise your victory will mean that we no longer care to defend ourselves. And that will mean death, to many individually, and to our dreams, collectively.

Bloody Code

I am aware that my archive pages have gone haywire. I don't know what's wrong, but I have the Blogger support team on the job. I await their advice.

Thought For the Day

I am well aware that it would be disengenuous to resolve indiscriminately the opposition of any set of men (merely because their situations might subject them to suspicion) into interested or ambitious views: Candour will oblige us to admit, that even such men may be actuated by upright intentions; and it cannot be doubted that much of the opposition that has made its appearance, or hereafter will make its appearance, will spring from sources, blameless at least, if not respectable...




-Alexander Hamilton, the Federalist No. 1

I Get Mail

My mother writes to say that she still prefers her version of rock n' roll to mine. She is entitled to her opinion, especially as she'll always be my biggest fan writing-wise. But journalistic objectivity requires me to note that she gets down on the Rolling Stones after a big dinner, and I've seen her shake her hips to the Ramones version of "Do You Wanna Dance?" In Boogie Veritas.

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

Finally did the color-change I've long been thinking on. Finally changed the music links to reflect reality. My last Allzah.com review featured me whining about not being able to buy the music I want per my RIAA-related rant. While in borders today, I resolved to assuage my hunger and buy me some Black Flag. I bet that I could get a release on their original label and thus be free of corporate stickiness, and I was right: they didn't have Damaged, but I was able to pick up a compilation of their pre-Rollins days. So far, it's glorious hardcore punk, back before "hardcore" meant "guys who are too drunk to play metal." And it came with an SST records catalog, wherein I can buy Descendents and Minutemen. They're not the bands I'm trying to support, but they'll get me through the long night ahead.

The Inspired Mind

I have been reading The Reckless Mind by Mark Lilla, an account/criticism of various 20th century thinkers who have, one way or another, found themselves supporting tyranny, be it of the Marxist, Fascist, or even Islamic varieties. His focus seems strictly to be on European thinkers, which in one way can be limiting, but for me has provided a useful primer on the kind of philosophizing and politicking that's been going on across the Atlantic of late. Of course, to be serious I'm going to have to read more, and read more I plan to do. Hence my title.


I came to realize that there was much I did not know, and much that I recognize but have not read. Thus inspired, I went to Borders and attacked the familiar: The Federalist Papers, and The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek, neither of which I've read. When that is done, I shall launch myself into the works of those I have casually dismissed on limited collegiate readings, such as Foucault, Derrida, and Chomsky. It is wise to know the ways of one's adversaries.

Thar She Blows

Isabel came and went, knocking branches about and getting the place wetter, but that's it. The only real damage this hurricane did was to Romeo & Juliet's performance schedule. As we are doing it at a local high school, the local school board ultimately had control over our use of the venue. They closed schools today, and would not reopen them for our use this evening. It's sunny out.


I hate bureaucracy.

Lies, And the Lying Liars Who Lie About Lies, While Lying that Lies aren't Lies, And Lying that Lies are Only Lies when Lying Liars Lie Them

No, I'm not going to make fun of Al Franken. He's as unworthy of my attention as Michael Moore or Ann Coulter, demonizers all. I'm going to direct you to a piece by Will Saletan of Slate, which is rapidly becoming the only left-leaning online mag worth reading (If for no other reason than they don't expect me to pay good money or watch commercials for the privelege of reading Joe Conason). Saletan does a workmanlike job of uncovering the faux-piety of Democrats shrill harping with regard to the other party, and closes with the following quotation:

Sure, some people are more guilty than others. But if that's your obsession, I commend to you the words of my colleague, Jack Shafer: If you're interested in which wing lies more, you're probably not very interested in the truth.

Amen, brother, Amen.

The Dragon Stirs

Apparently the Chinese government has found it fitting to place 150,000 troops on the border with North Korea. Our governments think they might be pressuring the PRK on the weapons talk table, but perhaps not. The Chinese say they're looking to stop criminal activities by North Korean soldiers and/or slow the flow of refugees out of North Korea's worker's paradise.


So far, so typical. But check this out:

The Foreign Ministry statement said China's army also is taking over border-patrol duties from police on the frontier with Myanmar in the southwest, a major heroin-smuggling area.



The statement gave no reason, but Chinese police in the area say they are outgunned by drug gangs.

Now believing anything an official from the Chinese government says carries with it certain risks. But let us assume that the Chinese police are telling the truth. Suddenly it's not so difficult to remember similar episodes from China's past. I wonder how long the Communists shall keep the Mandate of Heaven?

And There Was Much Relief

Affleck and Lopez: Welcome to Splitsvile. Population: You.


And the tabloids will pause a second or two before finding a new pair of self-involved nitwits to exploit. And Casablanca is saved. Who says there's no God?

Proof that Stand-Up Comics Do Change the World

The President has signed the Prison Rape Elimination Act. Wendy McElroy has the details at FoxNews.com. I think it's safe to say that this is the sterotypical "Study Law Masquerading as a Bold Policy Initiative," but its a step in the right direction. And some study may be required. No problems there.


But a great many folk have been mumbling about this in the past, not just for its own merits, but because of a larger problem within our prison system. I've been thinking on it m'self, and not just because I've been listening to Johnny Cash. It has long been the conventional wisdom that our prisons make criminals worse through years of brutality.


These are my ideas:




1. Seperate the sheep from the wolves. Violent and non-violent offenders should go to seperate prisons. That's common sense, but that's not the way it happens. If this is logistically impossible, maybe we should reconsider whether incarceration is the right penalty for non-violent offenders. I think the usefulness of putting pot-heads in jail, for example, is apparent to all.


2. Let's put the "penitent" back in penitentiary. Prisons should not become a recruiting ground for tribal gangs. There shouldn't be any gangs. There shouldn't be, among violent offenders, any social contact with one another whatsoever. They don't eat together, they don't sleep together, they don't talk to each other. They need human contact? Talk to the chaplain, a psychologist, or an instructor. They need something to do? Give 'em a library. No more gyms, no more cable TV, no more movies. Those are priveleges of free men and women. Their punishment is to spend years alone with themselves and their crime. That's tougher on criminals than dropping the soap in the shower could ever be (while I'm on that subject, seperate bathrooms).


3. Let's get serious about rehabilitation. Say it with me: Education. Technical instruction. If we cut down on the social interaction and the gang life sufficiently, they'll be begging for something to occupy their brains. Let's make sure nobody gets out of prison without a useful job skill. Preferably blue-collar, as such may serve them best in an urban environment, but if an uncovered savant wants to learn something else, let him do so. The point is, time devoted to positive pursuits should not only be encouraged, they should be the only kind of pursuit allowed.




It's been said many times that a society is judged on how it treats its prisoners. I've never agreed that such is the case, and I'm not even sure it should be the case (how about the way it treats, oh, EVERYBODY ELSE instead?). However, when our prisons become savage wastelands, that's not good for anyone. The moral compass of the West demands better.

In Other News...

Hurrican Isabel is headed towards my neck of the woods. The eye should be over my house by Thursday night. Is this what Noah felt like?

Quelle Surprise!

A suprisingly fair editorial in the Post on Sunday, all the more so for it's seemingly hostile title. Dominique Moïsi, a senior adviser to the French Institute for International relations, says that there is a limit to what military might can accomplish (true as far as it goes), but also points out that French picque is no more constructive than American belligerence. Now is the time, Moïsi says, for the French to step in, as allies. So far, I am in accord with her, as both of us are "not convinced that the French alternative would be any more successful than the American."




Even more interesting, Moïsi makes reference to the French "trauma" in Algeria. I am confused by her take, though: she seems to imply that it was the extended occupation of the capital, Algiers, that doomed the French effort. My understanding was that it was the ignorant rabble-rousing of the French Left, coupled with first the poor leadership of the Fourth Republic and then the cynical calculations of De Gaulle (who'd decided that France's future lay in the EEC, not in Africa) that rendered null what would otherwise been among the most successful counterguerrilla campaigns in modern history. Truly, in Algeria the French pulled defeat from the jaws of victory, and suffered two attempted military coups as a result of it. While I feel that true Franco-American concordance on Iraq would be to the benefit of all concerned, let us not read the wrong lessons from history.




Nit picked. Happy Monday.

Johnny Cash

It doesn't seem all that sad to me. The old boy was 71 when he died early this morning. He's lived a life full of success and good works, a man admired, despite his shortcomings, by many music fans. Sure, it's rotten luck that he died just as he was breaking through to a new generation of fans (I had 15-year-olds saddened by the loss today), but the man's already hung on well past the prime and time of all those other Sun Records cats, flashes-in-the-pan like Jerry Lee Lewis and that Elvis chap. What wierded me out more today was hearing that John Ritter dropped dead of a heart condition that no one even knew about. That to me is truly creepy. One minute you're happily working on the set of your new hit show, the next minute, you're worm food. Poor guy.

But Ritter will always be Jack Tripper, a harmless but otherwise forgettable character. Cash will always be the Man in Black, a Walking Contradiction. He was as religious a man as one might find, and sang heartfelt songs about Peace in the Valley, but he has also gone through years and years of drug abuse. He bowed to no man in love of his country, and presumably all the good old-fashioned ideals it was founded on, yet he would routinely play prisons and sing songs to the prisoners that suggested that putting people in prison was not the smartest idea. I have a copy of his performance at San Quentin Prison in California, and he sings a song to riotous cheers that condemns San Quentine and, implicitly, the entire penal system as designed in hell and belonging back there. Then, he sings it again. When Eminem grows the cojones to try anything like that, lemme know.

I'd go on, but folk with a more extensive appreciation of the man's recordings have already sounded off (here's one example). I've only really discovered him recently, based on the strenght of two LP's I bought. He is to me, as he is I suspect to many others, the Miles Davis of country music: the one guy from a genre you don't like that you can listen to and enjoy.

My problem with country isn't that it's redneck music. Credence Clearwater Revival were the biggest rednecks that ever walked the earth, and I can listen to them all day. Same with Lewis, Elvis, or any of those guys. Nor am I hung up on the insistent Christianity and patriotism of the genre. I am Christian and patriotic myself. No, my problem is that what gets called country music, especially the Nashville scene, is boring, gutless, garish redneck music, all sparkle and sequins and hoots (I'm not touching the "pop-country" guys who dress like Nirvana or Britney but still play banjos. Everybody but the teenagers seems to agree they're poseurs).

It's just not my scene, the songs, like the people, are too duded-up. I sat through some Country Music Awards show and saw with my own eyes, some pompadoured dingbat in a tourquoise suit make fun of the newer garage-rock bands, in a snide little song with appropriately wussy riffs called "The Next Big Thing." Had I the power, I would have lept through the screen and strangled him with his guitar strap, and not a jury in the world would have convicted me (provided I managed to get the trial staged in one of those counties on the coast that voted for Gore; in Nashville they'd probably lynch me before I finish the job). Fortunately, I was distracted by my mother proclaiming in her most serious voice that country music was the only form of rock n' roll left. I rolled my eyes so hard I could see the back of my skull and left the room (I later pressed on her some of my Vines and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion CD's; she never listened to them).

The point is, Johnny Cash was above such petty antics. For him, country music was about laying down the roots of white rural music, with it's fiddlin' and hummin, it's frontier fear and bravado, and never about getting "Yee-haws!" at the Grand ol' Opry. He was an artist in the best sense of the world, rendering creation that reflected experience; as genuinely concerned with prisoner's rights as he was with praising God and America. None of it was phony; none of it was show-biz. You can argue in the post-grunge world that being "not show-biz" is every bit as big a ploy as being "show-biz", but Cash didn't come from the post-grunge world. He came from the time where dressing in black all day was frowned upon. That middle finger he took out in a newspapers after he won his Grammy, aimed right at Nashville, wasn't a media splash to sell records. It was Johnny Cash saying "Fuck you," as loud as he possibly could.

So fare well, Johnny. Here's hopin' you got enough points to escape that ring of fire that seemed to worry you so much.

9-11

I hadn't intended to even mention it. Two years ago today, I was at home, having been dismissed, eyes glued to the TV screen, watching the towers fall over and over again. I didn't shout, I didn't spit, I didn't grumble about Arabs or foreigners or anybody else. But I was seething inside. Never had I seen such a thing as this, in my land, in my lifetime: an act of war. The cruelty of it, mixed with the joyous fervor that those who perpetrated it and those who support them doubtless felt, yielded a sense of horrible wrongness that I made a point not to forget. But I was that day, even as everyone, myself included, blithered and shook, confident: I knew we would respond, and vigorously.


One year ago, we took stock in our classroom, and a teacher showed slides, and played some bit of ethereal melancholia in the background. I'd thought myself inured to the whole affair. The Taliban had crumbled and we were getting ready to put the move on Saddam; the situation had improved. But I found myself looking into the eyes of students who responded to the images with tears, and then I responded similarly. My voice choked, and all the sadness I never permitted myself to feel was upon me. I got through it, but at the end of the school day was in chapel, stifling sobs, asking God if this was what it felt like.


And at that moment I wasn't referring to 9-11 but every last 9-11 that had ever streaked its red trail across the earth. I thought of every last battle, every last raid, every invasion of the brutal onto the peaceful. Every bomber run. Every Rape of Nanking. Every Klansman riding out of the night.


Today, I walk neither in fury nor sadness. I feel nothing about this particular day, excepting that I remember what this day has come to mean. There are those who wish that we would wrap up and forget about the Attack, sweep them under the rug, get over it. You'll hear them express annoyance that anyone would want to remember the event. They think it gross, obsessive, that we should want to comemmorate the dead and renew our commitment to preventing such a thing. Yes, it was terrible, but...they'll say, just as so many said Yes, it's terrible but...before even the second tower had fallen. They are entitled to their opinion, and I can sympathize with their motive, if their motive is indeed not to relive horror, not to fill ourselves with the lust for vengeance.


I sympathize, but I do not agree. While our soldiers risk their lives in Iraq and elsewhere, we ought to remember why they are doing so. Reasonable people can disagree as to the wisdom of our current efforts, but to do so without referring to the context that produced it is foolish. Bill Clinton, chastizing his party after the 2002 elections, said that the people would sooner vote for someone who is strong and wrong than weak and right. He's half correct. The left seems determined to forget or downplay 9-11, and I don't necessarily think that this is entirely due to immediate political considerations. I don't think they have language in their vocabulary to deal with the event, which is why everything is prefaced with "Oh, yes, it was an awful thing, but..." They don't want to deal with it seriously, as a violent act which must be responded to in a stern manner. They want to mitigate it, explain it away, turn the response against ourselves, imply without ever standing firm on the statement that we deserved it, make sure that every last UN member agrees to every arrest, make them quietly without waving any flags of any kind and then get back to the important things, like making Social Security more bankrupt. Just remember, while listening to Dean's and Kerry's and Lieberman's sallies at our current president's handling of the anti-terror campaign: that it is now two years since the Twin Towers fell, and the Left has presented no alternatives to the Bush strategy. Vague calls to be less arrogant, yes. Brainless denunciations of Bush, yes. But no alternatives. They have no plan, and no intention of developing one. They really do wish that the whole thing would just go away.


I hadn't intended to make this a political attack, but what was the Attack itself if not political in nature? This is the real stuff of politics, the only thing that Kings and Presidents have ever done well. All the tax debates and culture-baiting and mounds of papers we create and wave at each other as though they possessed magical powers are but frivolities to distract us while history naps. The Founders didn't write the Constitution so that we could have slapfights about imaginary trust funds, but so that our liberties wouldn't be torn apart by internal divisions or torn from us by foreign threats. One of the latter has so attempted, and on this second anniversary of that, I remember my rage and my sorrow, and quietly pray for that foreign threat's defeat and destruction.

New Link!

Here's a Brown University junior's blog: Neo-Liberal for Life. One might presume that "neoliberal" means "non-Sovietized left-winger" and so far this fellow's stuff indicates a certain disgust with the dogma of the hard left. I have always known that such folk have existed; indeed, most liberals tend to be just as unassuming: rather than spew vitriol or push an explicitly socialist agenda, they regard their ideology as a necessary corrective to what would otherwise be a tyrannical, laissez-faire society. This chap makes me wonder if some liberals and democrats are waking up to the fact that "corrective" has its own heart of darkness.




I'm posting a lot for someone who isn't posting, aren't I?

There Are More Things 'Twixt Heaven and Earth Than are Dreamt of in Your Philosophy

Guess what else causes hitherto unrealized amounts of greenhouse gases? Fungus.

Hell Week

Romeo and Juleit opens on Friday, so this week is going to be lived at the theater. I may pop in now and again if anything earth-shaking happens, but other than that, I'll see you on the other side.

St. Miles

Yesterday I left a Thelonious Monk CD on at low volume during one of my classes. I liked the effect so much that Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" was providing a modal counterpoint to all of today's lectures. Tommorrow I may try classical. We'll see if music really does stimulate the kiddies...

WHO CARES?

While I'm swiping at net-journalists I admire greatly, I really wish Matt Drudge would stop running the sirens everytime some Hollywood motormouth says a bunch of nasty things about America or the administration. Today it's Johnny Depp. Tommorrow it'll be Elijah Wood, or somebody else. I don't care what any one of them says. Not a one of them is qualified to discuss such matters, and I'm sick to death of them getting headlines while I, who have studied International Relations at great personal expense, have only this piddling blog. Once again, I expect the mainstream media to listen raptly to our Morning Stars, but Drudge is supposed to have an eye to the main chance. Come on, people. I want meat, not gruel.

Son of Wobbly

Sully shoots back at his critics, and seemingly me (though I flatter myself not that he reads this eyehole of a blog), regarding his stance on the war. His points are fair: he's a genuine supporter of the President and "fear[s] that he's going astray." I agree that this war, like most wars, is too important a matter to be left to the Democrats (Dean and Kerry, the most hawkish, have nothing to say but "we'd do it better," which is both unenlightening and unlikely), and that those of us, like Sullivan, who understand that importance need to make sure that Dub stays in office, and fair criticism is appropriate to that.


But giving into the hysteria isn't going to help Dub out, as all it does is add fuel to the Dean-Kerry bonfire. Whenever I get news of another explosion/death in Iraq, I run it through the prism of the last guerrilla war we successfully put down, in the Phillipines, 100 years ago. That particular war was 2 or 3 years in the finishing, after we spent a year making fools of ourselves with classically inept sweep-and-clear-and-stumble-into-ambushes-and-abuse-the-population tactics, against an enemy (Aquinaldo) who was far less of a beast than Saddam, and in a country whose ethnic map makes Iraq look like Idaho. There were many butcheries before we won, but win we did, because we gradually made good on our promises and became the better alternative to Aguinaldo, who gradually made himself inimical. The progress was slow and didn't make the headlines, but sure.


It's not a perfect analogy, but the point is that we have to be sure that we're seeing the forest for the trees. One of the best things about Sully during the war was his ability to grasp what was really going on as opposed to what the CNN/NPR/NYT axis was constructing. Let's not let the terrorists impress us with their infantile explosions, horrible though they be. Let's let the Anaconda work.


In conclusion, and in fairness to Sullivan: no, you haven't precisely gone wobbly. We only nag at you, old boy, because we dare not lose you.

Gone Wobbly

A month I wait for Andrew Sullivan to return and put everything so and thusly in that inimitable style of his, and this is what I get? The Aircraft carrier landing is now "the dumbest political gesture of the last two years?" I am plumb positive that wasn't Sully's assessment at the time. Wait, I've checked the archives, and he said it was "a bit hubristic." I stand corrected. I guess one is entitled to one's exaggeration, non sequitor though it be.


On the same token, he's joining the parade of doom-and-gloomers re: Iraq. Behold, the administration is no longer "serious," the shiites and Sunnis are about to explode, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum. Exactly what has happened that is going to undo all that we have accomplished so far? I expect this dreck from the New York Times, but not from you, Sully. Either a) a month for you in P-Town is way too long, or b) when headlines blare, you really are just a...journalist.

Ghetto-Fabulous

Hooray for me! I get to beat Whatever-Dude to the punch on the VMA's. Of course, I can't hope to match earlier efforts such as this and this because I didn't actually watch them. I've reached a point in my life where I no longer need to watch award shows to know what's going to happen. The predictable winners, the predictably unorthodox costumes, the funnyman struggling to keep up the impression that this is all so hip and fresh, I've seen it, and I need see it no more. Still, judging strictly by this Washington Post write-up, there were some interesting conclusions to be garnered from the evening's show.




1. Lesbian chic is so five years ago. And behold, Her Anglophilic Majesty, Madonna, descended from the heavens to accept tribute from two Whores, thus rendering a long-standing pyschological complex in spandex and glitter. Spearguilera (Christina may have actual pipes and a rougher image, but beyond that it's pointless bothering to tell them apart) performed "Like a Virgin," no doubt covered in see-through lace and clangingly obvious irony. And then she kissed them both, with tongue. And...


...yeah. I'm bored even trying to comment. Let's press on.




2. Anyone can be a Rap Star if he can manages to not look completely laughable in leopard skin. Can 50 Cent actually rap? Has anyone heard him? Does he ever perform, even in a video, without Snoop Dogg and a whole "posse" (We're still using this term? I thought it had been appropriated by white people long ago, and therefore anathema to the hip-hop community) with him? Has he said anything that other acts haven't said before?


I thought not.




3. Michael Jackson is the new Vanilla Ice. Jack Black did a Jacko impression last night; Eminem mocked him last week. It's open season, not just among the commonfolk, but among the Olympian stars. How the mighty are fallen.




4. Johnny Cash is almost good enough to win a VMA. He lost to Justin Timberlake. I think that says it all.

More Strategery

It's been whispered here and there that Dubya's deficit spending is a way to force liberals to stay honest -- the next Democrat that occupies the White House won't be able to construct grand new social visions because the money won't be there. Maybe that's true and maybe it's not. But it occurred to me today while reading Nick Schultz's blog in NRO's Corner. Bush is a big supporter of the prescription drug benefit for seniors (because, you know, drugs are so cheap and affordable for the rest of us). And the liabilities to be incurred by our existing entitlements are, according to Schultz, to come between $30 and 50 billion. I wonder if Bush is trying to force the issue, make plain the reality that there's only so much entitlement we can afford, and that it's time to de-Kaynesify. Can it be the old boy is forcing Atlas to shrug?

Welcome to the Land of Sweat

My classroom is an oven. Words such as hot, humid, sauna-like are but dim reflections of my current climate. I watch the kids wilt as the class continues; who can blame them for wanting to escape and breath fresh air? Blah.


See, this is why blogging is good. Come December, I'm going to be able to look back and smile at what I've written, wishing as my knuckles freeze that such warmth would return.

The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight

Republicans have really messed up this time, in California. Bustamante is ahead of Arnold in the polls, and its for the good and simple reason that conservatives have pulled an "icky" face at him. Schwarzenegger may not be the ideal conservative, but he's to the right of Gray Davis, and isn't that what we want? This is the same way that they lost last year's election, and thus failing to oust the worst, least popular governor in California history: by being too much interested in playing More-Conservative-Than-Thou and too little interested in presenting viable, positive alternatives to the Davis Mafia. Now watch them screw it up again. Morons.

I might have mentioned...

...that I was disappearing for part of the week to Minnesota. But more likely I didn't. Apologies.




Apparently the Senate has declared 2003 to be the Year of the Blues, according to an article in today's Washington Post Magazine. The focus of the story is the trials and tribulations of Linwood Taylor, a local bluesman and guitar virtuoso who somehow can't seem to sing the blues. So far, so journalistic.


What sticks in my craw is an offhand quote made by Bob Santinelli, owner of a music house in Seattle and permanent 60's nostalgia-man (because, you know, we've got a real shortage of 60's nostalgia in this country). Here it is:

"I want this music to thrive," Santelli says. "The blues is the bedrock of American popular music. As most of its legends and stars grow old and die, this musical form needs a shot in the arm to allow it to compete with other forms. I grew up in the Sixties, so thanks to the Rolling Stones and Cream, I got into Muddy Waters. But young people today haven't been exposed to it." For the blues to thrive, somebody has to recruit listeners

You may think me geeky, but this kind of nonsense infuriates me. Has this silly sonofabitch ever heard of Nirvana? That whole grunge scene was all about bringing the fury of the blues back to a thin and weedy American rock scene. Their Unplugged show back in '94 was the best blues concert since B.B. King played the Regal. Or how about the White Stripes? Check out this month's Spin for a full-on expose of how Meg and Jack became the biggest-selling band in rock, and what Jack was inspired by (*cough*Son House*cough*). Anyone who can't hear the blues on "White Blood Cells," or "Elephant" (500,000 copies sold to date) does not know from the blues. I'm not even going to mention Phish and the whole vibe scene, where blues flowers night by night.


Santinelli is right that the blues is the bedrock of American music. I've said so myself. But it doesn't need a special year from Congress to flourish (although that's a great deal more useful than most things Congress does). All it needs is for haughty Boomers (especially those that run record companies) to get off their high horse and realize that music didn't stop in 1980, that the kids are listening, and that the good stuff will out.


Rant over.

RIAA, Part ?‡

Senator Coleman's issues with the record boys have apparently borne fruit, according to this article. The RIAA execs have assure Coleman that they are not targeting "small" downloaders, just the kingpins. Naturally they won't say what the bar is between being a "small" downloader and one who downloads "as substantial amount."


They're either backpedalling, or they never were planning on going after everybody, or they're testing the waters. Either way, I'm not backing off the boycott.

Did I mention...

...that meetings suck? They do. Especially faculty meetings wherein we gamely attempt to reinvent the wheel, as though we might suddenly happen upon the magic shibboleth that will transform horny, zoned-out teens into the Vanguard of the New Tommorrow™. Frankly, I could make much better use of the time in my classroom, actually putting time and thought into my lessons.


On the other hand, the faculty got their first glimpse of the New Sherrif. Our incoming President, Fr. Tipton S.J., shared with us some of the things he's changed and his vision for the school. He is a serious man, not in the sense that he isn't funny (he is), but in the sense that he suits his words to his actions and his actions to the realities around him. It may be too early to say, but I think we're in good hands.

Clueless

A few days ago I caught a story on the Drudge Report that caught my eye and turned my stomach, rendering me twisted. Here it is. Apparently child prostitution isn't just for poor kids anymore. The FBI's claiming a 70 percent increase in prostitutes coming from middle- and upper-class neighborhoods, and not necessarily from the houses where Mommy drinks too much and Daddy does naughty things at night. Here's the kicker:

"Potentially good sex is a small price to pay for the freedom to spend money on what I want," says 17-year-old Stacey [not her real name], who liked to hang out after school at the Mall of America, Minnesota's vast shopping megaplex, Newsweek reports. After being approached last summer by a man who told her how pretty she was, and asked if he could buy her some clothes, Stacey agreed and went home that night with a $250 outfit.

Stacey, who lives with her parents in an upscale neighborhood, began stripping for men in hotel rooms -- then went on to more intimate activities.

And the child welfare advocates don't get it. This doesn't fit their equation: poor + abuse + drugs = prostitution. Why would a girl who has everything she needs sell her body? This isn't the way it's supposed to work.


Here's where I get all scoldy. Why shouldn't Stacey take the chance at "potentially good sex" in exchange for the things she wants (not needs, wants)? I think I know, and you might, but does Stacey? Has Stacey grown up in a world where "potentially good sex" wasn't considered the highest good? Has Stacey ever seen people suffer consequences for seeking whatever they might feel like seeking? Has Stacey not been bombarded with sexual imagery since she was old enough to tell the difference. To Stacey, and to a lot more of our young people than we like to admit, sex is just something you do. It has no weight, purpose, or value except as a scratch to an itch.


I'll bet this diatribe sounds familiar to you. Annoying people in garishly colored clothes and terrifying hairstyles have been throwing out phrases like this for some time. And we toss them aside, because they're painful to look at, and we can quickly run through the advocatus diaboli routine from "Inherit the Wind." Sure, we're a lot of fornicators, but we still honor the mom and pop; we haven't murdered anybody today (althought J.Lo needs to watch her ass. I mean: damn, girl); what's the big? Birds do it; bees do it; the President of the United States flavors his stogies with fresh secretarial vaginal juice; let's just get drunk and screw and let it be.


I'm not just pointing fingers. I haven't exactly been writing letters to the editor about all the bikini models being routinely tortured by Joe Rogan on "Fear Factor" (Joe is of course, on his way to take over Man Show duties from the previous two beer monsters, together with some other dink. And American manhood is saved). Blood flows through these veins of mine, and I do like the scenery offered by soft and beautiful female flesh. I've even sat through the occasional Britney video with the mute on. I'm not made of stone, and I'm not looking forward to a Baptist Taliban taking over.


I'm really just wondering why we can't find a happy medium between the tyranny of sexual shame and the nauseating maw of sexual depravity. Because until we find that medium, we better get used to Stacey and a million girls like her. They have learned what we have taught.

More lame excuses...

Work. Work work work work work. I still have the rant, but I have not the energy. Tommorrow, I swear.

Unexpected Downtime...

...due to that damn worm that's been screwing with a lot of Dell PC's these past couple of days. I got the patch by signing on with AOL (not my favorite thing to do), and now I'm fine. Mebbe I should consider upping my security provisions.


Anyway, I have a good-size rant in the works for tommorrow, and I'm thinking of altering the decor around here, especially with the color scheme. Right now the place looks like an Andrew Sullivan knock-off. I'm thinking...grey?

Back!

They say that North Carolina's Outer Banks are the Graveyard of the Atlantic. All I know is the water is damn cold for summer. Wonderful weekend of near-constant imbibing and consuming, plus lots of pictures of the angry ocean. Hopefully I recover from the former and manage to get the latter properly developed. I wonder if Picture CD's are the way to go?

I couldn't resist...

Flipping through the Catholic Standard after mowing the lawn, I stumble across an article on Mel Gibson visiting the office of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, who have been going through the little but-someone-might-be-offended routine regarding Gibson's film about the Crucifixion. I read the article, which was cursory, but it mentioned the critique by Paula Frederiksen of The New Republic, who basically declared the film anti-Semitic.


I had an opportunity to see Ms. Frederiksen on Bill O'Reilly a few nights ago, and I was struck by her argument that Pontius Pilate would have felt no obligation to please the Sanhedrin by executing a man who had violated no Roman law. That is, it struck me as being incredibly naive. The ancient Jews were habitually hostile to the Roman occupation: they'd actually thrown out the Seluccid Greeks in 67 B.C., and here was this Jewish religious adventurer showing up in Jerusalem on the feast of passover: Pilate wouldn't have been concerned because...?


That aside, my purpose isn't really to argue the historical evidence but to make an analogy. There are a lot of people who seem to be upset that telling an unvarnished account (which is to say, the story as the Gospels put it) of the Passion of Christ might lead to something bad. And two thousand years ago, Both Pilate and the Sanhedrin believed that letting this redneck from Galilee speak his mind might lead to something bad. I'm not proposing that Mel Gibson = Jesus. I'm just interested to note that certain things never do seem to change.


Okay. I'm really leaving now. Bu-Bye.

Vacation

I'm heading down to North Carolina with some palsies on the morrow, and I won't be back until Sunday, and I've a bit to do today, so absent anything major coming across the bows, I'll be signing off.




So hang in there, and I shall blog presently.

Off With Their Heads!

Word around the campfire is that the Affleck/Lopez vehicle "Gigli" is heading for box-office bombitude on the levels of "Ishtar" or "Waterworld," i.e., films that don't just flop, they flop in a truly embarrassing manner. I can only say I have prayed for it to be so, and this piece in the Onion encourages my hope. You see, boys and girls, there's been a bit of a backlash against those two overexposed mediocrities, and internet culture has been a prime mover in that. Observe this denunciation from the famously high-brow, low-blow Whatever-Dude.com. Dated from April of this year, it renders the absurdity of "Gigli," perfectly, as only a succint description of a lame plot can:

The movie stars Jennifer Lopez as a lesbian hitman, Ben Affleck as the hitman with morals that converts her to heterosexuality, and a mentally retarded guy that Affleck and Lopez kidnap and take on a road trip. Do I even need to make jokes about this? Lopez as lesbian hitwoman? Affleck as the manly man that’s so manly that he reforms her wayward homo ways through the power of his manhood? The kidnap a mentally retarded person and take them on a nutty comedic road trip bit?

The article closed with a horrifying account of Bennifer's next film after "Gigli," and Kevin Smith's "Jersey Girl," (read it, if you have the stomach) and in doing so, convinced me of their utter wrongness and unfitness to appear in films in my native land. Are these two media whores somehow not satisfied with sucking on their own? Do they have to take poor Kevin Smith down with them? Do they have to dirty one of the great achievements in American cinema with their attempt to re-make it as a vehicle for themselves? I would ask if nothing was sacred, but I was convinced of the answer to that long ago.


What's sacred is righteous indignation in the face of self-idolatry. Let's hope "Gigli" becomes the bomb that destroys them.

New Reviews

Two of my new reviews just got loaded up at PunkFix, one for Television and one for the MC5. The links will tell you all you need to know.


Happy Monday.

GOPRIAA?

I've mentioned it before, and I don't get it. Why on earth would GOP lawmakers give the Recording Industry Association of America the time of day? They don't fund Republican electoral campaigns; they don't reflect the kind of values that the GOP says it believes in. On the face of it, sure, it looks like a cut-and-dry property-rights situation. But there's piracy and there's piracy, and I have yet to be convinced that file-swapping violates fair-use. So, it's a bit depressing that a former GOP staffer will be taking over as RIAA's chief executive.


But perhaps all is not lost. Senator Norm Coleman (R-Mn) just sent a critical letter to the punters, suggesting that their scattershot litigation might be off the mark. Interesting...