Ecclesiastes-Based Real Estate Advice
|
|
| The Private Intellectual Ecclesiastes-Based Real Estate Advice |
|
|
Saturday, January 31, 2004 Thula Sizwe is the name of a South African a capella group that makes very good music. They're giving a free/freewill offering performance at Luther Memorial Church, 2500 W. Wilson tomorrow (Sunday) at 11am. It will be excellent. All are welcome. Take the brown line to Western, go south (left) out of the station to Wilson (the next light), turn right on Wilson and the church is just two blocks away. Otherwise take Lakeshore to Wilson or the Expressway to Lawrence. posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 5:57 PM Following up on Ben's argument against Kerry as the most electable of the Democratic Nominees, I urge people check out the Birddogger Blog's well-reasoned post on why any oddsmaker worth his salt wouldn't pick Kerry. Also, Daily Kos has some good stuff on the media's role in narrowing down the Democratic field, and the latest poll numbers in Arizona. posted by Senay | 2:05 PM The Jeremiah of the Left The Leftist Hawk has emerged as a charismatic species in the intellectual and media ecosystem. Like the prophets of old, they have a message of scorching condemnation for their erstwhile comrades, calumniating them for cowardice, loss of principle, failure of idealism. Christopher Hitchens is certainly central to this vest-pocket movement, but Paul Berman is a close second in the sweepstakes for the favorite Leftist of the American Right. His article in Dissent is probably worth reading if you would like to see him sharpen his high-flown rhetoric against another straw man. But it is not a very good argument. Berating an interlocutor at the bar, Berman unloads this chestnut: "The old-fashioned left used to be universalist-used to think that everyone, all over the world, would some day want to live according to the same fundamental values, and ought to be helped to do so. They thought this was especially true for people in reasonably modern societies with universities, industries, and a sophisticated bureaucracy-societies like the one in Iraq. But no more! Today, people say, out of a spirit of egalitarian tolerance: Social democracy for Swedes! Tyranny for Arabs! And this is supposed to be a left-wing attitude?" Leaving aside for the moment the fact that no one is alarmed by the fact that the Right used to particularist and has only lately discovered a utopian zeal for everything from stamping out the sex drive of adolescents to remaking whole societies to foreseeing The End of Evil ,I want to dwell on this argument. It's the least fair argument, a caricatured compression of several different political stances into one vague and lazy relativism. It's true that to varying degrees, the Left has come to distrust or reject the language of universal human values. But this has not happened out of mere slackness or cowardice. There are arguments involved in this. For one anti-universalist strain, which I think of as anthropological, there is an empirical argument about how different societies create value on the basis of radically different and incommensurable assumptions. This I don't know much about, and there's no doubt that it becomes, when lazily applied, a kind of avoidance of history and moral judgment. But there also may be good and sufficient reason that Maoris don't want to live like residents of Orange County. Anyway, the other and more relevant argument has to do not with universalism itself, to which many leftists still ascribe, but to the deployment of the rhetoric of universalism. The idea here is that the language of universal human values has always been a screen for exertions of power. I submit that you could not design from scratch a more apt illustration of this pitfall than the war in Iraq. Before the war it was quite possible to believe that this would be a war of liberation, a restoration of Iraqis to the state of liberty to which they are entitled like anyone else. I was not shy about believing this and about berating those who lacked the moral fervor to support this mission of liberation. But it's pretty clear now that nothing of the sort was ever in the offing for this mission. I have yet to read Berman's reaction to the fact that we've hired on the Mukhabarat, Saddam's old torturers. Or to the news that come hell, high water, or Hussein Lite, we'll be out of there by the end of summer. The fact is that in modern history, all wars have been justified on universal moral terms. Even Hitler framed his domestic campaign against the Jews as a response to "aggression." Ideologies of universal humanity are like Bills of Rights--they are a dime a dozen, especially in societies that trample them in practice. What matters is how, why, and under what circumstances force is deployed. Does someone like Berman find it odd that the "fundamental values" he is so high on happen to be, practically speaking, the program of the American Enterprise Insitute? Maybe these hoary arguments of Berman's were apposite a year ago [when you made them?--ed. Precisely.] But I don't know what kind of naivete or willful blindness keeps this guy repeating this stuff now, after so many betrayals. He and all other Leftist Hawks have the solemn responsibility to repent of their misjudgment or to stop demeaning the moral intelligence of their fellow leftists, who, if they have been diminished into an entirely critical and defensive crouch, were at least right about this. For an article on the reality of international power politics without Berman's lethal cocktail of sentimental leftism and high dudgeon, check out Josh Marshall's New Yorker article on the new literature of empire. It's very good and far short of that magazine's widowmaker standard article length. posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 10:25 AM Thursday, January 29, 2004 Yes, It's True, This Man Has No Dick I'll be writing more on this a little later, but I just wanted to quickly mention that last night I saw the Tucson premiere of The Lost Boys of Sudan, a documentary by California-based filmmakers Megan Mylan and Jon Shenk. A moving film with more than a few hilarious scenes, I'd recommend finding the nearest screening when it comes to your area. While on the subject of film, I was pleased to hear that the Academy finally recognized Bill Murray's brilliance by nominating him in the Best Actor category for Lost in Translation (he so deserved to win Best Supporting Actor for Rushmore). While the Oscars are almost entirely bogus, and Sean Penn will almost certainly win for Mystic River, seeing Murray's work acknowledged in this way is nice, if only because it supports my belief that he is the most talented of the first-generation SNL alums. Yeah, Chevy Chase was hot stuff in the 80s, but Murray has endured and taken some pretty noteworthy roles (starting with the highly watchable Groundhog Day). Who else can inspire simultaneous sympathy and subtle revulsion so well? posted by Senay | 6:11 PM Important Emailed around the office today (and certainly legit): Due to the harsh temperatures, many children are not showing up to school, or are showing up with inappropriate outerwear because they don't have warm coats. DIRECT EFFECT CHARITIES in conjunction with CPS is holding an emergency coat drive. We are asking for new or gently used and laundered children's winter coats, hats, scarves, gloves and boots. All sizes are being accepted. Items can be mailed or delivered until February 5th to Florence B Price Elementary School, 4351 S Drexel Blvd., Chicago, IL 60653, (773) 535-1300. They will then be sorted and distributed to the neediest children throughout Chicago's public schools. Please consider cleaning out your child's closets and sending us items they've outgrown. For more information, please call Direct Effect Charities @ 312.296.5311 or visit their web site at www.directeffectcharities.org Do what you can. posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 4:13 PM My post on the Young Republican straw poll has been expanded and combined with my observations of the Kerry party into an article for CityLink which I hope will come out tomorrow all over Chicago's more fashionable northwest side neighborhoods (Bucktown, Wicker Park, Uke Village, Logan Square, etc.) I'll check their website for a link, for those of you out of town. And if they cut it down too much, I'll just post the sucker. One exchange that I had to leave on the cutting room floor was with Whetstone at the Kerry party. "What I'm waiting to see is who will be the journalist to define this election," Whet said. "David Foster Wallace wrote such great stuff in 2000. Who will do that this year?" "Yeah, but DFW obviously didn't grow up with politics," I replied. "You need someone with a literary sensibility but who lives and breathes politics. A Robert Penn Warren type." "What about Gary Wills?" "He's too Bill Moyersish." "Maybe now, but he wasn't always. Nixon Agonistes is really great. But it's true, he's gotten a little sonorous." "'Sonorous.' Great adjective." posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 1:51 PM Wednesday, January 28, 2004 Lament of the Social Service Bureaucrat I really intended to write more today about last night's events and results, but the agency is a cruel taskmaster--tonight we've having one of those events where I started out as a guest, became a volunteer, and have since been conscripted. There's all kind of analysis out there, from Josh Marshall to Billmon to Tacitus to Kos. You can find just about any spin you want, and more speculation about the future of the race than even I can stomach. Something that hasn't been mentioned enough is how bad the news looks right now for Bush. Newsweek has him slightly behind Kerry, which of course has no predictive value but does speak to the president's present weakness. He only won 85% of the NH Republican primary vote; over 6% were write-ins for the various Democrats (Clinton won 95% of Democrats in 1996). Turnout has been huge in both Iowa and New Hampshire, speaking to an energized Democratic base and probably some influx of independents. Conservative activists, who will do as they're told in the end, are not happy with the prez. The Kay Report could help the administration if they had the least humility, but if what's past is prologue, they will continue to call up down and start to pay a price for it. The Plame grand jury looms, as does the 9-11 commission and the Intelligence Committee's investigation of WMD claims, which might not be stonewallable in the wake of the Kay Report. Not all of these things will hurt the president, but some could and none will help. I don't know how the myth of Bush's popularity got started--his ratings have been on a downward march since he took office, broken only by wars. If the Tribune's scoop about a plan to invade Pakistan in the spring is true, it may save Bush personally but no one outside of his party will believe he did it for anything but political gain. None of this is to say that beating Bush will be easy. He will be fantastically well-funded, he will have a media presence of unprecedented scope and ferocity, and the mainstream media are likely to be as cowed and servile as they've been so far. But he is not popular. His supposed popularity is a confidence game that is likely to unravel at some point. Then he'd better hope that he can inspire enough hatred of Kerry, or Dean, or Edwards, or Clark to put him over the top. posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 4:12 PM Credit Where Credit is Due At the Kerry party last night, I got to see the senator's speech. The Clever Bastards (a media type, often on display at Slate, that I will expand on soon) obviously didn't like it, but to hell with them. It was pretty good, especially: "If I am president..." [Crowd builds to a dull roar of "When! When! When!"] "When I am president...[something about soldiers, said to deafening applause]" The crowd around us cheered. Through my tears I shouted, "give that speechwriter a raise!" posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 8:17 AM Tuesday, January 27, 2004 Religion vs. Politics, Round 2,376,489 Noted scholar of religion and science Professor Phil Hefner will be speaking at 7pm tonight at Luther Memorial Church, 2500 W. Wilson. I've started reading his short book (Technology and Human Becoming) and it's very good. I really, really should go to this because it's the kind of thing TPI is all about. But unfortunately, 7pm happens to be the time that the NH polls close. So I'll be at Murphy's, 3655 N. Sheffield (mere steps from the Addison red line stop, in the shadow of Wrigley field) watching results with the Kerry campaign. It's a no-lose situation: if Kerry wins, we party with a happy crowd. If he loses, he's probably out of the race. Come by and join us. posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 2:32 PM ON SUNDAY I HEARD SOME RADIO NEWS while riding in a cab. I was half-listening, as I usually do with radio news, when I heard something about U.S. allegations that WMD materials/"program-related activities" had been smuggled into Syria before, during, or considering our lax security at weapons sites, after the war. The newscaster added, pro forma, that the Syrian government denounced the accusations as baseless. My reflexive response was, "Well of course they are." When I realized what had just happened, I experienced a moment of dizziness. I instinctively believed the government of Syria--for which I have no love or post-colonial sentimentalism--against my own. Some readers have noted a "move to the left" on my part, an observation to which there is as much truth as poetry. But I think I'm still pretty reasonable and no stooge for left-wing platitudes. So it struck me as a significant moment and an occasion for regret that I didn't even have to think about which story to believe. Perhaps I'm wrong, and for once our leaders are making an accurate statement about WMD, but any reasonable person has to admit that there is ample grounds for deep, deep skepticism at this point, considering the number of claims that have turned out to be completely empty. Writ large, this kind of skepticism is corrosive to our standing in the world and ultimately to our interests. I am amazed at how many intelligent right-wingers of my acquaintance seem to have given no thought to the consequences of our loss of credibility and moral standing. The reaction of the web 'wingers seems to be that the rest of the world is lame, terrorist-loving, cowardly, and anti-democratic, but even if each of those libels is true, it doesn't change the reality of our situation. Anyone who thinks we can defeat garden-variety terrorism--much less bring about Frum and Perle's messianic "End of Evil"--without lots and lots of help from allies is a fool and gambling with our security. IN NEW HAMPSHIRE NEWS, I will again make some hopeless predictions. I was 0 for 4 in the placement for Iowa; let's see if I can improve this time. Kerry Dean Edwards Clark Lieberman If I'm right about this, Clark is finished (a result I'm not eager to see). Depending on Kerry's margin, which I hope is paper-thin, he will be more or less anointed. Holy Joes saves plane fare and takes the train home from NH instead of last-ditching in South Carolina. I'm going to use my miniscule influence to try to start a campaign to find the anti-Kerry. This differs from the anti-Dean search of the fall in that unlike the Dean-o-phobes, I actually like Kerry and agree with his politics. But that doesn't change the fact that he's DOA against Bush, war heroism--and Bush's personal cowardice-- notwithstanding (the name Max Cleland should ring a bell, especially since he's been campaigning with Kerry for weeks). His 19 years of tax increases, dissents from the death penalty, and so on will be lunchmeat for Karl Rove, at least when he is sated on the blood of unbaptized infants. So who will it be? My choice is Clark, but I suspect he's not long for the race after tonight. There's Edwards, but he will have trouble going on the offensive on foreign policy, which is potentially Bush's biggest weakness. Even Dean, to my mind, would do much better than Kerry. Consider their second languages. But either way we've got one more week--if no credible anti-Kerry emerges on Feb. 3, it's over. posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 10:14 AM Monday, January 26, 2004 BEFORE HIS FEVER OF SEMI-SANITY BREAKS, I've been venturing back to read Andrew Sullivan. And he has a good point today! A propos of Kerry's much-ballyhoed (and over-interpreted, incidentally, although I'm too lazy to provide the links) dismissal of the South, he says: FORGETTING THE SOUTH: There goes South Carolina for Kerry. But the interesting question is: is he right? The cultural divide between the South and the rest of the country is getting pretty yawning. Isn't it equally true that the Republicans have given up on most of the Northeast? If you don't include Florida in the South, Kerry may well be factually correct. How come we never hear any SCLM bleating about how Republicans are "out of touch" or "unelectable" in the Northeast? How come we're the only party that's expected to do regional ass-kissing, and for the region that is by any objective measure, from poverty to illiteracy to out-of-wedlock births, the most cocked-up part of the country? Incidentally, I think that Kerry is a disaster waiting to happen (he really is what the media wrongly said Dean was, a culturally elite Northeastern liberal) and that Sullivan is still mostly nuts--the next post is a link to an argument for regime change in Iran, which I presume we will effect with the half-million testosterone-lubed, pharmeceutically-enhanced supertroops that are billeted somewhere in Sullivan's warped mind--but I thank him for pointing this out. posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 6:42 PM Sunday, January 25, 2004 Addicted to War Crazy times call for crazy writers, and these loony times try my patience. For those of you who find the Bush Administration's cynical manipulation of social issues and public fear for political gain somewhere on the spectrum from baffling to infuriating, I suggest Ryszard Kapuscinski's Imperium. Kapuscinski is one of those journalists who thrives on conflict and misery, and his account of the aging Soviet empire comforted me. Yes, many things distinguish the current U.S. administration from the crumbling USSR, but power-hungry government officials possessed with grand visions of remaking the world in their image have a lot in common, whatever their ideology. In the end, the Soviet party ended with a bitter hangover. I'm sure President Bush can attest to the need, sometimes, to just quit cold turkey. My hope is that the country will get back on the wagon, you know, like in November or something, before it makes a total ass of itself in front of all its friends. posted by Senay | 6:05 PM CALPUNDIT HAS MORE on the topic of Senay's post. This guy is good: Treating Medicare or abortion as a partisan issue is one thing, but treating war the same way is quite another, and in the end it's George Bush who is largely responsible for convincing half the United States and most of the world that terrorism is little more than a GOP talking point. It's likely that someday we will pay a heavy price for this. posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 3:28 PM (Political) Life During Wartime The Bush administration, stuck between a rock and a hard place of its own making, has told the U.N. that "everything is on the table except the June 30 deadline for handing over power to a new Iraqi government." Whatever professed committment U.S. officials had to a gradual transition to representative democracy has now been totally abandonned, a casualty of an increasingly complex political landscape that, if not simplified soon, will provide grist for the mill of a Democratic presidential opponent. Members of the Iraqi Governing Council favor a plan that would hand power to the body on June 30, after which elections would be held. My gut tells me that this is a bad, bad idea. How can an organ like the IGC, which has little popular support and, no doubt, an increasing taste for the power it currently wields, be trusted to set up an open and transparant electoral system? If I were a member of the Council I'd be pretty pleased with my bargaining position. I'm probably an expat that's had years of experience in the West, and I'm probably secular--or at least secular enough to not issue religious decrees regarding the need for direct elections. That has made me an infinitely more appealing partner to the U.S. than most other Iraqis and has also strengthened my hand now that the precious vision of a stable democratic Iraq, a lynchpin of the post-hoc justification for the Iraq war, is threatened. I stand between the the U.S. and a large number of Iraqis who might just want a theocracy. I (Senay) am looking forward seeing the UN's assessment on the feasibility of elections. But if the IGC--even in an expanded form--takes over before elections, direct or indirect, I don't see the hope for a Democratic Iraq that will "light the way for others and help transform a troubled part of the world" getting any brighter. posted by Senay | 11:28 AM Saturday, January 24, 2004 Chicago Diarist: A Mind of Winter After noon mass Friday at St. James Episcopal Cathedral, I took a homeless man to lunch. I say this without pride or self-admiration. For one thing, I spend more on coffee in four days than I do on my semi-annual Lunch-With-a-Bum. For another, I did it because he sort of ambushed me after mass, which is his custom (he attends). One of the problems with Christian charity is that the guilt or responsibility of the giver has much more moral force than the expected benefit of the recipient. I felt bad because my first reaction on seeing him enter the chapel, "damnit, now I have to buy that fucker lunch." So the least I could do was actually do it. "Robert" is not, so far as I can see, an addict. He's articulate, he's clean and well-kept. He seems very devout. This is all just impressions. I'm an easy mark but I'm not stupid, and I know that gentlemen of the highway are the only people more manipulative than political consultants or small children. But better to be duped by a junkie or a layabout than to spurn someone in real need. Over gumbo from the Gold Coast Whole Foods, we talked. So why do you go to St. James in particular? "Well, I come here to church on Sunday. And I don't like Holy Name [Roman Catholic Cathedral]" Why not? Are you not Catholic? "No, I'm Baptist. People at Holy Name look down on you if you're poor. People will come out of mass and call you 'nigger'....I tell you, Ben, if you keep serving the Lord, if no matter what happens, you don't turn your back on the Lord--because there are a lot of people who have everything but their lives are miserable....There are two kinds of people in the world, those that got it and those that don't, and I don't got it but I'm not gonna do anything bad to get it. I got shot in the back three times with a .38 pistol in 1990. I was removing asbestos, making lots of money, but it was my girlfriend that shot me and I thought I would die that day. But the Lord kept me alive for a purpose. I used to make a lot of money, now I live in the shelter. But as long as I got Jesus and I got my health, I'm happy." Later, a colleague told me about a girl in one of her school programs who has sickle-cell anemia. She's often sick, she's in horrible pain when she's cold, and to make matters worse, she's obviously neglected by her foster parents (DCFS has determined that her case is not a high priority, which considering the scope of the disaster they deal with and the scarcity of their resources is not as surprising as it should be). On Thursday they held an eleventh birthday party for her, but because of her awful health and the pain from the cold, she was crying the whole time. Our government has no money to provide her with health insurance or even to staff her school with a nurse, but we'll be damned if she goes to her early grave untutored in the virtues of abstinence. I don't want to use this poor girl to score a political point, but it is simply the case that politics is in some small degree an ethical project and that it has repercussions. This situation and many like it are a serious fucking lapse on our part. On the train home I thought about making a visit to Madison to see an old English teacher who is very ill. Unbidden thoughts of an old flame turned and twisted inside. I thought back to Sunday's baptism--God's love poured out as if tears. The baby started crying. "If only you knew, Sister," I said to myself. "There's more where that came from." Snow was falling on the city I love above all others, and from my standing perch by the door of the el car, I could look almost straight down to the alleys, freshly tracked, below. It reminded me of Wallace Stevens: One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine trees crusted with snow And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun, and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. Today, at least, I did not have a mind of winter. Labels: Chicago, Christianity, diarist, poetry posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 1:01 AMFriday, January 23, 2004 Seeing that Diotima linked to one of my posts has reminded me to talk that site up more. I haven't exactly been scouring the blog world for socially conservative sites, but of what I've seen, theirs is by far the most thoughtful and interesting (check out this takedown of the "young, hip Republicans" thesis one sees these days, and note especially the quote about the Criterion lads). One of the Diotima writers is a friendly acquaintance of mine, and I'm always amazed at how little separates us when it comes to principles (I recall one evening spent swilling first-rate red wine and bitching about libertarians, which is about all the commonality I require these days). But we seem to be just on opposite sides of some ideological Continental Divide, where a difference of a few inches at the apex of abstraction cascades into miles of distance in the lowlands of reality. Also, if anyone is interested in the status of women in NuIraq, they're keeping tabs on it. posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 11:04 AM Wednesday, January 21, 2004 Chicago Diarist Come for the Right-Wing Politics, Stay for the Food In a stolen tie, scuffed shoes, and a jacket that fit a lot better nine years ago, I forced myself through the doors of the Metropolitan Club to eavesdrop on the Federation of Illinois Young Republicans U.S. Senate straw poll. I don't know how the Right has pulled off its PR coup of making liberals out to be "out of touch" with ordinary Americans; it's not that a lot of liberals aren't out of touch, but rather, in what sense is a room full of investment bankers and condo dealers on the 66th floor of the Sears Tower "in touch" with ordinary Americans? By virtue of having the consumption patterns of 10 year olds? A mystery. The only candidate who skipped the Elk Grove Township endorsement meeting to address the young righties was a fellow with the unlikely name of Dr. Chirinjeev Kathuria. He is far too well-spoken, wordy, and Sikh to win this primary, but he is an impressive candidate. Check out his site--he's very accomplished. He didn't register in the top three. The runaway winner was Jack Ryan, reflecting an elaborate GOP suicide ritual in which the party repeatedly nominates guys named 'Ryan' whom the public punishes in equal measure to the corrupt ex-guv. As if to reflect this reality, the stickers his people were wearing spelled his first name in letters large enough to see from space, but his last name was both much smaller and translated into some long-dead runic language. To Ryan's credit, he had the prettiest surrogate, who herself had the good sense to buck the trend and wear a maroon pantsuit. The other proxy speakers were the kind of terse and beefy guys you imagine would be more comfortable pulling a block for a draw play than speaking to a crowd. And lest anyone think, based on reading P.J. O'Rourke perhaps, that the Republicans are the fun party, it should be said that not only was there a cash bar, but it was $7 for a mixed drink. The high point of the evening came when I buttonholed DuPage County District Attorney Joe Birkett at the bar. I enjoy talking to politicians because they have to pretend to know you. I disabused him of that notion but kept him going with a lot of questions. He's a nice guy in person, so much so that I felt pretty bad about voting against him in the 2002 Attorney General election. He had no endorsement to give, but spoke warmly of several of the candidates. "Steve Rauschenberger has the most legislative experience of all of them. Oberweiss has a strong grassroots organization, and Jack Ryan's got tons of money." He didn't mention the dark-horse second place finisher in the poll, Andy McKenna. I don't think of "Andy" as a particularly senatorial name. Rauschenberger took third (after his brother used colored charts showing his endorsement support statewide in his proxy spiel). The lamb chops came away with my endorsement. Even now, I'm thinking I should have stayed longer just for the canapes. The mini-quiches were delicious, and there was some kind of pastry horn filled with savory stuff that was very good. I chatted up a few people with varying results, but the really bad behavior I was not-so-secretly hoping for failed to materialize. I did, however, get some good leads on prime condos. posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 9:38 PM Holy Crap, Part II Among the lesser travesties of last night's SOTU address were those dealing with social issues--drugs and sex. Lesser, but more annoying. It is not just that Bush's tax cuts for the the rich, virtue for the poor social policy is perfectly tailored to the 19th-century social order he seems eager to bring about [Half of your conservative readers are saying, "Hyperbole!" while the other half asks, "what's wrong with that?"--ed. The former group are advised to look at new studies on income inequality (increasing) and social mobility (declining)]. It's not even the to-be-expected hypocrisy of our former party-boy, womanizer president piously urging abstinence and sobriety on others who are less able to afford his vices. Part of what is so damned awful about the abstinence and marriage talk is the fact that a room full of fornicators, adulterers, and divorces stood solemnly to applaud it. But it's not even that. I think it's the implicit idea that the struggle against temptation is uplifting solely for the poor. This is everywhere and always the problem with public moralism--it becomes a way to assuage our own sense of responsibility for the poor by suggesting that their state is due not just to poor judgment, bad luck, or social factors, but to a moral failing on their part. This saves us from any morbid consideration of the rightness of our own social position. Meanwhile, we tend to ignore or minimize similar failings (youthful drug use, infidelity, divorce) in our own social set. Morality, after all, is only for the poor and for Democratic presidents. posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 8:29 AM Tuesday, January 20, 2004 Holy Crap The good people at the Daily Bar and Grill were nice enough to put on CNN without any harangues or threats of legal action on our part, but by the time we got there the race was called. The wildest polls didn't predict such a turnaround. Aside from Gephardt, who would have been finished even if he'd won, the big loser here is obviously Dean. TNR's Johnathan Cohn has much the same view of Dean that I do, and he's got a really good post-mortem on why the governor tanked. Over at Kos, they've got some excellent first-hand reporting on the caucuses and how clueless Dean's people were. This will prove to be a huge liability in the near future. The other big, big loser, unfortunately, is Wesley Clark. It sounds like he could have snagged the AFSCME endorsement if he had been willing to contest Iowa, and he certainly wouldn't have lost all the momentum and attention to the two men who stand to gain most at his expense. posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 8:39 AM Monday, January 19, 2004 Game Day Stronger than any of my past or present addictions is my election-following habit. Like most addictions, I learned it from watching my dad, who would take me with on literature drops for Democratic candidates as soon as I was old enough to walk. So tonight I will be on a quest with TPI Roommate Emeritus PK to find a bar that has CNN on, or failing that, one that can be bullied into doing so. It's Iowa Caucus night, and this one should be a barn-burner. My money is still on Dean, although they sound scared (and frankly, he's been wearing poorly lately as far as I'm concerned--calling Clark a Republican is bad cricket even by my breathtakingly low standards). Kerry could be put over the top, or at least near it, by what sounds like a mafia-style turnout operation. And Edwards is finally getting somewhere thanks to the nice-guy routine, but he may not have the bodies to get where he needs to be. The best web coverage I've seen, by far, is at Daily Kos. They have a number of people posting from Iowa and it's got enough rumors, scuttlebut, and baseless speculation to keep even the most hopeless junkie above water. My completely uninformed guess as to the final standings: Dean Kerry Gephardt Edwards posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 5:16 PM TPI Mailbag Following the Chicago Diarist of Dec. 30th (sorry, archives lost for now): Professor-bashing is popular on the right these days, as I suppose it has been since the days of Aristophanes and the godless commie intellectual Socrates. But we are experiencing a particularly vicious strain of it right now, it seems to me. This is not to be confused with criticism of the faddishness, obscurantism, and cant so common in many post-humanities departments these days; those are typically the critiques of academia by her lovers, not her enemies. Reading Randel's letter, I wondered who the Bowtie Right--conservative profs like Harvey Mansfield, lovers of Plato and so forth--think their friends in the political world are. TPI Roommate Emeritus GW writes, "I like the term "bowtie conservative," but I have never seen Harvey Mansfield wear anything but stylish suits with regular ties and hats. Also, the politicans most identified with bowties(in my mind, anyway) are Paul Simon and Pat Moynihan. I associate Mansfield with fedoras and mischievous smiles." I don't know how I had gotten the incorrect impression, but consider it corrected. In response to this from MLK's day, But I think King has pointed me to the answer. The violence has to stop. No arguments, no rational self-interest, no moral reasoning is going to do the trick. It simply must stop and inspiration--the indwelling of the Spirit--must do it. disputatious reader RP writes: "I think that this is a profoundly anti-intellectual stance, one not reflected in what I've read of King's own writings. The child who thought, quite rightly, that he would be likely to end up murdered or in a boot camp is placed in that situation because other people have set up a society which leads to that end. King believed that inspiration was necessary, sure but not inspiration unguided by moral reasoning or analysis of what people believe to be their rational self-interest. The indwelling of the Spirit is present throughout history, but it hasn't worked in recent U.S. history to change the situation for that youth or those like him. Nor, I believe, is it ever going to, unaided by rational self-interest or moral reasoning." There is probably something to this insistence that my argument is "anti-intellectual," a stance I overstated for effect. Basically, I believe that ending much of the violence to which we're accustomed--be it in the Middle East or in Chicago's ABLA--is going to take commitment to something more than prudential considerations or the results of an intellectual process. It will take some kind of radical re-orientation which I have framed in religious terms. To use the contemporary jargon, I could say I am speaking of a paradigm shift, one reflected in the Chicago Cease-Fire initiative's slogan, "Stop. Killing. People." As ever, thanks for comments and corrections. posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 5:06 PM Friday, January 16, 2004 What if Andrew Sullivan Had Been a Pharisee? (Offered with thanks to William Sloane Coffin, whose broad idea this is, and with apologies for all the times I've made this dumb-assed argument.) SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!...You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets, sages, scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town, so that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly I tell you, all this will come upon this generation." --Jesus of Nazareth This is typical of the rhetorical violence practiced by the religious Left in this country--demonizing and exaggerating, substituting knee-jerk reactions for serious analysis. He calls us a "brood of vipers" when we are plainly not vipers but human beings. And that dark reference to "synagogues"? I think we all know what that's code for. But if Jesus were more concerned about godliness than about impressing his foreign admirers and fellow ideologues, he would turn his critical gaze on Rome. In Rome, polygamy is still common, sacrifices are made to pagan gods, and the government oppresses our people. I think it's suspicious to say the least that he has so little to say about Rome. It just doesn't make any sense. By virtue of his silence on the abominations in Rome, Jesus is objectively pro-pagan imperialism. What could get him to say these things? Sheer anti-Israelism. posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 8:39 PM Thursday, January 15, 2004 Martin Luther King's Day NB: Long, but I hope worth it. In preparation for tonight's peace vigil, I've been reading I Have a Dream: Wrtitings and Speeches that Changed the World, a compilation of King's central work. It has fired me with zeal on a variety of levels: for a religion that is marginal where it isn't dead and for a liberalism that is faithless where it isn't dead. There was a time when faith and a progressive engagement with public life were not only compatible but identical. To be sure, one still finds this unity in many churches, especially urban churches in the mainline denominations. But religion in public life has been dominated by the Right for longer than I can remember, to be sure. My boss lent me William Sloane Coffin's marvelous Credo, which I recommend to anyone who is suspicious of Christianity on liberal grounds or of liberalism on Christian grounds. Both books made me feel tired of being considered a somehow inferior Christian because I don't consider homosexuality an abomination. If you look carefully at public Christianity in this country, it amounts to a profession of certain personal beliefs, and/or a shouted insistence on adherence to certain rules, with varying degrees of Biblical support, regarding abortion, sex, and gays. That's it. Now if you look carefully at the New Testament, you'll find a message that has only a few points of overlap with what goes by the name of Christianity in America. More than anything else, the Gospels are about physical healing. After that, they're about justice, broadly understood. Reading King and Coffin has been exhilirating because it has not been what I expected. It has not been the bloodless, secularized liberal social ethics to which I've becomed accustomed. These writings are truly charged with fervor for the power and presence of the living God, a God who has no use for you if you don't reach out to your neighbor and who has a fearsome judgment waiting for a society that denies any of its citizens their full measure of humanity. "'God will not be mocked'," says Sloane Coffin, quoting the Apostle (himself quoting the OT). "All kingdoms but one will pass away." If you're not nuts, this ought to scare you a hell of a lot more than some crap about dancing, gambling, and fornicating. I am not without hope that a liberal evangelism could return to America's public life. These days even Howard Dean has to talk about Jesus all the damn time, so maybe our voices can eventually compete with those who insist that God wants us to shun gays and cut the capital gains tax. This has been a bit of a screed. The following is my approximation of what I said in front of a mellower crowd at my church this evening. I hope it will flesh out the foregoing (I've edited out some redundancies with the above): It's a refreshing experience to read King's writings, because he's become a pretty banal civic figure. We do our reverence to him at school and in speeches and in our public life, but in doing so we rob him of his depth and his force. The seriousness of his challenge to our society is lost. Two things struck me as I read these speeches. The first was the role of Christianity in King's thought. While the institutional church split on the issue of civil rights, with some for, many lukewarm or neutral, and some opposed, there is no doubt that faith suffused his work in the most intimate way. His political and social views came from the deepest possible sources, from the life and righteousness that God has planted in each one of us. If we are able to connect our political and social goals with this transcendent source, not only will our efforts be more meaningful and enduring, but we will be able to stop worrying about history. We will be free to serve a different Master. Many in my generation view church from a consumer's point of view, much as we might a college or some other institution. We look at what we like and what we can get from it. And the church is about what we receive: what we receive at the Lord's Supper, what we receive in the sacrament of baptism and in the words of grace and healing. But the church is then a place to give. Few of us will be called to follow King's path to martyrdom, but all of us must share in it, participate in it. The church is the community of sacrifice. The second thing that struck me as I read this book--and I don't mean to draw an anaology, by the way, between the Civil Rights movement and the situation in Israel and Palestine, which is would be a crude and false analogy--the second thing that struck me is that nonviolence was not merely a political tactic or a means to certain specific ends, although it was that. But nonviolence was a whole view of the world encompassing every aspect of human life. King himself was merely articulating, tapping into the essential power of the universe--Love--which he did not start and which survives him, which crosses the boundaries of time, place, and context that we find so vexing. Nonviolence is a disposition of the soul. It includes what we think and what we say, whether we are near or far from a conflict. I am not especially politically active on this issue, but I read a lot about it, and I have become appalled by the sheer lack of humanity expressed by partisans of both sides toward the other. I have heard and seen things said of Palestinians and Israelis that I would not hear said about us or about any other people. It is as if they are not fully human. Many of us here are partial to one side or another in this conflict, but we are all called to practice nonviolence in our own engagement in this conflict, even if it's letters to the editor or casual conversation. More than our allegiance to a side, we are called to witness to the love that does not know any distinction between Jew and Arab, Christian and non-Christian, all the distinctions that accuse us. Today I talked with a sixth-grader at a school in a blighted neighborhood where I run an after-school program. He was telling me about getting in trouble, often fights, with older kids. I pushed him a bit on it, wanting more details and fishing for the right thing to say. Eventually he looked down. "I'm gonna end up murdered. Murdered or in a boot camp." Like an idiot, I replied, "You know that there are choices you can make to make that less likely." He nodded, still looking down, and said he had to get some tissue. And it suddenly struck me that he was crying. First, I thought, tend to the crying. But as to what else to say, I didn't know. But I think King has pointed me to the answer. The violence has to stop. No arguments, no rational self-interest, no moral reasoning is going to do the trick. It simply must stop and inspiration--the indwelling of the Spirit--must do it. I want to leave you with this as we continue our worship, from King's address to the marchers on the steps of the Alabama state capitol: My people, my people, listen. (Yes, sir) The battle is in our hands. (Yes, sir) The battle is in our hands in Mississippi and Alabama and all over the United States. So as we go away this afternoon, let us go away more than ever before committed to this struggle and committed to nonviolence. I must admit to you that there are still some difficult days ahead. We are still in for a season of suffering in many of the black belt counties of Alabama, many areas of Mississippi, many areas of Louisiana. I must admit to you that there are still jail cells waiting for us, and dark and difficult moments. But if we will go on with the faith that nonviolence and its power can transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows, we will be able to change all of these conditions. And so I plead with you this afternoon as we go ahead: remain committed to nonviolence. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man. (Yes) I know you are asking today, "How long will it take?" (Speak, sir) Somebody's asking, "How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?" Somebody's asking, "When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?" Somebody's asking, "When will the radiant star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, (Speak, speak, speak) plucked from weary souls with chains of fear and the manacles of death? How long will justice be crucified, (Speak) and truth bear it?" (Yes, sir) I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, (Yes, sir) however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, (No sir) because "truth crushed to earth will rise again." (Yes, sir) How long? Not long, (Yes, sir) because "no lie can live forever." (Yes, sir) How long? Not long, (All right. How long) because "you shall reap what you sow." (Yes, sir) How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. (Yes, sir) How long? Not long, (Not long) because: Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; (Yes, sir) He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; (Yes) He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword; (Yes, sir) His truth is marching on. (Yes, sir) He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; (Speak, sir) He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat. (That's right) O, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant my feet! Our God is marching on. (Yeah) posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 10:22 PM Thank You, Lord The spirit isn't dead yet: From what I've been told, there are people in Atlanta who are refusing to obey police and leave the area so that Bush can go lay a wreath at MLK's crypt without having to actually see anyone. Apparently, CNN, based in Atlanta, is unable to get a camera there. Odd - they always have cameras at Bush's appearances. UPDATE: Corroboration. UPDATE: I'm not praising this because it's raising hell for hellraisin's sake, which I don't much like, or even because it embarrasses and frustrates the Prez, which Evil Ben likes a great deal. It's just that I'm sad to see MLK fall victim to James Joyce Syndrome, where a figure hated and despised in life miraculously becomes a hero and symbol of national unity and pride in death. I mean, if Bush can have a wreath-laying photo-op for MLK's birthday, then the old man really is dead. It's not just that Bush was not, from anything I've read, working very hard to further MLK's agenda at Yale in 1968 (some years after Joe Lieberman, to his credit, was a Freedom Rider). But Bush, as a scion of vast inherited wealth and power and as a president who fought a war of choice is a walking, sort-of talking rebuke to everything King fought for. Give the man his peace, for chrissakes. posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 5:13 PM THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO GO UP A LOT SOONER, but things happen. Anyway, the two of you who read this in time and live in Chicago are invited to tonight's Prayer Vigil for Peace at my church at 7:30pm, a service which I will be leading. As today is the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his commemoration in the Evangelical Lutheran (CAUTION: MAY CONTAIN CHRISTIANITY-LIKE SUBSTANCE) Church in America, I will be reading part of one of his speeches and offering a rare reflection during the liturgy. This I will post on the blog in superior form, punishing headaches permitting. Oh, yeah--the church is at 2500 W. Wilson, one block south and two blocks west of the Western Ave. brown line stop, about two miles down Wilson from Lakeshore, and about four miles east and two blocks south of the Lawrence Ave. exit on I-90 (AK and AO, I've kept hope alive vis-a-vis your crazy ideas). Mapquest here. posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 1:11 PM Wednesday, January 14, 2004 I don't mean to leave the blog again after a long absence, especially on such a sour note, but I am called away. I'll try to post again soon, especially since a northern Wisconsin travelogue is in the works. love, ben UPDATE: We must have been writing at the same time, because I completely missed Senay's post below. Welcome aboard! I'm thrilled. And by the way, if it even needs saying, the Child Welfare agency (DCFS) in Illinois is awful. Everyone blames these crises on bureaucratic mismanagement, institutional culture, and so on, but I've never seen anything about funding--is it so hard to believe that these agencies are starved for necessary cash? posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 6:51 PM Before I jump into the post proper, I want to thank Ben for inviting me into the TPI fold. I'll do mostly political stuff, but every now and then I hope to comment on something largely unrelated to that, like, for example, the brilliance of Bill Murray. I was all set to have this first post highlight the gulf between perception and reality vis a vis the Bush administration's counterterrorism policies. I believe--like other partisans, no doubt--that the Democratic presidential candidates (Dean and Clark in particular) can get in that gulf and shout out some sound policy alternatives. I'll get into this a little bit more later. For now I want to touch on something a little closer to (my) home. I teach math at a charter school in charter school-saturated Arizona--Tucson to be exact. The school serves a lot of "at risk" kids--those affected by poverty, tempted by gangs, behind in basic literacy....Two days ago Governor Janet Napolitano gave her State of the State Address, in which she focused ways to make life a little better for Arizona kids. Two major newspapers, the Arizona Republic and the Arizona Daily Star, ran front page articles on her plan to improve early childhood education, but I was drawn to an earlier section of the speech in which Napolitano laid out a proposal to improve Child Protective Services. She began by highlighting the advancements made thus far: "Case managers began receiving basic tools to do their jobs effectively, like cell phones and car seats for small children." Car seats for small children. I read the line a few times then thought through a few scenarios in which a car seat may have been needed and wasn't avaiable. What happened then? Napolitano charitably described the agency as being in a "state of disrepair," a detached phrase that one should use to describe a toaster, not an body that oversees the welfare of thousands of children. As the rash of high profile cases of neglect and death last year showed, state child welfare around the country agencies need some major financial and bureaucratic overhaul. Car seats are a good first step. posted by Senay | 6:43 PM Who Cast Out the Money-Changers, Again? Glad we cleared this up: In fact, Chase added that God uses the striving spirit in humankind to build His Kingdom. "The capacity of some Christians to work in entrepreneurial ways, to create jobs, to generate wealth can be an enormous gift to the Body of Christ, an enormous gift to society," he explained. He is quick to point out, however, that not all actions are motivated by greed. In fact, the greatest gift of all was given by God, Who selflessly gave us His Son. Balko said ambition is the basis of a capitalistic society, and lack of ambition aided the fall of communism. Scripture also endorses the concept of profit for hard work. I wish they had come right out and said, "the greatest gift of all was given bby God, Who selflessly [shouldn't it be 'Selflessly'? --ed.] gave us His Son, which we should by no means treat as an example." Offered for the consideration of any who deny that the modern evangelical movement has become the New Rome, slavishly devoted to the social status quo and the powers of the world [while the Old Rome has gone some measure toward renewal--ed. Indeed. The wonders of competition!]. Link via--no joke--Ex-Gay Watch, which I found at Tinabell, of all places. posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 6:38 PM Friday, January 09, 2004 Kaddish "The word killeth but the letter giveth life," T.S. Eliot once said in a contentious and insightful inversion of St. Paul. If approached with the proper frame of mind, a strict adherence to ritual, practice, and obligation is supposed to open us to the world, to God, and ultimately to ourselves. I repeatedly thought of Eliot's turn of phrase as I read Leon Wieseltier's Kaddish, a beautiful and demanding journal of mourning, study, faith, and doubt. Wieseltier, TNR's literary editor, is always worth reading because of his scholarly insight, his political sanity, his decency, and not least his absolutely perfect prose style. The book is his account of a year of mourning for his father, focused on the ritual thrice-daily recitation of the Jewish prayer for the dead ("Magnified and sanctified may His great Name be" etc.). It's an arduous obligation in itself and, for the bookish and introspective Wieseltier, it imposes further costs as well. Despite living "undevoutly," as he puts it, he is zealous in the fulfillment of his obligation and it leads to considerable self-examination: "In the morning I told a terrible lie, and when I rose to say kaddish in the evening I was ashamed. This is more than I bargained for." What is liberating about ritual is its absolute separation from us qua us. The kaddish is in a vague way related to the Sanctus of the Latin mass ("Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might; Heaven and earth are full of your glory; Hosanna in the highest"), and the affinity is more than linguistic: the kaddish famously does not mention the dead, and the Sanctus doesn't mention the human race at all. These prayers seem to suggest that nothing of ours, up to and including our humility, is in itself of the least interest when scaled against the Divine. The Letter of the Law is an assurance of something entirely outside of ourselves, something that survives us. It is perhaps a way of arguing ourselves out of death. Starting with Luther, who was very Catholic in other respects, Protestants have rejected systematic prayer for the dead. In the views of the Evangelical, Reformed, and Baptists faiths, there is no gray area between eternal life and eternal damnation (or, if you prefer, nothingness), one of the many reasons that lapsed protestants are so much less interesting than lapsed Jews or Catholics. Jewish and Roman Catholic prayers for the dead strike a compromise with death, embodying a lack of certainty about one's eternal destination that is easily secularized into an act of commemoration rather than one of intercession. This I don't mind. In fact, I departed from my generally orthodox Lutheranism in the year following my maternal grandfather's death, when I prayed for him at the appropriate moment in the Anglican mass about once a week. It was, I think, less out of a sense that I could be of any help to him now than an unwillingness to let him go entirely. As long as I was doing some small thing to save him from the holocaust of forgetting that our society indulges in so carelessly, death hasn't completely won. In documenting his fulfillment of the kaddish obligation, Wieseltier explores the history of the ritual, its theological foundations and implications, and its interpretations over the ages. Thus death--both in the concrete case of his father and in the abstract--begins an excursion into almost all the important aspects of life. At times Wieseltier seems to be aping the gnomic style of Pascal's Pensees, which I find annoying (after all, Pascal died with his notes in that condition). A lot of his observations go nowhere, and that's just fine. He launches a full-out assault on philosophical materialism at one point, which is more than fine (I'll be copping his arguments for years). It's hard to resist quoting many choice bits of the book here, but they will lose their force. I can't recommend it highly enough. The ending in particular was striking to me. As the headstone is unveiled, he writes, "there stood facing us the strangest thing I have ever seen: a stone that said 'Wieseltier'." For an instant this puzzled me, because I grew up walking the rows of Bone Lake cemetary, where Dueholms have occupied plots for a hundred years. I was accustomed to stones bearing my name that were worn to near-unreadability and ones that were quite new. I can visit my dead whenever I wish. Wieseltier's aunts, uncles, and cousins were slaughtered in a ravine in Poland. There are no stones for them. They are memoralized in word and prayer. * * * Thanks to some liquor-fueled prompting from Aaron, I've started investigating the blogs that link to me. I don't know, for example, how Tinabell found me. She seems to be right-winger and a papist to boot [Some sarcasm is in order here --ed. Speak in haste, clarify at leisure!], but her site is really wonderful, especially the paintings that she highlights. Whetstone, a crystalline mind who may actually redeem the whole concept of rock criticism, also has a link. Thanks, bro. A guy in Texas named Len has a link from his Dean-focused site, too, which he probably got from Billmon, the first and biggest blogger to link here. Thanks for linking. I perhaps should have done a post like this in October when we had our one-year mark, but I also want to thank everyone who comes and reads this site. I have resisted the urge to do the site-tracker thing and find out how many of you there are and how you get here, but Aaron has given me the impression that there are a fair number of you--certainly concentrated among the populations of current or former residents of Madison, Wisconisn, Deep Springs, California, or Leiden, Netherlands. Drop me a line, especially if we've never shared an address. Um, sorry about the papist crack--I like Catholics. posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 3:49 PM Thursday, January 08, 2004 JOE LIEBERMAN WOULD BE THE IDEAL MAN to lead a demoralized and purposeless Democratic Party to electoral disaster this year, a fact that has not prevented the rapidly degenerating New Republic from endorsing him. Shit, if they wanted to make an entirely irrelevant and hopeless endorsement, they could have picked me [You don't support every war ever. --ed. True.] Anyway, I have some respect for Lieberman's views, but he is disloyal to his party, he is patronizingly sanctimonious in rhetoric but blandly liberal on substance with regard to social issues (he must think social conservatives are dumber than I do), he offers no critique of the major dangers facing us (Pakistan and Saudi Arabia), he picks his view of Bill Clinton based on convenience, he was useless as a committee chairman in confronting the Administration, and his campaign skills inspire pity. We're Democrats, so it's okay to have someone like him in the Senate. We don't bully, bribe, and humiliate our members into conformity. But making him our standard-bearer would be tantamount to giving up. Let's not do that just yet, ok? I know I promised no politics, but this was just ridiculous. UPDATE: The dissenting opinions in favor of Dean and Clark--who, in contrast to Lieberman, could conceivably actually win the nomination--are both worth reading. posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 11:31 AM Wednesday, January 07, 2004 Chicago Diarist Culture Vulture A traumatic return to my job after 16 blissful days of leisure has kept blogging at bay, but I've rushed hurriedly through the stages to acceptance and I'm ready to pontificate again. Huzzah! During my break, I finally broke down and entered the gaping maw of twenty-something urban solipsism by purchasing a portable CD player. In principle I had been suspicious of the act of cutting oneself off from the aural stimuli of the city, which over time has a greater effect on one's consciousness than daily dosages of hallucinogens )back when I dabbled in poetry, I wanted to name my sure to be only book Love, Death, and Shit I Heard on the Bus.) In order to preserve some dignity, I have stuck to listening to classical music exclusively. From my meagre and pedestrian collection I have favored a disc of Beethoven's 3rd and 7th symphonies. I don't know how long it had been since I had heard Beethoven through earphones, but it was too long by far. Suddenly, the real world became Beethoven World, which looks deceptively like its real cousin but is far more heroic. "I salute thee, O #81 Lawrence Avenue bus, chariot of the masses!" I felt like saying as I embarked. "I shall take my seat here without shame among the Gentlemen of the Road as thou bearest us to yonder Blue Line Rapid Transit station!" Mozart's Great Mass in C minor, on the other hand, makes the outside world about as boring as it can be. Since I was a kid, Mozart's music has been like crack: the pleasure hits me immediately, and within five minutes all I can think about is how to get more. This grim, cold, painful back-to-work Monday, the "Jesu Christe" and "Cum sancto spiritu" sections of the "Gloria" reduced me to a stupor, not that it normally takes much at that hour. So it's funny that just as I am patronizing the classical recording industry more than usual, I read that it's dying. It is good, at some point in one's life, to fall in love with something beautiful that is dying [Although if you love nothing that is coming to be, you will become ridiculous--ed.] This is not to say that the industry itself was beautiful, but only that its products were. And it is also not to say that we can't get lifetimes of aesthetic bliss from the great recordings already made. But the end of new recordings is merely the harbinger of the end of the old ones. It is not inappropriate to mourn. I thought of this after leaving Epiphany mass at Chicago's most elaborately Anglo-Catholic Episcopal parish. High mass at this church is an incredible experience. Almost all the liturgy is sung--no small part of it in Latin by the chant choir. I object to some of the language of sacrifice during the eucharist (the mass is something we receive, not something we give) and the chancel-prancing was a little bit much even for me, but I would guess that it's much the way a mass looked, smellled (plenty of incense!), and sounded five centuries ago. And remarkably, despite the fact that it was a Tuesday evening and the windchill was about -15, there was a pretty good crowd. A pretty good graying crowd; there were some in their thirties and no children that I could see. One hears rumors of a high church revival and I deeply hope they are true. But I fear that this, too, will largely become a memory outside of the Orthodox church and the reactionary-sentimentalists in the Roman Catholic church. As I look forward to the beginning of my seminary career, I fear that one day in the foreseeable future, all it will take to be a liturgical traditionalist will be a refusal to use PowerPoint during a service. George Steiner describes densely allusive "poet-critics" Eliot, Pound, and Lowell as "erudite tourists racing through the museum falleries and libraries of Europe on a mission of inventory and rescue before closing time." Today these items are on remainder (I got a stunning Berlin Philharmonic recording of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis for seven bucks used and a complete Jowett translation of Plato, among many other things, free outside of Powell's). In the long run, I suppose I should have faith that what is great will survive. Either culture does not need us, or we do not need it. But I don't have this faith, and would be foolish to--think only of the huge majority of Aeschylus that is lost forever. Which gets me to revise my principles about the portable disc player. What Homer (of Springfield, not Ionia) called "stupid reality" will persist indefinitely, but Beethoven World may not. posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 4:59 PM Sunday, January 04, 2004 Governor Pot, Mrs. Kettle on Line 2 "Often those who cloak themselves in a cape of religiosity happen to be some who are the biggest cutters," [Democratic Michigan Governor Jennifer] Granholm said. "Now, some of that can balance out. But when you get to cutting the services for the least of these -- in the 25th chapter of Matthew in the 37th verse the Lord says, 'Whatsoever you do to the least of these, so also you do unto me' -- that's when I question whether somebody is really living out the faith that they profess." Skubick responded by saying he thought Granholm would be criticized for the remark, but she said she simply hoped that everyone in Lansing would "keep those values in mind . . . through the budget process." Granholm's critics were quick to pounce. "It is quite arrogant for the governor to cloak her views on balancing the budget in religious terms in order to demonize her political opponents," said Betsy DeVos, chairman of the Michigan Republican Party... posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 5:57 PM Saturday, January 03, 2004 "I think George Bush is going to win in a walk," Robertson said on his "700 Club" program on the Virginia Beach-based Christian Broadcasting Network, which he founded. "I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be like a blowout election in 2004. It's shaping up that way." Robertson told viewers he spent several days in prayer at the end of 2003. "The Lord has just blessed him," Robertson said of Bush. "I mean, he could make terrible mistakes and comes out of it. It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad, God picks him up because he's a man of prayer and God's blessing him." We seriously need to shut up about how backward the Islamic world is with regard to religion and the state as long as this guy has a the bully pulpit he has. This is insanity, especially the last sentence (although I think he's confusing God with the Wall Street Journal editorial page). posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 12:07 PM Friday, January 02, 2004 The New Propriety A professor named Laura Kipnis has an excellent article on Slate about moves at universities to ban all romance, or even hints thereof, between professors and students. While I am no admirer of this practice, I am relieved to see Professor Kipnis's perfectly sane view being published: In the olden days when I was a student (back in the last century) hooking up with professors was more or less part of the curriculum. (OK, I went to art school.) But that was a different era, back when sex—even when not so great or someone got their feelings hurt—fell under the category of experience, rather than injury and trauma. This dichotomy--experience versus injury and trauma--is a useful one for understanding how bathetically solicitous colleges are of the feelings of students it clearly doesn't consider adults. We have moved so much of life onto the "injury" side of the ledger that little remains to that lovely, morally neutral category of experience. The University of California--always progressive on these issues--has proposed a ban on dating not just between professors and current or prospective students, but between all professors and all students (including, presumably, a liaison between a 32-year-old literature professor and a 26-year-old med student): Feminism has taught us to recognize the power dynamics in these kinds of relationships, and this has evolved into a dominant paradigm, the new propriety. But where once the issue was coercion or quid pro quo sex, in institutional neo-feminism the issue is any whiff of sexuality itself—or any situation that causes a student to "experience his or her vulnerability." (Pretty much the definition of sentience, I always thought.) "The unequal institutional power inherent in this relationship heightens the vulnerability of the student and the potential for coercion," the California code warns, as if any relationship is ever absent vulnerability and coercion. The perfectly logical conclusion to this sort of thinking is a situation in which no person may have any sway over another in matters of love and sex. Beautiful women must wear disfiguring clothes. Suave men must act as total boors. There is, of course, a name for this state of affairs: Saudi Arabia. It's fascinating to read about Saudi Arabia because it has the most stringent laws on just about everything, all of which are so widely flouted as to cleave the society in two. Hypocrisy in itself is not the worst thing in the world, but the kind of hypocrisy that comes from legislating the impossible (celibate all-male priesthood, anyone?) borders on madness. What worries me about this is that between the sexual prudery of the Christian Right and the power prudery of the feminist Left, there will not be much of a vocal constituency for sanity on these sorts of issues. This is not to say that conflicts of interest, harrassment, and sexual quid-pro-quo shouldn't be punished, but until we can find synthetic alternatives to professors, they're going to sleep with students. Thankfully, even at the odious workshops that attend these kinds of reforms, there are glimpses of hope: Everyone seemed grimly determined to play along—probably hoping to get out by cocktail hour—until we were handed a printed list of "guidelines." No. 1: "Do not make unwanted sexual advances." Someone demanded querulously from the back, "But how do you know they're unwanted until you try?" (OK, it was me.) David seemed oddly flummoxed by the question, and began anxiously jangling the change in his pants pocket. "Do you really want me to answer that?" he asked. Another person said helpfully, "What about smoldering glances?" Everyone laughed. A theater professor guiltily admitted to complimenting a student on her hairstyle that very afternoon (one of the "Do Nots" on the pretest)—but wondered whether as a gay male, not to have complimented her would be grounds for offense. He started mimicking the female student, tossing her mane around in a "notice my hair" manner. People shouted suggestions for other pretest scenarios for him to perform. Rebellion was in the air. Someone who studies street gangs whispered to me, "They've lost control of the room." posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 2:04 PM |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
||||
|
|||||
