The League of David

A Year Ago Today

A year ago today my father died.

If someone is near the St Andrew's Cemetary in Salem, VA, please place a flower at his stone for me.

I can't be there in person, but my heart has never left.

Two Thoughtful Reads

The Oneida Experiment:  What We Have Discovered About Not-So-Free Love
by Frederica Mathewes-Green
From the November 2002 issue of Touchstone Magazine.

Excerpt:

In the middle of the room there was a woodburning stove. The small iron door   was open on this chilly day, and the red flames could be seen leaping within   as if in time to music. For there was music, too, a marching song, and the little   girls who circled the stove marched around it in time. The girls were not happy.

Each girl was holding in her arms her favorite doll. These were pretty dolls   with painted faces, who usually wore fancy clothes reflecting current fashion.   But today the clothes had been left in a pile, and the wax figurines were exposed,   hard and bare. One by one, each girl marched up to the open door of the stove.   One by one, each girl threw her doll into the “angry-looking flames.”

The phrase is that of Harriet Worden, a woman who participated in the sacrifice   that day and recalled the painful event long after. It was 1851, in the utopian   community of Oneida, in upstate New York. What was being burned up that day   was an unseemly trait that their teachers had observed developing in the little   girls of the commune. The dolls had become too important to the children; these   were frivolous toys, indicating an affection for worldly finery and vain display.   Women of Oneida were expected to bob their hair rather than fuss it to flattering   styles, and to wear efficient clothing rather than long, sweeping gowns. They   were to work in the factories alongside the men, while men took their equal   share of labor in the kitchen. Pretty dolls were a tantalizing, subversive distraction.

Augustine the Bishop in the Light of New Documents
By Peter Brown
For the Center of Theological Inquiry

Excerpt:

Yet, despite Possidius’ efforts, not all of Augustine’s “living   voice” would be heard, by all persons all the time, in subsequent centuries.   Augustine’s formal works had been carefully placed in order by Augustine   himself, in his Retractationes, and by Possidius, in the Indiculum   attached to the Life of Augustine. These formal, theological works were   regularly copied throughout the Middle Ages and were published, in their entirety,   in the great printed editions of early modern times. Our knowledge of Augustine   the theologian comes from them. But at the time, in his own lifetime, the letters   and sermons of Augustine were just as important for his activity as a Catholic   bishop. To be a preacher, a seminator verbi, a “sower of the Word   of God” to his congregation, and not to be a theologian, was the job description   of any late Roman bishop. Augustine was no exception. It is his letters and   sermons that take us to the heart of his life as a Christian leader in North   Africa. These letters and sermons were also listed in Possidius’ Indiculum.   But they were not copied as systematically or as regularly in later centuries.   The collection of letters and sermons that appeared in the printed editions   of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries represent only a proportion of those   which Augustine had originally written and preached. Although modern scholars   have used these, as the basis of their study of Augustine as a bishop, they   have always known this fact. They had before them all the formal works   of Augustine; but not all the letters and sermons. Many other sermons and letters   had appeared in the original list given in Possidius’ Indiculum.   Some of these were known through references, even through extracts, in medieval   works. But they had not been included in the printed editions. They still awaited   discovery.

Why Read A Review of a Movie I'm Not Going to See?

Because it's funny.

If you want to learn something about the Crusades, stay as far away from Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven as you can. There's more historical accuracy in The Lord of the Rings, which took place in a world that never existed. On the other hand, if you just want to see some big medieval battle scenes and eat popcorn while absorbing Scott's obvious message, then this one's for you.

Kingdom of Heaven is the story of Christian zealots inciting a war against the innocent Muslims because their bloodthirsty God wants them to kill infidels. Sound like a familiar lament from the Left? The peace-loving knights (what?!?) who happen to live in Jerusalem value their truce with Saladin's forces, and are horrified by the villainous fanatic Guy de Lusignan, leader of the religious order of the Knights of the Temple (Templars), who schemes to stir up trouble and sieze power.

If you don't want to know any details about the movie, this is as far as you should go. There will be "spoilers" ahead, although there's nothing to spoil... unless you're the type who would have been upset at finding out the ship was going to sink at the end of Titanic, or that the Japanese were going to attack in Pearl Harbor.

                                                            

Tom Shales' 1999 review of The Phantom Menace for NPR is still the classic good review of a bad movie.

Break, Blow, Burn

In Break, Blow, Burn, Camille Paglia does something novel.  She reads a poem.  She reads it closely and then she writes about it.  Why is this so novel?  Close reading is no longer taught in undergraduate and graduate humanities courses.  Philistines long ago usurped the discipline of close reading, essential to the appreciation of poetry.  They replaced it with identity politics and something called poststructualism, a worthless mishmash of neo-Marxism, relativism, French deconstruction, and an unbelievably opaque syntax of half-words, and endless, incomprehensible sentences.  And like everything else that Philistines touch, academic training in the study of literature has become an irrelevant exercise in posing. 

As Paglia writes in the Introduction,

"Poststructuralism and crusading identity politics led to the gradual sinking in reputation of the premiere literature departments, so that by the turn of the millennium they were no longer seen, even by the undergraduates themselves, to be where the excitement was on campus. One result of this triumph of ideology over art is that, on the basis of their publications, few literature professors know how to 'read' any more - and thus can scarcely be trusted to teach that skill to their students.  Cultural studies, for example, despite is auspicious name, has been undone by its programmatic Marxism and is a morass of misreadings or overreadings."

I think I was part of the last generation of  English majors trained in close reading, and so I didn't see much novelty in this book.  However, I did find her insights clever, interesinting, and sometimes striking.  It inspired a certain nostalgia for the kind of reading my professors used to do in front of class.

The book is a "walk the walk" statement.  Dr. Paglia  has made a career confronting the Philistines of academia. But, she doesn't just criticize.  Through her work, she shows Philistines what good criticsm is all about.  And they hate her for it.

On Being Contrary

In a recent issue of new magazine The New Pantagruel, James V. Schall writes this:

A student recently sent me a copy of Being a Dog Is a Full-Time Job (Andrews and McMeel, 1994). Charlie Brown and Linus are on a teeter-totter. As he rises to its height, Charlie, rather panic-stricken, yells, “It’s her!” A confused Linus responds, “Her who?” Up again, Charlie, smitten, explains, “Look, it’s the little red-haired girl!” They both get off the teeter-totter. Charlie makes a deal with Linus, “Do me a favor. Go over and talk to her. Say you know me. Try to find out if she likes me.” This is the great question – “does someone else like us?” Do they “know that we exist or care?” We next see Linus determinedly walking towards the girl as Charlie cunningly tells him, “I’ll hide here behind this trash thing and listen.”

In the next scene, we see a pleased Charlie duly hidden but listening. “Hi there. My name is Linus. I believe we have a friend in common.” Charlie’s mood suddenly becomes more sober as Linus tries to describe him to the little red-haired girl, who evidently has never heard of him. “His name is Charlie Brown. He sits across the room from you in school…. No, by the windows, near the pencil sharpener. No, in the last row.” Charlie’s face droops even lower as Linus continues his description of him. “Well, kind of blond, I guess. No, you’re thinking of Mike. No, not as tall.”

By this time Charlie has slumped down into a kind of stupor, but he still hopelessly listens for some spark of encouragement. “A shirt with sort of a jagged stripe. No, not John, John is a lot bigger.” Finally, Charlie is flat on his back as he helplessly hears the final words that prove that the little red-haired girl has no clue about who he is, has never so much as noticed him, and does not “like” him.

“Sort of a round face,” Linus continues. “Doesn’t ring a bell, huh? No, Brown. Like in town. Just doesn’t ring a bell, huh? Nothing, huh?” In the end, we only hear Charlie, now reduced to “nothing,” muttering forlornly to himself, “I can’t stand it!”

That may be the saddest piece of modern literature I ever read.  I cannot stand it either.

Ha!

The voice of modern woman

In her new book, Break, Blow, Burn, Camille Paglia chooses several poems and poets I didn't know, including Rochelle Kraut's My Makeup.

My Makeup

on my cheeks I wear
the flush of two beers

on my eyes I use
the dark circles of sleepless nights
to great advantage

for lipstick
I wear my lips

Dr. Paglia reads this as an expression of sexual confidence and "modernist anxiety."   I see the confidence, but it's not the confidence of the "liberated" woman.  It's the personal confidence of the worldly woman: She Who Has Graduated from the School of Hard Knocks. 

The first image that came to me was not of a young confident woman who flaunts her "dark circles of sleepless nights" as "trophies of women's hard-won freedom to roam and loiter."  Instead, I saw the aging aunts and cousins' wives from the big immigrant family parties of my childhood.   They would sit together at the picnic table, their costume jewelry clinking against their glasses of mixed drinks, High Balls and Manhattans.  I remember one aunt made a statement by drinking beer (Schaefer, Schlitz, or Budweiser, of course).   

Some wore a lot of makeup; others none at all.  Most had no formal higher education, but they were all street-smart and confident women.  Smartasses, was the word their husbands used.  After a few High Balls, they'd get downright raunchy, smoking like chimneys, swearing like sailors and barking orders to their husbands.

"Hey, Louie, can you cook this goddamn bergha.  It's so fuckin' raw, I'm gonna milk it tomorrow mornin'."

When I think of today's "liberated" woman I have the image of a narcissistic, bulimic loner, drinking a low- carb beer and wondering why the latest boyfriend wouldn't call even though she gave him a blowjob last Saturday.

God, what happened?

A Philistine Says Good-Bye

Today, in the San Francisco Chronicle, Keith Thompson, former Philistine, says goodbye to his tribe, and joins the rest of us:

I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives  --  people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere  --  reciting all the ways Iraq's democratic experiment might yet implode.

As a former Philistine I can confirm Thompson's slow process of  realization:

My estrangement hasn't happened overnight. Out of the corner of my eye I watched what was coming for more than three decades, yet refused to truly see. Now it's all too obvious. Leading voices in America's "peace" movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-suffering Third World country because they hate George W. Bush more than they love freedom.

But there is always a moment -- the proverbial straw -- that makes it almost impossible to cling to whatever dimming shadows of good are left in the Left.  For Thompson, it was the January 30th vote.  For me it was the Left's -- especially feminists' -- inability to see anything good in our liberation of Afghanistan.  Eight years of Taliban horror, and all of the stern proclamations and U.N. condemnations did nothing.  It wasn't the Western academic feminists who liberated Afghan women, it was American Special Forces soldiers.   For this, Philistines will never forgive our military.  And for this, I will never forgive Philistines.

Philistines are incapable of giving their country -- especially their servicemen -- any credit, of any kind for anything that resembles good work.  They would rather reject reality all together, and manufacture failure, than embrace a good and noble cause. 

Don't worry, Keith, your're not alone.  Besides, you can still shop at Whole Foods.

By the way, Thompson's article proves a theory I've long held: there's often more eloquence in the parting than in the coming together:

Leftists who no longer speak of the duties of citizens, but only of the rights of clients, cannot be expected to grasp the importance (not least to our survival) of fostering in the Middle East the crucial developmental advances that gave rise to our own capacity for pluralism, self-reflection, and equality. A left averse to making common cause with competent, self- determining individuals  --  people who guide their lives on the basis of received values, everyday moral understandings, traditional wisdom, and plain common sense  --  is a faction that deserves the marginalization it has pursued with such tenacity for so many years.

All of which is why I have come to believe, and gladly join with others who have discovered for themselves, that the single most important thing a genuinely liberal person can do now is walk away from the house the left has built. The renewal of any tradition that deserves the name "progressive" becomes more likely with each step in a better direction.

Watt? Not Worried.

I live for the fluid language and profound insights of my favorite Philistine, Barbara "Fetus Hater" O'Brien.  This week she's decided that former Secretary of the Interior James Watt -- old and long retired -- deserved to be slandered by Bill Moyers back in February, because, well, he banned the Beach Boys from playing at the 1983 national July 4th celebration:

I want to begin this post by reminding readers what a flaming idiot James Watt, Secretary of the Interior in Ronald Reagan's first term, truly is. For example, in 1983 he banned the Beach Boys from the 4th of July celebration on the Washington Mall, saying rock'n' roll bands attract the "wrong element." You've got to admit only an idiot would have done that.

Powerline has more on Bill Moyers' careless February slander.  In summary: Moyers published an op-ed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, raging against the Christian Right.  In it he attributes a slanderous quote to Sec. Watt.  The attribution was, as you may guess, false.  Moyers did one of those Philistine "apologies."  James Watt responds today in the Philistine, er, Washington Post. 

O'Brien doesn't understand what the big deal is about falsely attributing a quote to someone, since the "quote, or variations thereof, is widely attributed to him." She's angry (as usual) because Watt is defending himself:

Today the Washington Post embarrasses itself by publishing an op ed by Mr. Watt. This nearly unreadable [unlike her writing -- ed; she's wrong, by the way] screed claims that "the religious left" is out to destroy "the Christian community," which makes one wonder what religion the "religious left" subscribes to. They can't all be Jewish, and I know they aren't all Buddhists. I would have noticed.

James Watt actually does name the leftist organization (National Council of Churches) he thinks is leading an attack on the Christian Right.  He also identifies individuals who are leading their cause against the Christian right.  He also says nothing of specific jewish organizations.  O'Brien's implication that Watt is anti-semitic is the kind of low-life sneering you'd expect from a meager mind posing as an intellectual.

None of this intellectual dishonesty is surprising.  What's interesting is how such a liberal and opened-minded woman can be so filled with blind ignorance and intolerance for Christians:

There have been a number of heinous assaults on the Body of Christ in recent years, led by people like James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson. The damage these men have done to Christianity is beyond calculation. I suspect it will take generations for the Christian community to rid itself of their pernicious influence, if it ever does. I believe James Watt also owes the Christian community an apology, but as he appears to be in an advanced state of senility (judging by his WaPo op ed) I suppose that will never happen.

For someone who calls herself a Buddhist, O'Brien's breathless concern for the Body of Christ seems out of place.   The contradictions are many and tedious.  They're also fun!  I look forward to many posts to come on my favorite Philistine.  She's a gift that keeps on giving.

Remember, folks, this angry old woman from...wherever.. is some of the best the Philistines have to offer.  For this reason, I'm not worried.

I Don't Know Where I Found This..

but it's cute.

The World's Most Depressing Blog

Catholic Church Conservation.