Monday, April 26. 2010
Far be it for me to be a profound social critic but the brouhaha over the censoring of Southpark’s depiction of Mohammed reminds me of the musical Cabaret.
A central progression in Cabaret is the audience transforming from enjoying the subversive cultural progressivism to its jolly enjoying the triumph of Nazism.
Southpark has led in revealing the inanities and contradictions of almost everything. Yet, it became too much for Comedy Central to allow Southpark to depict Mohammed and Comedy Central also censored Southpark's defiance of self-censorship to avoid the wrath of ideologic gangsters.
Comedy Central features the funniest and the most vile forms of comedy, never before to my knowledge censoring itself in targeting or revealing cultural inanities and contradictions or denigrating cultural pieties.
Yet, now Comedy Central reveals itself in allowing the takeover of its Cabaret by thugs, becoming itself complicit.
Comedy Central reveals itself as enjoying the profits of decadence until its lack of spine collapses upon itself. Comedy Central transforms from the presenter of any irreverence to become the channel of self-imposed cultural decadence that refuses to resist and indeed joins in capitulation to thugs.
Are we to be that Cabaret audience?
Other takes, from Memeorandum:
Ross Douthat / New York Times:
Not Even in South Park? — Two months before 9/11, Comedy Central aired an episode of “South Park” entitled “Super Best Friends,” in which the cartoon show's foul-mouthed urchins sought assistance from an unusual team of superheroes. These particular superfriends were all religious figures …
My internet discovery of the day: The Internet Bird Collection. Videos and photos, worldwide, by category. They are up to 40,000 videos thus far.
Ed. note: This is a wonderful resource. I just perused their videos of the Parulidae (New World Warblers). Fantastic. Identifying many of the female warblers remains just as tough for me as ever, I am sorry to say. When they are flitting through the treetops, I am lucky to get a glimpse. For example, below, female Tennessee Warbler, via CLO:
I mumbled briefly about Positivism last week, alluding to its potential as a fuel for hubris. No philosophy is the "cause" of human evil and destructiveness, but Human Nature is. Pure rationalism (if there is any such thing) is a frightening way to run the world, or to run anything.
This weekend, in timely fashion, I stumbled on a review of Grayling's latest screed against irrationalism by the esteemable John Gray. One quote from the thoughtful review:
Reading Grayling, it is hard to resist the impression that he believes Western civilization would be much improved if it did not include the Judeo-Christian inheritance. Absurd as it is, there is nothing new in such a claim. It is one of the most venerable clichés of Enlightenment thinking, and Ideas that Matter is a compendium of such dated prejudices. When Grayling condemns religion on the grounds that “a theory that explains everything, and can be falsified by nothing, is empty,” he takes for granted that religions are primitive theories, now rendered obsolete by science.
 Prothero in The Globe: Separate truths. It is misleading — and dangerous — to think that religions are different paths to the same wisdom
American Self-immolation. Pravda
Steyn: Don’t worry about Iran’s nuclear program, but if you meet a tea partier waving some placard about the national debt, try not to catch his eye.
Kling: What I think about financial reform
Climate scientist sues newspaper for 'poisoning' global warming debate. So he admits that there is a debate?
The Five myths about green energy
The White House wants churches to advance its climate change agenda.
Just when you thought puff peces couldn't get more ridiculous: Obama loves pie
Q and O: Immigration and the welfare state
Jonah: What Kind of Socialist Is Barack Obama? h/t, Never Yet Melted
Republicans Threatening Congressional Seats Long Held by Democrats
John at Powerline: The Paranoid Style of American Liberalism
Just One Minute on The NYT:
For heaven's sake - is it asking too much of Times editors to reflect for two seconds before they reflexively blurt out their current PC response? OK, we all understand that when the next case comes the Times will insist that it is completely different and that the living, breathing Constitution can solve the next problem on the exhale.
Most Risks Hide in Plain Sight - WSJ.com
Benjamin Graham, perhaps the most astute analyst Wall Street has ever produced, was once asked whether he thought disclosure was adequate. Graham replied that the quantity of disclosure "makes me ill." He added, "I don't know if there is any solution … I suppose [a prospectus] would have to say in big red-letter words, THIS [SECURITY] IS NOT WORTH WHAT IT IS SELLING FOR. I don't know if that would make any difference either … somebody [would just say], 'What the hell, it is going up anyway.'"
You can lead an investor to disclosure, but you can't make him think.
Sunday, April 25. 2010
 I posted this early Sunday morning:
Farm chores for my aging parents regularly pull me away from church, but this morning we trek down to NYC to meet the pup at Gascogne for a cheap brunch (I'll have the mussels - I always do when they are on a menu - and a healthy and organic Bloody Mary) before treating her to Paul Taylor ll's final day at the Joyce.
Mrs. BD is a big Taylor fan. Our blog pal Neoneo loves Taylor too. Despite being married to a dancer/choreographer for about 100 years, I remain a bit of a dance agnostic. I always did like Merce Cunningham, though, and Meredith Monk. Very quirky.
Follow-up:
It was a wonderful program from the Paul Taylor ll (the 80 year-old Taylor's 6-person touring company), but I would have been fine just seeing Esplanade. In fact, just one dance is really all my brain can process in one day. Powerful stuff, Esplanade. Substantial. Recklessly physical and driven by physical momentum, romance, and gravity and, as I sometimes say about some dances, a poem without words - or like a dream. Mrs. BD could discuss it endlessly; how his Graham background evolved and how ballet training is essential to modern dance, etc., but I lack the skill, the words, and the knowledge. The dance is in my head, though, along with the Bach.
Brunch was good, too. Free Bloody Marys. And it is always a treat to spend some time with the Bird Dog pupette Wall Streeter who returned to work after the performance. Those folks work on weekends, keeping the engines of capitalism humming so that people have money to support Paul Taylor.
I have never seen the TV show South Park, but I have heard that it is clever in a goofy, sophomoric and irreverent sort of way.
You have probably heard that fanatics have threatened Comedy Central about South Park's irreverence towards Mohammed (pbuh). Comedy Central folded like a cheap camera. Hence South Park now has the Prophet appearing in a bear costume, and as Santa Claus. Kinda funny, if you can take a joke. Doubt they can.
As Kate observes:
The "extremist" is the one with the death threat.
The "moderate" is the one who explains what you've done to deserve it.
If you want to have religion in the world today, you have to be big enough to take some teasing and/or annoyance from those who don't get it. If you have a religion with vocal murderous and hateful people in it today, teasing is the least one should expect.
But Everybody Draw Mohammed Day is just teasing.
I stumbled onto Myron Magnet's fine 2003 essay of the above title. Magnet says that good writing is about higher and deeper truths than "knowledge," "information," or "data" can provide, and I agree of course.
One quote:
What’s wanted is wisdom: the ability to see into the heart of things. This is the kind of knowledge that Plato describes so poetically in that most literary of all philosophical passages, the allegory of the cave: the knowledge that sees through the world of appearances to the Truth, of which the appearances are but an emanation—a knowledge that requires a lifetime of reason and study to attain but that comes finally in a flash of intuition, because the Truth is in us, in an inner nature we can glimpse by introspection and intuition, as well as in the world. And this is the knowledge—a knowledge, one might say, that resides in our souls as well as in our minds—that great literature embodies.
He includes a smack-down of the one-dimensional pomo critics, but that's far from his main point.
And since Magnet mentions Cosi Fan Tutte so often in his piece, here's the truly ridiculous and lovely Act 1 Finale, in which the cheating suitors fake committing suicide to re-engage their girlfriends:
Hot-button issues like immigration, ObamaCare, bailouts, taxation, national security, faith divide us mostly along what has been labeled conservative-liberal.
At root, however, the differing views are more rooted in who gives and who takes.
Our “betters” are largely insulated from the consequences of their views, catering to themselves and our “lessers.” Then, there’s the “rest of us.”
The primary divide is between the rest of us who struggled, strived and gave versus those whose advantages parachuted them into powerful positions they abuse for their own wealth and to then take away the more meager advantages earned by others to give to the lessers who haven’t.
The rest of us favor immigration by those willing to work, but not to those who aren’t able or who just demand benefits.
The rest of us favor aiding the truly poor or disabled to adequate health care, but not to those who waste their money on frills and then demand providers to impoverish themselves and us not be allowed to make our own life decisions.
The rest of us favor business creating jobs and opportunities, but not lazy management and crazy schemes then feeding at the taxpayer trough.
The rest of us voluntarily pay our more than fair share, but not basic services being cut to enrich politicians and government workers who create more ways to tax in order to feather their own nests by creating more dependent lessers.
The rest of us support and serve in danger to preserve our freedoms and protect others’, but not to be frittered away through lack of priorities or will.
The rest of us thank G-d for our being and opportunities, but not to tolerate those who would deny us or others theirs.
The rest of us may become polarized but at root are not. The rest of us just feel caught between those who consider themselves our betters, who perpetuate themselves by allying with the lessers without due claim upon us, whether at home or abroad. These betters denigrate the legitimate concerns of the rest of us, but their scorn is hollow, ludicrous, and, indeed, energizing.
Our parents and grandparents were great generations whom we identify with because they were the inspiration for the rest of us. My baby-boomer peers have largely been the selfish punk generation of wastrels. Coming again, the generation of the “rest of us.” Those who want to lead, who deserve leadership, are recognized as authentic in being of, by and for the rest of us.
Our Editor recently described himself, and Maggie's Farm, as "resolutely middlebrow." I cannot disagree, but with the caveat that we repeatedy take adventurous forays into the lowbrow.
As confirmation of the above. I have been thinking about Positivism lately and found myself needing to refer to Wiki for a refresher on the late Enlightenment thinker Auguste Comte, known as "The Pope of Positivism," and the inventor of Sociology.
Comte, interestingly and paradoxically, wanted to use a science of society in order to create a new religion for humanity. His grandiose dream lives on.
I have always thought that Cape Dory made fine boats.This pretty 33' Cape Dory is for sale.
Psalm 23
1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
Saturday, April 24. 2010
A reader minded us that the Polka and the button box came to North America via eastern European immigrants, and became Tex-Mex in a happy if unlikely union with the Mexican sound. Always was fond of the Texas Tornados, with the late greats Doug Sahm and Freddy Fender, plus Flaco Jiminez, Augie Meyers, et al. A motley crew, and good fun.
Got your Camaro?
I know The Barrister has fond memories of the old Bar Cars on The New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad (now Metro-North). I have some such memories, also.
People smoking and drinking Scotch, and the bow-tied, white-jacketed bartender who knew everybody's choice. A cozy cheerful place on the 6:14 from Grand Central. A smoke-filled decompression chamber between work and home.
The famously alcohol-fueled and adultery-fueled bar car on the branch line from Stamford up to New Canaan and Ridgefield, CT used to have their own web site, but I can't find it now.
Photo below from the NYT photo essay. I never saw a bar car like that one, though. In my time, usually more packed with people (including chic gals and MILFs on their way home from shopping and hair-dos at Kenneth's) and so full of fragrant and wholesome tobacco smoke that you couldn't see from one end to the other.
Addendum: A reader has kindly sent us a Bar Car site
For the cranky contrarians among us (h/t, Blair):
 Genius Stanford educational experts started a charter school. Their ideas didn't work.
But will they learn anything from their experience?
I continue to believe that the average schoolkid learned more in the US in 1830 in one-room schoolhouses with hornbooks and the teacher armed with a good paddle, with the teacher supported by donations either in kind (eg firewood, or housing a teacher or providing him or her food) or in cash, by the parents of the kids who ran, and paid for, their school.
And don't tell me "it's a more complicated world" now. It is not. Try training a horse, building a barn, making a living on a farm, making a winter coat from a couple of sheep, or smithing every iron item a family might need. Life is easier now. We don't even need to make our own beer, and 99.9% of us do not even understand how computers work. Including me.
Readin', writin', and 'rithmetic haven't changed one bit since then.
Dr. Roy Spencer's new book. Related: Global warming scare industry suppresses benefits of CO2
Unbelievable: CNN promotes AGW-volcano nonsense. And Newsweek: The 100 places doomed by global warming.
Carpe Diem: Environmentalism as religion. Yes, it is a primitive paganism.
The New Coke in Bolivia. Of course, the original American Coke "tonic" had some coke in it too.
Paul Ryan: Obama Leading America on ‘Dangerous Path’ to Welfare State. Yup.
Theory: South Korean ship sunk by crack squad of 'human torpedoes'
Sissy says it's about "Fiscal responsibility, limited government and free markets" . Related, It's the year for GOP Reformers
Related, Kudlow: It's America's Constitutionalist Revolt
From Goldstein's “The next Obamacare target: Your bacon sandwich”
The argument that an increased federal involvement in the health care industry will over time lead to ever more intrusive regulations on our bodies “for our own good” is one I’ve been making for years now. For my troubles, I’ve been called “paranoid” and “foaming” — and been accused of backing the kind of dogmatic libertarianism that would allow businesses to poison customers while the market sorted things out.
Of course, such a complaint is ludicrous. My point has always been that giving the government such a vested financial interest is dangerous precisely because the feds wield the kind of regulatory power that can take away our freedoms, all the while justifying such decisions based on a combination of what they’d call sound fiscal responsibility and improving “public health.” The result? Liberal fascism.
Fannie & Freddie Reform Excluded from Finance Bill Warmth causes CO2. From Item #21 here:
Global warmings result in an increase in atmospheric CO2 as warmed oceans emit their dissolved CO2. Global coolings result in a decrease in atmospheric CO2 as cooling oceans absorb atmospheric CO2. Temperature variations precede those CO2 variations by several hundred to a thousand years, thus indicating that it is the temperature variations that cause atmospheric CO2 changes and not the reverse. The human contribution to the cycle is trivial and furthermore the so-called “greenhouse effect”, touted as the mechanism by which atmospheric CO2 controls weather, has long been known to be devoid of physical reality. Accordingly, proposed measures of “carbon control” will have no effect on the weather but instead will seriously damage the Nation’s economy and the reliability of its electric generating capacity: a system that is currently working quite satisfactorily and is entirely independent of foreign sources of energy. Clearly, that system for supplying the Nation with its essential need for reliable electricity “ain’t broke”…and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
The World is Too Much With Us (1807)
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
Friday, April 23. 2010
Mr. Spock Set to Hang Up His Pointy Ears
I was there when Spock uttered his first iconic Live long and prosper.
We'd heard about some cool new space series coming up and eagerly tuned in for the first episode. It certainly did not disappoint. The show looks pretty corny now, but everything about it was state-of-the-art for 1966, from the concept to the design of the ship to the aliens.
And over the ensuing half century, while starlets and action heroes rose and fell, one of the true constants in the Hollywood universe was the logical mind of Spock. Whole continents could roil in upheaval, but Spock would know what to do.
He was an anchor. A hope. A symbol that one day mankind would cast aside its petty grievances and jealousies and grow up.
Yes, I was there when Spock uttered his first iconic Live long and prosper.
And his last.
J. Robert Smith has exactly the right metaphor at American Thinker. Who gets to be Zoo-Keeper, though?
Speaking of zoos, Dalrymple recently visited some government zoos in the UK, and it was not pretty. Old steel towns where the main jobs involve welfare administration.
Editor's note: I dropped this Sen. Feinstein post since nobody could find any confirmation of the quote -
|
