The lack of responsibility led to the Ward and Brown cases

For wrath killeth the foolish man, and envy slayeth the evil one.” – Job 5:2

Sitting through my thoughts over the week's news, I looked at notes from my Ryrie Study Bible, purchased while at a college retreat, and is falling apart from a decade and a half of consistent use, thinking of this verse while finagling through the news in both the Canandaigua, New York and Ferguson, Missouri cases, where in each case, a man died from wrath, and outrage from the nation has become the issue. Upon the review of each story, it was evident that wrath played a role in both cases.

In the Canandaigua incident, which some are wanting the “assailant,” Anthony W. Stewart, 43, of Columbus, Indiana, charged with manslaughter, the disturbing video evidence proved negligence not of Mr. Stewart, the 1997 Verizon IndyCar Series¹ and 2002, 2005, and 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion driver, proved the driver allegedly struck by Mr. Stewart, Kevin Ward Jnr, 20, had lunged towards a second driver (the #45 car) in the 360 (cubic inch displacement engine – a lower-cost series versus the 410 cubic inch) sprint car event before he gathered his anger at Mr. Stewart by lunging in front of the #14 car, with dim lighting in a dark firesuit and helmet, with little (if any) reaction time to react with his actions. This incident has forced Mr. Stewart in hiding, while his operations (Stewart-Haas Racing, Tony Stewart Racing, Eldora Speedway, True Speed Communications) are run by associates in the interim, while some are wanting him guilty when it's evident Mr. Ward had lunged in road rage that he crossed the line, forcing motorsport authorities to tighten rules regarding driver behaviour when exiting the car (which, in theory, will lead to more fights in the pit area). In motorsport, a driver involved in an incident is often forced to be restrained by circuit officials if he attempt to charge at another competitor. The Canandaigua Motorsports Park officials did not restrain Mr. Ward in any matter, which is disturbing considering most circuits would have officials do their hardest to prevent other competitors from charging at other cars.

In the Ferguson incident, reports are the teenage assailant and a friend entered a convenience store (where the most popular items sold are tobacco, alcohol, and gambling tickets) and committed a strong-arm robbery where a full cigar case, valued at $50, was stolen in the robbery. The clerk in the store called police and likely called it an “armed robbery”. When questioned, the suspects then attacked the policeman (the cigars were stolen, and the suspect may have looked too young to own tobacco), with reports coming that the shoplifter and his accomplice were involved in an incident with police, attempting to resist arrest, with part of the battle involving the policeman's gun. When a policeman could be held defenseless by an assailant, he has a right to defend his weapon, which he did away from these assailants who were going after his gun, and shooting the policeman was a possibility.

Think about a motorist who travels US Highway 21, which I travel often, with a 88 KPH speed limit on the two-lane road. If you are traveling at 130 KPH, more than 41 KPH over the limit, that's a six-point penalty (0-16 is two points, 16-40 is four points, 41 and up is six points; twelve is a suspension). If you resist arrest and go on a high-speed chase, you will face extra forms of police technique to stop you from your antics. Reckless driving will result in police using severe tactics to stop the dangerous driving, similar to what happened when the policeman was having to stop the assailants from attempting to use his gun to attack him.

If you look under 18 years of age with the full box of cigars, let alone having stolen the tobacco, that is an automatic suspicion since tobacco sales are prohibited to those under 18, and with the actions that took place as proven by cameras, it was serious case of stealing, which even our Ten Commandments prohibit. However, in today's humanist teachings, there are no standards. They are taught there is no right or wrong, and it is based on feelings. The looters forget the most important part of the Ferguson story in that Mr. Brown and his accomplice first engaged in the strong-arm robbery, which in effect was shoplifting. That's stealing and violates Exodus 20:15. But once again, they are not taught the Bible today in schools. Popular culture has turned away from God's Word in favour of relativism.

This leads to an article this past week in the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission by Collin Garbarino of Houston Baptist University². Mr. Garbarino, a professor, assigned a paper to students based on Thucydides' accounts of the Sparta and Athens battles, and Athens' attack on Melia when the city refused to join their side in the Sparta-Athens battles, led to the annihilation of the area. The professor found the students unable to see how Athens' moral failure was based on their self-centred arrogance, and they could not see how democracies could only stand with moral fabric. Such is why we have urban arrogance in an attempt to push a new humanist religion as the state religion, and attempts by activists to eliminate the moral fabric by wiping out standards based on the Bible, and instead impose standards based on man.

When considering that, the moral relativism of those who ransacked Ferguson as “social justice,” even reaching into the idea they want what they want, and refuse to be responsible for behaviour that led to the death of the robber.

In both the Michael Brown and Kevin Ward Jnr cases, both men were irresponsible. In Mr. Ward's case, he charged at race cars traveling at safety car speed in anger, which led to his own death for not following correct protocol after a crash, and wanted to take the situation with Mr. Stewart immediately, and not await until later to see what happened. In Mr. Brown's case, he committed crimes of robbery, and when suspicion aroused he was involved in illegal behaviour, he showed no responsibility and resisted arrest, even threatening the policeman.

Whatever happened to responsibility? Neither man was being responsible after their incidents, leading each to rage that led to their own deaths. We need to be responsible now. And moral relativism is allowing a lack of responsibility to dominate. Think about it.

***

¹INDYCAR attempted to run the season to end the season at Indianapolis; that plan, which had been proposed for the 1996-97 season, was to have the season-opener in Loudon 1996, through the five-race season that continued through Las Vegas, and 1997 races at Disney World and Phoenix, before finishing at the Indianapolis at the 500; during the calendar year change, INDYCAR decided to finish the season at the end of the calendar year, meaning new races in Fort Worth, Fountain (Colorado), and Charlotte, and the two established races at Loudon and Las Vegas would end the 1996-97 season; further INDYCAR-sanctioned seasons have been calendar year only. Mr. Stewart's title is written as per style guidelines established by INDYCAR. Please note “INDYCAR” in all capital letters specifically refers to the sanctioning body, formerly known as the Indy Racing League until the end of the 2013 season. The name change was formalised in the 2014 INDYCAR rule book.

²The article refers to a movie that is now on DVD; when Mr. Chang attended the movie as part of a church trip in March, he discovered the movie was an feature-length film advertisement for Vivendi Universal Music around its storyline. Obviously, in the twelve years since taking his first voice lesson, and further learning of church music from friends such as Ingrid Schlueter, and reading of theologians regarding church music history, which effectively separates church music into a antebellum, postbellum ('gospel song'), and modern emotionalism era (OCP, GIA, and the Michael Jackson Family Trust that controls modern church music), he cannot justify a movie that promotes secularised music that is too often played in churches today.)

Bad radio

The "homers, screamers, and shouters" on radio have long been a target of this blog. As the collegiate gridiron season starts, last November's Iron Bowl derby (Alabama vs Auburn) showed, oddly, the difference between a professional who has worked at the national level, and a homer. Auburn's Rod Bramblett showed the example of the bad homers, while Alabama's Eli Gold went national on his call, which was appropriate considering he has worked college and pro games (and other events) on a national level. (Mr. Gold was on the CBS roster from 1997-2000, mainly serving as #2 for NASCAR Truck Series races on broadcast while their #1 for Cup races on cable.)

That's part of the reason why I've criticised the lack of national grade radio broadcasters remaining in sport today. It's this level how broadcasting has deteriorated when homers replace national, and yet most television broadcasters in the past came from a radio background, and still keep that radio background in their calls. The big irony is how Mr. Gold used the derby's name in his call, while Mr. Bramblett did not even reference the derby's well-known title.

Throwback Thursday: The moral responsibility of the writer

The May 2007 issue of First Things has an intriguing article by Ross Douthat entitled “Lost and Saved on Television.” Douthat writes about the underlying questions of religion, morality and salvation (some obvious, others allegorical) that appear in several of today's most successful TV shows, such as Lost (obviously, judging from the title of the article), Battlestar Galactica, and The Sopranos (full disclosure: these aren't shows that I watch, although any good cultural archaeologist would certainly be familiar with them). It's a good piece, one that should be read on its own merits.

However, of particular interest, especially to the aspiring artist, is the following section:

The question, of course, is whether the audience gets the point, or whether The Sporanos’ faithful viewers are in it for the same reasons the mobsters are: the adrenaline rush that comes with any violent or sexual encounter, no matter how degrading it may be. This is the problem for any artist who seeks to show sin as it is. Does depicting an act make you complicit in it, even when you stand in judgment? Last Tango in Paris makes loveless sex look like hell on earth, for instance, but there are still people who watch it for titillation, just as there must be some segment of The Sopranos’ audience – young men, in particular – who spend their time cheering on the killers, identifying with the mobsters instead of profiting from their hell-bound example.

[...]

[I]s it the chance to see the story of Christ’s Passion as Mel Gibson reimagined it – blood-drenched and harrowing and brilliant – worth giving the same R-rated carte blanche to Quentin Tarantino, or worse, the makers of torture-porn thrillers like Hostel and The Hills Have Eyes?

I don't know how far Douthat intended to go down this particular avenue, but here we have an issue that works on many levels, radiating from one central question which Douthat asks: Are you glamorizing sin? We've talked often in these pages about the relationship between art and the artist, and the moral responsibility thrust upon the artist by his art. This gets dangerously close to Paul Drew’s territory (Nazi artists and whatnot), so we'll defer to him for the most part on the historical analysis.

But one cannot look at this without thinking of art as a creation, and the artist as creator. And while the idea of art for art's sake is an old one, it would seem that at least a secondary effect of art is the depiction - the revelation, if you will - of the artist himself. Art doesn't create itself, and it seems as if separating the art from the artist, even if one could do so, would leave the creation incomplete, lacking in some fundamental way. For example, we cannot know that God is good simply by looking at His creation, but we can know that His creation is good by looking at Him.

And therefore, one must read into the creation itself the personality of the creator, which in turn will tell you not only about the creation, but the creator as well.

Taking this back into the world of art, specifically the medium of the written word, it seems safe to say that much of what a reader knows about an author comes from the author's own words. The conclusions they draw about the author are to a great extent based on what they read, and that judgment of the author's character in turn helps to determine the weight to which they give those words.

So the writer returns to the question posited by Douthat - are you responsible for how people interpret your art? Can you plead innocence, even in cases where you ought to know better, as to what that interpretation is? Can you be held responsible for drawing your readers into, say, the proximate cause of sin? As Douthat asks, "Does depicting an act make you complicit in it, even when you stand in judgment?" For the author who attempts to portray man's rise from sin to salvation, what kind of risks does he assume when he takes on the mantle of sin itself?

This is an issue that confronts me directly in my (as-yet unpublished) fiction, one story of which features as its heroine a stripper, another with a professional assassin as the protagonist. What can be gained, despite the literary quality of these stories, by delving into such territory? Can it be justified by invoking the name of Art Itself? And does the author assume the responsibility for everything the reader takes from his work, even if it runs contrary to the author's own desire?

Is there a psychological or sociological justification which can be cited, for example, the desire to explore the Big Question? For one with a fertile, inquiring mind it is a road that begs invitingly. Certainly I think such a case exists, or else I wouldn't be investing time in it myself. I think that in terms both of self-expression and the desire to lead the reader into areas of the mind that might not previously have been considered, the author has a responsibility to honestly confront these issues as best he can.

It's possible, of course, that this could also simply be some kind of self-justification wrapped in denial. I wouldn't dismiss it.

But there can be no denying that the work will rub off on in some way on the writer, and will color the impression of said writer in the eyes of the reader. Which is why, once again, it is so important for the writer to assume responsibility - good or bad - for what he writes. If the writer wants to be taken seriously, if the writer seeks to influence or inspire, if the writer intents to pose serious questions to which he requests serious answers - all this will depend on how he conducts himself, both in public and in private. His writing may appear to apply only to the public arena, but surely the reader will interpolate its contents into the writer's private life as well.

So do I worry about glamorizing sin, about making sex too sexual and violence too violent? Absolutely. It presents a constant struggle within the creative process. A good many writers whose work I admire appear to go through similar struggles, with varying outcomes - some of which I quesiton, some with which I disagree totally. I can never know completely how they arrived at that process (although in the confessional world of the blogosphere I can come closer), and so I must content myself with my own personal struggles.

But this is a question worth posing, not only for the moral theorist but for the creative writer. In choosing the subjects one pursues and the words one sets down, the consideration of the effect these words have on those who read it can never be put far from one's mind.

Or, in other, simpler terms, think before you write.

It's a lesson those in the blogosphere could mull over more often.

Originally published April 25, 2007

How "elite" higher education is destroying our society

I got this link from Mitchell over the weekend; he knew this was bait for another "Scam Alert" on higher education.

It comes from the website of the Dallas Morning News, where William Deresiewicz pulls back the curtain on the scam that is an Ivy League education.  It's a damning indictment, and you really ought to read the whole thing, but this excerpt should give you an idea of what Deresiewicz, who used to be on the faculty at Yale (and thus, knows of what he speaks), sees in today's "elite" higher educaton:

Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it.

Now, we used to think of college as the place wherein young people prepared to face the world, and in an ironic way the Ivy League has done exactly that.  For Deresiewicz describes perfectly what kind of a world we now live in.  Look at U.S. foreign policy, for example - don't the words "anxious, timid and lost" describe it to a T?  Of course, what else would you expect from a society that displays these very traits?  One has only to look at the breakdown in religious belief to see a people with no sense of purpose, little to no curiosity, no idea why they do what they do.  Remove belief from life, and that's what you get.

More:

When I speak of elite education, I mean prestigious institutions like Harvard or Stanford or Williams as well as the larger universe of second-tier selective schools, but I also mean everything that leads up to and away from them — the private and affluent public high schools; the ever-growing industry of tutors and consultants and test-prep courses; the admissions process itself, squatting like a dragon at the entrance to adulthood; the brand-name graduate schools and employment opportunities that come after the B.A.; and the parents and communities, largely upper-middle class, who push their children into the maw of this machine. In short, our entire system of elite education.

Deresiewicz speaks of the students he taught at Yale, and once again it's hard not to see the cause-and-effect, in that the system is producing exactly the kind of society one might expect when it's made up of young people who bring these experiences into the world.  There were many wonderful young people,

But most of them seemed content to color within the lines that their education had marked out for them. Very few were passionate about ideas. Very few saw college as part of a larger project of intellectual discovery and development. Everyone dressed as if they were ready to be interviewed at a moment’s notice. [...] Look beneath the facade of seamless well-adjustment, and what you often find are toxic levels of fear, anxiety and depression, of emptiness and aimlessness and isolation. A large-scale survey of college freshmen recently found that self-reports of emotional well-being have fallen to their lowest level in the study’s 25-year history.

Well, it's hard to argue with any of this, especially when we don't even know what college is meant to achieve:  "Is it just about earning more money? Is the only purpose of an education to enable you to get a job?"

In the midst of the gloom, Deresiewicz offers the start of the solution: "I’ve come to see that what we really need is to create one where you don’t have to go to the Ivy League, or any private college, to get a first-rate education."  You may or may not agree with his conclusions, but be sure to go here and read them.

War as a metaphor for war

This extraordinary photo, of gas-mask-wearing soccer players (likely soldiers playing the game during some training or down time) accompanies Brian Phillips' equally-extraordinary account of soccer during World War I, "Soccer in Oblivion,"  at Grantland. For me, World War I has always held more fascination than any war other than our own Revolution, because the cultural implications are so distinct.

While it's important to acknowledge, as Spengler does in this Asia Times piece, that World War I wasn't necessarily any more horrific than other wars of the past, at least in pro-rated manpower, it's also true that the Great War inflicted a kind of cynical somberness that the world likely will never recover from.  The thought of God looking down on His creation, all of it, doing its damnedest to tear itself apart, is a sad one, perhaps one of the saddest that a religious person can imagine.

The money quote from Phillips' story, which should tell us everything we want to know about the war, and about ourselves, then and now:

Never such innocence again. But we still make the same mistakes, because we still understand war through analogy and our analogies still fail. Now we see it as a video game, or we see it as a component of the NFL’s set of minor paraphernalia, jet flyovers part of the same combo pack that includes beer commercials and classic-rock riffs. We’re still trying to make the metaphor work, only now we’re doing it in reverse, endlessly describing games in terms of who conquered/eviscerated/bombed/slaughtered whom. It’s the same old trick, though. It’s a way to hide the horror under one layer of spectacle and another layer of moral virtue — a way to pretend that war is like a game, that there are rules, that there is safety. A way not to look into oblivion. We missed the cruel irony in all those soccer balls that show up in World War I photos. Nothing is a metaphor for war. War is a metaphor for nothing.

Make no mistake - war, no matter how horrible, is sometimes necessary.  That should happen sparingly, and without celebration, though.  As the soldier (attributed to Robert E. Lee, perhaps apocryphally) once said, “It is well that war is so terrible, or we would grow too fond of it.”

Flashback Friday: The cult of celebrity

The cult of celebrity is something that we've alluded to here from time to time, most often in the idea that celebrities, like everyone else, are role models whether they like it or not. And then there's what we've called the "Oprafication" of life, the wear-your-heart-on-your-sleeve mentality that substitutes feeling for thinking.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. In "The Dianification of Modern Life," Theodore Dalrymple of The New Criterion sums up what a commenter refers to as the "vapidity of celebrity culture." It strikes at one of those things that seems so very wrong about our society today:

Her death provoked a reaction of sociological and psychopathological interest. Her combination of inaccessible glamour and utter banality (on her own admission, she was not very intelligent, and it was evident that she had no taste for threateningly elitist intellectual or artistic pursuits) appealed to millions of people. Apart from the fact that she was extremely rich and married to the heir to the British throne, she was just like us. Her personal tribulations were just like ours: at base, rather petty and egotistical. She was the perfect character for a soap opera, in fact, and those who ‘grieved’ after her death were really protesting at the deprivation of a large part of the soap opera’s interest.

He also makes an excellent point about how this very tendency was leapt upon by Tony Blair, eager to find the hook for his prime ministership. It was Blair who made popular the phrase, "The People's Princess," and as Dalrymple shows, the impact on Britain (and Western culture, for that matter) has been extensive:

In the orgy of demonstrative pseudo-grief that followed her death, Mr Blair said that the people had found a new way of being British. Indeed so: they had become emotionally incontinent and inclined to blubber in public when not being menacingly discourteous. They had come to believe that holding nothing back was the way to mental health, and their deepest emotional expression was the teddy bear that they were increasingly liable to leave at the site of a fatal accident or at the tomb of someone who had died in early adulthood.

A wonderful phrase, that: "holding nothing back was the way to mental health, and their deepest emotional expression was the teddy bear." Whether or not you agree with that, you have to like the way it rolls off the tongue. Say it a few times, and you'll probably begin to see the truth of it as well.

Dalrymple begins his essay with a quote from the (viruently) athiest Sam Harris, in his book The End of Faith, who writes, "Three million souls can be starved and murdered in the Congo, and our Argus-eyes media scarcely blink. When a princess dies in a car accident, however, a quarter of the earth’s population falls prostrate with grief."

That is the scandal of modern life, the scandal of the cult of celebrity, the scandal for the believer. And it is a scandal, because we can do better than that, we are capable of far more than we are showing. If we fall into these traps, if we sanctify the dead simply for being dead (as Dalrymple puts it, "How could anyone who personally hugged people suffering from AIDS and was against the planting of landmines not be a force for good?"), then we give those like Sam Harris no reason to look further into the eternal truths of Christianity. If the only object is to feel good - well, you can get that anywhere, can't you? Hardly seems worth needing a Redeemer, what?

Life is a challenge, and oftentimes the only way to meet that challenge is through reason, combined with faith in the power of the mind. Sadly, thinking is something that seems passé all too often, now.

Dalyrmple's essay comes from a fascinating forum at Britannica Blog, "Diana and the Cult of Celebrity." It's a discussion well worth checking out.

Originally published on August 29, 2007

Classic Sports Thursday - remembering 1984

It's only fitting Classic Sports Thursday goes back 30 years to the Olympics . . .

BREAKING . . . .Pauley Pavilion, the venue in question for today's article, was flooded by a water main break in California. The main floor is damaged and will be out of commission as a temporary floor will likely be used on campus for the time being.

With the Soviets out of commission at the Olympics, Edwin W. Pauley Pavilion (the gymnastics venue) seemed to become an East Bloc battle of Romania, the sole survivors from the boycott. What we didn't know then was the Romanians were falsifying ages just to compete, as it took 18 years, the fall of the Iron Curtain, and an innocent marriage licence application in Cobb County, Georgia to confirm the truth. (Daniela Silivas entered senior gymnastics competitions at 13 when the minimum age had just been raised to 15; after her engagement to Scott Harper, and during the time leading to her wedding, she admitted the the age falsification, as she was 31, not 33 as her international competition passport said, in order to comply with Cobb County authorities.)

Yet when Romanian coach Bela Karolyi defected on a tour of the United States in 1981, he and wife Marta settled in Texas. Little did they know how a 13-year old rising star from West Virginia, the daughter of Jerry West's teammate on the 1959 West Virginia basketball team, and a Hershey's National Track and Field Games participant would become the most celebrated project, with recovering from arthroscopic knee surgery just six weeks beforehand, and with a superhuman recovery, she made it back to the Games. Little did we know the legacy that sixteen year-old did thirty years ago, on August 3, 1984. She defeated Ekaterina Szabo with that perfect ten on the vault, by the slimmest of margins, and being nicknamed the matriarch of American gymnastics.

How would we have known Mary Lou Retton now, at 46 and the mother of rising American elite gymnast McKenna Kelley, who tied for the win at an elite meet in February?

We celebrate her victory at Pauley Pavilion this week.

What a tangled web we weave...

http://attendingtheworld.wordpress.com/

In the pages of the Asia Times, the columnist Spengler doesn't mince any words in describing the mess that is American foreign policy:

The United States has misunderstood everyone in the world outside its borders and mismanaged everything. It has done so with a bipartisan consensus so broad and deep that it has no opposition except simple-minded isolationism. America gets unwanted results — most recently in Iraq - because it wants the wrong things in the first place. And there seems to be no way to persuade Americans otherwise. The crumbling of the Iraqi state will provide yet another pretext for mutual recriminations among political parties. The trouble is that both parties wanted the wrong thing to begin with.

Not pretty words, but sometimes the truth hurts.  Find out what both parties wanted, and the inevitable denouement to which it may all lead - it's well worth spending a few minutes - here.

Good news in the old "Our Word" family

If any of you are long-term enough readers to go back several years, you might remember some very funny and very good posts written by one of our old contributors, Kristin. (Check this one out, for example.)

Sadly for us, Kristin's stay at the blog was too short, and she went on to bigger things.  I wouldn't have thought they were necessarily better, though - after all, what's better than this blog?  Well, Kristin found something a lot better than that.  A month or so ago, our friend tied the knot, and she's now happily married!  I knew this some time ago, but sadly I've neglected to broadcast it to our readers until today.

I'm so happy for you, Kristin.  Best of everything for the future.  And if you ever want to make a cameo appearance or two, you'd be welcomed back with open arms!

Wish I'd written that - Rules for sports commentary

I was taught very early on that the picture is so powerful, you can’t hope to compete with it, all you can hope is to occasionally augment it, and add additional information and improve the overall viewing experience for the person at home watching the telecast."

- Jon Champion, British soccer commentator.  (H/T Awful Announcing)

And that, my friends, is why so many of us prefer English broadcasters when there's a choice.  God love America, but it seems as if American announcers always feel that the picture is nothing more than a distraction from whatever it is they happen to be talking about.

It also highlights why so many of the great American announcers of the past - Curt Gowdy, Chris Schenkel, Pat Summerall, Ray Scott - were great.  And why so many of them today (excepting, say, Mike Emrick) - are not.

What if democracy, like higher education, is just a scam?

Yeah, I know I've been away for awhile.  Don't remind me; I hear enough of that from The Boss (M. Hadley, if you're wondering.)  Just consider this a cameo if you want, but I promise I"m going to try and come back here more often.

A couple of pieces for your consideration.  The first hearkens back to the "Scam of Higher Education" series I did a couple of years ago, and it concerns the new director of Islamic Studies at Duke University. (I asked Mitchell if he wanted to take this one, since he used to work at Duke; his reply was more or less unprintable, but by and large suggested that if I wanted to write about Duke, now or at any time in the future, I was more than welcome to do so.)

Anyway, this gentleman, Omid Safi, compares recent Israeli "crimes" to the Holocaust.  I'll let you read all about it here, but what bothers me about this is not only the dishonesty that apparently accompanies his "scholarship," but the laziness of it all.  I mean, how many times do we have to read about something being compared to the Nazis or the Holocaust?  It's just plain lazy - lazier than the number of F-bombs that show up in a Martin Scorsese movie.  I used to think that just dropped them in there to meet the word count minimum, but it's a stroke of pure creativity compared to how many times liberals compare _________ (fill in the blank) to the Holocaust and equate ___________ (various conservatives) to Nazis.

Just give me a break, will you?

The second item this week is more thought-provoking.  It's by one of my favorite pundits, Judge Andrew Napolitano, and he asks a disturbing question: what if democracy is a fraud?

Yes, I know - there are a lot of conservatives who throw that question around the same way liberals toss around Nazis.  But, setting aside the provocative nature of the headline, there's some real food for thought here:

What if democracy as it has come to exist in America today is dangerous to personal freedom? What if our so-called democracy erodes the people’s understanding of natural rights and the reasons for government and instead turns political campaigns into beauty contests? What if American democracy allows the government to do anything it wants, as long as more people bother to show up at the voting booth to support the government than show up to say no?

He goes on to elaborate with a number of similar points, before he comes to the conclusion, which is a crusher:

What if the late progressive Edmund S. Morgan was right when he said that government depends on make believe? What if our ancestors made believe that the king was divine? What if they made believe that he could do no wrong? What if they made believe that the voice of the king was the voice of God?

What if the government believes in make believe? What if it made believe that the people have a voice? What if it made believe that the representatives of the people are the people? What if it made believe that the governors are the servants of the people? What if it made believe that all men are created equal, or that they are not?

What if the government made believe that it is always right? What if it made believe that the majority can do no wrong? What if the tyranny of the majority is as destructive to human freedom as the tyranny of a madman? What if the government knows this?

What do we do about it?

I've always been one to defend the United States from those (primarily very traditional Catholics) who charge that the nation was conceived in sin, so to speak, that religious freedom itself was license for the kind of hedonistic libertarianism we seem to have today.  While the Founders may not have been Catholics, they were great Americans nonetheless.  As someone once said, the United States is the worst country in the world in which to live, except for all the rest of them.

Nowadays, that defense is harder and harder to maintain.  What do we do about it, indeed?  Thoughts?

Wish I'd written that - a Dickens of a time

On reading Charles Dickens:

"Some of it’s fascinating, and it’s marvelously acted, but there’s something about those 19th century novels that just wears on the heart like a dull stone pressing against a ventricle. The courtship rituals are tiresome and boring. All these protestations and fluttery words and fevered attempts to hold someone’s right pinky-finger. The conversations between anyone of the same class seem to take as their motto that one word shall not suffice when 75 may do, and the general effect is like being smothered with fresh bread."

- James Lileks, reading (or listening to an audio version of) The Mystery of Edwin Drood

I completely agree with this, which is why I also stay away from the Brontë sisters, and so many others from that era.

On the other hand, I have no trouble with Shakespeare.  Go figure.

Doctor Who and friend.

Throwback Thursday

Cubs Announce “Live Goat Sacrifice Night”
Move Is An Attempt to End Century of Futility

Cubs got your goat?  On 9/8
 you'd better hope not

CHICAGO -- In an effort to end the nearly century-old “Curse of the Goat,” the Chicago Cubs today announced plans to sacrifice a live goat in a ritual ceremony designed to appease the baseball gods.

The “Chicagoland Meat Packers Association Reverse the Curse Live Goat Sacrifice presented by Haroldson Foods” will be held between games of a September 8 doubleheader between the Cubs and the Miami Marlins, team officials said.

“After nearly one hundred years, it was clear to the team that dramatic action was necessary,” assistant Publicity Director Ken Randolph said. “We’ve tried blockbuster trades, spending wildly in the free-agency market, and hiring high-profile managers, all to no avail. And even though we’re seeing some signs of life in the team this season, it became obvious as we analyzed our history that something drastic had angered the baseball gods, and that only a blood offering would totally appease them.”

The so-called “Curse of the Billy Goat” supposedly dates back to the Cubs’ last World Series appearance in 1945, when a man trying to attend Game 4 with his pet goat Sianis was denied admittance to Wrigley Field. Subsequent attempts to “reverse the curse” by bringing goats into Wrigley Field have failed to stem the tide of futility and loss which have dogged the Cubs since their last championship in 1908.

“The vengeful baseball god Homeron is clearly not satisfied with our meek attempts at redressing the injustice,” Randolph said. “We concluded that the only possible step available to assuage Homeron’s wrath was to sacrifice a male goat between the ages of 18 months and two years, after which his blood will be drained into a clay pottery bowl and offered up in humility to Homeron, along with a meek plea that he might take pity on the Cubs and remove the curse which he so justly invoked upon us these many decades ago.”

A stone altar will be constructed midway between second base and the center field bleachers. Akwar Abandai, a Verdic priest, will preside at the ceremony, assisted by veteran slaughterhouse butcher Duke Mantel. The ritual sacrifice will be telecast live by Cubs broadcast partner WGN, and will be available via streaming video on the station’s website.

For a city still reeling from the 1979 “Disco Demolition Night” fiasco at Comiskey Park on the south side which resulted in a riot that forced the Chicago White Sox to forfeit the second game of a doubleheader, announcement of the sacrifice brought apprehension to many fans.

Cubs follower Dick Blutus spoke for many, calling the sacrifice “a cheap stunt” and comparing it to “a gimmick the Sox might pull, but unworthy of our Cubbies.” Teresa Sims offered her own concerns about the promotion. “I mean, what’s to keep other bizarre cults and religions from storming the field to offer their own ritual sacrifices?” Sims asked. “I’m all for diversity, but I’d hate to see something like this get out of hand. The Cubs can’t afford a loss, even by forfeit, this late in the season.”

PETA spokesperson Victor Benjamin illustrated the unease with which his group views the Cubs announcement. “Of course, we completely deplore this inhumane treatment of an innocent goat. This announcement by the Chicago Cubs is another example of the corporate influence of American culture, putting greed and profit ahead of the lives of animals. On the other hand, one hundred years is a long time to go without winning the Series. If it works, well, it is only one small goat.” A representative from the Illinois Humane Society said the group would defer comment until November.

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig declined to intervene in the Cubs promotion, issuing a statement that since there were no drug tests in place for animal sacrifices, there was no action he could take. Selig also refused to confirm nor deny that he would be in attendance at the sacrifice ceremony.

Originally published August 30, 2007

A parody and a flashback

At one time, television on Saturday mornings was deemed "educational," and ABC's Schoolhouse Rock was known for teaching fundamentals (I'm Just A Bill, Conjunction Junction, A Noun is a Person, Place, or Thing) until that show went exceedingly "Commie Core" political with the "climate change" projects of Dear Leader in later years.

Sadly, such programming has disappeared, replaced by entertainment rot that does not teach virtues but rather propaganda.

It struck me this week during news reports that famed parody artist "Weird Al" Yankovic has pulled the feel of the older television with his new parody "Word Crimes." Does it resemble a modern-day Schoolhouse Rock to inform people that there are standards in the English language?

Korean Air 7 again?

The shooting of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 at Ukraine near the Russian border is reminiscent of two cases where Korean Air flights 902 (1978) and 7 (1983). With that, we reminisce with President Reagan after the discovery September 5, 1983, of the shootdown of Korean Air Lines (as it was called) Flight 7 (as it would be referenced today to remove what was jokingly referred as the reason for the conspiracy theories -- the three digit code for the flight allowed it to be known as a Licence to Kill).

The once and future persecution

At At the risk of being disowned by my fellow orthodox Catholic friends, I picked up a copy of Rolf Hochhuth’s infamous play The Deputy a couple of weeks ago at a used book store.  It was no great revelation to me; I’ve read it before, and I bought it on this occasion as a research aid for a writing project that you may or may not ever hear about again.  It went on the bookshelf, between The Complete Works of Ayn Rand and How to Become a Libertarian in Six Easy Steps.

As a work of fiction likely to be taken as fact by readers and viewers, The Deputy is little more than a slanderous piece of Communist propaganda, deliberately promoted to tarnish the reputation of Pius XII through lie and innuendo.  And over the decades since it was published in the early ‘60s, it has indeed gone a long way to smear a man who, in the immediate aftermath of WW2, had been praised by Jews and Christians alike for his efforts to save Jewish lives while in a delicate position.  Evidence has since been uncovered linking Hochhuth with East German intelligence, and it’s likely that the whole thing was part of an orchestrated plot to undermine the Church.

It’s also not that well-written; far too polemical and strident, not to mention the slander I mentioned earlier (which, I guess, means I shouldn’t have to mention it again).  As a play, though, at least in written form, it has some intriguing qualities.  For one thing, Hochhuth’s prose stage instructions go on and on, sometimes for pages.  They’re obviously meant to be more than just directions; indeed, they provide background and commentary in such depth that they become an integral part of the story.  If you’re attending it as a performance without having the book in front of you, there’ll be so much left out that you won’t really receive the full impact.*  With some judicious editing, it would be reminiscent of a book I enjoyed quite a bit, Michael Herr’s Walter Winchell – a prose novel written in the form of a screenplay, complete with descriptions of fade-ins and fade-outs, camera cuts, and the like.

*Of course, there are many who’d argue that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

If there’s one redeeming factor in my purchase, aside from the research aspect (which has already borne fruit), it’s that I bought it second-hand, which means that neither Hochhuth, his publisher, nor anyone else connected with The Deputy made any money off of me.  Had I been forced to pay full price, I probably would have had to make a trip to the confessional.

There is, however, one thing I’d like to note in favor of The Deputy, although it has nothing to do with the book itself.  It came to me as I was driving in this morning, pondering the Christian persecution that seems to be in America’s immediate future.  Oh, I don’t necessarily mean a persecution on the scale of the Holocaust; it’s more subtle and insidious than that.  It’s the persecution occurring when an individual refuses to conform to the new social order and realize that religion is best kept hidden away in a dark corner, not to be brought out into polite company.  You’re OK if you want to cling to your superstitions, just don’t do it where you can be seen, or in a way that might influence public policy.

It might not be as pronounced as wearing a yellow Star of David, at least not at first.  But when you’re queried at work about political beliefs that have nothing to do with your job, when you can be forced to step down from a job or sell a company because of contributions you’ve made to various organizations, when the government can try to force companies  fund insurance coverage for acts that violate their own religious beliefs – well, you fill in the blanks.

Eventually it spreads.  The skeptic might suggest that, in a free-market economy such as ours, anyone confronted by religious discrimination is at liberty to start their own company, hire people who agree with you, and so on.  But when the prospective business isn’t able to get funding because lending institutions won’t provide it to those of a certain ideological or theological bent, when the business can’t attract customers because of intimidation tactics waged by those for whom freedom of speech applies in only one direction, when the burdens placed by government on the business force an owner to choose between conscience and profit – well, you try explaining it to someone who still has to put food on the table for a wife and children.  There’s more than one form of persecution, and sometimes the unbloody ones are every bit as painful and damaging.  They don’t attack the body, at least not outwardly, but they chip away at the soul.

Which leads me back to The Deputy.  Hochhuth’s claim is that Pius allowed political and financial considerations to prevent him from taking a stronger stance against Nazi persecution of the Jews.  And for all of his preaching, there’s no doubt that Hochhuth’s words (if they’re sincere and not simply a propaganda tool) show a great deal of compassion for the plight of the Jews during WW2.  If he really means what he says, if his fictional Fr. Riccardo (based, supposedly, on St. Maximillian Kolbe) really exemplifies, in his contempt for Pius, a desire to empty himself out for those being persecuted, then one can at least begin to understand the depth of abandonment that the Jews must have felt back then.  To have the entire world abandon you, turn its back on you and ignore what’s being done to you, and then to have the man who carries the greatest amount of moral authority remain silent* - well, that truly speaks to the dark night of the soul.

*To be clear once again: despite Hochhuth’s claim that the play was “ein christliches trauerspiel,” that is, a Christian tragedy, I believe it to be a smear job backed by the KGB, with no intent of sincerity.  However, as Caiaphas discovered (John 11:50), anyone can be an inadvertent prophet, no matter how much the thought might horrify them.

And so, as we enter the once and future persecution, I will put that hat on and look toward Rome and its bishop.  Can you see what is happening here, or are your eyes only on the refugees and the dissenters?  Do you feel the pain that so many are feeling, the choices that are having to be made, the sense of despair that rises, or are you more interested in kissing babies and playing the role of the kindly, benign father?  Are you prepared to confront a powerful government of an increasingly post-Christian nation that wants to marginalize Christianity and its beliefs in the name of progress and majority rule?  Are you ready to speak out for those who have no voice, to show the truth to a world that prefers not to see?

Are you aware of how high the stakes are, of how immigration and social justice and wealth redistribution and all the rest are of no consequence without this basic freedom?

In other words, are you ready to interfere?

Or, like Hochhuth’s fictional Pius, are you all-too willing to allow worldly considerations to influence you to look the other way?

The end of the world

Apropos of yesterday's "Best Of" piece, today I'm going to reprint a quote. It's a little long, but read it. Afterward, I'll tell you more.  (H/T Dreher)

The Liberal notion that religion was a matter of private belief and of conduct in private life, and that there is no reason why Christians should not be able to accommodate themselves to any world which treats them good-naturedly, is becoming less and less tenable. This notion would seem to have become accepted gradually, as a false inference from the subdivision of English Christianity into sects, and the happy results of universal toleration. The reason why members of different communions have been able to rub along together is that in the greater part of the ordinary business of life they have shared the same assumptions about behaviour. . . . The problem of leading a Christian life in a non-Christian society is now very present to us, and it is a very different problem from that of the accommodation between an Established Church and dissenters. It is not merely the problem of a minority in a society of individuals holding an alien belief. It is the problem constituted by our implication in a network of institutions from which we cannot dissociate ourselves: institutions the operation of which appears no longer neutral, but non-Christian. And as for the Christian who is not conscious of his dilemma — and he is in the majority — he is becoming more and more de-Christianised by all sorts of unconscious pressure: paganism holds all the most valuable advertising space. Anything like Christian traditions transmitted from generation to generation within the family must disappear, and the small body of Christians will consist entirely of adult recruits. . . .

What is often assumed, and it is a principle that I wish to oppose, is the principle of live-and-let-live. It is assumed that if the State leaves the Church alone, and to some extent protects it from molestation, then the Church has no right to interfere with the organization of society, or with the conduct of those who deny its beliefs. It is assumed that any such interference would be the oppression of the majority by a minority. Christians must take a very different view of their duty. But before suggesting how the Church should interfere with the World, we must try to answer the question, why should it interfere with the World?

The author of that quote was T.S. Eliot, which means that though it sounds as if it was written yesterday, it was actually quite a while ago.  Try almost 75 years ago.

In one way this is encouraging; it seems as if whatever time in which you lived was always pointing toward the end, which was always just around the corner.  At the same time there's something depressing about it as well; because he describes today's times so well, his pessimism is that much more so.  Either way, there's no doubt that his words are prophetic.

But there's more to Eliot than that, and ultimately - if you read the whole thing - you'll find that he also provides a call to action, a description of exactly what we're called to do. "To accept two ways of life in the same society, one for the Christian and another for the rest, would be for the Church to abandon its task of evangelising the world. For the more alien the non-Christian world become, the more difficult becomes its conversion."  That's the challenge; those are our marching orders.  It sounds vaguely like a call to martyrdom; I don't know.

But one thing that comes instantly to mind: has the Pope ever said anything this cogent?  In this sense, the money quote:

I do not mean that the Church exists primarily for the propagation of Christian morality: morality is a means and not an end. The Church exists for the glory of God and the sanctification of souls: Christian morality is part of the means by which these ends are to be attained. But because Christian morals are based on fixed beliefs which cannot change they also are essentially unchanging: while the beliefs and in consequence the morality of the secular world can change from individual to individual, or from generation to generation, or from nation to nation. 

He's not talking about the Catholic Church, though I have no doubt that if Eliot lived today, seeing what's become of his Anglican church, he would convert.  The message remains the same, though.  Unlike, perhaps, the Bishop of Rome, Eliot does not soft-sell the faith; he does not dumb down the message.  The Church does not exist in a state that renders insignificant what it really stands for.

No matter how confused today's message might be.

Throwback Thursday: The lion that squeaks

I'm going to start you out with some quotes from an article I admire, and then we'll discuss it.

One cause of present-day childishness in grown-up people is the change in the character of the work by which an ever-increasing proportion of the world's population has come to be earning its living since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The mechanization of the world's work has been lightening mankind's physical labor, but this at the price of imposing on the factory worker a psychological curse from which the pre-industrial farmer was free. This curse is the curse of boredom.

Now, the farmer works from dawn to dusk. His life is not dull. Everything - everything - on the farm requires his attention. On the other hand, the factory worker tends not fields nor animals, but machines. "The factory worker's relation to the machinery is impersonal."

If the wheels are to be made to pay, they must be kept turning 24 hours in the day, so the machine-tender works on a shift; the machine is not his own, in the sense in which the farmer's cow and crop are his.

Understandably, this can lead to a dull life for the factory worker. "He may come out physically fresh; but he is likely to find himself phychologically jaded. What he craves for, in his off-time, is recreation; and of course, he is tempted to choose the kind of recreation that makes the lowest spiritual demand on him.

But this isn't an experience limited to those who work in manufacturing:

The middle-class office worker is also making the same choise, without having the same excuse. In his case, perhaps, the cause is not so much boredom as it is anxiety. His higher education has made him more acutely aware of problems - political, social, moral, and spiritual - that are baffling him. His flight from these cares to soap-box opera is a case of escapism.
Moreover, the incentives to seek frivolous distractions are growning in strength. The problems that create anxiety become more menacing, and daily work becomes more boring as automation's pace accelerates.

Interesting, isn't it? At least I think so. And you're probably wondering what kind of textbook or philosophical tome it comes from.

Arnold Toynbee

Well, in fact, it comes from December 4, 1965 issue of TV Guide (with the lissome Juilet Prowse on the cover), in an article entitled "The Lion That Squeaks" by the famed British historian Arnold J. Toynbee. Now, we could discuss at length what this says about TV Guide, that it could go from such in-depth and distinguished writing by a noted historian, to the pap that it now produces. But we've covered that ground before. What I find fascinating is what Toynbee has to say, and what it says to our own times. The lion in Toynbee's article is television, and his speculation is why TV has failed to fulfill its potential. Keep in mind that this article was written almost fifty years ago.

The scene that Toynbee describes is eerily our own. Writing in the '60s, when manufacturing still made up a large part of our economy, Toynbee focuses on the dreariness of factory work and what it does to an individual's spiritual makeup. However, in the paragraph I just excerpted, Toynbee turns his focus to the office worker, and here he describes our service-driven economy to a T.

Working hours are continually becoming shorter and leisure hours correspondingly longer; and here we have a second caues of the public's present choice of forms of recreation that are frivolous and childish.

Toynbee might have been amused to find that although technology has made it possible for us to do more work in less time, we seem to be reacting by working longer and longer hours, in an effort to afford more of the material goods that define our lives, even as in doing so we sacrifice the time available to make use of those toys. But he saw the results coming; oh, yes he did: "The misspending of leisure, even on comparatively innocent frivoloties, will lead to social, cultural and moral regression if it continues unchecked."

Isn't this what we're seeing this very minute? In a past post on TV Guide I cited a publishing expert who looked at the tastes of post-9/11 readers: "Everyone thought that after 9/11, people were going to focus on what really matters, get their priorities straightened out . . . [b]ut I think more than anything people have sought escape at a higher level." In a Strib article on the resurgence of horror shows on TV this season, an anylist followed the same reasoning:

"I think people expected that after 9/11, people were going to want light comedies," said Stuart Gordon, director of "Re-Animator" and the series' installment next week. "But there's so much tension in the world, and people need a chance to get it out of their systems."

It might be well at this point to remember that the great sci-fi movies of the 50s were often seen as cold-war metaphors, the paranoia reflecting our concern with Communism, nuclear war, and the end of the world. And so it's not surprising that we'd turn to horror and celebrity gossip - when we don't believe in anything, when we see no hope for anything other than the world in which we live now; and we see that world seemingly spiraling out of control, then why not turn to more and more destructive ways of living? Even if it's only vicariously, through watching the imploding lives of celebrities or the latest apocalyptical horror story. We're not only escaping responsibility, we're trying to close our hands over our ears and shut the whole thing out. We just don't want to think about it.

Toynbee describes a very Chestertonian-like outlook on economic issues and their relationship to the spiritual lives of people; the need for ownership of work, the essential goodness of physical labor, the dangers of becoming a "wage slave," with no personal stake in the work being performed. He's absolutely right when he talks about the inevitable effects: a rise in anxiety, laziness, moral slackness, an urge for the frivolous. He has looked at today's world through Chesterton's eyes, and seen what the great man predicted.

So what happens next? Toynbee's article concluded with a prescription for what was needed, but doubt that it would happen. First, people need to expect more from television:

How far does this depend on him, and how far does it depend on the policy of the commercial organization that purveys to him those silly programs to which the viewer is now giving an appallingly high proportion of his viewing time?

Networks have to be responsible to viewers, and since they're all businessmen they have to give the viewer what he wants. They can't afford to get too far ahead of the curve, for then it may appear they're trying to force-feed the viewer, who will turn away, leaving the network and its sponsors in a financial dilemma. But, as Barnum (I think) pointed out, nobody ever went broke by understimating what the people will accept:

The purveyor [executives and sponsors responsible for what's on TV] therefore allows himself a margin of safety. He sets the level of his wars below the average level of demand, not above it, and this poor-spirited policy gives him greater freedom of play; for his researches tell him that he can depress the level of his wares at least 12 inches below the average level of demand before his low-brow customers will give up television in disgust because they are finding it too banal to please even them.

Yes, TV needed to become more educational, at least in the sense of feeding the viewer's intellect rather than acting as junk food.

But will just educating the head be enough? The head cannot run far in advance of the heart; and, for bringing about a change of heart, something more than an improvement in formal education is required. A spiritual revolution is needed; and here, I think, we are touching the heart of the matter. We are putting our finger on what is wrong, not just with present-day television, but with present-day Western life.
[...]
In our time, we have lost the lofty vision and the serious purpose with which our forefathers used to be inspired by their ancestral religions. This inspiration has now been lost by many people who still attend church and temple and mosque. How is this vital inspiration to be regained? The future of television, and of everything else, will depend on our answer.

Toynbee was right forty years ago; he's even more right today. And while he's talking about TV in the article, he could be discussing all the institutions of our society: government, business, church. The mood he saw in the waning days of 1965 came to flower in a generation that seemed to reject everything: faith, morals, authority, responsibility, convention. They talked of peace, often in the most violent ways possible. The damage caused by the 60s and 70s can't be overestimated; we now see what happens when our major institutions are run by the generation that ceased to believe. And today's culture is being written by their offspring, children of the children who never grew up.

Toynbee saw the warning signs, and they came to pass. We are poorer because of it. And we must now ask, as we see the signs flare up again: what will they produce this time?

Originally published October 31, 2005

Opera Wednesday: Songville Mystery!

Well, well.  Opera Wednesday paid a visit Friday to "Songville Mystery," which the Carolina Opera Project children wrote and performed.  The libretto states the lead character "has the finest voice in all of Songville Woods, but when her voice is stolen right before the annual singing contest, only the detective can find out whodunit"  I filmed two clips from this project --- enjoy!

Who says you can't combine sports and religion?

This appeals to my sense of the absurd.  Harris - why didn't you come up with this first?

Germany Abdicates World Cup Championship; Argentina to Assume Title

BRAZIL––The German National Team today stunned soccer fans across the globe with their announcement that they would abdicate the World Cup title, effective today. FIFA, the international governing body of association football, said today it has voted the largely unknown Argentinian National Team to assume the title of champions of the soccer world.

Read the rest here.  I laughed out loud at this; would have been even funnier if it hadn't cut so close to the truth...  (H/T Fr. Z)

Flashback Friday - This Just In

Another gem from Steve Harris, a man who can always find the absurd in everyday life. From 2006.

Fortune Cookie Writer Fired, Claims Bias

KING OF PRUSSIA, PA -- Local resident Harold Ludman says he can’t understand why he was recently fired from his job writing fortunes for the homemade fortune cookies served at Leonard Wang’s Chow Palace.

“My fortunes speak to the human condition,” Jones said, holding a sheet of paper with his most recent saying, "When misery knocks at the door, you don’t ask if it’s made a reservation." I know it’s not cheery, but it’s real life. People need to face up to that once in awhile.”

Other fortunes which Jones said he was proud of included “If at first you don’t succeed, try again, but know that the possibility is great that you might fail again,” and “Every glorious sunset means you’re one day closer to the cold eternal darkness of the grave.”

Jones said he had always hoped to find a profitable use for his Master’s degree in the works of French existentialists such as Camus and Sarte, and considered writing fortune-cookie fortunes to be the ideal job.

Wang, however, begged to differ.

“People look for escapism when they crack open a fortune cookie,” he said. “They want to read things like, ‘You will meet a tall, dark stranger,’ not the depressing crap he was coming up with. I was afraid I was going to have to start offering Prozac instead of after-dinner mints.”

Ludman, who himself had recently undergone electro-convulsive therapy at nearby Pleasant Valley Mental Health Clinic and Sanitarium, was disappointed with Wang’s decision, but sought to put a positive spin on the dismissal. “I was thinking about getting out of the fortune-cookie business anyway,” he said. “To be honest, there isn’t a lot of growth potential in it. I didn’t want to be caught in the bathroom when the last lifeboat leaves the Titanic, if you know what I mean. Hell, I’m not sure I know what that means.”

As for his future plans, Ludman said, “I’ve already sent my resume to Hallmark. There’s always a market for a good greeting card.”

Originally published November 6, 2006

Why conservatives may be right about soccer - and why I like it anyway

I'm a political conservative.  I’m also a soccer fan.  If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, neither of these will come to you as revelations from on high.  But there seems to be this idea, from both liberals and conservatives, from soccer fans and non-soccer fans, that you can’t be both.  Allow me to put this idea to rest.  And if neither soccer nor politics interests you (and I can’t say I’d blame you for feeling that way), feel free to come back in a few days.  Or go to It’s About TV, which generally has far more interesting stuff anyway.   For the one or two of you who remain, here goes.

Bernard Goldberg, whom I mostly agree with and always respect, describes soccer as the “anti-American pastime,” and favorably quotes Ann Coulter’s recent ridiculous column, in which she says, “Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation’s moral decay.”  Now, these kinds of pronouncements aren’t new, and some of the worst offenders are the sport’s own fans.  Fans like the liberal columnist Peter Beinart who told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that that soccer “reflects a more cosmopolitan temperament, more of a recognition that America has things to learn from the rest of the world.”

To the liberal elite, soccer proves “the superiority of the young over the old, of liberals over conservatives.”  As Beinart says, younger Americans – who are more disposed to like soccer than older Americans – are also “far less likely than older Americans to say that American culture is superior or to say that America is the greatest country in the world.”  And when one looks at the growth in popularity of the sport, “the states where soccer is most popular, they’re overwhelmingly blue states and the states where soccer is least popular are red states.”

Now, that’s really the way to win fans and influence people, isn’t it?  You know how I’m always going on about how you have to make your argument in such a way that you won’t make people disagree with you just because they don’t like you?  Well, this is about as bad an advertisement for soccer as I can find.  Anyone who’d get into a sport as imperfect as soccer, just because of imagined ideological reasons, really does need to have his head examined.  Maybe he took too many headers in his youth soccer league.

I don’t appreciate it that Google’s little doodles pay more attention to the World Cup than they do commemorations such as D-Day and Memorial Day.  I don’t like the fans who use the lingo of the sport to shut out non-fans (although you really should use the term “nil” rather than “zero”), and I mostly laugh at teams that try to copy European naming conventions, such as Real Salt Lake and FC Dallas.  Note to Dallas ownership: why would you use the term “FC” (an abbreviation for “Football Club”) when your own league is called MLS – with the “S” standing for “Soccer”?  In the United States, soccer isn't football - we already have a game with that name.  Let’s face it, there are a lot of pretentious tropes to be found among soccer fans.

But none of it is enough to make me any less of a fan myself.

The thing about discussions like this is that when you start refuting someone else’s opinion (well-formed or not), you always run the risk of going down the rabbit hole, of trashing other sports in defense of soccer, of resorting to ad hominem attacks.   Goldberg says that most soccer fans “wouldn’t know a fumble from a first down, a hit-and-run from a double play,” but go wild when the Americans tie Tunisia zero-zero, “or nil-nil, as they call it.”  This is a funny line, but it’s just not true, at least in my case, and I suspect for many others as well.  I don’t quite go back as far as Tinker to Evers to Chance, but I’ve seen a few double plays in my lifetime.  I’ve got an entire bookcase in my library devoted to baseball, football, basketball and hockey – the four food groups, if you will, of sports.  I don’t think I’ve got a single book on soccer; I know at the very least that I have more on Formula 1 racing than the World Cup.

As a matter of fact, if name-calling were all that was needed, I could say that “if you think soccer is boring, have you tried watching baseball lately?”  Now, you’ll note that just last week I wrote a piece that ripped on baseball for many things, including being boring.  And yet I was a baseball fan for a long time, and I still enjoy watching classic players and games.  Just because you like soccer doesn’t mean you have to hate baseball, or vice versa.  It’s a big sports world out there.  I’ve lost interest in many sports over my lifetime – baseball, pro football, basketball – but none of them had as a root cause a dislike of America or American culture.

Here’s what I like about soccer – the clock doesn’t stop, the game isn’t interrupted by commercials, the players are exceptionally skilled athletes, the crowds sing and really gets into the game, the announcers are among the best in the world.*  Unless hating commercials is somehow a betrayal of the capitalist system, I fail to see how any of these preferences are bad.

*Except for Gus Johnson.

Come to think about it, there are some things about soccer that conservatives should not just like, but love.  Take relegation, for example.  In most countries (excluding the United States and perhaps a couple others), the bottom three teams at the end of the season are relegated to a minor league, Being relegated means a considerable loss of income and visibility, not to mention increased difficulty in attracting top talent.  Such a system puts a premium on performance – if you finish in last place, you don’t get the top pick in the draft – you get booted out of the league altogether, and have to win your way back.  For a conservative that values achievement-based reward, what could be better than that?

Look, I’m not blind to soccer’s faults.  Yes, there’s not enough scoring – too many teams play not to lose, rather than to win, and soccer’s extremely complicated offsite rule could be tweaked to give the offense a bit more of an advantage.  So what – hockey’s gone through a considerable scoring drought for a couple of decades.*  Yes, the players take dives and act like divas, rolling around at the slightest hint of physical contact as if they’d been shot.  Some of them even take a bite out of their opponents – but even there, American sports did it first, and better.

*Although I’ll allow as to how the threat of a fight does keep the interest level up for a lot of fans.

And I take second to no one in decrying the corruption of soccer’s top governing board, FIFA.  The awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar reeks of bribes, backroom deals, and misdeeds of one kind or another.  (Kind of like politics, now that I think of it.)  The U.S. federation has made its share of questionable decisions over the years as well.  But is any more corrupt than the NCAA’s governance over college athletics?   Even giving the NCAA the benefit of the doubt, I doubt you’d want to be in a darkened room with either group.

I don’t care if soccer is the “world’s sport.”  All that means to me is that I have more leagues to choose from, more styles to compare, more games to catch.  It doesn’t matter if it’s cheaper for kids to take up, or less hazardous to their health.  And for all the times that soccer players flop when someone breathes on them (kind of like basketball players, now that I think of it), I still marvel at their abilities, their stamina, the way they can manipulate the ball with both head and feet for at least 90 minutes in every game.

It doesn’t mean I’m anti-American, nor does it mean that I’ve become a political liberal.  What it does mean is that I’m exercising my God-given right to choose what sports I follow.  What could be more American than that?

WIsh I'd written that - the problem with corporate suits

In these days of corporate ownership, the Commissioner has become of particular importance to the hustler. Corporate ownership brings company men, company policy, and company cards with little holes in them. Corporate ownership, in short, brings committee-think, and with ComThink comes the banishment, discouragement, and attrition of colorful characters. The hustler is dependent upon colorful characters, because color is what is salable. Corporations don’t want to be regulated. They don’t want a Commissioner with any powers … The hustler needs a Commissioner who will throw his weight against the stuffiness, the routine, the deadly boredom of the executive suite. He needs a Commissioner who will help baseball, in spite of itself."

- Bill Veeck, The Hustler's Handbook, as quoted by Charles Pierce.  

Notice how easily you can substitute so many different things for "Commissioner [of baseball]" -  just about anything that the suits of Corporate America touch, in fact.  Capitalism is a great model for economic diversity and success, but as Whittaker Chambers once pointed out, it's an ideology the same as Communism and Socialism, and if it lacks a moral foundation, it's no better than they are.