MH - What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

For us - a trip to the Olive Garden for an early dinner, and then our annual battle to make it to midnight and the start of the new year. Tomorrow - early Mass, followed by HGTV's commercial-free presentation of the Rose Parade. After that, we'll see.

It wasn't always that uncertain, however. As you might have figured, in my misspent youth New Year's meant only one thing - football. (Well, two things actually - football, and the end of Christmas vacation.) Back then I'd spend New Year's Eve watching the Bluebonnet Bowl, then getting ready for the Big Day - the Cotton, Sugar, Rose and Orange Bowls. I'd map out my strategy, figuring out which games to concentrate on, almost always picking out one game in particular to concentrate on. Some years I'd bring my portable TV from my room and set it on top of the big TV in the living room, so I could watch two games at once. (For more affectionate reminiscences of New Year's football past, see this column from Michael Bradley at SI.com.

But times have changed, and as you all know, we have to change with them. As my interest in football has wained, I've had to look elsewhere for my New Year's jollies.

Perhaps my most memorable New Year's Eve was a couple of years ago, when I took my friend Gary out to lunch for his birthday. We drove down to Red Wing, to the Veranda at the St. James Hotel, for a half sandwich and soup. Gary never made a big deal out of his birthday, coming as it did on New Year's Eve, but I thought he might be planning something big for the following year, which would be the big five-oh, and I asked him about it.

"Nah," he said, "but we might do something in a couple of years for my 50th."

"What do you mean?" I said. "You're 50 next year."

"No I'm not. I'll only be 49."

"No," I said. "You're 49 now."

"I'm 48," he said.

"You were born in 1953," I pointed out.

"And that makes me 48," he insisted.

"Gary, trust me," I said. "I know how this works. You're 49 now, you're going to be 50 next year." At this point there wasn't much I could do other than diagram it for him. He looked at the evidence for a few moments and was silent. Finally he sighed.

"Ah, crap," he said. "You're right."

"I'm sorry," I said helpfully.

"I feel like I've just lost a whole year," he said.

"You always did say there was no such thing as a free lunch," I reminded him.

"Yeah," he grumbled. "All this one cost me was a year of my life."

It's to Gary's everlasting credit that he was able to see the humor in the situation, albeit not as quickly as I did, since I was cackling about it all the way home. As soon as he dropped me off, I called his wife, Judi.

"When your husband gets home," I said, "ask him how old he is today."

You might think she would have hesitated at a weird request like this coming out of nowhere, or at least asked what it was all about. But all she said was, "OK, I'll ask him." She'd had plenty of experience linking weird and Gary.

I remind him of this every couple of months, and it's always good for a laugh ("at my expense," he says ruefully). I've related the story to my co-workers, one of whom asked him, when he came up to the office for lunch one day, if he was the one who didn't know how old he was. You might think that Gary puts up with a lot having me for a friend, but it works both ways, trust me.

I just got off the phone with him a few minutes ago, wishing him a happy birthday. "I'll be 51 this year," he said. "I know how old I am this time." He assumed I'd be writing something about this for the blog. To tell you the truth, between you and me, the thought hadn't even occurred to me until he mentioned it.

But never let it be said that I don't take Gary's advice...

A Happy, Happy Birthday, my good friend! And Happy New Year to all of you from the Hadleys! We'll talk to you again next year!


UPDATE: I made it to midnight. My ailing wife, suffering from a virus of some type, only made it to midnight Eastern time - long enough to see the ball drop before she dropped into bed.

MH - Because I Know You Want to Know...

For what it's worth, my BCS predictions:

Rose - Texas
Fiesta - Utah
Sugar - Auburn
Orange (the only one that really matters) - Oklahoma

And remember, as always my predictions are worth what you pay for them.

MH - Reflections on the Holy Family

It’s easy to overlook the Feast of the Holy Family in the liturgical calendar, especially in a year like this where it falls on the day after Christmas. But those of us fortunate enough to hear the homily given at St. Agnes last Sunday by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf were treated to a treasure trove of information and points to ponder. I can’t begin to do justice to all the points he raised - I can do no better than to share them with you and incorporate them into my thoughts.

Fr. Z spoke of the importance of the family unit. Of all the ways in which the Savior could appear, God demonstrates the importance of the family by choosing to have Him born into a human family consisting of a man and a woman. Not only does this therefore represent the perfect form of family, in its construction it also mirrors the three in the Holy Trinity. The family, therefore, must be understood as a creation of God Himself.

Then there was the oft-misunderstood passage in Colossians 3: 18 – 21 where St. Paul speaks of the need for wives to be “submissive” to their husbands. (“Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.”) These four verses are part of the optional “longer” form – were they read in your parish on Sunday? A lot of parishes omit them, so as not to “offend” anyone in the congregation. Well, we read them, and Fr. Zuhlsdorf spoke to them.

Where critics focus on the “submissive” portion, often accusing St. Paul of misogyny, they generally overlook the following clause, where husbands are admonished to love their wives. Fr. Z speaks of this love as a sacrificial love, a love dedicated to the spiritual improvement of the other, a love which causes the husband to sacrifice, to work, to protect and defend his family. This sacrificial love, which exists not exclusively but uniquely in the family, mirrors the love of Christ for His bride, the Church, and as such is instrumental in the implementation of God’s plan for the family.

It is the love of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross, the love of St. Joseph's protection as he whisks his family into Egypt to save them from Herrod. It is the love of which St. Therese writes when she says "true love grows by sacrifice and that the more thoroughly the soul rejects natural satisfaction, the stronger and more detached its tenderness becomes." All in all, a pretty tall order to which St. Paul calls husbands, don't you think?

Now, to me this explains to a great deal the importance of the attack on the family. We all know how marriage is under attack today by homosexual activists, those who advocate polygamy, and more. Understanding the importance that God placed on the family helps to explain why this is a source of danger to liberals. Tear down the family, and you tear down the building blocks of society as we know it, the foundation upon which so many of our mores are constructed.

As parents are separated or drawn away from their children, you eliminate them as first teachers of their children (and, of course, their first obligation as teachers is to teach the Faith). You eliminate the role that fathers play in the lives of their families as supporters and protectors, and we certainly see how the male has been replaced by the government. We see the absence of the male in so many black families. We see the dignity of the man being stripped away. Likewise, woman, are often forced by our economic system to choose between career and family, or are told they can “have it all.” Increasing numbers of stay-at-home moms point to the widespread failure of this attitude. Add to that our increasingly materialistic consumer culture, which calls on us to reject any form of sacrifice in favor of instant gratification. Not just "have it all," but "have it all now!" Is it any wonder that such concepts now seem quaint and antiquated?

Eventually, by redefining and tearing down that perfect unit, we can proceed with tearing down the dignity of man through abortion and euthanasia. Without the stability of the family, human beings become statistics, units of commerce, measured in a utilitarian way. With no one to care for them, protection for the unborn, the sick and the elderly drifts away.

I’m sure none of this is new to most of you. But it never hurts to have a potent reminder, and this is what Fr. Z provided in his homily.

This brings us to a TV program called The Christmas Show Christmas Show which was broadcast last week on the Bravo and Trio cable networks. The show contained some fascinating highlights from old Christmas shows (among which: clips of the elves from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer doing commercials for General Electric, and brief excerpts from the original 1950s TV broadcasts of Amahl and the Night Visitors), and provided occasionally insightful commentary into the effect television has had on our culture’s perception of the Christmas celebration. But overriding the entire production was a smirking, cynical, mincing distain for the family.

Traditional portrayals of the family unit were met with arrogant, know-it-all condensation. An eye-rolling “give me a break” attitude was reserved for celebrities who tried in the face of reality to present a united family in front of the cameras, even though they might all go their separate ways once taping stopped. Everyone from Judy Garland to Andy Williams to Bing Crosby came in for their share of scorn.

Look, we all know how corny these shows could be (diabetics should be especially careful when watching some of them). Sure it was good business to show yourself as a good family man (or woman), and especially in those days any hint of scandal could result in poisonous, career-damaging publicity. But at the same time these shows understood something about what America expected and considered important in a family, and they felt an obligation to present it. Maybe it was as fake as the bleached corn flakes they often used as imitation snow, but at least they tried to hold the family up as something other than an object of sarcastic ridicule.

The Holy Family represents a model for emulation; the perfect family unit. Not all of us come from such a family, and best efforts occasionally fall short. Nonetheless, there can be no question that this is the model which God created for us; it is the love which God has for us that is reflected in the love family members have for each other, and it is the model to which we should aspire.

It explains why those who want to change society aim first for the family, for as the family goes so goes everything else. And it explains why we must fight for the family, and keep on fighting – in this upcoming new year, and always.


For those interested in learning more about Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, he is moderator of the Catholic Online Forum.

MH - Ad Limina, Et Al...

Our Archbishop, Harry Flynn, recently returned from his ad limina visit to Rome. During the visit, the subject of his treatment of members of Rainbow Sash came up. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Rainbow Sash, it’s basically a group of homosexual activists demanding equal treatment from the Church. Their technique is to present themselves for communion while wearing a rainbow colored sash to identify themselves as members of the movement. An article in the archdiocese newspaper gives details of the meeting.

Rainbow Sash has been fairly controversial in this archdiocese. Some bishops, such as Cardinal George in Chicago, have refused Communion to members of the group “on the grounds that they were using the Eucharist to make a political statement against church teaching.” Others, including Archbishop Flynn, have given Communion to the members, saying they didn’t want to use the Eucharist as a weapon. Archbishop Flynn has added “sash-wearers would not be denied Communion because members of the movement had assured him in writing that their presence was not in protest of church teachings.”

There’s a lot to be said on this issue, probably too much for one post. What I want to focus on here is this excerpt of the newspaper article.

Archbishop Flynn said he discussed the issue in a private meeting in early December with Cardinal Francis Arinze, head of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments.

He said Cardinal Arinze agreed that it was a complex problem requiring clear teaching and pastoral sensitivity. The archbishop said he was not asked to change his policy.

“I got the clear understanding that this is recognized as a very complex pastoral issue which must constantly be looked at in all its ramifications,” Archbishop Flynn said in an interview in mid-December."

And here is the part I don’t understand:

Archbishop Flynn said it was recognized that U.S. bishops have come to different conclusions about how to respond to Rainbow Sash members who present themselves for Communion, but he said he got no sense that the Vatican was pushing for a single policy on this.

Now, what I don’t understand is this: everyone involved seems to agree that the Church teaches against homosexual behavior. In the article, Archbishop Flynn is quoted thusly: “We all stand very strong in our teaching concerning human sexuality, and what is right and what is wrong, and the teaching of the church concerning homosexuality, the teaching of the church concerning marriage between one man and one woman.”

So at least in this case, everyone seems to be on the right page. Therefore, if this is true, why shouldn’t there be a single policy on this? Seems pretty clear-cut to me.

Reception of the Eucharist is not a right, it’s a privilege. In order to receive in good conscience, one must be in a state of grace, i.e. no unconfessed mortal sin. While it’s true that you can’t read a man’s mind or know what’s in his heart, you most certainly can draw conclusions based on their outward actions. Generally, in our don’t ask-don’t tell atmosphere, the priest has no way of knowing the inward disposition of communicants. Under those circumstances, he’d have no choice but to give Communion, and that’s fine. But here we’re talking about people who’ve publicly declared their position, and back it up by wearing these sashes.

Now, if Rainbow Sash isn’t challenging church teachings, why are they wearing their sashes in church? Why be so demonstrative?

My point is not to argue with the Archbishop here. As I said, you could write an entire book about that question, and I’ll probably write more about it later anyway. (N.B. Considering the recent fiasco involving Cardinal McCarrick’s “interpretation” of Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter regarding administering the Eucharist to pro-choice Catholics, I would be very interested in knowing exactly what Cardinal Arinze actually said, rather that what the newspaper or Archbishop Flynn says he said. Could be the very same thing.) Anyway, I don’t want to be putting words in anyone’s mouth.

But my question stands. If the church recognizes homosexual behavior as being wrong, why isn’t there a uniform policy on how to handle administration of the Eucharist to those who publicly identify themselves with a policy at odds with church position? It can’t be right in one diocese and wrong in another. As the good priest Fr. John Paul Echert has pointed out, the truth can’t contradict itself. And yet here we find ourselves. Is it any wonder the sheep are confused when the shepherds don’t seem to know what direction to take them?

JH - Snow White and the Seven Wagners

First of all, I hope you had a blessed Christmas and that you'll have a happy, healthy new year.

A couple of weeks ago we were in Chicago visiting our friends the Crawfords. They wanted to show us the City at Christmas, so we spent several days driving around looking at decorations and lights and seeing how suburbs can transform themselves into nostalgic small towns at Christmas time. Naperville was one of the nicest, with a display in every store window and a Nativity scene on the main street. Yes, my friends, a real, honest-to-God religious symbol of the season right in town.

Of course we had to see the windows at Marshall Field's on State Street. This year it was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Oh, pardon me - not dwarfs. Seven little men. Wouldn't want to offend anyone. We bundled up and braved the winds of 50 mph along with scores of other hardy souls to ooh and aah at the magical scenes in each window. Then we reached the window with the first hint of the Prince. It was a sort of painted silhouette since he was hiding in the bushes peering at the lovely vision that was Snow White. The prince was, well, less lovely than the one I had envisioned reading the fairy tale as a child. I suppose we all have our own fantasies, but this one was decidedly modern. "Say, what's with the spiked hair?" exclaimed my friend Gary. But we pushed on to see if, once again, Snow White would eat the poison apple. She hadn't gotten any smarter and ended up in the deadly sleep, waiting to be awakened by..."hey," Gary shouted, "that's Clay Aiken!" Sure enough, the prince, once he was seen in his full 3-D glory, was indeed a dead ringer for the popular singer.

There were other departures from my memory of the Grimm's tale. The dwar..sorry, little men, were in fact little men, little multi-cultural men instead of fanciful characters with big noses, scraggly beards and big floppy hats. And now, instead of working in a dank, dark, dirty iron mine, they labored in a diamond mine. Okay, every ancient story has different interpretations. But it wasn't until we got back to Minneapolis and went to the 8th floor auditorium of Marshall Field's (or Dayton's as many of us still call it) to see the diorama in all its splendor that we experienced the full impact of the updating to the story.

There were the seven little men and the same spiked-hair prince, who now was diorama life-size and wearing what every royal prince naturally would wear - blue jeans. Seems princes these days have either fallen on hard times or are trying to move with a more populist crowd. The wicked step-mother was played by a different mannequin, this time deserving the once-held titile of "fairest of them all." The one in Chicago couldn't even have fooled the mirror by wearing a bag over her head.

And what about the mine? Well, this workplace was a little less labor-intensive than the one the seven used to whistle their way to. The Diamond Mine was an upscale, hip disco club. No picks and shovels for these guys. No sir. Now it's turntables and strobe lights. And Donna Summer.

I suppose the people who put this all together thought that they were being very clever. Clever isn't always a good thing. Neither is this version of Snow White.

It did remind me in places of things that I saw in the Ring. No, not Tolkein. Wagner. Honest. After Snow White had ingested the poisoned apple, the dwarfs made a bier where they laid her to rest forever, as they supposed. It was a breath-taking scene of deep blue with silvery snow all around, Snow White in beautiful repose and the dwarfs lining the stairway, mourning. Snow White awaits her hero who will awake her with a kiss.

In Die Walkure, Brunnhilde, after disobeying her father Wotan's directive to fight against Siegmund, is sentenced by Wotan to be cast out of Valhalla and lie in a magic sleep until some man comes along to wake her. Wotan casts this spell upon her with a kiss. (In the next opera of the Ring cycle Siegfried awakens her with a kiss.) In the DVD version we have Brunnhilde is atop a rock, ringed with fire in a scene much like the Marshall Field's Snow White surrounded by snow. Although Snow White is awakened with the prince's kiss and they live happily ever after, things are rarely as easy in Wagner. They are rarely that easy in real life either, although we do all have the chance for eternal happiness.

And this is where the similarities of the fairy tale of Snow White and fairy tale, or heroic saga, of the Ring of the Nibelungen really touch hands. These characters are archetypes. These stories are the stories we have told and retold from the beginning of time. We tell stories to try to explain the world we live in. We change them, we see them in different ways, we try out different versions to try to learn why we are here and what we're supposed to be doing. Many of these stories are meant to have a moral meaning, to teach us concepts such as duty and loyalty, faith and love.

Snow White made two other mistakes before eating the apple by letting the disguised wicked step-mother near enough to her to cause her harm. Each time the dwarfs were able to save her. The third time they could not. The hag floats the shiny red apple before Snow White and she succumbs. Snow White's punishment was to sleep until the prince comes to save her. Brunnhilde's punishment was to be banished from Valhalla and to sleep until her prince came. Eve's punishment, after being tempted by the serpent and eating the apple, was to be banished from Eden and to pass this curse to her descendants until the Prince came to save us all.

And what about redemption? Two seasonal characters leap to mind: Scrooge and the Grinch. Our stories are still trying to show us that while we live it's never too late to repent and reform.

We all, whether we accept it or not, are made in the Creator's image and we have a natural instinct to reach out toward that Creator, to try to grasp what it is that eludes us so often, so much. Our stories from the most ancient times have been used to try to understand this.

MH - It's a Wonderful Life in 30 Seconds - With Bunnies

Maybe I'm the only person in the world who hadn't already seen this - but if you haven't seen it either, click and enjoy!

MH - Pros and Cons on Santorum

Get Religion has an interesting piece today on Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum (thanks to Amy Welborn for the tip!), who's become quite controversial in both Republican and Catholic circles over the past year. While I have to give him credit for some of his achievements in the past, I'm prone to agree with Jeremy Lott that Santorum is "an intriguing mix of conservative firebrand Catholic and GOP hack." He's the primary reason I let my subscription to Crisis lapse, but that's another story...

MH - Comments in the Email

Hadleyblogger Mike Sable with a pithy comment on my post "The Indignity of Work" (see sidebar for link) - "It reminds me of the Dilbert strip when amemberof the herd was promoted to management; one of the management gnomessays, 'welcome to management, I'll be removing your soul. The only way you can get it back is by being demoted or learning to appreciate jazz.' "

Couldn't have put it better myself! :) Although I do like jazz...

MH - Reason #632 Why I Am Not a Member of NPR*

The local NPR station, KSJN (flagship of public radio beheamoth MPR) couldn't interrupt their Christmas music programming Saturday for the regularly scheduled Metropolitan Opera matinee broadcast of Janácek's Kát'a Kabanová, but they did somehow find two hours to present Garrison Keilor's Prairie Home Companion. Let's face it, the worst, most atonal modernist dreck the Met ever put on has more artistic merit than Prairie Home Companion. But you gotta have your priorities, I guess.


*Or NCPR - National Communist Public Radio - as Joe Bob Briggs once put it.

MH - Celebrating Christmas

Barring unforseen circumstances, this will be our last post before Christmas, and I thought I might spend a minute passing along some ways that people commemorate Christmas. In the Hadley household, we read the Nativity scene from Luke prior to dinner on Christmas Eve, and then attend Midnight Mass at the great St. Agnes in St. Paul. Our friends the Crawfords sit around the tree on Christmas morning and read the story of the Magi bringing their gifts to the Christ Child, before they open their presents. In households throughout the world similar traditions are observed, as we recall the momentous events that happened over two thousand years ago, and what they mean to us today.

I thought for awhile about what would be an appropriate post to close with, and I decided on this, one of my favorite passages, the prologue to the Gospel of St. John. And with that, my wife and I wish all of you out there a blessed and very merry Christmas, and we'll see you next week.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was made nothing that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men: and the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness to give testimony of the light, that all men might believe through him. He was not the light, but was to give testimony of the light. That was the true light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them He gave great power to become the sons of God: to them that believe in His name: who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

MH - Offended by Christmas?

Hadleyblogger Mark Peterson forwards an email from a friend talking about the continued attack against Christmas. Here are some excerpts:

When I saw a news report the other evening of children being taught new words to a song we've sung for years - "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" - I was saddened to hear "We Wish You a Splendid Holiday."

I know now that it's just a matter of time that the "Merry Christmas" greetings will be gone. Look around your town. Notice the "Holiday" greetings and not "Christmas." It's happening right before our very eyes.

Start singing the songs; go down the streets of America singing to your heart's content. Get some of those wash-off markers that these kids use to write on their car windows when they're rooting for their hometown football team. It's easy to do, and if a torrential rain washes it off, write it on there again.

We've got to get this message out. "Go Tell It On the Mountain . . . that Jesus Christ is Born." Sing it, speak it, be a billboard for our Lord.

The story of this "Baby Jesus" alone has brought about more goodwill at this time of year than any other day we celebrate. How can we sit back and allow Him to be snuffed out of our lives?

Is it Jesus, or is it His followers that the "offended" don't like? What kind of revulsion galvanizes one to campaign so vehemently against the mere mention of His name, the mere singing of a carol, or the mere visual of a sign that says "Merry Christmas?"

I can listen to my own boss at work use some of the vilest words and follow up with, "Excuse my French." I may cringe inside at his damning of God's name, but I tolerate it. So if you don't like me wishing you a "Merry Christmas," I'll say, "Excuse my joy." You may cringe that I celebrate the birth of Jesus, but just tolerate it.

I cannot be concerned that "Merry Christmas" offends you. If I'm not careful, the day will come when saying I'm a Christian will offend you.

I'm offended that you're offended. How about that?

When we get to a point that we can no longer take part in a tradition we hold dear, we have no choice; we either defend that tradition or we give it up to those who say NO. That's it . . . period. So, which will it be?

I'm not giving up my "Merry Christmas" joy to anyone. If I know of someone that celebrates another holiday during this time of year, I will be glad to wish them whatever holiday they want. Just tell me what it is and I'll shout it to the world and wish you a grand celebration.

Lileks has had some very interesting thoughts on this subject this week as well. See this example, in which he rebuts comments made by blogger James Wolcott. Don't bother to look at Wolcott's site; Lileks repeats the relevant comments in his post.

Someone asked me why this is such a big deal now, when we all know "Merry Christmas" has been systematically stamped out for years. It's because we're starting to fight back, and the other side can't stand it. That means it will get much worse, but that also means we have to fight all the harder. Get angry about this, folks, and then as I said earlier, pray for those people who hold Christians and Christmas in so much scorn.

MH & JH - Check Out this Website

A new link we've added to the sidebar is Faithmouse.com. Faithmouse (also known as christiancartoon.com and conservativecartoon.com), by Dan Lacey, is a daily Christian conservative cartoon online since 1998 and which appears and/or is linked on over 225 web sites including newsmax.com. We checked out this site and strongly recommend it for anyone reading Our Word. They are saying things about our culture that need to be said, and doing it in a way that is very accessible to people. When you've looked at the cartoons, read some of the comments sent in by people. If it's true that you can often judge a man by his enemies, then I think Dan's "enemies" prove that he's doing the Lord's work. Some of the comments will make you mad, but let that righteous indignation turn to prayer for these people, some of whom have a great hatred of God and Jesus, that they will turn their energy and their souls over to Him, Who can do all things.

MH - Wish I Was Strong Enough to Have Written That...

"[H]ow true it is that wealth doesn't bring happiness. I should have been a thousand times happier under a thatched roof with the prospect of Carmel before me than living in a palace with a marble staircase and silken hangings and yet having this sorrow in my heart. I realized very clearly that happiness has nothing to do with the material things which surround us; it dwells in the very depths of the soul. One can be just as happy in a gloomy prison as in a palace."

The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux

MH - In Case You Were Wondering...

...how a blog can link the Middle East, college football and Catholicism, check out this.

MH - Bowling for Dollars

Well, even if you can’t wish people “Merry Christmas” anymore, you can at least wish them “Happy Bowl Season.” That’s right, it’s time once again for the college football bowl games.

In that same old TV Guide I cited a few days ago (December 27, 1969), there’s an interesting article by Melvin Durslag – “The Annual Howls Over the Annual Bowls.” Seems that way back in 1969, there were people, former Georgia Tech coach Bobby Dodd among them, who thought the bowl situation had gotten way out of hand. There were now 12 – count ‘em, 12 – bowl games on TV. Can you believe it?

Imagine how Bobby Dodd would feel today. We now have not 12 but 28 bowl games, starting with the New Orleans Bowl on December 14 and ending with the Orange Bowl on January 4. Someone figured out that there were now so many bowl games, only two or three bowl-eligible teams would be left out. Whereas bowl games were once seen as rewards for outstanding seasons, today over 25% of the teams playing in bowls had 5 losses (out of 11 or 12 games). I don’t know about you, but it’s really hard for me to work up any enthusiasm for watching a game between teams with combined records of 12-10, played before an announced crowd of 30,000, many of whom came disguised as empty seats.

Bowl games started out as inventions of local tourist boards looking for ways to bring in more tourist dollars in the winter. It shouldn’t be surprising, therefore, that even then money was a major component. The Rose Bowl, the granddaddy of them all, was designed by the Tournament of Roses Committee to augment the chariot races and ring toss events that followed the parade. Winter vacation getaway destinations like Miami and New Orleans soon followed, and the race was on.

Even now, most bowl games look not only at the record of the teams, but also at the number of fans that are likely to follow along – fans that can be counted on to spend plenty of money while they’re down there. The University of Minnesota, which has had a couple of good seasons recently, probably got stiffed out of more prestigious bowls because they have a small traveling base of fans, which ultimately means less money coming into the city’s coffers.

But believe it or not, there was a time when bowl games weren’t as big a deal as they are now. In the early 1960s, Ohio State refused an invitation to the Rose Bowl because the faculty thought there was too much of an emphasis on football. Georgia Tech players turned down a game one year because their Christmas vacations had been disrupted two years in a row and they were tired of it. Notre Dame had a no-bowling policy until 1969, because bowl games interfered with exams (they changed the policy when the academic calendar was altered).

Until the late 60s, the bowls didn’t even count toward picking the national champion. That was done at the end of the regular season by the AP and UPI, and the bowls were seen more as exhibitions. As legendary Ohio State coach Woody Hayes saw them in Durslag’s article, they represented “a player’s just reward for hard work during the season.”

The problems arose when the national championship team lost in the bowl. It was even worse if they were beaten by a team which had its own claim to being number 1. For that team, it was a case of winning the battle, losing the war; beating the number 1 team might earn you acclaim as the people’s champ, but it doesn’t take up much space in the old trophy case.

Eventually, of course, the old system was scrapped and the wire services started choosing the national champion after the bowl games. While this wasn’t without its own problems (for example, AP and UPI sometimes chose different teams, thus creating a split national champion), at least all the games were played before the voting was held. The ultimate goal was a national championship game between the top two teams. This did happen on occasion, but not very often, because many of the best teams were committed by conference contract to playing in specific bowl games.

Thus, the desire for a national championship game, and the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) was born. About this, the less said, the better. Frank Deford had a recent article which puts it better than I could ever hope to.

You’ve probably figured out by now what’s at the bottom of all this chaos. That’s right, money. Bowl games are cheap programming for ESPN, the network that covers most of them and created many of them to fill their prime-time schedule. They’re also cheap advertising for corporate sponsors, the proliferation of which has robbed most games of any semblance of identity (the classic Champs Sports Bowl, for example*).

The NCAA gets big bucks for selling the rights to the BCS (Fox recently shelled out $80 million for four years’ worth). The schools and conferences involved in the games stand to make windfalls, thanks to those networks and corporate sponsors. Think the University of California is upset with the BCS bumping them from the Rose Bowl to the Holiday Bowl because they’d rather have spent New Year’s in Pasadena? Try the difference between $2 million and $14.5 million instead.

The players don’t get paid for playing, of course. But before you feel too sorry for them, don’t forget the free scholarships, not to mention who-knows-what from some of the school’s more energetic boosters.

What we’re left with are often meaningless games between mediocre teams in front of lethargic and sparse crowds. The matchups are often uninspired (most of them are locked in by pre-arranged deals between conferences and bowls), and there are always at least a couple of teams claiming they deserved better.

Obviously the answer to all this is a playoff. They’ve been talking about one since, well, this 1969 TV Guide article, where the idea was already being bandied about.

But there are just too many egos involved, and too many bowl games to satisfy, not to mention the money. If it was impossible to take care of everyone when there were only 12 bowls, imagine what it’s like when there are 29. Check out this excerpt from the Durslag article:

The minor games get ordinary-to-weak ratings on TV. They are offered for incidental amusement, serving mostly as promotional gimmicks for the communities sponsoring them. Heat from such promoters is believed responsible for the tabling last spring of a national playoff proposal at a meeting of the NCAA Executive Committee. A disgusted coach remarked: “The bowl people are doing what’s good for them. We favor what’s good for college football.”

As I’ve said before, the more things change…

Was the old system unfair? Sometimes. But you know what? Life can be like that sometimes. What we’re seeing now is an unholy alliance between those who counsel mediocrity – the “everyone’s a winner” group – and those for whom money is the bottom line.

Keep it in mind tonight when you watch that gripping Fort Worth Bowl matchup between Marshall (6-5) and Cincinnati (6-5). Enjoy!


* The Champs Sports Bowl, previously known as the Blockbuster Bowl, the Carquest Bowl, the Micron PC Bowl, and the Tangerine Bowl, and played first in Miami, and now in Orlando.

MH - Khomeini Fest

Here's a disturbing story - a"North Texas Muslim organization last week staged a 'Tribute' conference honoring the life and works of the 'Great Islamic Visionary' Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini." Excerpt:

A 10-year-old boy opened the conference praising Khomeini for reviving "pure" Islamic thinking and saving the religion from being conquered by the West. The boy called President Bush "the greatest enemy of the Muslim Ummah," CBS-11 has learned.

It sounds as if not everyone participating in the conference realized what the theme was going to be, so we should be careful painting with a broad brush. Nevertheless, this sounds to me like another wake-up call for America - but I wonder how many will just press the snooze button again...

An interesting exchange on the Dallas Morning News blogsite followed (registration may be required to link to the DMN blogsite, but you can read about it in this link), featuring the typically reliable Rod Dreher.

Many, many thanks to my friend Mark Peterson for bringing this to my attention (he wonders why, to the best of his knowledge, we haven't heard about this in the MSM. Sharing information is the way we're going to keep informed!) and to Jihad Watch for the link to the Dallas Morning News info.

UPDATE: Rod Dreher has more on this at The Corner (December 21), including a link to Wednesday's DMN editorial on the event.

MH - The More Things Change...

Here's another item from my TV Guide collection. This is from the issue dated December 27, 1969 - a landmark time. End of a tumultous decade, and a year that saw the Mets win the World Series, man land on the moon, Nixon sworn in as president, Agnew attack the media, and the Smothers Brothers exit network TV. And all that's just on the cover!

Anyway, the editorial in this issue discusses filmmaker Jerome Katzman and his new movie, Angel, Angel, Down We Go, which is described as "a putdown of the Establishment and just about all the cherished mores of Western society. It mocks motherhood, the flag, sexual fidelity, orthodoxy and fatherhood. It wallows in unrepentant murder, corruption, seduction, flagellation and homosexuality. It is, Katzman proposes, a satanic distillation of the latent evil in all people, and it explains - at least to his satisfaction - why fils of putdown, brutality and erotica have become commercial pacemakers." In words that eerily resemble those of Willie Stark, Katzman says, "I think the basic nature of man is not good, but bad...We (have to make films that) satisfy the baser appetites in man in order to have him do the good things that he does."

If you've been to the movies lately, you're probably thinking "what's new in this?" And it does sound a lot like the kind of junk you see at the multiplex. In fact, it's probably tame, campy entertainment compared to what passes for cinema today. However, what got me to thinking was this quote from Katzman - "I feel a strong conviction that pictures today have to throw away all the rules to get people away from the tube." Substitute the word "cable" for "tube," and you have a perfect description of what's happened to television today. Remember a few years ago when Steven Bochco tried to justify the explicitness of NYPD Blue by saying networks had to compete with cable? It's only gotten worse since then. Watch the networks try to copy the success of shows like The Sopranos. Cable TV has won justifiable praise for some of its series, but they're adult programs, in households that (presumably) pay extra to get access to it. The networks, on the other hand, are free, public airwaves. The recent spade of fines by the FCC testifies to the direction network programming is going.

None if this is news. But what I find particularly intersting about editorial is TV Guide's clearly disapproving reaction to all this. The editorial sarcastically concludes: "Man is essentially evil. He gets rid of that evil by watching depraved, revolting Katsman films. What's left is good. Ergo, Jerome Katsman is performing a public service by producing such movies." Would TV Guide say the same thing today? I subscribed to the magazine for over thirty years before I finally got fed up with the soft-core porn covers, the salacious content, the lascivious profiles of the latest scantilly-clad starlet describing her current ground-breaking series noted for its sexual frankness.

Which just goes to show that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Movies have stayed the same, television has become the same, and TV Guide just goes along for the ride.

MH - Target in the Bulls-Eye

Some additional thoughts on Target’s decision to ban Salvation Army bell ringers from the front of their stores. You already know about this story. I wrote on it last week, from the perspective of whether or not Catholics should give to the SA. Now I’m back, to address it from the point of view of Target.

It wasn’t a very smart move from a public relations standpoint. We won’t know until after Christmas whether or not it hurt them financially, and even if there’s a drop in sales we can’t know for sure that there was a cause/effect relationship, but considering the amount of criticism that they’ve gotten, you can’t think it was a very bright thing to do. You have to ask yourself if you’d want the people responsible for making that call to be in charge of your company. At least we’ll find out if there’s really no such thing as bad publicity.

Apparently Target has a policy against allowing solicitations in front of their stores. For years they’ve made an exception for the Salvation Army, and now they’ve decided not to. Many reasons for this decision have been bandied about, from union regulations (continuing to allow the SA to solicit would open the door to union solicitations) to the fear that other, more divisive groups would petition to be allowed, to the idea that Target is anti-religious, to the simple thought that Target wants to keep their customers from being harassed as they enter the store.

I don’t pretend to know what the answer is, although I’ll offer some speculation at the conclusion of this piece. But first some visual observations:

Drive through downtown Minneapolis during the month, and you’ll see Salvation Army bell ringers on many street corners. Sure, you might see an occasional pamphleteer somewhere along the line, but you can get around them easily enough. And mostly what you see in December is the bell ringer.

Of course, downtown corners are still public places. But aside from the noon hour, not very many people go shopping downtown, at least in Minneapolis. Downtown has been replaced by the suburban mall, and this is the crux of my argument.

Shopping malls have become the modern public square, the secular house of worship, the place where people go to hang out. Pages and pages have been written about this as a sociological phenomenon, so I’m not going to argue the point; let’s accept this as a given. If so, one could make a compelling argument that the parking lot, indeed the entire area around the store up to the entrance, does not really belong to Target. Oh, it belongs to them legally. They pay property tax on it, they’re responsible for the maintenance, they plow the lot and shovel the walk during the winter. But figuratively, this area belongs to the public. It’s an open space, a landmark, a meeting space, a short-cut on the way to other places.

Put simply, the public has a vested interest in areas like this, an interest that comes into conflict with the legal rights of the landowner. I’m not necessarily carrying this argument to a legal conclusion, merely a moral one. Target may be able to do whatever they want with access to their store, but does that mean they should? Or does the public have rights as well, even when it comes to private property?

Again, I’m no lawyer (I don’t even play one on TV), but FWIW here are my two cents: If Target is afraid that other groups will want to solicit in front of their stores, then the answer is – let them! Let ‘em all come if they want. The more the merrier.

Of course, you can have some regulation of this mass solicitation: for example, don’t allow them to actually overtly solicit. Let them stand there with their kettle or their pamphlets or whatever else they might have, but tell them they can’t approach the public unless the public approaches them first. Last time I looked the Salvation Army didn’t really “solicit” anyway – they just kind of stand there and ring their bell, maybe wish you a Merry Christmas, but they don’t usually ask you straight out for money. Let everyone else play under these rules. You can have your informational flyer, but you can’t give it to anyone unless they ask for it first. I would hope that groups could adhere to this mild restraint of freedom of speech – after all, it’s better than not being allowed there in the first place. (And it might not hurt them to be less aggressive – it’s always a bad idea to drive away potential customers. Although someone ought to tell this to the people who operate mall kiosks.) For strip malls, let these groups gather on the sidewalk at a reasonable distance from the store’s entrance. For enclosed malls, the spot would be outside the mall entrances.

My wife asked about abortion protesters, as they’re often restricted in their activities outside abortion mills. This is true, and such restrictions are just as ridiculous as Target’s policy. A consistent application of the policy would give them a lot more freedom than they have in many places.

So who’s afraid of the Salvation Army, besides Target? Come one, come all, I say! Besides, I have an idea that there’d be less traffic outside the store entrance than you might think. Here’s why:

Have you been to your neighborhood grocery store lately? I have. Every week, in fact. And what to my wondering eyes should appear in front of that store each week but a Salvation Army bell ringer. The first question I asked was this: why isn’t there anyone else in front of the store? After all, I assumed if you allowed the SA, you’d be swamped with groups demanding your money, yet, the only person outside the store was a lone bell ringer.

Where are all these other groups? You’d think they’d all be camped out in front of a grocery store – regardless of the effect of superstores, a grocery store is still a pretty high traffic area – people gotta eat, you know.

So if you buy into this “allow one, allow them all” idea, then there are two possible answers: one, nobody else is asking, and two, the grocery store makes an exception to allow the SA.

And that begs this question: if a grocery store can do it, why can’t Target?

My wife, who hasn’t quite bought into my concept of public/private space, said this was the most compelling argument on the issue she’d seen.

We’re left with one final thought – is Target (and all other corporations with similar policies) discriminating against religious organizations? Think about it. There is, after all, no mention anywhere in a Target store of Christmas. (Don’t get me started on that again!) You can only judge groups, as well as individuals, based on their public actions, and while the last thing I want to do is accuse Target of being anti-religious, what other explanation can there be? If there is one, I’d be happy to hear about it, but it had better hold more water than the other arguments I’ve seen, or at least be more consistent.

As for the Salvation Army (for you’ll recall this is where the whole discussion started), it certainly doesn’t appear that Target’s decision was made because of the SA’s position on abortion and birth control. It appears to be a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reason. But if this whole sordid affair leads to an examination of the SA’s position, and a possible change in their stance, then it will be another example of God working in mysterious ways.

Mind you, this won’t necessarily prevent me from shopping at Target, unless I find out something conclusive on the issue. But it does bring into focus the larger question of the public gathering space. Target may own the parking lot, but it belongs to the public.

MH - Comparative Lit 101

As you might gather from the excerpts I’ve posted recently, I’ve been reading two very different political novels that both, in some way, deal with the seamier side of politicians and politics – Christopher Buckley’s hilarious satire No Way to Treat a First Lady, and Robert Penn Warren’s gothic political horror story All the King’s Men.

Buckley, who recently won the Thurber Award for humor, is near the top when it comes to political satire – I saw him in person a couple of years ago and regretted not asking him if it was more difficult to write satire nowadays, seeing as how it seems pretty hard to top the absurdity of what you hear on the evening news. No Way to Treat a First Lady might not be his best but it’s still a great read, and I’m looking forward to his recently published Florence of Arabia.

On the other hand, there are only flashes of grim humor in Warren’s relentlessly dark and somber novel of corrupt mankind, and since this was my first encounter with Warren, I’ll be focusing the balance of my attention in his direction.

I bought All the King’s Men over twenty-five years ago for a college lit class I soon dropped. I kept the book, though – I was reading a lot of political fiction back then (Seven Days In May, The Manchurian Candidate, Convention, Full Disclosure, to name a few), and knew it was something I’d read one of these days.

The years passed and more books followed – Fail Safe, The President’s Plane is Missing, the entire Advise and Consent series, All the President’s Men (I know, it’s not supposed to be fiction, but…), and still All the King’s Men was on the bookshelf. As I grew older and my outlook on politics soured, I moved into political satire – Christopher Buckley, P.J. O’Rourke – but it wasn’t until recently, when I’d run out of Nero Wolfe mysteries, that I decided to finally give Warren a try.

All the King’s Men, the fictionalized story of former Louisiana governor Huey Long, is what you might call “serious” fiction (just look at the number of reviews on amazon.com from students who’d been assigned to read it). It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947, and was adapted into a movie that won the Best Picture Oscar two years later. As such, it has all the gravity that one might expect. But it has more, much more. It has language.

The book has recurrent themes – motion, for example (the motion of cars down the highway, the motion forward in the quest for knowledge and the journey both away from and towards God, the motion of heading toward one’s destiny while at the same time trying to escape from it). And always, there’s the underlying question of good and evil (at one point, Willie Stark, the Huey Long character, comments that all good comes from evil because evil is all there is to work with).

Perhaps because of the novel’s basis in fact, the ending has a preordained feeling that allows Warren to concentrate on other elements of the story. It is true, as many critics have pointed out, that Warren digresses from time to time – in particular, two sub-stores go far afield from the main narrative, and in the hands of a lesser writer you might even forget what he’d been talking about before.

You have to constantly remind yourself that the man is a poet; otherwise, you’re going to keep wondering why it takes him two pages to describe a scene that could just as easily be boiled down to two paragraphs – if, it fact, it has to be included at all. This means you’re going to have to get lost in the language as much as you do the plot. If all you’re interested in is how it’s going to end, watch the movie. And yes, on occasion the florid language gets a little tedious – at times I couldn’t be sure that I wasn’t actually reading someone’s parody of Warren’s style (you know, like the Bulwer-Lytton contest).

This can make the book frustrating reading at times – and yet, just when you’re ready to flip ahead a few pages to get back to the story, you run into something like this:

So maybe she was up in the room trying to discover what her new self was, for when you get in love you are made all over again. The person who loves you has picked you out of the great mass of uncreated clay which is humanity to make something out of, and the poor lumpish clay which is you wants to find out what it has been made into. But at the same time you, in the act of loving somebody, become real, cease to be a part of the continuum of the uncreated clay and get the breath of life in you and rise up.

You might expect to hear this from Bishop Sheen, but it’s not likely you’ll encounter it in Term Limits or Absolute Power. And that’s my point. As far as telling the story is concerned, it might not have been worth 20 pages just to get to this paragraph. But sometimes the value of writing lies not in plot development but in the sheer pleasure of reading the printed word on the page.

Which brings us to this question – All the King’s Men is generally considered one of the great political novels ever written, if not the greatest. But is it really a political novel? I suppose if you’re comparing Warren to Vince Flynn or David Baldacci, then the answer is no. There’s not enough “action” in “the corridors of power” – or in the bedroom, for that matter. (Not that the two aren’t mutually exclusive, and sex does play a pivotal role in All the King’s Men – it’s just that you don’t actually see it.)

But what this book does, however imperfectly at times, is tell you about the human condition, about human nature and what makes people tick. And that is really what politics is all about. It doesn’t take place in a vacuum (although we can be forgiven for thinking that one does exist, between the ears of most politicians), and it’s the elements that go into making up one’s character – where you live, when you live, your friends, family, neighbors, those you love and those whose love you lose – that doom Warren’s characters, almost from birth, to act in the ways they do.

Politics doesn’t occur in a vacuum; the people involved in it are, whether they want to admit it or not, part of the larger world. This is the difference between a political novel (Balance of Power, for example) and a novel about men and women in politics.

Does this mean we have to look to the past, to books like All the King’s Men and Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent, in order to discover the future of the political novel? For a long time I’ve wanted to see what the post-modern (for lack of a better word) political novel would look like. By this I mean books that don’t fall into the thriller genre as most political books today do, written by today’s contemporary novelists, written about people whose identities are not defined by what they are – by what office they hold – as much as by what they are made up of.

Using those terms, the first book that comes to mind is Tim O’Brien’s haunting and disturbing In the Lake of the Woods, followed by Don DeLillo’s equally disorienting Libra. You might be able to make a case for Joyce Carol Oates with The Assassins or Black Water, though I wouldn’t push the point. I thought that John Calvin Batchelor’s Father’s Day might be one, since Batchelor had quite a post-modern reputation, but unfortunately it turned out to be (IMHO) a load of junk.

What I’m looking for is someone who will do for politics much as Paul Auster did for detective novels with his stunning New York Trilogy – turn it on its ear. If and when that happens, the results should be interesting. Notice I said “interesting,” which is not necessarily the same thing as “good.”

Or maybe it’s already happened – I’d welcome hearing from readers with any nominations. No pun intended, of course.

MH - What's Playing

Mitch Miller, Holiday Sing Along With Mitch. I always enjoyed watching his show when I was little, and I don’t think it had anything to do with that outstanding first name. After all, what kid would forget that bouncing ball, which must have been the height of animated graphics back in those days.

In particular, I have a vague recollection of watching his Christmas show one year when I was still in single digits and we lived in the double bungalow on 28th Street and 31st Avenue in south Minneapolis. I seem to recall it was Christmas Eve, and I was thinking how this was a great way to spend the time waiting for family to come so we could open presents, which we did on the 24th. In later years I remember how delighted I was later in life to find out that Bob McGrath on Sesame Street had been one of the stars with Mitch.

I don’t know if reruns of his show would hold up today, or if we’d find it hopelessly hokey and outdated. But for us boomers, this CD is guaranteed to bring back affectionate memories of Christmases past, and it really should be a part of your Christmas music collection.