CRAZY LIKE A FOX?: A couple responses to the "LOL Americans" post below. Keep in mind that that post really was a... is it a blunderbuss I'm thinking of? The thing that fires a huge amount of shot all over the place, in hopes that some of it might hit the target. So:

T.H. writes:

Long time, no talk. I had one short point about your post, and a question.

First, the question: did Kirk really identify with the agrarians? I've read some Kirk, but not enough to know if this is true or not. It sounds fishy, though.

The point: I'm not so sure about your identifying Americans with utopians. I mean, there's certainly a strain of that in the American tradition. Tom Paine's a good example. There's some stuff in Jefferson that lends itself to utopianism, too, I suppose. And certainly there's a strong streak of utopianism in contamporary
American society. But, usually that utopianism is among the elites of culture and academia.

I think your claim that Americans are utopians is in some tension with your claim that Americans try to do crazy stuff like blend Enlightenment rationalism and evangelical Christianity. If Americans really were utopians, one would think they would choose one or the other, like the French (who really do seem to be utopians, or at least have seemed to be quite utopian since the French Revolutoin until
recently). Blending enlightenment rationalism and evangelical Christianity looks a lot more like pragmatism to me than utopianism. "Look, we've got these two elements in our cultural patrimony. Let's put them in a bag, shake them up, and live with the result." In other words, there's a level of abstraction that seems to be missing that would normally indicate utopianism. This is, in some degree, why we only have two viable political parties, instead of the multitudes of small, ideologically pure parties in Europe.

I hope I have succeeded in rattling off even less organized thoughts than you did in your original post. Hope you're doing well!

Eve says: OK, the two-parties thing is a good point. But I do think that the bats craziness of trying a mix of Enlightenment and evangelicalism in the first place is so out there that it proves my point, rather than being some kind of pragmatic Chinese-menu approach.

R.D. writes:

"...the political-philosophy work we need to do now, which is re-founding liberalism on a Christian basis."

Eve--
I'm all for that. But when you say that, I'm wondering just what you mean by "a Christian basis." That could be a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Would that Christian basis be focused on issues like abortion and stem-cell research? Or would it be focused feeding the hungry and caring for the ill in America and abroad? Would it be prone to work in non-military ways for world peace, even if that peace involved material sacrifice? Or would it be prone to launching "Just Wars" in order to promote the cause of freedom and justice at the barrel of a gun?

Christianity cannot incorporate politics, liberal or otherwise. The reverse, of course, is not true; nor should it be.

Unfortunately, however, when Christians become political, their religion is, usually, in fact, corrupted by their politics. This ultimately renders their politics ineffective, from a purely Christian perspective.

I would be very interested in seeing a bit of elaboration, therefore, on what "Christian basis" means to you in the context of a reformed liberalism.

Eve says: Superbriefly--
1. Yeah, that's probably the sloppiest line in a post that wasn't too hospital-corners to begin with. I definitely see the danger of instrumentalizing Christianity in the service of a political philosophy, and I hope you all realize that is very much not what I was promoting.

2. It may help to think "liberal" as in "liberal democracy," not as in "liberal Democrat." I've written before on the blog about how "liberal" (as vs. Left) and "conservative" can in some ways be shadows of the same edifice; sometimes that's bad (see post linked below, about how Burke gives me a Paine) and sometimes it's good, but basically, just keep in mind that in the way I was using "liberalism" in that sentence, Ronald Reagan was a liberal.

3. What I want is a different framework for political understanding. Sometimes it can be helpful to talk about that framework in terms of contemporary political disputes: I think one possible angle of approach is to say, "Defend freedom of conscience without laying the groundwork for the 'mystery doctrine' of Casey v. Planned Parenthood." But keep in mind that if the underlying political culture changes, some questions that are controversial now will be mostly-resolved, and new things will become controversial. I'm not actually trying to lay out, e.g., a solution to the US health-insurance mess. It would be closer to the truth to say I am trying to figure out how the contemporary political options (= not monarchy, and not agrarianism, both of which may have their virtues but are nostalgia at best for us now) can be based on the individual without falling into rationalism or utilitarianism.

...Yeah, I bet that didn't help. Um. If I can think of something else useful to say, I'll say it, but right now my mind is much more in cultural-critique mode than in useful-things-about-politics mode.

Blogwatch happens, and I'm head over heels...

(Wow, that was bad. Sorry.)

I'm enjoying Amuse-Biatch, a blog devoted to season 2 of "Top Chef." Click at own risk etc etc.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has a new blog, Open Market. Jeremy Lott of hypocrisy fame will be contributing. Looks like a good place--I'm blogrolling. Free markets, free will, free beer, Free Press....

LOL AMERICANS: OK, I know it's unladylike to eavesdrop. But the guys sitting next to me outside Starbucks today were so fascinating!!! I'm not made out of stone, people.

One of them was writing a book about conservatism, or something. He did most of the talking, as his younger interlocutor asked him to elaborate on various points. His basic thing seemed to be tracing the intellectual lineages of various possible conservatisms--e.g. is a Burkean conservatism possible or desirable in the United States? Can Lincoln be a father in a conservative lineage?

I don't know the answer to these questions. But the conversation made me think a few things, or suspect a few things, and I'd be interested in people's thoughts. These are scattered, tentative points, not fully-formed in any way, but this is what I've got:

1. I'm not sold on Burke really. I've learned from him, definitely. But see this post about the problems he shares with Thomas Paine.

2. The talkier guy made the absolutely accurate point that Christianity is not "conservative" within the lineage that goes Burke-(somebody I'm forgetting! Hayek???)-Oakeshott-(Sullivan? The talky guy thought Andrew Sullivan's new book was squarely within this lineage, i.e. the one Christianity isn't part of; but I haven't read it). And so--this is me talking now--the temptation is for the skeptical-tradition-slow-moderationy conservatism to seek to cordon off Christian belief from the political sphere. And you maybe can get away with that sometimes. But I don't think you can cordon off Christian belief from politics in societies where people disagree on fundamental definitions of justice. (See above re: Lincoln; also, obviously, all kinds of issues today, from abortion to torture to marriage.) Hmm... could you add Aristophanes to this Burke-Oakeshott lineage?

3. Americans are bats crazy. This is my basic argument for why what the talky guy was calling "British conservatism" won't ever fly here. Americans are utopians. We're visionaries. We're strange, son--and unlike the classic British "eccentric," we want everyone to be weird in our way too. I mean, look at Russell Kirk. He does all this fun stuff about custom, prudence, and assorted whatnot. And then who is his example? John Randolph, a bats crazy man! And what is his ultimate philosophical affiliation (I think--please correct me if this is wrong)? The agrarians--bats crazy nostalgia-utopians, one and all.

I don't say this pejoratively! I fully own my bats craziness. I'm as American as the rest of them. Americans don't do compromise. As genres go, we do mythos better than "realism." We try completely ridiculous stuff like merging Enlightenment rationalism with evangelical Christianity. (We try completely ridiculous stuff like basing our politics on either of those two things.)

There are insights to be gained from our particular breed of crazy. I think both the successes and the failures of the American attempt to merge the Enlightenment and the Gospel can inform the political-philosophy work we need to do now, which is re-founding liberalism on a Christian basis. But I do not think Burke-Kirk-Oakeshott (or even Hayek, who is a somewhat different case) will fly here. The closest you'd get in this country is something like Richard Rorty's anti-foundationalist metaphysics supporting Virginia Postrel's libertarian-dynamist politics. Which would certainly be better than Richard Rorty's metaphysics supporting Richard Rorty's politics!--but still, not really good enough.

Okay.... Having said all this fairly uninformed stuff, I will throw the floor open to you people. Am I right? Am I crazy? Is that a dichotomy?

(Two posts on America, for background--I still think these are pretty good--immigration as tragedy, and the blood at the root of American literature.)

I'm not going down on my knees,
Asking you to blogwatch me...

Hit & Run: "Most people are still under the quaint assumption that you can't be punished for a crime for which you've been acquitted." (But wait. There's more.)

The Rat: In which I am pwn'd by Shakespeare. And Yale still looks for leaders. (The link at the latter post is a must-read if you are interested in Yale stuff. For contrast, you could try this 2001 Yale Free Press article: "It's unclear if they were trying to be cute or Heideggerian, but it was definitely one of the two.")

So he prayed. But the sea remained cold, and the darkness maintained its stubborn silence. All that could be heard was the monotonous dull sound of the oars again and again.

Will I turn out a failure?, he asked himself.
--Shusaku Endo, Silence

WHEEL OF FORTUNE: I re-read Kathy Shaidle's post from the post-election in 2004, and it holds up really well with the names changed. "Don't pray for victory. Just pray."

Hit & Run has a quickie roundup of how the various anti-Kelo (eminent domain abuse) propositions fared.

And in non-political linkage, I really loved this column, in which a comics writer gives a script and squiggly sketch* to several different artists and compares the resulting panels. My favorite might be the first one--it doesn't convey panic as well as some of the others, but the noir atmosphere is fantastic, and (shallowly) I love that lady's pantsuit. Via Journalista.

*EDITED: No, just the script. Apologies!

(...And yeah, I realize it isn't fortune so much as a lot of willed actions; considered titling this "The whirligig of time brings in his revenges," but I preferred the Vanna-and-Pat imagery.)

TWO LINKS THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ELECTIONS: Cinecon reviews the Virginia Film Festival, which took "finding God at the movies" as this year's theme; and Ratty has a really fun, snarky, insightful post about her trip to Paris.

PUSHERMAN: Love and Rockets--the first one's free! Special network-TV edition.

If you like Veronica Mars...

...and you want more of Veronica and Lilly: Wigwam Bam.

...and you want more Weevil: All of it!!!! but maybe start with The Death of Speedy.

...and you really like the California setting: Try X (volume 10). I wasn't into it--it's actually the only volume of L&R about which I don't feel wildly positive--but I do think people would love it if they're into what V-Mars presents itself as trying to do, with the Cali race-and-class mystery setting. Blood of Palomar might also hit your kink--the central story, "Human Diastrophism," is a horror mystery set in South America, just chilling.

All of these except the last are Jaime Hernandez rec's. I'll do Gilbert rec's later if I can think of a cool hook.

(In re current television generally, my roundup: V-Mars seems unlikely ever to return to the high standard set by s1 [although s2's "Plan B" might be the best episode of the show ever filmed]; Top Chef is fun; pacing, dialogue, and acting problems killed my love for the innovative superpowers show Heroes, but you might like it; the one episode I've seen of Studio 60 suggested that everything they say is true, which isn't a good thing.)

EGALITARIANISM (AND EMPOWERMENT): There's a real difference between wanting us all to be Dives and wanting us all to be Lazarus.

That is all.

TWO CENTS ON THE ELECTIONS from Disputations: one; two.

OH, DRAMATISE!: Be forewarned, what follows is half-baked at best. I'm posting it so you all can help in the baking.

One of the recurring themes in Flannery O'Connor's letters is that she writes so much about Protestants because spiritual conflicts and revelations that a Catholic would work out internally or quietly must be worked out through dramatic action. If you have the Mass you don't need to do like the Protestant preacher who crucified a straight-up woolly lamb on a fence at his revivals. If you get a special revelation and you're a Catholic, she says in one letter, you disappear into a monastery and nobody hears from you again; a Protestant goes out into the world making trouble, and bringing all kinds of trouble on his head.

As we know, I am bracketing all discussion of whether this is an accurate take on Cath-v-Prot differences. What I actually want to talk about is this: It seems to me that, maybe esp. on college campuses, these same spiritual conflicts, needs, and revelations are worked out through dramatic actions involving sexuality, sexual orientation, and in some cases sexual identity as a man or a woman.

I don't know what more to say than that, but I also don't think this sounds like a new insight. So presumably someone has written about it--either fiction or non-. Does anyone have something to recommend? (I'm guessing I Am Charlotte Simmons, so, besides that.)

MUSIC FOR MECHANICS: So every now and then I try to make people read Love and Rockets comics.

This is that time again. I've only got two entries here, but if others want to put their two cents in, I'll print 'em. I want to hook the world.

If you like Flannery O'Connor, you should try "Flies on the Ceiling: The True Story of Isabel in Mexico," in Love and Rockets vol. 9: Flies on the Ceiling. Every time her letters talk about the Devil, I picture the Devil in this amazing story--genuinely, one of the most frightening things I've ever read.

If you like the Missy Elliot song "Back in the Day," you should try the title story in vol. 7: The Death of Speedy. If even that doesn't do you for, you should still pick up vol. 11: Wigwam Bam. If you've spent years looking for the same day-glo noir you got from the best '80s music--it was hiding in these comics.

ONE OF MY LEAST FAVORITE PHRASES:

"He [she/they] brings it on himself, you know...."

Use each man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping?

KITCHEN ADVENTURES: WITH HONEY AND WITH VINEGAR. I'm not really sure why this fit came on me; but I had extra honey lying around, with many other leftoverish things and staples, and I figured I might try combining some of them. We have one success and one failure to report.

Spicy honey vinaigrette: I don't really know what a vinaigrette is, but my impression is that this would count. These quantities were for a side dish for one person. All quantities are even more approximate than they appear, and you should change them radically to accommodate your tastes.

Chop two cloves garlic; saute with a small amount of honey (I don't think it could have been more than a teaspoon?), a splash of balsamic vinegar, some cayenne, dashes of five-spice powder and curry powder, a small splash of olive oil, and the juice from half a lemon. Just saute it, stirring, until the garlic is well-cooked and fragrant, but not more than a tiny bit browned.

I ate this with 6 oz. well-cooked spinach. That was fine, but not the way to make the vinaigrette shine. The dark, vegetable taste of the spinach kind of got lost under the bright, sweet tanginess of the vinaigrette; and there was nothing to cut the heat from the cayenne. Homemade, buttered croutons would have been a perfect addition. But I think this would work very well as a salad dressing, especially for a salad with good, conventional tastes--not like my Crazy Salad. You get some cherry tomatoes, crumbled feta cheese, croutons, mixed lettuces and all that sort of thing, and I think this would be terrific. ...It might also look prettier if you substituted crushed red pepper for the cayenne. Those red flakes always look lovely in salad dressing. I think you'd need to use more then, to raise the heat level.

How did it taste? Well, I really liked that all of the flavors came out, and yet blended also. If I had to tweeze them apart, I think the flavors hit you like this: HOT balsamic vinegar and honey; garlic and spices, with lemon lilting in there at the end; spices and honey. So it finishes with a kind of exotic, spicy sweetness. People who like bottled hot sauces might like it. I'd expect you could use it as a marinade for chicken, since you can use anything as a marinade for chicken; and maybe also for pork, since people tend to pair pig and honey....

Honey-rosemary tomato sauce: Yeah, not so much. I saute'd chopped plum tomato, chopped sweet onion, chopped garlic, cayenne, five-spice powder, cumin, curry powder, dried rosemary (it was on sale--"don't question me!"), and honey, for maybe ten minutes or a bit more, stirring occasionally (basically, got it bubbling hot and then lowered the heat to simmer for the rest of the pasta's cooking time); and poured that over pasta, with one slice of ripped-up muenster cheese.

Too sweet. The later addition of grated Parmesan cheese helped a bit; but really, this was just too much sweetness, and looking at the ingredients list I don't know why I didn't realize that. The rosemary got completely hidden by the other flavors. This is edible, but it won't answer the Chickpea Eater's profound question, "Why do we say, 'It doesn't matter,' but not, 'It doesn't spirit'?"

His blogwatch she had tamed...

Family Scholars: How many advocates of gay marriage actually buy the Jonathan Rauch "conservative case"? Yeah, about how many you thought.

Also, a terrible story from New Orleans:

...Teenagers in the city are living alone or with older siblings or relatives, separated by hundreds of miles from their displaced parents. Dozens of McDonogh students fend largely for themselves, school officials say. …

The principal, Donald Jackson, estimated that up to a fifth of the 775 students live without parents.

more

Hit & Run: Cliff's Notes to series on SF homelessness. Interesting.

And: Wily drunks circumvent cheap-booze ban, use what they learned in Econ 101:

...Outside the Dutch Shisler Sobering Center, which provides social services as well as a place for people drunk on the streets to dry out, a man who'd give only his street name -- Caveman -- said he'd been sober a month and a half. But, he said, "People are going to realize it's cheaper to get whiskey at the state-run (liquor) store. People are going to be drinking harder, and they're going to be getting drunker. It's easier, too, because you can just put it in your soda can."

more

The Economist has launched two new blogs--one on economics, which I expect will become a must-read (although it isn't yet), and one on US politics of which I'm more skeptical. The few times I've dipped into Economist US-politics coverage it's tended toward a patronizing Toryish "LOL Americans" standpoint--whereas I want a hard-hitting "LOL Americans" standpoint that actually understands Americans!--to the extent that anyone does, I mean. Is that so much to ask? (Memo to the Economist: It helps to view God as something other than a bizarre political aberration akin to the electoral college.) ...Anyway, both links via Jane Galt, who will also be blogging at the econ one; see above re must-read.

And a neat article on the Latin Mass, from the perspective of a Jew describing the effect of Hebrew in Jewish liturgy. (If liturgy is the word I want. You know what I mean.) Via Dappled Things.

'Tis women make us love,
'Tis love that makes us sad.
'Tis sadness makes us drink--
And drinking makes us mad!
--trad.

Oh, I really do love this "Art of the Bawdy Song" CD from the Baltimore Consort. It's also interesting (though it makes perfect sense) that the songs whose innuendo is subtler or storyline gentler are given to women to sing. I mean, it's obvious why a woman sings "My Thing Is My Own" (and I adore the joyful, independent version on this album--buy it for your freshman daughters! Between "Some courtiers do promise much more than they do" and "As young as I was, I understood trap" they will learn some lessons they will very much need...), but the poignant "Cold and Raw" actually has a male narrator, so it's strange to hear this beautiful version sung by a woman. Anyway, highly recommended, especially if you like transitions from subtle bawdy humor to fart jokes and "My man John had a thing that was long...."

EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE: Everything that follows in this post is from Flannery O'Connor's letters (except where obviously indicated). In chronological order, and lightly edited to clarify something w/r/t Other People's Churches.

Furthermore, almost any spiritual writer ought to wear thin for you. It's like reading criticism of poetry all the time and not reading the poetry.

------

The Communion of Saints has something to do with the fact that the burdens we bear because of someone else, we can also bear for someone else.

------

What [Graham Greene] does, I think, is try to make religion respectable to the modern unbeliever by making it seedy. He succeeds so well in making it seedy that then he has to save it by miracle.

[Eve: Oh, I don't think this is really right--but I think it's one of those criticisms that, even when wrong because importantly incomplete, signal something real.]
-------

Crisis means something different of course for the Catholic than for the Protestant. For them it is the dissolution of their churches; for us it is losing the world.

[Eve: I don't pretend to have views about Protestants (other than not being one), because I don't get it. I didn't grow up among Protestants, I don't know any intensely (although I admire many), I can't write Protestant characters. I'm not proud of this--and it isn't a moral claim, as there are many terrible things I understand and many good ones I don't--but the opacity is there and I haven't gotten past it thus far. So this is a quote I find deeply suggestive, but, you know, I don't really do the Cath-v-Prot questions very well, because I don't get why you'd want to be something else when the Church is right there. ...And actually I think this reaction might be what O'Connor is talking about. Eh, at least I'm an object lesson.]
--------

[to a non-Catholic:] You speak of the Eucharist as if it were not important, as if it could wait until you are better able to practice the two great commandments. Christ gave us the sacraments in order than we might better keep the two great commandments. ...The center of this is the Eucharist.

--------

What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. ...If you feel you can't believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and leave the rest to God.

--------

Penance rightly considered is not acts performed in order to attract God's attention or get credit for oneself. It is something natural that follows sorrow. If I were you, I'd forget about penance until I felt called to perform it. Don't anticipate too much. I have the feeling that you irritate your soul with a lot of things that it isn't time to irritate it with.

--------

The review is by a lady in the Concord P.L. She also says Tarwater is the latest edition to my "band of poor God-driven Southern whites." I am getting the connection between the God-driven and the underprivileged--God-drivenness being a form of Southern degeneracy....

--------

If Greene created an old lady, she would be sour through and through and if you dropped her, she would break, but if you dropped my old lady, she'd bounce back at you, screaming "Jesus loves me!"

--------

One of the good things about Protestantism is that it always contains the seeds of its own reversal. It is open at both ends--at one end to Catholicism, at the other to unbelief.

[Eve: See above re my slack-jawed bewilderment w/r/t all things Prot.]
--------

You don't join the Catholic Church. You become a Catholic.

--------

The writer whose point of view is Catholic in the widest sense of the term reads nature in the same way the medieval commentators read Scripture. They found three levels of meaning in the literal level of the sacred text--the allegorical, in which one thing stands for another; the moral, which has to do with what should be done; and the anagogical, which has to do with the Divine life and our participation in it, the level of grace.

--------

I hate to deliver opinions. On most things I don't deserve an opinion and on a lot of things I simply don't have an opinion.

--------

I very much like the idea that [Elizabeth Sewell] gets across that the poet deals exactly with the things that don't work out, that he's sort of a shock absorber, that he takes the first blows and mutes them through the imagination and makes things bearable.

--------

I'm glad you've figured out free will or whatever. It's great to be able to figure it out but dangerous to put too much faith in your figuring.

--------

Love and understanding are one and the same only in God. Who do you think you understand? If anybody, you delude yourself.

--------

I make do very nicely with guest rooms. In fact, I collect them. The one at Hollins was a fully equipped apartment, even down to the electric dishwasher. The larder was stocked with Mt. Etna Ginger Ale and hushpuppy mix. Did they read my stuff and decide this is what I would eat?

--------

I came back from my trip with enough money to order me another pair of swans. They are on their way from Miami and Mr. Hood, the incumbent swan, little suspects that he is going to have to share his feed dish. He eats out of a vase, as a matter of fact, and has a private dining room. Since his wife died, he has been in love with the bird bath. Typical Southern sense of reality.

---------

I'm rather glad the single folks, or left-overs as you call us, haven't been discovered by the Church. Think of the awful oratory that would flow over us....

---------

I wouldn't spend much time worrying about dryness. It's hard to steer a path between indifference and presumption and [there's] a kind of constant spiritual temperature-taking that don't do any good or tell you anything either.

DIVINE APHASIA: I've just watched Waiting for Godot and also Beckett's Not I. I don't have thoughts so much as reactions. So, a few reactions [edited b/c I wasn't sure I agreed with myself in all particulars]:

1. Godot is really, really funny. I laughed my way through--not contented laughter, but the kind that's startled out of you.

2. I almost think you could write a catechism based on Godot's absences. Rebuild Christian faith off of what Estragon and Vladimir expect. What is an outrage to them, rather than simply "the way things are"? From that, I think maybe you could trace a shadow of the Gospel. I would look at time vs. eternity, power/weakness/cruelty/poverty/class, and maybe guilt. Guilt is usually the distorted shadow of sin: You can't accurately trace sin from its distorted shadow, at all, but you can maybe intuit that there is a real thing casting this real shadow.

You can get these versions by Netflix'ing whatever comes up when you search for "Beckett on Film."

The two worst sins of bad taste in fiction are pornography and sentimentality.
--letters of Flannery O'Connor

It's close to blogwatch,
And something evil's lurking in the dark...

Amy Welborn: Reader asks: "I'm putting together my own card and 'care package,' and I am wondering if there are any suggestions for a Catholic book that might be good for a man in his situation, a lapsed Catholic who has maybe two or three months to live (barring a miracle--my friend did just go to Lourdes and prayed for him there!)."

First Things: Abortion and the difference between development and manufacture. Am linking because of the really interesting analogy between human development and the development of a photograph; I don't quite know what this does for people who aren't already pro-life, but either way, it should be worth your time.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN. So over the weekend I saw a really sweet, well-meaning advertisement for a Catholic church's "Holy Ween," where kids would dress as saints. And just... I... no. There is nothing wrong with dressing as a daggone witch, or a leopard or a ballerina. More importantly: I wondered what would happen if some kid became sick from an especially realistic St. Lucy with her eyes on a platter; a friend added, "Yeah. Just dress as St. Sebastian."

Hee, hee. You tell me how that works out for you!

Anyway, me on Magritte as a horror artist; my review of Carnival of Souls. And you guys should all see I Walked with a Zombie. Can we have more zombie movies about actual freakin' zombies, please?

SO, I'M UNDER THE WEATHER. I am, in fact, investigating the weather from the perspective of the snake. So I have stuff to say, but be forewarned, its coherence will be brought to you by a grant from the John D. and Catharine T. Sudafed Foundation. In the carousel of my head, right now all the horses are camels.

Because of the spitting.

...Yeah.

EDITED to change "seeking" to "socking," because apparently Maclin Horton can read and I can't!

I don't want to be any angel but my relations with them have improved over a period of time. They weren't always even speakable. I went to the Sisters to school for the first 6 years or so... at their hands I developed something the Freudians have not named--anti-angel aggression, call it. From 8 to 12 years it was my habit to seclude myself in a locked room every so ooften and with a fierce (and evil) face, whirl around in a circle with my fists knotted, socking the angel. This was the guardian angel with which the Sisters assured us we were all equipped. He never left you. My dislike of him was poisonous. I'm sure I even kicked at him and landed on the floor. You couldn't hurt an angel but I would have been happy to know I had dirtied his feathers--I conceived of him in feathers. Anyway, the Lord removed this fixation from me by His Merciful Kindness and I have not been troubled by it since. In fact I forgot that angels existed until a couple of years ago the Catholic Worker sent me a card on which was printed a prayer to St. Raphael. It was some time before it dawned on me Raphael was an archangel, the guide of Tobias. ...The prayer asks St. Raphael to guide us to the province of joy so that we may not be ignorant of the concerns of our true country. All this led me to find out eventually what angels were, or anyway what they were not. And what they are not is a big comfort to me.
--letters of Flannery O'Connor

"You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something."
--George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara

See--even Shaw gets stuff right now and again! Via About Last Night.

THE MEMORY PROJECT: "I founded the Memory Project in October, 2004, following the advice of a man in Guatemala. Having grown up in an orphanage, this young man did not have any pictures from his earliest years or any parents to share
memories of his youth. Consequently, he felt that much of his childhood had been forgotten, and he shared this feeling with a group of university students working at the orphanage. As one of the students, I was very moved by his story, and I founded the Memory Project as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization after returning home." (more--via E-Pression)

In any case I can't climb down off the high powered defense reflex whateveritis. The fleas come with the dog as Mr. McG. ...says. If you were Pius XII, my communications would still sound as if they came from a besieged defender of the faith. I know well enough that it is not a defense of the faith, which don't need it, but a defense of myself who does. The Church becomes a part of your ego and gets messed in with your own impurity. It's a situation I can't handle myself so I wait for purgatory to do it for me.
--letters of Flannery O'Connor

I CAN'T HELP IT. I did like "Dangerous Liaisons," but it didn't leave me as helpless to the power of its AWESOME as "Cruel Intentions." John Malkovich is a better actor than anyone in "CI" (though Ryan Philippe was fun--yeah, I said it), and the half-updated half-outdated dialogue didn't really work, and I'm two hundred percent over closing scenes where bitchy women get humiliated--and even so, all I can say is that this movie was ace.

...I can't tell if Catherine was supposed to be sympathetic or if I'm just completely wrong in the head.

I will never have the experience of the convert, or of the one who fails to be converted, or even in all probability of the formidable sinner; but your effort not to be seduced by the Church moves me greatly.
--letters of Flannery O'Connor

KITCHEN ADVENTURE: COME WIS ME TO ZE CASBAH. WE SHALL MAKE BOOTIFUL OMELETTES TOGEZZER. So okay, my first attempt at omeletteness kind of broke into parts. But I think that was because I was trying to transfer it into a too-small dish. Anyway, I used a recipe from The Foster's Market Cookbook and it worked really well. Your simplified version here:

1. Beat some eggs (they say three large, I used four smallish) with salt and pepper. I'm not totally sure what "beating" eggs entails (dude, be happy I can walk upright, okay?), but I whisked vigorously with a fork until the eggs were all mixed-up like the files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler, and that seemed to work okay.

[EDITED: Frankweiler, obviously. Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, and her, Elizabeth are all angry with me now.]

2. Put a big smacker of butter in the pan and heat it up and swirl it around until you've got butter everywhere in the pan. Mmmm mmm. Pour the eggs into the pan and, I guess, turn the heat down to medium, although I think I didn't do that for some reason.

3. This is where it gets interesting: "Let the eggs sit for a few seconds to begin cooking, then push the outer edges of the eggs toward the center of the pan with a spatula. As they cook, continue pushing the edges toward the center, allowing uncooked egg to flow to the outer edges of the pan."

4. "When the eggs are still moist but no longer runny, place the desired filling on one side of the omelet." The cookbook suggests all kinds of nifty-sounding fillings, which I won't reproduce here (buy the book! or read it in the store! just don't sue me!), but I used chopped tomato, onion, mushroom, and munster cheese, because that was what I had on hand.

5. "Fold the omelet over the filling with a spatula." I did a little cookity-cookity here, even though they don't say you have to, just in case. Anyway, voila! Decant onto plate and serve. "Garnish as desired."

In short, this was really neat-o keen, fancier than scrambled eggs, and easier than I'd expected. The eggs brown a little bit, and hold together better than scrambled eggs would. (I'm assuming that's because you use no milk and let the eggs sit longer.) Yum yum.

SEASONS IN THE SUN: If you had to name two women/girls, or images of women--whether characters or archetypes--who represented, to you, particular seasons of the year, who would you name?

like this: spring: Artemis (mostly because of her virginity, though a friend pointed out that as the goddess of the hunt she'd also be associated with autumn and the hunter's moon), Alice

summer: Maria Lactans, Andromakhe (or, in a completely different vein, Jean Grey/Phoenix--really, don't feel like these images need to be "high culture" or anything)

fall: Miss Havisham, Mary from The Secret Garden

winter: Narnia's White Witch, Medea

(obviously, these are very fuzzy distinctions, and which season you associate with which lady doesn't hugely matter to me.)

THANKS....

I watched my blog in Newport Pagnell....

(I think I've done that one before.)

Amy Welborn: I'm not done yet with this post, and don't expect I'll even make a sortie on the comments; but I'll be thinking about it for a while....

...The question that has bugged me for ages is different from that I hear asked by others. Others try to rebuild, to recreate that old sense of Catholic culture--which is admirable, but is it possible? No, what I wonder about is how do we reconstruct Catholic life in the catacombs? By that I don't mean the extremes of persecution, but as Christians living in a culture that is really inimical to the Gospel, at every point, to the celebration of materialism, consumerism, economic success, personal appearance, to the rank hostility to life and the commoditization of sex. Christianity was born and flourished in the Roman Empire, in conditions hostile to it. There was no "Catholic culture" as we associate it with Christendom on. I'm thinking it is more useful and to the point to imagine myself, as a Christian, living in the time of Domitian, than thinking that the answer is to try to recreated 13th century Italy. As I've written before, as the witness of Ireland and Quebec show so painfully--is there a shadow to "Catholic culture"? As there is a shadow to everything?

much more

Balkinization: Marty Lederman vs John Yoo:

...Why was this the one point of absolute consensus within the Administration? Isn't that odd -- that the easy point of unanimous agreement was to keep our detention operations outside of our own nation, above all else? It's not as if these captured persons were all detained where they were found. No -- they were shipped halfway around the world; but instead of, say, detaining them at a military brig in South Carolina, which would have been the logical plan, the planes and ships made a sharp left turn at the last moment so that these folks would disembark in Cuba, which is less than 100 miles from the Florida coast.

The reason, of course, for such a resolute determination to keep the detainees offshore, was (as John quite candidly writes) because the lawyers assumed GTMO was a law-free zone -- a location impervious to any judicial oversight. And of course, in light of what we were doing to these detainees, there was damn good reason to keep our operations out the plain sight of any courts, lest they have the temerity to insist that the Administration follow the law.

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and Brian Tamanaha tells a story I am linking because it interests me, not because I endorse any underlying purposes or assumptions (whereas I think I do endorse the Lederman post in content and purpose--I don't know nearly enough to do more than find the Tamanaha post interesting):

...I am able to recount the details of this event because the assistant federal public defender was me, handling the case in the mid-1980s. To recap the hard-to-believe basics of the situation: in the middle of a trial, I was charged with three criminal offenses on the grounds that the questions I asked in open court prompted the witnesses to disclose classified information. At the time of these supposed offenses, the prosecutors objected neither to the questions nor the answers, and neither they nor the judge gave any indication of a problem until the moment the charges were lodged against me. So there I was, still handling the ongoing trial, but now also facing my own trial to begin 30 days after the current trial was over. Despite my compromised position, I was not allowed by the judge to withdraw as defense counsel, and our request for a mistrial in the ongoing case was denied. I continued to examine witnesses from the CIA, but now with pending criminal charges hanging over my head, and a real prospect of more to come.

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For me a dogma is only a gateway to contemplation and is an instrument of freedom and not of restriction. It preserves mystery for the human mind.
--The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor (much more from her soon--this is such an awesome, fun, fruitful book!)

DANGER: MEMETIC HAZARD. And other warning signs for tomorrow.

Via Mixolydian Mode.

OLD SCHOOL: Kiriko Nananan's Blue. Manga, high school girl with crush on local "bad girl," read on recommendation from Journalista among others. It's a very, very well-done example of the "poignant, aching first love at boarding school" gay genre. (Although the school in Blue isn't actually a boarding school. But you guys know exactly what I mean, yeah?) Breaks no new ground, but is lovely to look at--black and white line drawings so crisp they're dreamlike, capturing that adolescent state of mind where nothing in the world seems real except you and her. The back cover copy reads,

The sky that stretches out above the dark sea.
The school uniforms and our desperate awkwardness.
If those adornments of our youth
Held any color
It would have been deep blue.

You see what I mean about old-school? If you are really into this genre, like I am, you will love this manga foolishly, like I do. If you're not, you still might take a look, since the artwork is intensely pretty.

WISE CHILDREN:

Does biology matter?

Ask Rebecca Hamilton, a sperm-donor baby who’s now grown up. She has been searching for her biological father for years. “It’s a very human need to be able to look at a face and say, yes, that’s where I come from,” she says. She thinks the widespread practice of donor anonymity does a huge injustice to the offspring.

The first generation of sperm-donor babies can now speak for themselves. And what they are saying raises disconcerting questions about biology, identity, and families. Is it right to deprive people of knowing who their natural parents are? What happens to your sense of identity when one of your biological parents is missing? Is there a difference when you’re raised by “social” rather than biological parents? What if those parents are two women, or two men, or perhaps three people? Are children’s understandings of parenthood as flexible as we would like to think? How do kids feel about all this? And do their feelings matter? ...

In an ideal world, a reasonable response might be, “So what?” But this is not an ideal world. Already, courts in the U.S. are wrestling with custody issues that not even Solomon could sort out. They are frequently required to decide who a child’s parents are, picking among the many adults who might be involved in planning, conceiving, birthing, and raising her.

“Once you get three legal parents, why not four or five?” asks Ms. Marquardt. “What if they can’t agree? It’s hard enough for two parents to agree. What if these three people break up? Is the child supposed to travel between three different homes? How many homes are necessary to satisfy the parenting needs of three separate adults?”

No one doubts “social” parents love their children, or that their children love them back, or that same-sex couples can be great parents. “Love is not the question,” stresses Ms. Marquardt. “The concern and good intentions that non-biological parents have for their children are not in question.” The question is whether it’s okay to deprive a child of half her biological inheritance before she’s born.

Rebecca Hamilton marvels at adults who claim that what children really need is a loving family, and biology doesn’t matter. Yet it obviously matters quite a lot — to adults. “If biology didn’t matter, infertile couples would just adopt, instead of taking themselves through expensive fertility treatments,” she says. And if biology doesn’t matter, then why do so many parents of donor-conceived children keep their origins a secret?

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The Revolution in Parenthood: The Emerging Global Clash Between Adults' Rights and Children's Needs (I haven't read yet)

And the air hangs heavy like a blogwatch wine...

Balkinization: What the administration won't say about waterboarding. (There's a lot of stuff there about the implications of the McCain/Bush compromise for habeas corpus, too, but I haven't sorted through it yet. Scroll down for that.)

Cinecon on Visconti's Death in Venice, and other DIVa-ish thoughts.

YouTube in the womb. (Via Amy Welborn.)

MARC ALMOND'S "DEATH IN VENICE": I thought a bit more today about why I would so love to hear this imaginary opera. A big part of it is that MA would get the distance Britten sometimes seems to lack--Britten's opera sways into sentimentality, which Mann's novella stringently avoids. If anything, MA would probably be too scathing; but I'd prefer that error to the sentimental one.

It was then I knew that I'd rather be
with a .22 caliber next to me
than the blond boy...

FOUR LINKS: These are in alphabetical order-ish, which is why the second one seems so out of place.

Amy Welborn:

...Modern views of St. Francis present him as a nice, if eccentric fellow, presenting us with an alternative lifestyle through which we can clear our lives of bother and make them happier. It is all much harder than that in reality, and in understanding the story of St. Francis, the most important thing is to now how the story ends (on earth at least)--St. Francis, having suffered grievous physical pain for years, ready to meet Sister Death and be joined to the Lord, but his movement in disarray, alienated from his original vision, an aura of, in earthly terms, failure, surrounding him.

Name it and Claim It, indeed.

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Hit & Run: In November, 11 states will vote on ballot measures restricting the use of eminent domain for private uses--i.e. the government taking your property and giving it to some developer or corporation. Is your state on the list?

NYTimes: "In one sign of their approach to tragedy, Amish residents started a charity fund yesterday not only to help the victims' families but also to help the gunman's widow."

How to donate to the Amish School Recovery Fund.

Last two links via Mark Shea.

LIVEBLOGGING DEATH IN VENICE: OK, not completely liveblogging, since I went back and edited my impressions before posting. But I watched/listened to the 1981 filmed version of Britten's DIV opera, and after about half an hour I began to suspect I would get more out of it if I gathered my impressions and asked opera-savvy readers to comment (or dispute). So this is my completely uneducated take; I know I was handicapped by a) loving the novella a lot, b) having a hard time with opera generally, and c) taking notes, probably being too aware of my own reactions. Still, onward and upward!--or, in the case of DIV, downward. (...And the timing of this was completely accidental, which is all I'm going to say about that.)

First impressions of Death in Venice opera:

1. Aschenbach has a weird, reedy, strained voice. I am guessing Britten was going for an exhausted tone, but it's unpleasant, grating, and we have to listen to it CONSTANTLY! Esp that whole vibrato thing. No like the straining vibrato.

2. English is maybe too colloquial for this opera? Too many contrasting sounds in the words--I usually like this diversity, how English can be thorny or supple by turns, but it isn't working here. The words seem alternately flat (instead of poignantly casual, dramatic irony) and turgid (instead of lush, infected, doomy). Some of the turgidity is in the music, as well, though see below. Without the libretto and the voice, I don't think I'd notice a problem in the music. ...Oh bah, Asch's thoughts about Tadzio and his form and whatnot really don't work when the slightly pompous, self-deceiving monologue is sung rather than written. I'm not really sure why--maybe when it's sung you have to look at it too long or too intently. Maybe it's just a very difficult tone of voice to do in operatic form??? (...Hee, he has to sing the words "human relationships." Poor singer.)

3. In prose, when you're just reading, the casual conversations about e.g. the vaporetto and how you can't take baggage on the vaporetto and welcome to our hotel, etc., can fall quietly to the ground like leaves, and just stay there in the reader's mind rustling a little. But when these lines are sung, you have to pay too much attention--too much weight is placed on them, weight they can't support.

4. I think I like the music, sans singing. Possibly I like it a lot. But then Aschenbach starts singing over it and gah! But maybe that is just because I'm more used to movie scores than to operas?

5. Oh, yeah, I do think the music is better at conveying a creepy, febrile beauty. OTOH, it is kind of the exact music you would expect from an opera of DIV. Evil carnival music. I'm such a sucker for evil carnival music.

6. Heh--it doesn't really work to have a Tadzio we can see and judge. Must be equally hard to cast your Helen. The costuming is fine but I just don't think this is filmable....

7. OH, here's the problem: In the story, the descriptive prose and internal monologue have to continue because they create the mood, the background to the action, whereas in the opera the music is the background, and so the libretto often feels intrusive.

8. AUGH, when the music tells you he has been overwhelmed and is fleeing, WE DO NOT NEED THE LIBRETTO TO SAY SO TOO!!!! Haaaaaaate for the libretto.

9. Hee, "naw-see-us." Human relationships!

10. Ai carai, the staging/filming here gets hideously overdone (just before A sings "Iiiiiiiiiiii love you," which itself does not work for me either). Again, the music is better than everything else.

11. "A sweetish medicinal cleanliness/overlaying the smell of still canals"--the imagery I like, but the actual lines are too sibilant, and it's made worse by that thin vibrato voice. "The city fathers are seldom so solicitous"--is he doing this crazy amount of sibilance on purpose?? Because it IRKS. It feels clumsy, not serpentine or whatever it is supposed to be.

12. Wargh, the Apollo vs Dionysos thing is really bad. Clunky. Although I like the clichéd-but-effective end ("I go, I go now"). Then it gets amazingly clunky again. ...Marc Almond could pull this scene off (in the style of his song about the bullfighters, or the cabaret Rimbaud), definitely, but Britten apparently can't. ...Actually I would LOVE to hear the Marc Almond version of DIV. Wow.

13. The Phaedrus section is really good, though. The lighter voice works wonderfully here, the music is mysterious and gentle and foreboding, and only the staging in this version causes trouble. The libretto can be ignored when it gets silly or too obvious, because the voice is working. "I will go" is a good echo of the Apollo leavetaking, too. ...Yeah, that was good.

14. The ending of this is so much better than the beginning. POSSIBLY BECAUSE THE END IS WORDLESS.
-----------
okay, so... that was my first impression. Other reactions, comments, howls of execration??

TWO LINKS: Disputations: "The hoarded wealth not only cries aloud, but after it corrodes, it acts as a witness for the prosecution -- and, in a particularly ghoulish image, it goes on to corrode the flesh of the rich!" (more, brief but really interesting & powerful)

and, via Journalista, a good review of Jaime Hernandez's Ghost of Hoppers. I commented on the comic here, but Derek Badman's review does some very cool quickie panel analysis to show how awesome JH really is. The cool thing is that there's more to say about both of the sequences he discusses--the way the tree stump parallels Izzie's posture, and the rhythm of "noticing" features of the landscape fits with the theme of Maggie's return to her old neighborhood; the POV shift at the end of the ghost-dog sequence, when we suddenly see Maggie from the back.... JH is awesome. There will be more comicsness here soon, maybe before the weekend.

KITCHEN ADVENTURES: 'WICHY WOMAN. So, inspired by this "Top Chef" episode, I've been trying out a passel of sandwich ideas--a change from my ol' favorite. These are all hot sammiches:

Mushrooms, bacon, gruyere, balsamic vinegar: Heat oven to 375. Take a largeish roll, split it down the middle, then cut the halves lengthwise. Put the bottoms of the roll halves on aluminum foil. (Do that for all of these recipes, except for the french toast one.) I used a mealhada roll for this. Any relatively plain roll would work--portuguese, for example. Slice mushrooms and yellow onion, and cut two bacon slices in half. Layer mushrooms, onion (drizzled with balsamic vinegar), and bacon on the roll-half bottoms, top with sliced gruyere, and cover with the roll-half tops. Wrap in foil and bake 15 minutes. ...The verdict: Neh. Tasted indistinct and weirdly antiseptic. Not sure what the problem was--possibly the vinegar?? Caramelized onions might work better.

Rosemary roll, bacon, and fontina: Oven to 375, foil, open rosemary roll. Fill it with thinly-sliced mushrooms, tomato, and red onion, then bacon and sliced fontina; cover with roll top, wrap in foil, cook 15-17 mins. The verdict: Fine, but not a standout or showstopper. The red onion was probably the best part. The fontina didn't seem to add much--probably overwhelmed by the high roll-to-cheese ratio. Would have worked better as an open-faced sandwich cooked in the toaster oven.

Mushroom, yellow pepper, and munster cheese: Roast a couple 'shrooms on a foiled baking tray in the oven--about 15 mins. at 375? Then prepare a mealhada (or whatever) roll as in the first recipe. Fill it with sliced vegs: tomato, roasted mushroom, red onion, and yellow bell pepper. Top with munster cheese, cover with tops of roll halves, wrap in foil, bake 15 mins. at 375. The verdict: This was really yummy. The pepper was especially delicious. Yellow pepper would work really well in these toasted sandwiches in general, I think.

Chopped fresh cilantro should also work here (on top of the cheese), and in the recipe below. Sort of like Mexican Radio Sandwich, which is delicious and which I ate practically every day for a week or two last year.

Pinto beans, bacon, yellow pepper: Exactly like the sandwich above, except using a rosemary roll layered with canned pinto beans (very easy--only slightly goopy), tomato slices, onion slices, bacon, yellow pepper, and munster cheese. The verdict: Good, but not great. Maybe would have been better without the bacon? (How can that be???) The pepper was, again, delicious.

And a breakfast sandwich: Make two slices of french toast in whatever way is your favorite. Drizzle with maple syrup and fill with crispy sliced bacon (cooked 1 1/2 mins. on paper towels in the microwave). Verdict: This was yummy, but needed maybe one extra component--a slice of fontina, say, or a fried egg. (Or both, if you typically use challah or another thick bread for your french toast. I make very thin french toast.) I'd also be interested in possible herbs for this, like rosemary.

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN: Awesome para. from Australian Cdl. Pell:

...The most profound changes emanated from the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World, the most problematic of all the Council documents at least in its implementation. This constitution quite properly called for dialogue with the surrounding culture rather than condemnation and urged us to emphasise what was common rather than to begin immediately with our differences. This is fundamental to the way we now see ourselves as an integral part of Australian society, the main reason why the majority accepts us as such and why all educated Australians now automatically and rightly presume that they have every right to comment publicly on distinctively Catholic teachings on e.g. the impossibility of women's ordination, or contraception or the mandatory celibacy of priests. Most Australians are much slower to do this with e.g. the Orthodox or the Jews and Moslems.

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See, the neat thing about this passage is that it talks about something that ordinarily really irks me--random people who barely know Balaam's ass from a hole in the ground, yapping away about Crap They Wot Not--and points out that it's due to engagement with the surrounding culture, which I love about Catholicism. The Church is such a tabloid religion, so willing to get down in the gutter and start punching, so willing to bring the Cross to the people. Mysteries without secrets; an up-front and brazen faith. And if you shake it in people's faces... people will talk about you. Because you're hot.

I SCOURGE THE BODY ELECTRIC: "To borrow an analogy from Boston College professor Peter Kreeft and give it a twist, if I were to announce at a cocktail party that I just got my tongue pierced, I would be surrounded by an eager crowd of spectators. But if I were to announce that each morning before work I take a cold shower as a religious ritual, I would soon be talking to myself." (more--a really good piece) Via Amy Welborn.

Every single one of his blogs
Is titled a number, and starts with a watch....

Balkinization: Scroll down for links to Marty Lederman's essential posts on the detainee abuse (since I guess we can't call it "torture" because it, like, makes Laura Bush feel bad?) compromise; but for now, a leftist's union blues.

Disputed Mutability is back!!! R0xx0rz. And as usual, her comments section has a ton of interesting stuff, like this comment about expectations of same-sex friendships.

Hit & Run: Heart of Tony Starkness. Iron Man is one of my favorite superheroes, in part because he was the only bright spot in the first vol. of Mark Millar's irksome Ultimates. If people have awesome Tony comics (...or fanfiction?) to recommend, I'm all bionic ears.

SpaceBlog: What does outer space smell like? Anousheh Ansari, Iranian space tourist lady, tells us. This is... really just terrific. I was made for an age like this, you know?

As long as we're geeking out here--are any of you all watching Heroes? It sounds really well-conceived and maybe well-written: Super-Hiro and Wolverine the Cheerleader and the Flying Shark all sound kind of awesome to me. But I've heard the acting is crap. True/false? (...Yeah, not that this is wildly relevant in the short term, since in the spring my television decided to give up television for Lent, so I'm lucky if I get one channel. But still--Heroes? y/n?)

And: In re the blogwatch heading, I recently pushed "OK By Me," from Martin Tielli's Operation Infinite Joy, on a music geek who gushingly compared it to David Bowie. (I'm thinking Spiders from Mars era.) This comparison is less true of We Never Even Suspected That He Was the Poppy Salesman; but it really does work for OIJ, I think, and if it intrigues you, why not check the guy out?

PRESTER JOHN... KING ARTHUR... RUMPOLE OF THE BAILEY:

...I am getting ready for a book tour to promote a new Rumpole. Unlike some writers, I enjoy book tours. Writing novels is a lonely business; your feet and legs get cold and you have no direct contact with your audience. ...

Rumpole keeps going because all his stories are a comment on the passing scene. At the moment, he is engaged in defending a Pakistani doctor accused of being a terrorist. He takes part in extraordinary trials of prisoners anxious to be freed from Belmarsh. In these alleged judicial proceedings, the prisoner and his lawyer cannot be told the particulars of the charges. When these vital matters are discussed, the accused and his advisers have to leave the court.

Such abandonment of our civil liberties as this, the diminishing right to silence, the partial elimination of jury trials and, in some cases, placing the burden of proof on the defence are all, in Rumpole's view, a victory for the terrorists who want to change our way of life. It is to be hoped that his latest escapade will irritate everyone at the Home Office and in the new, unnecessary Department for Constitutional Affairs.

more (I forget where I found this, maybe Hit & Run?)

A humourous piece of AA advice is: "Ask yourself what a sane, intelligent, caring person would do, then pretend you're that sort of person and do it!"
--Kathy Shaidle, A Seeker's Dozen: The Twelve Steps for Everyone Else

OH, PATSY. This weekend's discovery: Absolutely Fabulous season five is the best since the very first season. Go! rent!

COSTUMED VIGILANTES: OK. I fully admit that I have not been plugged-in enough this past week to have a robust opinion on the McCain/Bush interrogation compromise. But it's troubling that no one else seems really to know what happened either. And this,

The Administration has been suggesting that it would somehow be inappropriate for the legislation, or the Senators, to say specifically which techniques the law would prohibit, i.e., that the law must remain so opaque that the Congress and the public don't have any idea what it does and does not prohibit. ...Senators McCain, et al., do not need to, and they probably should not, publicly reveal the extent to which, or circumstances under which, the CIA makes use of lawful techniques. But of course the Congress can and should specify which techniques are unlawful, if for no other reason than that it would be irresponsible for legislators to vote on a bill without having a clue what it does and does not prohibit.

from Marty Lederman, reminded me forcefully of the most powerful arguments for judicial restraint. What on earth is the point of voting if you have no idea what you're voting for? What's the point of laws if you can't have any idea what the laws mean?

But I'll never blogwatch your heart...

So... in my absence, apparently everything has gotten crazier than usual. Can't say I'm surprised. Here are a few photographs from the latest lipstick vogue.

The Agitator, awesomely, may get a man freed from Death Row. Wow.

Balkinization: What does Sen. McCain think the "torture compromise" does? And this is the most important post I've found thus far on the issue.

Jane Galt: Why a time machine stuck at 1973 would clarify our understanding of economics. More here!

NIGHTSHIFT: So, because I am awesome, I had a nightmare in which I was romantically rejected by

(wait for it)

the Virgin Mary.

Our Lady.

I hate you all!

PUTTING THE RAT BACK IN "LITERATE":

I've been meaning for awhile now to do a series of short posts about--to pick an arbitrary number--21 writers or works that are very personal to me; the idea would be to try and encapsulate why, for each, using somewhere between 10 and 450 words. It having finally dawned on me that there's never going to be a time when doing this is actually convenient, I've decided to just do it in dribs and drabs (and in no particular order).

In the first episode, we get In Search of Lost Time; Story of O; and Portrait of a Lady. (Ratty's such a girl....)

A SMALL THOUGHT. It seems we're now in the part of the argument where people want to draw distinctions between "real torture" and, you know, just a little smacky-face. So it might be useful to link again to this excellent Washington Post op-ed from a Soviet dissident, on "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment" as (not) opposed to torture:

...As someone who has been on the receiving end of the "treatment" under discussion, let me tell you that trying to make a distinction between torture and CID techniques is ridiculous. Long gone are the days when a torturer needed the nasty-looking tools displayed in the Tower of London. A simple prison bed is deadly if you remove the mattress and force a prisoner to sleep on the iron frame night after night after night. Or how about the "Chekist's handshake" so widely practiced under Stalin -- a firm squeeze of the victim's palm with a simple pencil inserted between his fingers? Very convenient, very simple. And how would you define leaving 2,000 inmates of a labor camp without dental service for months on end? Is it CID not to treat an excruciatingly painful toothache, or is it torture?

Now it appears that sleep deprivation is "only" CID and used on Guantanamo Bay captives. Well, congratulations, comrades! It was exactly this method that the NKVD used to produce those spectacular confessions in Stalin's "show trials" of the 1930s. The henchmen called it "conveyer," when a prisoner was interrogated nonstop for a week or 10 days without a wink of sleep. At the end, the victim would sign any confession without even understanding what he had signed.

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And my small thought is this: Two of the most searing photographs from Abu Ghraib were an American woman with a naked Iraqi man on a leash, and a hooded, shrouded man on a box. According to the makers of fine distinctions, neither of these two photographs depict real torture--just degradation, threats, and "stress positions" (as well as sleep deprivation). It's easy to use euphemisms and concealing terminology. But when you see the thing, it's repellent....

Anyway, Balkinization is your source for information about the competing interrogation bills. See recently here.

There was whiskey on Blogwatch and tears on our cheeks...

Disputations: Christ's scars as "a source of recognition." And more. So profound and powerful. Very helpful in something I'm writing.

Mark Shea:

...I became Catholic because I came to see that the Faith was beautiful and fulfilling, the desire of my heart. The notion "I better do this or the Great and Terrible Oz will damn me to Hell" was about as far from my mind as the thought that I had better marry Janet or unspeakable things would happen to me. In one sense only, that was true: if I didn't marry Janet, I wouldn't marry Janet, which would be a horrible loss. Likewise, if I refused to be Catholic, I wouldn't get to be Catholic, which would likewise have been a terrible loss. But the notion that either God or Janet were standing over me with an ax, threatening "Love me or ELSE!" is foreign to what a love relationship is.

(more)

YOUR DEADPAN HEADLINE OF THE DAY.

WAR:

...President Bush pointedly cited the capture and interrogation of Mr. Zubaydah in his speech last Wednesday announcing the transfer of Mr. Zubaydah and 13 others to the American detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. And he used it to call for ratification of the tough techniques employed in the questioning.

But rather than the smooth process depicted by Mr. Bush, interviews with nearly a dozen current and former law enforcement and intelligence officials briefed on the process show, the interrogation of Mr. Zubaydah was fraught with sharp disputes, debates about the legality and utility of harsh interrogation methods, and a rupture between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the C.I.A. that has yet to heal.

more (via)

And many links and info re sending care packages to our soldiers.

We care a lot about Blogwatchers, yeah they're more than meets the eye...

The Agitator: "The TV show Cops has actually sent cameras on several raids that ended up targeting the wrong address. At the request of police, each time they've decided not to air the footage."

Hit & Run: US longevity stats:

...A new study out from the online journal of the Public Library of Science has some unexpected findings on longevity. Race remains relevant (blacks and Indians are the shortest-lived), but income is less important than conventional wisdom holds. And three biggest predictors of longevity?: Location, location, location. ...

Other interesting tidbits:

* American Indians who don't live on or near reservations in the West have life expectancies similar to that of white people.

* Lack of health insurance wasn't a powerful factor, it explained only a small portion of differences observed

* Longevity gaps have been about the same for the last 20 years, despite increased focus on race-related health problems and numerous government programs designed to better insure minorities.

more

Plus bonus link: Catholic Vietnamese rebuilding New Orleans.

Stuart Buck: Quotes from Mark Gerson's book on teaching in a Jersey City Catholic school:

Because they worked hard and wanted and expected to work hard as adults, my students took an almost instinctive interest in money and economics. One of the parts of the Constitution that captivated them was the interstate commerce clause, because it allowed the government to limit the number of hours they could work. I did not expect to spend much time on this, but the students were fascinated by the idea that the federal government could regulate working conditions in a Jersey City restaurant on the basis of the fact that the tablecloth was made in New York. I was surprised that this point generated significant ire among my students. Carmen reacted first: "No one should tell me how much I should work except my mother. How does Bill Clinton know how much money we need or how many hours I can work and do well in school?"

Walt added, "She be right, yo. And if I ain't workin', you think I'm studyin'? No. I am out with my boys."

more

And She-Devil author finds God: "The soul is the essential part of us, the inner recognisable core which stays the same while the body which ties us down changes." Plus lots more, on women vs. men, adultery vs. divorce, visions, vodka, and vicars.... (via Thunderstruck)

Blogwatchers are there,
The smell of blog is everywhere...

Hit & Run: Are Gypsies still being targeted for sterilization? The post recalls a lot of the points I made here--even without a policy of racist sterilization, there are a lot of reasons to think the dominant groups will get there anyway.

The Rat: ?!?!? (or, philosophie dans le boardroom.)

And from the Telegraph:

The notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad is at the centre of fresh abuse allegations just a week after it was handed over to Iraqi authorities, with claims that inmates are being tortured by their new captors. ...

An independent witness who went into Abu Ghraib this week told The Sunday Telegraph that screams were coming from the cell blocks housing the terrorist suspects. Prisoners released from the jail this week spoke of routine torture of terrorism suspects and on Wednesday, 27 prisoners were hanged in the first mass execution since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Conditions in the rest of the jail were grim, with an overwhelming stench of excrement, prisoners crammed into cells for all but 20 minutes a day, food rations cut to just rice and water and no air conditioning.

Some of the small number of prisoners who remained in the jail after the Americans left said they had pleaded to go with their departing captors, rather than be left in the hands of Iraqi guards.

(more; via The Corner; and I'd really like to think that James S. Robbins isn't implying that as long as Americans aren't the worst possible option, anything we do wrong should be glossed over.)

JUST CONDUCT IN WAR: A bunch of links.

"Mixed messages on torture":

...Meanwhile, across the Potomac, an Army general unveiled a new Army interrogations manual designed to fit squarely within the protections of the Geneva Conventions. That new manual specifically bars hooding, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, mock executions and many of the other "tough" techniques allegedly practiced in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo and the black sites.

The new manual was presented by Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, the Army deputy chief of staff for intelligence in a press conference that aired live Wednesday morning on the limited-circulation Pentagon Channel. During the press conference, Kimmons expressed a view about the effectiveness of "tough" interrogation techniques utterly different from the president's.

"No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices," Kimmons said. "I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the past five years, hard years, tells us that." He argued that "any piece of intelligence which is obtained under duress through the use of abusive techniques would be of questionable credibility." And Kimmons conceded that bad P.R. about abuse could work against the United States in the war on terror. "It would do more harm than good when it inevitably became known that abusive practices were used," Kimmons said. "We can't afford to go there."

more--not the most important point (the most important points are that torture is wrong and that degrading others is degrading to our interrogators), but worth saying.

Jack Balkin comments on a draft bill on military commissions.

Marty Lederman on the administration's proposals. And here. And here.

My old series of posts on torture.

ANTI-CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM ROUNDUP. There's a lot to like about John McCain, but McCain-Feingold was stupid and wrong.

MORE ON "PATH TO 9/11": 1. It's a docudrama, not a documentary, which I didn't know and which seems seriously lame, especially due to point #2:

2. Apparently there is quite a bit of important falsehood in the portrayal of some Clinton-administration figures, inc. Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger. Ick.

3. I still think the Dem senators' letter had troubling overtones of "make the movie nicer to the Clinton administration or we'll cause difficulties with your broadcast license"; but criticism certainly seems warranted, and this sounds like a very dumb move on ABC's part. I apologize for previous overreaction/going off half-cocked.

SO YOU WALKED BACK IN THE REVOLVING DOOR, AND DID IT ALL AGAIN: Or, more fun with sin!

[EDITED to remove an analogy that was interesting to me, but probably unhelpful in the wider conversation. Also, I need to sleep now, but when I wake up I'll put in some more links, I think.]

OK, Noli Irritare Leones comments on previous posts here. But this post is actually about Anactoria's replies to my comments here. And please do read her post before going on with this one, okay?

I think things are getting a bit tangled here. Anactoria and I agree, in many ways, about which issues are connected--but we disagree, I think, about how they're connected. So let me try to card the wool here. (I suspect this might be more of a riff on her post than a reply to it.)

I thank God that my sins are not like those of this publican!: Anactoria is coming from a tradition in which rejecting the community's understanding of Christian faith meant that you were shunned, completely cut off from everyone who'd loved you and raised you. I can't express how awful that sounds. I am so sorry that anyone goes through that--in fact, it's a part of why I write about my whole deal on this blog, that I hope it will make that horrible breaking of families at least a little less likely. I don't understand how shunning is Christian and... and I think I should rein myself in, here, because I start wanting to talk about how awful this approach is, and that gets perilously close to a self-righteous focus on Other People's Faults.

So instead I will just say that I am incredibly lucky that the orthodox Catholics I met were totally awesome, admirable, welcoming people, willing to listen to me babble on about heterosexism or whatever other random thing I wanted to talk about. They were up-front with me about what I'd have to give up, but equally up-front about what they had struggled with in their own lives.

Well I've been a drag racer on LSD...: That said: There are a lot of possible methods I don't think you get to use in order to figure out what is right, what is wrong, what is a dealbreaker when you try to make sense of the world, etc. And my strong impression is that Anactoria is using methods that I just don't think work, for distinguishing possible belief systems from impossible ones.

"I wouldn't shun someone who believes his identity is based in doing X" doesn't mean X is actually okay to do. [this is where the analogy was--and keep in mind that Anactoria says I'm still misreading her in this section....]

In order to figure out if something is okay to do, you can't just ask whether people who seem like good upstanding citizens (according to some culture or subculture's definition of "good"!) want to do it. I mean... I know a lot of good upstanding citizens who wouldn't bat an eye if somebody shoved bamboo sticks up Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's fingernails. Doesn't make it right to do. Culture can't be the final word on moral truth; nor can individual inclination be the final word. This actually strikes me as one of the stronger arguments that if there is a distinction between right and wrong, it requires a Creator God.

Strange things seem to occur, somewhere behind the nursery door: And now we get to the question of original sin.

Look--I find that language really illuminating. I think Augustine's influence on our understanding of the inclination to sin is right-on and awesome. It explains cultural myths of a Golden Age (Orwell yay!); it is dark in the right places (Pat Barker yay!) and bright wherever it can be. I've written here and here (bonus Queen reference!) about life as exile from Adam's happiness.

But a good friend pointed out that the language of "original sin" might be getting in the way here. And that might well be true. I know I had a really hard time taking Christianity seriously until I a) met awesome Christians and b) read St Anselm's Cur Deus Homo (How God Became Man) and thought, "Hey wait now--is that what Christians mean when they say 'sin'? Because that actually makes sense!" ...Plus, I remember how an Eastern Orthodox friend had to explain to freshmen, every single year, "Christians don't think you need to feel guilty for original sin!"

So okay. I like the language of original sin, because it implies a homeland and an exile. But if it doesn't work for you, okay. All I am really talking about in the previous post is an undertow: a terrible riptide pulling us toward sin.

I don't think we stand in front of a crossroads and calmly choose good or evil. I think it's more bewildering than that, less rational. We choose wrongdoing when it won't benefit us; we choose it even when we know it will hurt us. We choose it when we really don't know why--and when no explanation really explains why.

And I think we do this because something very big has gone wrong. One of the most compelling things, to me, about the Christian story, is that it responds to my sense that something terrible has happened. Something equally great and terrible has to respond to the shock and sorrow and outrage with which it's appropriate to meet what we see in the world every day. The torture and death of God seems... lurid enough for a lurid world.

NICE BROADCASTING LICENSE YOU'VE GOT HERE. SHAME IF ANYTHING WAS TO HAPPEN TO IT. Democratic Party leaders yell at ABC over "Path to 9/11," including some stuff that sounded to me like a veiled threat.

[edited--man I am sloppy!--to tone down the melodrama. But also to add this: I haven't seen the documentary. And of course people should vigorously counter anything they think is a distortion. But one odd thing is that the various right-wing sites I frequent have been saying for a while, basically, "This is a really powerful documentary. Clinton comes in for a lot of criticism, but so do Clinton-impeaching Republicans, and the Bush administration in general and Sec'y Rice in particular." I wonder what people-in-general will think when it is broadcast.]

YEAH, BUT IF I DON'T SOUND MY BARBARIC YAWP, WHO WILL?: Ended up re-reading some old articles, and found things I'd still promote. Including but not limited to my piece on prison reform; and "Christianity from the Outside," a really compelling symposium in which people pose the hard questions, and my best friend is brilliant as usual. (Um. I feel like people won't read it if I say that. Christopher Hitchens is in it too--? But also many, many Jews? Yeah? Look--lots of people liked it! I am not crazy!)

WHY on earth do we rush to apply dehumanizing terms like "vegetable" to actual living humans?

[title changed and other link deleted--it was this, but I had actually forgotten what was in the article, and it turned out not to have some stuff that I had thought was in there. Sorry...]

SHOPLIFTERS OF THE WORLD UNITE: Wow, every single aspect of this story sounds awful.

1. I've expressed before (oh, at length!) my problems with the "ex-gay movement." (And I do think "ex-gay" as a political cause is different from "ex-gay" as a personal narrative. I agree with the people who suggested that if you're looking for people who used to consider themselves 100% super extra gay, and now do not, the "ex-gay movement" is the last place you should look.) So... I'm really, really not on board with this TV show. Actually I would love to come on as a guest, and wreak polite havoc.

2. But--I'm kind of inarticulately horrified at the way that professed "ex-gay" people are having their own honesty and vulnerability used against them. OMG, Alan Chambers says he stole stuff! I wonder if Jesus had anything to say to repentant thieves! ...No, probably not. Jesus came to save the good people--not the sinners. YA RLY.

Actually, this article reminds me of nothing so much as the constant stream of "gay people are evil drug-using alcoholic miserable losers!" commentary from anti-gay lit. Every single thing you ever do wrong in your life is used against not only you, but an entire class of people who may have nothing to do with your own personal mess. If any gay guy admits that ten years ago he tricked or snorted coke, all gay people are promiscuous cokeheads; if any ex-gay guy admits that years ago he stole stuff or prostituted himself, all ex-gays are promiscuous thieves. Which is so compassionate. And so in line with Jesus' actions. ...Oh, and if you succumb to the pressure placed on you to be "one of the good ones," and lie about or conceal the stuff you do wrong, expect triple the fury if you are ever exposed. But if you talk about where you lost your way, expect blame not only for what you did, but for being a self-aggrandizing Oprah-culture professional victim.

Yeah... riled, a little. This got under my skin.

Use each man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping?

ROCK ME, MACHIAVELLI: Last night I dreamt that I was trying to explain "The Three Waves of Modernity." With a chalkboard and everything.

I NEED A VACATION.

EASE THE MARKET FOR ORGAN DONORS: From the Rocky Mountain News

...A 1984 federal law prohibits organ donors from receiving any "valuable consideration" for their life-saving generosity. A live donor can be compensated for medical expenses (which are usually paid by the recipient's health insurance), travel and lost wages, but nothing more. And if you choose to donate organs at death, your survivors get nothing.

The medical establishment has long considered it anathema to allow donors or their survivors to "profit" from their beneficence. The worry is that poor people will sell their organs out of financial desperation and thus in some cases compromise their health. But there are ways to minimize the risk that such a fully open market might pose.

For example, Washington could alleviate the shortage by considering pilot programs. One idea is federal income tax relief along the lines of laws operating in eight states, including Utah. Those states offer up to $10,000 in income-tax deductions to repay donors' travel expenses and lost wages.

Another possibility: "futures" contracts, in which recipients would pay up front some of the funeral expenses of those who elect to donate organs at death.

And the medical establishment should drop its objections to organizations like MatchingDonors.com. This site lets organ recipients find willing live donors and make transplantation arrangements privately.

We're certainly not comfortable endorsing a full-fledged market in organs, a regime that would allow donors to auction kidneys on eBay. But the current system is not compassionate; it amounts to a death sentence for thousands of Americans each year.

more (via Virginia Postrel)

FOOT-WASHING SPARKS ATONEMENT DEBATE: "The thorny issue of white atonement for apartheid has been thrown under the South African spotlight after a white former hardline minister washed the feet of a black preacher his forces once tried to kill." (more) Via Colby Cosh.

MY FAVORITE DESCRIPTION OF KATHY "RELAPSED CATHOLIC" SHAIDLE: "She does all her own stunts."

(um, more Fun With Sin soon, but maybe not tonight.)

THE NIGHT IS YOUNG, AND WE HAVE HEDGEHOGS IN OUR DRINKS!