FALLING IN LOVE (IS SO HARD ON THE KNEES): Out of all the responses challenging my half of that Commonweal piece on Scripture and homosexuality, I think Teresa Wymore's might be the strongest. And not just because she says I'm "articulate, brilliant, and dangerous"!

I'm going to respond to those portions of her post where I think I have something to say. So this isn't a comprehensive response, should such a thing be possible; and if you want her full argument, you should read her full post, not this selective rebuttal/drum solo....

"self-hating": If you get that adjective from my essay, it's possible that reading this would be illuminating, esp. the question about changing one's orientation--? I don't know. It's impossible to convince someone else of your internal mental state. I will say that I'm much, much more ashamed of owning the Daredevil soundtrack than of being queer...!

Righteousness and peace shall kiss each other: Teresa writes:

Like many converts who are drawn to the Church, she seems to be seeking a perpetual engine of moral clarity, as if one’s hard moral choices shouldn’t rely on time, place, or circumstance but come in a handy indexed volume.

So there's absolutely no way she could know this, but that is a really inaccurate take on my actual conversion! I think she's using "moral clarity" here to mean, "It's obvious what you should do in particular situations"; and not only was wanting that moral guidance absent from my motivations (as best I can remember), rules were something I strongly resisted.

(Would it help if I said I was almost an English major? One of the things I find so fruitful about Catholicism is the way it meshes rules and roles [sorry for the cute phrasing]--philosophy and literature, thou-shalt-nots and "follow Me," commandments and weird saints. I genuinely don't think Catholicism provides easy or even frequent answers to the moral questions I confront in daily life, even though of course it does rule a lot of things out, like support for torture or for abortion. And to the extent that there is a "rulebook," that rulebook was basically the opposite of my motives for conversion!)

So what did I want? Morality definitely played a role, though perhaps a more abstract one. I wanted justice and knew I needed mercy. I believe very strongly in justice--in desert. Sometimes I attribute this belief to the left-Jewish tradition in which I was raised. That may be overreading, but anyway, I believed in justice and yet fled from applying that standard to myself. ("Relativism means never having to say you're sorry.") The things we do wrong, we can never take back, and never fully make amends for; we simply don't have that capacity. If there is resolution and reconciliation, it must happen outside time and beyond our own abilities to enact justice. Only God can make justice reconciliation, rather than merely punishment.

So there was that. I also sought an explanation for the meaning I found in the beauty of the created world; more on that in a bit, though.

Don't tell me what I want to hear: More Teresa:

She begins her argument with her own coming out story. And then, there is this:

Experience is itself a kind of text, and texts need interpreters. How often have we thought that we understood our experiences, only to realize later that we had only the barest understanding of our own motives and impulses?

Yes, she’s an apologist. Do you recognize the first step of any institution seeking control? Don’t trust yourself.

This I think is the key, the best criticism of my piece, even though the first sentence I quoted does give the hint of how I will respond.

It's my fault that my essay can be read that way--as if I'm making the self-contradictory statement that your core epistemological principle should be self-mistrust. (Who is doing the mistrusting? Why, myself!) I don't help this misunderstanding by occasionally using "self-mistrust" as a synonym for humility.

What I actually meant can perhaps be discerned by noting that I don't only begin the Commonweal piece with my coming-out story. I begin it with two parallel love stories: my crush on a high-school girl, and my Catholic conversion. The implicit narrative of the essay is the story of how love of Christ and His Bride the Church became more central to my life than lesbian love (real love, not just crushes!), and how, therefore, I began to interpret the latter kind of love in light of the former.

Both of these loves are things I really experienced my own self. So my argument probably should not have been cast in terms of experience vs. tradition, but in terms of which experiences lead us to reinterpret prior experiences and transform our response to subsequent experiences.

(Was I perhaps hampered in making my case clearly because a) my conversion had a lot of philosophical work on the front end--there were a lot of things I needed to work on through reason, before I could convert, and/or b) I find it very difficult to describe the experiential aspects of my conversion, what it felt like, in ways I think might resonate with others?)

Sure of You: Teresa:

Scripture is a result of personal experience, both produced and interpreted by the personal experiences of a fraction of humanity during ages of class oppression. I do believe it is divinely inspired; I’m just waiting for the divine interpretation. The Tradition that has given us our current understanding of Scripture is based in patriarchal culture, which Tushnet herself seems to acknowledge with a nod early, but now forgets.

OK, I'm boring on this stuff. I don't get why you'd trust Scripture at all, to the extent of believing it is divinely inspired, if you don't trust the Tradition which canonized, preserved, and translated it. Why not the Gnostic gospels, or any story you find meaningful? Without the Church, the Bible is simply "one bible among others."

But more to the point, again, for me it is a question of certainty. I am more sure of the church of Caravaggio, Wilde, Augustine, Anselm, Juan Sánchez Cotán, John Paul II, and Dorothy Day than I am sure that gay sex is a-okay. In my essay I did try to argue for submission to the Church, but of course if you are more certain that prohibiting gay sex is cruel and unjust than you are of the Catholic Church's teaching authority, that argument will be utterly unpersuasive to you, as it should be.

Teresa summarizes well here (although I think the word "rewards" is vague enough to foster misunderstanding--a cross is a reward, you know?--and I'd replace "replace" with "transform"):

I want to ask why she gave up sexual relationships. Did she surrender that expression through discipline or did one desire replace a stronger one in her? My question, you see, is whether she chose her own sacrifice and finds more rewards when she chooses to support tradition and live in conformity with official teaching on sexuality. And yet, she seems to be telling other lesbians who find greater rewards in personal sexual relationships that they are not listening to God.

Tushnet has chosen to make a sacrifice of her lesbian sexuality, but maybe God wants her to sacrifice her attachment to a patriarchal tradition. I would say only she knows the answer to that. She would say the Church knows better than she does.

But then she says this, to which I hardly know how to respond because it seems to come from such a different sense of what Christianity is:

What would make me more open to Tushnet’s ideas is if she simply made the point that she chooses celibacy because she finds greater rewards in it, not because she’s choosing the moral high ground.

I mean... does this translate to, "It's okay to be celibate if you feel fluffy about it, but not if you're doing it just because it's the right thing to do"? I think even those who believe not all homosexual people are called to celibacy should still reject this claim if they believe in vocation, since vocation is not something you choose. So you may have a celibate vocation even if there are no evident "rewards" for you in that life, and you believe other gay ladies can get busy with their ladyloves as much as they like. This phrasing of "reward" vs. "moral high ground" isn't how I think about either universal morality or particular vocation, so like I said, I'm kind of baffled as to how to respond; and possibly I'm therefore being too dismissive--? I dun' get it.

Me, I think the universal morality of "no gay sex" requires of me a personal vocation including but not limited to celibacy. (I think my primary vocation is writing, though that may well be completely self-aggrandizing. But in general I think it's best to conceive one's vocation as positive--I have a vocation to pregnancy center counseling, I have a vocation as the friend of those I love--rather than negative.) But I just wouldn't use the terms Teresa uses here, and I challenge them.

Saint Monica, Rene Girard/preserve me from my past: Then Teresa switches to a discussion of James Alison vs. Rene Girard, which began on this note:

But I find discomfort with any idea of sacrifice. Claiming that Christianity breaks the cycle of escalating sacrificial violence by having us make sacifices of ourselves is seeming less true to me all the time. I’ve never really seen the difference between sacrificing someone else as a scapegoat versus sacrificing ourselves.

At first I found this a bizarre statement. Murder and martyrdom are equivalent! Stealing your wallet and punching you in the face is just like turning the other cheek! Yeah, no.

Besides which, I've been on the whole love-requires-sacrifice kick for a long time.

But one of her commenters wrote:

...I guess one question is, does letting someone enact violence reinforce the mechanism of violence or contribute to its end? Thinking about the U.S. civil rights fight, and then thinking about domestic abuse and mob violence, I come up with different answers.

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And this made me see the real challenge here, to which I have no adequate response. When does witness become enabling? When does Adam Smith become right, and mercy to the guilty becomes cruelty to the innocent?

I have no answers; but I would recommend that anyone interested in the questions check out David Adams Richards's novel Mercy Among the Children. Here's part of what I said about it in Crisis magazine in February '02:

Very few authors today believe in human greatness as sincerely as David Adams Richards does.

That may seem like a strange conclusion to draw from a novel set among poor rural Canadians, in which a relentlessly kind couple is ostracized, beaten, abused, poisoned by chemical dumping, and accused of everything from theft to child molestation and murder. A list of the horrors to which Elly and Sydney Henderson are subjected would read almost comically, like the stage directions from Titus Andronicus: "Enter Lavinia, with hands cut off, tongue cut out, and ravished." But in Richards's hands, despite the book's stylistic flaws, both the abuses and the gentle response are believable.

The book's creed might be: I believe that good and evil are real. I believe that complete pacifism, self-sacrifice, and sainthood are possible. I believe that we can love our enemies. I believe that any man can search for the truth, that any woman can find it. ...

But notice, too, what is left out: I believe in God. I believe that it is good to be a saint. Those are two conclusions Richards, within the world of his novel, does not reach.

As a child, Sydney Henderson almost killed another boy while fighting drunk on a snow-covered rooftop. Afterward, he made a pact with God that he would never harm another person. ...

But is it even possible to understand the nature of Sydney's pact? He is Christlike, but there are moments when his life seems as much Stoic as Christian. Sydney sometimes appears to believe not that harming others is wrong but that it will ultimately backfire. He tells Elly, "[N]o one can do an injury to you without doing an injury to themselves. ...Those who scorn you taunt only themselves." This belief doesn't square with Sydney's passivity--he won't even tell others when they are acting wrongly. Sometimes it's clear that he is silent because he fears his own power to hurt. But if Sydney truly believes that the viciousness inflicted upon him will harm its perpetrators most, why doesn't he try to stop them, for their own sakes?

(There's more to the book than that, obviously; I'm just quoting the part of my review which engages with the questions Teresa and her interlocutors raise.)

All for now....

THE FEAST OF SAINT LONGINUS: "...[T]he American military now earns a 'great deal' of trust from a larger swathe of the American public than the White House, Congress, the media, and organized religion combined."

I'm your daytime blogwatch at the Taco Tiki Hut...

Amy Welborn:

...When I think of St. Patrick, the word that comes to mind is forgiveness.

For St. Patrick had been kidnapped as a boy, and taken in slavery to Ireland, held there for years.

When it was time, years later, to share the Gospel, Patrick responded to the call - to share that Good News in Ireland, with those who had caused him great suffering and even killed members of his family.

His story reminds me of that of St. Isaac Jogues, another disciple of Jesus who returned to serve those who persecuted him.

It makes you think. What are the limits of my love?

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Ta-Nehisi Coates:

...I think it takes a real flight of fancy to dismiss the culture argument. If you are rich and you've been rich for generations, you almost certainly develop cultural habits. Likewise, if you're poor and you've been poor for generations, you do the same. If you've been wealthy for generations and you were suddenly asked to function in the ghetto, you may have problems because you didn't know the rules. You weren't acculturated. Likewise, if you're poor and you're trying to climb up the economic ladder, you may also have problems. What will keep you safe in the projects, may well get you fired from a job, or kicked out of school. I think this would be true whether you are poor in West Baltimore, or poor in West Virginia.

But one reason that a lot of African-Americans get pissed off at cultural arguments is because the "culture of poverty" is often so easily transposed over the "culture of black people." I went to public school all my life. So does my son. I've had my share of contact with the culture of poverty. But the culture that encourages people to jump the broom at weddings, isn't the same as the culture that makes drug-dealing a choice occupation. The culture at, say, Spelman isn't the same as the culture of the projects here in Harlem. And the culture at Spelman isn't the same as the culture at Howard.

more (this is a blog post, not a treatise, so I'm going to pretend I don't see the parts where Coates tries to lump all cultures-of-poverty together and handwave ways in which the contemporary US black culture of poverty is a) different from previous US black cultures of poverty, b) different from non-black cultures of poverty, and therefore c) not inevitable--its good aspects need preserving and its bad aspects can be combated....)

"BETTER": Short story by me, at Doublethink. What if the aliens are just better?

Once, twice, thrice--as I crept close
Into the ark, the nest, the bride,
Into the pulse, into the life, into the wounded side
--Eliza Kearny, "Christine and Mary"

KITCHEN ADVENTURES: FISH FRY. Timely!

ingredients: two skinless catfish fillets, a big lemon, a big yellow onion, some butter, and sea salt; tinfoil; eventually, a potato

I turned the oven to 400, put the fillets in a baking dish, and squeezed half the lemon over them. I dotted them with butter, then covered the dish with foil and put it in the oven. While it was cooking, I sliced half the onion.

The fish cooked for... I don't know... ten minutes? fifteen?, and then I uncovered it, added the sliced onions, and returned it to the oven at 375 for another sevenish minutes.

Then out and into the dish! Scattered sea salt over it and devoured with glee. This was fantastic--buttery, lemony, catfishy. You're left with extra lemon butter, which I used to flavor a baked potato. It was so good, I questioned the wisdom of allowing fish during Lent.

BETTE DAVIS SAYS, "GIT OFF MAH PROPERTY!" Hey guys. I'm swamped in work here, but I need to tell you all about various things involving Amy Welborn, who bestrides the Catholic blog world like a Colossus. So please go away, and read her instead.

First, she has a really powerful meditation here, on one unexpected effect of her husband's recent, unexpected death.

Second, she has moved blogquarters, and will be doing most of her posting at BeliefNet, here. She'll be posting more often; right now she's asking what you heard and saw in church on Ash Wednesday and on the first Sunday of Lent.

Amy is a lovely writer and a deeply sensible person. You'll want to check in with her often.

For my part, once I dig myself out of work--probably Sundayish?--I should have posts on: Aerosmith, Rene Girard, ye olde Commonweal piece, and CanLit; shame and vocation (and Top Chef); more gay-marriage compromises, but this post is actually about adelphopoesis; and how God is like a killer mutant cat.

EVE'S ADVICE TO THE LOVELORN: Just a bit more on that APA thing.

Some commenters have suggested that requiring only gay people to abstain is differential treatment which constitutes discrimination. This claim prompted a series of thoughts, which I present here, ranging from most relevant to the APA to least; the ones most relevant to the APA are least interesting to me, though, and vice very versa.

"It's Lent." "Well, when you get it back, come up and see me sometime!": Does the APA prohibit marital-status discrimination? If so, it seems that unmarried heterosexuals are "similarly situated" to homosexuals at completely-Christian-conduct-code colleges; if required abstinence is discrimination, and marital-status discrimination is barred, unmarried heteros can get just as indignant as gay people.

And yet that isn't the issue. I wonder why!

(Sex is the new religion, and the gay-liberation movement is the new Caesaropapism.)

Juno and Mary: Actually, I suspect you could also bring a claim of sex discrimination against anti-fornication colleges, given that only women get pregnant, thus only women might be faced with the choice between dismissal from their jobs or clandestine abortion.

That's one of many, many reasons I don't actually support the C-C-C-C colleges.

But again: Why hasn't this issue been raised? Possibly--and I don't know the players, so I'm just raising this as a possibility--because gay and straight people have a very easy time isolating themselves from the other group's tragedies, in this culture. I wrote about that here. Although this is a stupid idea for many reasons, I still do wish that every straight evangelical could be forced to spend time at a gay-youth group, like the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League here in DC, and every gay-liberationist could be forced to hold the hand of a woman sobbing because of an unwanted pregnancy or a decades-past abortion.

There's really enough suffering to go around.

A woman taken in adultery: This whole kerfuffle got me thinking about how I would reshape C-C-C-C colleges, if I could. Because I do get that the gutter-punching, "here comes everybody," bar-brawl style of a Yale (or Georgetown, or Notre Dame) education isn't necessary for or beneficial to everyone.

I guess I'd say that you could replace conduct codes with: a) parables of transgression and forgiveness. This is how Jesus did it, you know? What if your college conduct guide told you stories of how you could be forgiven academic, sexual, even criminal transgressions? What if they gave examples of confession, penance, and communal re-embrace--not just rules?

b) a requirement that you profess certain beliefs, and/or not speak against them. I like this less, but it does get at the key claim that heresy is worse than acknowledged sin. It would also distinguish interestingly between sins which are commonplace at university yet kept quiet (drunkenness, lechery, hypocrisy); those which are commonplace and condemned (dishonesty, plagiarism); and those which are commonplace and argued for strenuously as human rights (no need to list them!). Sinners of all kinds would be welcome; heretics would be advised not to attempt to spread their heresies.

Neither of these are what I, personally, would want in a college--I basically would want Yale, and hey!, I got her--but they're better than a cocoon of complete conduct-code conformity.

YOU LIVE INSIDE A BOTTLE AND PRETEND YOU'RE IN A CAN: John Schwenkler's post on "closeted Christians" in academia reminded me of a conversation I had with a young, conservative lesbian, just after my piece on ex-gay ministries was published at National Review Online.

She expressed surprised that NRO had wanted the piece; and I may be wrong, but I felt as though she was implying that she wouldn't've pitched it to them. Whereas my approach was basically, "Well, this might not work, but hey: I'll email K-Lo and see what she says." And Kathryn Lopez proved amazingly supportive, helping me when I had a hard time gaining access to the conference and sending me a follow-up email making clear that she really understood what I was trying to say with the piece. I took a chance on her.

I wonder how often we sit inside cages when the doors are wide open.

COME, MUSE, AND LET US SING OF RATS!: Movie reviews.

Actually, only two of these movies involve rats. But two is enough, don't you think?

The Rats: The Hulu description promises killer rats at Christmas! That would've been awesome.

In fact, the Christmas element is virtually absent. I have no idea why it was even introduced. Why not rats in Christmas trees, rats attacking Santa, rats in church? Gremlins did much better with this movie's attempted anti-consumerist theme (although Gremlins also cast that anti-consumerism in Pat Buchanan xenophobic terms, so hey, what you lose on the dogs you gain on the ponies).

Nonetheless, this is an '80s horror movie about killer rats in New York City which does not analogize street criminals and vermin. For this lack of creepy, bourgeois good-people dehumanization alone, it is to be commended.

It's also kind of hilariously delicious.

If you only want one killer-rat movie, I'll still recommend the Willard remake (haven't seen the original yet). But it turns out that I want multiple killer-rat movies; and this one is serviceable.

Welcome to the Dollhouse: Okay, I really hated this. But it's entirely possible that I missed the point, so I welcome arguments in my email inbox.

My main problem is that its genre- and tone-shifting didn't work for me. It felt as though it just switched randomly from genre to genre, rather than genuinely combining genres. In the terms of this post, it was Harry Potter, not Veronica Mars.

I was in the market for an intensely painful satire of high-school hell. Maybe some kind of combination of Heathers, Cruel Intentions, and Donnie Darko--the Grand Guignol of bullying, something which would make the audience complicit, or else maybe make the realistic portrayals of bullying seem just as absurd and degrading as the fluorescent, lamb-dressed-as-mutton-dressed-as-lamb fashions. Maybe something like this article translated to Suburbian.

Some scenes really did that. Dawn's costumes; her locker; the bathroom scene. But then you have the idiotic "Lisa Simpson bonds with Nelson Muntz, after he threatens to rape her" scene; and the kidnaping plotline, the reason for which I cannot fathom.

If other people get it, get how this movie hangs together and does something not merely groundbreaking (because I could probably buy that) but artistically great... email me, for real, because I did feel like I was missing something. Were my expectations wrong, or too specific? Did I miss the point of the kidnaping thing? I've been wrong in my first impression of movies before. But I genuinely didn't get this.

Arachnophobia: Heh, this was fine. Bog standard '80s spider horror; does what it says on the tin. Nice "city vs. country" storyline, in which although the city wins, there isn't any sense of contempt. Overall the story handles lightly a lot of elements which could become really heavyhanded, e.g. gender role reversal (the husband needs the wife to kill spiders), or "never ever ever move away from where you live, or travel anywhere else."

It may not affect others this way, but I definitely found myself a bit freaked out by shadows and similar possibly-spiders! after watching this.

Graveyard Shift: Based on the Stephen King short story, which is better. Creepy mill is creepy; filled with rats; needs to be cleaned; cleaners discover horrific Rat Queen hiding in basement. I had fun with this, because I love "out of the past"/coverup/creepy old building stories, but it's really Session 9 without the good parts.

And wow, the Rat Queen is risible. Sorry, Rattus!

You can kind of tell my problem with the movie when I say that there's a scene where someone discovers all the old mill files which have been relegated to the basement--and all I wanted was for us to get a look at the horrors hidden in those files. Those files are Annie Wilkes's "Memory Lane" book; they're Jack Torrance's memories of the speech-and-debate tournament from The Shining; they're Jame Gumb's basement with the uneven floors.

We don't ever get to see what's in them.

Anyway, the close-credits song is hilarious--different lines from the movie remixed to a dance beat! Listen to it here (with the end of the movie, so spoilerous). Best part of the movie by far.

The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
--Ps. 19:1-4

LET'S YOU AND HIM FIGHT. So apparently there's this kerfuffle in the American Philosophical Association about whether schools which require their faculty to abstain from gay sex should be allowed to advertise in the APA's job listings.

There's a petition, and a counterpetition, and my name came up in comments on the latter, because apparently I've been weaponized now? I tried to post this at Brian Leiter's site, but the comment wasn't accepted--not sure if it's in moderation, or if it's too long (for which I apologize!), or if this is just some computery glitch, but just in case, I'm reposting it here.

It's nothing new if you read this site regularly, but I figured I'd post it in case people are still finding me by Googling for stuff about this issue--if that's how you got here, I suggest checking out my sidebar under "Sicut cervus: Resources on God and homosexuality," and/or the "Gay Catholic Whatnot" and "romoeroticism" tags.... I promise to have some more interesting stuff up Saturday, inc. possibly some Gay-Catholic-Whatnot for those who can't get enough of that wonderful Duff. Plus reviews of movies about rats.
-----------

Well, now I know why so many people have been coming to my site by Googling "Eve Tushnet and John Heard"....

I feel as though I have been pushed into the middle of someone else's fight--I don't think the best model of a Catholic university is one in which all faculty must pledge to profess and follow the Catholic faith--but... fine. My take on some of the issues involved in this question.

1. Some of the arguments in the counterpetition are quite silly. ("Many of the greatest..." etc.)

2. But y'all are really arguing that "You cannot make sense of someone's sexual orientation apart from the acts that embody and constitute that identity"? Really? (This from the movement that claims Cardinal Newman was gay?--sorry, cheap shot.)

Many, many "gay people"/"people with same-sex desires"/(your term here) have chosen celibacy, for a variety of reasons, not all of which have anything to do with religion. Gay people choose celibacy as a form of fidelity to a deceased beloved. They choose celibacy because they're bitter about their experiences in a gay community (my guess is that Djuna Barnes, for example, might fit this one). And of course they (we) choose it as a form of fidelity to Christ. You can judge some of these reasons as much better than others--bitterness is something I'd try to alleviate, not recommend--but they don't make the people involved any less gay. "Between the emotion/and the act/falls the shadow," as TS Eliot didn't say....

(You're really telling me I'm... what? Straight? Nothing neither way? Romoerotic?)

I don't think this analogy works:

Though if the counter-petition's argument is that one is capable of discriminating only against those that act upon their orientation while not against the broader category of those that have that particular orientation, then it seems to me that it is legitimate to hire a person who have an orientation towards a particular religious faith on the proviso they don't act on that faith (e.g. attending services, partaking in Communion etc.)

If you're Catholic, for example, there are lots of things you're supposed to do. (Those things really are intrinsic to being Catholic.) Are gay people supposed to have sex? Is sex the vocation of the lesbian, as witness is the vocation of the Christian?

Now, you could argue that the vocation of the lesbian can be expressed in lots of different ways, including some forms of celibacy, but religiously-motivated celibacy cannot be among them. I am not sure why the APA should endorse this viewpoint.

Anyway, at least the religion analogy is much better than the race analogy; I'm not sure what I could possibly say to someone who thinks I'm analogous to a black girl bleaching her skin in an attempt to become white.

4. Finally, I understand why people want to marginalize and stigmatize religions which bar homosexual acts. But do acknowledge that that's what you're asking the APA to do.

Ahhhh, this is too long. I'm sorry.

Yeah well, happy Lent to me, I guess. I had to cut a lot of stuff from that, including my defense of Catholic universities hiring all manner of religious flotsam and moral jetsam--God and Man at Yale is wrong, y'all, and The Closing of the American Mind is right--but rest assured I know that sots and lechers and even Presbyterians can be good teachers....

YOUR AMAZINGLY AWESOME THING OF THE DAY. Via Mark Shea among many others.

UH... OOPS. Reader Dr. Weevil pointed out that I really made no sense in my earlier call for DC-area Catholic school alumni. Who I am actually looking for:

DC-area alumni of DC-area Catholic schools.

In other words: You live nearish here now, and you went to school nearish here.

The other criteria in that post still apply (LGBT/same-sex-attracted alumni especially encouraged; I don't care what you think about gay stuff; if your Catholic education was elementary, middle, or high school, that is most awesome, but college might also work).

Sorry for ambiguity, and please do email and/or spread the word!

I HOPE YOU KNOW THAT THIS WILL GO DOWN ON YOUR PERMANENT RECORD: Hey, are any of you guys alumni of DC-area Catholic schools (esp. elementary and HS, but I think college might also work) and living in the DC metro area? If so, can you email me? LGBT/same-sex-attracted alumni are especially encouraged (regardless of your current religious/moral beliefs), but believe me, you can definitely still help me even if you're straighter than Anna Karenina.

Also, if people in the area wanted to put this notice on their blogs, that would be great. My email is eve_tushnet@yahoo.com.

Thanks. Once this project is further along I'll post more about it, but for now, just shoot me a quick email and I'll give you the scoop.

EDITED to clarify that I'm looking for DC-area alumni of DC-area Catholic schools.

TODAY ON MARRIAGEDEBATE: More discussion of possible compromises on gay marriage; the most convincing take I've seen so far on how Proposition 8 passed; arguments that "gay marriage put an end to gay sex" and that "the right's baby love is undermining conservatism"... and more.

I'm going to stop doing these, really, but I want you guys to see that I'm getting new, provocative content up there every day.

THERE GOES MY WEEKEND! Audio recordings of Allan Bloom lecturing on Nietzsche, and (now with cool pix!) Plato.

Awesome, all-too-awesome.

PROFILE OF NEW PRESIDENT OF THE NAACP INCLUDES THESE BITS:

...Only a few years out of college, Jealous quickly climbed the ranks of the nonprofit world. In 2005, he was named president of the Los Angeles–based Rosenberg Foundation, which grants money to groups working in low-income communities. Jealous whipped the foundation into fiscal and managerial shape and directed its money toward an emerging method of dealing with mass incarceration: re-entry programs that help former inmates readjust to society and find work. Jealous plans to prioritize these issues as president of the NAACP. "A hundred years from now we're going to be judged by our grandchildren," he says. "They're going to look back, and they're going to say, this country had the most incarcerated on Earth. Young black people were the most incarcerated in modern history. What did you do about it?" ...

For Jealous, mass incarceration is the civil-rights challenge of this generation. Addressing it, he says, requires more than just changing draconian drug laws; it also requires confronting poverty and a failing public-education system. Young black folks, particularly the urban poor who most need an organization like the NAACP to look out for them, are facing problems of violence, drugs, AIDS, and unequal education. ...

Jealous must figure out how to hold Obama accountable without drawing "the hate." Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton, is optimistic. The NAACP "could become the authentic supportive and yet challenging voice to the Obama administration," she says.

This is the role Jealous envisions. "It would be disrespectful not to criticize [Obama]," he says. "If we don't let the brother know when he's not living up to people's expectations, he's only going to be there four years."

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(via Jack and Jill Politics)

DAY JOB: There is just a cornucopia of links up at MarriageDebate today, people. First up we have the NY Times piece co-penned by David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch, "A Reconciliation on Gay Marriage." Then I have trawled the vast reaches of the interwebs to bring you this round-up of reactions to the piece. If you have seen others you think I should include, please email me at eve_tushnet@yahoo.com!

If you scroll past all that, you'll find scads of other fascinating links, on subjects from religious liberty to the story of a transgendered sorority brother. I also have a bunch of great links on deck for posting tomorrow--and, in general, I hope to do better about posting every day.

I am not being paid to tell you this (although I do work part-time for iMAPP), but I figured a lot of my readers would be interested in these topics. Go read!

"WHAT IS HOLY SEX? WHO NEEDS CHRISTIAN FRIENDSHIP?": Check out this Dreadnought discussion, & help him shape his upcoming talk at the University of Sydney....

VICTOR MORTON VS. THE OSCARS.

The entire life of a good Christian is in fact an exercise of holy desire. You do not yet see what you long for, but the very act of desiring prepares you, so that when he comes you may see and be utterly satisfied.
--St. Augustine, via

CUPID AND PSYCHO: I'm sure someone could come up with a lot of really annoying psychoanalysis of me based on the particular points at which I shift from being incredibly attracted to Bernadette Peters's witch to identifying intensely with her and back again. I'm just right--can't they see?!

I SHOULD BE DRINKING A TOAST TO ABSENT FRIENDS/INSTEAD OF THESE COMEDIANS. The inimitable Abhay Khosla on Scott Pilgrim.

IN MY HEAD, I'M ON MY KNEES: I review Catholic and Feminist: The Surprising History of the American Catholic Feminist Movement in the latest First Things. Subscribers-only for now.

Keep in mind that when I make a statement, I'm standing behind that statement; but when I suggest, or question, it's because I think my questions are a better way to approach the complex truth than any partial or provincial comment I could make.

The cross, therefore, is always ready; it awaits you everywhere. No matter where you may go, you cannot escape it, for wherever you go you take yourself with you and shall always find yourself.
--The Imitation of Christ

ALIAS LOVE: I make myself ridiculous all over the prospect of more Bendis/Gaydos Jessica Jones complete awesomeness.

SHAMED CULTURE: Shamed Dogan (rhymes with "Club Med") is back online!

THE STRINGS THAT CONTROL THE SYSTEM: More on Iron Honky.

One: My basic thing about Tony Stark can be completely conveyed in the "No Handlebars" fanvid which is not the thing you get on YouTube if you search for "'iron man' 'no handlebars'"--so email me, for real, if you want to see it. That video is better film criticism than I could do in a year of Sundays.

Two: The race thing isn't the only thing about Iron Man. Honestly, one of the most debilitating things about privilege is the way that it corrupts all the things you like, all the things you love... all the things you might draw hope from. So I can say that "Iron Man" is super cool because Tony Stark is an example of leadership in isolation (as vs. e.g. Cyclops' leadership, or Emma Frost's intense focus on her lost students) but it won't change the fact that there is no Arab Tony Stark. There is no American "Vietnam movie" which is really about the Vietnamese.

And so... here's an exchange, between me and Blackadder, which I think gets at the real issue underlying my badly-defended initial post:

Him: I don't get it. Yes, Iron Man is white, and various of the other characters in the origin story are not white.

Okay. So what? What's racist about that?

Me: It's the "Dances with Wolves" thing, where non-white people's tragedies and struggles are constantly sidelined to showcase the heroic white man.... The Asians are instruments, not characters, and Rhodey, for all that he is awesome, is the traditional Black Sidekick who exists to be a character in a white man's story rather than to have a story of his own.

If "Iron Man" were one of only a few places where that marginalization happened, it wouldn't matter, but it's such a common pattern that it becomes a real problem

Him: I guess my reaction here is something along the lines of "dude, it's a comic book!"

Do we learn much about the inner life and tragedies of Stark's captors?

Of course not. They are the villainous henchmen from Act I.

Is the side kick character a, well, side kick? Again, of course.

If the treatment of the non-white villainous henchmen and/or non-white side kick were more hackneyed than is typical in such stories, then you might have a point. But it's not. The treatment of these characters is pretty standard. And to argue that, because certain characters in the story are not white, it's racist to treat them exactly as you would any other villian or side kick strikes me as being a tad unfair.

Me: But it really is about the larger pattern--who ends up as the faceless villains, who ends up as the sidekick, and who ends up with his name on the cover....

Or, let me try this another way: There really are lazy black people and money-grubbing Jews. But you'd be pretty careful if you wanted to put one in your comic, right? Not because they don't exist, but because those images play into larger cultural narratives.

This is sort of similar: It plays into a larger cultural narrative in which the only interesting stories/the only heroes/the only people with inner lives and subjectivity, are white people.

Like, the first time you see a story where the non-white people exist solely to serve the white hero's interior journey, it's no big thing, that's how stories often work, not every character can have a rich inner life. But the fiftieth
time, it gets really, really old, and each individual instance of it starts looking more and more suspect.

Him: Okay, so it sounds like the real problem is not that the villains aren't white, or that the side kick isn't white, but that the main character *is* white. Or, rather, that all the main characters are white.

And, yeah, you kind of have a point there.

However, I would note two things:

1) This isn't a problem that it particular to Iron Man. There aren't any non-white characters with deep inner lives in Spider-man either. Or Superman. Or Batman, etc. It may be more obvious in the case of Iron Man, in the same way that the racial make-up of a party may be more apparent when there is one black guy there rather than none. Nevertheless. And saying that it's okay to have white people be the only ones with real characterization in a story, but only so long as there are no non-white people in the story whatsoever, then that doesn't strike me as being very helpful.

2) We're dealing here with characters that are not being created out of whole cloth today, but that have a pre-existing history. If the racial make up of the characters is undesirable, our only two options would seem to be either to just change the race of the character (as was done with Nick Fury) or to introduce new characters and try to build them into major figures in their own right. The latter option is, ironically, what they tried with Iron Man (and are trying with Iron Man). Rhodes starts out as just another side kick, but if they follow the comic this is just a jumping off point for him to become Iron Man later on.

I've got an infinite number of places to go, the problem is where to stay.
--Johnny, Mike Leigh, "Naked"

I CAN TIE A KNOT IN A CHERRY STEM: Comics review. So everyone who knows me knows I couldn't resist the paperback copy of Iron Man: Demon in a Bottle. This is the early '80s story arc in which our hero, Iron Man, gained an origin and an addiction. I loved it with a deeply stupid love.

The covers are so bad. The front cover is basically, "John Romita, Jr. Presents: THE HUMAN THIGH!", and then the back cover is AA Werewolf.

And... I don't know a good way to put this. All Iron Man origin stories are racist. Iron Man is a white guy who experienced an epiphany in a country full of brown people, and then he came home to be important and have his own comic book title, and sometimes his black sidekick got to tag along. Honestly, there's no defending it. There are a lot of things I like about the Iron Man mythos, but I don't recommend it, for exactly the same reason that I don't say everybody should read Gone with the Wind.

So okay, that said... I thought this book was surprisingly clever and fun and (on a scale of negative-1000 to negative-100) subtle. I really enjoyed this. The art was action-comics standard, but the pacing worked, and the dialogue was what you wanted '80s comics to be, rather than what you just kind of accepted as the '80s comics norm.

I can't recommend this in good conscience. But if you are pretty sure you want the first Tony Stark alcoholism arc, I can tell you this version of it is a lot better than it had to be. It really isn't lugubrious or pro-forma the way future Tony-drunk comics can seem. And if you liked the movie, I can say that this comic is similar, for good and for ill.

GIRLS LIKE VIOLENCE: William Writes has a pretty awesome post criticizing my "Sublimity Now!" column. I don't know that I can respond, necessarily, but I guess I will ask: Can there be a peaceful rapture?

Because I pretty much think no, and his post suggests that this might be a relevant difference between us: I'll go with rapture over peace, if I have to pick.

But seriously, you should read this post, because its understanding of beauty is really different from mine and yet really appealing to me.

ALL HONORING NATURE--UNTIL I ARRIVED: A few postscripts to my pissed-off post about that Commonweal James Alison piece.

1. First of all, I've never read Alison, and people I really respect are into him. So I completely assume that while I can't stand the excerpts in that Commonweal encomium, that doesn't necessarily reflect the context and fullness of his argument.

2. I've said before that I don't get natural law arguments, at all, ever. And so to the extent that Alison is arguing from the basis of peacefulness and natural law, I'm pretty much... against peace with oneself and against nature, as everyone who knows me will attest. As a friend of mine once said, "I hate the happy medium!"

3. On the other hand... I can't judge Alison's full argument. But I can judge the excerpt in the Commonweal article. And that was just bad. If "natural law" can be stretched like Silly Putty to cover any actions flowing from any involuntary, deep, existential inclination, then natural law is stupid.

4. An anonyreader writes:

...I will say that one's bad loves are so closely kith and kin to one's good loves that they might as well be identical twins. Almost. But there is a mutation, or a difference of some kind, that allows one to distinguish the "good" from the "bad."

So, yes, I think the bad loves can seem central, because they grow out of the good, but take a detour somewhere along the line.

I totally agree with this; more so, I try to emphasize, with gay stuff, how our desires can be made truly sublime. I try to write about how being gay in this culture can be a Christian vocation--a call to transform, without denying or ignoring or suppressing, our desires in the service of Christ.

So apparently my irritation with this one quoted, out-of-context paragraph of James Alison's has made me sound much more negative toward gay desire than I really am! Good grief.

I guess the main thing I want to say--and the reason behind the Mary Gauthier thing--is just that "nature" isn't obvious. Cultures define what is natural, and those definitions need not match up at all well with your own morality, whether or not you're an orthodox Catholic. So when you rely on "nature" arguments, you need to be fierce, be careful, and be anything other than complacent; and--my old hobbyhorse--maybe you'd be better off just leaving the "natural" category alone, and making your arguments on other grounds. Because frankly, I could make better gay-heresy arguments than the natural-law one, and it's not my actual job.

But yeah--that post wasn't about Alison's arguments, but about the part of his argument which the Commonweal author saw fit to quote; and it wasn't really about gay stuff, but about natural-law arguments and their limits.

He who is not ready to suffer all things and to stand resigned to the will of the Beloved is not worthy to be called a lover.
--The Imitation of Christ

COMMONWEAL VS. THE COMMON WOUND, PART 300 IN A SERIES.

They say:

As Alison lays out the argument, Catholicism has long taught that people are heterosexual by nature, and that homosexual activity is thus unnatural. But this teaching conflicts with the growing recognition that homosexuality is a way of being, not simply a way of acting; unchosen, it belongs to one's nature or essence. Drawing upon the scholastic axiom agere sequitur esse (acts flow from being), Alison maintains one cannot hold both that the homosexual inclination is natural or involuntary and that homosexual acts are inherently evil.

link

I can't think of a really awesome way to point out all the problems in this theology except to say, "Can you really believe this, unless you believe you're a Good Person?"

I mean... think of the worst thing you've ever loved. Is that love peripheral to you, or in some complex way, central? Are you absolutely sure that no "bad" love could ever be central to someone's self-conception?

Mary Gauthier says:
Fish swim.
Birds fly.
Daddies yell,
Mommas cry.
Old men
Sit and think--
I drink.

I HATE YOU ALL. How did no one tell me that Amy Winehouse covered "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?"

Thanks for nothing, blogroll! Do better when she covers "Crimson and Clover," or I'll track you down.

MULES AND WOMEN: My Ladyblog post about that article comparing Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Zora Neale Hurston; with bonus Ayn Rand, Dorothy Day, and (maybe!) GEM Anscombe....

"If there were only one steel worker in the world he could be just as interesting to a novelist," [Isabel Paterson] declared. "But the Communist theory requires that there shall be a mass of steel workers, or they don't matter."
--cited in David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, Independent Review, "Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Zora Neale Hurston on War, Race, the State, and Liberty"

"SUBLIMITY NOW!": My latest piece for Inside Catholic. Fire, Burke, ice, unicorns, and a man in his underpants waving a gun!

WAYS TO HELP Amy Welborn's family after the death of her husband: buying his books (royalties from his How-To Book of the Mass go to their children's college fund), and contributing via PayPal. Amy has been a constant source of inspiration to me. I hardly know what to say, so I will just point you to these other links.

Michael Dubruiel's final column includes this:

...Working with a very frail Father Benedict at the time, I was reminded of an interview that he had given some years earlier at EWTN with Doug Keck on Booknotes. During that interview, when Father Benedict’s book Arise From Darkness was first published, Doug asked Father Benedict to elaborate on something that Father had called the “big lie” in his book. The “big lie,” Father Benedict said, (and I’m paraphrasing him at this point), is to think that if we say all the right prayers and live correctly, then nothing bad will ever happen to us.

more

IF FLANNERY O'CONNOR WERE MICHAEL CHABON. I posted my take on the "Bill Jemas presents: Ultimate Bible!" thing, at Ladyblog. Feel free to suggest content for Leadership Secrets of the Hebrew Prophets in the comments section!

THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME BRINGS IN HIS REVENGES. Inside Catholic reposted an article I did for them way back in 2002, when they were still Crisis magazine. The piece is called "Outside Narnia: Christianity and Children's Fantasy," and it was my attempt to defend non- and even anti-Christian fantasy books while also promoting a few fun or even great Catholic works which had been swamped by the flood of Lewistolkein.

Re-reading it... wow, I would not write this article the same way today! Every column-inch of the praise for Tamora Pierce is humiliating to read, and in general, this is just more "pi" and ethics-y than I'd want to write now. On the other hand, the parts where I recommend John Bellairs, Margot Benary-Isbert, and (especially) Ottfried Preussler, and where I defend Susan Price (author of the world's most nihilist children's books!), are still fine.

Anyway... uh... there it is! Can you tell I'm not strong enough or humble enough to keep my old diaries?

To glory in adversity is not hard for the man who loves, for this is to glory in the cross of the Lord.
--The Imitation of Christ; and in related news....

KITCHEN ADVENTURE: NOW I WORK AT THE PIZZA PIZZA. I made pizza-on-a-pita for brunch. It was not the most delicious thing I've ever cooked, but with good ingredients it's a super-easy meal.

I covered a baking tray with parchment paper and flopped a pita down on it. I thickly sliced some canned whole tomatoes, and sliced some mozzarella, and those went onto the pita. Then a bit of salt (if you put the salt in your hand and sift it down onto the food from fairly high up, it scatters more evenly across the food), lots of fresh basil, and crushed red pepper. Then all of that got drizzled with ex-vir olive oil.

I hadn't pre-heated the oven, so the cooking took longer than it would if I'd been a little more certain about what temperature I wanted earlier on. I put the oven to 400 and slid the tray in there. About ten-ish minutes later I checked up on the pita, but the mozzarella wasn't quite melty enough yet and the pita wasn't burning, so I gave it another... five? seven? minutes.

Then it came out and I sampled it. It needed a bit more salt, and I added some freshly-ground black pepper as well. Overall this was tasty, although it's kind of sad to have a pizza without real pizza crust, so I'd still say this thing's big selling point is how incredibly easy it is.

I have a bunch more pitas, so I'm going to try some other variations; I think the next one might be fried egg and habanero jack cheese. If I had today's pita-pizza to do over again I'd add rosemary, I think, and obviously more salt earlier on. I might also experiment with aluminum foil rather than parchment paper, and a slightly lower cooking temp (since my smoke alarm goes off if I get oil on foil above 400 degrees), since I think that might've led to a puffier pita base with a bit of that burnt crust I love on thin-crust pizza.

If in the beginning of your religious life, you live within your cell and keep to it, it will soon become a special friend and a very great comfort.
--The Imitation of Christ

"WHAT LIFE ASKS OF US": Possibly the only David Brooks column I've ever liked!

Often we do not know what we can stand, but temptation shows us what we are.
--The Imitation of Christ

LAUGHING ALONG TO YOUR BLAH, BLAH, BLAH: If you don't care about whether there are secular arguments for things... you can skip to an exegesis of B-52s videos; family as politics; and a terrific quote from Jerry Lee Lewis, by which I mean Elvis.

THE MOST IMPORTANT WORD IN THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE IS "CREATED": So Upturned Earth picked up my "no such thing as a secular reason" post, which is good... because that was a ridiculously sloppy post, and I knew it at the time, and I'm grateful for the nudge to clarify and maybe push the conversation forward. Or, at least, be sloppy in different ways.

This is a post whose structure owes too much to Rube Goldberg. I'm going to try to sort out the parts so that they make sense, but there will be a bit of looping back and forth, for which I Apologize in Advance. It's also way too long. Hilariously, I'm reading The Imitation of Christ right now, in which the basic message is, "Have you considered shutting up?" So take this for what you paid for it.

First off, I think the argument comes in three parts (at least!). 1) There is no secular philosophy. And here, I totally didn't follow through on my promise of controversy! All I could offer was the weak, "...philosophy at its best takes part in the same eros as religion...". And even that should probably be "sister" rather than "the same."

I really like this comment, and I think its phrasing gets at some of the central issues. While I think love of Christ is a lot more than "comprehensive doctrine," Catholicism also does seem to be the kind of thing we mean when we use that clunky unaesthetic phrase, so I can roll with the phrase for the moment.

My real thing, in these posts, is that there are two levels of question: a) What is justice? and b) Which kinds of answers to a) are secular? And both are eventually going to implicate your underlying "comprehensive doctrine," if someone pushes you hard enough. Both are eventually going to require you to come clean about whom or Whom you love. You can't get out of the religious implications of a) by switching to b). I will track you down!

2) The things we can discuss in purely secular terms aren't the things we're really fighting over. For this, I'll go to the wall--I think this is a basic, obvious, and important truth about contemporary American politics.

Think of it this way: Recently we've seen a lot of fairly pathetic attempts to argue that socialism plus legal abortion is America's best hope of reducing the abortion rate. (Of over a million a year, just by the way.) This is an attempt to circumvent first-things politics in favor of we-can-all-agree-that politics.

And yet... would anyone accept this if the issue were child abuse? Would anyone really say, "Well, we all want to reduce child abuse, and I have this study saying that laws against child abuse don't actually prevent it, whereas rich people [a) beat their children less or b) don't get written up by CFS as often] so really we need to focus on the economy, and forget about the child abuse laws!"?

Or... work with me here... would your views of the underlying issues maybe, a little bit, affect your judgments both of the evidence about expedience vs. moral-legislation and of the relative importance of expedience vs. moral-legislation? In other words, I'm pretty sure you'd be both more skeptical that the expedience argument was true, and more skeptical that it was the best way to address child abuse.

So yeah: No matter how hard you try to avoid moral politics, it just keeps happening.

3) Therefore, make your political/moral/ethical points as intensely as possible, even when that requires sectarian language. This is another place where my initial post was really weak. I basically said, "Use sectarian language when it will work, and not when it won't!" This is the reverse of the Sorites Paradox problem faced by my interlocutors.

Basically many of them say, "You can use sectarian arguments, but only when there could maybe be secular reasons in there somewhere." But who decides which reasons are sufficiently secular--and why?

If I can dredge up one atheist who thinks we need to keep "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance because it reminds us to be humble, even though (let's say; I'm making this up) 99% of the people who want the phrase in the Pledge are God-fearin' believers... is this an acceptable public-square sectarian argument? How many atheists do I have to convince of any particular position (from "gay marriage is an oxymoron" to--what should be far more controversial--"human nature has no history") before it's sufficiently secular? How many atheists before it's Febreezed?

And which sects and anti-sects are sufficiently far apart? If a Cat'lick and a Prot agree on something, is that no longer sectarian? What about a Catholic, a Jew, and a Muslim? How close to "...walk into a bar" territory do we have to get before an argument is considered broadly-enough-accepted?

(Does it matter if the Catholic is Camille Paglia, the Jew is Naomi Wolf, and the Muslim is Irshad Manji? Because I bet I could get that lot to agree to some whacked-out things.)

If it's, "I know it when I see it," well that's fair enough, but it's hard for me when I see something different. If you think "nature" or whatever is a Jesus word that contaminates your pristine politics, I really need you to argue for that (and try to convince me on my ground from your premises, the same way I'm doing from my side) and not just assert that I'm out of bounds for saying the taboo word.

I need you to tell me what makes your abstractions boringly obvious and mine scarily sectarian, and so far, no argument I've seen has convinced me that this can be settled a) without reference to metaphysical beliefs or b) faster than we'd settle things if you just let me argue politics in whatever way comes naturally.

This is an especially knotty problem for my opponents because my whole claim is that our culture conditions us to find some claims obvious and other claims risible, and those divisions don't match up well with the truth. But I'm going to deal with the cultural-blinders problem in a moment, and tackle the parallel problem in my own position first.

In my first post, it sounded like I was basically saying, "You should only use sectarian arguments if they'll be convincing to people outside your sect!" This is an obviously silly thing to say to people who lack the Second Sight. It would be better to say that you should seek to express your beliefs in ways which should be, or maybe which you might expect to be, compelling outside your sect. (In other words, yes, I should've been more hardcore about the fact that sectarian arguments are valid.)

Pretty obviously, this is as true for atheists as for believers. The most difficult, but maybe also the most fruitful, way to do this would be to seek places where what you love matches up with what your opponent loves, and work from this shared beloved to a consensus on what that love requires.

IF MEN NO LONGER KNOW WHAT THEY ARE LOOKING AT, THERE MAY BE OTHER UNICORNS IN THE WORLD YET--UNKNOWN, AND GLAD OF IT. My whole point here, I think, is that what is controversial is not some kind of objective fixed point. Different things are controversial at different times. If I can't tell natural law from "let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel," does that really mean we have to ditch the concept of human nature entirely?

(I use that example for two reasons: a) I really can't fathom natural law, as a thing, and generally think it assumes way too much cultural consensus on teleology to be useful for us; and b) I agree with the Straussian critique that modernity is defined by the loss of a belief in a teleology of the natural world, and therefore loss of the belief in human nature--pretty sure this is coming from Natural Rights, Natural Right, though it's been over a decade since I read it--and you can't go home again, and that's bad. In other words, "human nature" is a concept I find both necessary and deeply problematic. It's one place where I find it really hard to negotiate the tensions between contingent, changing culture, and unchanging truths.)

Here, let me try this another way, a story I've told before: Before I became Catholic I went on a trip to Italy with my high school's Latin class. One of my more striking memories from that trip is of a church with a huge statue of Saint Sebastian stretched out across the ceiling of the church. Like seriously, you look up, and the guy's practically dripping blood in your face.

And I was revolted. In fact, all depictions of St. Sebastion repelled me. They all seemed so fetishistic, so much in love with suffering, so intensely what I was trying to escape in myself. ("Relativism means never having to say you're sorry.") I just literally could not see a St. Sebastian as artistically valid or interesting; my only response was rejection.

That changed after I converted. I started noticing St. Sebastians which were genuinely sublime. Not all of them, obviously; but it was an iconography which had been opened up to me. Or I had been opened up to it.

There are a lot of different possible interpretations of this change.

You could say that a work of art which requires the viewer to be Catholic already is a smaller work of art than one which commands a more universal audience.

You could say that I should've been open to more kinds of beauty and sublimity before I converted.

You could say that I should've become a Christian sooner.

(You could say that there might be a tradeoff between universality and intensity, which would make the first possible interpretation perhaps less helpful.)

But I think unless you take the first interpretation wholly uncolored by the others, you should be able to recognize that there's a place for rhetoric--political imagery, and political reasons--which may attract some outsiders and repel others, but which is explicitly embedded in a particular and controversial religious tradition.

I THINK I'VE GOT THE ALIAS--ALIAS!--THAT YOU'VE BEEN LIVING UNDER, GLORIA: This is a minor point, but maybe it's worth saying: If you get people to stop talking about the sectarian reasons for their moral and ethical beliefs, you won't actually cauterize their faith. You'll just force all of us--atheists, believers, croyantes-on-cold-nights--to hedge and fudge and talk around what we really mean to say.

Think about the bad-faith accusations in this claim:

“The idea here is to strengthen Jewish identity, but you can’t do it in an open way because you run afoul of the law,” said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism and a critic of Hebrew charter schools. “So you end up having rabbis and Jewish educators involved, and in all probability promoting Jewish commitment is exactly what they are looking to do, but they can’t do it openly. It simply will not work.”

(from here)
Ask yourself whether you want all our politics to be conducted in a kind of bubble-wrapped Kremlinology, where no one can say what he really thinks or why. Ask yourself whether that's really showing respect for one's fellow citizens.

IT NEVER RAINS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: Finally, I want to address this

America was founded on the modern liberal ideals of not delegitimizing entry points into the public debate, so to appoint yourself the determinor of what starting points are too “banal” to count isn’t just illiberal but anti-American in the most essential way.

(link)
just because it hits on one of my pet obsessions. (All my pets are obsessions.)

I think the basic mistake here is thinking that national character is determined by traits, not tensions. In my view one thing which typifies the American character is the problem of how to negotiate religion vs. politics... not one particular proposed solution to that problem. Jonathan Edwards, "The Minister's Black Veil," "Oh Freedom," and Lincoln's second Inaugural are as American as the Transcendentalists, the libertarians, and (I have to put something awesome on this side of the ledger) Invisible Man. If that means I have to accept that pop-Rawlsianism is also as American as... things that don't suck... well, okay, so be it.

And on that irenic note I will close! Fight more in my email inbox!

EDUCATION IN REVERSE: If you were in high school when I was in high school (i.e. exactly in between these two videos), it's really weird to compare the Golden Age, Sunrise on Pluto retro-futurism of this 1982 B-52s video with its dystopian/utopian retro-retro-futurist 2007 successor. I really like both of them, but the similar tropes and production values make the mood dissonance impossible to ignore.

AND IF I BUILT THIS FORTRESS AROUND YOUR HEARTH: Helen Rittelmeyer turns her politics-as-tribalism shtik, with which I usually disagree (maybe just because I'm too busy trying to build my own tribe from materials I find at home?), into a series of terrific insights, of which this

I can imagine a world in which fatherhood (or motherhood) is simply a matter of love and tenderness, but do we really want to relieve parents of the burden of leadership?

is the center. (Although the footnote is the best part.)

Go, read!

(And hey, be grateful I didn't title this post, "A Woman So Hearthless"!)

After we had been playing and jamming for three or four hours, I said, "Elvis, I want to ask you one thing before we leave. This is on my mind, and I’d just like to know. If you died, do you think you’d go to heaven or hell?" And his eyes got real big, and he looked at me, and he said, "Jerry Lee, don’t you ever ask me that again."
--Jerry Lee Lewis

IT'S THE FEAST DAY OF ST. FRANCIS DE SALES, patron of writers and journalists! A good day to ask for his prayers for your favorite (...and least favorite) ink-stained wretches.

THE FLOORS ARE THERE TO WALK OVER, THE WALLS ARE THERE TO CLIMB: Movie reviews. My Netflix had a theme again, as I watched Brief Encounter immediately followed by The Squid and the Whale--a double dose of domestic despair.

Brief Encounter was--unexpectedly--harder to watch. It's an adultery drama from 1945, dir. David Lean. The lead actress, Celia Johnson, is pretty excellent, although to be honest all she's asked to do is stare at the camera with a look of repressed misery. But I loved her huge-eyed, oddly lumpy and jawy face. She looked raw.

None of the other actors struck me at all, though the final scene was very poignant.

My main problem, watching the movie, I think was a culture-clash problem. I was strongly reminded of the Chris Ware line from Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Boy on Earth--

But with the inevitable forward march of progress
come new ways of hiding things,
and new things to hide.

Because we lie to ourselves differently now, it was easy to feel that the narrator of Brief Encounter was being willful and stupid to a degree and in a way which I found totally unsympathetic. Her self-deception tricks felt alien to me, and so it was hard to feel like I was implicated in her actions. I kept thinking of the New X-Men issue "Some Angels Falling," which showed the same stages of an affair in a way which struck me as less mannered (though obviously even more genre-bound!), more queasily familiar, and therefore more powerful, more of an indictment, a plot in which I was much more complicit. (This might also be related in some way to my reaction to The Ring as vs. Ringu--?)

I liked the heavy-handed use of Rachmaninoff, though I can see how someone else might find it soggy.

The Squid and the Whale I found completely compelling and watchable, despite the fact that it's basically about four truly horrible and/or wretched people, in large part because their particular varieties of horribleness did feel so familiar. The teenager, especially, was skin-crawlingly close to home.

It's basically a soapier version of (some aspects of) Elizabeth Marquardt's Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce, which you should read, translated directly onto the screen. There were occasional plot elements I found overdone (although for all I know they're taken from life--that doesn't get you a pass) but overall yeah, I'd recommend this.

SOUL OF A NEW MACHINE: Here is an amazing video--the cheap, reductive slogan would be, "Blade Runner via the black Atlantic." It's an android auction as scored by the Fugees. It's smart and hard and everything you, as a devotee of Octavia Butler and Kanye West, might've hoped for... only more. I mean for real, are you kidding me--if you think about how to convince other people of your personhood, and if you worry that no one will listen when you try to make futures which know the past without loving it or assuming it ... this is for you. It bends gender and genre.

But for real, it's just phenomenal. Metropolis plus racial and sexual politics plus incredible angular dancing plus... look, why are you still here? Go to the YouTube link, before I beat you with a bat.

MARTY LEDERMAN TO JOIN THE OFFICE OF LEGAL COUNSEL. This is why I truly do hope that Barack Obama will in at least some ways bring this country back into accordance with Catholic teaching. Prof. Lederman is an honorable man and, if you pray, he needs your prayers.

Where do you watch the blog?
I'm not telling you, I'm asking you....

Amy Welborn says a lot of good, provocative things, although I disagree on at least two points: 1) Obviously I think Ta-Nehisi Coates is more right about hip-hop culture than Juan Williams (on the one hand, I've already heard more than one anecdote about kids essentially pulling up their pants because of Obama; on the other hand, how old and/or obsessive do you have to be to remember the slogan, "Clean for Gene"?), and

2) I really do think America's "identity crisis" is a huge deal--for us, and for the people we bomb.

Culture11 Confabulum: James Poulos shares my deep dysPepsia. Yes, you can indulge your consumerist whims! (The weirdest, for me, is that the Pepsibama banners replaced the Union Station American-history-by-decades banners. Have you noticed that Washington, DC, is an actual place, and not merely a stage for your rose-petaled commercial Ascension?)

Interestingly, I just read someone talking about how great it felt to be watching the TV all day for an event which wasn't tragic. All I can say is, I think inaugurations in this our bad age are either tragic or horrific. And after a horrific presidency, I truly hope Barack Obama's inauguration proves tragic. It's the very best I can imagine.

More, and with real hope, in the next post.

WORTH IT SOLELY FOR THE UNCANNY X-MEN SUMMARY. I can't tell you how many people have lectured me on my own oppression; or attempted to gain street cred by poking my bruises. Just... you know... in case you were wondering if I'm bitter.

YOU LOSE YOUR GRIP/AND THEN YOU SLIP/INTO THE MASTERPIECE. Conservative aesthetics; and why you should be grateful to be one of the gouged-out sculptures of God.

I guess they won't
exchange the gifts
that you were meant to keep....

...AND HANDED THEM OVER TO THE SECULAR ARM: The comments section to this post, specifically Elizabeth Crum's use of the term "natural," reminded me of something I've wanted to write about for a while now--the fact that there's no such thing as a fully secular political argument.

Political arguments are about what is just, what is good, what is honorable, what is natural, and what is sacred. (They sometimes pretend to be about what is efficient or what is safe, but in order to rank efficiency and safety highest you must already have made a judgment about the relative ranking of the just and the good.) Those terms might seem like they're arranged in order from least to most religious, but I think really they're only arranged in order from least to most obviously religious given current philosophical mores. Even the most-neutral term, justice, is claimed by groups ranging from the American Center for Law and Justice to Jews for Justice to the Institute for Justice--these seem like groups working from obviously divergent traditions of meaning, obviously divergent definitions of the word "justice." More.

(I am reminded of the Yale man who leapt onto a table in Commons, at the height of the Panther trials, and yelled, "Justice to the Black Panthers! Death to the Black Panthers!" If ever a word was double-edged....)

What gives our words meaning?* This is, at heart, a religious question; a question of aesthetics, of whom or Whom we love.

*Yes, this is that same link I always give you. If I could think of a better way to say it, I would.

If we discard philosophical naivete, then, we can only argue that we should use the arguments most likely to be understood across a broad range of religious/reaction-against-religion-ous (sorry!) traditions. I see three reasons to support this claim, in increasing order of importance: social comity, good manners, and rhetorical effectiveness.

One of the central features of the American project is its need to simultaneously acknowledge, give meaning to, and mitigate the tragedies inherent in our status as an immigrant nation. Casting a broad rhetorical net is part of how we bring people into the American story. It's part of how we try to assimilate in both directions--immigrants changing America, even as they're changed by America. So social comity is a big deal here.

Good manners, even more important. It's uncouth to exclude someone just because you can--just because your clique has the numbers in the Homecoming Queen vote.

But rhetorical effectiveness is the most important reason to seek seemingly-neutral political rhetoric. And therefore, when sectarian rhetoric can be made so sublime that its appeal breaks over the banks of its sect, and washes across people from many other and contrary traditions, do it--this is the basic, boring lesson of the Rev. King's religious rhetoric.

The upshot: 1) "It's the right thing to do" is not a neutral statement. All virtue-words are given content by a religious tradition, a philosophical tradition, or (this is almost always the case nowadays) both. And since philosophy at its best takes part in the same eros as religion, suggesting that only the "non-religious" philosophy is valid in the public square will only make our discourse banal.

2) "Civil religion" which changes no minds and touches no hearts = stupid and useless. It's tapioca. Spit it out therefore, and seek sublime religious rhetoric of the kind which can awaken undiscovered longings even in the breast of a hardcore secularist.

3) To combine both of the above points: Neutral is boring. Neutral is banal. Neutral is also impossible, since even if you and I agree on the most efficient means of securing physical satisfaction (good luck with that!) we disagree on when, how, and whether justice, liberty, mercy, loyalty (which loyalties?), family, or sublimity should trump efficient satisfaction of wants.

In short, "You need to use secular arguments!" is bad philosophy and we should stop saying it. Show me pictures so I understand what your words mean. Don't pretend we share compatible traditions of justice or freedom or equality or happiness. And I'd rather be accommodated than implicitly excluded... but I'd rather be wooed than accommodated.

IT'S THE FEAST OF SAINT ANTHONY. There are lots of paintings; I really like Sassetta's weird, dreamlike 15th-century one, and de Zurbarán's, which I describe here.

MINIMAL MOVIE POSTERS. Man these are awesome. My favorites of the featured posters are the Indy and Deer Hunter ones. Via... PoMoCon, I think.

The young officer bowed with easy politeness. Being strong, he was graceful in his every movement.
--Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

KITCHEN ADVENTURES: BLESS THIS MESS. A sandwich of things mostly on sale.

How-to: Set the oven to 375.

Take a roll. Cut in in half crosswise, then cut the halves in half lengthwise. (This is not as hard as it sounds. Just do what you need to do to make two smaller rolls, then cut those smaller rolls so you can fill them.)

Scoop out the flesh of an avocado. Chop up some kind of hot pepper. (I used a fairly large Mexican thing which was pale green, and hotter than your average jalapeno but definitely not on the level of a habanero.) Cut the kernels off a cob of sweet corn. Mix all of that up with a fork, mashing the avocado.

Slice a sweet onion.

Spread out two sheets of aluminum foil. Put the bottom half of one roll-half on each sheet. Spoon the avocado mixture onto the bread until it's all divided up. Top with the sweet onion, and then a slice of munster cheese, and then some cayenne pepper, and then the top halves of the roll. Wrap all that in foil and bake for 15 minutes.

Remove from the oven and plant your face in the dish.

Verdict: This was so great! Incredibly messy to eat--even messier than most of these toasted-cheese sandwiches I do--but absolutely delicious. I was worried that the roll would be too bready, and do keep that in mind; also worried that I would miss cilantro. But in the end this was just an immensely tasty and satisfying sandwich.

SO THE ECONOMY IS TANKING. I HAVE AN AWESOME IDEA!: Overlawyered has rounded up an amazing, heartbreaking bunch of links on the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, a.k.a. the I Hate Small Businesses and Also Children (But Did You Know I Love Unintended Consequences?) Act. This expansion of regulation will hurt families, entrepreneurs, and--in a twist I hadn't anticipated, but which made sense as soon as it was explained--ethnic costumers like the people who make powwow costumes.

"DEFINING THE RELATIONSHIP": My new piece at Inside Catholic. Quick summary: "Do you have a personal relationship with God?" is a reductive and kind of cloyingly Hallmark question; but it might still help us understand times when we're angry at God, when we feel abandoned by God, and when we feel an ironic distance from God.

GONZO: I'd like to try this without the balloon!
KERMIT: Try what? Plummeting?
GONZO: Yeah!
--I aspire to be the Janis, but really I'm the Gonzo at best....

THE STREET OF CROCODILES, BRUNO SCHULZ: ...Polish interwar surrealism, I guess? Hard to describe. Very episodic. Schulz has the kind of lush, hothouse prose I associate with certain fantasy authors--Angela Carter, Tanith Lee, that kind of thing--and the book is basically a series of bizarre, creepy, sad things happening in a small Polish town with a commercial quarter. I found it so episodic that it had a hard time keeping my attention, but I'd accept the judgment that this is my problem, not the book's.

I will say that there's a bit where the mad father turns into a cockroach, which effectively proves that having one's father turn into a cockroach would be much more disturbing than merely turning into a cockroach oneself. So if anyone ever asks you which one you'd rather, you know what to tell them.

Narrator: You are entering the realm which is unusual. Maybe it's magic or contains some kind of monster. The second one. Prepare to enter... The Scary Door. Please send a man 'round back and pick up Clyde Smith, a professional gambler who's about to have an unfortunate accident.

Clyde Smith: [Smith is run over by a car, then awakes in a casino. He plays the slot machine and wins] Ha-ha-ha! A casino where I'm winning? That car must've killed me. I must be in heaven!

[wins again]

Clyde Smith: A casino where I always win. That's boring. I must really be... in HELL!
--Futurama (it then does a shout-out to "Gremlin on the Wing"! Love.)

"DOMESTIC DISTURBANCES": I have an article up at the American Spectator. It was supposed to be a wide-ranging look at the marriage movement as it stands now; it ended up as a bizarre little piece mostly given over to an interview on donor conception with the brilliant Elizabeth Marquardt.

UTILITARIAN UNIVERSALISM: The final paragraph of this article makes me wonder: If we learned that people were more polite, or more conscientious about dental hygiene, after listening to Mozart, would we then say that music exists because it makes us nice and clean?

...I mean, would we say it without feeling gross?

Of course, the particular measurements by which these studies find that "religion" promotes self-control may suggest that we have tamed the lion: I can't imagine Catherine of Siena browsing the Health section of her favorite magazine for tips on nutrition. And I'm thinking the kind of self-control required to wear a seat belt and the kind of devoted submission required to accept martyrdom are different not merely in degree but in kind. For some people they may even be directly opposed.

"How delightful and happy is the form of existence which you ladies have chosen. How beautiful and simple is the truth which is revealed by your lives. And with what mastery, with what precision you are performing your task. If, forgetting the respect due to the Creator, I were to attempt a criticism of creation, I would say 'Less matter, more form!' Ah, what relief it would be for the world to lose some of its contents. More modesty in aspirations, more sobriety in claims, Gentlemen Demiurges, and the world would be more perfect!" my father exclaimed, while his hands released Pauline's white calf from the prison of her stocking.
--The Street of Crocodiles

BROKERS WITH HANDS ON THEIR FACES.

Via... Sparrow Fallen, maybe?

We assembled again around the table, the shop assistants rubbed their hands, red from the cold, and the prose of their conversation suddenly revealed a full-grown day, a gray and empty Tuesday, a day without tradition and without a face. But it was only when a dish appeared on the table containing two large fish in jelly lying side by side, head-to-tail, like a sign of the zodiac, that we recognized in them the coat of arms of that day, the calendar emblem of the nameless Tuesday: we shared it out quickly among ourselves, thankful that the day had at last achieved an identity.
--Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles, tr. Celina Wieniewska

CHYPRE AT THE GATES OF DAWN*: In which I gush all over Perfumes: The Guide.

*What were you expecting? "Scents and Sensibility"?

AND MY USUAL PLEA FOR "A CIRCLE IN THE FIRE": Thread for nominating "the best short stories." I do my usual shtik. But I'd be interested not only in you all's nominations, but also your theories about why certain stories are great and/or popular, and why certain genres and media (comics but not movies, for example) gravitate to or at least accommodate the short story.

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FOURTH GRADERS. Go add yours!

SOMEDAY ALL THIS WILL BE PICTURESQUE RUINS: Best of 2008.

Best books read (nonfiction): Same-Sex Desire in Victorian Religious Culture, Frederick Roden
The Letters of Abelard and Heloise/Heloise and Abelard, Etienne Gilson
I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination, Francis J. Spufford
Sexual Personae, Camille Paglia (more)
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, Andrew Solomon

Best books read (real books): The Little Friend, Donna Tartt--I'm not sure what I can say about this other than, READ IT NOW, since even discussing its general thrust and genre would be spoilerous. But I can tell you it is a terrific portrayal of childhood; it's in some ways the opposite of The Secret History, and less addictive but just as accomplished; the ending is better, the prose is just as good (less urgent, more composed); basically this is an amazing book, part The Plague, part A High Wind in Jamaica, but mostly sui generis. If you liked TSH you owe this to yourself, but even if you didn't like it, this one is different enough that you should check it out.
Cards of Identity, Nigel Dennis
Ladies Almanack, Djuna Barnes
Penthesilea, Heinrich von Kleist
Earthquake Weather, Tim Powers--sequel to both Expiration Date and (the terrific) Last Call; the terrible gifts of the god Dionysos, Powers's usual fantasy of salvage deployed in the service of placing America in mythic tradition. Dark, painful, redemptive and expiatory... and featuring one of Powers's best characters, Cody, certainly my favorite of his women.

Best movies watched for the first time: Ringu
Tokyo Godfathers
Repulsion
Shock Treatment
The Way Things Go

Best blog posts (six, not five, as is traditional):
A ridiculously long post on conservatism, complicity, and things that aren't Godel--basically my position statement at the moment
How to Make Your Child a Gay Activist
Skirting the Issues (my review of the Shakespeare Theatre's all-male Romeo and Juliet)
Resurrected words battle zombie words (ridiculous, ragged post about language, leadership, philosophy, and why our political rhetoric fails so epically)
The best horror anthology never made (with bonus theology!)
Mixing memory and desire: Notes from my Theology on Tap presentation (about gay Catholic whatnot)

Best things I wrote (nonfiction, non-blog): "Theology of the Body in Pain" (on torture)
"The Weakerthans: Liturgy of the Other Hours"
"Tainted Love" (on Heloise and Abelard--see link above)
"When I Was Cruel" (review of Alan Moore's Small Killing)
"The Serenity Player" (review of Hermann Hesse's Glass Bead Game)

...The fragrance is a delicious Tabu-like oriental, whose claim to be a masculine is based entirely on its transience. A man is a woman consisting entirely of top notes.
--Luca Turin reviewing Old Spice, in Luca Turin and Tina Sanchez, Perfume: The Guide

I THINK I'M SUPPOSED TO HAVE A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE. So, rejoice!--this was written about 40 years ago and yet if you're reading this, you're probably not dead! Woohoo!

On the other hand, I note that your local Catholic church can probably hear your confession.

I'm just sayin'.

...AND BE FORGOTTEN WITH THE REST. Awful news from Mory's Temple Bar--a place I loved, but which had been showing increasing strains in the past few years as it struggled to cope with an ethos of not merely egalitarianism (you don't need to be a Weatherman to weather that one, at Yale) but health- and temperance-fascism.

I remember countless hangover hot chocolates and lunchtime soups bought from Au Bon Pain, the year I was working in a New Haven suburb after college. I would replace all of them with raw cauliflower and dirt, if I could have Mory's back the way it was when I was new.

Keep that in mind the next time you confront the choice between convenience and tradition.

And... the first day I worried about the future of Mory's was the day I learned that the Party of the Right could no longer count on them to wink at underage tippling. I very, very rarely saw anyone get drunk at Mory's--far less so than at parties on campus. Mory's provided a camaraderie of drinking, an ethos, even a "shame culture," which made drunkenness less appealing--and abusive drunkenness, whether in terms of fighting or of sex, even less acceptable. So it is especially gnawing that stepping up enforcement of our catastrophically stupid drinking laws may have led to the death knell for Mory's.

If I had Liddy Dole here right now, I'd be hard-pressed not to smack the lipstick off her face.

[...] the devouring gorgon romantic love, toward which, as toward wine, unfaith is renewal
--Marianne Moore, as excerpted here

"NOW YOU ARE AWARE OF ME."

The first service of religion is to show to man, "isolated in the universe and unable to compare himself to anything," "how much he cost." The sacrifice of the god himself demonstrates "the enormity of the crime that demanded such an expiation; the inconceivable grandeur of the being that could have committed it; the infinite price of the victim who said here I am."

The inconceivable grandeur of man that required to redeem it an infinite price is emphasized all the more when Maistre cites Aeschylus's Prometheus: "Look at me, it is a God who has made a God die."

--A Modern Maistre

(context)

SAVING THEMSELVES FOR YALE: My review of Donna Freitas's intriguing--yet frustrating--Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America's College Campuses is in the current Weekly Standard. Subscribers can read it online here.

GHOSTS DO NOTHING NEW: Astonishing X-Men: Ghost Boxes #2. Well, this was a polarizing comic. My vague impression is that the two Ghost Boxes issues were marketed as "steampunk" X-Men. And... I pretty much desperately don't care about steampunk as a thing. I know people like both corsets and contemporary philosophical assumptions, but that doesn't impress me, as a combination.

So I was okay with the fact that Ghost Boxes #2 isn't that, at all. It's a pricey (just about a fifth of the comic is script pages for what we've already seen) look at a post-apocalypse, all gray painting and melodramatic narration.

WHAT FOLLOWS IS SPOILEROUS.

Some more backhanded compliments: I liked some things about the art. The weepy-feathered, Goreyish birds in the second story are fantastic. The grays feel creepy and even nuanced (they're harder in the first story, cloudier in the second), rather than merely oppressive. The suspense and reveals are handled very well--the pacing is great, so great that you don't even notice until much later that these aren't stories. These are two X-vignettes... at best.

That's fine. I got nothing against a good vignette. But both of these vignettes were the same story. Things go horribly wrong; the X-Men respond with suicide or euthanasia, because how can you have a story without killing things?

On first reading, these two stories were both really, really powerful for me. I thought the Scott characterization was plausible (his own survivor's guilt was the subtext of Joss Whedon's Emma arc), and in general I'm okay with the other characters' portrayals. But on re-reading, I wonder why these stories. Aren't these the easiest ones? "I lost, so I killed myself/I lost, so I killed everyone who would suffer." Those storylines provide obvious endings, but require--frankly--very little thought. It's a lot harder to come up with storylines about rebuilding, acceptance, perseverance... or, even, letting people make their own decisions about what it means to die a good death.

I found myself comparing Ghost Boxes #2 to a particular fanfiction story. I won't link to it because I'm unsure of the etiquette there, but email me if you want to know more; it's not an X-Men story, but it's about an apocalyptic disaster, and how the people caught within that disaster still try to have compassion and solidarity in the face of devastation. They don't win. They don't solve anything. They just figure out a better way to die.

"Well, that's the problem with living in the clouds, Commander...

"You can't see the big picture from this far down."
--"Agent Brand," Astonishing X-Men: Torn

AND A BAND CALLED "AMERICA" SINGS A SONG ABOUT THE DESERT, AND A HORSE WITH NO NAME: Inside Catholic did a symposium about how Catholics can move forward from what has been--let's be honest--a devastating eight years.

I'm on page three, I think. I guess my entry is kind of, "Oh hey, powerlessness! Double down!"

So take it for what you paid for it.