Friday, March 30, 2007
NOSTALGIE DE LA BOUE. Dean Esmay is yelling at the Arab guy at his website:It's very hard for me to look at American Muslims, or Muslims in general, or anyone who considers themselves "liberal" or "progressive" or "humanist," who claim to stand for freedom and human rights and then attack everything America has done and tried to do in Iraq over the last four years...
Furthermore, anyone calling himself a "liberal" or a "humanist"--Muslim or not--is in my view faced with a stark choice:
You either sit around pretending that a vicious, murderous, fascist "insurgency" that routinely cuts people's heads off and shoots children in the face blah blah blah blah blah...
Wow, it's just like the old days! Bombing Iraq as the real, classical liberalism! Also takin' me back: Saddam-statue-style warblogger hubris:The fact is that the naysayers claimed we weren't really striving for liberation. We were. They claimed we'd install a new puppet dictator. We did not. They claimed that we wouldn't really try to set up a democracy. We did. They claimed there would be no legitimate elections. The Iraqis had three national elections in a row, all certified as legitimate by international observers, not even counting the local elections that were held before that.
They claimed we'd do everything possible to get out of the country "before the next elections"--they claimed that before the 2004 elections and again before the 2006 elections. It didn't happen. Now these same people in many cases are cheering for a Congress that's trying to force us out of Iraq even though the war supporters consistently say "no, that would be morally and strategically wrong."
Time after time the naysayers have proven themselves both morally and intellectually incoherent, and yet they never have the introspection to acknowledge this. That's right, liberals who aren't really liberals -- gaze upon the success that is Iraq and gnash your teeth!
It's nice to know someone's keeping the old standard aloft. Sometimes I worry that people won't believe me when I tell them such people ever existed.
2:40 PM by roy edroso
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Thursday, March 29, 2007
L'ENNUI. Welp, haven't been posting much, let's see if there's a TV review at National Review Online... ah, here we go:Through the drama, a national dialogue takes place on the issues of love and marriage, family, abortion, and faith or lack thereof...
The show has explored what it really means to love another person, moving beyond mere sexual desire. The show’s writers have managed to make interesting and lasting relationships, even if we wish they had also made the characters married.
At least the characters are generally moving toward marriage. And the show, despite the fact that it does away with nearly all sexual mores, does seem to acknowledge that a happy marriage is somehow the desired end of romance...
...It is never suggested that fatherhood has turned unconnected, selfish, womanizing men into responsible fathers...
...while she admits that unexplained miracles do happen, she never allows that a higher power was behind them...
Here’s an idea, Lords of TV: How about just one, rippin’ hot hospital chaplain who offers the patients hope? The review is about "Grey's Anatomy." Not that it matters.
I could have written about this meditation on "a conservative view of culture" based on the Texas A&M bonfire (sample: "Of course, in both a marriage and the bonfire tradition, such a self-conscious, analytic process leading to an intensity of experience signals the loss of unself-conscious piety, of an intensity that arises from the loss of self"), but you know what? Life is too fucking short.
11:08 PM by roy edroso
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Wednesday, March 28, 2007
ROCK THE CASBAH. Peter Suderman applauds an Iranian antiestablishment rocker -- as do I! (Also I disapprove of shitting on a burning flag, except if it's done tastefully as part of a cutting-edge "reimagining" of Dialogues of the Carmelites or something! There, that'll put an end to those posts!)
Then Suderman goes for the big picture. First there is the expected moment of gibberish:Where's Williamsburg's sneering hipster outrage when you need it? Oh, Peter. Williamsburg is played out, man! Greenpoint is where it's happening!
But wait:Not surprisingly, I tend to think that Islamic totalitarianism—the kind that seeks nukes, denies the Holocaust, and bans indie rock (among other things)—is one of the central challenges the world faces in coming years. I often suspect, however, that a large part of the solution will simply be the passage of time, as the younger generation grows into power and, unwilling to give up Western rock music or cell phone flirting, rejects a lot of the extremism we see now. I suppose it's almost the opposite view of D'Souza, in that I tend to think that Western culture and technology, whatever problems they definitely have, will ultimately be a civilizing, moderating influence on Islam, at least in the next generation. Ah, we are not so different, you and I. Now can you tell your colleagues to stop praying for war with Iran? I'd much prefer to win the Iranians over with booty calls and The Decemberists.
While my good friend Pete and I wait for our decadent culture to reverse centuries of religious mania (he in Iran, me in America -- just like Stalin and Gus Hall!), some of the brethren are more excited by the dream of using American comic-book movies to excite our citizens into jihad. Victor Davis Hanson diagnoses a "liberal furor over 300" -- and implies that the film's critics would have preferred success for Oliver Stone's Alexander, a film that was fulsomely panned by just about everyone on the planet (including me). Hanson then dissects the merits of 300 as if it were a CIA leaflet dropped from helicopters to sway a populace, citing its relevance to contemporary events and his own classicist daydreams. You would never imagine, reading his analysis, that 300 is an action movie consumed with popcorn and soft drinks by citizens with disposable income and a desire for well-ordered thrills.
Some people will never figure out that American culture does its work in the world not as a propaganda for America's policies, but as food for the world's appetites. You may argue that it is junk food, but it is undeniably tasty, and it comes in a multitude of flavors to suit a multitude of tastes. Soviet teenagers certainly spent more of their black-market kopeks on bootlegs of Exile on Main Street than on The Wealth of Nations. Like George Clinton said, free your ass and your mind will follow.
Still, give Hanson credit for stirring the Ole Perfesser to drop one of his more amusing culture bombs:Part of it is that the movie industry -- or at least the critic section thereof -- is stuck in the 1970s, when moral ambiguity and angst used to be groundbreaking and novel. Now they're overdone, predictable and boring. Moral ambiguity and angst haven't been novel since Doctor Faustus, if they were then, though the Perfesser is right to intuit that some of us (though not the lords of the "movie industry," surely) prefer the age of The Godfather and McCabe & Mrs. Miller to the age of The Hills Have Eyes 2. But that is a matter of taste, not a problem of politics.
UPDATE. Premiere critic Glenn Kenney is also on the case, and better. I didn't know before I read Kenney's post that Hanson actually contributed to (and presumably profited from) a piece of 300 ancillary marketing -- because Hanson didn't mention it. Well, when you're intellectually corrupt, I guess the other kinds of corruption just naturally follow along.
8:54 PM by roy edroso
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Tuesday, March 27, 2007
TANTRUM. Ann Althouse's recent webcam performance has been, I think, widely misapprehended. To say she "loses it" in the video, as C&L does, is technically correct but misleading. That is, we may also say that a badly-brought-up child who throws a tantrum has "lost it," but this implies that the child is thoroughly and helplessly victim to his own passion, when experience teaches that kids milk their shit-fits in hopes that they will cause the relevant adults to change the rules in their favor.
Professor Althouse's whole online career, as has been tediously documented here, may be seen as one long series of tantrums, thrown to remove from herself the responsibility of making logical arguments on behalf of her crack-brained ideas. She constantly commits the most egregious offenses to common sense -- as when, after ceaselessly decrying political correctness in others, she decided Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic remarks made his movies retroactively ungood -- and, when challenged, says that her opponents just like to argue ("link only for the things they disagree with"), that their "political vision... feels like depression," and other such non-sequiturs.
In other words, as soon as things start going any way other than her own, Professor Althouse resorts to behaviors usually seen in the as-yet-unsocialized. So let us not deceive ourselves that the Professor was showing us anything new when she blew up at Garance Franke-Ruta. Her video tantrum only looks different from her written ones because, confronted with a live commenter whose words she could not delete, Althouse resorted to a more physical form of her usual schtick -- that is, yelling and making faces.
And she got what she wanted -- Franke-Ruta backed down like Alan Colmes with a shy bladder. I think that's too bad, but I suspect that even if Franke-Ruta had come roaring back, Professor would have done something else as evasive -- sticking her fingers in her ears and singing "Yellow Submarine," perhaps.
And the same people would notice, and the same people would fail to notice.
7:43 PM by roy edroso
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AN OLDIE BUT NO-GOODIE. Think I'll drop by that New Criterion blog. After all, they got a fancy Latin name... they can't be too much like the mouthbreathers I usually consort with...Why America Hates New York
[Posted 12:37 PM by James Panero]
'Forty Days in the Dessert'? The 'Immaculate Confection'? The possible New York Post headlines here are endless (and yes, I know the difference between the Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth.) But one thing is clear. From Piss Christ to The Sensation Show, America hates New York for cheap art-world stunts, and for good reason. Check out the following notice that just came over the transom... Piss Christ and Sensation! How did he miss Karen Finley? Must have been edited for space.
He's angry at a Jesus made out of chocolate, by the way. Oh wait, I forgot the best part:And why have I yet to see a custard Mohammed? Blasphemous and soft on Islam! I hope Panero storms this exhibition, throwing Holy Water and screaming "The Power of Charles Johnson compels you."
On the bright side, at least America hates New York again. Thank fuck! I was really tired of them pretending not to.
6:48 PM by roy edroso
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Monday, March 26, 2007
FOGGY MOUNTAIN BREAKDOWN. The L.A. Times has a story about how Democrats get more famous musicians to play at their fundraisers than Republicans get. This should be no shock to Republicans, as the Party of acid, amnesty, and abortion has long been the natural home of all us godless artists.
The Ole Perfesser, however, reacts to the news as if he has just seen a passel of bluecoats comin' over the ridge:ANOTHER REASON WHY REPUBLICANS should cheer the music industry's troubles, and perhaps help them along by repealing the DMCA or something. As I've suggested in the past, though, I think their reflexive tendency to side with big business has gotten in the way of smart politics. Not enough musicians like the GOP. Let's punish them with frivolous legislation!
As previously mentioned here, the Perfesser seems not to know the difference between art and propaganda. We might try explaining it to him by using his own work as an example -- take your own short films of car interiors, Perfesser, or your thoughtful essays on how much hotels charge you for internet access -- surely these are not political in purpose, but pure expressions of those few vestiges of humanity left in that shallow grave we call your soul!
But then again, why bother?
P.S. Since the recent box-office triumph of 300 was supposed to mean that Americans want to be ancient Spartans, does this latest development mean that Americans now wish to be anthropomorphic turtles? (Favorite Libertas line: "If white men kill darker men in this story, it’s not because of their color, it’s to stave off their slavish culture, just as we must do today." Wow, maybe that will be the Sean Bell officers' defense.)
2:35 PM by roy edroso
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