Is an Imam to be Our Inquisitor?

I am an American Exceptionalist. I believe that in the last half of the 18th century a group of men gathered in a colony of England and, synthesizing Classical Greek and Roman with Nordic and even indigenous Iroquois models of goverment, founded what is today the world's oldest democratic republic.

Every time I think that modern technology has taken us so far from the Founders that their writings may be becoming irrelevant, I encounter a tract, speech, or paragraph that give me a shiver of the uncanny at its current applicability.

This is the case currently with the question of whether or not newspapers will print the cartoons that have been used to incite riots throughout the Middle east. That Stalwart of Liberty, the New York Times, presents an article about the cartoons illustrated by a drawing of the Virgin Mary covered in dung.

In 1814, former president Jefferson's Philadelphia book dealer had some trouble securing a French astronomical work on the creation of the world. Jefferson wrote this:

"Is this then our freedom of religion? and are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason."

via The Corner

Thankfully I note that there are today a myriad channels of information, and yet there are still some people who long for "an inquisitor" to question "blasphemy against religion."

And no, kids, this does not refer to whether Mom and Dad can force you to go to Sunday school.

I'm Islander, and I'm a Prog-Rock Fan

Yes, I'm a Prog-Rock fan. I started with just a little Yes. I knew that it was wrong, but I told myself I could quit whenever I wanted. Then it was Kansas, E.L.O., and then Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

I listened to songs that filled the entire side of an LP album, 20 minute songs based on a footnote to a commentary to the Veddas. I wept. I got goosebumps when I heard Rick Wakeman's synthisizer work. I was a Trooper.

Well, in the early 1980s, Punk killed Prog. Or did it?

S.T. Karnik holds his own one-man Grammy awards ceremony and gives the nod to several new examples of Prog-Rock:

Among the most promising recent debuts are the appealing retro-progressive rock album Peace Among the Ruins, by Presto Ballet, and Motions of Desire, by the talented Norwegian band Magic Pie (the lyrics of which are sung in English). The latter release is delightfully inventive and enjoyable, with a definite classic song in the 20-minute opening track, “Change,” a tune that spices up classic, Yes-style progressive rock with elements of hard rock, soaring power balladry, folksy pop, jazz fusion, funk, and whatever else they found in their kitchen sink during the recording sessions. These guys can play.

As good as those discs were, the Debut Album of the year is A Doorway to Summer, by Moon Safari, produced by Tomas Bodin of the Swedish prog giants the Flower Kings. Like the legendary rockers Yes, Moon Safari creates long, progressive rock songs filled with memorable melodies and bright, cheerful, musical textures. Acoustic guitar, Hammond organ, analog synthesizers, mellotron, soaring vocal harmonies (all sung in English), and other classic early ’70s sounds are prominent in the mix, and there is real energy in the performances. This is one of the most tuneful, buoyant, and delightful albums of recent years.

I can see that I need to put down those 1970s albums for awhile and listen to some new stuff.

The only thing that gives me hesitation is the thought that the only limit to the length to a song by Yes was the length of an LP album side. Somewag pointed out that it CD technology had been available in 1973, Yes's songs would have been 60 minutes long.

How much room is available on my D: drive?

Selling the Lie

I remember back in the 1980s when the line, "I want my MTV," was current and MTV actually played only, you know, music. At this time the big news was that Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, wasn't in the MTV video rotation. The question on America's lips was, "Would Jackson be the first artist to break MTV's color barrier? Would he be the Jackie Robinson of pop music?"

(This was the cute, black, talented Michael Jackson. The one who was stunning the world with his chart-smashing albums; not the sad, creepy, pedophile Michael Jackson currently hiding out in Bahrain.)

There was a news program at the time that profiled the programming directors of MTV as they decided what videos would make it into their playlist. The image of the programming team, the very heart of MTV, was stunning: it was a corporate boardroom filled with white guys (an two white women) in business suits, planning how they were going to sell their latest picks to their compliant teen viewership. They were listening to the latest hopefuls and deciding which ones fit their corporate image.

The irony of a multi-million-dollar media outlet having a corporate image of raw, working-class hero rebellion was a rich beyond words. But this is the music business; and this is how that business has been run from the beginning.

Jonah Goldberg makes this point in his syndicated column:

I am astounded by the naivete of young people -—- black and white --— who actually buy the canned rebelliousness not just of rap music but of most pop music.

[Kanye] West is simply the latest example of decades of hucksterism. Under the headline "The Passion of Kanye West," the rap star graces the cover of Rolling Stone posing as a bloodied Jesus with a crown of thorns. I particularly enjoy the publicity around the piece. Clearly borrowing from the same press release, publications across the country proclaim that the "outspoken rapper defends his brash attitude inside the magazine."

Ah, yes. It's about time. After all, it's so rare to find a rapper with a brash attitude. Normally they're shy, retiring types overflowing with modesty and humility. I was particularly enamored with the "aw, shucks" Andy Griffith personalities of Niggaz Wit Attitude and the late Tupac Shakur.

...

It'’s all such an obvious con game. We hear so much about how kids today are cynical, skeptical, media-savvy, and so forth. But if they're buying this hooey, they're idiots.

When asked by Rolling Stone if he's worried that his outspokenness might cost him a Grammy, Kanye replied, speaking in the third person: "Kanye is always opinionated and outspoken, and now that it's Grammy time he turns into a house nigga? Come on. That's not even realistic." Right, but the suggestion that the guy with eight Grammy nominations is a pariah, never mind suffering from Christlike persecution, is entirely plausible?

Obviously, none of this is unique to rap or "black" music (quotation marks necessary because white suburban kids are the biggest market for the stuff). Big corporations have been marketing "rebellion" since the 1950s. And the kids fall for it every time. In 1968, Columbia Records promised in an ad that "the man can't bust our music!" Madonna made her career glamorizing slattern chic and attacking bourgeois morality. Now she peddles children's books.

Today, there's a great cellphone commercial in which a corporate executive explains to his assistant that his new billing plan is his own private way of "sticking it to the man." His assistant replies, "But sir, you are the man." The boss says, with some dismay, "I know."

As far as the music industry goes, Kanye West is the man, but he won't admit it. Instead, he sells himself as a victim of a society that can't handle his truth. Four million records sold and saturation adulation in the media suggest that it can handle his truth just fine.

The problem is, it ain't the truth. It's just a scam for kids too stupid to recognize they're being played --— again.

Want to be a real rebel? Read a book.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Cartoon Bruhaha Followup

In an earlier post I made the following statement:

There seems not to be a clear consensus about the propriety of publishing the Mohammed cartoons. Hugh Hewitt feels that it was indifferent to the sensitivities of the Islamic world, and points to a political cartoon in the US that offend conservative sensibilities. His point: "...don't cheer the vulgar and the stupid."

I differed with Mr. Hewitt and compared the publishing of the cartoons to the US Navy's "Freedom of the Seas" exercises.

Over at National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg writes about the issue of giving offense:

Personally, I didn't think the cartoons were particularly good. They also seemed to be published out of a desire to offend Muslims. The editors, and many defenders of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, claim otherwise, saying that they needed to prove there was a climate of fear in Denmark generated by Muslims. So they offended Muslims, and effectively proved, at the least, that there were Muslims eager to generate a climate of fear.

But the issue of "offense" is a distraction too. Let's assume that the publication of the cartoons was motivated entirely by a desire to offend Muslims — or at least some Muslims. How does that change the way we should view events now? If I needlessly offend my neighbor, shame on me. If, in response, he burns down my house and threatens to murder my entire family, who cares what I said in the first place?...

Overreactions are usually about something bigger. The whole point of the "last straw" metaphor is that small things can set off disproportionate reactions. One Muslim protestor in Britain held up a sign saying "Freedom Go To Hell!" Do we really think that a handful of cartoons in Denmark transformed him from a Jeffersonian democrat into a jihadi? Was the holder of the sign "Behead Those Who Insult Islam" a pacifist until recently?

Maybe, just maybe, these guys brought some issues to the table long before they ever heard of these cartoons.

He closes his article with the question of why the U.S. Government has tut-tutted the publication of the cartoons, even though we have a long history of press freedom:

Denouncing the State Department for criticizing these cartoons only makes sense if you look at this situation through a very narrow prism. The U.S. government is fighting a conventional war in two Muslim countries and a clandestine and diplomatic "global war on terror" that involves the entire global Muslim community. I don't like the U.S. picking on little Denmark either, but we should at least recognize that the Bush administration has in mind a bigger picture than those who think this is just about some cartoons.

Self Importance, Cultural Importance

Apparently the sitcom Will & Grace was planning a Very Special Easter episode:

NEW YORK (AP) — Britney Spears will guest star on an episode of Will & Grace, NBC announced Tuesday.

The pop star will appear as a Christian conservative sidekick to Sean Hayes' character, Jack, who hosts his own talk show, on the April 13 episode, the network said.

Jack's fictional network, Out TV, is bought by a Christian TV network, leading to Spears contributing a cooking segment called Cruci-fixin's

But doggone it, them Fundamentalists are gittin' uppity again!

Via IMDB, this nugget.

The Rev. Don Wildmon's American Family Assn. (AFA) is taking credit for killing a planned Will & Grace episode on NBC that reportedly was to feature Britney Spears as a Christian conservative co-host with Jack, the gay character portrayed by Sean Hayes, on Jack's Out TV cable channel. According to an early NBC news release, she was to appear in a cooking segment of the show called "Cruci-fixins." The network later said that the script for the episode had yet to be written "and the story line will not contain a Christian characterization at all." In a statement on Monday, the AFA said, "When NBC said that the script 'has yet to be written,' what they didn't tell you is that the 'story board' had been completed, and the offensive material was scheduled to be a part of the episode." Wildmon himself was quoted in the statement as saying, "Plainly put, NBC heard from their affiliates that they did not want to go through another Book of Daniel situation while losing millions in advertising revenue." NBC recently canceled The Book of Daniel following an AFA letter campaign that, the organization claims, generated hundreds of thousand of written protests.

Did anybody watch The Book of Daniel other than the producer's families and the Rev. Don Wildmon? Not according to the ratings.

Both the Rev. Don Wildmon and the reporters who write these nuggets are in a symbiotic relationship. He fulminates about pop culture, they inflate his importance, then warn against his influence.

Invasion on Hold?

Via Slice of SciFi:

February 02, 2006

Invasion Gets KO'd In Six

Submitted by: Kyle Nin

The slow-paced Shaun Cassidy scifi creation Invasion is being put in the back of the top shelf of ABC's closet in about six weeks from now in order to make room for a new mid-season crime drama called "The Evidence."

As early as 3 weeks ago ABC execs were touting their faith in the show and vowing to stick with it. Whether this remains to be the case or not only some time will tell. Until then the last episode of Invasion before it's unscheduled hiatus will be shown near the end of March.

Bad news for the Islander family. We have been enjoying the genre-bending* series since it premiered last year. Part paranoia trip (much in tone like Invasion of the Body Snatchers), part weird soap opera, the story started claustrophobically in a small Florida town, and it has just started to open up both geographically and in its cast.

I won’t mourn it just yet, but I’m getting disgusted by network executives that get all twitchy when a new series doesn’t become this season’s Cheers or Friends.

------
* Longtime aquaintences will know that I have a weakness for SciFi-based genre-bending television shows. Examples? Well, Alien Nation and Firefly spring to mind.

Fantasy Title Generator

Todd, over at Speak Like a Geek, sent me this link to a website that generates titles for fantasy novels:

http://nine.frenchboys.net/novel.php

In just a couple of tries I got:

Castleِ Winterِ and Mistress
Citadelِ Runeِ and King
Summerِ Ladyِ and War
Sunِ Heraldِ and Master

As you can tell, I have a weakness for triplets! But if you see a novel as requiring a beginning, middle, and ending these titles practially plot out the book for you!

Cartoon Depictions of Sacred Figures

Sebastián Schiavone over at myWhidbey.com has a post linking to the cartoon depictions of Mohammed that have sparked riots across the Islamic world. He concludes his post with this question:

Would cartoons of Christ in a similar light be as offensive to Christians?

Well, ruling out Jack Chick tracts and those odd little cartoons in Good News for Modern Man, there are quite a few less-than-reverent cartoon depictions of Jesus.

Exhibit A: South Park's Pilot, The Spirit of Christmas (Jesus vs. Santa) pretty much takes the cake:

Jesus arrives in South Park and at the local mall he accuses Santa of blasphemy. Santa challenges him to a fight and the violence between the two quickly escalates. Even Brian Boitano can’t help the boys who’ve found themselves in the middle of this fight.

Swear words were used 26 times total in this episode, out of them, the F-word was use 16 times. 7 kids were killed-including Kenny.

Well. How many people were killed in the riots that followed the showing of that episode? I mean, how many Starbucks were looted. Yah mean that Trey Parker and Matt Stone's cars didn't even get keyed?! What's up with that?

Exhibit B: I find it very interesting that during this weekend of Islamic riots, the Fox television network re-ran it's Simpsons Christmas episode. I don't keep up with the Simpsons these days, but out of curiosity I had Tivo-ed the episode and watched about 15 minutes this morning as I munched cereal and gulped my morning coffee.

In this episode, the Christmas story is re-enacted with the Simpsons as the Holy Family: Homer is Joseph, Marge is Mary, Lisa is the angel Gabriel, and Jesus is portrayed by Bart! The depiction (as far as I saw it) was rather harmless, but as far as depicting the center of your religious beliefs in a cartoon, it did make the Danish cartoons seem small beer.

And the Christian reaction? (Crickets chirping.) The contrast to the Islamic riots is rather breathtaking.

So I guess that the question of whether depictions of Jesus in similar light is offensive is subjective. I don't think that you would have to look very far to find a Christian that would be very offended by these characterizations (especially the South Park episode.)

But the question is not how we feel, it's how we act. I don't watch South Park, and neither do most of my co-religionists. How do we deal with the offense of the program? We change the channel and deny the station that airs that program our eyeballs and so deny it the ad revenues derived from those eyeballs. I don't deny that there are some people who would get violent about these depictions. There are always fringe actors in all belief systems. But Western European/American Christians are devoted to the concept of freedom of religious expression--even expressions that offend them.

Can we finally get past the bogus characterization that Islamic and Christian fundamentalists are indistinguishable?

UPDATE: There seems not to be a clear consensus about the propriety of publishing the Mohammed cartoons. Hugh Hewitt feels that it was indifferent to the sensitivities of the Islamic world, and points to a political cartoon in the US that offend conservative sensibilities. His point: "...don't cheer the vulgar and the stupid."

I really disagree with this view (though I defend to the death his right to say it!). I think that it is at times salubrious to cause some offense. Let me give an example:

The United States Navy is more powerful than all the other navies in the world combined. Periodically, they conduct "freedom of the seas" exercises right off the coasts of hostile, paranoid countries. These exercises often result in loud protests, complaints filed with the United Nations and even weapons fire and death. We don't stop these exercises when they offend another nation’s sense of sovereignty, because we feel that the concept of “freedom of the seas” is so important.

Likewise, western culture is based upon the free exchange of ideas and viewpoints, “the marketplace of ideas.” If we start saying that there are things that cannot be said, that cannot be expressed, our culture is untrue to itself.

Galileo certainly annoyed the Church when he espoused the Copernican model of the solar system. Should he have shut up? Is it time for the scientific community to apologize to the church for "offending its sensebilities?"

Attention, Operatives of the Patriarchy!

...Known agent Norah Vincent has penetrated protocols 5-Alpha through 9-Gamma. Critical intel, vital to the Patriarchy, has been compromised...

After reading the raves of Ms Vincent's latest book, and hearing her interviewed by Glenn and Helen , I bought and am reading her book, Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back Again.

I am only halfway through, but I'd like to record three impressions while they are fresh in my mind.

First, Ms Vincent has really made a hugh leap into male culture. Her ability to see what she has looked at serves her well. When she first joins a bowling league, she encounters the three other guys that compose her team. When she's introduced to them she wonders if their terseness and abruptness means that they are treating her with hostility. Then the team captain shakes hands with her and she gets it. Their quite reserve is a sign of the respect they show her as an equal.

I can't count the number of times women have tried to get me to 'fess up and explain "what's really going on," when men are quite in each other's company.

Second, there is occasionally, in reading the book, the dizzyness of infinite regression. She is a woman, passing as a man, giving a woman's viewpoint on what men are like when women aren't around. And I'm a man, reading this woman's book on being a woman passing as a man, reporting on the women's view of men.

It's like when I was a small boy at the barber shop. The barber had mirrors behind the chairs and on the wall across the room. Sitting in the chair I saw an infinite number of little boys, receding in the distance. Somtimes I wondered if I was the boy, or if I was just a reflection and the real little boy was the next little boy or the ten-thousanth little boy in that series. And then the barber would whip the towel off my neck and I'd run outside into the sunshine.

Finally, by describing her view of men, Ms Vincent must necessarily compare and contrast that view with her certain knowlege of women. By doing this, she clarifies (to me) much about the female culture that I find baffling.

Though this book isn't for everyone, I highly recommend it to anyone who has been baffled by the opposite sex. If you have the opposite sex all figured out, save your money.

It's All About the Money

Well, not ultimately.

But presidential candidates that start with large warchests of cash have a expotential advantage over their poorer bretheren. One reason that George Bush was the Republican candidate in 2000 was because he had a direct pipeline to mainstream Republican donors. He could use that early cash to raise name awareness (though it hardly seemed necessary in his case) and prime the pump for the serious fundraising needed for the long slog to the convention.

With the culture so media-connected, candidates have to hit big early. (Kids today don't remember that Robert Kennedy didn't enter into the 1968 Democratic primary until mid-March, after sitting president LBJ had made a poor showing in the New Hampshire primaries.) Every twitch from the buildup leading to the Iowa caucases to Super Tuesday is relentlessly examined, spun, and respun. Candidates that can't fund media buys in the early markets are left as footnotes in civics textbooks.

New York Republicans have struggled to mount a serious challenge to Clinton, and recent polls show her more than 25 points ahead of her nearest GOP rival. Then-Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro abandoned her bid after several stumbles; Edward Cox, son-in-law of President Nixon, said he would pass on the race despite GOP appeals.

Clinton's fundraising totals and her poll numbers make her the early favorite among potential Democratic candidates for the White House in though she repeatedly insists she isn't thinking beyond the Senate race.

Former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer, one of two lesser-known Republicans challenging Clinton, raised $571,000 and ended the year with $243,000 in cash on hand.

So where is this going? Her Hillaryness is sitting on a pile of cash for her "senate campaign." Her rivals are lagging so far behind that look like they're walking backwards. With the power of the incumbency, she isn't going to need bupkiss to get re-elected. And all that leftover swag goes into fundraising for the "Hillary 2008" campaign*

Her tightwire act between now and the Super Tuesday is going to be very instructive. She is going to have to convince the Kos Kidz that she is a real-live transnational progressive while convincing the traditional Democratic base that she really does take national defense seriously.

Watch that she will not condemn the principal of use of military force or the NSA intercepts--only that the Bush administration has misused them. She won't willingly say anything that will limit executive power when she assumes office.

Kos, Cindy Sheenan, Hugo Chavez, Jack Abramoff, Hillary Clinton, NSA, Hamas....

It's going to be a hell of a ride.

* I know, it's not an official web presence, but, then, neither is this blog.

I Ain't Lileks

So I look at my blog output so far and wonder, "Why aren't I like James Lileks?"

Why the bitter edge to my posts? Why so few idyls about family and home life?

Hey, my kids started moving out last century and finally achieved escape velocity a couple of years ago. With the kids gone, my home life has reverted to two people doing things that they don't talk about to other people.

And yet.

I am going to strive mightily in 2006 to try to post a little more about where I live--the change of seasons, the way the island wakes up after winter and becomes busy with summer people, the blue skies and salt air.

Just as soon as this grey, rainy weather lets up.

Ken Blackwell: Cruel to be Kind?

Via The Corner:

BLACKWELL LEADS PETRO [Jonathan H. Adler]
An independent poll commissioned by the Ohio Republican party shows Ken Blackwell with a substantial lead over Jim Petro for the party's gubernatorial nomination. Yet the same poll shows Petro faring better in the general election. Word is that the state party is hoping to avoid a contentious primary and wants one of the candidates to drop out, yet the poll seems not to be having this effect. More on Right Angle Blog here.

The Republican party has often succumed to the John Kerry disease. That is, fronting a candidate whom they think is "electable" over one of principle. This has been the case in the Specter vs. Toomey race in 2004 and might play out again in Chaffee vs. Laffey.

Of course, all these remarks must be put in the context of a conservative, more than a Republican viewpoint. But the situation becomes like that old joke about the rat race: even it you win it, you're still a rat.

The Kos Kidz are constantly asserting that if "true Democrats" (that is, transnational progressives) were presented to the public, they would be elected by acclamation. I think that the past 25 years has shown that they are wrong. Of course I could be wrong, but I am willing to put my viewpoint to a vote.

Draft Ken Blackwell!

Post 9/11 Movies

So there is another movie to add to my list of must-see's.

Flight 93 tells the story of, well, United flight 93. The 9/11 flight that crashed into rural southwest Pennsylvania. The passengers abord that flight that September morning decided that they were not a flock, but instead were a pack and fought the hijackers. By their actions the saved uncounted lives in the nation's capitol. They spent what they could not keep to gain what could easily be lost.

Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday, The Bourne Supremacy) wrote and directed this film.

hat tip: John J. Miller

Nostalgia Down Under

It seems as though fond rememberances for a childhood that never was are as prevelant in Australia as they are in the United States.

Tim Blair points out the inconsistancies in leftist nostalgia for a never-never past:

Christopher Bantick gets all nostalgic in The Age:

Children these days are growing up in a very different, less open, society than when I grew up in the 1950s. Curiously, even with high postwar levels of Mediterranean migration, there was less need to ostentatiously show what being an Australian meant. Those simple days were measured out with Vegemite on crusts at the school tuckshop and singing the national anthem on Monday mornings.

Not even John Howard wants to return to that sort of monoculture. Bantick’s nostalgia is perverse.

Back then, there were no wire fences in the desert keeping new arrivals from the rest of Australian society.

“New arrivals”? He’s talking about illegal arrivals, who tend to turn up without passports or any other supporting documents. By the way, Australia’s enlightened post-war Labor government tried to ship refugees home. Here’s what went on in 1949: “The Chifley Government passes the War-time Refugees Removal Act in July, with a view to forcibly repatriating approximately 900 non-Europeans who had been admitted temporarily during the war. They had declined to be repatriated, wishing to settle in Australia.”

I loved my childhood, even with the Duck and Cover drills in elementary schools, but that doesn't mean that I can't see that lots of stuff has gotten better in the last 50 years.

The Words "Innocent" and "Exonerated"

In this post on capital punishment and the court system I wrote, "Mostly the courts are right." In this NY Times piece, Joshua Marquis reports on the metrics of how large is the margin on "mostly."

To start, only 14 Americans who were once on death row have been exonerated by DNA evidence alone. The hordes of Americans wrongfully convicted exist primarily on Planet Hollywood. In the Winter 2005 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, a group led by Samuel Gross, a law professor at the University of Michigan, published an exhaustive study of exonerations around the country from 1989 to 2003 in cases ranging from robbery to capital murder. They were able to document only 340 inmates who were eventually freed. (They counted cases where defendants were retried after an initial conviction and subsequently found not guilty as "exonerations.") Yet, despite the relatively small number his research came up with, Mr. Gross says he is certain that far more innocents languish undiscovered in prison.

So, let's give the professor the benefit of the doubt: let's assume that he understated the number of innocents by roughly a factor of 10, that instead of 340 there were 4,000 people in prison who weren't involved in the crime in any way. During that same 15 years, there were more than 15 million felony convictions across the country. That would make the error rate .027 percent — or, to put it another way, a success rate of 99.973 percent....

It is understandable that journalists focus on the rare case in which an innocent man or woman is sent to prison — because, as all reporters know, how many planes landed safely today has never been news. The larger issue is whether those who influence the culture, like an enormous television network, have a moral responsibility to keep the facts straight regardless of their thirst for drama...

The words "innocent" and "exonerated" carry tremendous emotional and political weight. But these terms have been tortured beyond recognition — not just by defense lawyers, but by the disseminators of entertainment under the guise of social conscience.

"The Exonerated" played for several years Off Broadway with a Who's Who of stage and screen stars portraying six supposedly innocent people who were once on death row. The play, originally subsidized by George Soros, the liberal billionaire philanthropist, now tours college campuses and was made into a television movie by Court TV.

The script never mentions that two of the play's six characters (Sonia Jacobs and Kerry Cook) were not exonerated, but were let out of prison after a combined 36 years behind bars when they agreed to plea bargains. A third (Robert Hayes) was unavailable to do publicity tours because he is in prison, having pleaded guilty to another homicide almost identical to the one of which he was acquitted.

Here is another piece by Joshua Marquis specifically about the play, "The Exonerated."

Upcoming Movies

Taleena over at Sun Comprehending Glass has been posting reviews of movies that she has recently seen in the theater or by Netflix; so I thought I'd post about some upcoming movies that I am looking forward to or dreading.

Nanny McPhee. This Movie looks to be the corrective to the unaccountable sweetness of Disney's Mary Poppins. With Colin Firth and Emma Thompson leading the cast, It seems as though it can't miss. Emma Thompson play the title character under pounds of makeup, including warts and a snaggle tooth.

Miami Vice. Yeah, I know. Another remake of an old television show. But, doggone it, Michael Mann is the kind of a certain kind of artistic look, and the trailer shows this look in spades. It's shown in the composition of the shots, the odd muting of the sound track at critical moments, letting the music track and images develop a completely new momentum. If you have seen Manhunter, Crime Story, or Last of the Mohicans, you know what I mean.

What I wonder is, will that 1980s--glam-drug-cop schtick work in a post 9/11 political reality? We will see. Oh, yes. We will see.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. The first "Pirates" movie, Curse of the Black Pearl, did what I considered impossible: it created a fun, engaging move based on a theme park ride. Granted that ride was very cinematic, and told it's own story in three acts; but still! Unfortunately, they weren't able to get Keith Richards to play Captain Jack Sparrow's father, but the very fact that they tried to get him in the movie show, I think, that they understand what made the first move good. It was fun. It had everything but parrot wearing an eyepatch and a pegleg pirate dancing a hornpipe (as was in the "Jack of All Trades" opening.)

I haven't anticipated a sequel so much since "Men in Black II." Of course MIBII was a much weaker movie than the original. Here's hoping that Verbinski can make lightning strike twice.

Lady in the Water. At this point I'll go see anything that M. Night Shyamalan puts out. Even his weaker efforts are better than 90% of what Hollywood produces. He tells big stories through small, intimate viewpoints.

And now a likely stinker:

V for Vendetta. Commenting on the Matrix sequels, a wag said, "It took George Lucas nearly 20 years to alienate his fan base. The Wachowski brothers accomplished that task in just 5." This is an attempt to recover the edgy, transgressing vibe of the original Matrix.

Yawn.

It's purportedly about a shadowy hero named only "V" who uses "terrorist tactics" (scare quotes intentional) to fight the secret police and stage a revolution in a 1984-like England...Except that he's not blowing up orphanages and gunning down shoppers in the town square, or even wearing a suicide belt to a wedding party. In the trailer "V" is using daggers to take out uniformed policemen armed with machine guns. This is much more what the U.S. Marines are doing in Baghdad that what Hamas is doing in Gaza.

And I noticed in the trailer the ever-present signs that indicate that you are in a police state say:

FAITH
THROUGH
UNITY
UNITY
THROUGH
FAITH

Feh. This must give certain people a shiver of naughty delight. "Yeah man! It's those Christers that want to oppress us!" Get over the fact that you parent forced to to attend Sunday School. That just doesn't cut it, oppression-wise.

I'd be more impressed by the writers and producers of "V" if either adultresses were being stoned in Oklahoma City's town square or young women weren't being killed by their families for dating non-Muslims in western Europe and Canada.

Draft Ken Blackwell!

City Journal has a wonderful article on Ken Blackwell, a black Regeanite running for the governorship of Ohio. He seems to be the candidate that frightens both the Democrats and the tax-and-spend Republicans in his own party:

Right now, Ken Blackwell stands at a pivotal point in American politics. He'’s taken an early lead in the race for governor of a state that was key to reelecting George W. Bush and that may well be even more crucial in picking the next American president. Moreover, Blackwell has built his early lead not by tacking toward the center of this swing state but by running on an uncompromisingly conservative platform that's won him grassroots support from both Christian groups and taxpayer organizations--a novel coalition that makes the old-boy network in his own Ohio GOP as uneasy as it makes the state'’s Democrats, who have begun a "“stop Blackwell"” campaign.

Ken Blackwell has so many people worried because he represents a new political calculus with the power to shake up American politics. For Blackwell is a fiscal and cultural conservative, a true heir of the Reagan revolution, who happens to be black, with the proven power to attract votes from across a startlingly wide spectrum of the electorate. Born in the projects of Cincinnati to a meat-packer who preached the work ethic and a nurse who read to him from the Bible every evening, Blackwell has rejected the victimology of many black activists and opted for a different path, championing school choice, opposing abortion, and staunchly advocating low taxes as a road to prosperity. The 57-year-old is equally comfortable preaching that platform to the black urban voters of Cincinnati as to the white German Americans in Ohio'’s rural counties or to the state'’s business community.

Blackwell stands apart from the group [of leading black Republicans], thanks to his deep electoral experience and his very good chance of getting elected. He has already run more political races--—from school-board seat to city councilman to secretary of state--—than all the rest of them combined. He'’s served in Washington as a HUD undersecretary and traveled the world as a U.S. ambassador. He'’s chaired a major presidential campaign, been mayor of one of Ohio'’s largest cities, and plotted supply-side fiscal policy with Jack Kemp. If he wins in Ohio, a state where Republicans are on the defensive after scandals that rocked the administration of Governor Bob Taft, Blackwell would not only become the nation'’s first elected black Republican governor but would immediately figure as a compelling 2008 vice-presidential candidate.

"Ken Blackwell represents the only chance the Republicans have in Ohio,"” says Paul Weyrich, who headed the Heritage Foundation, where Blackwell was an analyst in 1990. Weyrich, who calls Blackwell one of the few extraordinary individuals he has met in 50 years of public service, says that, without him on the ticket, Ohio Republicans "“are going down the tubes big-time for what they'’ve done there."

Serving on the National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform in the mid-1990s, Blackwell became a passionate advocate of a simplified tax code and co-edited a book with Kemp, entitled IRS v. The People: Time for Real Tax Reform. So much significance did Blackwell eventually come to attach to tax reform that he agreed to chair Steve Forbes'’s 2000 Republican presidential primary campaign, centering on Forbes'’s flat-tax proposal. "Ken is an experienced fighter in the political trenches, but he also thoroughly understands the ideas he'’s fighting for,"” says Forbes. "“That'’s a very rare combination in politics."”

Tax reform! Be still my heart!

Can Ken Blackwell fulfill the unkept promise of Jack Kemp? Of Alan Keyes? Will the Republican have the first serious black candidate on a presidential ticket? In the White House?

There has been a lot of "Draft Condi" talk out in the blogosphere; but much as I admire Ms Rice and her many accomplishments, winning any elective office has not been one of them. Mr. Blackwell may be a leader in the movement to clean up the corruption that has bloomed in the Republican party since they came to congressional power in 1994.

I hereby declare my support for a "Draft Ken Blackwell" 2008 campaign.

Loose the pigeons!

The America I Knew

There has been a meme going around for a few years that has annoyed me more and more as time goes by. I call it: "The America I Knew."

Ed Asner is the worst offender:

I feel that George Bush's actions are desecrating the America that I grew up in and believed in. He is making us an imperialist government. He is choosing to replace heads of state and government he doesn't like.”

Anne Levinson chimed in this last holiday season:

If it is not too much to ask, this holiday season I'd like my country back. It's really what I want most. I think about it every day, without fail. I understand it would be easier to get me an iPod, but that joy would be short-lived compared with helping me be proud of my country again...

The America I grew up loving used to stand as a symbol of hope, of equality, of liberty and justice, not only for the rest of the world, but for its own citizens. I love this country, but the America I live in today makes me long for unwavering and principled leaders who will stand up for their citizens the way Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin stood up earlier this year in the House of Commons to support civil-marriage equality for his country's citizens...

What I am annoyed about is that both of these people are being intellectually and historically dishonest about where America is and where it used to be. They are attempting to appropriate a conservative, even reactionary, meme and use it to advance a point of view that is radically unconservative.

Both of these quotes speak of an America of living memory. Let's ask ourselves what was the America like these people are nostaglic for?

By a quick Google of published documents and biographies, Anne Levinson is approximately 47 years old, Mr. Asner is 76 years old. What America was like in Mr. Asner's memory?

• Between 1919 and 1922, a further 239 blacks were lynched by white mobs and many more were killed by individual acts of violence and unrecorded lynchings.
• In 1948, the Democratic party was split when the "Dixiecrats" walked out of the Democratic National Convention to protest the party's segregationist plank. None of these Representatives and Senators who bucked the Democratic party ever suffered punishment from their caucuses by expulsion or demotion of seniority or removal from prized committee chairmanships.

Is this the America that Mr. Asner longs for?

What about Ms Levinson's childhood?

• It wasn't until 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka 347 US 483 that the Court held that separate facilities were inherently unequal in the area of public schools, effectively overturning Plessy v. Ferguson to outlaw Jim Crow.
• In 1962, George Wallace was elected governor on a pro-segregation, pro-states' rights platform in a landslide victory. In his inaugural speech he declared "In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw a line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say: segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever."

Surely this is not what Ms Levinson means by "unwavering and principled leaders."

A few years ago John Stossel ran one of his libertarian pieces on ABC about the culture of blame. In it, he played a couple of television commercials from the late 1950s and early 1960s for various products, laundry soap and canned coffee. I was aghast at their sexist bias and insensitivity. What was worse, I remember seeing the commercials when they first aired, and they were completely unremarkable in the cultural context of their day. Younger people who don't remember this time could fall into the "America I Knew" meme because they have no direct memory of those times. I do. Shame on those, conservative and liberal, who trot that old warhorse out.

America is a wonderful country. My favorite! And I have wonderful nostalgic memories of my boyhood. But I cannot generalize from the specific of my own experiences to say that America was better back then.

Look, if you are a progressive at least espouse a doctrine of progress. It is conservative to look back. It is silly, politically, for progressives to engage in nostalgia.

Poster Child for Capital Punishment

Maybe it's my advancing age, but the older I get the less I oppose capital punishment. My initial feelings on capital punishment spring from my native distrust of any government agency. I hesitate to entrust anyone to the mercies of a bureaucracy.

Right now the country is going through one of its periodic reassesments of capital punishment. Tookie Williams had thousands of supporters claiming that he was innocent. ABC has just launched a critically-panned show InJustice, in which every week a new criminal is shown to have been railroaded by corrupt and incompetent police and prosecutors.

And yet. Mostly the courts are right; and sometimes locking someone up for life isn't enough.

The case of Clarence Ray Allen provides a strong argument that the extreme sentence of justice is not just and "eye for and eye."

From Wikipedia:

In the 1970's Allen ran a security guard business in Central California. He knew both sides of the security business because he ran a burglary business at the same time. His employees both guarded and robbed businesses. In 1974, Allen burglarized a Fresno area supermarket, owned by Ray and Fran Schletewitz, who Allen had known for years.

As part of the burglary plot, he arranged for someone to steal a set of door and alarm keys from the market owner's son, Bryon Schletewitz, age 19, while Schletewitz was swimming in Allen's pool. Allen then arranged a date between Schletewitz and Mary Sue Kitts (his son Roger's girlfriend) for the evening, during which time the burglary took place. The burglary netted $500 in cash and $10,000 in money orders from the store's safe.

Following the commission of the burglary, Kitts told Schletewitz that Allen had committed the crime, which she knew as she had helped Allen cash money orders that had been stolen from the store. Bryon Schletewitz confronted Roger Allen, informing him that he had been told of the crime by Kitts, and Roger Allen admitted the crime. When Roger Allen told his father Clarence of Bryon's accusation, Clarance Allen stated that they (Schletewitz and Kitts) would have to be "dealt with." Allen then ordered the strangulation of Kitts by Charles Furrow, after an unsuccessful attempt to poison her with cyanide capsules. Furrow threw Kitts's body into the Friant-Kern Canal, and it has never been found. In 1978, Allen was tried and convicted for the burglary itself, the murder of Kitts, and the conspiracy to murder Kitts. For these crimes, Allen was sentenced to life in prison without possiblity of parole.

While in Folsom Prison, Allen conspired with fellow inmate Billy Ray Hamilton to murder witnesses who had testified against him, including Bryon Schletewitz. Allen intended to gain a new trial, where there would be no witnesses to testify to his acts. When Hamilton was paroled from Folsom Prison, he went to Fran’s Market, where Bryon Schletewitz worked. There, Hamilton murdered Schletewitz and fellow employees Josephine Rocha, 17, and Douglas White, 18, with a sawed-off shotgun and wounded two other people, Joe Rios and Jack Abbott. Hamilton shot Schletewitz at near point-blank range in the forehead and murdered Rocha and White after forcing them to lie on the ground within the store. A neighbor who heard the shotgun blasts came to investigate and was shot by Hamilton. The neighbor returned fire and wounded Hamilton, who escaped from the scene.

Five days after the events at Fran's Market, Hamilton was arrested while attempting to rob a liquor store. Hamilton carried a “hit list” with the names and addresses of the witnesses who testified against Allen at the Kitts trial, including the name of Schletewitz.

So the fact that this guy was locked up and the key was thrown away wasn't enough. He arranged for the murder of eight other people.

Sometimes even the government does the right thing.

Skinned Knees

Last Saturday I attended a suwari waza clinic. Suwari waza are techniques executed with both nage and uke in a sitting position. In this clinic the sensei included attacks from a standing position. I was glad to spend two hours in study on a technique that will play an increasing role in my future tests, but...

TWO HOURS moving and twisting on your knees! I have two knees without skin! I also discovered that seated moves, while similar to standing moves, require a new set of muscles to balance and walk. Shikko, the "samurai walk" looks much easier than it is to do. I have a brand new set of aches!

Fabulousness

Taleena, over at Sun Comprehending Glass posts her take on the News John Stewart is emcee-ing the 2006 Motion Picture Academy Awards Ceremony:

I hope Stewart revitalizes the Oscars. I hope that he is funny and takes great pot shots at such a self congradulatory industry. I will tune into his opening monologue, a good bet to be the most entertaining portion of the evening. I just will not hold my breath that it will remain funny. No reflection on Stewart, Hollywood continues to marginalize itself because it usually ignores or belittles those of us who place importance on religion and other traditional societal building blocks.

My take on it? Glad you asked.

Scott Ott has already addressed this one:

Stewart to Host Oscars, Rumsfeld to Give GOP Response

(2006-01-05) — Just hours after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences named Comedy Channel news anchor Jon Stewart to host this year’s Academy Awards show, the White House announced that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been tapped to deliver the GOP response.

The Oscars Rebuttal Show, part of ABC-TV’s commitment to fairness, will attempt to refute and debunk the anti-Bush administration remarks that naturally flow from Mr. Stewart and his colleagues as they give little golden statues to people who make up stories and who pretend to be other people...

...A spokesman for the Academy, in announcing the emcee deal today, said, “Now, we know whose monkey Jon Stewart is.”

The Oscars (outside the industry) are a massively trivial event. The only reason that we pay any attention is that the participants, for the most part, either look fabulous or own or operate the cameras.

The "Major" awards have all the credibility (and authenticity) of the status battles for "coolest clique" we saw (or fought, or avoided) in high school. With the exception of "Best Editing," "Sound," "Visual Effects," the majors seem to be a popularity contest only loosely attached to any merit or achievement. Just take a jump to the official MPAA Database for "Best Picture" and review the list. Rocky beat out Network and Taxi Driver?

The "Minor" awards are the most interesting. These are awards given to people inventing technologies that make movies better, so of course they get a plaque rather than a statuette and their ceremony in unbroadcast. (It would make a great episode of Nova, though.) But really, these are the kids in A.V. Club, not the ones who get elected Homecoming King and Queen. I have no dogs in this hunt, no horse in this race, no favorite for which I am cheering.

I may have Tivo record the ceremony, but only for the opening monologue and the chance to view some fabulousness on the fly.

UPDATE: Mark Yost has a great editorial over at Opinion Journal about the campaign by stuntmen and stunt coordinators to be recognized by the Academy. Though the outlook for an Oscar for stunt work looks unlikely, there is an Emmy in that category:

Spice Williams-Crosby, a stuntwoman and actress, was successful at lobbying the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which gives out the Emmy Awards, to create a stunt category. But it wasn't easy.

Ms. Williams-Crosby was motivated after her friend, fellow stuntman Paul Dallas, was killed in August 1996 doing a high fall for the TV series "L.A. Heat."

"We were hit with more opposition than you can ever imagine," she says of her initial efforts. Worse yet, most of the actors she lobbied were ignorant of what stunt people did and didn't even know they were in the same union, the Screen Actors Guild. "We're risking our lives to make the actors look good," she told a peer group. "We protect you and you don't even have a clue as to who we are or what we do."

'Cause, you know, actors are seriously fabulous people.

Jim Baen Shears Sheep Several Times

Jim Baen has launched a new, electronic magazine, Jim Baen's Universe! While subscriptions start at $30, they range up to $500 in a multi-tiered subscription scheme.

"Wait," I hear you cry, "How can you sell identical digital bits for vastly different amounts of money?"

Child, child.

Don't sell the steak, sell the sizzle! Jim is selling Tuckerization rights to future writings by his stable of writers.

For a mere $100 you get limited Tuckerization:

Your Tuckerized character will be a minor character with a name but no dialogue, unless the author decides to expand their role, for his or her own dramatic reasons.

In the $250 membership, things improve:

Your Tuckerized character will be guaranteed to be a secondary character in the story, not a minor character.

But way up in the $500 memberships things get very tony:

Very extensive Tuckerization rights, if you wish to exercise them, by any author in the Tucker Circle , in either a book or a magazine story. You can choose the author, and indicate a preference as to book or magazine story. Your character will be a secondary character in the story, AND you get to choose whether they’re still alive or dead at the end of the story.

But wait! There is a catch!

Fair warning: Do keep in mind that in the event your character appears in a series, if you want to keep him or her alive, you’ll have to renew your $500 membership next year. Yes, we know that’s evil. We’re professional scribblers, what do you expect?

Evil? Jim's stable boils an honest pot, so I'll be subscribing. But I think I can pass on the chance at a private meal with one of the Baen authors (it would seem rather uncomfortable to me) and the ego-feed of seeing my name used in a Sci-Fi series.

Geeze. What if your namesake was a really evil character? I don't mean cool-evil like Ming the Merciless, but disgusting-evil, like Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. I guess you pays your money and takes your chances.

Not Again!

Yet more Bible illiteracy, this time from someone who must know better: the Reverend Jesse Jackson!

"The ideologues over at Fox News have decided that to save Christmas, we've got to insist that stores advertise 'Christmas sales,' not holiday sales, and that cards wish people a 'merry Christmas,' not a happy holiday. Behind their moralizing, these folks are trying to use Christmas for petty political purposes. But that's not what the Christmas story is about either. It's about a couple--Mary and Joseph--forced by an oppressive government to leave their home to travel far to be counted in the census. They were homeless in a strange land."--Jesse Jackson, Dec. 20, 2005

Jesse, you don't have a political purpose in your remarks?! Let me state my viewpoint. I don't watch Fox News. Heck, I don't pay for cable TV (I'm too cheap!) But just looking at your statement, I can see a couple of problems you may want to address.

Okay, Jesse, stay with me here. You may have heard this before, but this time pay attention:

Luke 2

¹And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.

²(And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)

³And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.

So what do we know about the Holy Family? They had an oppressive government all right, in that we agree. But how did we know it was oppressive? That government wanted to tax them! It wanted to hide that tax with the sham of a census.

But where were did they wind up? In Joseph's own city! I am sure that they felt like strangers, but it was Joseph's ancestral homeland. They stayed there for some time, maybe years, until Herod decided to practice a little retroactive population control. (But that's an issue for a different post.)

And the Christmas story, Jesse? It's not primarily about Joseph and Mary, as you well know. It's about the Incarnation.

I'll give you the same advice I gave Nancy Pelosi: cut the glittering generalities; and speak the Gospel.

They Gave at the Office

Democrats continue to bang away at their "religion gong," assuring all us benighted Evangelicals that they do, too get this "faith thing." The latest exhibit is House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's Jeremiad against the Republican budget resolution:

"Mr. Speaker, as we leave for this Christmas recess, let us say, 'God bless you' to the American people by voting against this Republican budget and statement of injustice and immorality, and let us not let the special interest goose get fat at the expense of America's children.

"The gentleman from Washington [state], Mr. McDermott, quoted the prophet Isaiah. And as the bible [sic] teaches us, to minister to the needs of God's creation is an act of worship, to ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us. Let us vote no on this budget as an act of worship and for America's children."

Wow. So voting against the Republican budget is like going to church?! Oh, man! No wonder we don't see you guys in church! You gave at the office!

Nancy, do you want to give me chapter and verse on that doctrine that you just declared?

Okay, maybe I can help you Nancy. Maybe you were referring to this:

³¹"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. ³²All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. ³³He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

³⁴"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. ³⁵For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ³⁶I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

³⁷"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? ³⁹When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

⁴⁰"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

You see, Nancy, you gotta get past those glittering generalities of "God's creation" and jump right into the concept of hungry, thirsty, naked, and imprisoned people.

But maybe you were right to be vague about this scripture, Nancy. It deals with judgement at the end of the age. You know that stuff that we Evangelicals just can't shut up about.

In fact, this parable comes from St. Matthew's 25th chapter--right after the Parable of the Talents. You remember the Parable of the Talents, don't you Nancy?

No?

Don't feel bad. John Kerry read right through the New Testament and missed it.

If your going to bash Republicans with the Bible (note the capital letter used for a proper name) you are going to have to do much, much better than this. You are just embarrassing yourself.

Absolutely the Best Blog Headline of the Month

Geoff Robinson over at Faith, Beer, and Other Things (which in itself is a great title) has my undying appreciation for a wonderful post headline:

The Fool in His Own Heart Says "Multiverse"

Which title spins off Biblical knowlege, cosmology, and Science Fiction in a great three-bank shot.

Congratulations!

Magnet Madness

Okay, this will be my final post on the "flaming hypocrite" fish.

The company that markets the magnets, Reefer Magnets, is featured in a Skagit Valley Herald story:

A political parody of the ichthys, the Christian fish symbol, has put Washington state Democrats in some hot water and cast a spotlight upon a Mount Vernon activist who wants marijuana legalized.

Allison Bigelow did not create the facetious fish, but her company, Reefer Magnets, owns the copyright and sells it on the Internet.

“I didn’t make it,” she said. “Now I’m the one in the hot seat.”

The parody is a car magnet with a cross and the word “hypocrite” inside the fish.

The magnet comes on a piece of poster board with phrases meant to illustrate hypocrisy between Christian values and what some consider twisted morality of some of society’s Christian leaders, especially those with a hand in politics.

So what are these phrases that provide clues to the "twisted morality" of some of society's Christian leaders?

Love thy neighbor
An eye for an eye...
Blessed are the peacemakers
Who would Jesus bomb?
Armeggedon outta here
Thou shalt not kill
Pro-life? Pro-war?
Oh, Lord, won't you buy me...
Beware of false profits

I don't know about you, Faithful Reader, but this does look like the result of some heavy critical political analysis...arrived at sometime after the fourth or fifth bong bowl.

She sees the media attention as a chance to talk about the real aim of Reefer Magnets and her efforts to educate and advocate for the decriminalizing marijuana.

“In my opinion, we wouldn’t be such a warring people if we used more cannabis and used less alcohol,” Bigelow said.

Bigelow has marched in anti-globalization and anti-war rallies in Seattle. She has written letters to editors and voted for Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry in 2004 if only to vote against President Bush.

“I’ve done everything I can, but I still feel I have blood on my hands,” Bigelow said of the ongoing war in Iraq...

“We don’t need to be in a war for oil because we have industrial hemp,” Bigelow said. “If you look into all the little things that hemp can do, you’ll understand. We wouldn’t be killing people for oil.”

It's all about OIL! In the words of Billy Bob, "It's like I'm playing cards with my brother's kids."

These people are quite beyond parody.

This whole issue was raised because some dim bulb over at Washington State Democratic headquarters looked at wooing the disaffected evanglicals, or alternately, giving the Evangelicals the boot and securing the hemp-oil reefer vote.

Put on the pilot's jacket, guys, cause it's MISSON ACCOMPLISHED!

Democratic Chairman Bails With Fork

In response to the outcry over the fish magnet offered on the state Democratic Party web store, Democratic Party Chairman Paul Berendt had the item yanked. Tuesday Berendt said, "The moment I became aware of it, I insisted it be taken down. I'm sorry if anyone was offended. It's embarrassing."

You insisted Paul? Was there opposition to the directive? Who's in charge over there?

So where does the fish come from? According to the Seattle Times:

The fish magnet is copyrighted by a Mount Vernon company called Reefer Magnets. The company mostly sells magnets with pro-marijuana messages such as "Hemp is Patriotic" and "Jesus is coming, roll another joint."

Berendt said he wasn't sure what the fish symbol is supposed to mean but said he thinks it is aimed at "people who claim to be pro-life but are for the death penalty."

Paul, it's time to file a malpractice suit against the doctor who installed that tin ear.

Lots of people who are truly pro-life see a great deal of difference between a unborn baby who has never hurt anyone and "Tookie" Williams who, after killing (at least) four people, had 25 years of appeals and court motions before the order of the state was carried out. Refusing to acknowledge that this position can be taken by thoughtful people (after a lot of reflection and inner turmoil struggle) is to live in a Romper-Room world of primary-color moral distinctions.

The issue goes a lot deeper than the brief appearance of a piece of anti-Evangelical litter (Why not include that "Jesus is coming, roll another joint" magnet?). The problem is that someone thought that placing that item on the store page was funny or clever. Someone approved this item; someone at your Washington State Democratic Party headquarters thought cocking a snook at Evangelicals by including that nasty little piece of litter was worth the effort.

That means that whoever did this thought that Evangelicals were

1. too stupid to know they were being mocked
2. not worth the effort to accommodate
3. not a group that is worth including in the Democratic Party.

Works for me! Count me excluded, Democratic website operative!

How Democrats are Loosing the Evangelical Vote Part MCXIII

I'm not somebody that slaps bumper stickers onto my car. There are many worthy causes and viewpoints that I uphold and support, but are unrepresented on my bumper. In fact, this reluctance has annoyed Mrs. Islander for years.

I have been a member of a Pentecostal church of one kind or another for over 20 years, yet my car does not sport the little chrome "fish" one often sees here and there. This is not to say I despise these badges of viewpoint. I find the more restrained ones kind of classy, quite unlike the "I Found It!" and "Honk if You Love Jesus!" bumper stickers.

When I first saw the "Darwin" fish-with-legs I almost ran off the road laughing. Though it was derivitave, it was smart, cute, and had the advantage of gently turning the Christian "fish" into the setup to the "Darwin" punchline. The Christian "fish" eating the Darwin fish was less funny, but still tasteful.

But there have been lots of less tasteful and cute products out there. At top right is one that was offered for sale by the Washington State Democratic Party.

I it just me or is the party just clueless? Lots of ink has been spilled by Democratic advisers since the 2004 election in trying to understand why they are doing so badly among Evangelicals. I gassed on about it myself.

But, folks, if a state party is so clueless that they cannot see that this kind of imagery offends the very people that they need to capture in 2008, they are beyond hope.

The original page was taken down, but the image was captured and can be seen at:

http://www.710kiro.com/images/upload/original.jpg

Varieties of Sleep

Warning: this is a post of the Seinfeldian variety. That is, it's mostly about nothing.

A few weeks ago, after haven taken the grand-Islanders Trick-or-Treating, I was lying, exhausted, in bed on the edge of sleep. As I snuggled down into the covers, hearing the cold wind moan outside my window, it occurred to me how much this sensation differed from falling asleep outdoors in daylight.

I know, Deep thoughts, Maynard. But I warned you.

Falling asleep outside is a light sleep. It is as though a part of my brain stays alert for unfamiliar sounds or the approach of unexpected presences. Even with this lack of depth, few things are as sweet as lying warmed by the sun, lulled by the humming of bees and the scent of green, growing things, and just drifting imperceptibly to sleep.

Falling to sleep with the sound of ocean surf produces in me a sleep that is almost like being drugged. Once, Mrs. Islander and I got away for the weekend to a costal hotel, sleeping in a room that overlooked a Pacific beach. I could almost feel the work-a-day stress sliding off of me like a heavy coat. That night, to the sound of the waves, my sleep was insensate.

Falling asleep in a warm bed during a cold winter’s night is sleep filled with the smugness of your isolation from the discomfort outside. Mrs Islander and I enjoy keeping a window ajar year ‘round, so the air on our faces is cool. This causes the warmth of the quilts and comforters to be that much sweeter.

When I was a child, sleep seemed an interruption of long, glorious days. I fully understand why a child cries at bedtime. When I was a solider, sleep was a wonderful break from the stesses of martial life. (In fact, in boot camp I discovered how to fall asleep anywhere, anytime I had a few spare minutes. It's a talent that I sadly had to unlearn.)

Now, as I enter my mid-fifties, I find that my only bars to sleep are the aches and pains that the flesh is heir to. And for that I have ibuprophen.

Taleena Takes Me to Task

Taleena over at Sun Comprehending Glass takes me to task because in this post I speculate aloud about the chances of a couple of social moderates capturing the social conservative's vote:

Wither "Social Conservatives?" What will 2006 and 2008 bring? I think that rank-and-file social conservatives will vote for a McCain or a Guliani, if they feel that they have a conservative Supreme Court to guard the legacy of their gains of the last 20 years.

I found Taleena's response puzzling:

I think he over estimate's McCain appeal and I stand by my earlier comment:

"Social conservatives" will be split down big vs. small government lines in '06, but will ultimately back a tough Hawk in '08 as Western Europe slides deeper into dhimmitude.

...and so I commented:

Do we have a bigger hawk on the national Republican scene that McCain? Do not the centrists voter swoon at his name? Has he not traction among the moderate Democrats as the anti-Bush?

Taleena replied:

Centrist swoon over Guiliani too, and the first amendment travesty McCAIN-Feingold will not be forgotten. Neither will his flirtation with running as a third party candidate. Guiliani also has traction among moderate Democrats.

Since when has Howard Dean hesitated to use Christian in demonizing the R's? Neither has he or other leaders in the D's concealed thier disdain for Israel either. Sure libertarians are a small to smaller group of people (depending on where you live) but I wonder how long even socially liberal libertarians (like Glenn Reynolds) will put up with the creeping and not so disguised socialism on the left?

This has gotten too long for comments, so I'll post my reply here:

Again, two points I'll contend:

Centrists may have swooned over Guliani, but unless he's got a great new campaign line, he is rapidly approaching his "sell by" date. 2001 was a presidential term ago and there have been no new terrorist attacks on U.S. soil (thank God!) In the meantime Guliani has not held a national post or pulpit. I would have nominated him first head of Homeland Security, but that did not happen. What has he been doing? What compelling narrative can he relate?

I think that the outrage over the McCain-Fiengold campaign finance debacle is kept alive only in the hearts of hard-line anti-McCainers and First Amendment zealots. (I consider myself in the latter category.) But I really think that that kind of outrage gets very little traction in the general public who still think the problem with the political system is too much "special interest" money. Ironically, MacCain is going into 2008 with a guaranteed pipeline to mainline Republican donors. He is going to appeal very strongly to the anti-Hillary crowd.

Howard Dean presents the Democrats incoherent political voice about Christians. (He is joined in this by John Kerry.) He wants Christians to vote for the Democrats, but expresses contempt for their gullibility in voting for Republicans. He claims to be a Christian himself (which he may be, that judgment is reserved for Another), yet he has only hazy ideas about where the books of the Bible are located.

Glenn and many other libertarian thinkers identified with the Republicans during the Reagan years, due to the Gipper's stance that, "Government isn't the solution, government is the problem."

Many libertarians jumped the Republican ship when GWB announced "compassionate conservatism." The only thing that kept people like Glenn around was the cold-eye realization that post-911, the Democrats had zero foreign policy credibility. Whatever you thought about the Republican's domestic agenda (not much) we could argue about later, after the people that want to kill us are dealt with.

UPDATE: After posting the last couple of paragraphs, I realized I may have oversimplified to the level of untruth. There are many Democrats with loads of foreign policy smarts. The problem for the Democrats as a viable opposition party is that those grown up voices are being shouted down by the (increasingly misnamed) MoveOn.org and the Kos Kids.

Deconstructing the Social Conservative Vote

In response to Taleena's comment to an earlier post, let me deconstruct the "social conservative" vote.

"Social Conservatives" = "Political Christians."

There. Having in one fell swoop decrypted 50% of current political newspeak, let me expand my remarks:

Catholics = Traditional blue-collar lunchbox Democrats. The Democrats ran working class Catholics off the reservation in 1973 with their embrace of Roe v. Wade to the exclusion of all else. Non-pro-abortion candidates were barred from speaking at national conventions and from having any voice in platform committees. Made the jump to Republican identity with Reagan's 1980 campaign. Still feel more comfortable with the Dems social emphasis. Would bolt in a New York minute for a pro-life Democratic candidate.

African-American Christians (AME and others) = Since 1964 Democratic. Their shift from the Republican Party is the second greatest political blunder in modern US history. When the Party of Lincoln® stood by during the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s, even the Democrats freezing black delegates out their 1964 National Convention couldn't stop the tide. Except for a few free-thinkers, this block is has linked cultural, church and political identification together in a way only dreamed of by Jerry Falwell at the height of his mid-1980s power.

This block has stood by the Democrats through 30 years of neglect and abuse and I see no sea change coming. The continued trashing of conservative blacks such as Thomas, Rice, and Steele shows how diligently the A-A community polices itself to repress aberrant voices. However, the rise of A-A leaders such as Barak Obama may indicate a new insistence that the Democrats respond to a wider spectrum of A-A concerns rather than the hustlings of a few poverty pimps. (Al Sharpton, call your office!) While the RNC has continued to reach out to black groups such as the NAACP, expect few black Christian voices to speak out for Republican candidates in 2008.

Evangelical Christians = Solidly Republican. (Who everybody thinks about when you say "social conservative") The greatest political blunder in modern US history was when Democrats, drunk with political power of Watergate, were goaded by their most left-wing elements to demonize Evangelical Christians. For most of my lifetime, most Evangelicals had an other-worldly focus, tending to ignore political involvement (seeing it akin to re-arranging deckchairs on the Titanic). But the leftward swing of the Democratic Party in the late 1960s and 1970s radicalized some evangelical leaders.

Their political concerns reviled by the DNC, shut out from main-stream media, Evangelicals had formed a parallel cultural, social, and educational structure. Many Evangelicals, untutored in either Theology or Political Science, were easily directed by para-church leaders to the Republicans. Evangelicals saw the world (and hence the political process) as an arena with good guys and bad guys. People who went to church tended to be good guys. People who said you were an ignorant, snake-handling, redneck for going to church tended to be bad guys. And the more Evangelicals swung rightward, the more the Democrats demonized them. It was a self-reinforcing feedback.

Evangelicals have been Republican's most stalwart base, sticking with the party even when they were marginalized. Since 1984 every Republican presidential candidate has had to have a "born again" story to include in their stump speech. GWB quite frankly has a stem-winder.

Wither "Social Conservatives?" What will 2006 and 2008 bring? I think that rank-and-file social conservatives will vote for a McCain or a Guliani, if they feel that they have a conservative Supreme Court to guard the legacy of their gains of the last 20 years.

Will Democrats be able to tell a convincing narrative to Evangelicals? Perhaps. Gov. Mark R. Warner of Virginia might be able to do so. But to do so he will have to Square the Circle and Untie the Gordian's Knot, both of which I will detail in a later post...

Blasphemy in Narnia

Todd, over at Life on a Pacific Island, has a posting about C.S. Lewis's reservations about live-action versions of the Narnia chronicles. Todd says, essentially that if only Lewis could have seen Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, he would have rested easily.

Here is the relevant passage:

...I am absolutely opposed – adamant isn’t in it! – to a TV version. Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare. At least, with photography. Cartoons (if only Disney did not combine so much vulgarity with his genius!) wld. be another matter. A human, pantomime, Aslan wld. be to me blasphemy.

I think what Lewis is objecting to is the grotesquery of portraying the godhead in pantomime. I feel rather certain that Lewis would never object to the convention of of the masque, or to the portayal of the godhead in passion plays. It is the pantomime that raises his ire.

However, Lewis seems to feel that animation would be an acceptable. And how is Aslan portrayed in the upcoming movie? Digital animation.

I think that Lewis was very close to correct when he uses the phrase "buffoonery or nightmare." I have seen the trailers and, while I saw no buffoonery, the moment when the wolf turns to the camera and speaks is going to be nightmare fodder for many children.

Of course, years from now, small children will see this movie and smile to themselves at the simplicity of the animation, wondering how mother and father could have been at all upset. But the first generation of children seeing this movie in theaters are going to be profoundly impressed by this telling of Narnia.

Happy Birthday, WFB

I love stories about the behind-the-scenes activities that make up a great political campaign. I have an odd sort of soft spot in my heart for the 1964 Republican party who, in nominating Barry Goldwater on the first ballot, showed the world that they would rather be right than be successful. That's why I enjoyed the following anecdote about a wonderfully hare-brained scheme cooked up by William F. Buckly:

William A. Rusher
Connoisseurs of conservative intrigue are largely unaware of a remarkable idea that occurred to Bill Buckley in or about the late spring of 1964. Barry Goldwater was well on his way to amassing the number of delegates that would (and eventually did) assure his nomination for president on the first ballot at the Republican convention in San Francisco in July. But thereafter he would have to face President Lyndon Johnson in the general election in November, and not even Barry’s warmest admirers were very optimistic about his chances of beating the formidable Texan, who had succeeded the martyred John Kennedy just a year earlier.

It was at this point that the ever-inventive Br’er Buckley hit upon an idea that would, to put it mildly, have transformed the campaign: Nominate Dwight Eisenhower as Goldwater’s vice-presidential running mate! No one was eager to be the person to ask Ike (who at this point was three and a half years into his retirement in Gettysburg, PA) for his consent. But Bill, consumed with enthusiasm for the idea, was willing to let that problem slide while amassing support. He consulted constitutional lawyers, who assured him the Constitution didn’t bar the nomination. (The Constitution would prohibit Eisenhower from running again for president, but not for vice president.) And I believe he managed to enlist Admiral Lewis Strauss, one of Washington’s wise men, in the cause.

But that was about as far as the idea got. The scheme turned out to be one of those in which Bill’s awesome ingenuity simply overpowered his political practicality. But what a race it would have been: Goldwater & Eisenhower versus Johnson & Humphrey!

— William Rusher served as publisher of NR from 1957 to 1988.

The link above points to many fond stories about Bill Buckley on the occasion of his 80th birthday.

If I can add my own story. (And why not? This is my blog!) I was a young man, raised in a warm, wonderful family of FDR Democrats. I was taught to properly despise Republicans as the party of the rich. But two things happened:

• First, I got a job and saw what the effect of government spending meant to my working-lad's paycheck.
• Second, I discovered Firing Line and weekly saw the zest, brio, and bonhommie that characterized Buckleyism.

I was heartbroken when Firing Line went off the air, and I have found no replacement with the wit, depth, and plain good manners of it. Today's conservative media folk tend to be too poplulist and too ready to descend to the pit. This method has its rough attractions, but it at best provides new facts to buttress already-held positions, not incisive analysis and persuasion to re-align the viewpoint.

So here's to you, Mr. Buckley! I wish you many happy returns!

Republicans should Worry?

From Instapundit.com:
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WHY THE REPUBLICANS SHOULD BE WORRIED, and the Democrats should be seizing opportunities: Driving in to work this morning, I heard this guy talking on the Hallerin Hill show, and he noted that he votes for the Republicans because of their stance on money and taxes, but that he agrees with the Democrats on a lot of other issues. If the Democrats would just lose their hostility to the idea of people getting rich, he said, they'd have his votes and millions of others.

I think that's probably right -- and I'd guess that Gene Sperling does too. That's why, as I suggested in my column yesterday, it's important that the pro-growth Democrats get a hearing. And while Republicans might prefer that they lose out, the truth is that sooner or later the Dems will be back in, and we'd rather see them sensible on economic matters when they are.

Of course, there's still the whole national-security issue, which for me is more of a dealbreaker than the economics. But I'd like to see more sense on that front, as well. Karl Rove may prefer the Democrats to chase the Democratic Underground vote and marginalize themselves, but I think the country would be better off if they moved in the other direction.

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Now with a highly-touted win by a pro-life, pro-growth Democratic governor in Virginia, perhaps the party can drop its hostility to people of faith, be reclaimed from the MoveOn.org and KosKids loonies, and become a serious rival to the Republicans in 2008.

Or maybe not.

I see insurgencies springing up in both parties in the next few years. In the Republicans, the resurgence of the conservative, small government deficit hawks are breaking from the Bush "compassionate conservative" crowd. But Bush is unable to run again and he won't be able to appoint a successor like Reagan did Bush 41, so the primary process should be a good test of which way the active, engaged voters lean. I don't see "social conservatives" running the tables, though they are a big block and will be tie-breakers.

On the Dem side I see the Blue Dogs sending the moonbats into a frenzy and the moonbats trashing anyone to the right of the late Paul Wellstone in a contest that will test the stretch of the tent fabric. I think that the days of courting the hate vote are ending. Edwards will run again (oh, please!) but will try to decouple himself from the Kerry debacle. Hillary Clinton seems more and more likely.

But until the Dems are able to articulate a foriegn policy and defense policy more comprehensive than, "We were brainwashed by Rove's secret mind rays!" They won't be taken seriously by the majority of the electorate. To me the bellweather is Howard Dean. If he is still running the DNC in late 2006, the Republicans have only themselves to blame if they can't elect Barney Bush.