Marilyn Monroe's Corner on Hollywood's Walk of Fame

Marilyn Monroe is getting some media buzz with the 50th anniversary of her death. The name and the memory really is as big as ever, about as iconic as Elvis.

Today’s news item is a petition to have her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame moved to a more desirable neighborhood. As the article puts it: “This particular location on the Walk of Fame is narrow, littered with spilled food and drink, and crowded with threatening and aggressive panhandlers.” They want her star moved to the front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater, “one of her favorite places”.

But I don’t know. I wouldn’t veto the movie certainly. Yet, I cannot help thinking that there is something fitting about her star being on some trashy real estate amid the litter, the ruffians, and the used condoms. The way she was sexually used and abused throughout her life - from childhood, and while she climbed the ladder of fame, and by the president of the United States, Jack Kennedy, and by his brother Bobby, as well as the baseball star, and who knows who all else - she could be seen as one of America’s most celebrated whores. It was a tough life, and that her star on the Walk of Fame should be treated so shabbily seems darkly poetic.

(Source: ONTD)

Marilyn Monroe's Corner on Hollywood's Walk of Fame

Marilyn Monroe is getting some media buzz with the 50th anniversary of her death. The name and the memory really is as big as ever, about as iconic as Elvis.

Today’s news item is a petition to have her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame moved to a more desirable neighborhood. As the article puts it: “This particular location on the Walk of Fame is narrow, littered with spilled food and drink, and crowded with threatening and aggressive panhandlers.” They want her star moved to the front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater, “one of her favorite places”.

But I don’t know. I wouldn’t veto the movie certainly. Yet, I cannot help thinking that there is something fitting about her star being on some trashy real estate amid the litter, the ruffians, and the used condoms. The way she was sexually used and abused throughout her life - from childhood, and while she climbed the ladder of fame, and by the president of the United States, Jack Kennedy, and by his brother Bobby, as well as the baseball star, and who knows who all else - she could be seen as one of America’s most celebrated whores. It was a tough life, and that her star on the Walk of Fame should be treated so shabbily seems darkly poetic.

(Source: ONTD)

You

"You are the books you read, the films you watch, the music you listen to, the people you meet, the dreams you have, the conversations you engage in. You are what you take from these. You are the sound of the ocean, the breath of fresh air, the brightest light and the darkest corner. You are a collective of every experience you have had in your life. You are every single day. So drown yourself in a sea of knowledge and existence."

-- Unknown

I think that is a great quote, but I cannot get a source. Even Google will only lead me to a Facebook profile that contains this paragraph, but I have a hard time believing that this does not come from a big name.

You

"You are the books you read, the films you watch, the music you listen to, the people you meet, the dreams you have, the conversations you engage in. You are what you take from these. You are the sound of the ocean, the breath of fresh air, the brightest light and the darkest corner. You are a collective of every experience you have had in your life. You are every single day. So drown yourself in a sea of knowledge and existence."

-- Unknown

I think that is a great quote, but I cannot get a source. Even Google will only lead me to a Facebook profile that contains this paragraph, but I have a hard time believing that this does not come from a big name.

The Sky and the Water

The Sky and the Water

If You Don't Make the Rapture Cut

(Source: PolitiCartoons)

If You Don't Make the Rapture Cut

(Source: PolitiCartoons)

Of Western Culture and Christianity

“I do not think that there is any hope for the world or my country unless men can come to regard themselves as members of a common brotherhood. But the brotherhood of man is philosophically meaningless and practically unattainable except in the light of the universal Fatherhood of God…. The denial of the fatherhood of God is the root from which spring quite naturally the various heresies which have afflicted the species in our time, the doctrine of race and of class, the worship of the State, the philosophy of dialectical materialism, or the more pragmatic and not less popular creeds of Get-rich-quick, or All’s-fair-in-love-and-war.”

-- Quintin Hogg, “The Case for Conservatism” (1947)

In a fairly recent post, we were discussing the ebbing of liberal Christianity, and I posed the question: ‘Why call yourself a Christian if you cannot even accept the divinity of Christ and the hope of heaven?’ The quote at the top is linked to a book review that is squarely on point. In fact, the book is titled “Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians” by Marcello Pera.

And the answer seems to be that in the teachings of Christ we have the key foundational ideas that have undergirded Western civilization: the idea of equality as suited to beings all created in the image of God. Even if one cannot believe in the supernaturally imbued creed of divinity and afterlives, it is culturally beneficial to accept the message of Christianity; more than beneficial, it is culturally necessary.

The rebuttal, of course, is that the culture was not that wonderful when it was heavily and even fundamentalist in its Christianity - slavery, inquisitions, and people could still be cruel to each other. And we know that people can lead good, noble lives without religion. As the kids say, we don’t need to believe that God is love; it is enough to know that love is love.

Besides, at this point in our history, I think the only way that Christianity can regain that much of its former identity is through state coercion, by enforcing Christianity as a state religion. And that truly runs contrary to our developed sense of freedom and equality.

Of Western Culture and Christianity

“I do not think that there is any hope for the world or my country unless men can come to regard themselves as members of a common brotherhood. But the brotherhood of man is philosophically meaningless and practically unattainable except in the light of the universal Fatherhood of God…. The denial of the fatherhood of God is the root from which spring quite naturally the various heresies which have afflicted the species in our time, the doctrine of race and of class, the worship of the State, the philosophy of dialectical materialism, or the more pragmatic and not less popular creeds of Get-rich-quick, or All’s-fair-in-love-and-war.”

-- Quintin Hogg, “The Case for Conservatism” (1947)

In a fairly recent post, we were discussing the ebbing of liberal Christianity, and I posed the question: ‘Why call yourself a Christian if you cannot even accept the divinity of Christ and the hope of heaven?’ The quote at the top is linked to a book review that is squarely on point. In fact, the book is titled “Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians” by Marcello Pera.

And the answer seems to be that in the teachings of Christ we have the key foundational ideas that have undergirded Western civilization: the idea of equality as suited to beings all created in the image of God. Even if one cannot believe in the supernaturally imbued creed of divinity and afterlives, it is culturally beneficial to accept the message of Christianity; more than beneficial, it is culturally necessary.

The rebuttal, of course, is that the culture was not that wonderful when it was heavily and even fundamentalist in its Christianity - slavery, inquisitions, and people could still be cruel to each other. And we know that people can lead good, noble lives without religion. As the kids say, we don’t need to believe that God is love; it is enough to know that love is love.

Besides, at this point in our history, I think the only way that Christianity can regain that much of its former identity is through state coercion, by enforcing Christianity as a state religion. And that truly runs contrary to our developed sense of freedom and equality.