Monk

The professional right has made a big business out of pretending that TV and the rise of gay culture and rap music and dozens of other things have contributed to the fall of a once greatly moral nation, all the while seeming to forget that Thomas Jefferson is known to have taken sexual advantage of his slaves and Benjamin Franklin is believed by some to have been part of a drunken orgy club. It may make you feel nice to pretend that the societies that gave rise to the modern world were ones of pure honor and decency, but that’s not reality. The world isn’t on a moral decline, because there was never a time when the world was particularly morally superior.

-- Cord Jefferson

It is hard to fight against Mayberry and other such fabled notions of the past. Then, again, when speaking of the Republicans, these people now tend to be the people who generally prefer fantasies, such as that of man living with the dinosaurs, not to mentions angels and a white-bearded God among the stars and virgin births and their secured place in heaven.

"I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion."

-- Newt Gingrich

And it's not like our Christian fundamentalists have shown the least interest in controlling government and imposing their beliefs on the rest of - oh, wait... Sorry about that. Back to your regularly scheduled programming. Here, have some Elvis:

Gail Collins, in her column today, in the happy afterglow of Obama's election, seems to offer a response to the We Generation message, speaking up for the Me Generation of the baby-boomers:

Finally, on behalf of the baby-boom generation, I would like to hear a little round of applause before we cede the stage to the people who were too young to go to Woodstock and would appreciate not having to listen to the stories about it anymore. It looks as though we will be represented in history by only two presidents, one of whom is George W. Bush. Bummer.

The boomers didn’t win any wars and that business about being self-involved was not entirely unfounded. On the other hand, they made the nation get serious about the idea of everybody being created equal. And now American children are going to grow up unaware that there’s anything novel in an African-American president or a woman running for the White House.

We’ll settle for that.

And they had a really good time protesting for equality, too, along with all that free love - good drugs helped! Just watch out for that bad acid.

"French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States” by Francois Cusset

Stanley Fish applies his dialectical gifts on DECONSTRUCTION and the language of social constructs, in his review of the above book, which might be a good brain-buzz while remaining within the comprehension of a modest Liberal Arts student. I'm mostly convinced that I definitely need to get Fish's book on Paradise Lost.

The book is supposedly a defense of deconstruction against its uses as a political weapon, with Cusset maintaining that it is merely a critical perspective. However, I can see why conservatives would be more up in arms over deconstruction. After all, this is the party that holds more faithfully to the idea of self-evident truths, especially as embodied in the American way with its honoring of rights and property, and which is therefore more likely to be aggrieved by a discipline which denies knowable truths and holds all truths to be convenient creations.

Even so, I suppose the answer is to distinguish between philosphy and politics. Free-spirited inquiry befits philosophical investigations. Propositions that get stamped with the force of law through our democratic processes are another matter. Although the relationship between philosophy and politics may become more or less volatile at different times, I don't see anything inconsistent in this distinction. We can debate furiously over truths, and we can respect and abide the outcomes of our democratic contests.

( Fish )

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I like to remind people who long for bipartisanship that FDR's drive to create Social Security was as divisive as Bush's attempt to dismantle it. And we got Social Security because FDR wasn't afraid of division. In his great Madison Square Garden speech, he declared of the forces of "organized money": "Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred."

-- Paul Krugman for Slate.com

It's funny to come across Krugman away from the New York Times. His ink well overfloweth. In his call to arms for liberals, we can also see here why he is not interested in Obama's candidacy with it's 'above the fray' pretensions.

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I'm glad I read the review. Being behind on my news rounds, I was going to pass over it. The book is titled "The Abstinence Teacher" and I have had enough of this culture war stuff. I decided to give it a quick skim, and this was the first paragraph:

Children, even good children, hide some part of their private lives from their parents; and parents, having been young and furtive themselves, remember the impulse. So when Ruth Ramsey, the divorced 41-year-old mother who is the protagonist of Tom Perrotta’s new novel, “The Abstinence Teacher,” learns that her teenage daughter, Eliza (who could be a grumpy, pimply poster child for “The Awkward Years”), has concealed a book from her, she’s not surprised. “She must have kept it hidden in a drawer or under a mattress,” she reflects — just as she herself once hid books like “The Godfather” and “The Happy Hooker.” But the book Eliza has been keeping under wraps is not a pulp fiction fable of vice and libertinage: it’s the Bible. And Eliza has yet another secret to spring on her mother: she and her little sister, Maggie, want to start going to church. To Ruth, a tolerant, progressive sex-ed teacher, her daughters’ embrace of “Goody Two-Shoes Christianity” comes as a slap in the face. “I don’t think you’re a born-again, fundamentalist, evangelical, nut-job Christian,” she tells Eliza, not imagining she would disagree. “I believe in God,” Eliza stubbornly replies. “And I believe that Jesus is His only son, and that He died on the cross for my sins.”

Christian fundamentalism is overtaking an American community. It looks like a winner. I may get around to it this winter.


(Source: Liesl Schillinger for The New York Times)

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Stanley Fish has a fun little piece in the Times on country music. In the process, we get a little glimpse of Red State culture. I suppose this is also where Fred Thompson is getting a lot of his electoral love these days, so long as the actor can act country.

( Fish )

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I thought I was the only one sick of non-competitive sports days and playgrounds where it's practically impossible to hurt yourself. It turned out that the pendulum is swinging back at last. Boys are different from girls. Teaching them as though they are girls who don't wash as much leads to their failure in school, causing trouble all the way. Boys don't like group work. They do better on exams than they do in coursework, and they don't like class discussion. In history lessons, they prefer stories of Rome and of courage to projects on the suffragettes.

-- Conn Iggulden for The Washington Post

Mr. Iggulden is the author of "The Dangerous Book for Boys". It has been taken up in our culture wars with respect to education and gender. Boys have been lagging in school these years, and Iggulden represents the approach that part of the reason may be that school has become too sissified. You can perhaps appreciate the controversy. He opens this column with a boysy story:

When I was 10, I founded an international organization known as the Black Cat Club. My friend Richard was the only other member. My younger brother, Hal, had "provisional status," which meant that he had to try out for full membership every other week. We told him we would consider his application if he jumped off the garage roof -- about eight feet from the ground. He had a moment of doubt as he looked over the edge, but we said it wouldn't hurt if he shouted the words "Fly like an eagle!" When he jumped, his knees came up so fast that he knocked himself out. I think the lesson he learned that day was not to trust his brother, which is a pretty valuable one for a growing lad.

Boys will be boys...

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We have seen the French taking a surprising conservative turn in their politics with the election of Sarkozy, and now it looks like even the ever-free Netherlands are taking a sharp rightward turn, led by a Christian party no less. It seems that we are seeing a general reaction for the Western nations to shore up their traditions and identity.

Although there is something to be said about being more conscious of your cultural roots and what Western civilization means, I certainly think one has to be concerned about going so far back that you find yourself again in medieval territory. In your defensiveness, you don't want to become more like the Taliban even if in Christian dress.

( article )

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