If you’ve spent much time around the newly graduated, you’ll find something striking about this younger generation. They have a new religion. It’s called “sensitivity.” There are plenty of things wrong in human conduct, but by far the greatest sin is “insensitivity.” Anything that could faintly unsettle, upset, disturb, unnerve or discombobulate another person according to the Litany of offenses – ethnic, religious, sexual, etc. – must be excised from speech and thought. The reductio ad absurdum of this new creed is to be found in New York States Regents’ Exams for graduating high school students. In the New York Times yesterday, we found out that even Isaac Bashevis Singer and Anton Chekhov have been bowdlerized to conform to the new faith. Their writing has been gutted of any conflict, ethnic references, sexual innuendo, and even hedonistic mentions of wine. It’s so clarifying when all the fusty puritanisms of new left and old right combine. According to the bureaucrat defending this violation of literature, “The changes are made to satisfy the sensitivity guidelines the department uses, so no student will be ‘uncomfortable in a testing situation.'” Doesn’t she understand that making students uncomfortable is the point of education? It’s precisely when we read something offensive or strange or alien that we start to think, to put ourselves and our myopic lives into a broader context. What our education system is now attempting to do is therefore literally instill incuriosity into children, a stultifying, inoffensive, comfortable state in which all the difficult conflicts of the modern world are conflated into anodyne pabulum. Thank God there are some feisty people with brains ready to expose and fight this. Thank God also for Cathy Popkin, Lionel Trilling professor in the humanities at Columbia. She wrote the Regents: “I implore you to put a stop to the scandalous practice of censoring literary texts, ostensibly in the interest of our students. It is dishonest. It is dangerous. It is an embarrassment. It is the practice of fools.” But the fools are now running a large part of the educational asylum.
WOOF WOOF: Here’s what the dust jacket says about “My Dog Tulip,” June’s Book Club Selection:
“J.R. Ackerley’s German shepherd Tulip was skittish, possessive, and wild, but he loved her deeply. This clear-eyed and wondering, humorous and moving book, described by Christopher Isherwood as one of the “great masterpieces of animal literature,” is her biography, a work of faultless and respectful observation that transcends the seeming modesty of its subject. In telling the story of his beloved Tulip, Ackerley has written a book that is a profound and subtle meditation on the strangeness abiding at the heart of all relationships.”
Ackerley was, in his day, one of the most celebrated literary impresarios in London. As editor of the Listener, he published some of the finest prose and poetry of his time. But arguably his greatest achievement was this small classic, arguably the greatest book about a dog ever written. Why pick it? I needed a break from carbon dioxide. And I have to say that this modest little story gave me as much pleasure as any book I have ever read. It’s a book I always recommend to friends, and have never been disappointed in their response. It’s about a dog, but as all dog-owners know, that hardly limits its purview. It’s about love and its mysterious, weird forms. It’s about a real relationship between man and beast that somehow transcends every other relationship this particular man has ever had. It’s about the indignities of being mortal, about fluids and solids, about mating and fighting, about devotion and sexuality. It’s also screamingly funny. I’ve rarely laughed out loud uncontrollably in public spaces by myself, but this book had me sputtering coffee, choking on french fries, and alarming fellow passengers on airplanes. In a strange way, I also found this book a beautiful meditation on freedom; and how such freedom might even be thought of as applying to lesser creatures than men. It brought up a lot of experiences I have had with my own beagle and helped deepen my respect for the lessons she has taught me. What will we discuss? The relationship between animals and humans, the forms of love, the wonder of dogs. Add your own dog experiences and meditations to the mix. If you’ve found the more recent books a little hard to get through, this one you won’t. So join up now. We’ll start discussing it in a couple of weeks.
JEW, JEW: Woody Allen and Ed Koch go at it over the French and anti-Semitism. This is a normal media cycle. After a while, Leon Wieseltier will write a diarist, and everything will be clear.
PRE-EMPTION: This is the new doctrine for American foreign policy. It needs to be. No responsible American administration can simply sit and wait until a rogue terrorist or terrorist state prepares to use weapons of mass destruction, or just weapons of destruction against citizens of the United States. Perhaps president Bush realizes that many of us need reassurance that he hasn’t gone soft or lost focus. Or perhaps it’s part of a concerted campaign to prepare the public for war. Whatever, it’s a highly impressive speech – yet another one. Still, and I never thought I’d say this about a Bush administration, eloquence is one thing. What we need to see now is action – reform of the agencies that have been too passive in the past, and preparation for taking out the biggest single threat to our security, Saddam.
MODO AWOL?: Maureen Dowd gets the blogger treatment from the Judd Brothers.
DID THEY USE BOX-CUTTERS? The often invaluable Edward Jay Epstein lays out the case for skepticism.
FRIEDMAN GETS IT: He’s quietly something of a heretic at the Times op-ed page. Now, he’s another voice understanding the importance of Pim Fortuyn. It’s time we started challenging Muslims about the unreconstructed hostility to liberal institutions in their religion. And those who do shouldn’t be intimidated by phony accusations of bias. These questions must be asked. Good for Tom for broaching the subject.
FISK AND PEARL: Weird detail in Robert “Please Beat Me Up” Fisk’s recent piece complaining about death threats from John Malkovich. (Yes, it’s a funny old world, isn’t it?) Here’s something a reader caught in the text:
But the e-mails that poured into The Independent over the next few days bordered on the inflammatory. The attacks on America were caused by “hate itself, of precisely the obsessive and dehumanising kind that Fisk and Bin Laden have been spreading,” said a letter from a Professor Judea Pearl of UCLA. I was, he claimed, “droolin
g venom” and a professional “hate peddler”.
Is Fisk aware that Daniel Pearl’s father is called Judea and works at UCLA? And that when he hears people like Fisk supporting the hatred and anti-Semitic violence of Islamist terrorists, he might have good reason to be outraged?
GOODBYE! GOOD BOOK: Another fair – and devastating – review of the theocons’ favorite book, “Goodbye! Good Men,” which blames the Church’s current crisis on a conspiracy of ‘liberals and homosexuals.’
A MOSQUE AT GROUND ZERO: A rabbi proposes.
The Dish 