“The legacy of Harry Potter in popular culture remains to be seen – those who’d burn the books as demonic are encouraged to get library cards pronto – but at present, despite its sophomoric awkwardness, the film of Chamber of Secrets is a welcome delivery of childlike wonder for a planet of ever-increasing ugliness. We’ve accidentally allowed a retarded monkey to rule America, but otherwise it’s not such a whimsical place. Perhaps works like this can help set that to rights.” – Gregory Weinkauf, Dallas Observer. What must it feel like to lose an election to a retarded monkey?
AHNOLD THE EAGLE: Schwarzenegger is surely the Eagle candidate par excellence. He claims that he’s very socially liberal, backs legalized abortion, some gun control measures and gay adoption. But he’s a foreign policy hawk and a small government conservative. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the real Kennedy comeback was via an Austrian steroidal import?
ARE YOU HOT? A new sign of where television is headed: a TV version of the online “Am I Hot or Not?”. One suggestion to the producers. Can you add a gay man and a lesbian to your panels of judges? It would enliven the show, add new perspectives, and help show straight men, for example, that it’s not so terrifying to be viewed as a sexually attractive human being by another guy. (By the way: I’ve been overwhelmed with some eye-opening emails on gays-and-straights in the military. I’m putting together a piece tying them together. I hope to post it soon. Thanks for your candor.)
THE YOUNG AND WAR: I’ve been impressed by George W. Bush’s support among the young. Maybe it’s not as anomalous as I thought. Here’s a study by blogger Jim Miller that shows how the young were consistently more supportive of the Vietnam War than their elders – throughout the conflict.
LEFTWING DEPRAVITY WATCH: Ted Rall does it again.
SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “The nation is faced with ‘a fascist takeover of the American government,’ Stahl says. The Bush administration is colluding with corporations to use the war to hold its grip on power, Stahl says. ‘It’s a way to keep the citizenry repressed,’ he says.” – professor Frank Stahl of the University of Oregon, quoted in the Eugene Weekly. Stahl, by the way, won one of the coveted “leftist genius” awards from the MacArthur Foundation.
WHAT CONSERVATIVES MISS TODAY: My Bradley lecture, given earlier this month, has just been transcribed by the American Enterprise Institute. It’s posted here. It’s about the relevance of Michael Oakeshott to contemporary conservatism. A couple of caveats: especially in the question and answer section, this is obviously not a vetted scholarly text. My only notes – apart from quotes – were scribbled on a postcard. I hope to nail it down and turn it into a real essay this winter. Until then, please treat the lecture as an extemporaneous work-in-progress. And forgive occasional grammatical (and other) errors. Here’s a pull-quote:
What I think modern conservatives sometimes miss in their legitimate calls for morality and the need for human beings as personalities and as people to live up to certain moral norms is also the joy of character, or personality, of the things that make us love another person. We don’t always love another person because he or she is virtuous. We sometimes love another person because of their faults. We love them because of their idiosyncracies. And yet it takes, often, until the memorial service before we actually acknowledge this particular reality. And Oakeshott saw that love of humanity in all its difference as one of the critical projects of a liberal political order. He looked around at people and saw them as things to be cherished, in contrast to those who would look at human beings and see them as something to be corrected or corralled or instructed or uplifted or informed.
This is the real conservative definition of diversity … the joyous variety of humankind, the beautiful difference that exists in our culture and the ability to cherish difference without being panicked by the possibility of inequality.
MOORE’S LIES: A Spinsanity take-down of Michael Moore that’s well worth absorbing. The usually sober authors describe Moore as someone who “uses lies, distortions, and nonsensical arguments to mask cheap attacks and promote his own political agenda.” Not exactly news, of course.
WHAT WOULD JESUS DRIVE? I asked for it. One reader posited that Jesus favored a certain Eastern bloc auto. As in John 8:11, where Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn Yugo.” Others found evidence of Old Testament bias in favor of an old Hudson Hornet: “I will send Hornets before you,” God promised in Exodus 23:28. Then there was this effort:
Moses drove an Acura which he kept in excellent condition, since when he died, “his sight was unimpaired and his Vigor had not abated.” It is clear that Pharaoh did not keep his Dodge in the garage during bad weather, for after his famous dreams, “in the morning his Spirit was troubled.” Dodges were very popular among the entire populace in ancient Egypt, since when Moses asked the Israelites to pack into their car and leave Egypt, “they would not listen to Moses because of their broken Spirit.” The Dodge continued to be the car of the upper class right through turn of the century Jerusalem, when the priests and scribes “conspired to arrest Jesus by Stealth.” The apostles could not afford Dodges, however, and had to make due with Hyundais, as evidenced by the fact that Peter was identified as a follower of Jesus when the bystanders said to him, “Certainly you are also one of them, for your Accent betrays you.” God himself likes to give Mazdas as gifts, proof of which is that in Numbers 31, “Moses gave the Tribute, the offerring for the Lord, to Eleazar the priest, as the Lord had commanded.” For his own wheels, God drives a Plymouth when he wages war, as the prophet Zechariah proclaimed, “Then the Lord will appear over them, and his Arrow will go forth like lightning.” But there can be no doubt that when God is in the mood for a nice leisurely drive, nothing but a Rolls Royce Silver Dawn will suffice, which makes him the envy of world leaders as Isaiah makes quite clear when he says of the Lord, “Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your Dawn.”
No more. Please.
The Dish 