Month: January 2006

The Republicans are not known for subtle ads. This one sure isn’t. But by focusing on the Patriot Act, rather than the president’s breaking of the FISA law, are they conceding that the NSA issue isn’t quite the slam-dunk they are looking for? Or are the Democrats so unappealing and stupid that the Bush administration rightly calculates it can get away with anything? I guess I’d bet on the latter.

A profile of that Subway guy in the annoying ads. (Hat tip: Tim Cavanaugh.)

A harried parent takes exception to my cereal politics:

"I think many parents would welcome bans on advertising targeting our kids because you just get sick of being the killjoy "no" machine. No, you may not have that cereal, it’s crap. No, we’re not getting pizza from Pizza Hut for dinner. No, we’re not going to get Sunny D instead of OJ. No, you can’t have Lunchables instead of lunch. On days when he gets to watch TV, our relationship is instantly transformed from that of child and provider to child and denier. The kid is being manipulated and you know it ‚Äî and you are too, as a parent, because the advertisers know that you‚Äîor enough of you ‚Äî will eventually cave."

Point taken. But no one said parenting was easy.

How Focus Features keeps humiliating Mickey Kaus.

The original James Frey? Here’s the author of Robinson Crusoe defending himself against the notion that he made any of it up:

"I Robinson Crusoe being at this Time in perfect and sound Mind and Memory, Thanks be to God therefore; do hereby declare, their Objection is an Invention scandalous in Design, and false in Fact; and do affirm, that the Story, though Allegorical, is also Historical; and that it is the beautiful representation of a Life of unexampled Misfortunes, and of a Variety not to be met with in the World, sincerely adapted to, and intended for the common Good of Mankind, and designed at first, as it is now farther apply’d, to the most serious Uses possible.

Farther, that there is a Man alive, and well known too, the Actions of whose Life are the just Subject of these Volumes, and to whom all or most Part of the Story most directly alludes, this may be depended upon for truth, and to this I set my Name."

More reflections here.

Some obvious reflections. On the negative side, we have a clear indication that a majority of Palestinians elected a government dedicated to the destruction of Israel. On the positive side, we have a clear indication that a majority of Palestinians elected a government dedicated to the destruction of Israel. In other words: we’re done with the minuet with duplicitous, double-dealing crypto-terrorists claiming to want a negotiated peace. The good news is that this empowers the Israelis to continue their largely successful policy of unilateral withdrawal and the construction of the wall. It’s also true that Hamas was elected in part to clean up corruption, provide real services, improve law and order, and so on. Now the bluff is called – and Hamas will have to deliver. Democratically accountable governments tend to focus on the state of the sewer system rather than on theological battles with the anti-Christ. All good.

Still: we have no assurance that Hamas will be committed to real democracy when its turn comes to be judged by voters. Fascist movements sometimes come to power democratically, but they rarely submit themselves for re-election. We have also found that democracy is not incompatible with Islamist terror. That’s a big deal. It may be that democratically-elected Islamist maniacs are a necessary stage before a more mature democratic system emerges. All I can say is: that necessary stage also scares the hell out of me. Put Syria, Hamas-run Palestine, Iran, and al Qaeda together and you don’t have an axis of evil. You have an axis of clear and present danger.

According to this imdb thread, she will today. Money quote: "The greatest love story since Gone with the Wind and Titanic. This movie changed my life." I cannot confirm this, so beware. But if it’s true, we have a cultural shift of pretty big proportions. Stay tuned for more details. Or watch the show today.

Two responses to Benedict’s first Encyclical. The first can be found here. Money quote:

Benedict’s understanding of eros is also redeeming; it is explicitly not anti-body and acknowledges that romantic love needn’t be selfless and chaste from the get-go to be positive:

Even if eros is at first mainly covetous and ascending, a fascination for the great promise of happiness, in drawing near to the other, it is less and less concerned with itself, increasingly seeks the happiness of the other, is concerned more and more with the beloved, bestows itself and wants to "be there for" the other.

The second came in an email:

On one hand, Benedict suggests that erotic love is intrinsic to mankind; an immutable desire to (re-)unite in "one flesh" that implicitly parallels the notion (for which Rahner gets a lot of credit) of the immutable desire to enter into a more perfect relationship of love with God. But by spelling this all out in the most literal terms of the Genesis creation narrative, the Pope makes sure we know who is given license for eros, and what kinds of erotic love are natural:

"man is somehow incomplete, driven by nature to seek in another the part that can make him whole; only in communion with the opposite sex can he become ‘complete’ … Adam is a seeker, who ‘abandons his mother and father’ in order to find woman; only together do the two represent complete humanity and become ‘one flesh’. The second aspect is equally important. From the standpoint of creation, eros directs man towards marriage, to a bond which is unique and definitive; thus, and only thus, does it fulfil its deepest purpose."

So all humankind is made complete in marriage. Except, of course, for some.

It’s Mission Accomplished, apparently. Noam Scheiber teases out the implications of an off-hand remark by the worst secretary of defense since McNamara.

Not so easy, it turns out:

Attempting to reformulate Alpha-Bits into a healthier cereal made with 75 percent whole grains and no sugar, Kraft Foods runs into "letter integrity" issues: The whole-oat flour yields an edible alphabet that’s too chunky to read, while the elimination of the sugar coating causes the floating font to break apart more readily. Adding insult to injury, a dining reporter for the New York Times soon weighs in, saying the less-legible cereal "tastes like wet cardboard."

So sue ’em! For the sake of the children.