Category: The Dish

The haunting sights and sounds of  Tanita Tikaram’s "Twist In My Sobriety."

"So hard at best is the lot of man, and so great is the beauty he can apprehend, that only a religious conception of things can take in the extremes and meet the case. Our lifetimes have seen the opening of abysses before which the mind quails. But it seems to me there are a few things everyone can humbly try to hold onto: love and mercy (and humor) in day-to-day living; the quest for exact truth in language and affairs of the intellect; self-recollection or prayer; and the peace, the composed energy of art," – Robert Fitzgerald, Harvard poet and classics translator, from "The Third Kind of Knowledge, Memoirs & Selected Writings."

"[I]t is true that religion on a superficial level, religion that is untrue to itself and God, easily comes to serve as the ‘opium of the people.’ And this takes place whenever religion and prayer invoke the name of God for reasons and ends that have nothing to do with Him.

When religion becomes a mere artificial façade to justify a social or economic system — when religion hands over its rites and language completely to the political propagandist, and when prayer becomes the vehicle for a purely secular ideological program, then religion does tend to become an opiate. It deadens the spirit enough to permit the substitution of a superficial fiction and mythology for the truth of life. And this brings about the alienation of the believer, so that his religious zeal becomes political fanaticism. His faith in God, while preserving its traditional formulas, becomes in fact faith in his own nation, class or race. His ethic ceases to be the law of God and love, and becomes the law of might-makes-right: established privilege justifies everything. God is the status quo," Рthe great American Catholic, Thomas Merton, from his book, "Contemplative Prayer."

A reader writes:

Regarding Olivia Newton-John, your reader uses words written about her grandfather to belittle her. Classy! I will use those same words to point out that her life has "shined with intense beauty" as she has worked tirelessly in the battle against breast cancer.

We all have something to contribute to our age and I do not see the necessity of impugning the contribution of some while elevating the works of others.

One of the greatest songs written in recent years: Leonard Cohen’s "Democracy," from his astonishing album, "The Future." It captures all my hopes for today. And tomorrow. And the day after that. Performed here by Don Henley.

Money quote:

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It’s coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It’s here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it’s here they got the spiritual thirst.
It’s here the family’s broken
and it’s here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It’s coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we’ll be making love again.
We’ll be going down so deep
the river’s going to weep,
and the mountain’s going to shout Amen!
It’s coming like the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious,
in amorous array:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

The "left" and "right" on the Internets: an interesting survey. Bottom line: right now, the moonbats are ascendant in passion. We’ll see if that lasts tonight. No predictions here.

It was remarkably gay, don’t you think? Here’s a much better version of the American Dad clip I posted yesterday. I should add, for the benefit of new readers, that I am not now and never have been a Republican. A conservative? Sure. Gay? Super-gay.

"There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds," – Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Wiki-bio here.

A message from P. Diddy and South Park for election day. (Some obscenities, so don’t click if you don’t appreciate naughty words.)

Another actual reader review:

I was raised in an Irish-Catholic New Deal family, was an undergraduate member of SDS in the 60s and am the least likely fan of your new book; I like adventure. And I am in the middle of reading your excellent book. Imagine my surprise as I was wading through chapter 2 on the fundamentalist psyche and realized it was the best damn description of Christian, Jewish and Muslim fundamentalisms I have ever encountered. 

I appreciate your clarity, honesty and dedication to humane values. I have been searching for a wide ranging but common sense grounded analysis of what makes fundamentalism tick. You have taken that clock apart and put it back together. While I will mostly likely never agree with conservative politics ( I was, for more than 20 years, a legal services attorney ), you have restored my basic faith in the generic decency of most people, regardless of their political allegiance and shaken my view of conservatives as irredeemable right wing reactionaries.