Category: The Dish

Issaqua, Washington, 6.05 pm.

A reader writes:

Your post reminded me of this:

Perhaps the shortest telegram exchange involved author Oscar Wilde when he was in Paris. He sent this wire to his publisher in England to see how Wilde’s new book was selling:

?

The reply was equally succinct:

!

Update: another source attributes this to Victor Hugo.

I just got wind of Michel Gondry’s next movie, "The Science of Sleep." If you don’t know of Gondry’s work, you really should. His music videos are astonishingly inventive, complex, playful and visually original. "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" was superb. His single video for the Rolling Stones is one of my all-time faves. He did Kylie proud too. I subject most friends to them at some point or other. The movie’s out September 22.

A reader responds to the Washington post testimonial I linked to yesterday:

I agree Andrew, that letter does speak to many American Catholics and I think that’s unfortunate. It is frustrating. It, the tribalism it reveals, is dangerous. There is only one reason that I remain a Catholic and it ain’t for the lively sermons. I believe what the Church claims to be, that it is THE Church founded by Christ, that the Eucharist really is the body and blood of Christ, that we – Catholics – are united as family because we share this blood.  What the Church claims is radical, but after much research, thought, and discussion I am left with no alternative. I am not a conservative Catholic or a liberal Catholic … just a Catholic.

I understand, on one level anyway, what that letter writer means. I have met many people like her. There are throngs. Catholicism is very sensual. You hear the prayers of consecration, you smell the incense, you feel the holy water, you see the advent wreath, you hold the palms on Passion Sunday. It, the faith, becomes part of you. However, I could not raise my children – and I have five – in any denomination that taught things about which I had grave reservations.

Well, of course, it depends on the nature of the reservations. Humans being humans, we have thoughts and doubts and questions and consciences. many Catholics may conscientiously differ from the Church hierarchy on less fundamental matters and still remain within the Church, as far as I’m concerned. My basic rule is the creed we recite at the Mass. If you can say that with no reservations, and seek a good conscience on all the rest, you’re a Catholic as far as I’m concerned.

A musical interlude – by Joel Guzman (not the baseball player), in an inspired improvization on the accordion.

Mystery Pollster crunches the Lieberman-Lamont numbers. Mid-summer primary polls have been way off in the past.

Dahlia Lithwick homes in on why Justice Anthony Kennedy is such an important figure for the future of conservatism:

[I]n spite of the lofty intellectualism and the big words, this speech captures my imagination and that of the assembled crowd for its two quintessential Kennedy traits. The first is the vast sprawl of his imaginative world. He travels the planet and reads widely and he attends lectures on water purification. Then he applies all that knowledge to his conception of the law. And whether you like that expansive scope, listening to him is still a tonic to the smallness and smug certainty that has characterized our political leadership in this country for the past six years. It offers a welcome break from the hermetically sealed constitutional worldview of some of his detractors. Kennedy is a legendary agonizer. But his comments here reveal the extent to which that agony is not an end in itself. His sense of justice and equality is a work in progress, informed by what he learns from people all over the planet who know more than he does. There’s something reassuring in his sense that the world is a fluid place.

That sense – of the fluidity and inconstancy of everything – is the mark of a particular kind of conservative, an Oakeshottian attempt to find balance in doubt, and freedom in the minimal constraints of a rule of law that is as neutral between varying claims as possible. It is so different from the theological certainty that now passes for conservative doctrine. But "conservative doctrine" is an oxymoron. The point of political conservatism as I understand it is that it offers no doctrine, just the wisdom of a tradition resting, provisionally, on doubt.

Today’s the day. Full recrimination coverage later.

It’s revealing of so much:

Tom Ricks, author of "Fiasco": I asked one officer why are you talking to me about these things, and he looked down at his hands, and he said because I have the blood of American troops on my hands. And I said what do you mean? And he said because when I said to Rumsfeld we need that division, and Rumsfeld said no, I gave up. I compromised. And he said U.S. troops died because of that. And he said that’s why I’m talking to you.

Hugh Hewitt: And you can’t name him, though?

TR: No.

HH: Well, you’ll pardon me, Tom, Mr. Ricks.

TR: And he was practically crying as he spoke to me about this.

HH: Yeah, I’m just not going to buy that.

So Hewitt accuses Ricks of lying. Because if the truth about Rumsfeld’s criminal incompetence has to compete with Hewitt’s "no-mistakes-were-made" Caeasarism, then the facts be damned and the reporter’s a liar. Ricks or Hewitt? Reality or ideology? I link. You choose. A reader notes another quote from Hewitt, which is just as revealing. He seems to believe that all the criticism of this botched war is due to some sort of conspiracy:

The "money quote," as you say, is this from Hewitt:

"A cadre of Clinton-era senior brass, who did not see it coming, it being the Islamist world war, got bitter and angry at having been passed over and pushed aside by the 9/11, post-9/11 Pentagon, and they have spent the next five years doing their best to undermine this administration, using reporters like you who are good, to carry out that story, and amplify every mistake, and there are many, and to downgrade every success, and there are many, in a continued war against the people who tossed them out, and perhaps against their own conscience for not having seen it coming. Your response?"

Throughout the interview, Hewitt deals with the overwhelming evidence that he is wrong by, first, using a quibble about some fraction of the evidence (here, that some of the sources are anonymous) to cast doubt on all of it; and second, by accusing everyone of pursuing the same kind of partisan agenda that he himself is. There are no facts, to him. There is just a fight, and if you say something that supports the other side, you’re on it.

Here’s Ricks’ response:

"It is not partisan, it is not a bunch of burn-out generals. It is the military trying to do the best it can in an extremely difficult situation. And to disregard it and slap it aside, if you’ll excuse me, I think is aiding and abetting the enemy."

Finally Ricks is giving Hewitt the medicine he so regularly dishes out to others. I think of Hewitt as an American version of Baghdad Bob – you remember, the guy who insisted that U.S. forces were defeated even as U.S. shells were pounding in Baghdad behind him. No, I don’t mean the analogy literally – just in so far as it reflects the Christianist inability to deviate from received dogma, even when confronted with empirical reality. Hewitt is a very smart, completely partisan propagandist. Once you understand that, the rest fits into place.

Chicago, Illinois, 7 pm.