Category: The Dish

A reader notes something:

"It’s funny you should mention today that Bush "tells everyone to go shopping, and that Big Daddy will deal with the enemy and don’t trouble your pretty heads about anything." That is pretty much just what he said today at the Grand Ole Opry crowd: "I knew after September the 11th, people would – they would tend to forget the nature of the enemy and forget the war, because it’s natural.  Who wants to live all your day worried about the next attack? That’s my job, to worry about the attack."

Don’t worry, be happy.  Spend money, indulge, and, most importantly, TRUST ME.

I got a chill, and not the good kind."

A reader writes:

"Are you certain there is no difference between ‚Äúneutral rationality‚Äù and ‚Äúreason as a neutral way of understanding the world?‚Äù  Or perhaps you are misreading what the current pope is saying. Consider this most recent encyclical in light of paragraph #5 of JP II‚Äôs 1998 encyclical ‚ÄúFides et Ratio:‚Äù

5. On her part, the Church cannot but set great value upon reason’s drive to attain goals which render people’s lives ever more worthy. She sees in philosophy the way to come to know fundamental truths about human life… [P]ositive results achieved must not obscure the fact that reason, in its one-sided concern to investigate human subjectivity, seems to have forgotten that men and women are always called to direct their steps towards a truth which transcends them. Sundered from that truth, individuals are at the mercy of caprice, and their state as person ends up being judged by pragmatic criteria based essentially upon experimental data, in the mistaken belief that technology must dominate all.

If you consider Pope Benedict‚Äôs words in light of this and the rest of Fides et Ratio, does the paragraph you cite not take on a different meaning than that which you ascribed to it? In other words, Pope Benedict does not say that we should ignore reason, but that ‚Äúneutral rationality on its own is unable to protect us."  Pope John Paul II, on whose work Pope Benedict builds, did not "attack reason as a neutral way of understanding the world" and neither does Benedict. I am assuming that the current pope means to say, like his predecessor, that reason, "rather than voicing the human orientation towards truth, has wilted under the weight of so much knowledge and little by little has lost the capacity to lift its gaze to the heights, not daring to rise to the truth of being."

That strikes me as a more persuasive reading than mine on that point. Thanks.

It’s back – although it never really went away. Tab, for me, is now bathed in ’80s nostalgia. (I had a recent dip by watching "A Nightmare on Elm Street 4" the other night. Yes: 4.) I have a very vivid memory of a Harvard friend of mine, with whom I’ve lost touch – David, if you’re out there, email me! It was 1985, I think. I went to find my friend who had been in some kind of thesis hell, I seem to recall. His room was full of two things, mainly: dozens of old socks, that had been worn a few dozen times (without ever seeing a detergent), could stand up largely by themselves, and were yellow at the edges; and countless old, empty Tab cans, some crushed, others stagnant, a few actually placed in an orderly pile, ready for consumption. David’s politics at the time made Noam Chomsky look like a neocon. Mine were to the right of Reagan. But we had some of the best fights in my life, jacked up on the old cola. The unique aroma of dried-up Tab cans and encrusted foot odor has never quite left my consciousness since.

"I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people, and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’  I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.

Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood. This sets the stage for further repression and violence, that spreads all too easily to victimize the next minority group.

Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Georgia, and St. Augustine, Florida, and many other campaigns of the civil rights movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions." – Coretta Scott King, in 1999 at the 25th Anniversary luncheon for the Lambda Legal Defense Fund.

"Critics should remember that, in nine tenths of Iraq, peace reigns. Thousands of Iraqi towns and villages are untroubled by insurrection and continue to regard the British and Americans as liberators. They cannot be abandoned to terrorists, fanatics and friends of the defunct dictatorship. To urge that we should go on as we are is an unpopular line of argument. That it is unpopular does not, however, mean it is wrong," – John Keegan, making sense as usual.

The more I think about the president’s use of the "addicted to oil" metaphor last night, and his proposals, the more inappropriate I think it is. A reader puts his finger on exactly what’s wrong:

"Bush’s Addiction Meme precisely encapsulates everything that is wrong with contemporary Republican moralizing. Bush wants to cast the essentially pragmatic problem of our dependence on middle-eastern oil as a moral issue, as if we’re a bunch of crazed junkies. There’s something to be said for this view, but you can’t say it without taking the next step: a junky needs to be told to kick the habit. 

Recovery takes guts, and hard work, and sacrifice. Is that what Bush is asking of the country? Not at all. Should we increase gas taxes, improve fuel efficiency, push for smaller cars? No way. Who then is going to solve our addiction problem? In a word: Big Government. We need a new drug, and Big Gov’s going to invent it, and it’ll be cheaper, all the high without the hangover.  That’s the miracle of government: it keeps you from having to be self-governing.  This is such a neat inversion of everything conservatism is supposed to stand for you’d think the progressives must have invented it, but you’d be wrong."

It’s just a reflection of how this president has all but destroyed conservatism as a governing philosophy. In that respect, it reminds me of his war-management. Energy independence could have been a rallying cry after 9/11. He could have asked for a higher gas tax to pay for the war and prompt the prviate sector to innovate for new energy resources. Instead, he tells everyone to go shopping, and that Big Daddy will deal with the enemy and don’t trouble your pretty heads about anything. When we ask questions, the secrecy mantra slams the door shut. When abuses of power occur, he resorts to the us-or-them meme. You know what? I loathed Kerry. But I backed him in 2004 because I cared about conservatism – and what this president has been doing to it. He has three more years to wreak havoc on what was once a coherent tradition.

A reader responds:

"Your emailer does not speak for all conservatives.
I thought "Crash" was a very good movie and I am going to see "Brokeback" and give it a fair shot (although somehow I doubt the subject of same sex love between lonely ‘pokes on the range will be focused on at the Cowboy Poetry Festival in Elko, Nevada this week). I agree the other movies listed are probably propaganda vehicles for their directors and writers (and generally Hollywood does have its head up its collective ass) – but I will probably check them out on DVD. The Academy Awards are heading down the same road as the Miss America Pageant, but least Murderball got nominated in the documentary category.
But calling you ‘Andypoo,’ where did that come from? It is something John Waters would put in one of his movies."

I don’t know where the "Andypoo" thing came from. People who don’t know me (and my dad) call me "Andy." Somehow they think it’s an insult (except for my dad who has used it since I was in diapers). But I’ve always been an Andrew to everyone else, which came in handy when I dated an Andy. I have to say I liked "Crash" a lot, and as readers may recall, was underwhelmed by "Brokeback." As for "Good Night .." or "Munich," I haven’t seen them yet, and my fiance nags me about it. I tell him I may get too irritated – anyone who knows me knows I’m no fan of Tony Kushner’s politics and have made a point of noting the real communist credentials of many in the black-listed Hollywood years. Still I’ll see the movies on DVD at least. Kushner may be irritating, but he’s not stupid. And any exploration of the moral dilemmas of countering terrorism is worth our time right now. The only films I really won’t sit through are anything by Oliver Stone or Michael Moore. They’re liars and propagandists. Even then, I forced myself through "Fahrenheit 9/11." And heckled it.

Every now and again, you hear how so many feel. A reader writes:

"Sorry to interrupt your daily diatribe against Bush while you ingratiate yourself to your new MSM masters, but did you catch the Oscar nominations? 8 for "Bareback Mounting", you know the gay cowboy movie? Have you heard of it? Well, I just checked the box office totals for this movie (that has been hyped to the gills by every gay shill in the media, including you, which is a considerable since most gays gravitate to the entertainment industry). Guess what: it fell fourteen percent last weekend.

And get this: the five best movie nominees, Capote (gay nihilist), Syrianna (US sucks and is corrupt), Brokeback Mountain (gay cowboys, uuuhhhh, yeah, right), Good Night and Good Luck (conservatives suck and there were never communists in the government no matter what those pesky Venona Papers say), Munich (hey, terrorists have feelings too), and Crash (LA is full of racist whiteys) have grossed a total of $186,000,000. That’s $75 million less than Narnia. Good call Hollywood. Nominate 5 movies that nobody has seen or cares about. And you and the rest of your idiot friends wonder why nobody is going to the movies.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again Andypoo: keep it up. Live in your fantasy world and keep pissing off the rest of us bumpkins. And we’ll keep solidly supporting anybody but you idiot liberals. And BTW, stop with the conservative nonsense. You aren’t one and we don’t appreciate you posing as one and pretending you represent us. Any moron who would vote for Kerry deserves to have to sit through two hours of that mindless and nonsensical RumpWrangler Mounting.

Er, thanks.

Veronique de Rugy, my favorite budget-cruncher, adds up how much of your money the president vowed to spend last night. Oy.