Tag: Ross Douthat

First off, thanks to Andrew for having us on – though I’m skeptical that our host will actually be able to lay off the blogging over the next couple weeks, looming book deadline or no. (He’s done, what, five posts in the hour since he announced his semi-hiatus?) And in the spirit of the season, I’ll start by agreeing with him about the Christmas wars – the only thing more annoying than the killjoys who want to keep creches off town greens is listening to Bill O’Reilly or John Gibson rant about how it’s all part of an insidious plot, cooked up in some secret lair where Barry Lynn, John Shelby Spong and the editorial board of the New York Times gather to guzzle eggnog and plan the destruction of all that is good and holy. To the extent that the real meaning (or the “original intent,” if you will) of the season has suffered serious damage, the PC nonsense is just a flesh wound – the real de-Christianization of Christmas is being carried out, as it has been for some time, by the frenetic pace of modern life, and the crassifying tendencies of commerce. I’m all for public acknowledgment of the holiday, and all against the fashionable mult-culti silliness that’s more comfortable talking up minor Jewish holidays and defunct pagan observances than admitting that we’re mainly celebrating Christ’s birth at this time of year. But what does it say about the state of American Christianity that we’re being asked to rise in righteous fury over the number of references to Christmas on Wal-Mart’s website?

(Of course, if you’re an Ayn Rand devotee, this could be taken as a sign that things are proceeding exactly according to plan . . .)

Still, there’s a reason that the Fox News conspiracy-mongering touches a nerve, and it’s encapsulated by the latest New Yorker, where Hendrik Hertzberg passes a page or two in mocking Gibson and O’Reilly, and then cedes the floor to Laura Miller’s profile of Philip Pullman. Why profile Pullman, an author whose last book was released three years ago? Because he hates C.S. Lewis’s Narnia, of course – or rather, Narnia specifically and Christianity generally – and because Narnia and its themes are on everyone’s lips these days. Inevitably, the profile is glowing, if not worshipful: Pullman’s assertions go unchallenged, his motivations go unplumbed, and there’s no hint that his militant atheism lends his fiction precisely the lecturing, bullying, force-feeding quality that he claims to dislike so much in the Narnia books. (And who, after all, could object to a writer whose “fundamental objection is to ideological tyranny”?) Whereas of course when the New Yorker dealt with poor benighted Lewis a few weeks ago, the essay was all about how nice and swell the Narnia books are, but how much better they would have been if it hadn’t been for all that annoying dogmatic stuff – and by the way, did we mention that Lewis had a “weird and complicated sex life”? Oh, and Merry Christmas.

The New Yorker is just a microcosm, but the larger reality is that while there isn’t a war against Christmas, there is a significant chunk of this country – the most educated chunk, the chunk that runs the high-minded magazines and writes for the big newspapers and makes most of the movies (the sudden interest in the Christian market notwithstanding) and teaches at the major universities and generally controls the commanding heights of the culture – that doesn’t much care for Christianity, at least if it’s practiced seriously and its basic dogmas are left intact. This reality is what drives the siege mentality among many Christians, and the popularity of O’Reilly-style conspiracy theorizing – the awareness that our majority-Christian country is saddled, for some reason, with an elite that approaches religious belief with a mix of bemusement, ignorance, and fear.

Of course the other side, the secular elite, feels under siege as well – they’re in the minority, they don’t control the the government, they thought we were past all that Christianity stuff, and they can’t quite understand why a twenty-first century educated class should have to put up with a bunch of benighted yahoos who buy tickets to The Passion of the Christ and elect Presidents like George W. Bush. (The Europeans don’t have to deal with this kind of nonsense, after all . . .) So everybody feels disempowered, and everybody has a point – which is why the Christmas wars are fake, but the culture war is real.

– posted by Ross

Okay, I’m done sorting my longtime personal secretary’s books and it’s back to the blogosphere with me. Seriously, I don’t know how Andrew does this everyday. Just keeping up with the email is killing me-don’t get me wrong, You People. I’m enjoying the hell out of this. I’m even enjoying the hate mail-and, I’m sorry haters, but you’ll have to work a bit harder if you want me to lock myself in the bathroom and cry. I get hate mail every day at Savage Love, my syndicated sex advice column, that puts the the pathetic mewlings of Michelle “I Hear Dead People” Malkin’s fans to shame.

-posted by Dan.

I’M INCOMPETENT: Well, it’s official. I’m a big, dumb dope. I got tons of responses to my query about the meaning of the Danish word/term SLUTSPURT, which my longtime personal secretary can be seen standing next to in a photo posted below. The photo was taken in Copenhagen, where we recently spent a few days. A lot of helpful, informed people wrote in to share the definition with me-a lot of different definitions. Apparently SLUTSPURT means different things to different people.

Anyhow, I copied the many definitions of SLUTSPURT that came in, pasted them into a document, deleted the original emails, and then somehow managed to the delete the document too. Whoops. I have just one email left:

I don’t know the literal translation for “SLUTSPURT”, but in practice it means “BIG SALE!” My other favorite, when I lived in Koebenhavn, was “BADFART”, or “BOAT EXCURSION.”-Ryan

Thanks for sharing, Ryan, but some of the other definitions were a bit more fun. According to other readers, SLUTSPURT literally means, if I can remember correctly, “big finish,” “final push,” and “end explosion.” In Denmark you only hear the word in stores during the final days of a sale, whereas in America you sometimes here it in, er, slightly more salacious circumstances-and there’s usually a comma after “slut,” an exclamation point after “spurt,” and it sounds rather like an order.

-posted by Dan.

THAT’S NO MULLET: My longtime personal secretary insisted on a clarification: sometimes he sorts my books. We’re versatile. Oh, and he doesn’t have a mullet! He’s wearing a hat and has long hair, and the pixilation makes it look rather mullet-esque, it’s true, but it’s an optical illusion.

-posted by Dan.

I’M INCOMPETENT II: Yesterday I posted a picture of a tree full of pacifiers that my LPS and I stumbled across in Copenhagen. We couldn’t figure out what was up, and none of the Danes we asked had any idea. Since Andrew is always going on about how brainy and resourceful You People are, I tossed the photo on the website and asked for your help.

Well, it turns out it’s not a memorial to Denmark’s murdered children, my LPS’ first guess, nor is it, as many of You People speculated, a memorial to Denmark’s aborted children. And it’s not, as Kurt from Trevose, PA, speculated, a drug culture thing. (“I understand that people into Ecstasy use pacifiers when they’re rolling to alleviate the dry mouth,” Kurt wrote. “Perhaps there was a rave in Denmark and what you saw was its aftermath.”) The answer is basically what I suspected-and the answer was literally at my fingertips. As one reader pointed out…

PACIFIER + TREE + DENMARK x GOOGLE = ANSWER!

There’s a nice run-down on Danish “suttetræ,” or pacifier-trees, here. A snip:

Frederiksberg Garden is, like all parks, a favored place for pushing strollers. It is thick with infants and toddlers at any time of year. At some point, some Danish mother must have said to her child, “Skat, you’re old enough to stop using your pacifier now, aren’t you? Yes, you’re all grown up, now! But I don’t want you to give it to me. I want you to give it to that tree, and I want you to promise the tree that you’ll never use a pacifier again because now you’re a big grown up!” Maybe that’s not how it started. In any case, that’s what happens now, according to the women I spoke to. The babies of Frederiksberg are weaned off their pacifiers by giving them to the tree and promising the tree never to use them again.

Another reader sent me this very sweet letter…

Obviously, you have by now figured out that your longtime personal secretary is wrong about the binki tree in Frederiksberg. The best thing about the existence of this binki tree is that it is-in typical Danish fashion-explained very earnestly in a brochure put out by the government.

In the brochure, the county explains all the best ways for people to help their children kick the nasty binki habit, explaining that a new stuffed animal, emotional support from parents and siblings, or a visit to the binki tree might all be helpful.

Must not be anything terribly rotten in a county where the government can put out brochures about getting rid of pacifiers! I remember hearing about binkie trees growing up in Denmark, but I managed to get rid of mine without visiting the local tree. (Oh, and the sign in the window, it literally means final (slut) sprint (spurt). It would ususally refer to the final round of price markdowns in a big sale.)-Mogens

So how come none of the adult Danes I spoke with-hip young employees at our hotel, young and young-ish gay guys we met at the bars-knew anything about the pacifier trees?

I don’t really know how the tradition evolved, but I think it happened within the last 10-15 years. It certainly didn’t exist when I was a kid…. I live in the second-largest city, Aarhus, and we have a few here too. Should you visit this corner of the world one day, wanting to witness this bizarre phenomenon, head for “Dyrehaven” in the forests of Moesgaard.-Mikkel

Now everything is illuminated-except why it didn’t occur to ME to go to Google and type in “pacifier” and and “tree” and “Denmark.” Like I said on the first day, I am a Luddite through and through. When something stumps me, my first response is not to jump on Google, but to start asking around.

Still, while I may have exposed myself to be a non-tech-savvy geek, without my idiocy and incompetence I wouldn’t have been treated to so many letters from around the world about Denmark’s suttetræ phenomenon.

My kid is long past the pacifier stage, but I think the pacifier tree tradition is a wonderful idea and should be adopted by American parents. First, I think it would really help get kids to let go of their pacifiers-if the tree communicates anything to little kids it’s that TONS of other kids have already given up their pacifiers. They’re big kids now, don’t you want to be a big kid too? Kids seem to have an instinctive connection with/love for trees-a throwback to the origin of our species, perhaps?-so building this charming ritual around a sprawling, welcoming tree is a stroke of genius. Central Park in Chicago needs a binki tree, Lincoln Park in Chicago needs a binki tree, Volunteer Park in Seattle needs a binki tree. American parents, let’s get this sweet tradition of the ground here.

-posted by Dan.

I guess this was inevitable at some point; but, of course, it is still horrifying and barbaric and a reminder of the terrible danger we still live under. My brother, who works in London, is fine. I found these images, taken by ordinary people and posted by them, to be among the most distressing and necessary. This one reminds me, as it must, of the blitz. Londoners, unlike New Yorkers on that September morning, have dealt with this kind of violence before and have endured. My father’s response will perhaps be typical of many, as it often is. He told me not to worry, that this was “not nice,” and that “we’re too bloody p.c. over here.” From one blog, an eye-witness account:

I’m fine, but I was in a tube at King’s Cross when when one of the explosions happened. I was stuck in a smoke-filled, blackened tube that reeked of burning for over 30 minutes. So many people were hysterical.
I truly thought I was going to die and was just hoping it would be from smoke inhalation and not fire. I felt genuine fear but kept calm (and quite proud of myself for that).
Eventually people smashed through the windows and we were lifted out all walked up the tunnel to the station. There was chaos outside and I started to walk down Euston Road (my face and clothes were black) towards work and all of a sudden there was another huge bang and people started running up the road in the opposite direction to where I was walking and screaming and crying. I now realise this must have been one of the buses exploding.

The coordination is like Madrid. But Britons will not respond by blaming their government. They will respond by stiffening their will to fight back.

AN EMAIL FROM IRAQ: This is as good a time as any to print an encouraging email from a military medic in the field. Some excerpts:

We are riding out the ninth month in country and it seems like I have been here for half of my life. I have even started to recognize the faces of ordinary Iraqi citizens when we pass through the local villages. I have watched this country change over the last few months. When we first arrived, the main mission was to gain control over the area. Terror was rampant and gunfights, ambushes and IED’s were all we seemed to deal with. The unit we replaced had not done as good a job as they could have (or maybe we are just better trained for it), and as a result, we got the impression that we were in for a rough ride. My battalion commander is an awesome leader, though, and we quickly started to gain control. As an example of this, when we first arrived, the newly formed Iraqi units were afraid to even show their faces while in uniform. In November, when threatened by the insurgents, they all left their posts and hid. Since then, we have trained three new battalions of soldiers. We have run four basic training classes and are on our fourth NCO course. We used to have to practically drag the IA (Iraqi Army) soldiers along on missions. Now it is hard to keep up with them.

For my medics and me, the daily mission was usually at night and was to root out and capture the bad guy. Now, it is daytime MEDCAP’s (medical civil action program) where I usually spend an hour or two playing football with the kids out on their front lawn after seeing to a few cases of arthritis in the elderly. We have set up and supplied each of the three IA battalions with the same supplies I run my aid station with and have started training their medics to take care of their own. One of my proudest moments was recently when, in the middle of the night, an IA team brought in a terrorist (yes, we still treat them) who had multiple gun shot wounds to the leg and arm. I started the routine of assigning my medics the tasks of vitals, IV, airway and such. The IA medic grabbed me by the arm and asked why I didn’t give him a position. I showed him a particularly nasty wound on the leg and told him to go to town. He cleaned, wrapped and splinted it as good as any of my medics could have done. When we were done, I told him he did an awesome job and asked him why he even bothered to bring the guy to me instead of taking care of him himself. He told me that he has such respect for us that he thought he would let us get in on the action because he knows we like doing our job so m uch. It was then that I reminded him that the more he shows his country that he can fend for himself, the sooner it will be that we can get back to our own families.

This past Saturday, an event took place that could be remembered as another milestone in the history of the new Iraq. In Quyarrah, over a thousand citizens and police held the first “march against terrorism”. It was led by sheiks, mukhtars, and imams. They are the mayors and religious leaders from the local areas. The crowd was composed of people from all over the Ninewah Province. That is the whole area my battalion covers (basically all land south of Mosul for about 60 miles). Although we had Special Forces in and around the area, the only other US presence was my medics. Even then, we were well out of sight on the edge of town. The people have said they are tired of the terrorism and are not afraid any more. Kudos to them. There was not a single casualty at the event. If you are interested, there should be a ton of press coverage floating about. I hear there were over 10 different news crews on site.

My emailer tells me this guy is not a dreamer; that his previous emails have been pretty gloomy. He sees progress. If he does, so should we. The war in London will be won in part in Iraq. Resolve in one place is indistinguishable from resolve in the other.