Monday, February 28, 2005

Happy Birthday Yes, Minister. 25 years old this week. "A basic rule of government is never look into anything you don't have to, and never set up an inquiry unless you know in advance what its findings will be."

Thursday, February 24, 2005

This one flew under my radar, although I am delighted to read it: Dr. J. Budziszewski has converted to Roman Catholicism. A fascinating interview with Ignatius Insight.

Blinded by the light! Doctors help restore sight to Buddhist monk who accidently glued his eyes shut. Seems he mistook a tube of superglue for eyedrops. Ouch.

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

And you think the Episcopalians have problems

The Greek Orthodox Church is being rocked and wracked by a wide spread scandal that actually lives up to the noun. 91 year old bishops naked with "nubile" young women, embezzlement, widespread homosexual liaisons amongst the supposedly celibate hierarchy, drug and antiquities smuggling, budding fashion designers headed for Paris...as a fellow liturgical fundamentalist observed "Gee, minnity!"

Monday, February 21, 2005

Dr. Potomac, knowing that I am is a.) the only female on this blog and b.) the only member of this blog who has a degree in the sciences, has requested that I say a few well-chosen words on the Larry Summers kafuffle.

I intended to weigh in earlier on this topic, but I when I saw that the Manolo has placed us on his list of blogs, I was overcome with emotion and had to take several moments to recover. But having now recovered, I am ready to take on the question: Do innate differences predispose more men than women to careers in science and engineering?

Frankly, dear readers, I don't give a damn. The point of science is not who does the science but how good is the science that they do? I am disappointed but not at all surprised to see that the sciences, which are supposed to place a premium on objectivity, i.e. the quality of scholarship, are as bogged down in the stupid subjectivity of who did the scholarship, as the humanities. For goodness sake, you science types, stop behaving like English professors. Put down your op-ed pens and pick up your pipettes and start working on something that will actually affect the state of humanity, instead of whining that discrimination keeps you down or that you have a biological edge over the competition.

Curious though isn't that these scientists whose knickers are so twisted over who does the science, don't get their knickers twisted at all over whether some science should even be done (except to be upset that some ill bred and obviously stupid people would dare raise that issue. ) Yes indeed, when faced with issues about morality in science, suddenly scientists become vastly concerned about nothing but terminal objectivity.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

The DC Examiner, a newly created free paper for commuters, doesn't have bad content. Not if this three-way kerfuffle between Susan Estrich, Michael Kinsley and Charlotte Allen is any indication...

I kind of know Susan Estrich. I have ridden in a car with Susan Estrich. I have had speaks with Susan Estrich. And it is no great indictment of her to say that, despite her wealth, political elbows, and academic credentials, she is carrying a knife to a gunfight when she picks on Charlotte Allen.

Professor Estrich was objecting, btw, to this article by Ms. Allen. And here's some more chortling from La Allen.
Another mystery, solved.

Well, not really solved. But who among the armed citizens of the United States hasn't wondered, once or twice, just who is that thuggish guy on the B-60 target who is aiming the .38 at me?

Bizarrely enough, the New York Times (!!!) is here to help us in our perplexity. Could it be...Ernest Borgnine?
Boris Johnson, who does seem to be increasingly nutty, says...Don't apologize, Red Ken!

Of course Boris says this because of his Blair Hatred, which overrides all other thoughts and emotions in his cerebral cortex, as it does with just about every other Tory in Britain. He relates it to the moment when the scales fell from his eyes re Blair: l'affaire Glenn Hoddle.

If you don't know what that was, you really need to read Boris.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Arthur Miller, Reconsidered

The obit for Arthur Miller that the Doc linked below is positively celebratory compared to Terry Teachout's retrospective glance. I mean to say, check this out:

I recently described "After the the Fall," the 1964 play in which Miller first made fictional use of his unsuccessful marriage to Marilyn Monroe, as "a lead-plated example of the horrors that result when a humorless playwright unfurls his midlife crisis for all the world to see," written by a man "who hasn't a poetic bone in his body (though he thinks he does)." For me, that was his biggest flaw. He was, literally, pretentious...

Ouch! And that's from the positive bit!

Seriously, though, I believe Teachout is saying that Miller was the drama equivalent of the other 50's wunderkind, J.D. Salinger. Take this:

The irony is that the smartest critics of Miller's own generation, virtually all of whom shared his left-wing views, held his plays in a different kind of contempt. Back then he took his roughest beatings from the likes of Eric Bentley, Mary McCarthy, Kenneth Tynan and Robert Warshow, who found him heavy-handed and insufferably preachy. Tynan, for instance, wrote that "The Crucible" "suggests a sensibility blunted by the insistence of an outraged conscience: it has the over-simplifications of poster art." Bull's-eye.

Poster-art, just like Salinger's novels; no wonder why high school drama students go from reading Catcher in the Rye as freshmen to starring in The Crucible as seniors.
Red Ken, Victim

The other day London Mayor Ken Livingstone, annoyed at being questioned by a reporter from the Evening Standard, asked if the reporter was a "German war criminal". Informed by the reporter that he was Jewish and found Red Ken's remark offensive, Red Ken doubled down, as he is wont to do: the Mayor of London suggested that this Jewish Evening Standard reporter was like a "concentration camp guard", apparently because he accepts editorial instruction.

Nothing like the casual yet spirited give and take with the press, eh?

What makes it particularly priceless is that Red Ken views himself as the aggrieved party. In a press conference two days ago, "His voice shaking", the Mayor of London said that he could not apologize, because that "would require me to be a liar...[and] why should I say words I do not believe in my heart?" Then, moving from his performance as Martin Luther to channeling the spirit of Jean Jacques Rousseau and not a little of the Valley Girl, Red Ken said, "...I am sorry, but that is how I feel after nearly a quarter of a century of their behaviour and tactics."

Red Ken neglected to mention during the press conference that, for a period during those twenty-five years, he had moonlighted as an Evening Standard food critic.

Monday, February 14, 2005

The Doc's recent long quotation from Chesterton reminds me of an aside that John Derbyshire made on The Corner, in which he mentioned that everything we thought we knew about Chesterton's best known aphorism is wrong. To wit:

When Man ceases to worship God he does not worship nothing but worships everything.

Good stuff, eh? To bad GKC didn't actually write it. [Don't you think the amount of intellectual effort they spent on tracking this "quote" could have been put to more useful purposes?--Ed. There you go again, failing to understand scholarship!]

Then again, that means that I can claim this wonderful, unattached aphorism as my own without any wild-eyed Chestertonians bludgeoning me to death with a beer mug, or running me through with a sword-stick (or would it be stick-sword, when drawn?) for insulting the memory of their beloved GKC.

On the other hand, these devoted Chestertonians at the American Chesterton Society (upon their house be peace) turned up five quotations , all meticulously cited, that say the same thing in creatively different ways (the last two from Father Brown stories):

There may have been a time when people found it easy to believe in anything. But we are finding it vastly easier to disbelieve anything. [Illustrated London News, March 21, 1914]

The nineteenth century decided to have no religious authority. The twentieth century seems disposed to have any religious authority. [Illustrated London News, April 26, 1924]

A man who refuses to have his own philosophy will only have the used-up scraps of somebody else's philosophy. ["The Revival of Philosophy," The Common Man (1930)]

It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense. ["The Oracle of the Dog" (1923)]

You hard-shelled materialists were all balanced on the very edge of belief - of belief in almost anything. ["The Miracle of Moon Crescent" (1924)]

Sunday, February 13, 2005

The Dr. Dean 'Heartland Tour' Begins!

It's official: Howard Dean, former Vermont governor and, pre-Scream, candidate for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, has scrambled to the top of the greasy pole known as the Democratic National Committee. According to this morning's news coverage Chairman Dean has set as his top priority a prolonged tour of those areas of the South, Midwest and West that recoiled from Senator Kerry and the Democratic party last year.

Dr. Potomac, while delighted by these developments, believes, in fairness, that a revision to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law is required. The thrust of this amendment, let us call it the Dean Rule, is as follows: whenever either party engages in actions or activities that inadvertantly create a windfall for the opposition, those actions and activities constitute an "in-kind" contribution and must be defrayed by the party which benefits. Under the Dean Rule, all travel by the DNC chair must be paid for by the Republican National Committee when Dean touches down in the following states: West Virginia, Ohio, Missouri, North Carolina, Florida, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, New Hampshire and New Mexico. Trips occuring within one year of a general election into rural Pennsylvania, metropolitan Pittsburg or western Michigan would also be covered by the Dean Rule.

So Dr. Potomac says, "Roll on, Mr. Chairman. Take the Democratic message into the hinterlands, swing-states and marginal districts of our great country. Let your voice be heard in our villages, hamlets, towns and ex-urbs. Let every convoluted policy nuance, liberal interest group plank, cultural code word and leftist litmus test that travels under the banner of the Democratic party follow you across our fair land. You're worth 10 points to us, Mr. Chairman, and we're willing to pay a lot for that kind of help."

Saturday, February 12, 2005

If Americans Are Indians Ruled by Swedes, Who Are the Swedes Ruled by Again?

The Washington Post reported Saturday that a Swedish appeals court had reversed the conviction of a pastor who was found guilty of propogating "hate-speech" in a sermon condemning homosexuality. The appeals court found that although sexual orientation was a protected category under the law, it "was never intended to stifle open discussion of homosexuality or restrict a pastor's right to preach."

Well, this is a fine kettle of lutefisk. Sociologist Peter Berger has famously argued that if India is the most religious country in the world and Sweden the most secular, America is a country of Indians ruled by Swedes. Berger may owe the Swedes something of an apology if this ruling stands. Depending on the jurisdiction, it is at least arguable that Swedish pastors now have somewhat more leaway than American pastors to speak their conscience on the topic of homosexual sex. A couple years ago, the sign announcing the weekly sermon topic at a conservative African-American congregation in Dr. Potomac's neighborhood was dismantled and removed, by city employees because the sign said, "God Made Adam and Eve Not Adam and Steve" which, by comparison with these fire-breathing Swedes, is pretty tame stuff indeed.

Could it possibly be that we have reached the point where religious liberty is more secure in the home-office of secularism, Sweden, than it is here in the U.S.? Dr. Potomac awaits the answer from Sweden's high court.
Nice essay at Armavirumque (actually written in 2000) about the ruse that was Arthur Miller.

Interesting story of how a Welsh schoolmaster, cleaning out desk drawers, discovers a cache of World War One medals. No one remembers how or why the school has them.

I keep hearing that terrible cliche "I believe in myself." Half of the awful wannabe singers who appear on "American Idol," in between tears and fist-shaking, leer at the camera and say, "I believe in myself." And I usually leer back, saying from my couch, "So did Josef Stalin. What does that have to do with you having a terrible voice?" Frankly, the fact that they believe in themselves is exactly the problem; their faith in their own talent is delusional.

One can believe in oneself too much, and that is vanity. Pride is believing in oneself. Those with the mightiest belief in themselves are the greatest dangers and the greatest fools.

Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true. Once I remember walking with a prosperous publisher, who made a remark which I had often heard before; it is, indeed, almost a motto of the modern world. Yet I had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly that there was nothing in it. The publisher said of somebody, "That man will get on; he believes in himself." And I remember that as I lifted my head to listen, my eye caught an omnibus on which was written "Hanwell." I said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves?
For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums."
He said mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. "Yes, there are," I retorted, "and you of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness.

G. K. Chesterton, ORTHODOXY

Thursday, February 10, 2005

Political Clips

This morning's Roll Call (requires subscription) has two items that Dr. Potomac would like to highlight.

The first relates to Senator John Kerry's announcement of "Keep America's Promise" the new political organization that takes the place of his presidential campaign. The apparent objective of this new entity is to keep the torch burning until 2008 when Senator Kerry, apparently, plans to make another run for the White House. An interesting notion that. Kerry seems to be under the misimpression that Democrats supported him because of his terrific ideas. They didn't. They made Kerry their nominee because, to use a term often invoked during the primaries, he was "electable," a notion he decisively refuted by losing in November. Even Dr. Potomac doubts Democrats are silly enough to go for Dukakis III in 2008.

To follow up on yesterday's retirement announcement by Senator Mark Dayton, I note the first opening moves of the likely Republican candidates, Congressman Gil Gutknecht and Mark Kennedy. As predicted, Kennedy indicates he will announce for the Senate this week. Gutknecht, true to form, appears to be holding back, saying that in light of Dayton's announcement, he wants to take more time to make his decision. The apparent illogic of the decision leads Dr. Potomac to conclude this is stage one in Gutknecht's decision not to run in the primary at all. Roll Call also mentions Governor Tim Pawlenty as a potential candidate and Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer. Dr. Potomac is skeptical of both. He's a sitting governor who is a strong candidate for a second term; she's a liberal Republican who would have great trouble in a primary. Keep an eye on Kennedy.

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Sen. Dayton Bows Out

Not content to close his Senate office after having the daylights scared out him by a routine threat briefing for Senators last fall, Mark Dayton (D-MN) has, almost two years before the election, announced that he isn't going to ask the voters for another term. Pity the poor multi-millionaire, he "cannot stand" the rigors of fundraising.

(Dr. Potomac would like to take this opportunity speak out on a pet issue: Mark Dayton's whining about the burdens of fundraising is Exhibit A in why the country should not institute public financing of Congressional campaigns. Most politicians hate raising money because it forces them to pay attention to the communities of interest that they represent when they secretly would rather follow the op/ed pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post. They also hate it because it requires them to ask other people for help which is a drain on the political ego. If for no other reasons than these, we need to keep making them do it.)

The horse-race for Dayton's seat goes as follows. On the GOP side, two sitting House members, Gil Gutknecht and Mark Kennedy, had already been positioning themselves for a race against Dayton. An open seat will make it irresistable for both to announce officially -- and soon. Kennedy is probably the odds-on favorite as he opted into a tougher district a couple years that put him in contact with suburban voters. Gutknecht has a safer district but gets only a tiny part of the outer-suburbs of Minneapolis. Moreover, Kennedy is probably more palatable to a center-left state like Minnesota. He's a conservative but a non-threatening one, in the model of current governor, Tim Pawlenty.

Dr. Potomac is uninformed on who the Democratic candidates might be. Former Congressman Tim Penny will no doubt float his own name and that's about as far as it will go. Penny, the prototypical New Democrat, has no real base in the Democrat-Farmer-Labor establishment which warms only to true liberals like Dayton and Paul Wellstone. Look for one of the left-liberal House members or statewide elected officials to get in and then watch Kennedy trounce them.
Martin O'Malley, Please Switch to De-Caf

This morning's Washington Post reports that Baltimore Mayor and prospective Maryland gubernatorial candidate, Martin O'Malley, is over-caffeinated. In responding on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Mayors to the release of President Bush's budget, O'Malley likened the budget to another September 11 attack on America's major urban centers. Really? Dr. Potomac must have missed the footage of the airliners delivering the the budget to the mayors.

Dr. Potomac has had the pleasure of seeing Mayor O'Malley up close and personal. Here is a man who's ambition and partisanship frequently outstrips his judgment. Montgomery County Executive and likely gubernatorial primary opponent, John Duncan didn't miss the opening O'Malley's statement created. "The president of the United States is fighting terrorism," Duncan said. "It hurts our cause when people say things like that." O'Malley's colleagues in the U.S. Conference also backed quickly away with D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams denouncing O'Malley's "harsh rhetoric."

Difficult to say why such remarks are so damaging to political futures. Is it the lack of proportion or the pretentiousness or the overreaching? What is clear is that O'Malley verges toward laughing stock status. He needs a long vacation in a nice quiet place if he plans to get his campaign for governor back on track.
Our O-man asks what I think of Disraeli. Very little.

I also see BD as an opportunist, a sort of Victorian Bill Clinton who, lacking firm principles, sought to co-opt the other party's issues (like advocating the various Reform Bills) and make them his own. He also seemed more interested in the Party than conservatism itself. Still, if memory serves, Queen Victoria liked BD a great deal, yet found Gladstone a tremendous preachy, whiny annoyance.

I err toward real Tory reactionaries like Eldon and Wellington. They had principles -- they opposed everything.

In order to complain of an outrage it is more productive to invoke a bygone felicity than it is to insist on counsels of perfection, even though such returns never get all the way back to 'the way things were,' and something better than that is the eventual objective of the exhortation. 'Reaction' is a necessary term in the intellectual context we inhabit late in the twentieth century because merely to conserve is sometimes to perpetuate what is outrageous.

Mel Bradford in "The Reactionary Imperative"
The Exegetical System of the Rev. Easterbrook

Gregg Easterbrook has confused me which, to be sure, is not to hard to do.

In an essay in the "Taste" pages of last Friday's The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Easterbrook advises his readers that Jesus only advocated six commandments, that he had as it were stripped down the ten commandments into a speedier, handier six. Easterbrook writes:

In the Gospel of Matthew, a man asks Jesus what a person must do to enter heaven. He answers: "Keep the commandments." The man inquires: "Which ones?" Here is how the biblical account continues: "And Jesus said, 'You shall not murder; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother. Also, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"

Debating what laws are more important than others was a long-standing exercise of the rabbinical tradition in which Jesus was educated. But in these verses, which have a parallel retelling in the Gospel of Mark, Christ is not merely offering an opinion about law. Something wholly remarkable happens--Jesus edits the commandments.

Quickly now, which commandments did he leave out? "You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourselves an idol. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God. Remember the Sabbath Day, and keep it holy." These are the commandments having to do with formal religious observance--from today's perspective, the ones that clash with the Establishment Clause. Jesus' Six Commandments make no mention of God or faith. They could be posted on public property without constitutional entanglements.


Easterbrook seems to believe that this is a hitherto unachieved textual insight. "If Jesus taught Six Commandments, why do Christians talk so much about 10?", asks Easterbrook

Because they're dummies, right? Ignorant boobs, even about that Bible they thump all the time?

Of course! "As a churchgoer," Rev. Easterbrook says loftily, "I am amazed at how many of my fellow Christians do not seem to know Christ's teachings."

By golly, I remember Gregg Easterbrook! He was that lisping little golden-haired know-it-all in Sunday School class! Quick, let's grab him and hold him in the toilet for a swirly after we're dismissed to church-time.

Anyway, Mr. Easterbrook is very pleased, because surely these six commandments are acceptable to just about everyone, forming as they do the basis of a sound ethics. It's those darn traditionalist Christians that get in the way:

Because the Six Commandments de-emphasize formal observation of religion, some Christian traditionalists pretend that the verses do not exist. In a lifetime of sitting through the sermons of various denominations, I have never heard a minister make more than passing reference to Christ's deletion of commandments. Such was his gift that, in the Gospel of John, he simplified all moral and spiritual instruction into a single dictum: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." That modification of the original commandments also de-emphasizes formal religion and as such is also given short shrift by institutional Christianity. Many Christians seem to prefer the Ten Commandments because they embody a sense of might, mountaintops and divine wrath.

But if displaying Scripture in public is meant to encourage morality, surely the Six Commandments serve the purpose.


He concludes:

Christians who say that morality is their concern in the public-display controversy ought to switch to the Six Commandments. The whole question of whether declarations about God may be posted on public property can be avoided simply by heeding Jesus.

This all strikes me as hideously bizarre. Greg Easterbrook seems a very intelligent fellow, who, so his author blurb says, knows something about theology; why then this bizarre exegesis, which almost deserves the Nick Kristof Award for Exegetical Incomprehension?

For he falls into what can only be called the Fundamentalist Trap. He plucks a statement out of context, and uses it for purposes other than its intention. Jesus makes this statement that Easterbrook cites as some kind of teaching dicta in the course of his conversation with the rich young man who comes to Jesus, desiring to be his disciple. If the Ombudsman were going to give a sermon on this, he would point out that the beginning and the ending have a certain symmetry, with the passage that Easterbrook cites as their centerpoint. "Good teacher", the young man addresses Jesus; "who do you call good," Jesus replies, "no one is good by God alone." Then the centerpoint, in which Jesus asks the young man if he has kept the commandments, and then lists the last six. When the young man says that he has, Jesus looks at him, "and loved him", and says, "only one more thing is lacking; go, sell all you have and give the money to the poor, and come follow me." And the young man went away broken-hearted, for he had many posessions.

So, the Rt. Rev. Ombudsman continues, it seems to me that while proclaiming his ability to keep the six commandments of proper behavior towards his fellow man, the young man fell flat on the implicit charge to give up the dolatry of his wealth and possessions. For they were the ones that kept him from following a teacher who at the very least he must have regarded as a great prophet sent from God. In the end, the last six commandments depended on the first four.

But this story occupies no part of Rev. Easterbrook's exegesis. He instead cherrypicks this "edit" of the commandments. Moreover, this exegesis does harm to other parts of the Gospel, for how can we take Easterbrook's Jesus seriously when he says he has come to fulfill the law, rather than change it or replace it? Aquinas said (I am paraphrasing very freely here) that if confused by the Scriptures, a Christian should keep reading. It follows therefore that exegetical insights like Easterbrook's can only be tested by further reading, not by how cool they seem at the moment; and further reading renders Easterbrook's interpretation incoherent.

Moreover, Jesus did summarize the commandments, and did so by using a Mosaic teaching. The essence of the law is to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself." Why these two commandments are less acceptable than the six, I can't imagine. Is it because they emphasize the worship of God? Is it because Jesus sounds like he has been to the mountaintop?
Dick Morris Agrees with the Ombudsman

Dick Morris, in his weekly column for The Hill flacks Condi Rice as a candidate for president in 2008, and makes his usual convincing case. Dr. Potomac loves Dick Morris. He's right about half the time. The trick is knowing which half.

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Cole Porter: Cultural Revolutionary

Dr. Potomac, venturing very far-afield indeed from Beltway politics, would like to offer comment on the film, De-Lovely, a musical recounting of the life of Cole Porter. To put it succinctly as possible, Dr. Potomac would like to nominate Mr. Porter as the Most Destructive Influence in 20th Century Popular Culture. You think he's kidding but let me assure you he is not.

If you haven't caught the Kevin Klein film yet, put it at the top of your Netflix queue. Other than enjoying the Porter's toe-tapping tunes from the 30s, 40s and 50s, Dr. Potomac had had no other exposure to the Porter story. It was a very rude shock, indeed. Porter, it turns out, was a not-so-closeted homosexual who carried on mutliple gay affairs simultaneously over the course of his long marriage to Linda Lee Porter. The film reinterprets Porter's music through this prism (and quite a prism it is) to disturbing effect. Cole Porter turns out to be the Elton John of his generation using catchy tunes to cast he most base human impulses as natural and inevitable.

We are all acquainted with songs like "Anything Goes" and "Let's Do it (Let's Fall in Love)" -- more about the unpleasant juxtaposition those paretheses create later --but "De-Lovely" throws these songs into a light that reveals them as nothing short of cultural subversion. The movie script has Porter suggesting, as he and his wife traverse what seems to be a marriage that was one long, sad, rough patch, that all the songs "sound like they are written in code." He's too modest: they are written in code and the code is frontal assault on traditional morality.

"Experiment," which sounds like a paean to gay liberation, was edited and edited but never ultimately used in a film that was never made:

Experiment.
Make it your motto day and night.
Experiment
And it will lead you to the light.
The apple on the top of the tree
Is never too high to achieve,
So take an example from Eve,
Experiment.
Be curious,
Though interfering friends may frown.
Get furious
At each attempt to hold you down.
If this advice you always employ
The future can offer you infinite joy
And merriment,
Experiment
And you'll see

Were it not for all the rhyming and tinkling piano accompaniment the song would not be out of place at Woodstock. One wonders what the studio guys, in on the worst-kept secret in Hollywood, thought when they laid their eyes on "Experiment." Evidently, they asked Cole to re-think because it was subsequently revised to something with a little more appeal to middle-class movie goers of the mid-1940s:

Experiment,
Be curious,
And when you've picked a perfect wife,
Get furious
Till she is yours and yours for life.
If this you do (and no cock-and-bull)
In time she may give you a nurs'ry full
Of merriment.
Experiment
And you'll see.

"Let's Misbehave" reinforces the a kind of naturalistic worldview that extinguishes differences between human love and sexuality and sexual reproduction among the animals:

They say that spring
Means just one thing
To little love birds
We're not above birds
Let's misbehave

They say that bears
Have love affairs
And even camels
We're merely mammals
Let's misbehave

"Let's Do It (Let's Fall In Love)" was (and is) one of my favorites in the Porter repetoir but I won't play it with children in the room. The song is particularly egregious in its crude reduction of love to mere sex.

Romantic sponges, they say, do it
Oysters down in oyster bay do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love

Cold Cape Cod clams, 'gainst their wish, do it
Even lazy jellyfish, do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love

Electric eels I might add do it
Though it shocks em I know
Why ask if shad do it - Waiter bring me
"shad roe"

In shallow shoals English soles do it
Goldfish in the privacy of bowls do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love.

And on and on it goes. There are Webpages with lots of unused verses that run together in a dizzy string.

It is interesting to think about the influence of figures like Cole Porter on the cultural context of their time -- and our present. It is not difficult to see how his music, immensely popular among the parents and grandparents of the 1960s radicals, might have had effects far beyond his imagining but not, Dr. Potomac thinks, beyond his hope. He seems to have been out to liberate bourgeois culture from behavioral constraints that he himself could not and would not conform himself to. In doing so, he added his considerable influence to a sexual revolution that, toward the end of his life in the 1960s, would reshape American society and from which we are still recovering. Damos of Athens' reminder on the cultural influence of music comes to mind, "Let me make the songs of a nation and I care not who makes its laws."





Liberal Wins!

That's right, pancake lovers, Liberal, Kansas won this year's International Pancake race when Jill Wettsein finsihed the 415 yard course in 67.38 seconds, beating out the Olney, UK winner, Andrea Rawlings, who had a time of 69 seconds on the course.
Of course, this Shrove Tuesday, you could mimic Atherstone, Warwickshire: play football.

After two hours a klaxon is sounded, and the stewards search the pile of bodies to find out who is clutching the ball.

The brave winner gets to keep the ball, which one of the game's organiser Howard "H" Taft said was patented and specially made each year.

Mr Taft told BBC News: "We always have injuries; it's part and parcel of the game - bloody noses, cuts and bruises, black eyes, that kind of thing.

"We've never had any serious injuries though, as far as I know."
The Great Disrael and the GOM

I am curious about what the Doc thinks regarding David Gelernter's recent Weekly Standard essay, "The Inventor of Modern Conservatism: Disraeli and Us".

Myself, I have never liked Disraeli much, once I had actually read about him rather than just enjoyed him as a character in costume dramas. He struck me as an unprincipled opportunist, which is much what Gladstone thought of him. The assault upon Sir Robert Peel seemed to me crass, serving only to eliminate an opposition party from British politics for decades. Nor could I see any pattern in Disraeli's legislative program when he was Prime Minister, other than making the Conservative Party very popular. Here my feelings were exactly in line with Anthony Trollope's. In Phineas Finn, the story of a rising young Irish MP, the Disraeli-esque leader of the Tories suddenly decides to advocate the disestablishment of the Church of England as part of his solution to the Irish question. It must have seemed somewhat plausible to Trollope's readers; they knew that Disraeli might do anything for political advantage.

Maybe it was Trollope, or Roy Jenkins' great, big, fat biography, but I came to view Gladstone as a much more acceptable figure. And, in a lovely synchronicity, here is a review essay from Books and Culture that deals with David Bebbington's new book, The Mind of Gladstone: Religion, Homer, and Politics. (Since Jenkins was not so muchunsympathetic as uncomprehending of Gladstone's spiritual and religious life, and more than a touch patronizing towards the GOM's classical scholarship, Bebbington's biography is very welcome indeed.)

Compare and contrast, class.
Shrive, Shrove, Shriven

In the liturgical year, today, the last day before the season of Lent is Shrove Tuesday. Shrove is the past tense of the verb “to shrive”, which in what Merriam Webster informs me is an intransitive archaic form means “to confess one's sins especially to a priest”.

The intransitive archaic form is precisely the form we want, because why “to shrive” also means to administer the sacrament of reconciliation or to free from guilt, the emphasis of the name “Shrove Tuesday” was not on the act of the priest although that is obviously an integral part of the process, but rather on the act of the penitent. At some time during the day, the penitent was required to shrive, to go to the priest and confess his sins and receive absolution (to be shriven), so that he could enter the Lenten season with a clean slate. So important was this practice that in England, workers were given the afternoon off so they had time to hit the confessional. (I‘m sure you’ll all be astonished to hear that this practice is no longer followed.) In many towns, a bell rang to announce the cessation of work and that the shriving season was now open. And in the afternoon as the people tucked into the pancakes you could doubtless hear sentences like “ Round about 2 o’clock I shrove and by half past was shriven.”

Did I say pancakes? Why yes I did, because it is tradition in England to eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. The reason for this is more apparent in the French name for the day “Mardi Gras”, which does not mean, as millions of Americans doubtless think, “Flash your breasts and get some beads” or “Get drunk and urinate in your trousers,” but rather means “Fat Tuesday.”

Lent is a time of repentance and contrition and one primary of the forms of contrition during Lent involved food, to wit the practice of abstinence, refraining from eating certain foods, and fasting, not eating or eating substantially less than usual. Fasting was a common practice in the Bible, but the particular motivation the Lenten fast was Christ’s 40 days of fasting and prayer in the wilderness, which is why Lent is 40 days long (excluding Sundays). The fasting rules in the Western church used to be almost as strict as they still are in the Eastern Church. Originally the faithful were not to eat meat, eggs, or dairy products, including that most lovely form of fat, butter. Thus your frugal housewife has to use up all her milk, eggs, and butter before Lent, and what do you get when you milk together milk, eggs, butter, flour and a bit of leavening (or not) yes, if you're English or Irish, you get a pancake. (Other countries arrive at a different result. On the continent the Teutonic peoples eat doughnuts for Fastnacht (the Eve of the Fast) and during Carnevale the Italians eat pastries, fritters and many other lovely things depending upon the region. And other regions have their own gastronomic traditions.


So tightly were pancakes and Shrove Tuesday intertwined that the bell ringing to announce the time of shriving in is sometimes known as the “Pancake Bell." Olney, England even has a pancake race. The story is that in 1445 a housewife making pancakes lost track of time and when she heard the shriving bell she went dashing out the door with her apron on and her pan in her hand, and thus the pancake race was born, although there are alternative explanations as well.

As the end of Carnival, today was also traditionally a time of merry making, games, celebration, revelry and downright debauchery right up until midnight or dawn when abruptly everything changed to a somber Lenten mood. So get your one last big party in now before the clock strikes midnight!

Monday, February 07, 2005

The British Pub is Being Killed Quickly

Not, alas, a very surprising story. The worst pub "interior desecrations" are when they put in a fake historic interior, with photos of pub cricket teams that never existed, fishing rods that probably never caught a fish, reproduced Times headlines announcing the German invasion of Poland or Queen Victoria's death...it's always very discouraging. It's what happened to all the Morrell's pubs when they got bought up by Thomas Hardy Brewery in '99 (and now I see that Hardy has folded, and Greene King has swallowed up the Morrell's pubs, and who can keep track anymore?).
More on "Bill Moyers" and the Jesus-Loving, Environment-Hating Nutjobs

Please pardon the Ombudsman his cynicism--or perhaps his attractive, Gaulois puffing, languid world-weariness, with a touch of je ne sais quoi--but it is with a complete lack of surprise that he reads that "Bill Moyers" in his lengthy opinion piece in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune committed some errors of fact.

You will recall that "Bill Moyers" in his essay made the following syllogism: Christian fundamentalists believe in the bodily return of Christ to earth; this is an event which these Bible-thumping wackos led by the "Right Rev. Bush" [thank you, James Lileks] believe will be preceded by, among other things, the devastation of the environment (due to plagues, droughts, infestations of locusts, hordes of mice, and PBS pledge drives); ergo, Christian fundamentalist nutjobs eagerly approve of environmental destruction since they believe it will move the return of Jesus several millennia forward in the Divine EpochTimer.

As "evidence" for this "syllogism", "Bill Moyers" offered the testimony of James Watt, once Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Interior. Watt is Exhibit A for "Bill Moyers" of a Christian fundamentalist nutjob; "Moyers" writes the following:

Remember James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first secretary of the interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious.


BTW, notice the nice rhetorical self-stroking? "Bill Moyers" alone knew what Watt was talking about, snickered, and realized that this Christian fundamentalist nutjob was, you know, really dangerous because he was a Christian fundamentalist nutjob. This "Moyers", with his deep perceptiveness, will ruin all the plans of the nutjobs. If you want to make yourself look good, be certain to employ the same rhetorical techniques, OK?

Too bad for Bill, in terms of the whole logic and dialectic and truth part of the argument, that James Watt never said any such thing.

You see, it turns out that "Bill Moyers" favorite envirojournal was wrong, because it was quoting from a guy who didn't know what he was talking about. Go to Powerlineblog to read the whole thing, including Watt's actual testimony from the Congressional Record. Powerline, thanks in part to a phone call they received from James Watt himself, tracked down the Watt's testimony.

But hang on a moment! What's this?

Even for green activists within the evangelical movement, there are landmines. One faction in the movement, called dispensationalism, argues that the return of Jesus and the end of the world are near, so it is pointless to fret about environmental degradation.

James G. Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first interior secretary, famously made this argument before Congress in 1981, saying: "God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back." The enduring appeal of End Time musings among evangelicals is reflected in the phenomenal success of the Left Behind series of apocalyptic potboilers, which have sold more than 60 million copies and are the best-selling novels in the country.


That's from the Saturday's Washington Post, in an article entitled "The Greening of Evangelicals". It reads as a Post attempt to educate blue state intelligentsia about the complexities of the evangelical movement. And it does make a refreshing change from reading "Bill Moyers", to be sure.

But it's too bad they had to repeat what seems to be a canard of long standing. Sigh. Maybe they too have been reading Grit.

The rest of the article, BTW, is enough to give Virginia Postrel and Glenn Reynolds nightmares and a warm case of smug self-satisfaction. Both of these highly intelligent libertarians deplore any dust mote that lands on the tracks of Human Progress. As the Instapundit blogged recently:

SONIA ARRISON WRITES about the mainstreaming of transhumanism. And Alyssa Ford writes that the next big political divide will be between transhumanists and technophiles on one side, and bioconservatives and lefty-Luddites on the other.

I hope not, but as Rand Simberg observes: "If this is the next political divide, I know which side I'm on."


And that was about transhumanism, for crying out loud! Imagine how green (heh) Professor Reynolds could get reading this:

"Stop Mercury Poisoning of the Unborn," said a banner that Ball carried in last month's antiabortion march in Washington. Holding up the other end of the banner was Cizik, the National Association of Evangelicals' chief lobbyist.

They handed out carefully footnoted papers that cited federal government studies showing that 1 in 6 babies is born with harmful levels of mercury. The fliers urged Christians not to support the "Clear Skies" act, a Bush administration proposal to regulate coal-burning power plants that are a primary source of mercury pollution.


Not that I don't get more than a little squeamish myself at such reckless trampling upon scientific data. (Just how many parts per billion is this mercury poisoning that's killing the unborn? Do you think that abortions might kill more?) But that's because I believe in prudential judgments.

That's why I can believe that transhumanism is sick-inducing and not a little silly; that "Stop Mercury Poisoning of the Unborn" is disingenuous rhetoric; that coal plants do pollute too much; that they should be replaced by third-generation nuclear fission reactors; that wilderness must be protected; that resources must be preserved and improved for future generations; that Progress is not a moral good; and that "Bill Moyers" is the Blue State version of a shameless, dishonest, disingenuous, and deceitful revival preacher.

See? You can believe all those things at once, with a little prudence.
We thank the Style Editor for her kind words. It has been a giddy time for New England sports fans, 'lo these last several years. The Red Sox and now the Patriots, again. I cannot help but feeling a tad spoiled for all the good fan fortune coming our way after a prolonged walk in the wilderness which was the 1990s.

By the way, I'd surprised if a mob of Eagles' fans aren't hanging around the stadium with torches and pitchforks, waiting for Andy Reid to appear and explain himself. To have your team huddle and mill around the field with 5 minutes left, down by 10 points, is a sports felony. I don't recall ever seeing such poor strategy and time management in the Super Bowl. Just plain dumb.

On another note, a strikingly odd and interesting note, a former Nureumberg guard now claims that he believes he gave Hermann Goering the cyanide poison that killed him. Two strange figures named "Erich" and "Mathias" showed up at the prison, said the Field Marshall was ill, and that he needed this medicine.

"(Erich) said it was medication, and that if it worked and Goering felt better, they'd send him some more," Stivers said. "I wasn't thinking of suicide when I took it to Goering. He was never in a bad frame of mind."

A military investigation concluded that Goering had the cyanide all along and that a vial of poison was at various times in a body cavity or behind the rim of his cell toilet.

The Army's explanation never rang true to him, Stivers said, noting that Goering "was there over a year. Why would he wait all that time if he had the cyanide?"

How fascinating and bizarre. First, who are Erich and Mathias? Second, how could they get such easy access to such a high-ranking figure as Goering? Third, how dumb could this guard be to agree to do this? Too many holes here, and unanswered questions. I smell a book coming.

Happy Birthday Sir Thomas More, Charles Dickens, and Sinclair Lewis.

The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. They were neither citadels nor churches, but frankly and beautifully office-buildings...(Opening lines to Lewis' "Babbitt," 1922)
Congratulations to the Doc. It appears to be New England's year for sports victories (but thankfully not for political ones). The Iggles will make it sometime though, perhaps even in my lifetime. Then again, perhaps not.



Sunday, February 06, 2005

The Manolo Reminds the Mens...

"...that the Day of the San Valentino it approaches, and that the man who in his life has the woman, would be unwise to forget this."

Manolo makes many good observations, at all times, so this is why we are proud to link to him so that he may be of great helpfulness to you as well as he is to many, many mens–and to the womens who read his blog on the shoes.
Brooks Agrees with what Dr. Potomac said First

Over the past two years, what we might loosely call the university-town elite has come to dominate the Democratic Party not just intellectually, but financially as well.

Howard Dean, in his fervent antiwar phase, mobilized new networks of small donors, and these donors have quickly become the money base of the party. Whereas Al Gore raised only about $50 million from individuals in 2000, John Kerry raised $225 million, including $87 million over the Internet alone. Many of these new donors are highly educated. The biggest groups of donors to the Dean and Kerry campaigns were employees of the University of California, Harvard, Stanford, Time Warner, Microsoft and so on...

Howard Dean may not be as liberal as he appeared in the primaries, but in 1,001 ways - from his secularism to his stridency - he embodies the newly dominant educated class, which is large, self-contained and assertive.

Thanks to this newly dominant group, the Democrats are sure to carry Berkeley for decades to come.


Naturally, you should never tell an academic that they are out of touch with the rest of America. They know exactly what the "rest" of America thinks, they will say huffily, and they are a bunch of ignorant red-state boobs who need to hold still long enough for some intelligent people to re-educate them.

Friday, February 04, 2005

Factory in a Box

I think this is very, very cool:

IF YOU ASK Neil Gershenfeld, there may come a day, perhaps not so far in the future, when we'll no longer need manufacturers to make our products for us. Gershenfeld, a physicist and computer scientist who runs the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT, envisions a time when many of us will have a "fabrication center" in our homes. We'll be able to download a description of, say, a toaster -- perhaps one we designed ourselves -- to our computers, and then feed the designs and the raw materials into a personal fabricator. At the push of a button, almost like hitting "print," the machine will spit it out.

Wuh? Huh? How's that work then?

... The fab labs -- which consist of about $25,000 worth of high-tech equipment and supplies, including a laser cutter, a vinyl cutter (normally for making signs but used here to cut copper for circuits), and a 3-D milling machine to make circuit boards, all connected to Linux-based computers loaded with open-source design and manufacturing software...

In other words, a machine shop in a box. Very nice. This turns out to be perfect for use in countries or areas without an industrial infrastructure.

The idea is that they can be empowering, especially in rural, developing communities, by giving people the ability to design and create the tools they want or need to solve local problems. In Ghana, users are trying to find an inexpensive way to build large solar energy collectors to turn the country's near-constant sunlight into power. In Pabal, India, a small community more than 100 miles outside of Mumbai, lab users developed diagnostic instruments to help fix tractor engines with timing troubles. And at the lab in Norway, users are working on GPS systems for boats and de-icing machines for windmills.

But wait, there's more:

Gershenfeld describes the shift from large-scale, expensive machine tools to personal fabrication as analogous to the evolution that began 40 years ago from room-sized mainframes to personal computers. Instead of personalizing the ability to do digital computing, we're now able to digitize and personalize the ability to manufacture our own tools and machines.

As it currently exists, however, the technology imposes limits on what can be done. The fabrication machines used in the fab labs today can't produce anything larger than themselves. (The milling machine, for example, is the size of a printer.) The laser cutter cuts no longer than two feet. Nor can it cut very deeply: It would take a day for the laser to slice through an inch of plywood (they now use a saw when necessary).


What's particularly interesting is how even the very limited use of fab-labs so far show the different approaches that cultures bring to using technology. When Gershenfeld began teaching a course in the use of fab-labs at MIT:

...The students -- many of them artists, architects, or science students without a technical background -- "responded passionately to the tools," he says. Soon they stopped asking him for help. They worked alone and with each other to learn what they needed to build what they wanted -- things like a portable scream machine" that saves your screams and plays them back (a kind of high-tech stress release); an alarm clock that won't shut off unless you prove you're awake by winning a game against it; a bicycle that recharges batteries when you ride it.

Though Gershenfeld liked his students' designs, he says, "they were making things for a market of one." He began to wonder how the fabrication tools could make a difference outside of Boston...


Thus the following interesting results:

The labs also face other, social challenges depending on where they are. In Boston, it is sometimes difficult to keep kids interested in learning after they're told, for example, they can't yet build life-sized robots. In South Africa, whose government is considering starting a fab lab, the challenge is apathy. "People don't want to be scientists or engineers anymore," said Riaan Coetzee, an information officer at South Africa's government-backed Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, at the user meeting in Boston. He believes a fab lab might get people excited about technology...In Ghana, says Amy Sun, a grad student at the Center for Bits and Atoms who helped set up the fab lab there last summer, they ran an average of six classes a day for locals aged 4 to adult. She estimates that nearly 1,000 people came through the lab during her six-week stay.

The other encouraging sign is current lab users' desire to collaborate, even though they're in far-flung countries. Most of the labs, for example, want to build antennas for various communications purposes. Recently, the lab in Norway -- where farmers and engineers are collaborating to build a wireless radio network to track sheep and reindeer -- built an antenna and posted photos and instructions on the Web for the others to see.


Naturally there are plans for an upgrade:

Ultimately, Gershenfeld wants to build a machine that can make any machine -- one that can "print" 3-D objects that include all the circuitry and mechanisms they need to move around, heat up, make noise, connect to the Internet, or do whatever it is they're designed to do. Such a machine -- think of the "replicators" on "Star Trek" -- doesn't yet exist, but Gershenfeld and others say there will be a version of it in a decade.

Thursday, February 03, 2005

President (Nancy) Reagan

Dr. Potomac wanted to take a moment out of a busy day saving the Republic to bring to readers' attention the CBS/Showtime production of The Reagans. Readers will recall that this had originally been intended for a CBS miniseries until an outcry among conservatives led to its exile on the Showtime network. Following the Hollywood adage that there's "no such thing as bad publicity" broadcast of The Reagans went on to lead that network to its highest ratings ever.

The Reagans is now available at your local Blockbuster Video Rental outlet for your viewing (dis)pleasure. At Dr. Potomac's Blockbuster on Capitol Hill, where one can stumble across a surprising number of very strange selections indeed, there was one copy of this video tucked in a very dusty corner. Because it is long (180 fun-loving minutes) it seemed a good choice for a snow day. As the Style Editor enjoys saying, "I seen my chance and I takes it!"

Despite its title, the movie is really about one Reagan -- and it isn't our former, beloved President. Pity the poor producer. He had no more idea about who Ronald Reagan was than, well, Edmund Morris. So, like Morris, he settled for a cartoon version of Ronald Reagan and turned to an easier subject, Nancy Reagan . Judy Davis' portrayal is enough to send any conflicted male directly to therapy. If Nancy Davis Reagan is anything like Judy Davis portrays her, Dr. Potomac would probably end up calling her "Mommy", too. Lover, Helpmate, Constant Customer of Astrologers and the Power Behind the Throne. A few scenes of note:

--Nancy's famous interview during Reagan's first term as governor with New York Times reporter, Joan Didion, or as Nancy calls her in the movie, "that bitch, Joan Didion." Nancy preens as the perfect mother and wife while a distracted, pre-adolescent Ron, Jr. turns up the classical music and begins pirouetting around the house setting the stage for years of family angst about whether Ron, Jr. was light in the loafers.

--Nancy tears into Jim Baker and Mike Deaver for not waking the President after Libyan jets attacked U.S. forces and then leaking the President's slumber to the media. "From now on," she growls from atop her heels, "if the media asks,'Does the President know about it?' the answer is, 'Yes, the President KNOWS about EVERYTHING."

--Nancy at the Geneva summit pouring tea while Raisa Gorbachev lectures her on the virtual servitude of American blacks and women and the absolute equality of women and minorities in the Soviet Union. To which Nancy replies, "Yes, there's total equality on the way to the Gulag" and then quickly to the interpreter, "Don't translate that!"

--Nancy at Patti Davis' wedding ceremony responding to Ron, Jr.'s inquiry, "Where's Michael [Reagan]?" To which, in her best "never-you-mind" tone, Nancy replies, "Oh, he didn't get his invitation in time." Huh. Wonder how that happened?

--Practically the best scene in the film has Nancy emasculating a quavering Don Regan, "I know you Don Regan. I see straight into your lying little heart." In the trade, this is known as the "Depends moment" as the chief of staff grapples to manage the full force of spousal fear and anxiety realizing that his next paycheck probably turns on the outcome.

All in all, a guilty pleasure to be enjoyed on a snowy afternoon. When it is over, your heart belongs to Mommy.




Little did we know: Macbeth was a hellava king, and now Scottish MSPs want to change his public image. Shame on you, Bill Shakespeare. Poetic license indeed!

Minnesota legislature unhappy over Reagan birthday tribute. "A resolution honoring the former Republican president's birthday caused partisan friction in the state Senate. It passed only after being retooled to mention that he never won Minnesota." Had he followed his advisors and challenged the tallies (which many considered crooked), he may have done just that. Talk about petty.

Happy Birthday Walter Bagehot (1826-1877). "Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell."
An Introduction (and Welcome)

Since no one else seems to be hanging about the place, I should introduce this blog to all the new readers who have shuffled over from Mere Comments. Mighty is the power of Touchstone magazine! Look on its works, ye Culturally-With-It-Trendy-Worship-Leaders, and despair!

Doctor Curmudgeon & Co. is a humble 990 square foot rowhouse in Blogopolis with a large bar, a well stocked library, a small but useful kitchen, and no bedrooms. We like it here. It began because the Ombudsman was tiring of continually forwarding the vituperations of Dr. Curmudgeon (an old school chum) to the Style Editor. Once the concept of "blog" and "to blog" was explained to the Doc, he was sold

Hence, our community. The Doc is a professor of history at a college somewhere in the vast American Midwest, to which he has come tentatively, warily, even suspiciously...for lo! He is of Yankee stock, and likes it best where people turn the "ar" into a dipthong. The Doc is married, and his mysterious wife and he have a child: one Scooter, a Welsh Corgi, whose life was shortened by about a year and a half during the American League Championship of 2004.

The Style Editor and the Ombudsman are related...they are, indeed, brother and sister. They come from a small village in the Mid-Atlantic, where there is a near-continual cry of waterfowl, mumuring of the tide race...and blam-blam-blam-blam of the citizenry proudly exercising their Second Amendment rights on aformentioned waterfowl. Thus, the Ombudsman and Style Editor share a love of the sea, stalwart yeomen, firearms, and any sports team connected with Philadelphia, particulary [ahem] the Philadelphia Eagles. Excuse me, I meant to write Phuldulphia Iggles.

Say it fast. It is a sort of prayer.

The Style Editor is legally trained, and works for an internationl Non Governmental Organization, NGO to the cogniscenti. The Ombudsman is a historian without licence, now in the throes of final combat with his doctoral dissertation, which as the Style Editor would point out to you has been a hell of a long time coming.

Dr. Potomac is a bosom friend of the Style Editor and the Ombudsman. He is one of the most sober and sensible people on the face of the earth. A politico of long-standing, he has traversed parties and ideologies until the current moment, in which he is a wonk and politico of no small standing in the serried ranks of the Washingtonian intelligentsia.

As is not unknown in the blogosphere, Dr. Curmudgeon has never met the Style Editor or Dr. Potomac. Great, no doubt, will be the shouting and consumption of cocktails when that happy event comes to pass. Or they might just hate each others guts. It's a tricky thing, blogging.

We remain anonymous, not because it gives us a frisson...well, it kind of does...but because we all inhabit a cold and cruel world. The Doc wishes to get tenure; the Ombudsman wishes to get a job; the Style Editor doesn't want to hack off any more NGOs than she does on a daily basis; Dr. Potomac does not want his views confused with that of the Bush Administration, and he does not want to get fired, for he has chilluns to feed. OK? Face it, we're wimps. If you want heroes, go some place else other than the internet.

Lutheran bloggers come here, thanks to our dear friend Bunnie Diehl. Yet only two of us (Style Editor and Ombudsman) are of the Lutheran persuasion. The Doc is a Catholic; and Dr. Potomac is a non-denominational Protestant. Even Bunnie has not rejected us because we form an interdemoninational community.

Thus we are liable to blab on about the Christian religion, given our effervescent interests. But we are also likely to babble about current politics, vituperate about academic affairs, drone on about 19th century history, enthuse about matters gastronomic, and obsess about matters British. For we have a strange interest in events in that island kingdom, such that some Brit bloggers confuse us as one of their own. But no, here be Americans only. Though the Ombudsman, it must be confessed, returned about a year or so ago from four years in that demiparadise; the Doc is strangely interested in it, for an Irish Catholic; and the Style Editor attributes her fascination to an early exposure to Masterpiece Theater. Dr. Potomac avers, meanwhile, that everything he learned in politics he could have learned by watching Yes, Minister at a younger age.

So...if you like some of what we say, you might not like the rest of it. Such is the way of the world. But remember, we are having fun. That is really our only purpose here.
Lileks on the State of the Union (or SOTU, as the hip bloggers say; or State of the Onion, as the policy wonks like to say):

I thought the Social Security section was strong, but whether it built up a head of steam to blast through the headwinds to come I can’t say. If the AARP puts out ads showing the spats-clad Monopoly man yanking checks from the hands of seniors and lighting rotund cheroots, what was said last night will make little difference. The challenge to Syria was nice, a public echo of what I suspect has been said in private. And hello, Egypt! Welcome to the Axis of Damn Well Better Get Your Act Together!

Go read it. Love it. Treasure it. And while you're at It [Ed.--Heavy use of the indefinite article there, eh, Mr. Ombudsman? Back off!], go down and check out Lileks' latest in his chronicle of the Adventures of Joe Ohio, Matchbook Salesman. I really am loving this little series, all inspired by a pile of matchbooks that Lileks acquired in his feverish pursuit of mid-century printed ephemera; it's a novel, it's a social history, it's both. It strikes me as a very creative way of doing social history, much the same as David Gelernter employed in his 1939: The Lost World of the the Fair.

Naturally, us'n historians would prefer to sneer rather than imitate; sneering so long and so hard, we have to use a fish-hook to keep our upper lip in the appropriate position.

Dang, but does that smart.

Oh, and yes, Style Editor, there is a Maustown, OH.




Dr. Dean

Following Dr. Potomac's observations on Dr. Dean, (which the Ombusdsman must in all modesty point out were prompted by the Doc himself) the Ombudsman finds nothing to add other than the headline:

Dean Likely DNC Chief; Rove Denies Involvement

Yes, that is a Scrappleface headline; and yes, Walter Cronkite really does believe Karl Rove has that kind of mind-control power.

Karl Rove...did you know he can bend spoons with the power of his mind? It's a favourite trick in the Oval Office, these days.

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Praising Dr. Dean

Dr. Potomac must thank the Ombudsman for raising the important point of Dr. Howard Dean, erstwhile presidential candidate and governor of Vermont, and soon to be Chairman of the oldest political party in human history. The reason for Dr. Potomac's silence on this topic is simply that he is of two minds.

In one mind, he's sees the logic of it perfectly. Dean is the closest thing that exists to a genuine populist figure in the Democratic Party -- if one can imagine a a popular base made up entirely of the academic, environmental and feminist elites of the country. He was able to raise $40 million dollars for his presidential bid (not since John Connally has so much political money been spent to so little political effect) through innovative use of Web-based campaigning. That is the kind of political entrepreneurship that has been entirely missing among the Democrats for 30 years or so and which was starkly missing in the John Kerry campaign. (John Kerry, true to his parsimonious New England heritage, managed to save $9 million of the funds he raised, and boy does he has some 'splainin to do.) From the rank-in-file standpoint, Howard Dean might not be a good candidate but he could very well be an excellent chairman.

The above explanation assumes, of course, that the Democratic party is still on the rails of reason. A second, more plausible, explanation is that they really are just batty. Dean, as he did on the campaign trail, is the chairman of those reduced to spittle-flecked rage by the Bush presidency. Peter Beinart's call to purge the Dean/Michael Moore wing of the party, brings to mind the famous Leninist formulation, "Kto, kovo?" Translated into our context this means roughly, "Just who's going to purge whom around here?" The reason Dean has waltzed into the chairmanship is that the Deniacs are the permanent Democratic party as opposed to the Democratic party that assembles quadrenially in the cold, Iowa night to launch a frontrunner. One expects the owner to mind the store. It is Howard Dean's party. Everyone else just has to live in it.
From the Far Abroad

Have we callooed and callayed about The Diplomad, yet? Certainly the Style Editor, Dr. Potomac and the Ombudsman, in our various run-in's around and about Our Nation's Capital, have chortled fiendishly as we recall what this underground network of Foreign Service diplomats have posted on their Most Excellent Blog.

But really, they go from strength to strength.

First there was their wonderful neologism of "High Priest Vulture Elite", something the Style Editor much enjoyed, given her frequent contact with the HPVE in her day job.

Then there was yesterday's post on "Comma-ism", which synced so well with the thoughts of our Dr. Potomac. Allow me to insert an extract:

There is one group of singularly anti-American types who just have had the hardest time imaginable praising the events of January 30. Who are these foul anti-Americans? Has The Diplomad taught you nothing? Why the leaders of the Democratic Party of the USA, of course! The party that has become the party of the Comma-ists. You know what we mean: the types who must always insert a comma after a ritual throw-away phrase. For example: “Of course the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were horrible [Here it comes! Listen for it!] [COMMA] but US policy in the Middle East . . ." “Of course the Iraqi elections were a good thing [COMMA] but they will not resolve the serious issue of severe income inequality in East St. Louis, or the growing gender disparity in the granting of scholarships to welding schools . . .”

And today we have "Supergeritolman vs Staypuffedmarshmellowbeings: Castro Creams the EU".

We read:

Well, dear readers, guess what? El Comandante apparently has the magic diplomatic formula for dealing with the EU -- we hope to see this formula taught at the US Foreign Service Institute. It seems that when dealing with the EU, it's best to be highly insincere, in other words tell them whatever they want to hear; then make them beg to give you money; take the money; then go back on whatever nonsense you told them originally; then insult them without mercy in the most vile language you can utter; and they'll come running back with even more to give you. You don't believe The Diplomad? You say no organization or group of countries would tolerate such behavior? Oh, pititful fools! Has The Diplomad taught you nothing? We're talking about the EU, for Heaven's sake!

Well, the Ombudsman finds no surprise whatsoever within his cerebral cortex at this. Nor is he surprised at the following:

The EU, also at the urging of Spain's government "recommended" that European embassies in Havana invite neither dissidents nor Cuban officials to its national day receptions. Well, fortunately, it seems not all the Europeans are going to buy off on that recommendation: so far, at least, Netherlands, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia have indicated that they will continue to invite and receive dissidents.

This is indeed a cruel, dark world, where the Ombudsman cannot be surprised by such foul EU cravenness. But there is a glimmer of hope, when nations who used to have to pretend El Commandante was their fraternal comrade in the socialist struggle can tell the EU where to put it.

As the old Scotsman would, after having hoisted the back of his kilt in the general direction of Brussels: "Aye, wheer's your soft power now, you narrow-chested nyaffs, ye
Goodness! It is lovely to see our full slate of bloggers back and blogging strong in February.

Dr. Potomac: How about some inside commentary on the (I think rather laughable) success of Governor Dean's DNC bid? Somehow I don't see Dean Dems taking Mark Shields' advice. And speaking of Dean, secession from his homestate proceeds apace -- Killington, VT is still anxious to become Killington, NH. My favorite quote from a NH rep: "My big fantasy is that New Hampshire state liquor store over there," Currier said. "We could generate a ton of money."

Ombundsman: Where have you been, my dear sir? Can I say D. Phil. yet? And you are right to anticipate my horror at the J. F. Stephen search.

The man who works from himself outwards, whose conduct is governed by ordinary motives, and who acts with a view to his own advantage and the advantage of those who are connected with himself in definite, assignable ways, produces in the ordinary course of things much more happiness to others (if that is the great object of life) than a moral Don Quixote who is always liable to sacrifice himself and his neighbours. When you have to deal with a man who expects pay and allowances, and is willing to give a fair day's work for it as long as the arrangement suits him, you know where you are. Deal with such a man fairly and in particular cases, if he is a man of spirit and courage, he will deal with you not only fairly but generously. Earn his gratitude by kindness and justice, and he will in many cases give you what no money could buy or pay for. On the other hand, a man who has a disinterested love for the human race--that is to say, who has got a fixed idea about some way of providing for the management of the concerns of mankind--is an unaccountable person with whom it is difficult to deal upon any well known and recognized principles, and who is capable of making his love for men in general the ground of all sorts of violence against men in particular.

Insane, my foot.

Style Editor: Your religious commentary here is most welcome. We have become distinctly popular with Lutheran sites, due in large part to your efforts. I tip my miter and welcome everyone. R.I.P. Pope Clement XIII, who died this day in 1769:

It remains, Venerable Brothers, that We advise you concerning the fortitude and strength of spirit needed to oppose those things which are against the orthodox faith, which harm piety or which damage the integrity of moral living. Let us be strong in the spirit of the Lord, in good judgment, and in courage. We should not be like dumb watchdogs unable to bark, allowing our flocks to fall prey to looting and our sheep to be devoured by every wild animal in the field. Nor should anything deter us from throwing ourselves into battle for the glory of God and for the salvation of souls: "Think of the way he endured such opposition from sinners." If we are afraid of the audacity of worthless men, it affects the strength of the episcopacy and its sublime and divine power to govern the Church. Nor can we Christians endure or exist any longer-if it has come to that-if we become overly frightened by the snares or threats of the damned. Therefore, trusting not in ourselves but in the God who raises the dead to life, we despise human affairs and cry out to the Lord: You are my hope in the day of disaster. Let us never be exhausted in body or in spirit, for we are fellow workers with God. The Lord Jesus is with us always even to the end of time. Therefore let us not be weakened by scandal or persecution, lest we seem ungrateful for God's favor, since his assistance is as strong as His promises are true.
If the Los Angeles Times Says So...

Dr. Potomac wishes to update an undocumented assertion he made in "The Plantation Strikes Back" relating to the African-American vote in Ohio last November. Nationwide, the President received 11 percent of the African-American vote. In Ohio, according to this morning's Los Angeles Times, George W. Bush received 16 percent of the African-American vote which was quite possibly the difference between winning outright and getting a recount in your Christmas stocking.
Candlemas

It was on Candlemas Day,
And all in the morning,
They visited the Temple
With our heavenly King.

And was not this a joyful thing?
And sweet Jesus they called him by name.

-All in The Morning (Trad. Carol from Derbyshire, England)

Judging from decorating patterns and tree disposal habits, a great debate permeates modern American society: when does Christmas end? Some people opt for Dec. 26; still others are decorating their now brown wreaths with hearts on St Valentine’s Day.

Before we giggle too much at this however, we should consider that the various branches of Christianity do not speak with one voice on the Christian year either. Nowadays liturgical Protestants end Christmas on Ephiphany. Roman Catholics consider the Monday after the Baptism of Our Lord the end of Christmas. The Orthodox also consider the Baptism of Jesus, the Theophany, the end of Christmas, but when the date is depends on whether they’re sticking to their guns on that Julian calendar issue. Non-liturgical Protestants could care less, after all some might not even celebrate Christmas in the first place.

The pattern has been fluid, however--no matter what the Catholics might tell you--because it was not unusual in the Medieval and post Medieval church for the people to consider today, Candlemas Day, the official end of Christmas.

What is Candlemas? It is the celebration of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. Jewish law commanded that first born sons be consecrated to God in the Temple. The Eastern Church generally continues to consider Candlemas a celebration of Jesus. (There are some exceptions.) The Western church however, gradually made it a day commemorating Mary, because under Jewish law a woman was considered unclean after she gave birth. 40 days after the birth of a son (80 if it was a daughter) she was to present herself in the temple and to present a sacrifice for her purification, a lamb for the burnt offering and a dove or young pigeon for the sin offering. If the woman was poor she could offer two doves or pigeons instead. Candlemas, then, was Mary's purification day.

While fulfilling their duties in the Temple, the Holy Family encountered two remarkable people, Simeon and Anna. Both were prophets and both upon seeing Jesus spoke of him as the redemption of Israel. Simeon, who had been promised by God that he would not die until he has seen the Messiah, had particularly moving words that are often incorporated into liturgies as the Nunc dimittis: “ O Lord, now let your servant depart in peace according to Thy Word. For mine eyes have seen Thy Salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to lighten the Gentiles and the Glory of Thy people Israel."

Candlemas gets its name from procession of candles into the church at the beginning of the service accompanied by the singing of the Nunc dimittis. The procession signifies the entry of the Light of the World into the Temple. In the eleventh century of so the custom was added that people would bring the candles they intend to use throughout the year to be blessed by the priest.

As well as some religious sources, some secular sources also assert that Candlemas is the end of Christmas, most famously Robert Herrick’s poem “Candlemas Eve", a sort of guide for the liturgical decorator. And for the liturgical gastronome, crepes are de riguer eating on Candlemas.

So, you, yes you with the brown wreaths and tree teetering on the edge of spontaneous combustion, go ahead and take them down.

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

As the Ombudsman here at Doctor Curmudgeon & Co., I believe it's time for a little tidying-up around the joint.

This occurred to me when I was viewing our "referrals", and noted that one Gentle Reader had found Doctor Curmudgeon & Co. by typing into Google the following words: "James Fitzjames Stephen Insane".

[Hushed, shocked intake of breath. Straightening of the back.]

This is not the sort of Google search regarding the estimable Mr. Stephen with which any of us here at Doctor Curmudgeon & Co.--those of us who have actually read his work--would care to associate ourselves. Certainly not the Doc, who has been known to give out James Fitzjames Stephen's treatises for Christmas, Yom Kippur, Bar Mitzvahs, Pentecost, Flag Day, and any other holiday that suggests itself to his veritably Stephenesque mind.

Let that be noted for the record.
Funny thing, but just the other day some nut by the name of "Bill Moyers" (imagine Homer Simpson air quotes there, please) wrote a column in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Believe it or not, this "Bill Moyers" was talking about at least three of us here at Dr. Curmudgeon & Co.

Wuh? No, no, not directly. But he was attacking--bravely attacking!--right wing Protestant Fundamentalist Nutjobs. And given that his net is very, very big, at least three of us fit into it. The Doc himself, as is well-known, falls into the category of right wing Roman Catholic Traditionalist Nutjobs. He has to put up with Garry Wills. That's enough work of anyone, OK? So leave him out of this.

Anyway, this "Bill Moyers" claims to be quite the expert on right wing Protestant Fundamentalist Nutjobs, because he was apparently a Baptist preacher for six months before he became, in turns, a PR Hack, Presidential Attack Dog, Acolyte Journalist, Seeker of Bliss, and...when the hell did this happen...Courageous Repository of Solomonic Wisdom for our Age.

Well, he's certainly four of those things.

Anyway, he starts out this way:

One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.

Well, sure. Glad to know you're not going to sugar coat it there, "Bill". Thanks for setting things up to allow for a reasonable, balanced, Solomonic exchange of opinions. No one out here but us Delusionals.

Frankly, the Ombudsman does not have time to Fisk all of this. The Ombudsman, he is the man of much business, as our dear friend the super fantastic Manolo would say. There are other things of greater concern to the Ombudsman, like the heat of his coffee, the state of the weather, or the strange thing on the sole of his Allan Edmonds cap-toe loafer, than the "musings" of the "Bill Moyers".

So it's a good thing that James Lileks is out there! Strangely enough, he too receives a salary from the Star-Tribune. [Ed.-- Perhaps they've forgotten about him?] But on his own blog, James has this (among many other things) to say:


"Sunday was the day when Americans were watching the Iraqi election, of course. What do you think the Strib’s editorial page had for this weighty day? Well, a lengthy editorial on Ethanol, for those who rise Sunday morn with a healthy appetite for flapjacks, sausages, orange juice and 2000 words on corn subsidies. ('Bold gesture, missed options.' Was ever a more perfect headline for an editorial ever printed?) But the main page had this at the top:

'For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power. What that means for the environment is frightening.'

Well, it depends on your perspective. We all remember how 270,000 people were killed in a day when the environment demonstrated that it had a monopoly of power over plate tectonics.

Below the words, a picture of cracked parched earth, which had once no doubt been green & verdant farmland before the Right Rev. Bush got out his joystick and sent his 900 foot tall Jesus robot to blast the crops with his death-beam laser eyes.

Did I mention that the shadow of a cross falls across the parched land?

You look down the page to see what this might be titled – Meek gesture, seized options? Bold & spicy options, savory gestures? Get this:

THERE IS NO TOMORROW.

We’re on a roll! Ecological catastrophe brought on by 'ideology and theology,' with another dull DONG of the catastrophe bell that’s been tolling ever since the Indian cried a famous lone tear over phosphates in the laundry soap. Then comes the cherry on the sundae:

'By Bill Moyers.'

All rise..."


It continues from there. Read, as they like to say in the blogosphere, the whole thing.

That 900 foot Jesus robot sounds cool. Maybe Dr. Potomac could get us one. Can we use it to scare Teddy Kennedy sober?

No, probably need the Second Coming for that job.
Rice 2008

At least two of us--that would be the Ombudsman and the Style Editor--have agreed that if Condi did run for President in 2008, we would drop whatever we are doing and run off to help the campaign. Quite frankly, December 2007 in New Hampshire looks like a good deal, as far as we are concerned, as long as we can do advance work for Madame Secretary.

It's hard to imagine that this is going to happen, but you can dream...which is just what Draft Condi is doing. Here are some of my favorite reasons for President Rice:

5. ...the first President who has proclaimed herself "a Second Amendment absolutist," repudiating everything including registration. Her father didn't hunt ducks -- he hunted Klansmen. (No proof that he got one, but Kerry never proved he got that duck, either).

6. She would also be the first unmarried President in over a century. All the supermarket mags could speculate as to whom she's dating now. (Okay, they could do it with Bill Clinton, too, but this would have a lot more decorum). Stolen glances at Prince Charles? Why did she appoint a 27 year old as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Paparazzi could pursue her as she sneaked away with a Marine guard. The Secret Service could detain the paparazi and "accidentally" drop them off the 14th Street Bridge. This gets better by the minute.

7. If she does get married, we'll have to figure out what the First Man of the U.S. does. Gets up on the White House roof to adjust the antenna? Trims the grass? Serves as the representative to NASCAR? (Takes out the garbage is a given).

8. Since the election of 2008 would end with her nomination, she would have no need to barter the usual political favors (this group gets a cabinet official, this donor gets a nice ambassadorship) and could run her Administration as she pleased. (Probably first time that's happened since the election of 1796). The British might actually get a competent ambassador for once. The Democrats would also benefit, since they would save the expenses of a convention, campaign, and inauguration.


You might also check out Rice 2008--which is, I hasten to add, highly unofficial.