Well quite

Comments by Robin Lane Fox historian advisor on the movie Alexander about the nature of battle rage (lyssa in Greek):

"I know what it means now," Fox says. "Even with a rubber spear, I know what it means, and you don't come near a chap, even with bare legs, if he is possessed by lyssa, especially if he is a historian."

Bare legged berserker hordes of historians. Oh my.

Having explained the mysteries of Delaware Chancery, I wish to read the Style Editor venting upon this here article from the NYT.

It does not begin well:

SEATED to my right was a former college fraternity president. To my left was a Condé Nast editor. The low roar of conversation — about personal trainers, one-night stands and the unlikely pleasures of calf roping — was interrupted by a spate of impromptu dancing, squeals of laughter and a brief wrestling bout. The tuna-noodle casserole was going over well, as were the Nutella and Skippy sandwiches.

The Postal Service, an indie-rock band, played in the background. A case of inexpensive wine was flowing, augmented by Grey Goose martinis and red plastic cups of Johnnie Walker Black, neat.

Dorothy Draper's advice was working.

Believe me, I could use some advice. I am a 22-year-old with a subpar income. I live with three roommates in a walk-up railroad apartment on the Upper East Side.

Until recently I had no clue what an aperitif was, and my idea of a proper dinner involved grating real cheese into a Kraft Dinner. Now, on the eve of the holidays, it was time to grow up and face that post-college rite of passage: giving my first dinner party.

Oh, gag me with a bottle of Grey Goose. Madam, Dorothy Draper would tar you and feather you and beat you bloody.

And when these are the opening paragraphs in a New York Times article on your new presidential library, don't you think that you would get even more nervous as you ponder your Legacy?


Like the 42nd presidency itself, the new Clinton library here sprawls across eight years of big ambitions and small details and does not omit, but hardly dwells upon, the sex scandal that led to Bill Clinton's impeachment trial.

The William J. Clinton Presidential Center, to be dedicated on Thursday, is a futuristic glass-paneled rectangle cantilevered over the banks of the Arkansas River, evoking Mr. Clinton's metaphoric "Bridge to the 21st Century." It is a reflection of a man who famously crammed just about everything into his speeches and his presidency and has now crammed them or their facsimiles into this shrine he hopes will shape his legacy.


I think it's time to announce that when I retire from the Presidency, or from the Ombudsmanship, I will not build one of these silly monuments to myself, nor ask the taxpayers to maintain it.

I'm sure the Doc saw this on the BBC, I just wanted to beat him to the obligatory foxhunting post. The House of Lords having voted to retain foxhunting, albeit with a new licensing system, it looks like the House of Commons will summon up the powers of the Parliament Act to override the Lords.

It's enough to make me want to take up the sport.

So I was listening to NPR this morning, soaking in all the amusing testimony by Michael Eisner, when it suddenly struck me: what in the heck is the CEO of Disney doing sitting in a courtroom in Georgetown, Delaware? That is about as far as you can get from anywhere on the Northeast Corridor.

Since the Style Editor has a legal background, and knows about things like Chancery Courts, maybe she can enlighten me.

Joan Baez performs anti-Bush minstrel show in Virginia. Don't quite know what to say about this. I think perhaps this deserves limited comment: Seek professional help, Joan.

Herbst

Die Blätter fallen, fallen wie von weit,
als welkten in dem Himmel ferne Gärten;
sie fallen mit verneinender Gebärde.

Und in den Nächten fällt die schwere Erde
aus allen Sternen in die Einsamkeit.

Wir alle fallen.
Diese Hand da fällt.
Und sieh dir andre an:
es ist in allen.

Und doch ist Einer, welcher dieses Fallen
unendlich sanft in seinen Händen hält.

Rainer  Maria  Rilke


AUTUMN


The leaves are falling down the world's abyss
as if in heaven distant gardens wither.
They fall in silence, meekly without mirth.
And through eternal night this heavy earth
falls from all stars to utter loneliness.
We all are falling, this hand falls.
Just look around you - it's in everything.
Yet there is One, who holds this fall most gently in his hands.

You must go and read the profile given our dear friend in blogville Enoch Soames -- you'll find it over at normblog. Some of the choice bits:

If you could effect one major policy change in the governing of your country, what would it be? > I would return the rebellious North American colonies to the Queen.

What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world? > Do you mean besides people?

Do you have any prejudices you're willing to acknowledge? > I am not prejudiced; I hate everyone and everything equally.

What is your favourite proverb? > Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible.

Instead of approaching the lack of conservatives in academia as an issue of fair play or ideological balance, Mark Bauerlein in the latest Chronicle discusses it via sociology and makes a remarkably good case.

But we can't open the university to conservative ideas and persons by outside command. That would poison the atmosphere and jeopardize the ideals of free inquiry. Leftist bias evolved within the protocols of academic practice (though not without intimidation), and conservative challenges should evolve in the same way. There are no administrative or professional reasons to bring conservatism into academe, to be sure, but there are good intellectual and social reasons for doing so.

Those reasons are, in brief: One, a wider spectrum of opinion accords with the claims of diversity. Two, facing real antagonists strengthens one's own position. Three, to earn a public role in American society, professors must engage the full range of public opinion.

Finally, to create a livelier climate on the campus, professors must end the routine setups that pass for dialogue. Panels on issues like Iraq, racism, imperialism, and terrorism that stack the dais provide lots of passion, but little excitement. Syllabi that include the same roster of voices make learning ever more desultory. Add a few rightists, and the debate picks up. Perhaps that is the most persuasive internal case for infusing conservatism into academic discourse and activities. Without genuine dissent in the classroom and the committee room, academic life is simply boring.

I couldn't agree more.

Royal Mail Contest: Write like an illiterate and win a prize

In an attempt to drum up business, the British Royal Mail is sponsoring a letter-writing competition for school kids. Sound innocent enough? Well, the catch is that children can use (and are, in fact, encouraged to use) modern slang in their compositions, and the winner will be chosen by a thus far unnamed "urban music star." Sayeth the BBC:

The contest, for five to 11 year olds, is designed to "bring letter writing in line with the communication trends of children today".

The results should "express the sender's personality".

Oh yes, in Anglo-American society and culture today there is far too little self-expression -- we really need to liberate letter-writing from inhibition and spread the plague of expressing one's personality to yet more areas. Ugh.

Common turns of phrase like "chav", "as if", "minging" and the perennial "cool" might be expected to feature heavily.

The terms "innit", immortalised by spoof rapper Ali G, and "yeah but, no but", favoured by Vicky Pollard of BBC TV's Little Britain, are also among modern youth catchphrases.

However, even in the age of e-mails and text messages, certain competition rules apply.

Carrie Holder, Royal Mail's social policy manager, said: "If a child's hero is Eminem we would expect the language used to be very different to a formal letter to Tony Blair, for example."

"It is important that children recognise the value of letter writing, whether it's to inform, advise or respond effectively or to convey feelings and emotions."

Far be it from me to suggest the Royal Mail's "social policy manager" is dead wrong (and who even knew the RM had a "social policy manager?" Does the RM have a social policy?) but shouldn't they be exercising a modicum of leadership and suggest that school children not talk and write like Eminem and more like Tony Blair? Certainly if literacy is a social good (and I would think the RM "social policy manager" would know this), why encourage the young to write like ill-mannered, uncultured, illiterate boobs?

British businesses have warned that they are uninterested in employing those with limited vocabularies. Schools are trying to correct it a bit, albeit not with enough conviction and verve. British kids cannot spell very well, and (big surprise here) neither can prospective teachers.

But in the search for more mail revenue (which seems to be behind this), the RM seems more interested in dumbing Brits down. Who cares what they say, as long as they pay for the stamps. Good social policy there.

Gary Wills Loses It

I don't believe, much, in the internet practice of "fisking", christened after the brutal beating given to the uber-lefty correspondent of the Independent, Robert Fisk. It seems pretty sophmoric to me, most of the time I see it done. But Gary Will's rant in the Houston Chronicle deserves a good working over. Here, then, a few highlights.

He begins:

This election confirms the brilliance of Karl Rove as a political strategist.

Of course it does. Karl Rove, evil genius, drinking the blood of bats in order to see into the future, controlling his Bushpuppet with twiddles of his overweight pinkies. This is called squaring the circle, comrades. Since Bush is, of course, mindless, each of his victories shows the mega-IQ of Karl Rove. By 2008, I predict, Karl Rove will be the Smartest Man Ever.

We continue:

He calculated that the religious conservatives, if they could be turned out, would be the deciding factor. The success of the plan was registered not only in the presidential results but also in all 11 of the state votes to ban same-sex marriage. Rove understands what surveys have shown, that many more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin's theory of evolution.

This might be called Bryan's revenge for the Scopes trial of 1925, in which William Jennings Bryan's fundamentalist assault on the concept of evolution was discredited. Disillusionment with that decision led many evangelicals to withdraw from direct engagement in politics. But they came roaring back into the arena out of anger at other court decisions -- on prayer in school, abortion, protection of the flag and, now, gay marriage. Rove felt that the appeal to this large bloc was worth getting President Bush to endorse a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage (though he had opposed it earlier).

Behold the new rationale, as discussed by Professor Brooks! It was those damn God-Lovers, comrades! Them Jesus lovin' freaks up in the hollers of the Applachians, getting dipped in Goose Crick, blubbering hymns, marrying their sisters, chewing tobaccy...and not one of them has read Gary Wills! True story!

Oh, and those Born-Agains are full of anger, too. Unlike Gary Wills, I suppose, who continues his irenic discourse thus:

Which raises the question: Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?

America, the first real democracy in history, was a product of Enlightenment values — critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences. Though the founders differed on many things, they shared these values of what was then modernity.

Gary Wills has written books on the intellectual history of the Revolution and the Early Republic, but you would never know it from these sentences. Or, perhaps more accurately, you know what to expect when you read them.

Are we to gather that at the time of the Revolution most Americans did not believe in the Virgin Birth? Or that most of the "founders" did not believe in the Virgin Birth? That people who regarded themselves as "Enlightened" did not believe in the Virgin Birth? That theological commitments, in their minds, inevitably clashed with "a regard for the secular sciences" to the detriment of the theological commitments?

Well, that all depends on what kind of Enlightenment existed here in America, doesn't it? Perhaps the Enlightenment in America was not quite like the God-free French Enlightenment. Perhaps the American Enlightenment was considerably influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment in ways that allowed Americans to maintain a fervent Protestant faith.

Hmmmm. I seem to remember a book that touched on some of these themes. Wasn't the author named...Gary Wills?

[And what's with this Virgin Birth thing? How about feeding the five thousand, or walking on water? What about the Resurrection? You aren't sex-obsessed, are you, Gary? Or is this part of the whole disaffected Catholic thing you've got going on?]

Then comes this:

Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in al-Qaida, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists. Americans wonder that world thinks us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed.

Right. OK. Well. Actually you do find a lot of fundamentalist rage in Europe, often concentrated in the Moslem communities there, to be sure. And do you think it might be exacerbated, just a little bit, by such Enlightened stances as banning headscarves?

But let's get back to the narrative. Europeans hate us because we believe things. Thus...what, exactly? Are we worthy of destruction? That would seem to be the logical conclusion from this farrago of illogic.

We press on:

Bush promised in 2000 that he be a uniter not a divider, that he would make conservatism compassionate. He did not need to make such false promises this time. He was re-elected precisely by pitting the reddest aspects of the red states against the blue. In this, he is very far from Ronald Reagan, who was amiably and ecumenically pious. He could address more secular audiences with real respect.

Newsflash! Gary Wills, author of Reagan's America, card-carrying member of Reagan Haters of Amerika, finds something to love about Dutch.

After such a miracle, Brother Gary, how can you deny the possibility of the Virgin Birth?

To sum up. Here is a classic example of bile and vituperation dressed up with hack scholarship, in this case allusions to historical happenings to give the air of ponderous punditry to the essay. What makes is so bad is that he knows better, but doesn't give a damn. This is precisely the sort of thing that David Brooks was warning the liberals against doing.

They just can't help themselves.

Final thought: if this is the best deep-thinker they can rely on, if this is the oracle of the (intake of breath) New York Review of Books, they really are up the creek

Tired of politics? Sure you are.

Well, now for something completely different. David Warren has a delightful column up on the joys of the cuisine of Friuli (that's the bit of Italy between Trieste and Venice). He even includes a recipe...

Great David Brooks column in the NYT today. Take a peek:

But the same insularity that caused many liberals to lose touch with the rest of the country now causes them to simplify, misunderstand and condescend to the people who voted for Bush. If you want to understand why Democrats keep losing elections, just listen to some coastal and university town liberals talk about how conformist and intolerant people in Red America are. It makes you wonder: why is it that people who are completely closed-minded talk endlessly about how open-minded they are?

And Newsweek has some fantastic behind-the-scenes looks at the campaign, some distinctly unflattering to Kerry. Again, take a peek.

This article in the Globe was amusing, on how uber-liberals in Cambridge, Mass. are dealing with a Kerry defeat. Some of the choice remarks:

"It just blows my mind," said Susan Corcoran, 60, who bundled herself against the wind near Central Square. "I really can't believe there are that many people across the county who are going to wrap themselves around morals as a reason to vote for Bush."

NASCAR dads. Security moms. Karl Rove. Corcoran spit them all out like poisonous seeds. "It infuriates me," she said. "Like I don't have any morals because I voted for a guy who at least has some common sense?"

"I wouldn't want to live in Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, where they're so concerned about how much you go to church and how moral you are," Corcoran said. "At least I live here. I wouldn't want to live anyplace else."

And you wonder why the Democrats get smoked in Red America, such arrogance. Trust me, people in Kansas, Missouri, and Wisconsin (which went Kerry, if I'm not mistaken) are tickled pink you plan to stay away. I watched (or endured, perhaps) the "Daily Show" last night, and Senator Chuck Schumer was a guest, another man who does not seem to "get it." He started ripping Wyoming as a place where people drive too fast (this from a New Yorker?) and saying "maybe we need more reruns of 'Bonanza.'" Keep it up.

The language of war and terrorism, which Bush used to question Kerry's leadership, rang hollow for Theresa O'Neill, 35, a real estate broker sipping a coffee with her brother, John, at the 1369 Coffee Shop.

"The whole war on terrorism -- what is the war on terrorism?" O'Neill asked, her voice thickening with irony. "It's like a bogeyman, and you can't fight the bogeyman."

Just click your heels together, and say, "There is no terrorism, there is no terrorism." Dream on, buddy.

Near Central Square at Broadway Bicycle School, Liz Coffey, 30, tinkered with the guts of a bike. A Green Party supporter, she was less surprised by the turnout.

"I don't have a lot of faith in my fellow Americans to do the right thing," Coffey said. "I'm always a pessimist when it comes to elections, probably because I grew up under Reagan."

I guess "do the right thing" means vote Green and agree with me, which is pretty hysterical right there. "Growing up under Reagan" for her (30 years old) would mean she was ages 6-14. Yeah, I'm sure those bitter memories are still fresh.

Bunny Diehl agrees.

Fascinating find in Britain: a Roman cosmetic tin from the Second Century AD, and it still had finger marks inside.

And here's a good one: a University of New Hampshire freshman was kicked out of his dorm and had to live in his car, until the University dropped its charges this week. His crime? He put up a flier in the dorm saying that freshmen girls were overweight and should take the stairs. UNH charged him with "harassment, disorderly conduct, violating affirmative action policies and lying," and also "imposed sanctions against [him], including probation through May 30, 2006, a mandatory ethics meeting with a judicial office official by Nov. 15, counseling, and writing a 3,000-word reflection essay." The word "draconian" comes to mind. Eventually the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education was called in and the matter was settled in the student's favor.

We were also up bright and early today, first to Mass at 7am (it is All Souls Day), second to the polling place to vote. We are not in a battleground state either, so there was no line. I'll be staying up pretty late tonight too. And I am nervous.

I'm not in a battleground state, but I voted. Break out the breakfast whisky! It's going to be a long day.