The Internet is over. (And stupid)

Surfed over to a London Review of Books article, by Terry Eagleton, on Frederic Jameson. Somehow at the top of the screen the two Google-run adverts that appeared in the little box were for the Assembly of God and something anti-Trinitarian (Protestant sectarian theology, I guess. Strange information entropy these days.

Blasts from the past

http://chrismagazine.blogspot.com/ (13May06)

The Wonder Stuff? They're still together? I haven't heard them since I was in college.... Except that I just dug up the "Hup" cassette (!) last month.

Come to think of it, I also just last month ran into a very old acquaintance from those years, whom I hadn't seen since the Wonder Stuff was big. (And 'alternative' music was alternative.)

If a clod be washed away to the sea, Europe is the less.

The German newspapers, perhaps because of their distance from the situation in New Orleans, seem able describe it with a calm gravity. The Süddeutsche Zeitung has taken a three-pronged approach: besides the news itself, there is an analysis of Bush, plus a pair of articles on the Crescent City.

I. Anarchy in the USA.
Stephan Kornelius' piece calmly follows the lead of the New York Times in noting Bush's difficulties with rapid-reaction. "The shock-phase following 'Katrina' was particularly long"; the deer-in-the headlights moment was only hesitatingly overcome on the third day. At which point, the authorities were overwhelmed and lines of responsibility were rather chaotic, which is "not entirely unusual for America."

But Kornelius identifies the heart of the problem (the anarchy), which stems in part from the fact that Bush paid little attention to the victims in the early hours. He puts it in stark and no-longer- theoretical terms:

If the State is overwhelmed by this original condition and finally fails, then the anger will quickly present the danger that politics, most of all this politics with the President on top of the pyramid, will be attacked.

He predicts that if the chaos is not brought under control soon, then political Washington will make Bush pay a heavy political price "for this demonstration of governmental infirmity."

II. Sensuality, R.I.P.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung also contains a beautiful obituary for the City of New Orleans, by Voker Breidecker.

Now the city is sinking into the water, and with her the dream, that life in the Big Easy follows only its own laws, that it goes on more slowly and indolently, more heavy-blooded and yet more cheerful, lighter, and more carefree than it goes on anywhere else. And now the bodies drift in the water; nobody knows how many... among them the poorest of the poor, who possessed no vehicles.... Their simple wooden houses, that are marked with ghastly symbols like in the plague-times of the middle ages, have become for them cases of death.

(After this, the article tends to shift into the preterit tense.) The writer is well aware that New Orleans has despite its images always been a city of the poor. And of course it was known to be a doomed and sinking ship: but the inhabitants' sense of being in an impossible situation was taken in and turned into its music, songs, its lifestyle. Breidecker mourns for it as a distinctly European city: indeed, as a city that was frequently succeeding when the Europeans themselves were failing. It was "aways already 'multicultural' long before that word was discovered."

Also sinking with New Orleans is the last colony, the last dream-city of the old Europe, which here and only here, in the delta of Ol' Man River, fused with America, Africa, and the Carribbean. Even Europe's own nations--French and Germans, British and Irish, Italians and Spaniards, Poles and Russians--have already lived 'down by the riverside' in peaceful neighborliness much longer than the places, out of which they migrated. New Orleans is--in mourning we must now say: was--by far the most 'unamerican' city on its continent.

In what sense this last sentence is true, i can't quite say.

III.
Cities, in the United States, are quite different things from cities in Europe, for neither the Americans nor anyone else can pretend that they were just 'always here.' (Except in a few old Spanish towns that are remarkably small). In Europe, however--in the greater part of the inhabitited world--that is the assumption, as anyone who's been to Italy can see. Venice was once the seat of an empire, with the greatest assortment of luxury goods in all Europe. Rome built an empire by building roads. And Cordoba was the capital of a Caliphate for 300 years a millenium ago. But Americans are used to considering their cities as having just been founded. Which might be why we find it so hard to contain suburban sprawl: our cities, we think--especially if we're not on the East Coast--are really only in version 2 or 3; the really profressional development won't be going on until v.5 anyway.

So it is a shock to us to contemplate the end of a great city, even if the rust belt has gotten an awful lot of practice in the last 30 years. Or rather, it's hard to contemplate a city that has reached the possible limits of its growth, which New Orleans certainly had. Yet New Orleans was unique because it was older than the others in its neighborhood, and because it was French, sometimes Spanish, and because the architecht Jefferson bought it ready-made (so that we could reserve our efforts for building Council Bluffs). Perhaps the sense of doom that seems to have always pervaded it stems from the knowledge that we didn't create it ourselves. Perhaps it's from the fact that it is an anchorage and point of commerce with a south-north orientation, whereas the trend in American history is to lay lines of communication east-west. Perhaps it's the vampires.

Other places in America have disappeared, but that was because they were not destinations. So much of our culture comes from New Orleans, it is hardly possible to imagine America without it. No Dixieland, no Jazz Age, no Tenessee Williams, no Emeril. Can all this really have sunk forever into a lake?

We avoided the Apocalypse by going into exile.

Yes, we left the country and crossed the Ocean in July. And that's where we're staying for now. We left in order to avoid the pending catastrophe. Although we predicted it was more likely to be of a shadow-of-the-dark-side type thing, than a deluge. And we are saddened at the condition of the Gulf Coast. However, after living through the Tsumami-winter in Eastern New England, we are not particularly surprised that there was a hurricane. Yet we are stunned by the number of casualties and the fact that the Army Corps of Engineers simply wasn't given enough money to do its job.

More on the catatrophe soon.

New Moon in Gemini. Get used to it.

Suddenly, there's, like, news.

Ronald Reagan, Libertarian
We think that it must be the confusing Gemini effect that can explain the fact that the three Justices who voted for pot for sick people were the conservatives, including two Reagan appointees. Or could it be that one of them is, actually, a cancer patient?
UPDATE: Wednesday's NYT editorializes that the majority is really about protecting the Interstate Commerce Act, which includes the federal power to ban child labor. We wonder how much they are rationalizing.

A couple of Yale Men
The Boston Globe is reporting that John F. Kerry's grades at Yale were not any better than George W. Bush's. And sometimes they were worse. Kerry's freshman year was particularly disappointing. But we think the most interesting item in the story is that Bush's best grades were in the following subjects. They were 88's, or a B+.

• Anthropology
• History
• Philosophy

No, we are not making this up. Bush got a B+ in philosophy at Yale. Which is a very good grade in a very difficult subject. On top of that, the effect of grade inflation mean that college grades before the Vietnam War would translate about half a grade higher today, sometimes more. So Bush was, if we can apply today's measures, an A- student in anthropology, history, and philosophy.

Three subjects you might need competence in if you were, say, planning a war against an Arab country. And Kerry's highest grade was about the same, but in political science.

On the other hand, Bush's success in those subjects does go a long way toward explaining the mystery of how it came about that a bookish teacher and librarian married him.

What the Globe's article is glossing over, of course, is the fact that is was simply easier to get D's in those years, particularly as a freshman. And the college attrition rate was higher (though probably not in the Ivy League). But the larger point is that Bush and Kerry's freshman year academic performance is really a moot point, and was at the time. After all, they were at Yale. And they were at Yale because they'd been at the most exclusive, elite private prep schools in the country, schools that have always considered it a matter of indifference whether one was more like an athlete or a scholar.

I imagine it would infuriate the current generation of college freshman, who actually had to fight for a place at their prestigious universities, that both Bush and Kerry had a free year, maybe two, to goof around. After all, they'd gotten into Yale, and in those days freshman and even sophomore year was way to early to really worry about one's career plans or grad school. And there was a tacit assumption by the old boys who kept things running that most academic deficits could be made up, at least if you were well connected. The midnight oil was burned by the nice small-town kids from the midwest.

The real news today reflects on the values of the Democratic party, which clearly chose a deeply rooted elitist to run as its candidate last year. Bush, at least, has at times pretended to by trying to be a populist.

This is what the decline of the regime looks like.

Laura Bush visits Jerusalem and is hated by everybody. The Israelis protest her, and the Arabs protest her. (It seems the Israeli protestors wanted to free Jonathan Pollard, a platform, which, all other things being equal, is senseless: after all, a captured spy is a captured spy. We can be confident his job description involved not getting caught.)

Now, Mrs. Bush she were a President, the fact that nobody likes what she is doing could be legitimately taken as a sign of good, or at least prudent, policy.

But First Ladies are supposed to be liked by everybody. This point is so obvious that we doubt it has ever needed to be stated until now. Even 'controversial' First Ladies are only controversial among Americans. (Eleanor, Nancy, Hillary were pretty good at either diplomacy or statecraft). Arguably, a First Lady is sometimes (yes, because of sexist, partriarchal condescension) an instrument of foreign policy.

Protesting a policymaker is one thing; protesting a First Lady is tantamount to a manifestation of the pending loss of all civilized discourse.

--We have considered that we've been rather quiet ever since the White Smoke went up. The reasons for this are simple: there was nothing to say after that; there was nothing one would say after that; there was nothing that could be said after that. And we weren't sure what to think. --

We wuz wrong

OK, we admit it: we were, like, absolutely, totally completely wrong. Worse, we were shameless optimists. Although we were very correct about the language requirement, that was only the most obvious criterion.

But a lot of people were wrong with us. The Italian Press, for instance. We heard Cokie Roberts gasped in surprise or shock when the result was announced. Most ecclesiologists were agreed that (1) the new guy will not be the favorite going in to the voting; (2) the new guy will 'not be very closely associated with the old regime.' We were all wrong.

We would tell you that we've just been drinking ourselves into a stupor for the last month as a result, but we didn't, because that's what we did for November, and it's been getting boring.

Still, we do not underestimate the power of this battlestation. Actually, when a few years ago we were discussing the coming election with a friend, we thought that Yoda was wise about these things: "Difficult to see, the Dark Side is."

Handicapping the mother of all elections

Hi, we're back after a wild Mercury retrograde, and wanted to offer our predictions for this week in Rome, keeping in mind that it is extremely difficult for anybody to say who, or what, the new pope will be--it is much easier to say who it will not be.

It will obviously not be Ratizinger, because he was the first name mentioned by the Italian press, which is a sure sign he has enemies. The proverb holds: "Whoever goes in a pope, comes out a cardinal." As it was, the Italian press spent the rest of the week airing the case of Ratzinger's opposition. And it won't be Martini either (his name's been bandied about in opposition to Ratzinger). But we've known that for a long time.

It should not be anybody who wants the job, and it would be surprising if it went to somebody who did. The reasons for this are not only theological and existential, but also classical.

It will not be an American, a point which was already obvious. Stalin's remark about the Vatican, in a way, missed the point: the pope should not have any divisions in Stalin's sense of the term. However, nobody really realized Stalin was wrong until Wojtyla had been pope a while. For that matter, it's not mere coincidence that the most important American diplomats of the 1970s were Central Europeans.

There are two things not to be underestimated about the conclave (1) how much influence Ratzinger still has; and (2) how much power Ratzinger does not have. He is presently nothing but the Dean of the College of Cardinals. Compare that position the position of the typical Dean at a typical mid-sized American college, considered vis-a-vis its professors. Now consider that the boss who appointed him is gone, and Dean will be losing his job at the next convenient opportunity. It's just not a very efficacious position.

OK, so beyond the typically rarefied method of bickering in the Holy Roman Church, here's what we thing the necessary qualifications for the office clearly are:

The next supreme pontiff:

• Should be a polyglot. He'll need to speak Italian (obviously) and Spanish, and probably English as well. There is no need for him to know French, but German or a Slavic language would be a plus. We'd love to have a pope with facility in Arabic, but there aren't any likely candidates this time.
  
• Will need to know Latin, for purely litugical reasons: the Cardinals shouldn't want to intentionally start a dispute about the form of the liturgy, since these keep breaking out anyway.
  
• Should be willing to dress down the formerly so-called Leader of the Free World, when possible and necessary. Hence, the importance of understanding and speaking English.
• Needs to be willing to work on Palestinian-Israeli issues, a/k/a "Peace in the Middle East." (After all, we do still refer to it as "the holy land." )
  
• Needs to have the ability to exhort and persuade one billion people and their leaders that World Peace is a virtuous and worthy goal to strive for.
  

That is all. Any other qualifications are purely accidental to the papacy. You'll notice that the requirements are defined by functions and not by ideas. This is because only functions can be correlated to actual social facts. Remember, the Pope is nothing but a prince, who also happens to be a bishop. Or perhaps, he is a bishop, who also happens to be a prince.

Only because they made a federal case out of it.

For Holy Thursday Desophistication was true to its mandate and got out to one of the nearer provinces of the interior. And we saw three newspapers all covering the same story. But they had three different headlines.

• Lancaster Intelligencer-Journal: "Shiavo's Parents Suffer Setback."
  
• Philadelphia Inquirer: "Schiavo Legal Battle Waning."
• USA Today: "Schiavo Options Near End."

From which we concluded, that any rational person would conclude, that there is no consensus here. For that matter, there are no fewer than three different sets of categories by which to interpret the information. And they don't overlap.

We are having trouble breathing upon our exalted platform

The Boston Globe seems perplexed as to why the catholic archbishop, speaking this week about the priesthood, stated that Jesus' disciples were apparently not "the best and brightest." Quoting the sermon:

"Jesus,... in forming his spiritual army, did not assemble a well-groomed, highly disciplined, state-of-the-art army of Dale Carnegie communicators in polyester suits and well-moussed pompadours, but rather he went down to the wharves and called a ragtag dirty dozen to be the pillars on which he would build his church, a clear indication that the enterprise was to be more than met the eye," he said.

We'll find the signifieds so the Globe doesn't have to.
The Jesuit order was founded by a soldier and have always considered itself a "spiritual army," famous for its sublime discipline. Being a modern religious order, it does also tend to be "state-of-the-art" by Catholic standards, frequently on the cutting edge of both theology and pastoral ministry. And this order operates a very large, selective university in the archbishop's city, at which people study these disciplines and numerous others; its students are famous for their well-moussed pomadours. They also give the best homilies, as they are thoroughly trained in the arts of persuasion.

So, the bishop was arguing over which catholic religious orders are more in touch with original Christianity. Actually, this is about vectors of power: he was arguing over who is more similar to Peter and the Apostles.

One correction to make to his remarks: the claim that Jesus did not have some of the "best and brightest" for disciples is confounded by evidence. St. John was obviously smart enough to become an evangelist and the church's "first theologian." Most Christians believe that Christ also personally called St. Paul, probably on account of his intellect. But the smartest of the disciples was Mary Magdalene, who tradition maintains devoted the rest of her life to study and contemplation, even though her publications were suppressed.

not to be dignified with a headline

yesterday Boston's archbishop spoke at a Catholic version of the Promise Keepers called "the Boston Catholic Men's Conference." One of the speakers there, a high school counselor, was applauded when he said, ''You are called to be the spiritual leaders of your home, not your wife." (We'll also note that this week an Italian Cardinal denounced the novel The Da Vinci Code because, among other things, it claims that Mary Magdalene was at the table of the last supper, and was a spiritual leader in the early Christian Church.)

it is difficult to explain how alien to christianity this sort of talk is. since it was a catholic event, let's just state that it's an affront to the Blessed Mother.

Perhaps more interesting, though, is how the bishop described contemporary society as ''a world where too often the father is absent spiritually, emotionally, and physically." Since this message was transcribed by the Globe from a speech, we are wondering whether the bishop was referring to an absence of the father or of The Father.

Sunday Summary: wake us up, spring break's over

• Memoradum: Catholic parishoners overcome bourgeois, individualist, capitalist values. Even more surprising: they make friends, they share a common purpose, and they are consoled. Go figure.
• Ralph Lauren's cars are cool. Because they are art. And in a blue state, only what is art is cool. Also, they exceed state speed limits (imagine yourself driving in a red state). And their designers wore crisp white shirts.
  
• Semiotic Brand Analysis takes the Beltway by storm!!

The Judgment: this was a case in which Sunday provided a confirmation of Saturday.

Anecdote on the difference between Europe and America

From the Boston Phoenix:

Not long after Cambridge instituted its smoking ban in October 2003, I went to the Middle East to see Holly Golightly, the bluesy English chanteuse. Between sets, I ducked out to the dingy back alley to suck down a smoke. There was Holly herself, a fag perched jauntily in her slender fingers. We got to talking, and it wasn�t long before she expressed her perplexed exasperation: why the hell was she not allowed to enjoy her Dunhill with her Scotch? At that moment I was embarrassed for my city. I also wondered if the Massachusetts ban might dissuade certain performers from making Boston a stop on their itinerary.

More distressingly, Millard reports on a 2002 incident in Fairfax County, VA, in which the local police ran a sting in a bar, using a breathalyzer and arresting 18 patrons--inside the bar-- for "public intoxication." None them had attempted to drive; none had created a disturbance. (Second page from link).

Anecdote on the difference between Europe and America

From the Boston Phoenix:

Not long after Cambridge instituted its smoking ban in October 2003, I went to the Middle East to see Holly Golightly, the bluesy English chanteuse. Between sets, I ducked out to the dingy back alley to suck down a smoke. There was Holly herself, a fag perched jauntily in her slender fingers. We got to talking, and it wasn't long before she expressed her perplexed exasperation: why the hell was she not allowed to enjoy her Dunhill with her Scotch? At that moment I was embarrassed for my city. I also wondered if the Massachusetts ban might dissuade certain performers from making Boston a stop on their itinerary.

More distressingly, Millard reports on a 2002 incident in Fairfax County, VA, in which the local police ran a sting in a bar, using a breathalyzer and arresting 18 patrons--inside the bar-- for "public intoxication." None them had attempted to drive; none had created a disturbance. (Second page from link).

Familism today

Frankly, we've been disappointed in the media's sense of anti-clericalism this year. It's like they forgot to put some thought behind their impressive but reactive efforts two years ago. Then we found this piece from Seattle. (Also known as the other antipode of I-90.) One more reason we believe we should really consider moving there.

Yet there seems to be some irony in the reference to The Ballad of Reading Gaol, one of the greatest anti-capital-punishment screeds ever crafted.

Supreme Court applies global test

Memo to candidates and debaters:
The Supreme Court ruled that is is unconstitutional to seek the death penalty for juveniles. Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion, in which he affirmed that "It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty, resting in large part on the understanding that the instability and emotional imbalance of young people may often be a factor in the crime."

Also, it's the top story on Deutsche Welle.