THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
"Well, you see,"
said Tristram amiably, "the old Conservatives
expected no good out of man. Man was regarded as naturally
acquisitive, wanting more and more possessions for
himself, an uncooperative and selfish creature, not much
concerned about the progress of the community. Sin is
really only another word for selfishness, gentlemen.
Remember that." He learned forward, his hands joined,
sliding his forearms into the yellow chalk powder that
covered his desk like windblown sand. "What would you
do with a selfish person?" he asked. "Tell me
about that."
"Knock him around a
bit," said a very fair boy called Ibrahim ibn
Abdullah.
"No." Tristram
shook his head. "No Augustinian would do that sort of
thing. If you expect the worst from a person, you can't
ever be disappointed. Only the disappointed resort to
violence. The pessimist, which is another way of saying
the Augustinian, takes a sort of gloomy pleasure in
observing the depths to which human behaviour can sink.
The more sin he sees, the more his belief in Original Sin
is confirmed. Everyone likes to have his deepest
convictions confirmed: that is one of the most abiding of
human satisfactions."
—Anthony Burgess, The
Wanting Seed
Kevin
Michael Grace, 10.01 p.m., August 14, 2003 [Link]
THERE ARE STILL THINGS WORTH
FIGHTING AGAINST
The interview with James
Howard Kunstler mentioned here yesterday
concerned the future of marriage. The advocates of
legalized homosexual unions argue that marriage is an
empty shell. They are correct—as the piece republished
below acknowledges. They further assert, however, that
filling this shell with a camp burlesque will somehow
revitalize the institution. This is as specious as their
assertion that the Catholic Church forfeited its moral
right to inveigh against homosexual marriage because of
the widespread sexual abuse of children by Catholic
priests and the subsequent cover-up of this scandal.
The adoption of homosexual mores by
heterosexuals has left marriage wholly contractual and
transitory; ergo, homosexuals must be allowed to
marry. Homosexuals have dragged the Church into a cesspit;
ergo, the Church must further accommodate their
sinfulness. In the future, these logical contortions will
be known as Sullivan’s Paradoxes.
In the present, the Liberal Party of Canada’s scheme
to introduce homosexual marriage by stealth is flagrantly unconstitutional.
It is dictatorship with a nudge and a wink. All Canadians
that cherish liberty must resist it.
Why save the nuclear family?
It merely supplies docile workers for the servile State,
and its doom was sealed 200 years ago
by Kevin Michael Grace
The Report, September 2, 2002
After the French Revolution had nationalized marriage
and unfettered divorce, Sir Walter Scott thundered,
If fiends had set out to
discover the most efficient way of destroying whatever is
venerable, graceful, or permanent in domestic life...they
could not have invented a more effectual plan than the
degradation of marriage into a state of mere occasional
cohabitation or licensed concubinage.
It took most of two centuries to develop, but
"licensed concubinage" is what marriage has
devolved into—sterile, brief "companionate"
unions disconnected from the past and uninterested in the
future. Now homosexuals, who think in similar terms, want
to be licensed too. Well, why not?
Until the Reformation, marriage in the West was the
domain of the Roman Catholic Church, and it was for keeps.
There were certain exceptions, however, as Alan Carlson,
president of the Howard
Center in Rockford, Illinois, points out.
There was much corruption.
The Church prohibited all kinds of marriage, but you could
get a dispensation from a bishop for the proper sum.
A dispensation played a crucial part in British
history. After the death of Henry VIII's brother Arthur,
Henry wanted to marry his widow, Catherine of Aragon. This
was incestuous under canon law, so Henry applied to the
Pope for a dispensation, which he got. When Catherine
proved unable to provide a male heir, Henry went back to
the Pope demanding an annulment, claiming the dispensation
illicit. He was refused, and the Anglican Church was born.
Martin Luther's rebellion resulted in marriage being
taken from the authority of the Church in Protestant
countries. Mr. Carlson argues,
Luther assumed that those who
ruled the State would be governed by Christian principles
regarding marriage and a whole lot of other things. What
emerged for a while was pretty much that.
However, the State—not just the Jacobin and Bolshevik
states—has long sought to make the family serve its
ends. In his landmark 1977 study, Haven
in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged,
the late sociologist Christopher Lasch observed,
By the end of the 19th
century, American newspapers and magazines brimmed with
speculation about the crisis of marriage and the family.
Four developments gave rise to a steadily growing alarm:
the rising divorce rate, the falling birthrate among 'the
better sort of people,' the changing position of women,
and the so-called revolution in morals. Between 1870 and
1920, the number of divorces increased fifteen-fold. By
1924, one out of every seven marriages ended in divorce,
and there was no reason to think that the trend toward
more and more frequent divorce would reverse itself.
In his 1930 encyclical Casti
Connubii (Christian Marriage), Pope
Pius XI lamented the
many unmindful
[people]...totally ignorant of the sanctity of marriage,
who impudently deny it, who even allow themselves to be
led the principles of a modern and perverse ethical
doctrine to repudiate it with scorn...These pernicious
errors and degraded morals have begun to spread even among
the faithful.
Soon enough, they would spread even among the
hierarchy, as millions of Western Catholic divorcées got
what Henry VIII could not. Pius XI quoted Leo XIII on the
purpose of marriage: "The chief cause of wedlock
established in the beginning by God's authority: Increase
and multiply." Very few Catholics and almost no one
else would assent today to that proposition.
Lasch was not a Catholic or even a believer, but he
understood that the family's proper purpose is not
providing workers for the managerial state. He wrote,
The history of modern
society...is the assumption of social control over
activities once left to individuals or their families.
During the first stage of the industrial revolution,
capitalists took production out of the household and
collectivized it, under their own supervision, in the
factory. Then they proceeded to appropriate the workers'
skills and technical knowledge, by means of 'scientific
management,' and to bring these skills together under
managerial direction. Finally they extended their control
over the worker's private life as well, as doctors,
psychiatrists, teachers, child guidance experts, officers
of the juvenile courts, and other specialists began to
supervise child-rearing, formerly the business of the
family.
Lasch was among the first to understand the symbiotic
relationship of capitalism and feminism.
Feminists want women out of the house because they want to
free them; capitalists want them out because they lower
wages. Feminists fought the traditional family because it
was patriarchal; capitalists fought it because it was not
prepared to forsake its neighbourhoods and communities for
higher wages.
The "nuclear family" we recognize today
performs none of the functions of the traditional family.
These functions have been assumed by the welfare state or
by business. Kinship networks have for all practical
purposes ceased to exist (among Western families; some
immigrants manage to maintain them for more than one
generation). Most children do not know their grandparents
intimately, and cousins have ceased to matter. In any
event, couples do not require and increasingly reject
marriage. Following Europe, Canada now recognizes no
practical distinction between legal and common-law
couples. Common-law couples now claim all the rights and
bear all the responsibilities of married couples, whether
they want them or not and even if they are not in a sexual
relationship.
The destruction of the traditional family was long the
goal of the therapeutic professions. The cleverer among
them realized, however, that marriage could be emptied of
meaning over time. Mr. Carlson explains that the clever
Swedes devised "companionate
marriage" as a substitute. The
companionate marriage, which comprises the vast majority
of unions in the West, is based on romantic love,
friendship, sexual attraction or common interests. The
purpose of the union is the individual happiness of each
man and woman (or, soon enough, man and man or woman and
woman); it is strictly nuclear. Children can be added if
desired; one is not obliged to raise them; nevertheless,
couples prefer contraception and abortion instead.
Romantic love ends, sexual attraction fades, and
friendship and common interests are weak bonds in crisis.
So companionate marriage may be dissolved as often as
necessary. The welfare state succours single moms and
chivvies deadbeat dads.
Social commentator Edward Luttwak noted several years
ago that the West is engaged in an experiment
unprecedented in human history: people without families.
In 1977 Christopher Lasch found the early evidence
discouraging:
It is precisely the
separation of love and discipline [associated with
communal forms of child-rearing] that encourages...the
development of personality traits more compatible with
totalitarian regimes than with democracy: a strong
attachment to the peer group, a marked fear of being
alone, more or less complete alienation from the past...a
strong concern with personal 'authenticity' in relations
with others, unmediated by conventional forms of
politeness or even by respect for the other person's
individuality and a lack of introspection and of a highly
developed inner life.
The road to Columbine started here.
So when our legislators of the Left and the Right
tussle over the future of marriage, perhaps they might
ponder, if only for a moment, the consequences of their
social Jacobinism. More likely they will salute another
victory for "choice," which has usurped the
place occupied by "virtue" in the ancient world
and "holiness" in the Christian era.
Mr. Carlson predicts "total ruin. Perhaps not for
a few decades, but you can't fool Mother Nature."
James Howard Kunstler predicts a happier ending. The
author of The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban
Condition predicts that the stock market crash is
leading to a collapse of the bubble economy—and nothing
less than the end of the "modern." Penury will
force us to live less selfishly. Think of it as
"creative destruction."
Kevin
Michael Grace, 1.38 p.m., August 14, 2003 [Link]
A COLONY OF ONE
Two names added to the blogroll: Joshua
Micah Marshall and James
Howard Kunstler. These will be no further
additions, barring restructuring, as a too-long list is
worse than no list at all.
Kunstler is a man of many talents: novelist,
journalist, painter,
social critic. He is best known for his studies in (dread
words!) "urban ecology." His books The
Geography of Nowhere, Home
From Nowhere and The
City in Mind are broadsides aimed at
cities and suburbs that assault the eye, deaden the soul
and reduce our humanity.
(Kunstler is an American born and bred, but everything
he has to say about The Way We Live Now is just as true of
Canada.)
Like Edward
Luttwak, Kunstler is a "declinist":
I
often joke that we are a wicked people who
deserve to be punished. But the joke is, it’s no joke. I
believe it with all my heart. I also often remark in my
public utterances that when we succeed in creating enough
places that are not worth caring about, that we will
succeed in becoming a nation that is not worth defending,
and a way of life that is not worth carrying on. We are
guilty of foreclosing our own future, and we are evil
because we don’t care.
Such talk is now considered treason, as Kunstler admits:
The September 11th attacks
had one outstanding paradoxical effect on our national
psychology: they put the kibosh on any criticism of the
"American Way of Life." I was in Texas just two
weeks after that event, in the wasteland of off-ramps,
megaplexes, chain stores, pawnshops, and fried meat
establishments that runs between Fort Worth and Dallas. I
had gone there at the invitation of a civic booster group
to give my talk on traditional town planning to the
chamber of commerce, which had all been arranged long
before the attacks.
Now, my regular rap contains
a goodly amount of criticism of the status quo. I've been
known to say things like "the highway strip is a
spiritually degrading environment," and "there
isn't enough Prozac in the world to counteract the anxiety
and depression generated by the average suburban high
school." Boy, did they not want to hear that now. I
could hear grumbling over the chipotle chicken even
as I warmed up.
But something had gotten into
me that day. Maybe it was the chain hotel I spent the
night in, isolated in its free parking orbit from
everything else in the universe. So I throttled up to
rant-speed: "We're about to send soldiers to
Afghanistan," I told them. "If one of them steps
on a land mine over there, what will he remember, in his
last moment, about the place he calls home? Will it be the
curb-cut in front of Chuck E Cheese's? Will he pine for
the stacking lanes at the traffic light in front of the
mall?"
The grumbling got louder…
…and soon became outright abuse.
According to Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
Patriotism means unqualified
and unwavering love for the nation, which implies not
uncritical eagerness to serve, not support for unjust
claims, but frank assessment of its vices and sins, and
penitence for them.
Not that Solzhenitsyn is much loved anymore, in his
native country or in the refuge that awarded him
citizenship. American patriotism has now devolved to
loutish bellowing: "My Country, Right or Go Fuck
Yourself." Not least among "conservatives."
How "paradoxical" that so many of those that
assailed American society as decadent and even depraved
during the Clinton years are all turned around on the
subject. What has occasioned so many Damascene
conversions, one wonders. Surely nothing so simple as a
Republican occupying the White House and the attendant
increase in government and thinktank jobs for GOP camp
followers.
Kunstler believes that things must get worse before
they get better. And he believes
that things will get worse real soon.
The well-being of Parking Lot
Nation is utterly dependent on stability in Saudi Arabia,
which supplies nearly a fifth of our imported oil (and
parks $1 trillion in US investments). King Fahd is a
stroke-downer on life support; Prince Abdullah, the
regent, is on the shady side of 70 years old; and the
region is infested with mullahs calling for jihad against
"corruption" meaning not just the infidel West
but the Saud family itself. If the regime goes, then the
American way of life, as currently conceived, goes down
with it—and global political stability probably also
goes, as all nations commence a desperate contest for
vital oil supplies.
The up-creep of real interest
rates is telling us that the world is finally nervous
about the dollar. Global finance has been enjoying the
long speculative romp in hallucinated dollar-denominated
paper. There will be a lot of indignant howling when the
"tilt" light goes on and "game over"
flashes across MSNBC's tape-crawl, as much of the world's
imagined "wealth" goes up in a vapour.
Rising real interest rates
will certainly kill off the re-financing fiesta that has
kept the game going at the cash register level in the US,
and also the suburban house-building jamboree. A crash in
house values and suburban construction would commence a
chain of economic destruction that could rival or exceed
the Great Depression. Since the creation of suburban
sprawl is America's chief "industry," the
suspension of sprawl-building, and the trade in its
components by realtors, would mean the end of our economy.
I imagine that in a decade or
so—once this new century gets some real traction—that
the American turbo-consumption society, and all of its
ideas and values, will be regarded in retrospect as a kind
of historical obscenity. We'll look back and be amazed at
how complacent, purposeless, and utterly demoralized we
were in the face of a gathering catastrophe.
As we have seen, Kunstler is a Jeremiah, but his savage
indignation can also be tremendously funny, as his monthly
photographic chronicle of America the Desolated demonstrates.
Marshall McLuhan once said that while he was lauded for
seeing into the future, his only talent was seeing the
present as it really is. It’s a rare talent and one
Kunstler shares.
I interviewed Kunstler last year for a story.
Unfortunately, I could use little of what he said, but I
was glad of the opportunity to speak with him. I noted
that several of the pictures of him on his site were taken
by someone called Jonathan Postal. I wondered if Postal
was the same fellow who played in the San Francisco punk
band the Avengers.
I explained I was curious because they had once stayed
overnight in my home after a concert in Vancouver.
Kunstler replied, "Jonathan Postal is my
half-brother."
Life is rich in such delightful coincidence. Years ago
I had the pleasure of interviewing the Canadian novelist Neil
Bissoondath. I found myself burbling on
about my admiration for the works of a fellow native of
Trinidad, the late Shiva
Naipaul. I asked Bissoondath, "You
didn’t know Naipaul, did you?" I was mortified as
soon as the words left my mouth. How condescending! As if
all the Hindus in Trinidad know each other. Bissoondath
replied, "Shiva Naipual was my uncle."
Kevin
Michael Grace, 2.10 a.m., August 14, 2003 [Link]
PUMP UP THE VOLUME
The Ambler has enjoyed a significant uptick in the
volume of visitors over the last fortnight. I’d like to
think this is due to the many scintillating pieces I’ve
posted recently, but it is just as likely due to the
recent appearance in these pages of the names Ben Affleck
and Jennifer Lopez. Or perhaps the appearance of the name
Jennifer Lopez coincident with the words
"vagina," "vulva,"
"clitoris" and "cunnilingus." Like
many other bloggers, I check to see which search strings
have generated visits. I am frequently bemused or appalled
by the results but also rather impressed by the ingenuity
of the human mind. Why, just this morning, for example,
some Australian arrived here after searching Yahoo for the
string "bosnian+rape+pictures." Come one, come
all, I say—the Ambler is not here to judge. Not his
visitors, anyway.
Speaking of judgments, I wouldn’t have thought it
possible to make one regarding my sexual proficiency (or
lack of same) based on the material published here, but I
had not counted on the ingenuity of one Belle Waring. She
was kind enough to alert readers of the blog
she shares with her husband to my "hilarious" review
of The Vagina Monologues but found my understanding
of sexual physiology deficient—and suggested two
possible reasons why this should be so.
It saddens me to note a wee
problem with his analysis. To wit, his scathing critique
of Natalie Angier's militaristic metaphor:
The Vagina Monologues
incorporates bits from other "Vagina Queens,"
including an ode by Natalie Angier to the superiority of
the clitoris over the penis, which concludes, "Who
needs a handgun when you've got a semi-automatic."
This is a stunningly inept metaphor. Let us count the
ways. A semi-automatic is not, as Angier seems to think, a
machine gun. And most handguns are semi-automatics.
Semi-automatic means merely that one pull of the trigger
results in one firing. In terms of physiology, Mizzes
Ensler and Angier have got it exactly backwards.
Now, I don't mean to cast
aspersions here, or to suggest that Mr. Grace has never
induced in any of his female partners the um...series of
physical states which the semi-automatic is meant to
suggest, but his analysis raises some doubts in my mind.
(Maybe he's gay, in which case he's off the hook). But.
It is not very likely that
Ms. Angier really meant a machine-gun. She's not Annie
Sprinkle, after all, nor are most women. The comparison
seems pretty apt, actually. It may not be topographically
correct to regard one thing which can fully enclose
another as being smaller than the latter thing, but if I
were offered a shotgun and a semi-automatic handgun and
told to assign the properties of the male and female
genitalia to each...I think you're all with me here. The
shotgun is so...well. And you see, the thing about a
shotgun is, once you fire it, you have to go to some
trouble to fire it again. It takes time to break the gun
and reload. Maybe the barrel is hot and you don't want to
touch it right away? It could happen. Whereas, with my
putative 9-millimeter, or what have you, I can just
squeeze away and the bullets keep coming right out. No
reloading, no cocking back the hammer, no nothing (yes,
yes, I know you can fire a revolver without cocking it. No
one denies that this is easier with a semi-automatic,
though). Sixteen in the clip and one in the chamber may be
a bit optimistic, but on the whole, I'm with Ms. Angier.
Well. That’s certainly an icebreaker. As to the
paroxysms of ecstasy I may have (or not) induced in my
female partners, I have nothing useful to say. You’d
have to ask them. (Names not available on request.)
I’m tempted to respond that if my "weapon" is
a shotgun, it is of the "pump action" kind, but
you know what, folks? At this moment I really don’t care
if Ms. Waring or anyone else thinks I’m no good in bed.
And as to Ms. Waring’s second aspersion, I will not
qualify my heterosexual experience, but I will quantify my
homosexual experience: zero.
In any event, it is my strong belief that the moment
when Western Civilization became obsessed with the female
orgasm coincided exactly with its final collapse. As I
have observed elsewhere, when sexual intercourse was
divorced from procreation, children were reduced to art
objects. Another result of this divorce is that coitus has
been reduced to a form of athletic competition between
mutual masturbators. It is now primarily a question of technique
and thus subject to what Glenn Gould called the "centipedal"
problem.
The Sexual Revolution, as I understood it, in freeing
men and especially women from the stranglehold of
"Victorian morality," sought to make coitus more
enjoyable. But is sex now more fun than it used to be? I
lack the data to make an empirical judgment, but this
hardly seems likely, now that women are expected to meet
an orgasm quota, while men are grimly determined to make
them meet it.
Was it good for you too,
honey?
Yeah.
Are you sure?
Yeah…
Really?
Well…
Well, what?
Nothing.
Come on, you can tell me.
Well, it was only twice for me.
We could go again, if you like.
No, really, it was fine.
Fine?
No, I mean great. It was great.
You said fine.
You’re making too much of this.
If you’re not satisfied, I’m not satisfied.
I’m satisfied, OK? Can we stop talking about this
now? I said it was great. Look, I have to go to
work in a few hours, and I’d like to get some
sleep.
Fine, then. Goodnight.
Goodnight.
Men and woman are more than collections of body parts.
They are not equal but neither sex is superior to the
other. They are meant to be complementary. To
militarize the sexual—shotgun versus semi-automatic,
"penetration" versus "engulfment"—is
to suggest that men and woman are at war with each other.
This suggestion serves only to support the
lesbian-feminist assertion that heterosexual intercourse
means rape. And this, far more than any literary
ineptitude, is why Mizzes Ensler and Angier so disgust me.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 6.35 a.m., August 13, 2003 [Link]
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
A lost cause may deserve
support, and that support is never wasted.
—Kingsley Amis, The
King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage
Kevin
Michael Grace, 12.05 a.m., August 12, 2003 [Link]
WHEN YOU ASSUME, YOU
MAKE A LIAR OF YOU AND ME
Colby Cosh has posted a response
to my insinuation
that he recoils from walking like a rabid dog recoils from
water. Turns out he needed to take a cab so he could get
to a 7-Eleven for a pack of fags. (Not, in this
context, a "derogatory word used against
homosexuals.") Why didn't you say so to begin with,
old man? Makes all the difference in the world, that does.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 11.50 p.m., August 11, 2003 [Link]
HERE WUSSIE, WUSSIE, WUSS, WUSS,
WUSS
The word police
They live inside of my head
The word police
They come to me in my bed
The word police
They're coming to arrest me
Oh no
They don't get paid to take
vacations
Or let me alone
They spy on me
I try to hide
They won't let me alone
They persecute me
They're the judge and jury all in one
(Apologies to Cheap
Trick)
The word police are not yet in my bed, nor have they
come to arrest me. Yet. But they have come after Jeremy
Shockey, and they have come to exercise plenary power over
my wussified morning newspaper, the National Post
(home of that delightful locution
"African-Canadian".)
Shockey, you will recall, is the New York Giants tight
end recently fitted with the devil horns previously
sported by John
Rocker. For what? For 1. Making an obscene
gesture at hecklers and 2. Hitting children with a cup
full of ice during a Giants playoff
loss? Are you kidding? No, for offending
the word police.
How did Shockey cause offence? The Post account
(no link available) is curiously reticent:
In [a] New York
magazine article, coming out this week, Shockey is quoted
making critical comments about Bill Parcells, a former
coach of the Giants, the Jets and the New England Patriots
and the current coach of the Dallas Cowboys.
Responding to comments
Parcells made about him on ESPN's NFL Countdown on
September 5, Shockey ended a tirade with a derogatory word
used against homosexuals. Shockey has said he did not use
the word.
Which word(s)? "Fag," "faggot,"
"queer," "bitch," "sissy,"
"fairy," "pansy," "swish,"
"nancy-boy," "shirt lifter," "ass
bandit," "chutney ferret"? No. Shockey
called Parcells a "homo." Quelle horreur!
Such "reckless" and "unacceptable"
discourse. Here’s the AP account:
Shockey [took] on Parcells
for comments he was told the former Giants head coach made
about him on TV last season.
"Let's see how much
Parcells wins this year," Shockey is quoted as
saying. "I'll make him pay when we play them. The
homo."
What did Shockey mean? Let’s look at the context.
Last year Parcells admitted he was surprised by the amount
of media Shockey had received. Parcells had a point.
Shockey is only a second-year player. Last year he had a good
but not great season. Shockey responded by accusing
Parcells of being a flitter. (Not a
"derogatory word used against homosexuals," at
least according to the Penguin Slang
Thesaurus.)
Parcells is not my kinda guy.
He says he quits then he wants to come back and coach. Do
something! Stay in commentary or stay in football or get
the hell out of everybody's life.
Shockey was clearly not maligning Bill Parcells’s
"sexual preference." (Not that Parcells is
innocent on this score. While coach of the Patriots, he
accused wide receiver Terry Glenn of malingering by
calling him "she."
Parcells was rebuked publicly by Patriots’s owner Robert
Kraft, an affront that surely played a part in his
decision to leave the team.) Shockey was merely engaging
in the vulgar practice of "trash talking." As defined
by the American Heritage Dictionary,
"homo" is "offensive slang used as a
disparaging term for a gay man or lesbian." But that
is no longer its primary meaning. Like "fag,"
"homo" has come to mean "ineffectual."
These words are now cognate with the slang meanings of
"weak" and "lame."
Unfortunately for Shockey, however, he had earlier
revealed himself as a "homophobe." He told
Howard Stern last year that homosexuals do not belong in
the locker room:
If I knew there was a gay guy
on my college football team, I probably wouldn't, you
know, stand for it…You know, I think, you know, they're
going to be in the shower with us and stuff, so I don't
think that's gonna work.
Shockey has apologized, and doubtless he will be forced
to grovel some more. Will he be destroyed, like poor John
Rocker? My guess is no. The Word Police’s American
"Homophobia" Division is not yet as powerful as
its Emma Goldman Memorial Death Squad. But we shall see.
What is truly shocking about Shockey’s slur is the
nature of the outrage. Homo, schmomo. What’s
next? A coach called on the carpet for calling a winded
player a "butterbean"? The real issue is
Shockey’s lack of respect for his elders and betters.
How many Super Bowls has he been to? How many rings does
he have? And are we supposed to believe that Shockey has
committed himself to the Giants in perpetuity, regardless
of any better offers made in years to come? I think not.
The era of George
Halas, Tom
Landry and Chuck
Noll has long passed. Vince
Lombardi and Don
Shula were as Old School as they come, but
they deserted their teams for the same reasons as Parcells:
power and money. Do we think less of them for this? And
the Hall of Fame concluded that James
Lofton playing for five different teams
wasn't reason enough to keep him out. Not that any sane
person will put "Jeremy Shockey" in close
proximity to "Hall of Fame" anytime soon, if
ever.
In Neil LaBute’s movie Nurse
Betty, Morgan Freeman’s character
Charlie delivers a memorable rant
against his son Wesley (Chris Rock) and the society that
made him possible:
There it is again. That lousy
attitude that got us here in the first place. That
"make a statement," do an end zone dance and
shake your ass…attitude that's dragging this whole
country down the drain.
They don't owe us shit,
Wesley! WHEN YOU FINISH THE JOB, YOU GET PAID!! WE HAVEN'T
FINISHED THE GODDAMN JOB!!
Jeremy Shockey hasn’t finished the goddamn job, yet
the media gives him more facetime than Jerry
Rice. Bill
Parcells is already a lock for Canton;
Shockey is just a Kid Rock lookalike who fumbles too much.
He hasn’t earned the right to call Parcells on anything.
Shockey is just another Wesley. His tribe has already
killed the NBA; it now bids fair to kill the NFL.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 1.19 p.m., August 11, 2003 [Link]
WORD POWER
Is Matt Drudge flacking for Arnold Schwarzenegger?
Consider Sunday's shock-horror headline:
"DEMOCRAT SPOKESMAN WARNS OF 'REAL BULLETS' AGAINST
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER." Drudge breathlessly reports:
California Democratic Party
Spokesman Bob Mulholland this weekend warned Arnold
Schwarzenegger that "real bullets" will be
coming his way during his campaign to be governor!
"Schwarzenegger is going
to find out, that unlike a Hollywood movie set, the
bullets coming at him in this campaign are going to be
real bullets and he is going to have to respond to
them," warned Mulholland in an interview with a
camera crew from ABC NEWS.
"[Wife] Maria [Shriver]
has been very concerned about Arnold's safety, her family
has a history with assassination, you know," a source
with direct ties to the movie star told the DRUDGE REPORT
from Los Angeles.
"Mr. Mulholland and his
talk of 'real bullets' with Arnold's name on them is
reckless and not acceptable political discourse. He should
be fired immediately, if the Democrats have any
conscience."
Poor Maria! Those heartless Democrat bastards! On the
other hand, the Kennedys have a "history" with
all manner of things—the words "bridge,"
"airplanes," "tree," "rape"
and "babysitter" come to mind. Are they to
be forbidden as "reckless" and
"unacceptable" as well?
In the event, Mulholland's threat is an empty
one—unless, of course, Gray Davis is prepared to cross
the line that separates character assassination from
actual assassination. "Real bullets" are fired
from guns, you see, not from campaign "war
rooms." Colts and Berettas can kill a fellah, but
words can never harm him. (Not that movie sets are quite
as safe as Mulholland imagines. "Fake" guns can
kill too, as the deaths of Brandon
Lee and Jon-Erik
Hexum prove.)
When I come to power, the use of metaphor will be
banned for a period of 20 years.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 1.50 a.m., August 11, 2003 [Link]
FOOT POWER
Much as I commiserate with Colby Cosh over his shabby
treatment at the hands of an Edmonton taxi
company, I'm afraid the memoir of his ordeal begs the
question
The large green area highlighted by the star in the map
above contains Commonwealth Stadium. Not wishing to
facilitate the efforts of would-be stalkers, I won't
publish Colby's address. But it is within the boundaries
of this map. Chez Cosh is, by my reckoning,
approximately 15 blocks or 6,000 feet distant from
Commonwealth. By Colby's own reckoning, he wasted over two
hours waiting for transportation. He is not a paraplegic,
is in reasonably good health, and is not, to be the best
of my knowledge, stricken by gout, as former Alberta
Report staffer Rick
Bell once was. It was (according to theweathernetwork.com)
a warm, dry morning: 19 degrees Celsius (66 degrees
Fahrenheit) at 1 a.m. Yes, it is a "shitty part of
town," but a moving target is less at risk than a
stationary one. Estimated time of journey at two miles per
hour (halfway between leisurely stroll and crawl): 38
minutes. Did he never think to simply walk home?
Use it or lose it, my friend.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 12.49 a.m., August 11, 2003 [Link]
STANDING UP FOR SCHWARZENEGGER
Andrew Sullivan salutes
Arnold as a "hard-ass Republican." To Andy, the
personal is always the political. And they once
said women were too frivolous to deserve the
franchise.
In other fundament-related news, the Globe and Mail
headlines
this morning: "Anglicans grapple with gay
issues."
Hey, that’s not my
chasuble!
No, and this isn’t my mitre.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 12.04 p.m., August 8, 2003 [Link]
EUREKA
I have found it! The solution to the vexing problem of
the moribund Ambler
Archive. I had been unable to update it
since March because I didn't know how. The difficulty was
this—after my hard drive died, I was forced to
reconstruct this site from the pages published on my
server. But for some reason I can't even begin to
comprehend, I could not use the old file names for my
reconstructed pages. So I created new ones—but the old
pages were (and still are) lurking somewhere on my server,
and (as I discovered tonight) the Archive links on my
pages pointed to the superceded Archive file.
Now all I have to do is figure out why the Main Page
(this one) isn't left justified while all the other pages
are. And how to get rid of those unsightly extra lines of
space underneath the PayPal button. Design perfection will
then have been attained.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 9.48 p.m., August 7, 2003 [Link]
MIXED BIZNESS
Two names added to the blogroll: Jay
Currie and J.P.
(John) Zmirak. Currie because he asked and
because it turns out he lives just a couple of blocks away
from where I last lived in Vancouver. I have fond memories
of Kerrisdale. We probably stood side by side in The
Newsroom without knowing it.
And Zmirak because he’s a man after my own heart. He
describes himself as "a high-tech blue-collar
Habsburg monarchist Yalie. With a beagle." That’s
me to a T, except I’m lower middle-class, didn’t go to
Yale and don’t keep a dog. If I did, however, it would
be a beagle—or perhaps a shorthaired dachshund.
But if The Ambler had a theme song, it would the Radetzky
March by Johann Strauss (Vater),
written in honour of the great reactionary hero Field
Marshall Josef Radetzky, who put
paid to the revolution of 1848-49 in Italy.
Gott Erhalte Franz den Kaiser!
I realize that my praise of the late emperor is likely
to alienate the libertarian newcomers to this site
directed here by Jesse Walker’s kind
mention in Reason’s Hit & Run.
As ever, the Ambler is determined to bite the hand that
links to him.
Zmirak, meanwhile, has sunk his teeth into the raised
fist of the neocons—and has drawn blood, if Ramesh
Ponnuru’s squeal
in the National Review Corner is any evidence.
Zmirak was one of the participants in the recent
"What the heck is a neocon?" symposium sponsored
America’s Future Foundation. His speech,
now posted on VDARE, was entitled "Neocons? Or Vichy
Cons?" An except:
It seems that National
Review now stands athwart
the march of history calling out
"Halt, halt! Wait for me…"
Why does National
Review’s star pundit [Jonah Goldberg] make
room for gay marriage? Because, as he
admits, the other side has won—and we don’t want to
look like losers.
Here is the very heart of
neoconservatism, which I’ve decided to rename
"Vichy conservatism." The Vichy-cons’s
worldview, apart from sheer jingoism, amounts to a statist,
egalitarian reading of the Declaration of Independence.
It’s a Leftist creed, designed to accommodate the
victory of the Left in America’s courts and the culture
wars.
All this takes place under
the benign eye of a beloved elder statesman, the hero of
the last war, William
F. Buckley—our very own Marshal
Pétain. In his beloved, nimble publishing
rival, William
Kristol, the American Vichy has found its
own Pierre
Laval. Their governing principle, as Max
Boot once put
it, is to become the kind of
"conservative whom liberals will feel comfortable
inviting to cocktail parties." To which I would add,
"at the German Embassy."
As Clausewitz wrote, "Direct annihilation of the
enemy's forces must always be the dominant
consideration."
Marshall Pétain, we will recall, died in exile on l'île
d'Yeu, an island off the coast of Brittany. Where should
Marshall Buckley end his days? Saipan,
perhaps? Nah, too warm. Nunivak
Island, that’s the ticket.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 1.26 p.m., August 7, 2003 [Link]
THE DOWN LO [Warning: Objectionable language]
"If writing is so hard," "Peter
Dragon" asked in Action,
"how come Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have
Oscars?" Just so. Or how come Anne Kingston has a
column in the National Post?
Envious? Bitter? Guilty as charged. In mitigation of my
sins, however, I offer this,
Kingston’s lead paragraph in the August 2 Post:
In all the discussion about
Jennifer Lopez's and Ben Affleck's alleged crime against
humanity, otherwise known as Gigli, nothing has
been said about the fact that it contains one of the most
clever synergies in modern cinema: Jennifer Lopez talking
up the virtues of her vagina. Next to this, E.T. gobbling
Reese's Pieces is child's play.
Let’s ignore Kingston’s illiterate use of the word
"synergy" and that "gobbling" is
bathetically inappropriate given its use in Gigli’s
already infamous cunnilingus scene. Let’s also ignore
her egregious "Makes The Fast and the Furious
look like Driving Miss Daisy!" construction.
What is her final sentence supposed to mean? Well?
It is characteristic of the bad writer that she (The
Ambler, inclusive to a fault!) cannot recognize bad
writing in others, as I noted in my review of Eve
Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. (Reprinted
below.) Like Ensler, Kingston is quite taken with the
celebrated simile of another American pisseur de copie:
As Natalie Angier wittily
points out in her discussion of the clitoris versus the
penis in Woman: An Intimate Geography: "Who
would want a shotgun if you could have a
semi-automatic?"
"Wittily"? Only if your definition of
"wit" includes observations unrelated to
empirical truths.
Kingston admits that she is not as taken with Lopez’s
paean to the vagina as Roger Ebert was. ("It is so
rare to find dialogue of such originality and wit [that
word again!], so well written.") However,
What did strike me about
Lopez's defence of the vagina is that it's a refreshing,
uncomplicated endorsement of female sexuality rarely
voiced by a female character in a mainstream action flick.
"Uncomplicated"? Judge for yourselves. The Post
has helpfully reprinted Lopez’s speech in a sidebar:
The penis is like some sort
of bizarre sea slug or like a real long big toe. It's
important, but the pinnacle of sexual design, the top of
the list of erotic destinations? I don't think so.
One's first impulse is to
kiss? What? To kiss the lips. Firm, delicious, rich, sweet
lips. Surrounding a warm, moist, soothingly scented mouth.
That's what everyone wants to kiss. Not a toe. Not a slug.
The mouth.
And why do you think that is?
Because the mouth is the twin system of the almost exact
lookalike of the one between the folds. The mouth is the
twin system of the vagina...The opening...to be taken in,
engulfed, to be squeezed, lovingly crushed by what is
truly the most wonderful, most caressing mouth.
If it's design you're
concerned with, hidden meaning, symbolism, power, forget
the top of Mount Everest, forget the bottom of the sea,
the moon and the stars. There is no place, no where that
has been the object of more ambitions, of more battles,
than the sweet, sacred mystery between a woman's legs that
I am proud to call my pussy.
Rather gilding the lily, no? (I am reminded of Céline’s
contemptuous assessment of coitus: "All this fuss
about a few drops of white mud.") And
"refreshing" is not the word that comes to mind
after the mouth has been compared to an excretory organ.
Kingston makes the bizarre claim that J.Lo’s speech
is her emancipation proclamation, part of a "canny
career strategy":
It wouldn't surprise me if
the attention-grabbing vagina monologue wasn't one of the
reasons Lopez took the role in Gigli. She is, after
all, a shrewd businesswoman who understands the importance
of diversification. Perhaps she realizes it's time to move
away from her traditional power axis, her famous
posterior, while adhering to the timeless "sex
sells" maxim.
If so, it would be the latest
of Lopez's strategic moves to reinvent a career that runs
the risk of "jumping the shark."
No, Bruce Willis appearing in Pulp Fiction was
part of a canny career strategy. Hitching your career to
Ben Affleck’s, not once, but twice—Jersey
Girl is due next year—is more than
jumping the shark; it's attempted suicide. Five days after
release, Gigli
had fallen to $157 per screen; its gross totalled $4.5
million, against production and marketing costs of $74
million. Gigli isn’t a bomb; it’s a Jenny From
The Block-buster.
Whatever could motivate "shrewd
businesswoman" Jennifer Lopez to hook up with alcoholic,
$60,000-per-round-gambling,
caught-on-tape-having-sex-with-strippers
Ben Affleck? According to Kingston, it’s all part of J.
Lo’s plan to overcome the misgivings of editor Anna
Wintour and adorn the cover of Vogue.
She's channeling Jackie
Kennedy as her style muse, first showing up at last year's
Oscars in a knock-off of a Givenchy toga-styled gown owned
by the former First Lady, more recently as the public face
of Louis Vuitton modelling a Jackie-inspired suit.
Her male accessories have
also become increasingly refined--from a waiter first
husband to the gangsta-esque Puff Daddy to a boy-dancer
second husband to the Academy Award-winning JFK Jr.-esque
Affleck.
A walk-in closet full of Vuitton wouldn’t disguise
the ugly truth that in Affleck Lopez has found her Ted
Kennedy, not her John-John. But this is unfair. No one
ever accused Teddy of being gauche enough to buy
his affianced a $105,000 diamond-encrusted toilet seat
with the explanation:
Jennifer is my princess, and
she deserves only the best—even when it comes to
toilets.
Ah, Ben Affleck—the man who put the "ass"
in class. If this doesn’t impress Anna Wintour, nothing
will.
A woman dim enough to believe that "Affleck"
and "refined" belong in the same paragraph is a
woman dim enough to believe—or write—anything. But
then Anne Kingston is in the National Post, and I
am not. So what do I know?
As promised above, my review of The Vagina
Monologues follows below. If I had to change anything,
it would be my overoptimistic conclusion:
The triumph of [Eve] Ensler's
vision would require the abolition of human nature. This
is utopian and therefore impossible.
"Human nature" is no longer a quality with
any fixed meaning. To give only one example, the planted
axiom in J.Lo’s vagina monologue: human sexual organs
exist solely for pleasure. Procreation, what’s that? Vesta
la giubba!
Middle-class crazy
The Vagina Monologues opens in Vancouver before an addled
crowd of females
by Kevin Michael Grace
The Report, April 2, 2001
"I don't think there'll be a lineup in here,"
the man remarked. He said it in the sad tone modern men
adopt when they are apologizing for their sex. He was
standing outside a washroom in Vancouver's Vogue Theatre.
His guess was correct. There was only one other man
inside. You don’t need a vagina to see The Vagina
Monologues, but it helps.
Men don’t need to pay $30 to $50 (plus service
charge) to go downtown and be harangued about their
stupidity, cruelty, inferiority and irrelevance; they can
stay home and get this from television for free.
Nonetheless, between 50 and 100 men (5% to 10% of the
audience) paid to be abused that evening. Almost every
male in the audience was on a "date." As far as
could be ascertained, there were no single men, except for
this reviewer. There was only one male couple, obviously
homosexual.
But there were few obvious lesbians, either. The
thousand-odd women at the performance appeared
overwhelmingly straight. They were of all ages, some in
their 70s, although most were in their 20s and 30s. They
were with few exceptions white and middle class. The party
seated next to me filled the minutes before showtime with
chatter about makeup and contact lenses. These were
resolutely normal women. And they loved The Vagina
Monologues. They groaned. They gasped. They laughed.
They howled. The woman next to me even screamed "Cunt!"
when it was demanded of her.
The play, by New Yorker Eve Ensler, is ostensibly based
on hundreds of interviews with women about their private
parts or what the author insists women used to call
"down there." The monologues alternate between
three actresses, who sit throughout and read from cards
into microphones, the better to maintain the illusion that
this is not drama but reportage.
It begins,
I bet you're worried. I was
worried. That's why I began this piece. I was worried
about vaginas. I was worried about what we think about
vaginas and even more worried that we don't think about
them. I was worried about my own vagina. It needed a
context of other vaginas—a community, a culture of
vaginas. There's so much darkness and secrecy surrounding
them—like the Bermuda Triangle. Nobody ever reports back
from there.
As the preceding paragraph demonstrates, The Vagina
Monologues is built on a foundation of mannerist
Marxism and outright falsehood. Darkness and secrecy?
Female sexuality has obsessed the Western world since the
1970s. The Bermuda Triangle? More like Mount Everest,
where one can hardly move without bumping into other
parties of explorers. The play makes much of the fact that
"vagina" is an ugly word: "It sounds like
an infection at best, maybe a medical instrument."
True, but so do many other body parts. "Penis"
is one that comes to mind. And it soon becomes evident
that the body part Ensler is so worried about is, properly
speaking, called the vulva. This would not have worked for
a title, of course, as "vulva" is a rather
attractive word. In the final monologue, "I Was There
in the Room," Ensler writes that during childbirth
the vagina becomes more than sexual, proving she does not
even know what "sexual" means.
The Vagina Monologues is a "chick thing,"
so any man who criticizes it (not that many have) is
accused of incomprehension or bad faith. Ensler makes this
easier, however, as she renounces authorship. "I
definitely do not remember writing the piece," she
claims in the introduction. "I was taken—used by
the Vagina Queens...As a matter of fact, the whole process
was totally off the record." (Proving she does not
know what "off the record" means, either.)
Vladimir Nabokov said that any writer who claimed his
works wrote themselves was either a bad writer or mad. The
success of The Vagina Monologues demonstrates
perhaps what Nabokov called "the cunning of the
insane," but there can be no doubt Ensler is a very
bad writer indeed.
Take, for example, the monologue with the
unintentionally hilarious title "My Vagina Was My
Village." This was introduced with the preposterous
"fact" that 60,000 women are raped in Canada
every year. This purported interview of a Bosnian rape
victim begins,
My vagina was green, water
soft pink fields, cow mooing sun resting sweet boyfriend
touching lightly with soft piece of blond straw...My
vagina was chatty, can't wait, so much, so much saying,
words talking, can't quit trying, can't quit saying, oh
yes, oh yes.
Oh no. Oh no. These are not the words of a Bosnian rape
victim or any rape victim anywhere, anytime in the history
of the world. This sub-Joycean drivel could only have come
unmediated from Ensler's mind.
Nor is Ensler capable of recognizing bad writing in
others. The Vagina Monologues incorporates bits
from other "Vagina Queens," including an ode by
Natalie Angier to the superiority of the clitoris over the
penis, which concludes, "Who needs a handgun when
you've got a semi-automatic." This is a stunningly
inept metaphor. Let us count the ways. A semi-automatic is
not, as Angier seems to think, a machine gun. And most
handguns are semi-automatics. Semi-automatic means merely
that one pull of the trigger results in one firing. In
terms of physiology, Mizzes Ensler and Angier have got it
exactly backwards.
Maladroit or no, this line knocked 'em dead at the
Vogue. The audience laughed everywhere it was supposed to
and in dozens of places where it was not. It had been
assured it was going to enjoy itself, and by goddess, it
did. "It" being the operative pronoun. For The
Vagina Monologues is not a work of art. It is a
mass-market version of "consciousness-raising,"
the conditioning technique used to create the women's
liberation movement. It is a political tool,
"agitprop": agitation and propaganda.
The message of The Vagina Monologues is that
women do not need men for sexual pleasure; this is best
achieved manually or through lesbian congress.
"Because He Liked To Look At It" was introduced
with "This is story of a happy sexual encounter
between a man and a woman." Oh, how the women laughed
at that. The man is a voyeur. He is accepted because he
worships at the shrine of female power. It is the only
"happy" heterosexual encounter in the version of
the play performed in Vancouver.
In "The Vagina Workshop," a woman attends a
masturbation class. She learns how to examine herself with
a mirror and achieve orgasm. (Vagina Monologue
mirrors are on sale in the Vogue lobby for $6.) She
concludes, "My vagina is a shell, a tulip and a
destiny. I am arriving as I am beginning to leave. My
vagina, my vagina, me." Ensler introduces it by
acknowledging "a brave and extraordinary woman,"
Betty Dodson, who "has helped thousands of women
reclaim their centre." Susan Brownmiller relates in In
Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution that
heroic Betty was a prominent member of the Lesbian Sex
Mafia, a "s/m [sadomasochism] support group and
dangerous games society."
Sadomasochism is the theme of "The Women Who Loved
To Make Vaginas Happy," a bravura piece celebrating a
lesbian prostitute—"my hero," ad libbed
performer Elvira Kurt, a lesbian comic. This was
definitely the climax of the show (no pun intended). The
women were so convulsed by Kurt's impressions of the
different of sounds made by orgasmic women of various
races and classes that they forgot they were celebrating
torture—or at least its simulation.
Nor were they disgusted or even disturbed that
"The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could" ("coochie
snorcher" being, or so Ensler claims, a popular
euphemism for vagina) is a celebration of rape. Here a
poor 13-year-old girl is plied with alcohol and then
seduced by a rich 26-year-old woman. In an earlier version
of the play, the girl said, "Some people would call
this rape. I say it was a good rape." Ensler has
excised these words, but the rape remains:
She's very thorough. She
tells me to always know how to give myself pleasure so
I'll never need to rely on a man...She was my surprising,
politically incorrect salvation.
Ensler claims to be a victim of rape at the hands of
her father. She lives with a male psychiatrist who claims
to be a victim of rape at the hands of his father. Misery
loves company. The "coochie snorcher" scene, she
insists, is not assault, because it is
"consensual." Is there a North American
Woman-Girl Love Association?
Ensler has become something of a messiah herself,
although she denies it. The Vagina Monologues is
not only grossing millions across North America but is
performed to sold-out houses at hundreds of universities.
Its script is a worldwide best-seller. A large part of the
proceeds (topped up by $1 million from Jane Fonda and
sponsorship from Planned Parenthood and Self
magazine) goes to the V-Day
Fund, which has renamed Valentine's Day
V-Day—for "vagina" and then for
"victory," after violence against women is
eliminated worldwide. This, Ensler figures, should take
about five years.
The triumph of Ensler's vision would require the
abolition of human nature. This is utopian and therefore
impossible. But only a few years ago we were assured that
feminism was dead. Who could have guessed that the most
popular play in the world in the first year of the new
millennium would be a manifesto of lesbian separatism? And
people wonder why Eminem sells so many CDs.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 4.09 a.m., August 7, 2003 [Link]
NEM DI GELT
Norman
Lebrecht, surely the best musical
journalist around, has written in the London Evening
Standard a touching appreciation
of Lotte Klemperer, daughter and amanuensis of her great
conductor father. Otto
Klemperer, the foremost champion of musical
modernism, was hounded out of Nazi Germany as a Jew and
then endured massive brain surgery and insanity. Lebrecht
recounts how Klemperer, his career in ruins after years of
scabrous behaviour, was rescued by a then-unknown Ronald
Wilford, later king of managers. Wilford
took Klemperer to England, where Walter Legge, the
impresario and producer, engaged him to conduct the Philharmonia
Orchestra (of which he was the founder and
owner) and signed him to EMI. It was with the Philharmonia
that Klemperer made the recordings of Bach, Beethoven,
Bruckner and Mahler upon which his reputation rests.
Legge was a talent-spotter without equal. After the
Second World War, he signed, among others, Herbert von
Karajan, Maria Callas, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and
Elizabeth Schwarzkopf (whom he married.) Legge is latterly
reviled as an uncommonly nasty man, but his name was
always be sweet to me for rescuing
from obscurity the songs of my beloved Hugo
Wolf and establishing them in the
English-speaking world.
In his memoirs,
Legge recounts a hilarious story about the irascible
Klemperer. Like Mahler and Schönberg, he became a
Christian. After the war, when he was in Israel visiting
his sister, he happened to meet the manager of the
Palestine Philharmonic (now the Israeli Philharmonic).
Here is the exchange (quoted from memory):
Klemperer: I am a great
Jewish artist, yet I have never been asked to conduct your
orchestra.
Manager: Yes, but you are a convert, so to us you are a
heretic.
Klemperer: Dr.
Koussevitzky is also a heretic, and he has
conducted your orchestra.
Manager: Dr. Koussevitzky agreed to conduct without a fee.
Klemperer: I’m still Jewish enough not to agree to that.
How could you not love such a man?
Kevin
Michael Grace, 1.13 p.m., August 6, 2003 [Link]
PENSÉE
If Communism was 20th-century Americanism,
then "Americanism" is 21st-century
Communism.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 11.13 a.m., August 6, 2003 [Link]
DIAGNOSIS
Went for a checkup last week. I prefer to avoid
doctor’s offices, but I felt a visit could be put off no
longer. Symptoms: two months of exhaustion, continual
headaches, roaring in the ears. I figured a stroke was
imminent. Amateur diagnosis: hypertension.
The doctor first took my blood pressure. He pronounced
it "excellent": 120/80. He then examined my
eyes, ears and throat and concluded by testing my
reflexes. Professional diagnosis: "stress." A
"$10,000 headache," he said.
My first reaction was disappointment and annoyance. No
one likes to be called a malingerer. I entertained a
fantasy of getting a second opinion and then returning to
Doctor No. 1: "Prostate cancer! What do you think of
that, Mr. Smart Guy?"
Childish, you say, but it occurs to me that my symptoms
are the manifestations of a long-standing condition: an
inability—more accurately, a refusal—to act as an
adult.
Prescription: exercise. So I’m off for a walk.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 3.45 p.m., August 5, 2003 [Link]
REFLEX ACTION
Bob Hope never meant that much to me. I dimly remember
his excruciating sex farces of the 1960s ("I'll take
Sweden!"), his tours of Vietnam ("Ladies and
gentlemen, Joey Heatherton!") and his NBC-TV specials
("When I was a young man, we had a thing called
vau-de-ville!"). The forced, sentimental jocularity
of Old Hollywood, of Johnny, Merv and Mike, was depraved
but certainly no more so than the forced, sentimental
cynicism of New Hollywood, of Jay, Dave and Craig. Old
Hollywood was certainly more forthright in its phoniness.
Old Hollywood was also better dressed..
But I also remember the Bob Hope of Paleface, Monsieur
Beaucaire, My Favorite Blonde and the Road
pictures. He was a talented comic actor, and his movies
certainly gave more innocent pleasure to more people than
anything Adam Sandler has ever done or will do.
So how to account for little Christopher Hitchens's
extraordinary assault
on Hope's life and works?
Q: What do Mother
Teresa, Evelyn
Waugh, Francisco
Franco and Bob
Hope have in common?
A: They all died Roman Catholics.
John Fraser was wrong.
Taki is not "the most conspicuously enfranchised
bigot in Western journalism." Christopher Hitchens
is. Let us all read Philip
Jenkins.
(The other Hitchens, the excellent Peter,
has been added
to my blogroll. I would have done so earlier, but the Mail
on Sunday, my new favourite British paper, doesn't
have a proper website. Thanks to Paul
Cella for alerting us to the existence of a
P. Hitchens archive.)
Kevin
Michael Grace, 12.19 p.m., August 4, 2003 [Link]
PHONING IT IN [Warning: Objectionable language]
Mark Steyn needs a vacation. All writers succumb to
word spinning, but anyone who styles himself "the
one-man global content provider"
practically guarantees it. To paraphrase what "Eppie
Epstein" told "Neil Simon" in SCTV’s "Nutcracker
Suite," you can’t write 100 columns
a week without turning out clinkers. Steyn doesn’t write
100 columns a week—yet—but it sure seems like it
sometimes.
In Saturday’s Telegraph, we are treated to
Steyn’s ruminations
on the Ben Affleck-Jennifer Lopez bomb Gigli. What
do we get? Obligatory J.Lo big-ass joke. Check. Obligatory
oral-sex double entendre. Check. (Bonus points for
not dragging Bill Clinton into this context for the 394th
time.) That leaves about 800 words to kill, so Steyn is
forced to introduce a thesis:
Hollywood sex depends for its
plausibility on it being two actors known to be unknown to
each other. It's so convention-bound—the power ballad
grinding away on the soundtrack, etc.—that the minute
you put real lovers in there it seems completely fake.
Real lovers? Like Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland
in Don’t Look Now? Elizabeth Taylor and Richard
Burton in Cleopatra? Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan in Proof
of Life? Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn in Woman
of the Year? Grace Kelly or Warren Beatty and whoever
in whatever?
If Steyn had given this column, oh, say, five minutes
thought, he would have remembered the commonplace that
movie shoots are so artificial and intense that they breed
affairs like hothouses breed flowers. Many of these
liaisons result in divorce and remarriage, but six months
after the nuptials—when you’re in Toronto or Tunisia
having it off with
