THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY
I think
that high art reposes on popular art; without one there
cannot be another. Taking this into account, I would
prefer that there is a French subculture in France as
opposed to an American one. Even if I admire American
cinema enormously, I think that each nation should guard
its cultural hegemony; otherwise things could become
dangerous.
-- Eric
Rohmer
Kevin
Michael Grace, 2.47 am, 31 January 2006►
AN
INTRODUCTION TO ERIC ROHMER
Everyone
who's never seen anything by Eric
Rohmer because he's certain he'll hate it
(and is proud of his prejudice) can quote Gene Hackman's
line from The
Conversation:
I saw a
Rohmer film once; it was kinda like watching paint dry.
Eh bien.
One could as easily say, "I saw a Coppola film once;
it was kinda like watching ambition congeal." But
that would be as just as unjust -- and more to the point,
pointless -- as Hackman's gibe.
The best
description of Rohmer's
films was given (quite coincidently) by
"Charlie Kaufman" in Adaptation:
I don't
want to cram in sex or guns or car chases or characters
learning profound life lessons or growing or coming to
like each other or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the
end. The book isn't like that, and life isn't like that,
it just isn't. I feel very strongly about this.
There are
no surprises in Rohmer; there is only the revealing of
character. His primary interest is epistemology -- or more
precisely, the limits of knowledge, particularly
self-knowledge. The foundation of his worldview is the
belief that there is only One who does not see through a
glass, darkly. Rohmer is a moralist, certainly, but he is
a gentle moralist. He has no interest in scoring points
off his characters. Goethe said, "Know thyself? If I
knew myself, I'd run away." To Rohmer, this is a cry
of despair. He teaches us that pride is the greatest sin
and that knowledge of our own failings is essential to the
attainment of the highest level of humanity.
Rohmer (rear) on the set at age 78: A gentle moralist
Most of the
prejudice against Rohmer is simple hatred of the French.
The rest is reverse snobbery. "People don't talk like
that" -- in complete sentences, even complete
paragraphs. One could say the same of Jane Austen. Some
people do talk like that, and in any event, articulacy is
to be preferred over incoherence, if only because clarity
of expression is inseparable from clarity of thought.
According
to CDUniverse.com,
only about half (17) of Rohmer's features are available
with English subtitles in North America. Caveat lector:
13 of these, including Ma
nuit chez Maud, are produced in
atrocious transfers by Fox Lorber. Of the remaining four,
I would recommend starting with Pauline
à la plage (Pauline At The Beach),
which looks as good as one would expect from a film shot
by Néstor
Almendros. This is a droll comedy about
sexual fatuity and the shameful childishness of
"mature" behaviour. I must confess that Pauline
was painful to watch, as I saw how much Pierre, with his
petulant protestations of moral superiority that make him
ridiculous, resembled myself, and how much Marion, with
her ceaseless trading of carnal favours as a substitute
for love that make her pathetic, resembled an old lover of
mine.
The holy
grail of Rohmer DVDs is available only in Britain: The
Eric Rohmer Collection, eight films
(including Pauline) produced by Arrow Films in by
all accounts excellent transfers for the absurdly low list
price of £40. Of course to even consider buying this I
would first need to buy a PAL/NTSC compatible Region 0 DVD
player. Not bloody likely. As they say, however, where
there's breath, there's hope.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 2.45 am, 31 January 2006►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY
Reason protests in vain; it cannot set a true value on
things.
-- Blaise Pascal, Pensées
Kevin
Michael Grace, 11.59 pm, 30 January 2006►
GREAT
MOMENTS IN CINEMATIC SMOKING (FIRST IN AN OCCASIONAL
SERIES)
Smoking is
stylish. There's no denying it. The Church
of Jesus Christ the Non-Smoker denies it,
but then they're the same
people agitating to censor smoking in
movies. I signed on to Scenesmoking.org
this afternoon, and a counter at the bottom of the page
informs me that as of this moment 270, no, wait, 271
"kids have become addicted from seeing tobacco in
movies since you hit this site." In other tortured
methodology news, scenewanking.org informs me that 577
"kids have become addicted to self-abuse from seeing
those scenes in any of the American Pie movies
since you hit this site."
And in
Thank You For Being Idiots news, Scenesmoking's crack spy
team informs me that Thank
You For Smoking apparently contains
scenes of smoking. Golly! Who woulda thunk it? (The
counter is now up to 287 doomed kiddies.)
Q:
Does smoking in movies lead to more smoking kiddies? A:
If so, good. It will give them something to do with their
hands and will put paid to PDS (Putative
Dehydration Syndrome), by which I mean
those ambulating fools who must needs tote water bottles
and coffee cartons everywhere. The savings realized
thereby will result in them having the sufficient readies
to afford the smoking habit, which will result in them
looking so much more stylish, which is where I came in.
(Counter: 309 doomed kiddies.)
As a poke
in the eye to the anti-smoking church but more as a
tribute to the glorious freemasonry of smoking, I shall be
posting in this space memorable smoking scenes from the
silver screen. The pictures are from my personal
collection, plus whatever I can dig up on Google Image
Search. (The greatest smoking scene ever is in Mervyn
LeRoy's Thirty
Seconds Over Tokyo, but this Greatest
Generation classic remains inexplicably unavailable on
DVD, so I can't show it here. I should be most grateful if
any reader with a VHS copy and the means to make screen
captures would contact me.)
First up is
Eric Rohmer's Ma
nuit chez Maud (My Night At Maud's).
This is a film about the philosophy of Blaise
Pascal, grace versus predestination and the
demands of Catholicism in an age of moral relativism.
Smoking serves as a signifier (see, I know my Saussure),
and what it signifies is concupiscence.
In our
first scene, Jean-Louis, a handsome, unmarried Catholic
engineer, has been tricked by an old university friend,
Vidal, into staying the night at the apartment of worldly
atheist and divorceé Maud. Until this time, we have not
seen Jean-Louis smoke, but when he realizes the
implications of Vidal's trap, he liberates the Gitanes
from his pocket. (332 kiddies now condemned to eternal
perdition.)
Jean-Louis and Vidal: Desire's fire is lit
After the
drunken, jealous Vidal departs, Jean-Louis is confronted
with an abstract problem made flesh. Having previously
declared a lack of interest in casual sex, he finds
himself in what Catholics call "an occasion of
sin." Maud is captivated by his seriousness, even as
she mocks him. When she invites him to light her
cigarette, she makes known her willingness to be seduced
but cruelly twists the knife by forcing him to make a
conscious act of will. Is she the Devil, a sad, lonely
woman or simply a playful one up for a bit of fun?
Jean-Louis and Maud: An invitation is profferred
Jean-Louis
does not have sexual relations with that women, but he has
lusted after her in his heart, and she has exposed him as
a hypocrite. Later, in one of the seeming coincidences
this film abounds in, he again meets the real object of
his desire, the enchanting Françoise,
the seeming opposite of Maud's worldliness. The same
snowstorm that led to Jean-Louis's night with Maud now leads
to another occasion of sin, at Françoise's student
residence. This time Jean-Louis is given his own room to
sleep, but as he tucks in to read a book called Of
True And False Conversion, he realizes
he is out of matches. They -- and Françoise -- are on the
other side of the door. He knows not whether she is
another seducer, but he cannot resist the temptation.
Jean-Louis: From darkness into light -- or further
darkness?
(386 doomed
kiddies. Oh, poor doomed, damned kiddies! But better to
live 50 years as a smoker than a slighter longer period as
a wuss, I always say.)
Kevin
Michael Grace, 11.36 pm, 30 January 2006►
SPAM
SPAM SPAM SPAM
Oh, this
is just too good.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 4.59 pm, 30 January 2006►
THOUGHT FOR
THE DAY
I like
being old. I don't have to talk to my parents. No one asks
me to help move their stuff. I don't need to understand
today's "edgy" TV sitcoms.
-- Professor Farnsworth, Futurama,
"Teenage
Mutant Leela's Hurdles" (Jeff Westbrook)
Kevin
Michael Grace, 11.54 pm, 29 January 2006►
ELECTIONEERING
This
is what greeted me after I followed a Wikipedia Radiohead
link. An opportunity to voice my outrage at Stephen
Harper's anti-people policies and a chance to win a
free
iPod? Talk about win-win! These guys
certainly know where I live.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 2.28 am, 28 January 2006►
DEAR
KATIE HAWTHORNE
Sweet,
sweet Metrosexual: Sign on from Lexington if you will;
cloak yourself with Firefox if you must; dial up from AOL
if you can bear it. The Ambler knows from whence you came.
When I
compare
What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
Little room do I find for pride.
I am aware
How many days have been idly spent;
How like an arrow the good intent
Has fallen short or been turned aside.
But who
shall dare
To measure loss and gain in this wise?
Defeat may be victory in disguise;
The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.
-- "Loss And Gain," Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Kevin
Michael Grace, 4.40 am, 27 January 2006►
STILL
NO GARLIC
Bouquets of
Gray comments
on my No
Garlic post:
There may be some truth there.
But we have to keep things in perspective. Same-sex
marriage was only one of a number of questions competing
for the voters' attention. And even if a candidate were
out of step with their constituents, SSM could hardly turn
a safe-seat into a marginal one.
What we need to be interested
in are those marginal ones, and the fate of socially
conservative candidates within them.
Last spring, the Globe and
Mail published a couple articles pointing out that
several Conservative nominations had been won by
candidates who seemed to reflect a religious right agenda.
I tried to identify candidates that fit (see here
and, coming up with only a dozen or so names, concluded
that they were not numerous enough to be a threat (here
and here).
What happened to those
candidates? Here is last summer's list, with some figures:
-
Andrew
House in Halifax. Lost. Came in third
with 18%, improving on the 2004 candidate's 15%.
-
Rakesh
Khosla in Halifax West. Lost. Came in
third with 23%, improving on the 2004 candidate's 21%
-
Paul
Francis in Sackville-Eastern Shore.
Lost. Came in third with 22%, improving on the 2004
candidate's 21.5%.
-
Darrel
Reid in Richmond. Lost. Came in second
with 39%, improving on the 2004 candidate's 35.3%.
-
Cindy
Silver in North Vancouver. Lost. Came
in second with 36.7%, improving on the 2004
candidate's 36.4%.
-
Marc
Dalton in Burnaby-New Westminster.
Lost. Came in third with 27.6%, slipping from the 2004
candidate's 28.3%.
-
Kevin
Serviss in Sudbury. Lost. Came in
second with 21%, the same as the 2004 candidate's 21%.
-
Ron
Cannan in Kelowna. Won with 49%,
improving on the 2004 candidate's 48%.
-
Rondo
Thomas in Ajax. Lost. Came in second
with 32.8%, slipping from the 2004 candidate's 33.6%.
-
David
Sweet in Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough.
Won with 39.1%, improving on his 34% of 2004.
-
Harold
Albrecht in Kitchener-Conestoga. Won
with 41.2%, improving on the 2004 candidate's 35.4%.
So, what's the pattern? Most
Conservative candidates' totals improved, perhaps not as
much as we'd otherwise expect -- the Conservatives
nationwide were up 6%, and only Albrecht had that much of
an increase. (Rondo Thomas, who was perhaps the most
openly evangelical about his evangelicalism, actually went
down.)
But even so, these figures
suggest that being regarded as a religious activist would
only cost a candidate a couple percent. In some races, of
course, that can be enough.
CPCer Thomas: Rondo alla loser
Based on
Bouquet's First XI, I'd say there's more than "some
truth" to my original analysis. A "couple
percent" would be statistical static. In the event,
"homosexual marriage" was only one consideration
of many in the ridings listed above, and not a
particularly important one. In Rondo Thomas's case, I'd
suggest his
belief in Young
Earth Creationism was more pertinent to his
defeat than his stand against SSM.
Or Stephen
Harper's stand (such as it was). I have it on
unimpeachable authority that Harper never cared much about
SSM and was shocked when it became a popular outrage. If
you're going to do the time, do the crime, I always say,
but the Right (such as it is) persists in allowing its
enemies to circumscribe the limits of its expression on
"contentious" issues. The Left says,
"What's ours is ours, and what's yours is ours,"
and the Right replies, "We can live with that."
Every
social conservative with a brain (and there are a few)
understood that Stephen Harper's stand was a sham.
Stephen
Harper has funked his own historical moment. He refuses to
take a formal stand against same-sex marriage. With
two-thirds of the voting population shown in polls to be
opposed to it and crying out for his leadership he is
playing the safe neutral. (David
Warren, 6 March 2005.)
And that abjuring the use of the notwithstanding clause
(after mincing around it for two years) was running up the
white flag.
A serious Conservative leader
would instead have declared that he is prepared to use the
"notwithstanding clause", not only to repeal
“same-sex marriage”, but repeatedly -- on every single
government bill if necessary -- to get the courts out of
the legislative business, and restore the authority of
Parliament. Confronted by the Grits' growling media
footpoodles, he could smile like Trudeau and say,
"Just watch me!"
The Conservatives should have
begun immediately after the last election, making the
urgent case against court-written law. For that, in the
end, is even more important than “same-sex marriage”.
It is a direct threat to democracy in Canada, that cannot
be ignored. From the polls, Mr Harper could have had well
over half the Canadian electorate solidly behind him. He
had only to sound the trumpet eloquently. (David
Warren, 17 December 2005.)
Even Egale
Canada, the "national organization
that advances equality and justice for lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and trans-identified people and their
families," recognizes that "Harper ducked the
marriage issue." Here are its facts
and figures:
-
Over the 56 days of the election, Stephen Harper
raised the equal marriage issue only once, on the
first day of the election. He then made an additional
substantive statement in answer to a question during
the first two debates, when he said he wouldn’t use
the notwithstanding clause. Aside from that, Mr.
Harper avoided raising the issue. None of his 121
press releases ever mentioned it.
-
Mr. Harper talked about his 5 priorities over and
over again. They are the Federal Accountability Act,
cutting the GST, cracking down on crime, helping with
the cost of raising children, and patient wait time
guarantees. Re-opening equal marriage is not one of
these priorities.
-
The Conservative website (www.conservative.ca)
lists 6 key issues: Accountability, Opportunity,
Security, Family, Community and Canada. The Family
issues page talks about child care, medical wait times
and seniors. It makes no mention of equal marriage.
-
The Conservative website lists 30 Issue
Backgrounders. None deal with equal marriage.
-
The Conservative Federal Election Platform is 46
pages long. It is the only document on the website
that mentions equal marriage. It is organized by the 6
key issues. Buried on page 33, the last item in the
“Stand up for Families” section, is a brief blurb
saying a Conservative government will hold a vote on
whether to “restore the traditional definition of
marriage”. There is no mention of Mr. Harper’s
promise not to use the notwithstanding clause. Mr.
Harper made a speech to tell the media and Canadians
what was in the Platform. The speech was 2,499 words.
It made no mention of the equal marriage issue.
-
The Conservative website lists 37 Announcements on
subjects ranging from small business to veterans to
family farms to immigration. None deal with re-opening
equal marriage.
-
The Conservative homepage lists 38 Ads, Videos and
Speeches. None deal with re-opening equal marriage.
-
The Conservative website lists 121 news releases
between November 27 and January 22. None mention
marriage.
-
Conservative candidate websites mirrored the main
Conservative website in that they almost never made
any mention of equal marriage. Of the new candidates,
about whom voters know the least, Egale identified the
34 most anti-equality candidates, including all those
who responded to the Campaign Life Coalition
questionnaire indicating opposition to abortion, equal
marriage and euthanasia. Of those 34, only three
mentioned the marriage issue on their websites.
Egale is
perfectly correct that "the Conservatives have no
mandate to reopen equal marriage." Never mind that
Stephen Harper will use any means necessary to ensure that
"equal marriage" will not be reopened in this
Parliament in any real sense. Every public figure with a
brain (i.e., not Larry
Summers) understands that if you're going
to argue against elite opinion, you best be willing to
argue long and loud; otherwise, keep your mouth
shut.
Harper's
pusillanimous posturing on SSM served only to depress his
base and elate his opposition. It provided further false
positives in support of the claim that "social
conservatives are poison." For example, this from
Egale:
The
clearest example of the public’s negative reaction to
hidden agendas came in North Vancouver, where Cindy Silver
was defeated. Though it was widely predicted she would
win, the revelation in the final week of the campaign that
she was an anti-equality activist dealt a death blow to
her campaign.
My good
friend Jay
Currie is somewhat less tendentious, but
remains economical with the actualité:
My own analysis is that it would have been somewhat surprising to see candidates winning or losing on the SSM issue in most of the ridings in Canada. However, the shutout experienced by the CPC in the three largest metropolitan areas in Canada may have had a little something to do with both the issue in itself and, perhaps more to the point, the issue as a symbol of a general uneasiness with socon positions.
This
uneasiness must be a rather recent development. Otherwise,
how to explain that Cindy Silver's riding
of North Vancouver went Reform in 1993 and
1997 and Canadian Alliance in 2000? Stephen Harper is a
piker in the "scary hidden agendas" department
compared to Preston Manning and Stockwell Day.
Cindy
Silver lost North Vancouver because its non-white
population has topped 20% (according to the 2001
census) or 30% (according to the CBC
estimate). The three largest metropolitan
areas in Canada are no longer white, and non-whites vote
for the Liberal Party. They were bought and paid for years
ago. (See my 2004
VDARE election analysis for the
demographics.)
One social
conservative with a brain was not so long ago obtuse on
this issue:
Why aren't
[the Conservatives] mobilizing the huge number of
immigrants with explicitly Christian right-wing views? (David
Warren, 4 July 2004.)
(Oh, I
don't know. Perhaps because since the 1970s the vast
majority of immigrants have been pagan or Muslim and that
immigrants have precisely one motivating issue:
immigration.)
Eighteen
months on, our brainy socon was singing the Mark
Steyn Blues:
Westerners
blame Ontario for refusing to accept any party that has a
Western base. There is something in that, but not what
appears. The truth is that Ontario has been
demographically altered so rapidly and to such a degree,
that it is no longer the same province that elected Mike
Harris, as recently as 1999. And yet a huge, still
basically WASP, semi-rural Ontario continues to exist out
there and continues to share precisely the same ethos and
outlook as Alberta -- minus the will to live. I believe
the “tipping point” that was reached, after decades of
weighting the Ontario electorate with “new Canadians,”
has had its effect on the old Ontarians, too. They no
longer think of themselves as “maîtres chez nous.”
(Go ahead: call me Jacques Parizeau.) (David
Warren, 14 December 2005.)
Frankly, I
don't give a toss about Ontario, but it's a bit thick to
blame Ontarians (or Canadians anywhere else) for lacking
the "will to live" when their physicians
instruct them repeatedly that they're dying. Canada is not
half in love with easeful death; it is being murdered. The
Liberals I understand; Canada's carcass is their meat. As
for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives, the question is
whether they remain invincibly ignorant or whether they
are hell bent on joining the Liberals in Antenora.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 3.35 am, 27 January 2006►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY
Peter Simple by ffolkes
I have been
spending a few days's recess from the column on a country
estate in Shropshire near the Welsh border, a part of
England which has still to some extent escaped the blight
of industry, particularly the tourist industry.
Although I was
staying as a temporary tenant in one of the apartments of
the house, it reminded me of my own Simpleham, with its
broad parkland and noble avenues of oak and lime, its
lakes where swans were serenely gliding, even its
melodious chiming stable clock.
I could have sat
and indeed did sit, for hours listening and looking at the
green recesses of this earthly paradise, in what Housman
called "the country for easy livers, the quietest
under the sun." Needless to say, in
that high summer there was perfect sunshine every day, and
even after we had left this blessed place, its benign
influence persisted.
What will England
be when no such secret, quiet places remain? It would be a
country fit only for mad people who will find relief in
violence varied by vile moronic entertainment. It was no
good our trying to forget that outside and beyond this
enchanted realm there still waited our familiar
multicultural society of terror and confusion. Is this to
be our only future?
-- Peter
Simple, 1913-2006
Kevin
Michael Grace, 11.34 pm, 26 January 2006►
NO
GARLIC
Remember
how Stephen Harper's tepid, cynical, pro
forma opposition to "homosexual
marriage" (Now With Added Guarantee: No
Notwithstanding Clause!) was going to doom the
Conservatives? Everyone seemed to believe this, even
though legalizing SSM was something only a noisy handful
of Canadians was ever going to care much about.
Percentage
of Canadians likely to contract a "homosexual
marriage": less than 1%. Percentage of Canadians who have
had an abortion: greater than 20%. There's
the difference. Homosexual marriage was always a boutique
enthusiasm. Of course this is Canada we're talking about,
the country where every boutique enthusiasm becomes a
"defining national characteristic" within a
decade.
Surveying
the electoral battlefield to quantify the slaughter of the
anti-SSM MPs, I noticed something strange. There was no
slaughter. Bouquets of Gray, a blogger who supports SSM, counted
the anti-"homosexual marriage" MPs who lost to
pro-"homosexual marriage" MPs and vice versa.
It was a wash.
More
significant, Bouquets reviewed
the 35 seats which had been held by
Liberals who voted against their own party on SSM.
Twenty-nine were re-elected; six defeated. All six of the
defeated lost to Conservatives, strangely enough, only one
of whom (Garth Turner) is known to be pro-SSM.
QED.
If Canadians were so hell bent on punishing those known
(or suspected) to harbour retrograde notions on the
dignity of gay nuptials, they would have rejected
Conservative MPs en masse. And they would have
rejected the Liberal holdouts in favour of the only party
in English Canada with a monolithic position on SSM (pro): the
NDP. That didn't happen either.
But the
"social conservatives are poison" argument was
never based on any empirical evidence. Of course this is
Canada we're talking about here, the country where truth
is not a defence. I mean that literally, by the way. You
could look it up.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 12.34 am, 26 January 2006►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY
Critics
are fond of displaying their erudition. If they're hostile
to a film, they maintain that this or that was stolen from
Antonioni; if they like it, they point out the wonderful
allusion or homage to René Clair, etc. The cinema is a
living language, and once a technical process has been
used successfully it becomes part of the medium's
vocabulary. The public has merely to be able to understand
and interpret it.
-- John
Boorman
Kevin
Michael Grace, 6.49 am, 25 January 2006►
HARPER'S
'HIDDEN AGENDA' REVEALED?!
It always
seems to be the way that whenever traffic to this site
spikes dramatically, I'm too busy with other things to
take advantage. The last few days have seen me chained to
my keyboard, in large part composing belles lettres
no one will ever see. But there was also this, about
yesterday's Canadian election, composed for the mighty
VDARE.com:
Stephen Harper remains an
enigma. He has been bedevilled in two consecutive
elections by charges he harbors a “hidden
agenda.” It is easy enough to dismiss
this as scaremongering, but I can say with all honesty
(and I have studied the man extensively for a decade) that
I have absolutely no idea of what his agenda really is.
Harper is a man of many surprises. It would be foolish to
suppose his trick bag is empty.
The trick that Harper sprang on
the Liberals this year was to return to his roots as a
disciple of former Conservative prime minister Brian
Mulroney and a devotee of his praxis vis-à-vis
French Quebec. Mulroney won two consecutive elections by
out Liberaling the Liberals in pandering
to Quebec, delivering much more money and
many of the appurtenances of the sovereign state...
Given that Harper knows well
the lessons of the Mulroney debacle (and benefited greatly
thereby, in an earlier political incarnation) one might
ask: What sort of game is he playing?...
Stephen Harper,
in the not-so-distant past, was a quasi-separatist
himself, an Alberta
separatist. (See the “Alberta
Agenda” for details.) At that time, he opined
that the Canadian
federation was little more than a vast
blackmail-bribery scheme. Now he is Prime Minister of that
federation; and together with the Bloc commands a majority
of seats in Parliament.
As the example
of Czechoslovakia proves, countries can be brought
to an end without referenda; they can be
dismantled legislatively. Could it be that Stephen
Harper’s “hidden agenda” is a Czech-style Velvet
Divorce?
In any event,
the National Question is being answered. Like all open
marriages, Canada’s union is doomed. Quebec has become a
nation-state, and Canadian Confederation is now nothing
more than a not particularly convenient administrative
convenience...[More]
As you can
see, my essay is deliberately provocative. But not, I
think, needlessly so. I defy anyone to demonstrate that
Canada is held together by anything other than inertia.
Small is beautiful. Stand in the place where you live.
More later. Sleep now.
Jacques Parizeau, 30 October 1995: Truth will out
Kevin
Michael Grace, 9.08 pm, 24 January 2006►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY [SPECIAL PERENNIAL ELECTION DAY EDITION]
Who cares about this stupid
election? We all know it doesn't matter who gets elected
president of Carver. Do you really think it's gonna change
anything around here: make one single person smarter or
happier or nicer? The only person it does matter to is the
one who gets elected. The same pathetic charade happens
every year, and everyone makes the same pathetic promises
just so they can put it on their transcripts to get into
college. So vote for me, because I don't even want to go
to college, and I don't care, and as president I won't do
anything. The only promise I will make is that if elected
I will immediately dismantle the student government, so
that none of us will ever have to sit through one of these
stupid assemblies again! … Or don't vote for me! Who
cares? Don't vote at all!
-- Tammy Metzler, Election
(Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor)
Kevin
Michael Grace, 3.42 am, 23 January 2006►
POETRY
CORNER [TO RCN, MONDAY, 23 JANUARY 2006, 3.04 AM]
The Flaw In Paganism
Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)
-- Dorothy Parker
Kevin
Michael Grace, 3.32 am, 23 January 2006►
POETRY
CORNER [TO RCN, SUNDAY, 22 JANUARY 2006, 2.47 AM]
Late, Late, So Late!
Late, late, so late! and dark the night
and chill!
Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.
No light had we: for that we do repent;
And learning this, the bridegroom will relent.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.
No light: so late! and dark and chill
the night!
O let us in, that we may find the light!
Too late, too late: ye cannot enter now.
Have we not heard the bridegroom is so
sweet?
O let us in, though late, to kiss his feet!
No, no, too late! ye cannot enter now.
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from Idylls
Of The King, "Guinevere"
Kevin
Michael Grace, 10.32 am, 22 January 2006►
IN FOR A PENNY, IN FOR A POUND
Four
observations on last night's Saturday Night Live.
1. Watching
Peter Sarsgaard in the "Cat Fancy" sketch, I was
reminded of what an old DJ once told me: Make one mistake,
and you'll make three. In the event, Sarsgaard made four.
2. Question
for Julian Casablancas of the Strokes: Would you take
career advice from Michael Jackson? No? Then why are you
taking sartorial advice from him? Those leg-warmers over
the hands were a nice touch, though.
3. Memo To
Writing Staff I: Oh satire, where is thy sting? Taking the
mickey out of Drew
Barrymore and then inviting her on to
"be a good sport about it" is not satire; it's
celebrity pandering. There are already 177 TV shows that
do that.
4. Memo To
Writing Staff II: Here's a bottle of whisky and a loaded
revolver. I'm leaving now and closing the door behind me.
You know what to do. As Steve Martin told John Candy in Planes,
Trains & Automobiles: "And by
the way, you know, when you're telling these little
stories? Here's a good idea -- have a point. It
makes it so much more interesting!"
Barrymore: Swing free or die
Kevin
Michael Grace, 1.26 am, 22 January 2006►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY [SPECIAL ONE-STOP IRAQ FIASCO EXPLANATION
EDITION]
How
is the world ruled, and how do wars start? Diplomats tell
lies to journalists and then believe what they read.
-- Karl Kraus
Kevin
Michael Grace, 11.58 am, 21 January 2006►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY
The age of
mutual compliments is gradually sinking into its grave.
Frankly, we are not minded to assist its resurrection. He
who does not attack the bad, defends the good but halfway.
-- Robert Schumann
Kevin
Michael Grace, 11.15 am, 20 January 2006►
RIDING
OFF INTO THE SUNSET
My tribute
to Ang Lee's The Greatest Story Ever Told provoked
a pleasing succès de scandale on Oscarwatch.com
but was sadly unincluded in Antonia
Zerbisias's Golden Globes Hatecrime Roundup.
[Editor's Note: The text is interrupted here. A
splenetic outburst worthy
of John Osborne was composed and then
deleted.]
In
compensation for the snub, I received a unusually
thoughtful note from a fellow called Jeff Snyder (an
American, of course), which reads in part:
I think most have missed the real significance of
Brokeback Mountain. It is not, despite its subject
matter, about homosexuality or about the universality of love.
Snyder
referred me to his website
posting on the subject:
At the
risk of being ridiculous by commenting on a movie I have
not seen and will not likely ever see, my idea of the
cultural significance of this movie runs counter to that
thus far offered in reviews or comments I have seen.
The movie
has been characterized as a romance, and based on the
trailer I saw and reviews I have read I don't doubt it for
a second. In Love
in the Western World, Denis de
Rougemont explored the development and meaning of the
modern Western notion of love between the sexes, which he
saw as a rejection of the Christian notion of love. One of
his key points, as I recall, is that romantic love, and
the intense passion of romantic love, could not and did
not exist without obstacles preventing its consummation.
This love was love thwarted, was a love fundamentally in
love with an ideal of love. So it is that in the standard
romance movie, the story ends with successful
consummation, because that is the end of the passion
itself. Remove the obstacles and there is no more passion.
De Rougemont, who was a Catholic, had little trouble
demonstrating that such love was more obsession with self
and self-love than actual love of another, in the
Christian sense.
In this
light, Brokeback Mountain perhaps signifies, not so
much the normalizing and increasing acceptance of
homosexuality, or stereotype-busting deconstruction of
masculinity represented in traditional Westerns, as the
death of romantic love between men and women. There being
no real class, cultural or moral obstacles these days to
"true love" between men and women, Hollywood and
our writers of fiction must now have recourse to
historical eras and to the few remaining taboos that
exist, albeit in ever tenuous form, in order to create a
romance.
If this is
correct, the significance of Brokeback Mountain is
that romance, in the modern Western world, is on its last
legs.
This is
exactly right and explains many things. For instance:
1. The
disappearance of the love song. If they no longer
stand in the way of our love, what's left to sing
about?
2. Closer
and Sex In The City: adultery and sexual predation
becoming chick things. The men are surfeited -- "Stay
me with Xbox, comfort me with porn: for I am sick of
love" -- so the women take up the slack.
3. Gay
"marriage." Hey, they are standing in the
way of our love! Well, not our love, exactly, but rather its full recognition by the State
-- and the concomitant rending of garments by priests and
bigots (same thing) this will engender. So we see that
after gay "marriage" is everywhere made licit,
interest in it will vanish, as the legalization is
the consummation.
Romantic
love is on its last legs, but how will the end play out?
As "love" has been completely politicized, first
by Marxists, then feminists and finally by
multiculturalists, we shall now witness attempts to force
the State to legitimize the few sexual perversities that
remain "transgressive": polygamy, pedophilia,
bestiality, etc. They are still standing in the way
of those loves. But for how much longer?
It is
customary at this point for "progressives" to
froth at the mouth, but here's the funny thing about
slippery slope predictions: every single one made by
social conservatives in the past 50 years has come to pass.
From an
Amazon.com review:
"When he accepted the Tony Award for Best Play in
2002, Edward Albee said he was grateful that there was
room on Broadway for a play about love."
(For those
who don't listen to NPR, he is the fellow who
taught John Waters,
"There was another value system, there was another
kind of beauty and smartness and coolness." It goes
without saying he is America's
most honoured writer.)
From
another Amazon.com review:
Welcome to
the quagmire of human sexuality. The Goat, or Who is
Sylvia?... places the audience in the jury box. The
accused are Martin, his wife Stevie and their gay
teen-aged son Billy. Albee challenges us to question the
nature and meaning of love. Can love and shame coexist?
Who defines normal? Who, or what, has been betrayed? Who
decides which behaviours are acceptable? After the
evidence has been presented and issues debated we realize
that this play isn't about bestiality or infidelity, but
rather intolerance, nonconformity and the arbitrariness of
societal standards. Does Albee provide any answers? No, he
insists, as he always has, that you find your own. A truly
great play.
Yes, Albee's hit is about a married man --
played by Bill Pullman and Jeremy Irons, among others --
who falls in love with a goat. And no, you just can't get
a jury to convict these days.
Albee and muse: Hate is not a family value, etc.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 11.04 am, 20 January 2006►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY
The apologists for Mao are
discredited or forgotten. It is easy and safe to recognize,
among fashionable people and in publishing houses, that
Mao’s regime was a murderous horror and Mao himself an
unlovely monster. Today’s apologists for China are not
naive old communists but naive young capitalists.
They look at the shining towers
of Shanghai and at China’s new passion for consumption
and production, and they think that liberty will arrive
alongside prosperity. In many cases, they believe this
because they have made the same mistake about the West,
imagining that free markets are automatically connected
with liberty in general, and that democracy is a matter of
form rather than content. The Reagan-Thatcher development
of a new populist conservatism made a god of the market
and ignored the great moral and cultural issues, such as
defence of the family and opposition to the cultural
Marxism known as political correctness. These, as it
turned out, are far greater menaces to private life and
individual liberty than any foreign enemy now in
existence.
-- Peter
Hitchens
Kevin
Michael Grace, 9.12 am, 19 January 2006►
IF
VOTING COULD CHANGE ANYTHING, IT WOULD BE ILLEGAL
And the
winner of the 2006 Strange New Respect Award (™Tom
Bethell) goes to ...
Stephen
"I'm Shortly To Be The Government, And I'm Here To
Help You" Harper. The reason I've had so little to
say about the election is that I'm disinclined to conflate
the State with Almighty God and have no patience with
those who do. "Conservative," my ass. Stephen
Harper is what David Cameron hopes to be when he grows up.
Point of
personal privilege: If the Liberals continue to use my work
as a stick
to beat Steve-O with, I'm going to have to
demand royalties.
Jay Jardine
writes:
The Tory election
platform basically contains an affirmation
of every single solitary Liberal entitlement
program and government agency that the conservative
movement has spent the last 13 years hollering about --
wrapped up with a big blue ribbon on top.
You need more evidence? Here's the
obiter picta:
Lickspittle Newfie Rick Mercer assumes the (new)
position
As always,
one laughs lest one weep, but honestly, how depraved is a
country when its leading "satirist" pimps
government agitprop for cash?
But I've quoted Patti Smith before, and I'll do it again:
"The only way to sell is out." So where's my
payoff? High
Commissioner in London would be nice. You have an option, Mr
Martin, sir!
Kevin
Michael Grace, 10.35 am, 17 January 2006►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY
One of the
principal functions of “conservatism” in our liberal
society is to praise, laud, and glorify the reigning
liberal values that the liberals themselves, having moved
to the left, no longer believe in. Thus, while it’s
questionable whether many white leftists still
enthusiastically celebrate Martin Luther King, since that
would imply that there’s something about America worth
celebrating, white mainstream conservatives very much
celebrate him, seeing him as a great figure, truly
deserving of his own national holiday. But has it ever
occurred to these conservatives that the main idea for
which they honor King -- the idea that race-blindness is
the highest value, and discrimination and intolerance the
greatest wrongs -- is also the main source of the West’s
current inability to defend itself from its enemies? To
me, this is the most important aspect of King’s legacy.
He is one of the fathers of Western suicide.
-- Lawrence
Auster
Sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal?: The sainted 'Dr'
King
found this image particularly amusing, see here
and here
Kevin
Michael Grace, 10.15 am, 17 January 2006►
ÉPATEZ
LA BOOBOISIE
If the Golden
Globes are any indication, the 2006 Academy
Awards will be for the GLBT community what 2004 wasn't
for Christians: Homecoming Day. Last night,
Ang Lee's Romeo + Juliet took four gongs: best
drama, director, screenplay and song -- Rufus Wainwright's
haunting "It Hurts (Like A Bugger) To Be In
Love" -- while Huffman and Hoffman were honoured for Transamerica
and Capote.
Is anyone
surprised? How long before Hunchback Mountain
becomes a "teachable moment" in every high school in North
America? ("In accordance with their religious
convictions, Caleb, Schlomo and Mohammed are excused to
the library for the rest of the day.")
Showing the
requisite love for Ang Lee's Tristan & Isolde
is already mandatory for adults. How long before David
Stern forces Larry Miller to make the requisite,
grovelling apologies -- one is never enough -- for his
"recent act of blatant discrimination"? "Unapologetic,
openly gay sportswriter" LZ Granderson
takes up the story at ESPN.com, and let
the show trial begin:
In addition to the [NBA's Utah]
Jazz, Miller owns Megaplex 17, a movie theater in Sandy,
Utah. Two Fridays ago it was scheduled to begin showing Brokeback
Mountain ...
According to the Salt Lake
City Tribune, Miller didn't know the subject matter
until a radio interviewer asked him about it the day it
was supposed to open. Less than two hours after the
interview, Brokeback was pulled from the theater
...
Now, we could assume that just
because [Miller] doesn't want a film about gay people to
play at his movie theater, that doesn't necessarily mean
he's intolerant. He could, for instance, just be making a
business decision, worried about a backlash from the good
people of Sandy. That would make him a coward, not a bigot
...
But perhaps the greater
injustice is that few, including the NBA, have taken
Miller to task for it. After all, if he opted to pull Glory
Road because he found out the black team won, I'm sure
Jesse Jackson and Nancy Grace would be on the first flight
to Utah.
Oh, the injustice! The Dreyfus Affair was as nothing to
this. Perhaps Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy could hold
hearings on revoking Utah's statehood. They could solicit
testimony from Heath Ledger, who bids fair to become the
Rosa Parks of our time, as theSuperficial.com explains:
Ledger
has lashed out at the ... theatres in Utah that refused to
show his movie Penis
Party Brokeback Mountain.
“Personally,
I don’t think the movie is [controversial] but I think
maybe the Mormons in Utah do. I think it’s hilarious and
very immature of a society,” Ledger said
in the Herald Sun.
“I heard a while ago that West Virginia was going to ban
it but that’s a state that was lynching people only 25
years ago, so that’s to be expected.”
Damn those religions and
their damn ... religious convictions. It's obvious they
should spend less time praying and more time watching gay
cowboy movies and climbing to the top of Mount Man-Butt.
Thankfully Heath will show us the way. And while I'm not
the American history scholar that Ledger obviously is, I'm
fairly certain that West Virginia hasn't been lynching
people in recent history. But hopefully he'll travel there
in the near future and prove me wrong.
Did I mention that I love the NSFW (or anywhere else) theSuperficial.com
and its anonymous author? The real injustice will be if he
doesn't win the Pulitzer for commentary. It's heartening
to know there's one real man left in the land of the free
and the home of the brave.
Ledger: An old denim coat will never let you down
Kevin
Michael Grace, 3.06 am, 17 January 2006►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY
Einstein
said “I think the fish will be the last to know
water.” I don’t think it would take much stretch of
the imagination to say that the modern citizen will be the
last to know technology, the reason being that it's no
longer something we use but something we live. The popular
myth of neutrality, that technology is “neutral” and
it’s the use or misuse of it that determines its value,
I think is woefully inadequate.
Modern
technology was devised, I guess, as a buffer from the
ravages of nature, which is at once beautiful and
horrible. But instead, it separated us completely from
nature to the point that now technology is our new nature
-- instead of anima mundi, it’s techno mundi.
Mystery is gone to the certainty of technological
principles. So the real terror, the real aggression
against life comes in the form of the pursuit of our
technological happiness.
-- Godfrey
Reggio
Kevin
Michael Grace, 7.43 am, 16 January 2006►
