Ideas Have Consequences: Self-Esteem, Achievement, and Narcissism
One of the most important trends of the past half-century was the self-esteem movement in education. The idea was that students learn more if they are told that they're smart and capable of learning more.
In theory, it made sense to a lot of people. Unfortunately, test scores tumbled, and students are doing more poorly than ever on standardized tests, even though the tests have been made easier than before. Meanwhile, U.S. students have rated themselves as doing just great academically. Students in Japan and Korea have been scoring much higher than U.S. students yet do not rate their achievment as high as Americans ratethemselves.
Now we find that this wonderful self-esteem movement has been fostering a narcissistic culture, a society in which people increasingly feel aggressive, unsympathetic, and disconnected from one another. Anyone looking at contemporary American culture, especially that part of it which is geared toward and inhabited by the young, could easily see a rising tide of narcissism, of course, and now there is scientific evidence to back it up. The Associated Press reports:
Today's college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society. . . .
[The study's lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University] and her colleagues, in findings to be presented at a workshop today in San Diego on the generation gap, examined the responses of 16,475 college students nationwide who completed an evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory between 1982 and 2006.
The standardized inventory, known as the NPI, asks for responses to such statements as "If I ruled the world, it would be a better place," "I think I am a special person" and "I can live my life any way I want to."
The researchers describe their study as the largest ever of its type and say students' NPI scores have risen steadily since the current test was introduced in 1982. By 2006, they said, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores, 30 percent more than in 1982.
This is a very bad trend for the society, the study's authors note. Narcissism has numerous awful consequences, says study co-author W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, according to the AP story:
"Unfortunately, narcissism can also have very negative consequences for society, including the breakdown of close relationships with others," he said.
The study asserts that narcissists "are more likely to have romantic relationships that are short-lived, at risk for infidelity, lack emotional warmth, and to exhibit game-playing, dishonesty, and over-controlling and violent behaviors."
Twenge, the author of "Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before," said narcissists tend to lack empathy, react aggressively to criticism and favor self-promotion over helping others.
The study's authors say that this trend is traceble directly to the self-esteem movement:
The researchers traced the phenomenon back to what they called the "self-esteem movement" that emerged in the 1980s, asserting that the effort to build self-confidence had gone too far.
As an example, Twenge cited a song commonly sung to the tune of "Frere Jacques" in preschool: "I am special, I am special. Look at me."
"Current technology fuels the increase in narcissism," Twenge said. "By its very name, MySpace encourages attention-seeking, as does YouTube." . . .
"Permissiveness seems to be a component," he said. "A potential antidote would be more authoritative parenting. Less indulgence might be called for."
The article notes that the authors do not have any prescription for turning things around quickly: "Campbell said the narcissism upsurge seemed so pronounced that he was unsure if there were obvious remedies."
Obviously, rethinking our national obsession with building kids' self-esteem through artificial measures—and returning to the common-sense habit of praising them for real achievements and simply treating them both kindly and fairly—is the most likely remedy for the long term. That is Twenge's conclusion too, the story notes:
"We need to stop endlessly repeating 'You're special' and having children repeat that back," said the study's lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. "Kids are self-centered enough already."
The old joke used to be that a neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged. The increasing lawlessness of American athletes has a lot of liberals reconsidering their willingness to excuse outrageous behavior as simply an inevitable byproduct of poverty, or worse, as an alternative culture that has a validity of its own.
Violence seems to break out all too often where prominent athletes gather, in recent years, and the incidence is clearly rising. Telander has had enough, and he senses that many others who hold liberal views like him are coming to feel the same way, realizing that the behavior of these wealthy, privileged thugs reflects a horrible reality of life in American neighborhoods:
I sense a change in the air. I sense for the first time that Americans -- black, white, brown -- have had enough of the nonsense from the sports and entertainment world, enough of the thuggery and violence in words and deeds disguised as the art of ''being real,'' enough of lawlessness masquerading as social acting out, enough of immoral, discourteous and criminal behavior being tolerated because it is expression or rebellion or anything other than what it is: bad stuff.
I say this in the aftershock of an NFL season that saw so many players arrested, it seemed like a casting call for prison sports.
''It has to stop,'' said Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer, steward of a team with nine players arrested in 13 months. ''It's ridiculous.''
I make my observation with the foul stench of the NBA All-Star Weekend in Las Vegas redolent in the air, with the January shooting death of the Denver Broncos' Darrent Williams still lingering, with the questioning of Tennessee Titans cornerback Adam ''Pacman'' Jones for his alleged involvement in a hideous brawl and multiple shootings at the Vegas strip club Minxx right there for all to stare at and gag upon.
The cult of lawlessness that has made some black American neighborhoods as dangerous as Baghdad, that has made many of our inner-city schools resemble locked-down gang fortresses, that has created an atmosphere that terrifies law-abiding mothers and fathers into cowering behind locked doors at night, fearful of the stray bullet that might choose one of their children -- this has reached critical mass.
What has made this mess possible, Telander acknowledges, is that the mainstream media and political leaders have avoided taking a stand on such lawlessness because it is concentrated so heavily among African-Americans.
Now, however, Telander realizes that this "cult of lawlessness" hurts everyone, especially black people. The latter are subjected to continual intimidation and criminal depredation from a sizeable African-American criminal class that is every bit as brutal toward black Americans as the Ku Klux Klan was decades ago. Telander quotes AOL sports columnist Jason Whitlock, an African-American, on the subject:
'We have a problem in the black community, and it didn't make its debut at All-Star Weekend in Vegas,'' writes AOL.com sports columnist Jason Whitlock, a black man whom I admire and consider a friend. ''What was impossible to ignore in Vegas was on display in Houston, Atlanta and previous All-Star locations.''
Whitlock, a large, intimidating-looking fellow who played Division I football and was nauseated by the thug posturing in Vegas, goes on to say that with the exception of Louis Farrakhan's 1995 Million Man March, black thuggishness ''has been on display nearly every time we've gathered in large groups to socialize in the past 15 years or so.''
A more severe condemnation could hardly be imagined. Understandably, Whitlock is disgusted by this situation. Telander continues:
His name for the criminals and malevolent poseurs who show up to ''ruin our good time''?
The Black Ku Klux Klan.
' In one of the strongest, most fearless statements of post-Civil Rights disgust you will read anywhere, Whitlock writes, ''instead of wearing white robes and white hoods, the new KKK has now taken to wearing white T's and calling themselves gangsta rappers, gangbangers and posse members.
''Just like the White KKK of the 1940s and '50s, we fear them, keep our eyes lowered, shut our mouths and pray they don't bother us. Our fear makes them stronger. Our silence empowers them. Our excuse-making . .. increases their influence.''
Telander concludes that it shouldn't surprise us that NFL players are asking their union to crack down on the substantial criminal element among the league's players, who bring shame upon the league as a whole:
Hating anarchy should have nothing to do with profession or status.
In an article on William Wilberforce and Amazing Grace in the Opinion Journal, Charlotte Allen of the religious website Beliefnet.com argues that the movie covers up the Christian foundations of William Wilberforce's political activities that led to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire:
Alas, a lot of people watching "Amazing Grace," Michael Apted's just-released film, may get the impression--perhaps deliberately fostered by Mr. Apted--that Wilberforce was a mostly secular humanitarian whose main passion was not Christian faith but politics and social justice.
This is an utterly astonishing claim.
I categorically disagree with Ms. Allen's assessment of the film. To give evidence of an absence in a film is difficult, of course, but it is significant that she doesn't give any examples of specific instances in which Amazing Grace slights religion. All she provides is an interview statement by the film's director, Michael Apted, to Christianity Today in which he clearly meant to convey that he wanted to avoid preachiness in the film. That is a statement for which I would commend him.
Similar to Chariots of Fire and Shadowlands in tone, Amazing Grace balances faith and filmmaking in a historical drama that depicts an ordinary Christian doing extraordinary things because of his beliefs.
He concludes,
It's a well-told cinematic example of a man who used his faith and God-given opportunities to change the world for good.
In my analysis of the film for National Review Online (previewed on this website over the weekend) I concentrate on how the film's aesthetic techniques convey its ideas, and hence I don't give a lot of examples about how the film shows Wilberforce's religious convictions and how they affect his actions. But that is indeed a strong aspect of the film, pace Ms. Allen.
She fails to acknowledge, for example, the film's treatment of Wilberforce's struggle to decide whether to devote his life to politics or the ministry, and his friends' persuasive argument that his talents would be best spent in politics and hence that is the best place for him to serve God. The first scene in which we see him at home, he is lying on the ground staring in wonder at the pastoral scene around him, and talks to his servant about his great delight in God's creation.
If anything, Wilberforce comes off as entirely driven by religion and specifically a fiercely passionate relationship with God through Jesus Christ, the hallmarks of evangelicalism. There can be no doubt of this from anyone watching the film fairly and carefully.
In addition, the treatment of Wilberforce's friend John Newton is about nothing but his Christianity and how it affected his life. And so on, throughout the film.
To suggest, as Ms. Allen does, that this film obscures the Christian foundations of the slavery-abolition movement in a manner reminscent of Spielberg's Amistad is so wrong as to be calumnious.
The film makes it perfectly clear that Wilberforce's evangelical Christianity was entirely central to his actions.
My analysis of the film begins with a point about a scene being more subtle than it may initially seem. Perhaps Ms. Allen simply wanted more of a Fox Faith kind of thing. That, of course, is her prerogative, but I'll take Amazing Grace any day.
The AP story recounting last night's Oscar ceremony goes right to the heart of why the Academy Awards no longer matter the industry has become so insular, complacent, and distant from its audience that it regularly nominates for award mostly movies that hardly anyone has seen.
The AP story mentions only the Best Picture nominations in this regard, and does so only at the end of the article, a destination to which few people will persevere, but this fact is, if anything, even more true of the other major awards, for performances, directing, screenwriting, etc. The message to the audience: we're smarter and better than you. AP writes,
Collectively, the five best-picture nominees had drawn a total domestic theatrical audience of about 38.5 million people, about a third the number of fans who have gone to see the contenders in recent peak years when such blockbusters as "Gladiator" or "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" have won.
The day when Hollywood and its audiences largely agreed on what is good is long gone. Hollywood is still humming along because it continues to make audience-pleasing films while its best and brightest talents fool about with their arrogant, condescending, leftist, elitist agenda. The Academy Awards, however, show us where their heart really is—and if it remains so, further box office declines are inevitable.
The lesson is that even if you're a glamorous, privileged, envied, powerful multimillionaire, you'd better remember whom you work for—or you'll get kicked out just like anybody else.
An early scene in Amazing Grace establishes the film's themes in a way that is more subtle than it may initially seem.
Young William Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd) confronts a man who is beating an exhausted horse as it lies inert in the mud, in an impossible and heartless attempt to get it to do its appointed work. But it is not simply Wilberforce's compassion that is at work here—that would be an insufferable cliche. Instead of responding to the man's threatening reaction with anger or accusations or pleas for sympathy for the exhausted animal, Wilberforce confronts him with straight facts, pure reason, and an appeal to the man's self-interest: he tells the man that if he lets the horse rest for a half hour or so, it will be ready to carry on.
The man grudgingly realizes the sense in this, and drops his whip into the mud.
This is precisely what Wilberforce would go on to do as a Member of Parliament and the man who led the Empire to abolish slavery. His great cause was to bring to light the facts of slavery and persuade his countrymen to do the right thing.
Amazing Grace is certainly suffused with religion, but it is not a "religious film." Issues and consequences of religious faith appear precisely where they belong in this particular story (and in all observations of human works): at the heart of the characters' motivations. Most of the film deals directly not with religion but with politics. And the treatment of politics is thoroughly intelligent and insightful.
Amazing Grace tells the story of the late-eighteenth century English Member of Parliament William Wilberforce, who as a young man finds his religious conscience so seared by the existence of slavery in his society that he turns away from a career in the religious ministry, which he would greatly prefer to undertake, in favor of a career in politics, where he can manifest his love for God by making the world a better place.
This is both scripturally sound and historically accurate. Wilberforce did indeed help to make the world a much better place.
The film shows the transition from a society in which a small aristocracy ruled without much influence from the general public, to one in which the public's opinion mattered immensely. This is a manifestation of the world-changing effects of Protestantism, and Amazing Grace shows that relationship by depicting the central place of Wilberforce's evangelical zeal in motivating his entirely quixotic ambition to end the slave trade throughout the British Empire.
It is quixotic because slavery is so ingrained into the British economy that almost everyone has an interest in keeping it going. Hence, at first there is overwhemling opposition to Wilberforce's ambitious proposal. He has to struggle for years before he can even get close to victory.
The filmmakers skill in telling this story is impressive. The screenplay, by Stephen Knight, jumps back and forth through time to keep the story's themes at the forefront. The cinematography of Remi Adefarasin skillfully uses light and dark to bring out the story's themes.
During the scenes depicting Wilberforce's long years of struggle, light and dark visual compositions convey the measure of his optimism and pessimism, respectively. That's at least a convention and at worst a cliche in the movies, but it makes sense here and is done with sufficient skill that it doesn't obtrude. In addition, given that the great majority of the film portrays times of struggle, the darker scenes predominate greatly and thus afford a basically consistent look.
This theme of light and darkness is taken up in the narrative in the story of John Newton, an Englishman and former slaveship captain who converted to Christianity and became an evangelistic preacher. Newton wrote the beloved hymn "Amazing Grace," and its prominent line, "I . . . was blind, but now I see," is used in the film to great effect, when Newton loses his sight but speaks to Wilberforce of his real ability to see. In depicting this character, Albert Finney once again shows his great brilliance as an actor in depicting both Newton's towering strength and his harrowing doubts and personal guilt. Newton's life is indeed, as the film makes clear, a powerful illustration of each person's need for a Savior.
A particularly effective use of this interaction of light and dark occurs in a scene in which Wilberforce expresses to his wife-to-be, Barbara, his doubts that he and his forces will ever be able to end the slave trade. As he speaks, Wilberforce twice takes a new candle, melts the bottom over the expiring flame of one that is about to go out, and sets the new one firmly in place of the old. It is a beautiful image that is easy to miss, but it means much in the context of the film. Renewal of the struggle, the need to shed light on injustice, the replacement of one strategy with another, and the power of just a little light—all of these themes are reflected in and reinforced by this humble, even mundane image.
Director Michael Apted contributes his usual solid, dependable, and basically self-effacing work. It is very effective here, as he concentrates on eliciting persuasive and affecting performances from the film's immensely talented cast. Ioan Gruffudd's performance is impeccable, and his skills are quite up to the task not only of depicting Wilberforce but also of not being blown off the screen by superb performers such as Finney, Michael Gambon (as the MP Lord Charles Fox), Benedict Cumberbatch (whose performance as Pitt the Younger is superb), Romola Garai (in an effectively understated turn as Barbara), Bill Paterson (excellent as wily Scots MP Lord Dundas), and Rufus Sewell in his standout performance as Wilberforce's friend and inspiration, Thomas Clarkson.
Adding further interest is the film's intelligent and comprehensible depiction of the politics of the time. The conservatives, of course, are those who will not even consider any alteration to the institution of slavery. Their concern (one that seemed valid at the time but was proven entirely illusory immedieately after abolition) is that such a basic change will bring vast social disorder, poverty, and defeat in an imminent war with the French.
The radicals, represented by Clarkson, are too impatient to accept gradual change and require an immediate transformation of English society such that the entire aristocracy will be thrown out immediately, as is happening in France.
The liberals, Wilberforce and his allies, want change but recognize that they must find a way to do it such that both liberty and order will be maximized. A more perfect illustration of the essence of classical liberalism would be difficult to imagine. In an important and impassioned scene, Clarkson argues with Wilberforce about the need for thorough, immediate change. Wilberforce points out that prudence and justice require that things be done in an orderly way. Ultimately, both the radicals and the conservatives come to see things Wilberforce's way—or at least give in to it.
In his reaction to the French Revolution, Wilberforce shares the thinking of the great British political philosopher and parliamentarian Edmund Burke, one of the first great modern liberals. Perhaps the most startling thing about Amazing Grace is its vivid illustration of the Christian foundations of true liberalism. In Christianity as in the world in general, reason and compassion are always in tension. In Christianity, however, as Amazing Grace and the life of William Wilberforce demonstrate vividly, they are ultimately in harmony. In any particular case, it is up to the body of believers to find where the two come together, in the greatest balance of liberty and order, for in that balance is improvement of the human condition made most consistent and endurable.
The USA Network mystery-comedy series Monk and Psych are both entering the season's stretch run, with their penultimate episodes appearing tonight beginning at 9 EST. The season finales will premiere next week.
Monk remains superb and inventive, and Psych has become a sold, entertaining mystery comedy program with real, enjoyably challenging puzzles.
In my earlier comments on Psych on this site, I observed that the show was trying too hard to be quirky, and I pointed out that "the best thing about a mystery is the mystery." It seems that the producers discovered this timeless truth in the course of the season. The final episode of the first half of the season, which premiered last August, included a solid mystery and incorporated the central characters' eccentricities into the story, instead of trying to do it the other way round (which never works). (See my review here.) The producers have continued this approach in the second half of the season.
It is important, however, to acknowledge that the best mystery stories don't just have interesting puzzles, characters, conflicts, and social implications. They also have very interesting detectives.
Xavier Lechard, a French mystery aficionado, astutely observed that "the most famous and enduring detectives tend to be also the most colorful." (His comment appeared on the Golden Age of Detection email discussion list.)
It's not enough for the 'tec to be colorful, of course, but without such a character at the center of the story, even the most intellectually challenging mystery can become something of a bore.
What makes Monk and Psych work so well is that they have both interesting detectives and good mysteries.
The movie industry's most important annual moment, the Academy Awards ceremony, will be shown on television around the world, witnessed by over a billion people, this Sunday night.
It is the night when Hollywood honors the films and performances that best represent the industry's self-image as the most decent, thoughtful, intelligent, talented, and beautiful people on the earth—and powerfully confirms the public's astute perception of them as the world's most amazing collection of disturbingly charismatic circus freaks.
A very good article by Jon Friedman at Marketwatch points out that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) certainly has nothing to complain about his treatment by the media, even though the Senator and presidential candidate has seen fit to do exactly that. Friedman writes,
It seems that the Illinois Democrat has a problem, though. Politico.com, the impressive new political-news site, ran this headline Feb. 12: "Obama Casts Peevish Eye on National Media."
The story behind the story is this, as Friedman notes:
Ben Smith's story on the Politico site began this way: Obama "used his first news conference after announcing his run for president to accuse the media of ignoring his substantive record and falsely depicting him as a lightweight."
It quoted Obama as saying: "The problem is that that's not what you guys have been reporting on. You've been reporting on how I look in a swimsuit."
Friedman correctly observes that this seems a strange complaint from a man who has received such fawning, unconditional admiration from the mainstream U.S. media:
Taken at face value, this astounds me. I can't remember the last time journalists gave a White House candidate such a supersonic push to enable him or her to capture the public's imagination.
I'm not alone, either.
"Not since John F. Kennedy has a junior senator so quickly become a national celebrity and a possible candidate for the White House," the Washington Post said in a review last Oct. 22 of Obama's runaway best seller, "The Audacity of Hope." (Obama declared his candidacy on Feb. 10.)
But now, Obama is grousing. Talk about audacity! Sometimes the media just can't win -- and the public wonders why we seem so cynical at times.
Journalists have widely hailed Obama for his intellect, vitality and charisma. Incredibly, in only a few months, Obama, a U.S. senator for a mere 25 months, has become a legitimate presidential candidate. By comparison, it took New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, his main rival for the Democratic nomination and the former first lady, 15 years to accomplish the same feat.
And if we are to be fully honest, we haven't heard a single word from Obama that inspires comparisons to the kind of wisdom, insight, and policy astuteness one sees in a Rudy Giuliani or even Hillary Clinton, though I intensely disagree with her views, let alone a Ronald Reagan or a Winston Churchill, two great leaders who were given brutal daily beatings by the media of their time.
If a Senator finds near-universal adulation to be annoyingly insufficient to his needs, how on earth can we expect him to lead a nation through a crisis?
Colorado Sen. Gary Hart should be a useful model for Obama to contemplate. He was a candidate whom the media intensely loved, but they turned on him when he showed feet of clay and blundered through a self-inflicted campaign crisis.
What is true of life in general is true in politics as well: charm and good looks will get you through the door, but if you can't produce, you'll be out on your ear eventually.
In time we're going to see what Sen. Obama is really made of. His peevish reaction to near-universal adulation does not bode well for him.
Every living American probably has received their instructions by now:
"Tim Hardaway has checked out of polite society. He is not to be rehabilitated by any means. Besides, he is about five abject apologies away from being nearly apologetic enough. He has sinned against our new god who is named Tolerance. A sin against tolerance is worse in its social stigma than theft, extortion, insider trading, perjury, and spousal abuse. The Tolerance taboo is broken by hating. The penalty for breaking the taboo is to be hated. A hate for a hate as the good Book says in a socially relevant and proper interpretation."
Exactly. This whole thing is siimply an open effort at intimidation, against not just Tim Hardaway but against anyone who would question the elites' forced consensus on any issue the latter deems important.
If this situation reminds you of a private-sector version of the government's activities in 1984, you understand the situation correctly.
Independently arriving at most of the same conclusions I have outlined in my analyses on the subject on this site, Medved agrees with my point that Hardaway was correct to apologize for using the word "hate" in describing his feelings about homosexuals, and with my observation that most people feel fundamentally uncomfortable with the presence of homosexuality:
Hardaway appropriately apologized for his harsh remarks, but many (if not most) Americans no doubt share his instinctive reluctance to share showers and locker rooms with open homosexuals. That reluctance also explains the controversial Defense Department policy that prevents out-of-the-closet gays from serving in the United States military.
Medved also points out that Hardaway's discomfort at the idea of being undressed around homosexuals is a perfectly sensible attitude:
In the wake of the nearly-universal condemnation of Tim Hardaway’s statements to a radio interviewer, the substantive issue remains. Is it a reasonable for an NBA basketball player (or a soldier in basic training, for that matter) to feel uncomfortable sharing intimate quarters with a homosexual, or does this represent an outrageous, irrational fear? In response to the Hardaway controversy, several sports columnists compared his resistance to the idea of playing alongside gay teammates to the racism of previous years when white players tried to avoid competing with (or against) blacks.
The analogy is ridiculous, of course. There is no rational basis for discomfort at playing with athletes of another race since science and experience show that human racial differences remain insignificant. The much better analogy for discomfort at gay teammates involves the widespread (and generally accepted) idea that women and men shouldn’t share locker rooms. Making gay males unwelcome in the intimate circumstances of an NBA team makes just as much sense as making straight males unwelcome in the showers for a women’s team at the WNBA. Most female athletes would prefer not to shower together with men not because they hate males (though some of them no doubt do), but because they hope to avoid the tension, distraction and complication that prove inevitable when issues of sexual attraction (and even arousal) intrude into the arena of competitive sports.
The parenthetical expression "though some of them no doubt do" is pricelessly funny.
Medved also alludes to the argument that revulsion toward homosexuality is a common human trait that may well have a genetic component, though he only glancingly treats the issue:
Many gay activists suggest that this near-universal straight male repulsion at the idea of sex with another man is merely the product of cultural conditioning: a learned prejudice that ought to be unlearned. This represents the core message of gay pride parades and even the drive for same-sex marriage: an effort to persuade all of society that gay sex is as beautiful as straight sex, and to “cure” men of their visceral disgust at the very thought of what two (or more) male homosexuals do with one another.
According to the “enlightened” advocates of gay liberation, this disgust gets to the very essence of “homophobia” – an altogether unjustified fear and distaste for male-on-male physical intimacy. When Hardaway says “I hate gay people” what he suggests at the deepest level is that he feels revolted by the very notion of same-sex eroticism and that he’d prefer not to face the distraction of such thoughts in the locker room or on the court.
Unfortunately, Medved never suggests any natural, noncultural reason why people have this revulsion. Hence he doesn't offer any real refutation to the notion that a discomfort with homosexual behavior is a mutable characteristic, a "product of cultural conditioning, . . a learned prejudice that ought to be unlearned," as he aptly summarizes the argument.
Medved usefully argues about the power of the sexual urge in adult human beings, and observes that denying the impact of this reality creates foolish and insane ideas:
Those who insist that basketball teams or submarine crews must welcome gay recruits must, for the sake of consistency, argue for the same welcome to teammates of the opposite gender. That notion – that a male player could, for instance, join a WNBA team without serious problems – shows the way that political correctness now seems to deny the obvious, often overwhelming potency of human sexuality.
Those who suggest that a guy could shower with young female athletes without risk of arousal, or that a gay guy could shower with young male athletes with[out] problems or discomfort, don’t merely defy common sense. They ignore human nature.
It's great to see Mike Medved join the fray, and it will be interesting to know whether this will broaden the discussion further, at least on the right, to consider more of the important implications of this serious news event.
As we noted yesterday, in the post immediately below, most of the intellectual-political-culltural publications on the right have been curiously silent regarding the Tim Hardaway controversy. Interestingly, the most forthright defense of Hardaway's position from any writer other than your intrepid correspondent has come from ESPN.com's Chris Broussard.
Actually, Broussard's column was posted on his ESPN blog on the very day Hardaway made his comments, before the controversy broke. Hence, Broussard defended Hardaway's position without actually mentioning Hardaway, for the very good reason that Hardaway hadn't made his comments yet.
Broussard opens the piece by saying that he thinks the NBA is ready for an openly homosexual player. He doesn't believe that all players will embrace the reality by any means, but that they will "tolerate" it. He notes that most of the comments by NBA players about former NBA player John Amaechi's disclosure of his homosexuality have been very cautious and politically correct.
This publicly welcoming attitude, however, is not what the vast majority of players, or American males in general, really feel, Broussard observed:
Go talk to guys at an open gym in your neighborhood, and lots of the comments won't be so polite.
But America has become so politically correct -- not to mention that, in my opinion, much of the media and Hollywood are promoting the idea that homosexuality is a normal lifestyle -- that many players are afraid to voice their true feelings publicly.
His observation about players' fears would be proven all too true later than day when the attack on Hardaway flared up.
Broussard then offered his own thoughts about homosexuality:
I'm a born-again, Bible-believing Christian (no, I'm not a member of the Religious Right). And I'm against homosexuality (I believe it's a sin) and same-sex marriage.
But before you label me "homophobic," know that I'm against any type of sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman. That includes heterosexual fornication (premarital sex).
Some cats in the NBA run around, sleeping with different women in every city -- I don't agree with their lifestyles.
Some players run around, cheating on their wives -- I don't agree with their lifestyles.
It's all wrong to me and against the biblical teachings I believe in.
Does that make him intolerant? Far from it. Broussard gives examples from his own life to show what tolerance really means, regarding an amateur basketball teammate of his, nicknamed LZ:
LZ and I know where each other stand and we respect each other's right to believe as he does.
I know he's gay, and he knows I believe that's a sin. I know he thinks I get my moral standards from an outdated, mistranslated book, and he knows I believe he needs to change his lifestyle. Still, we can laugh together, and play ball together.
That's real diversity. Disagreeing but not being disagreeable.
Broussard thus goes right to the main point of this whole affair, which is that disagreeing about some issues is no longer even possible, as power will simply be arrayed against those who don't reflect current opinions as to what constitute's enlightened thinking:
Since Amaechi came out, I've read lots of columns about being "progressive." The implication -- or outright assertion -- is that anyone who believes homosexuality is wrong is not progressive or enlightened.
That's where this thing becomes problematic, because those who hold to that view are saying I must change my entire belief system/religion because of your belief system.
Where's the diversity in that?
Those folks don't want diversity. They want everyone to agree with their "enlightened" opinion.
Broussard says that just as he does not (as he surely cannot) expect the pro-homosexuality forces to change their minds on this very basic issue, they have no right to try to force him to alter his opinion, either. That's part of tolerance, too:
Look, I'll accept your right to have your own belief system and to live as you please, but I'm not changing mine. Diversity is not just accepting alternatives to what has long been perceived as normal, but it's accepting the significant number of people who hold to long-standing "traditional" beliefs as well.
Millions of Christians who follow the Bible -- and Muslims who follow the Koran and Jews who follow the Torah, as well as many nonreligious Americans -- believe homosexuality is wrong.
That doesn't mean they're unenlightened. That just means their moral code doesn't fluctuate based on society's ever-changing standards. As long as we're not being violent toward one another, as long as we can be civil, everything should be fine. We don't have to agree.
Brossard calls for simple acceptance that some people think differently from oneself, a premise that should be a given in any decent society:
I'm not trying to get into a religious or scientific discussion here, I'm just saying that some people will accept homosexuality as fine and others will not.
Some will write me off as a bigot for this article, but folks, this is real talk. Unfortunately, we can't have real talk in America nowadays.
Whites can't voice their real opinions -- no matter how legitimate -- about race for fear of being called racist, and everyone's afraid of offending anyone. It seems the only person who can be openly criticized, or disagreed with, is the President.
How crazy is that?
Until we can honestly hear each other out -- and be civil while doing so -- we won't get anywhere. One thing I hope this article does is encourage people to have frank discussions about sensitive issues such as this one.
Here's the bottom line: If I can accept working side-by-side with a homosexual, then he/she can accept working side-by-side with someone who believes homosexuality is wrong.
If an NBA player can accept playing with a homosexual, then the homosexual must accept playing with guys who don't agree with his lifestyle.
The reaction to Broussard's article strongly confims my observation that the great majority of Americans today (like the great majority of people throughout human history) are very uncomfortable with homosexuality and prefer not to have it pressed into their lives, greatly wishing to be allowed to have at least a "live and let live" attitude toward it:
I received nearly 1,000 e-mails, some of them coming from as far away as Australia, Italy, France, New Zealand and Japan. And believe it or not, I read every one of them.
I had many reasons for writing the blog, one of them being my belief that I represented a viewpoint that was widely held but going largely unheard.
I figured there would be a lot of support, but also a lot of hate. I thought there would be roughly a 50-50 split.
I was wrong.
More than 90 percent of the responses I received were positive.
The responses could be broken down into three categories:
1. Those who were in complete agreement with my viewpoint. About 65 percent of the e-mails fell into this category.
2. Those who disagreed with my thinking on homosexuality but loved the overall tenor of the article. This group included several homosexuals. About 25 percent of the e-mails fell into this category.
3. Those who bashed me. Less than 10 percent of the responses were like this.
Broussard's article and the reaction to it confirm that the American elites who are trying to force open approval of homosexuality on the entire population are pushing against a very powerful and prevalent discomfort with the subject and are becoming increasingly nasty and forceful in their efforts to indoctrinate and coerce the public to accept the elites' point of view.
It also confirms that the great majority of Americans just want to be left alone to think what they think about the subject, and that they will surely tolerate the existence of this thing they don't like if they are allowed simply to go on with their lives without having to pretend to approve of it.
That's not too much to ask of a civilized society.
Eerie Silence on the Right Regarding Hardaway Controversy
I've done a quick check of the major intellectual magazines on the right—such as National Review, The American Spectator, The Weekly Standard, The American Conservative, Christianity Today, First Things, The American, Chronicles, etc., plus the Opinion Journal, TCS Daily, FrontPage magazine, and Focus on the Family sites, and I found not a single article on the controversy over former NBA star Tim Hardaway's comments opposing homosexuality.
This is very interesting given that on the whole these excellent publications cover just about everything of any import (and many of very little significance), including a wide variety of cultural questions. One can find reviews of the new movie Ghost Rider on several of these sites, for example. On the Hardaway matter, however, there has been an eerie silence on the right, even though the major media have been all over the story for the past week, and have been greatly on the attack against Hardaway for his opinions.
These opinions that are being attacked (once we set aside Hardaway's intemperate use of the word hate), moreover, are in fact the opinions that most people on the right—and indeed most people in the nation—hold: a deep, fundamental discomfort with the idea of homosexual behavior. People feel and advocate differing degrees of toleration toward homosexuality, of course, but there's clearly a basic feeling among regular people that there is indeed something wrong with homosexuality and that it is hence something to be tolerated, not put on an equal footing with heterosexuality.
That's simply the reality of people's attitudes, and this feeling has been common throughout human history.
None of that should be controversial or surprise anyone. The fact that the contemprary American elites strongly support a contrary opinion does not change the reality. It only exemplifies the vast divide between the elite and hoi polloi today.
Certainly this is a subject that most political-intellectual publications should find perfectly fascinating. Typically these publications are ever-ready to report on and analyze any big differences between elite and mass opinions and attitudes. Yet in this case, interest seems surprisingly weak.
It is possible that I have missed some brief discussions of this matter in major publications on the right, but the paucity of treatment of the story among conservatives is very clear from a check of their websites, including use of their search engines to make sure that I haven't missed anything major.
The only conclusion that one can draw from this eerie silence on the right regarding the deliberate destruction of Tim Hardaway is that most publications are simply afraid to touch it.
Given what has happened to Hardaway, I can't blame them. The silence speaks eloquently of the power being arrayed against the public expression of a very normal human attitude.
Destruction of Hardaway Continues, Freedom of Speech Confirmed Dead
Former NBA player Tim Hardaway has apologized once again for his remarks last week in which he expressed disapproval of homosexuality and a dislike for homosexuals. AP reports:
“I don’t hate gay people,” Hardaway said. “I’m a goodhearted person. I interact with people all the time. … I respect people. For me to say ‘hate’ was a bad word, and I didn’t mean to use it.” . . .
On Sunday, he acknowledged “that was very bad.”
His remarks quickly drew criticism from both the NBA and several gay and lesbian groups, and Hardaway said the firestorm surprised him.
“It was like, you know, I had killed somebody. … I never knew that this was going to escalate that high,” Hardaway said.
Hardaway was banished from some NBA-sanctioned appearances he was scheduled to make in Las Vegas as part of the all-star weekend.
He also lost at least one of his endorsement deals, and he ordered his name dropped from advertising at a car wash he owns in Miami, saying he made that decision to ensure the safety of his employees.
In response to Hardaway's comments, a consensus has arisen that he must be destroyed not only socially but economically as well.
This use of raw power to destroy an individual for his opinions is truly repugnant.
It's not a political freedom of speech issue, because the government isn't involved.
But it is indeed a freedom of speech issue for our society, because if an individual can be destroyed simply because he holds an opinion that is highly common in the society but unpopular among the elites, we really don't have freedom of speech in this country.
That seems to be the moral of this story. Toe the line, or be ruined.
Contrary to numerous gloomy internet reports prior to its airing, tonight's premiere episode of the new Fox News TV comedy program, The 1/2 Hour News Hour, co-created and produced by 24 mastermind Joel Surnow, was very funny indeed.
The opening sequence, in which Rush Limbaugh speaks as the newly elected President of the United States and Ann Coulter is vice president, was goofy and charmingly funny. Sample joke: Rush asks Ann if she'll join him for a cigar. Ann says, "Isn't the White House a smoke-free zone?" Rush replies, gleefully, "Not any more!"
It's a cheerfully silly moment, but it also makes a good point about the annoying busybody mentality so prevalent in America today that it permeates even the White House.
The rest of the program consists of a fictional news program hosted by two typically earnest anchors, complete with fictional commercials.
It's very funny.
Tonight's top story:
Dispelling reports that she would staff her White House with longtime cronies and political appointees, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton vowed that if she becomes president she will surround herself with a diverse, multiethnic, multigenerational group . . . of angry lesbians.
A comedy bit consisting of an advertisement for BO, a magazine about Barack Obama, turned out to have several good laughs. Article titles such as "A Life in Politics: My 18-Month Journey" and "Should We Even Bother to Hold the 2008 Election?" make solid satirical points and are quite funny.
A piece parodying the all too popular Che Guevara t-shirts includes a vendor offering shirts with a photo of Chairman Mao and the words "Ask about our one-baby policy." Another shirt has a photo of Idi Amin and the words, "People—the Other White Meat."
In another segment, a game show host and climatologist proffers his theory that any problem in the world can be linked to global warming in six degrees or less. He calls it "Six Degrees of Global Warming," and gives several examples of Rube Goldberg-style mechanisms leading absurdly, for example, from global warming to a crime wave in Houston. Superb.
In all, the program is funny, it's satirical, and it's gleeful in its political correctness. It succeeds greatly at what it sets out to do.
Sometimes things turn out just the way you suspected they would, and sometimes they turn out even worse. So it is with the British drama The State Within, which premiered last night on BBC America.
Episode one (of three TV movies in the series) truly is a compendium of suspense cliches, with the perspective in this case being decidedly left of center. The heroes are liberal British government workers in the United States, along with a pair of liberals working in a project to free unjustly convicted persons languishing in American jails. (And in this case, the prisoner is black, of course, and is a British Falklands War hero. Is he going to turn out to have been framed because He Knows Too Much about some war crimes that have been kept secret? You make the call!). Also presented as reasonably decent is a female American police investigator looking into a murder linked to some of the villains of the story.
The villains are businesses that make money from war (boo!), plus some sinister paramilitary troops who kill one of their own on American soil and dump his body in a stream, and of course the so-called hardliners in the U.S. government (hiss!) and in the Virginia state government (feh!) who are more concerned about national security than about the happiness and convenience of noncitizens on American soil.
For instance, after it is determined that a British Muslim in the United States was responsible for the bombing of a plane taking off from a DC-area airport, the governor of Virginia rounds up all British Muslims in the state. (Yes, I remember a lot of things like that happening after 9/11. . . . Or did they?)
That's not only horribly cliched (depicting as it does an endlessly repeated fever dream of leftists in the United States) and extremely unlikely, but we can try at least to play along.
But then, of course, two innocent British Muslims are killed by state troopers when they try to escape from a roadblack because they fear being sent back to Britain.
We've seen the failed escape from a roadblock in suspense films only about what, a million times?
What is worse, and goes entirely unexplained, is the truly grotesque illogic of the scene: Why are the Muslim couple so worried about being sent back to the tolerant utopia of Great Britain and away from the repressive horror that is post-9/11 America that they'll risk death, and in fact be killed, to avoid it?
As if all of that weren't bad enough, the U.S. government ponders a Patriot Act II, in which foreign nationals on U.S. soil can be detained without warrants and have to prove their own innocence in order to stay.
Yes, I recall that very proposal being floated in Congress last year—or maybe that was merely a report on Michael Moore's website. And of course upon hearing this proposed law, one British government worker says that we'll be dunking witches next, and another snidely asks, "What next, ethnic cleansing of all Muslims?"
All of this is presented straight, as a reasonable reaction to the mad Americans' repressive ways. You'd think that we were Soviet Russia. Oh, wait, those were the good guys, as I recall.
And somehow all of this is being seriously considered by a Democrat-controlled Congress, with the national security committee led by a thinly disguised fictionalization of California senior Senator Diane Feinstein (D).
Here we are definitely deep in fantasyland.
Logic has clearly had no influence at all on the program's story line. And unlike current American suspense shows such as 24 and Prison Break, the narrative doesn't compensate for this unreality by hustling us along with breakneck action and numerous startling plot twists. On the contrary, it's all drearily predictable.
Adding even more pain to all this silly attitudinizing is the fact that the entire narrative is thoroughly dull, as the characters are direly uninteresting in addition to the situations being cliched. The producers' idea of interesting characterization is to make one of the central figures a (poorly) closeted homosexual, and show him necking with another guy for a much longer time than is necessary in establishing this fact. A homosexual in a position of power in the British government? Who would have expected that? And he's not the only one, we soon find out.
The rest of the characters are equally uninteresting, and the earnestness of the presentation and performances makes the entire endeavor more than a little silly.
The UK version of 24 starts tonight in the United States, when BBC America will run the first installment of the three-part series of TV movies The State Within.
The program, which premiered in the UK in the autumn of last year, uses the 24 technique of creating multiple plot twists by means of unpredictable multilevel conspiracies at the very top of the government.
Judging from the character and plot descriptions on the BBC America site, the program seems likely to be a good deal to the left of 24 and to constitute a comprehensive catalog of suspense-drama cliches, but it might be some good dumb fun for a Saturday night.
Here's a description of the first episode:
When a flight headed for the UK explodes during take off from a Washington DC airport, America believes it may be, once again, under attack. As the day progresses, mounting evidence suggests that it's the work of a British suicide bomber. With political relations between the UK and the U.S. in jeopardy, the British Ambassador, Sir Mark Brydon (Jason Isaacs, Friends with Money, Brotherhood), maneuvers U.S. Secretary of Defense, Lynne Warner (Sharon Gless, Cagney and Lacey, Queer as Folk) into a public show of solidarity. But behind the scenes, tension mounts between the pair.
As a series of frightening events unfold, Brydon finds himself in the center of a terrifying conspiracy that could bring down Western governments. In the murky world of international conspiracy and espionage, your enemies are not always who you think they are - and neither are your friends...
The main idea appears to be that us regular folk can't trust the government, even in nations where we elect them.
Sounds reasonable enough. . . .
The program's U.S. premiere is tonight at 9 EST on BBC America.
The attention to former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani's stances on social issues has been intense in the past several weeks. This makes sense because Giuliani is an obviously perfect candidate for the Republicans—except for his often rocky personal life and his past support for legal abortion and for changing laws to have the government enforce homosexual marriages.
I have argued that Giuliani is indeed not a conservative, but that he is a liberal of the right, what we call a classical liberal, and that this is a good thing. (I myself am a right liberal; see articles here, here, here, here, and here.)
Now, Opinion Journal assistant editor Brendan Miniter writes in his home publication that whatever you may wish to call the former NYC mayor, Giuliani is a "culture warrior" of the right and is deeply committed to conserving the basic values of the American nation (which is a position important to classical liberalism).
Regarding the horse race aspect of the presidential primaries, Miniter writes,
Mr. Giuliani's track record, both political and personal, may hurt him in the primaries. He's been divorced twice, opposes banning abortion, supports gun control, and for a time as mayor lived with two gay men and (as Time magazine noted recently) their frou-frou dog, Bonnie. None of this will endear him to the party's values voters. But it also may not be what tips the scales in the primaries.
Take South Carolina. The state's influence in presidential politics has only grown since it derailed Mr. McCain's Straight Talk Express in 2000. Two weeks ago, Mr. Giuliani made a trip to the state and struck a chord by speaking to a burning issue in South Carolina--a fight over school choice. This probably won't make the national evening news, but today some 5,000 people--many of whom are black and live in poorly performing rural school districts--are expected to descend on the state capitol in Columbia to rally for school choice. After lobbying their elected leaders, they plan to leave behind chocolates for Valentine's Day embossed with the words "another voice for school choice."
Mr. Giuliani delivered his South Carolina speech to several dozen conservatives. One woman who attended told me she wonders whether electing a president who successfully took on the mob in New York is what it will take to finally break through the entrenched education political culture. Christian conservatives make up the core of the school-choice movement in the state. If they come to the conclusion that Mr. Giuliani is on their side and has the leadership qualities to achieve lasting and meaningful change, he may prove a surprisingly strong contender. . . .
Christian conservative leaders will continue to be unhappy with Mr. Giuliani. Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, recently laid into the former mayor for a shifting stance on abortion, saying that a politician who personally believes the practice is wrong but who refuses to ban it is more repugnant than someone who isn't morally troubled by the termination of a pregnancy.
He's right. But there is little the president can do directly about abortion. In weighing contenders for the party's nomination, will right-to-life Republicans be more worried about Mr. Giuliani's personal beliefs, or will they find comfort in the fact that he says he'll appoint judges in the mold of John Roberts and Samuel Alito, who may actually overturn Roe v. Wade? If Mr. Giuliani makes a convincing case that he'll also lend his efforts to school choice and other endeavors that will help win the other culture war under way in American politics--the one against an intransient political culture that is unresponsive to the demands of the public--Mr. Perkins could turn out to be mistaken.
I agree. What counts is what judges a president will appoint, and Giuliani has said explicitly that he will appoint "strict constructionist" judges, which is the correct approach.
In addition, Giuliani's strong support for school choice, toughness on crime, real belief in economic opportunity, and steadfastness in defense of the national interest are all things that will be strongly attractive to Reagan Democrats and could themselves tip the balance toward a renewal of the old Reagan coalition that was so successful in winning elections.
Giuliani's ability to appeal to Democrats should be seen as a strength, not a liability.
A prediction:
I believe that at some point in the next couple of months, some prominent religious conservative figure will endorse Giuliani's bona fides on the social issues, arguing that his stance on judicial appointments is a sufficient qualification for the support of religious conservatives.
It only makes sense because Giuliani is such a strong candidate politically and as President would be an effective fighter for a rightward stance on the social issues precisely because middle-road voters can feel comfortable that he is not a radical social conservative who will turn over the country to the religious right.
Regardless of whether that fear is rational, it is highly common, and Giuliani is the only likely candidate in either party who can deliver the economic and national defense goods without being a divider on the social issues.
That's a winning combination both in electoral terms and as a mode of governance.
As conservative critic/commentator Michael Medved notes, conservative bloggers have been attacking the forthcoming Fox News comedy series The Half Hour News Hour, which will premiere this Sunday night at 10 EST. The complaint has been that a few scenes released on YouTube have not been very funny or at least not uniformly so.
Having seen both shows in their entirety, Medved acknowledges that some scenes do indeed misfire, but he says that overall the program is good and that the humor is about as successful as in most comedy shows in their early weeks, meaning only fitfully so. Medved says that viewers, especially those on the right, should give it a chance:
For most people, the big question is whether The 1/2 Hour Comedy Hour, which debuts this Sunday night, February 18, is worth thirty minutes of your time?
After watching the first two episodes of the show, my answer is an unequivocal "Yes" -- it's worth watching, worth supporting, even if the project is very much a work in progress which, along with a few laughs, delivers a few moments of embarrassing, unfunny, ineptitude.
Yet this does not seem to be true of the population in general. Hardaway could buttress a case for a genetic basis of opposition to homosexuality with the following interesting fact noted (disapprovingly) in Rick Telander's Chicago Sun-Times column today. Radio host Dan LeBatard, who popped the question that started all the controversy, told of his audience's reaction to Hardaway's comment:
Even more stunning to Le Batard was his ensuing Thursday radio show.
''It blew my mind,'' he said, ''all the people who called in and agreed with Hardaway.''
So what we see here is a strong reaction among common people supporting Hardaway, while those whose jobs depend on approval of homosexuality are coming out strong against him.
Freedom of Speech for Some and Not for Others—the Hardaway Controversy
Retired NBA great Tim Hardaway was asked about homosexual former player John Amaechi yesterday on a radio program. Host Dan Le Batard inquired how Hardaway would react if he knew that he had a homosexual teammate. Hardaway's response has raised a storm of negative reactions.
Here is a direct transcription of the excerpt broadcast on ESPN:
Le Batard: How do you deal with a gay teammate?
Hardaway: [pause] "Whoa! Uh, first of all, I wouldn't want him on my team. And, uh, second of all, if he was on my team, uh, I would, you know, really distance myself from him because, um, uh, uh, I don't think that's right, and you know, I, I, I don't think that, you know, he should be in the locker room while we are in the locker room, and it's just a whole lot of other things, so I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't even be a part of that; but you know, there's stuff like that going on and there's a lot, uh, of other people, I hear, like that, people in the closet and don't want to come out of the closet, but you know, I just leave that alone."
Le Batard: You know that what you're saying there, though, Timmy, is flatly homophobic. Right? It's just flat, it's just bigotry.
Hardaway: Well, you know, I, you know, I hate gay people. So, uh, uh, you know, I let it be known. I don't like gay people; I don't like to be around gay people. I don't, you know, uh, I yeah, I'm, I'm homophobic. I don't like it; it shouldn't be in the world today or in the United States for it, so yeah, I don't like it.
That's all transcribed exactly from the ESPN clip. Regarding prevailing attitudes in the NBA, the following exchange occurred, according to multiple print sources:
Hardaway: The majority of the players would ask for him to be traded or they would want to get traded.
Le Betard: But you'd be trading him to a team where he probably wouldn't be wanted there either, I would imagine.
Hardaway: Right, that is true. Just buy him out his contract and let him go (laughs). You know, something has to give. If you got 12 other ballplayers in your locker room that's upset and concentrate and always worried about him in the locker room or on the court or whatever, you know, it's gonna be hard for your teammates to win and accept him as a teammate.
Clearly Hardaway was sandbagged by the questions, as indicated by the number of "uhs" in his response (which I have retained in my transcription in order to convey this discomfort, not to suggest that Hardaway is inarticulate, which he is most certainly not; he has, on the contrary, always come off in interviews as quite intelligent).
Hardaway was obviously not expecting to be asked about homosexuality in a radio conversation about basketball—ordinarily a reasonable expectation, but one that no longer applies now that former NBA player John Amaechi has publicly declared his homosexuality in an attempt to sell more copies of his autobiography which went on sale yesterday.
Confronted later in a telephone interview with a Fox affiliate in Miami, Hardaway retracted his use of the word hate:
Yes, I regret it. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said I hate gay people or anything like that," he said. "That was my mistake.
Some observations:
One, the use of the word hate was wrong and intemperate on Hardaway's part. He was right to apologize for that. (Of course, there are degrees of hatred, and not all of them are toxic, but that is a discussion for another time. Hardaway's use of that word was definitely inflammatory and poorly conceived.)
Two, note the condescending and openly hostile attitude of the radio host. He calls Hardaway "Timmy" at this point, whereas Hardaway has always been called Tim. Clearly, the host is suggesting, I think inadvertently and therefore quite tellingly, that Hardaway is an inferior person, something of a child whom the host has the authority to remonstrate for naughty behavior. This is also evident in Le Batard's willingness to characterize Hardaway's statement as "homophobic," like some modern Puritan denouncing the former player as a witch. Le Batard then says that Hardaway's statement is bigoted, again taking on the role of a superior upbraiding his inferior.
This openly superior and condescending attitude is very interested indeed as directed toward a man of African descent. That's not usually acceptable these days, but seems to have gone unnoticed in this instance.
Clearly Le Batard was trying to distance himself from the unexpected anti-homosexuality comments of a revered former NBA player, to save his own reputation in addition to stating his own position. The host's invocation of cant terms such as "homophobic" and "bigoted" shows that he knows what is and is not socially acceptable to say, and that this is all about power, not logic. More on that later in this post.
Three, Hardaway's statement that he doesn't want anything to do with homosexuals may or may not be a reasonable preference, but it's certainly something people should be allowed to talk about in public. If we're truly going to have a free society, we're going to have to hear things we disagree with once in a while. And we're going to have to answer them with reasoned arguments, not attempts to suppress the discussion.
Four, if people are going to be logically consistent (an unlikely premise, to be sure), Hardaway could stop all the controversy in a moment by simply asserting that he is genetically predisposed toward disapproving of homosexual behavior. Hence, he could argue, he cannot be held responsible for, or even criticized for, this genetically programmed behavior.
The fact that no one has identified such a gene is immaterial; nobody has looked for one yet. Surely one must exist, Hardaway could argue, given that so many people so strongly disapprove of homosexual behavior and that such attitudes have been so prevalent and persistent throughout human history. It is actually a highly plausible argument, he could say, given the evolutionary imperative for heterosexual behavior in creating children. Certainly the idea of an anti-homosexuality gene is every bit as plausible as the notion that there is a gene predisposing people toward homosexual behavior, he could argue. In fact, he could point out, it makes rather more sense in evolutionary terms.
And if it is wrong for society to seek to thwart or even disapprove of homosexual behavior because it is genetically programmed, he could observe, it must also then be wrong for society to attempt to thwart or even disapprove of people's dislike for homosexual behavior, because that, too, is genetically programmed.
Hardaway could argue that the two positions—approval or disapproval of homosexual behavior—are clearly on equal footing, as far as both genetics and political-social freedom are concerned.
The real difference between the two positions is that one is politically powerful at this point and the other is not.
The new, PBS adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula is a thorough reimagining of the tale, with an entirely different story line. Those who admire Stoker's original novel and remember it well will find many of the changes disturbing. Jonathan Harker, the protagonist of the novel, is nearly nonexistent in this version. In addition, this adaptation adds the horrors of syphillis as a major plot point that is entirely (and thankfully) absent from Stoker's novel. In addition, Abraham Van Helsing is presented as rather weak and cowardly, not at all the way most of those who like the book will want to see him.
In these and other ways, the film is fashionably bad—excessively grim, nasty, dark, and driven by sex—but ultimately it turns out to be very good in its fundamental ideas, and very politically bold in some important ways.
The most interesting of these ideas is the film's explicit premise that fin de siecle England was the center of the Christian world, and that both the Empire and Christianity are forces for good.
To say that in a classroom would get a teacher fired these days.
The film posits that Dracula wishes to use the great reach and power of England in order to spread his evil through the world.
As in the original novel, the evil Dracula is repeatedly compared to Satan, in this case mostly through visual imagery. In addition, the rising adherence to non-Christian religious traditions at the time is presented as aiding in the unleashing of Dracula's satanic evil.
To say anything like that even in a pulpit in England or Canada these days could get a person thrown in jail.
Also interesting is the fact that sexual immorality sets all the evil in motion. Lord Holmwood, a young nobleman engaged to be married, hides a terrible secret: he is suffering from syphilis, which he contracted in the womb, his mother having been unkowingly infected by her whore-mongering husband.
Not knowing Dracula's real nature, Holmwood brings him to London because the Count's minions in England have promised him that Dracula can cure his congenital syphilis. (Syphillis was incurable at that time, and its effects were truly horrible.)
After a few vampirical murders, Holmwood sees the error of his way and joins with his friend Dr. John Seward and the elderly folklorist Dr. Abraham Van Helsing (played by David Suchet) to avert Dracula's evil plan.
In the critical scene where the film's rising action culminates, Van Helsing, holding not one but two crucifixes, says that the three men will fight Dracula's immense power with faith. When Holmwood expresses doubt, Van Helsing replies, "Faith is everything, Lord Holmwood. Future generations will laugh, yes, laugh, at our science—but not at our faith. Faith gives us the strength not to be scared of what we do not understand—of darkness, of death."
The two young men accept the crucifixes from Van Helsing.
Afterward, Holmwood kneels before a crucifix and prays to the Lord (using that name, specifically), asking forgiveness for his sins and entreating the Lord to "enter my heart and give me strength—the strength you showed in Gethsemane to face death—to face this evil I have raised and cast it out."
This scene not only reinforces the importance of faith in the film, it also continues the emphasis on Dracula's satanic nature. The fact that Holmwood has "raised" Dracula to earthly power suggests that the latter is from Hell, and the term "cast it out" is commonly used to describe the process of expelling demons from human hosts.
After this scene of prayer, as Holmwood, Seward, and Mina search for Dracula's crypt, Homewood recites the Lord's Prayer as they walk through the dank cellars. Homewood ultimately gets an opportunity to show himself as truly wanting redemption, and he does so by offering up himself as a sacrifice. And as the others finally confront the monster, Van Helsing steps forward and recites from the Catholic rite of exorcism while Seward administers the quietus.
It's all very crazy and weird, and something of a vulgarization of the story, but also very Christian, like a medieval folk tale or Heronymous Bosch painting.
When PBS chooses to inject more explicit Christian content in adapting a novel that is strongly Christian in the first place, maybe some things are indeed changing for the better.
"Inside Man" and the Perils of "Transcending the Genre"
I recently got around to viewing Spike Lee's bank robbery hostage drama Inside Man. It's a watchable film, but it's marred by two huge problems, one of them aesthetic and the other in the realm of ideas.
Both flaws come about because Lee is trying to do more than just make a solid crime drama. That's an honorable intention, of course, but in most cases efforts to "transcent the genre" result in neither a good genre work nor a good non-genre work. That is what happens with Inside Man. It is neither fish nor fowl.
First, the good. The film features Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, and Christopher Plummer, all of whom are talented and charismatic performers, and each of whom gives a quite competent effort in the film. They make the movie worth watching.
A central plot element of the film is much less appealing and skillfully executed, unfortunately. The owner of the bank that is being robbed in the film turns out to have gotten his start in Switzerland during World War II by collaborating with the Nazis to turn stolen art works into Swiss cash. He has built his empire on dirty money earned on items stolen from Jews murdered by the Nazis. Awful.
That's certainly bad, but it doesn't make sense in this film. I disapprove of Nazism in the strongest terms. Of course. But that was more than sixty years ago, which makes Plummer's character at least in his mid-eighties (and he doesn't look it, by any means). A much more sensible approach would have been to have Plummer's character have gained his money by, say, collaborating with the Soviet Union in 1956 to betray Hungary, or in 1968 to betray Czechoslovakia.
Oh, but that wouldn't work, would it? Communists always had Good Intentions, even if their methods were sometimes not perfectly nice, so they can't be behind a Real Villain. No, that status is reserved for Nazis, white South Africans (now being murdered willy-nilly with no outcry at all from the West, by the way), mythical white separatists in America, and other, well, blond people.
So of course any dirty money had to come from Nazis, however absurdly anachronistic that is in a contemporary film.
In addition, the fact that this bank just happens to have been founded by dirty money is asinine. The implication that riches based on dirty money are rampant in our society is an utterly absurd and false notion. People in America get rich by offering people what they want to buy, not by robbing Jews. To suggest otherwise is ignorant, stupid, and evil.
This is a particularly silly notion to be offered by Spike Lee, a man who has made a good deal of his own personal financial fortune by selling overpriced athletic shoes to poor, teenage boys, many of whom thought the shoes so important that they committed crimes in order to get them.
Turning to aesthetics, the big artistic and dramatic flaw in the film is the inclusion of the character played by Jodie Foster. This character is a "fixer" who goes around solving problems for rich and powerful people. This is a character that deserves a film of its own, but she is entirely unnecessary to the story of this film and is shoehorned in without adding anything of value.
Taking out her story line would have reduced the bloated two hour and nine minute running time by a good twenty minutes, much increasing its dramatic impact.
Of course, Lee does a little something here and there with the character, using her to provide temptations to corrupt the central character, a hostage negotiator played by Denzel Washington (superbly, as is his usual way). But these temptations could have been done through other characters, and Foster's story line just bogs the narrative down.
Lee is a good director of actors, and the performers he has obtained for the film are very good, as mentioned, so at least the thing is watchable. But it could have been much more had he tried to do considerably less.
Pascal Fervor kindly forwarded us the following email message regarding the new comedy program The Half Hour News Hour, co-created and -produced by Joel Surnow (24, The Equalizer, Le Femme Nikita):
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2007 17:09:02 -0800 Subject: .FOX News Channel will broadcast the first episode of The Half Hour News Hour From: "Jeffers M. Dodge" To: friends
THE LOS ANGELES REPUBLICANS COALITION
Good Evening,
This Sunday, February 18th, 7:00 pm [PST} the FOX News Channel will broadcast the first episode of The Half Hour News Hour, a new political comedy a friend of mine, Ned Rice, has written and developed with Joel Surnow, the creator and executive producer of 24.
The Half Hour News Hour is a parody of the evening news from a conservative perspective. As such it will join the ranks of other noteworthy conservative comedy shows on television, includingŠwell, actually there aren¹t any others. We¹ll be the first.
If you're still reading at this point you're probably asking yourself, "OK, but just how good is The Half Hour News Hour?" I'll tell you how good it is: Critics are already calling it "the funniest show ever produced by The FOX News Channel, not counting Geraldo." I really think that says it all.
The Half Hour News Hour will air at 10:00 PM eastern time, 7:00 PM pacific. The show will be off the following Sunday, because of the Oscars, then a second installment of all new material will air Sunday, March 4, at those same times.
I do hope you get a chance to watch-- it's some of Ned's best work. And if you do watch The Half Hour News Hour, I hope you'll let me know what you think of it.
Jeffers M. Dodge President Los Angeles Republicans Coalition http://larepublicans.com
In a comment on our recent 24 item, writer Hunter Baker strongly recommends the TV program La Femme Nikita, which, as he points out, was produced by 24 co-creator-exec Joel Surnow.
I haven't seen the Femme Nikita TV show, and it doesn't appear to be running on any cable network at present (please let us know if you're aware that it is), but as Hunter points out, it is available on DVD. You can learn more about the DVD releases here, and as Hunter notes, you can rent the show from Netflix or your local video store.
Personally, I'm going to check it out. I greatly enjoyed the American film version, Point of No Return, starring Bridget Fonda (an excellent and sadly underrated actress), and the original French version written and directed by Luc Besson.
In addition, an interesting item at the "Hollywood Jesus" website sees some serious and evocative religious allusions in the film. The author claims that the original Besson film and the American remake include explicit Christian imagery and some instances of allegory. The page includes still shots from the films to make its case, which is a strong one. This makes me want to see the two film versions again.
After recounting the ghastly affair, Arroyo offers the following conclusion:
Given this one night’s collective assault on the ears, the eyes, and decency itself, is it any wonder that record sales have plummeted? If this is the best that the American recording industry has to offer the world, their future is very bleak indeed. While relatively cheap music downloads doubled last year, the industry’s bread and butter, CDs sales, continued to slide. In the year 2000, ’N Sync sold more than nine million copies of their album, No Strings Attached. This year’s bestseller, High School Musical sold a paltry 3.7 million. Big retailers like Musicland and Tower Records have called it quits for good. People will download a tune here and there, but their devotion to individual artists is slipping; their willingness to plop down 18 bucks to hear slickly packaged, homogenized drek is gone. As one record exec told a Canadian newspaper this week, “I think the fan is in control now… they have the power.” To quote those great Simpsons: “Heh, heh.”
Billy Wilder's "Witness" and the Pleasures of Genre Fiction
A commenter going by the cybernom of Pascal Fervor has made some interesting and provocative comments on my appreciation of the great film writer and director Billy Wilder. Fervor's comments specifically refer to the thematic content of Wilder's great mystery-comedy-drama Witness for the Prosecution. In my brief survey of Widler's career I mentioned this film as a classic but said nothing specific about it.
Mr. Fervor's comments afford an opportunity to talk further about this excellent motion picture which was produced in 1957 film and starred Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, and Elsa Lanchester. Set in London and dealing with a murder trial, Witness for the Prosecution is a strong comedy-drama with numerous plot twists and interesting characters.
First, I would suggest that everyone get a hold of a copy of this film, either the individual release or in the superb Wilder box set. Wilder is one of the greatest American filmmakers, and his movies are both entertaining and insightful. He has been characterized as cynical by most reviewers and critics, but as I demonstrate in my appreciation of Wilder and his work, his body of work is much more sophisticated than that simplistic characterization suggests, and much more laudable than the common opinion holds.
Now, on to Witness, specifically. Pascal Fervor asked about my opinion of "the social commentary that may be inferred from" the film. As Mr. Fervor points out, however, it is difficult to discuss this matter without possibly giving away some plot points that would lessen the fun for those who have not yet seen the movie and choose to do so after reading the discussion. However, I think that we can dance around it a bit while still making our meaning clear.
Fervor astutely characterizes the film as an "amazingly successful demonstration of human gullibility," and ties this insight to my reevaluation of Wilder's reputation. He offers his insight into Witness as further evidence for my point that Wilder was no cynic (As I wrote in my appreciation of Wilder, "Wilder knew that life does provide happy endings for those who live honestly, decently, and right. Wilder said, perhaps rather surprisingly, 'Anyone who doesn’t believe in miracles isn’t a realist.' ”):
[W]orking with your own evaluation of Wilder, I think you implied there is good reason for us not be so convinced of his lauded and perhaps cultivated appearence of cynicism. Indeed, there is reason to suspect from his whole body of works that he just so happened to provide a measure of protection to his viewers from cynics by unmasking them and revealing a bit of their tactics.
Our gullibility -- and maybe our guilty pleasure to be willingly gulled by masters -- I think is the overarching theme and social commentary [in Wilder's body of work, if I'm reading Fervor correctly here]. I think he employed a disarming measure here [in Witness] too. I don't believe I've seen another film that has quite as many subtle puns as does this movie. Include in this two and maybe three (Wilfred) character names. Double entendres R us.
I hope I've added to your appreciation for this classic. And that I haven't written too much.
Mr. Fervor has indeed added to my appreciation of this film—though I would hardly have thought that possible, given my already great fondness for the movie—and no, he has not written too much, by any means.
Mr. Fervor's comments are spot-on. He is correct to point out that Wilder's exposure of our vast human vulnerability to jiggery-pokery (to use John Dickson Carr's evocative term) in this film fits perfectly with this filmmaker's process in other movies. Like the scars on a particular character's face, the motives and intentions of the various characters in the film are hidden from one another, and the misunderstandings multiply.
In this way, one could indeed see Witness for the Prosecution as expressing a certain cynicism, as the distance between people's surface impressions and the reality behind them can be great indeed in the narrative. Yet this need not be cynical at all, and isn't in this case. After all, the observation that human beings are always being bad and pretending to be good is simply an expression of the Christian idea of Original Sin. In addition, Wilder shows the great good in several characters, including the lead character of the narrative, barrister Sir Wilfred Robarts, who rather flippantly risks his health and life in order to serve his client with a clear head. There is nothing cynical about that at all. On the contrary, it's quite inspiring.
Although it may at first seem something of an odd duck among Wilder's output, Witness for the Prosecution is indeed of a piece with his other work, thematically, and it's interesting in how oblique a way this film expresses those themes. Looking at the theme of deception, one can see why Wilder was attracted to the source material--an Agatha Christie short story and play--and also why he had such great affection for Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories.
Witness for the Prosecution is rather unusual among Christie's works in that it doesn't include several suspects from whom to choose, as her novels and short stories tend to do. On the contrary, it is designed for the theater, and with immense skill and ingenuity. Nonetheless, as Mr. Fervor's comments show in regard to Wilder's adaptation, Christie's narrative serves the same ends and provides the same pleasures as her other tales. In mystery fiction, we delight in being fooled by the author's trickery, and more greatly in that justice is ultimately done as the detective character does eventually figure out whodunnit.
We delight in being fooled, I think, because we human beings simply enjoy reasoning. Mystery fiction (of the classical, puzzle kind) invites us to exercise our God-given capacity for reason, and challenges us to the utmost in that regard. And because we don't solve the mystery, we more greatly appreciate the exercise.
After all, once the mystery is solved, the story is over, and our pleasure in ratiocination is finished in the present case. Hence, we actually enjoy being fooled, because it prolongs the highly pleasurable reasoning process until the last possible moment.
This is a rather different point from Mr. Fervor's, although I think that the two are complementary. On a practical, psychological level, mystery fiction gives pleasure by exercising the mind. On a thematic, moral level, mystery fiction challenges us by showing how easily we can be fooled, how easily manipulated by cynical evildoers.
In both these ways, mystery fiction does much more than provide light entertainment—though it can do that as well. It has been popular over the ages because it works on a deep psychological level while affording easily accessible, surface enjoyment. All genre fiction has its benefits, and in Wilder's film of Witness for the Prosecution, these rewards are at their apex.
Predictably, the New Yorker's feature article on the Fox TV program 24 is overly long and absurdly tendentious, but there's some interesting information in it if you can wade through the political complaint. According to the New Yorker author, 24 is about one thing and one thing only: torture. A good two thirds of the article are devoted to a long and stupendously uninteresting discussion of the instances of torture that have been depicted in the several years that 24 has been on the air, along with the opinions of ex-military and police officers who argue that torture is never effective and never justified.
The author does touch on the obvious point that the program is a fiction, and a romance at that, but that doesn't stop her from going on and on about how bad torture is and how 24 might create a new generation of torturers among U.S. military and police personnel, which strikes me as highly unlikely, to say the least.
Eventually, however, she gets around to writing about Joel Surnow, the show's co-creator and executive producer, and he proves to be a very interesting fellow indeed. If the program has ever seemed to be politically right of center, that's because Surnow is a full-blooded right-winger—he jokingly calls himself a "right-wing nutjob" and counts Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter among his friends, according to the author.
Surnow's first successes in television came as a writer for Miami Vice and then as creator and guiding force behind The Equalizer, a supercool 1980s vigilante-justice drama starring Edward Woodward. (It doesn't appear that the program is available on DVD, but an excellent film starring Edward Woodward is: The Wicker Man.)
The Equalizer had a decidedly right-wing attitude, and the New Yorker article summarizes some of Surnow's political thoughts, which sound like what we might expect from the man who helped create The Equalizer:
During three decades as a journeyman screenwriter, Surnow grew increasingly conservative. He “hated welfare,” which he saw as government handouts. Liberal courts also angered him. He loved Ronald Reagan’s “strength” and disdained Jimmy Carter’s “belief that people would be nice to us just because we were humane. That never works.” He said of Reagan, “I can hardly think of him without breaking into tears. I just felt Ronald Reagan was the father that this country needed. . . . He made me feel good that I was in his family.”
Surnow said that he found the Clinton years obnoxious. “Hollywood under Clinton—it was like he was their guy,” he said. “He was the yuppie, baby-boomer narcissist that all of Hollywood related to.” During those years, Surnow recalled, he had countless arguments with liberal colleagues, some of whom stopped speaking to him. “My feeling is that the liberals’ ideas are wrong,” he said. “But they think I’m evil.” Last year, he contributed two thousand dollars to the losing campaign of Pennsylvania’s hard-line Republican senator Rick Santorum, because he “liked his position on immigration.” His favorite bumper sticker, he said, is “Except for Ending Slavery, Fascism, Nazism & Communism, War Has Never Solved Anything.”
Although his program has been accused of parrotting the Bush administration's attitudes in the War on Terror, Surnow differs strongly with the administration on the War in Iraq, the article notes:
Although he is a supporter of President Bush—he told me that “America is in its glory days”—Surnow is critical of the way the war in Iraq has been conducted. An “isolationist” with “no faith in nation-building,” he thinks that “we could have been out of this thing three years ago.” After deposing Saddam Hussein, he argued, America should have “just handed it to the Baathists and . . . put in some other monster who’s going to keep these people in line but who’s not going to be aggressive to us.”
I rather like Surnow's analysis.
As to the program's political stance, the article quotes Surnow as saying, "Our only politics are that terrorists are bad. In some circles, that’s political.”
Surnow's newest project, the article reports, is a right-of-center comedy-satire program, the article notes:
“ ‘The Daily Show’ tips left,” Surnow said. “So we thought, Let’s do one that tips right.” Jon Stewart’s program appears on Comedy Central, an entertainment channel. But, after Surnow got Rush Limbaugh to introduce him to Roger Ailes, Fox News agreed to air two episodes. The program, which will follow the fake-news format popularized by “Saturday Night Live,” will be written by conservative humorists, including Sandy Frank and Ned Rice. Surnow said of the show, “There are so many targets, from global warming to banning tag on the playground. There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit.”
There is indeed.
Surnow sounds like an interesting and fun guy, attributes that shine through even the New Yorker's not at all sympathetic profile.
The film Babel, currently in theaters,has received great acclaim from critics, along with a nomination for the the Oscar for Best Picture.
I wonder, however, if they would be so enthused if they realized exactly what is going on in the film.
As you perhaps already know, Babel stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett and tells four separate stories, set in four different countries, that ultimately interlink and affect one another. The central story is the shooting of American tourist Cate Blanchett in Morocco, and her husband's frantic efforts to get medical help for her in that economically undeveloped area of the world.
An obvious theme of all four stories is the difficulties people have in communicating with one another, and not just across cultures but even (and perhaps most importantly) within families. That's really an enormous cliche of our times, however, and hardly worth the acclaim heaped on the film. Another evident theme is the nearness of violence and death to each of us every moment of every day. Ditto the cliched nature of that one.
In addition, the film deals with trendy issues such as the War on Terror and War in Iraq, immigration, and income inequality, all without taking any explicit political stands (a smart move on the part of the writers and director). That probably accounts in large part for the critical acclaim, along with the screenwriters' and director's skill in presenting the four stories.
But what few people seem to have noticed is what sets everything in motion in the film: parents neglecting their children as the adults pursue their own wandering interests. In each of the stories, parents' failure to look after their children results in tragedy and contributes crucially to the central incident of the film, the shooting of Blanchett's character.
I don't have an opinion on whether the filmmakers did this in order to make a statement. I rather think not. However, it is indeed there and is the one really interesting and fully true observation in the film.
So here we have what turns out to be a postmodern pro-family film. Sounds like a winner to me.
Concern for the environment has accomplished wonderful things since the 1940s. Both businesses (not widely acknowledged) and government (given far too much credit for the positive changes and a pass on the negative ones) worked to clean up the nation's air and water. Our environment is the cleanest it has ever been since the onset of the agricultural/husbandry age more than two millennia ago.
That's great news, right?
There's more that we can accomplish, of course, but exactly what that is and how best to do it are matters of furious contention. It is undeniable that economic growth and technological change have had the strongest effect in reducing pollution: the transition from the industrial age to the postindustrial one has cleaned up our air, land, and seas admirably.
Hence, policies that suppress the continued progress of this trend are to be avoided for environmental reasons as well as for their affect in slowing the spread of prosperity to greater numbers of people in this nation and around the world.
Many people, however, don't quite understand these realities and, often with the best of intentions, subvert the cause of human betterment.
Over at National Review Online, the site's newly appointed managing editor, Peter Suderman, writes about an interesting new documentary, Mine Your Own Business, by Irish filmmaker Phelim McAleer, which Suderman describes as a "clear-yed look at the true impacts of mining and the nefarious tactics of its opponents." According to Suderman's account, the film vividly shows how left-wing activists pursue an agenda explicitly designed to thwart economic growth, and how damaging that is to the poorest individuals, communities, and nations among us.
Instead of acknowledging economic realities about human life and searching their hearts to find room to support what is best for the poor, many Western environmentalists simply ignore the appalling human damage their policies cause, as documented so well in Michael Crichton's brilliant novel State of Fear. As a perfect example of the mindset, Suderman recounts the following scene in the film, in which Mark Fenn of the radical environmentalist group the World Wildlife Fund explains how dire poverty in foreign lands is a good thing:
Fenn opposes a proposed mine in Fort Dauphin, Madagascar on the grounds that it would destroy “the quaintness, the small-town feeling” that he so admires.
Of course, while Fenn, who boasts on camera of his $35,000 boat and the foundation of his new beachfront home, luxuriates in first world comfort, most of the town’s residents live in dire poverty. When asked why locals should be denied the economic opportunity that would come with the mine, he calmly explains that, although they might not have terribly good healthcare, or shelter, or nutrition, they have a stress-free life that can be valued by — I kid you not — the number of times they smile per day. Even if they did get money, he explains, they wouldn’t know how to spend it. As he tells it, they tend to blow their cash on parties, booze, and stereo systems. Not everyone, it appears, can have his taste in beach houses and catamarans.
Fenn’s attitude isn’t just witless, it’s sickening, and it’s indicative of the general level of smug, out-of-touch elitism that haunts the environmental movement. “Regional character,” “simple life,” “quaintness,” “small-town feeling,” “local history” — these are just warm, fuzzy phrases trotted out by anti-growth environmentalists to deny wealth and opportunities to residents of poor regions. And, as in Fenn’s case, they’re often markers of ugly condescension toward third-world residents.
I wouldn't tar all environmentalists with this brush, just as it would be grossly unfair to characterize all skeptics as tools of business interests, but the attitude Suderman and McAleer identify here is a real one, widely documented elsewhere. It's something we do need to consider when judging environmental policies, and I'm glad to see that McAleer has brought it to light in the cinema.
Tonight's episode of the CW program Supernatural follows up on the religious themes of last week's installment (see below), with a decidedly more sinister bent. In this episode, Sam Winchester is possessed by a demon—the very one he and his brother have been hunting in hopes of destroying it.
The episode includes some interesting and reasonable discussion of moral culpability, as the demon uses Sam's body to commit some murders which Sam himself, of course, would never do. Although the producers include a bit of mumbo-jumbo in the story, it is clearly for dramatic purposes, and the theology is decidedly Christian.
In all, the program seems to be moving toward a more explicitly Christian approach to its subject matter.
Last Thursday night's episode of the CW drama Supernatural included some interesting Christian-oriented discussion. Sam and Dean Winchester, a pair of brothers who hunt preternatural monsters, encounter a series of murders committed by people who say an angel told them to perform the killings. The angel wants these people killed, it appears, because they are horrendous evildoers—or potential ones. In at least two of the cases, the murder was called for to prevent the person from committing a crime, and the brothers' investigation confirms that these incidents were indeed about to take place.
Much of the episode takes place in a church and its grounds, including a crypt in the basement. The central interest of the episode is the two characters' discussions about belief in God. Dean, the older brother is a believer in demons and vampires but not in angels and God. He represents an aggressive atheism. Sam disagrees strongly:
Dean: Look, I'll admit I'm a bit of a skeptic, but since when are you all "Mr. 700 Club"? No, seriously, from the git-go you've been willing to buy this "angel" crap. I mean, what's next? Are you going to start praying every day?
Sam: I do.
Dean (shocked): What?
Sam: I do pray every day. I have for a long time.
Dean (face shows disbelief, then grudging acceptance): The things you learn about a guy. . . .
Dean states explicitly and indeed dogmatically that there is no God and no meaning in the world. He says that he requires hard proof that there is God, although he doesn't need any hard proof that God doesn't exist.
Later in the episode, Sam sees the angel himself. Dean is skeptical, of course, and asks for details. After describing what he saw and heard, Sam says, "This feeling washed over me, like peace, like grace."
Sam says that he has been given an assignment to kill an as-yet-unknown evildoer, and he soon encounters the target. Dean intervenes and says that he'll do the job himself, leaving Sam behind.
Sam is no fool, however, and determines that the "angel" is in fact the ghost of a former priest in the parish. A bit of interesting, offbeat theological discussion between Sam and a priest follows, and the ghost is put to rest by a performance of the Catholic Last Rites.
Dean, meanwhile, has gone after the person Sam was told to kill. It turns out that the person was about to commit a rape, which Dean intervenes to prevent. The man tries to escape, and in the ensuing automobile chase he is killed in a distinctively unusual accident, impaled by a metal post. Surveying the scene, Dean looks on in evident wonder.
Afterward, Sam and Dean discuss the implacations of the events. Sam confesses that he was fooled by the ghost: "I just wanted to believe so badly. It's so damn hard to do this, what we do, all alone. There's so much evil in the world, I feel like I could drown in it. . . . I needed to think that there was something else watching, too, you know? Some higher power, some greater good, and that maybe . . . I could be saved."
Dean sympathizes and acknowledges that the events of the episode were so extraordinary as to shake his beliefs.
This week's episode of the Fox TV drama House, M.D., "One Day, One Room," featured some interesting discussion of religion and abortion. Here are a few relevant paragraphs from the episode summary on the Fox House, M.D. site:
Cuddy lets House know that Eve [a pregnant rape victim House is treating] is pregnant. He breaks the news to the girl, then offers her the chance to terminate it. Eve isn't interested because she considers abortion to be murder. House asks her if she wants to take a walk outside to get some air. . . .
House and Eve sit in a park watching people jog by. They continue their philosophical discussion. Eve argues that eternity is what we live for, and House believes that our time on Earth is all we have. Eve refuses to believe that because then there are no ultimate consequences. She needs the comfort of knowing that this all means something.
Eve wonders if her attacker feels remorse for his actions. House asks why that matters. He then inquires why she trusts him. Eve explains that there's something about him, as if he is hurt too. House confesses that his story was true. Yet it wasn't his grandmother but his father who abused him. Eve begins to acknowledge what happened to her to House.
Back at the hospital, House informs Cuddy that Eve terminated her pregnancy and has been discharged from the hospital.
It's a very interesting philosophical discussion as it plays out in the scenes discussed here, and I think it's fairly realistic that Eve ultimately decides to abort the child. It's tragic, but life is full of such things. All in all, it's a very intelligently done and interesting episode.
The USA Network replays each new House, M.D. episode a couple of weeks after its initial appearance on Fox, so you'll have a chance to see this one soon—it's appearing on USA on Friday, February 9, at 11 p.m. EST.
Last week's episode of House, M.D. took a somewhat different approach, as is probably appropriate to Fox's more "edgy" programming style. The disease victim who comes in for treatment by the diagnostic team headed by Dr. Gregory House, the cranky, cynical genius doctor played by Hugh Laurie, is a nun, and immediately House is both rude toward her and dismissive of her faith. In addition, one of the team members — the handsome young Englishman Dr. Robert Chase — says explicitly, "I hate nuns."
Having set up this open hostility toward religion, however, the program then goes about systematically demolishing it. First, the good-natured young Dr. Eric Foreman makes it clear that he disagrees with Dr. Chase. Then, it becomes evident that Dr. House has quite possibly misplaced his faith in his own powers of diagnosis. The nuns, for their part, show surprising insights into the doctors' minds.
In this regard, the faithful women are portrayed as far more complex and intelligent than one might have expected. Both their ideas and their personal histories are quite sophisticated, and in the case of the one stricken by illness, the revelations of her many past sins show not hypocrisy but the redemptive power of religious faith. The nuns argue quite evenly with Dr. House, and though he usually wins through the sheer force of his great intellect and even greater will, the emptiness in his soul becomes increasingly clear. His doubts in his own abilities suggest that for this man, science is not enough.
An early scene in Amazing Grace establishes the film's themes in a way that is more subtle than it may initially seem.
The 
Actually, 
The UK version of 24 starts tonight in the United States, when BBC America will run the first installment of the three-part series of TV movies The State Within.
Retired NBA great Tim Hardaway was asked about homosexual former player John Amaechi yesterday on a radio program. Host Dan Le Batard inquired how Hardaway would react if he knew that he had a homosexual teammate. Hardaway's response has raised a storm of negative reactions.
Afterward, Holmwood kneels before a crucifix and prays to the Lord (using that name, specifically), asking forgiveness for his sins and entreating the Lord to "enter my heart and give me strength—the strength you showed in Gethsemane to face death—to face this evil I have raised and cast it out."
In 
Personally, I'm going to check it out. I greatly enjoyed the American film version, 
A commenter going by the cybernom of Pascal Fervor has made some interesting and provocative comments on 
Now, on to 
Mr. Fervor's comments are spot-on. He is correct to point out that Wilder's exposure of our vast human vulnerability to jiggery-pokery (to use John Dickson Carr's evocative term) in this film fits perfectly with this filmmaker's process in other movies. Like the scars on a particular character's face, the motives and intentions of the various characters in the film are hidden from one another, and the misunderstandings multiply.
onight's episode of the CW program Supernatural follows up on the religious themes of last week's installment (see below), with a decidedly more sinister bent. In this episode, Sam Winchester is possessed by a demon—the very one he and his brother have been hunting in hopes of destroying it.
This week's episode of the Fox TV drama House, M.D., "One Day, One Room," featured some interesting discussion of religion and abortion. Here are a few relevant paragraphs from the episode summary on the Fox House, M.D. site: