(This one took me a minute, but it was worth it.)
Laffs courtesy of Bob the Ape.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Where my Wimsey takes me
Darwin and I have been watching the BBC's Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, first Murder Must Advertise with Ian Carmichael and the slightly newer trio with Edward Petherbridge. As enjoyable as it is to hear Dorothy Sayers' witty dialog spoken, we have our quibbles with these productions, mainly relating to the characterization of Lord Peter.
Ian Carmichael is clearly too old for Lord Peter, who should be in his late 30s. As impeccable as his comic chops may be (and I get the impression that Carmichael was a noted comic actor in the fine old British style), he simply has no sex appeal whatsoever. This is utterly at odds with Sayers' characterization in the novels, and tends to make his scenes with women rather static. (Strangely enough, everyone in Murder Must Advertise seems cast about ten years older than necessary, though the acting is very fine.)
Edward Petherbridge comes much closer to Wimsey, for my money, but we still only got flashes of the intense ferret-like energy Lord Peter ought to possess. (This is the fault of the director, I think -- all the acting in this series is superlative and the action is hampered mainly by the overly-meditative directing, especially in Strong Poison.) Still, he's younger than Carmichael and has the right sandy hair and long nose for the character. If he were only taller and had a somewhat less high-pitched voice! (This Wimsey icon, and many more, may be found here.)
A question for all you Wimseyphiles who are up on the hot young British actor scene: who could play the definitive Lord Peter? Darwin and I have been trying out some virtual casting, but we're not coming up with anything. We need a tall, lanky (but not too skinny) actor with sandy blond hair and a long nose. Frankly, I think Hugh Laurie could be a fine Lord Peter, if he weren't a bit too old now. Too bad...
Ian Carmichael is clearly too old for Lord Peter, who should be in his late 30s. As impeccable as his comic chops may be (and I get the impression that Carmichael was a noted comic actor in the fine old British style), he simply has no sex appeal whatsoever. This is utterly at odds with Sayers' characterization in the novels, and tends to make his scenes with women rather static. (Strangely enough, everyone in Murder Must Advertise seems cast about ten years older than necessary, though the acting is very fine.)
Edward Petherbridge comes much closer to Wimsey, for my money, but we still only got flashes of the intense ferret-like energy Lord Peter ought to possess. (This is the fault of the director, I think -- all the acting in this series is superlative and the action is hampered mainly by the overly-meditative directing, especially in Strong Poison.) Still, he's younger than Carmichael and has the right sandy hair and long nose for the character. If he were only taller and had a somewhat less high-pitched voice! (This Wimsey icon, and many more, may be found here.)
A question for all you Wimseyphiles who are up on the hot young British actor scene: who could play the definitive Lord Peter? Darwin and I have been trying out some virtual casting, but we're not coming up with anything. We need a tall, lanky (but not too skinny) actor with sandy blond hair and a long nose. Frankly, I think Hugh Laurie could be a fine Lord Peter, if he weren't a bit too old now. Too bad...
Five Minute History
Although knowledge of history has seldom been lower in our country's history than at the current moment in our culture, or perhaps because of that fact, people seem to have a great penchant for declaring things to be historic.
Since I started keeping track, I believe we have now had five of "the most important presidential election of our times" in a row -- despite "our times" remaining fairly similar to what they were before.
The world "changed forever" on 9/11. Though if you were magically transported from 9-10-2000 to 9-10-2007, you'd notice few differences unless you happened upon the foreign affairs section of the newspaper or an airport security line. (And even then, the differences are not so large.)
This election cycle seems to be lending itself to much of this thinking. Several acquaintances emailed me after Sen. Obama's "Philadelphia Speech on Race" informing me that this would rank as the third great moment of American oratory next to the Gettysburg Address and MLK's I Have A Dream speech. School children would, I was assured, be reading this speech fifty years hence in order to understand "when America changed". Does anyone remember much about that speech now -- not yet 90 days later?
One must account for the enthusiasm of the moment, surely, but it seems at times that, having forgotten most of our history, we increasingly declare to be historic whatever caught our attention five minutes ago. Perhaps we even believe ourselves. When announcing his victory in the Democratic primary Sen. Obama declared:
But that aside, from any political side-taking: History simply is not made every day. It can't be made every day. What makes a historical moment "historic" is its status as a unique event or pivot point in the course of events, as it later becomes clear to us. As such, it's often difficult to know at the time to know that something is historic, but in general, you'll win most of the time by betting that any given event or speech is not. In order to understand that, however, we need to have the perspective of actually knowing history. Not just a few scattered names and dates, but enough of the flow of events in our own country and in others to know what seemed important to people at the time, and to what extent that continues to seem important now.
Only then can we begin to have any perspective as to what is historic and what is not -- and any perspective on what "change" is likely to happen through national politics, and what is not.
Since I started keeping track, I believe we have now had five of "the most important presidential election of our times" in a row -- despite "our times" remaining fairly similar to what they were before.
The world "changed forever" on 9/11. Though if you were magically transported from 9-10-2000 to 9-10-2007, you'd notice few differences unless you happened upon the foreign affairs section of the newspaper or an airport security line. (And even then, the differences are not so large.)
This election cycle seems to be lending itself to much of this thinking. Several acquaintances emailed me after Sen. Obama's "Philadelphia Speech on Race" informing me that this would rank as the third great moment of American oratory next to the Gettysburg Address and MLK's I Have A Dream speech. School children would, I was assured, be reading this speech fifty years hence in order to understand "when America changed". Does anyone remember much about that speech now -- not yet 90 days later?
One must account for the enthusiasm of the moment, surely, but it seems at times that, having forgotten most of our history, we increasingly declare to be historic whatever caught our attention five minutes ago. Perhaps we even believe ourselves. When announcing his victory in the Democratic primary Sen. Obama declared:
I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.Perhaps I'm a hardened cynic, but: excuse me? Our past is not so bad, nor our possible future (whether under Obama or otherwise) so good, that such a thing would be remembered. Now sure, part of my reaction to this speech is that I simply don't like Obama. I find his policies and inclinations dangerous, and his rhetoric foolish and shot through with demagoguery under a thin veneer of self-congratulatory high-mindedness.
But that aside, from any political side-taking: History simply is not made every day. It can't be made every day. What makes a historical moment "historic" is its status as a unique event or pivot point in the course of events, as it later becomes clear to us. As such, it's often difficult to know at the time to know that something is historic, but in general, you'll win most of the time by betting that any given event or speech is not. In order to understand that, however, we need to have the perspective of actually knowing history. Not just a few scattered names and dates, but enough of the flow of events in our own country and in others to know what seemed important to people at the time, and to what extent that continues to seem important now.
Only then can we begin to have any perspective as to what is historic and what is not -- and any perspective on what "change" is likely to happen through national politics, and what is not.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Signs you live in Texas
Listening to your daughter sing "Mary had a little lamb", you overhear the following:
"All the children sweat and play, sweat and play, sweat and play..."
"All the children sweat and play, sweat and play, sweat and play..."
What Will the Children Think
In an online debate about the "gay marriage" issue a while back, I heard a woman say that one of her concerns (in light of an assumption that the day of gay marriage was pretty much inevitably on its way) was how she would explain to a school-aged child why exactly she couldn't go visit a friend who had "two mommies" or "two daddies". This was immediately jumped on as being an incredibly homophobic idea. Why not, many asked, use this as a teaching moment? "Little Jenny has two mothers who love each other very much. However, we as Catholics believe that only a man and a woman can get married."
Now, the "teach the controversy" idea is a very popular one in the modern US. We like to think of ourselves as being open-minded and fair -- and also when you're talking to your opponents it's a good code for saying, "Sure you disagree with you, but do you mind teaching people my views anyway?"
However, as the parent (and looking back on having been a child) I think that the sheltering approach is probably the way to go.
Little though the idea may appeal to us at times, there are a lot of things that a mind not yet fully formed is simply not yet ready to deal with. One of these, I think, is "Sometimes people who seem nice or good in many ways do things which we consider gravely sinful -- even though it may not look very bad at first glance."
Actually, to be honest, it's an idea that even many minds which by rights should be fully formed do not seem to be able to deal with. All too often we hear in reference to some hot button personal morality issue, "The people I know who do X all seem like well adjusted and loving people, so how morally destructive can it really be?"
Instinctually, we seem to want to sort people out into "good guys" and "bad guys". As we get older, we hopefully get better at understanding that otherwise good people sometimes do bad things and seem to be pretty happy to go on doing them. We learn to see that people have strengths and weaknesses and can't be conveniently classified. But this takes a lot of time, and I really don't think kids under a certain age are up to doing it.
Perhaps I was just an overly judgemental child, but I remember clearly that one of the difficulties my parents had with me was that when I heard about someone's actions that I had strong moral opinions about, it was hard to keep me from swinging to a rather vocal "that's a bad person" point of view. So when an aunt had several children out of wedlock, or another aunt got married outside the Church, when an uncle walked out on his wife and kids, or when a friend or relative became Protestant, I had a tendency not only to decide that everything about that person was bad, but to volunteer this opinion at all sorts of inopportune times. It's not impossible that I was more of a jerk than most children, but I suspect that this was actually pretty normal.
So you're faced with an awkward situation as a parent in a highly diverse society. You can socialize a child throughout a diverse group of acquaintances, and either go light on the moral teaching, or be clear on moral issues and risk your children constantly coming out with comments and judgements that will be seen as deeply offensive; or you can choose to create an artificially homogeneous social set while your children are young, and hope to put off the "dealing with diversity" issue until your child's moral universe is more fully formed.
Obviously, one has limited choice in these issues. Sometimes they have a way of becoming obvious through friends or relatives in a way that is unavoidable. But to the extent possible, it seems to me that rearing children in a religiously and culturally homogeneous environment up to a certain age makes it easier for them to both deal well with diversity later in life and retail a solid religious and moral grounding. Actively encountering too much diversity too early in life, on the other hand, seems to increase the danger of lapsing into either intolerance or indifference.
Now, the "teach the controversy" idea is a very popular one in the modern US. We like to think of ourselves as being open-minded and fair -- and also when you're talking to your opponents it's a good code for saying, "Sure you disagree with you, but do you mind teaching people my views anyway?"
However, as the parent (and looking back on having been a child) I think that the sheltering approach is probably the way to go.
Little though the idea may appeal to us at times, there are a lot of things that a mind not yet fully formed is simply not yet ready to deal with. One of these, I think, is "Sometimes people who seem nice or good in many ways do things which we consider gravely sinful -- even though it may not look very bad at first glance."
Actually, to be honest, it's an idea that even many minds which by rights should be fully formed do not seem to be able to deal with. All too often we hear in reference to some hot button personal morality issue, "The people I know who do X all seem like well adjusted and loving people, so how morally destructive can it really be?"
Instinctually, we seem to want to sort people out into "good guys" and "bad guys". As we get older, we hopefully get better at understanding that otherwise good people sometimes do bad things and seem to be pretty happy to go on doing them. We learn to see that people have strengths and weaknesses and can't be conveniently classified. But this takes a lot of time, and I really don't think kids under a certain age are up to doing it.
Perhaps I was just an overly judgemental child, but I remember clearly that one of the difficulties my parents had with me was that when I heard about someone's actions that I had strong moral opinions about, it was hard to keep me from swinging to a rather vocal "that's a bad person" point of view. So when an aunt had several children out of wedlock, or another aunt got married outside the Church, when an uncle walked out on his wife and kids, or when a friend or relative became Protestant, I had a tendency not only to decide that everything about that person was bad, but to volunteer this opinion at all sorts of inopportune times. It's not impossible that I was more of a jerk than most children, but I suspect that this was actually pretty normal.
So you're faced with an awkward situation as a parent in a highly diverse society. You can socialize a child throughout a diverse group of acquaintances, and either go light on the moral teaching, or be clear on moral issues and risk your children constantly coming out with comments and judgements that will be seen as deeply offensive; or you can choose to create an artificially homogeneous social set while your children are young, and hope to put off the "dealing with diversity" issue until your child's moral universe is more fully formed.
Obviously, one has limited choice in these issues. Sometimes they have a way of becoming obvious through friends or relatives in a way that is unavoidable. But to the extent possible, it seems to me that rearing children in a religiously and culturally homogeneous environment up to a certain age makes it easier for them to both deal well with diversity later in life and retail a solid religious and moral grounding. Actively encountering too much diversity too early in life, on the other hand, seems to increase the danger of lapsing into either intolerance or indifference.
A Matter of Probabilities
One of the more enjoyably mind-bending elements of modern physics is the idea that in a number of cases, observing a given situation or reaction actually changes the result. This is the sort of thing that appeals very much to post-modern elements of our sensibilities.
And interesting corollary to this in mainstream culture is that, so I have read, opinion pollsters have found it increasingly difficult to get unstudied opinions out of people. As "marketing" and "positioning" become concepts that most people think about most of the time, people asked what they think of a TV pilot will give replies like, "Most of this I thought had very broad appeal, but I think that older women will be turned off by this plot point."
Political writer Jay Cost has an interesting article at the RealClearPolitics Horse Race blog, which examines the two parties' selection of their nominees in this light. He argues that the predictions of political science models in regards to this election (current president approval rating, economy, war, end of two term presidency, etc.) are to a great extent counter-acted by the fact that many voters in both parties consciously took such factors into account in their nomination choices this cycle.
And interesting corollary to this in mainstream culture is that, so I have read, opinion pollsters have found it increasingly difficult to get unstudied opinions out of people. As "marketing" and "positioning" become concepts that most people think about most of the time, people asked what they think of a TV pilot will give replies like, "Most of this I thought had very broad appeal, but I think that older women will be turned off by this plot point."
Political writer Jay Cost has an interesting article at the RealClearPolitics Horse Race blog, which examines the two parties' selection of their nominees in this light. He argues that the predictions of political science models in regards to this election (current president approval rating, economy, war, end of two term presidency, etc.) are to a great extent counter-acted by the fact that many voters in both parties consciously took such factors into account in their nomination choices this cycle.
... So, both parties manifested signs of sophisticated thinking in pursuit of a goal - even though the manifestations were quite different. In both cases, information made a crucial difference. Party actors had up-to-date knowledge of relevant variables, and acted in light of that knowledge. The Republicans were aware of their dire straits and, accordingly, made a risk-averse choice. The Democrats were aware of how favored they are and made a risk-accepting choice. An important precondition of all this is the information age. It is simply easier for people of all classes to acquire information nowadays, and thus easier for them to make sophisticated choices like this.This rings fairly true to me. In an internet and media saturated age, enough people seem to be thinking along these lines to make it difficult to handicap election. Essentially, both parties are consciously steering towards getting as much of their way as possible while just barely winning the election.
Interestingly, while they are pursuing different goals in different manners, both parties are putting the same kind of stress on the electoral system. Republicans looked at the macro structure and determined that McCain might turn a probable defeat into a possible victory. Democrats looked at the same structure and determined that while Obama could probably not pull off an enormous win, he could still win in a year like this. Both candidates were thus selected with an eye to having the final result closer than the macro models predict. Both are testing the tensile strength of the macro structure of electoral conflict. Republicans picked a guy they don't like but who might pull the upset. Democrats (with the final say) are trading a possible landslide for their first choice....
Friday, June 6, 2008
June 6th
Sixty-four years ago today, thousands of young American, British, Canadian, Australian and other allied men -- most of them ten years younger than I am now, and people nonetheless tell me I'm "young" -- poured off small landing craft to wade through the cold Atlantic water towards Normandy's beaches. On some beaches, they met with very little resistance, but on others, the young men Germany sent to oppose them poured down a murderous rain of lead that wiped out whole platoons in moments.
Last year I read Stephen E. Ambrose's D Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II
. It's a solid history, with a lot of personal stories from diaries, letters and interviews with veterans.
This year, however, I stumbled across a very up-close look at one unit's experience, The Bedford Boys: One American Town's Ultimate D-day Sacrifice by Alex Kershaw. It tells the story of the men of Company A, 116th Infantry Reg., 29th Div. 34 of Company A's men were from the town of Bedford, Virginia, from a national guard unit which had been called up to full time combat duty for the duration of the war. They were in the very first wave to hit Omaha beach on D-Day, the beach which say the stiffest resistance and the highest casualties. 19 of Bedford's men died within the first hours of D-Day, and it would certainly have been nearly all of them except that one of Company A's boats sank well out from the beach, and the men aboard it were taken back to England (after treading water for over an hour) and didn't land in Normany until several days later.
The Bedford Boys tells the story both of the men on the beach, and of the families back home -- including the day several weeks later when the telegraph machine in the town drugstore starts to reel off one "We regret to inform you" telegram after another. Bedford lost the largest percentage of its men in uniform of any town in the US during World War II, and it did so mostly in a couple of hours.
The book's focus is necessarily very close. You won't get a strong sense for the overall organization of D-Day from it, and it concentrates on what is already by far the most famous beach, for Americans at any rate. What you do get a strong sense of, however, and what is perhaps the most astounding human element of the D-Day story, is the bravery against impossible odds that somehow allowed thousands of young men, wading out of the water into withering machine gun fire, to eventually make their way up the beach, overwhelm the machine gun nests and pill boxes, and begin the long awaited liberation of Europe.
In 24 hours the Allies landed as many soldiers as are currently in Iraq, and suffered as many casualties as we have in five years. Through great bravery, and in the face of incredible suffering. As with so many others who have, throughout history, found themselves having to stand firm in the face of death -- I don't know how they did it, other than that they had to.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Last year I read Stephen E. Ambrose's D Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II
. It's a solid history, with a lot of personal stories from diaries, letters and interviews with veterans.This year, however, I stumbled across a very up-close look at one unit's experience, The Bedford Boys: One American Town's Ultimate D-day Sacrifice
by Alex Kershaw. It tells the story of the men of Company A, 116th Infantry Reg., 29th Div. 34 of Company A's men were from the town of Bedford, Virginia, from a national guard unit which had been called up to full time combat duty for the duration of the war. They were in the very first wave to hit Omaha beach on D-Day, the beach which say the stiffest resistance and the highest casualties. 19 of Bedford's men died within the first hours of D-Day, and it would certainly have been nearly all of them except that one of Company A's boats sank well out from the beach, and the men aboard it were taken back to England (after treading water for over an hour) and didn't land in Normany until several days later.The Bedford Boys tells the story both of the men on the beach, and of the families back home -- including the day several weeks later when the telegraph machine in the town drugstore starts to reel off one "We regret to inform you" telegram after another. Bedford lost the largest percentage of its men in uniform of any town in the US during World War II, and it did so mostly in a couple of hours.
The book's focus is necessarily very close. You won't get a strong sense for the overall organization of D-Day from it, and it concentrates on what is already by far the most famous beach, for Americans at any rate. What you do get a strong sense of, however, and what is perhaps the most astounding human element of the D-Day story, is the bravery against impossible odds that somehow allowed thousands of young men, wading out of the water into withering machine gun fire, to eventually make their way up the beach, overwhelm the machine gun nests and pill boxes, and begin the long awaited liberation of Europe.
In 24 hours the Allies landed as many soldiers as are currently in Iraq, and suffered as many casualties as we have in five years. Through great bravery, and in the face of incredible suffering. As with so many others who have, throughout history, found themselves having to stand firm in the face of death -- I don't know how they did it, other than that they had to.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.
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