Category Archives: snakes

. . . snakes

Posted on by

Not writing. It’s a year to the day since we returned from Eastern Europe. I’ve just realized that I’ve now been blogging for more than a year, but I’ve been away for more than a month. I need to write here again, before whatever readers I may have begin to think I’m dead. Here are some things I’ve been thinking about while I’ve been not writing, not writing being an actual activity. It might be fun to undertake a defense of not writing. Maybe I’ll do that one of these days.

Ted Kennedy. My coffee table sometimes holds a copy of Splash Kennedy’s book about his senator. As I looked around this morning, thinking about the book, which is charming and witty and altogether a hoot, especially if you love dogs, I was struck by the meanness of some of the commentary about it when it came out. All tne more struck now that Edward Kennedy’s life has entered a new stage. I expect Kennedy would be among the first to acknowledge that politics is a rough and crude business. In fact, Splash announces on the second or third page of his book that he owes his relationship to the senator to a familiar saying: “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” I, on the other hand could take the photo of Kennedy and his dog that appears on the back of My Senator’s dust jacket as the way I want to remember this man, who is my senator too. God bless him.

Tim Russert. And while I’m thinking of folks I hope will be blessed, God bless Tim Russert. I think it’s possible to agree in principle with Alexander Cockburn in The Nation that Russert wasn’t a progressive, that he often spoke for the political establishment–and at the same time to wish that Cockburn had held his peace for a while. What Cockburn calls “The Canonization of St. Tim” has revealed what many knew about Russert, that he was a devout Catholic who took his faith’s exhortation to serve very seriously, and a serious family man and father. Friends at Boston College say that he could often be seen wandering the hallways waiting for his son to finish class so that he could take him to lunch. I believe Russert was a good and decent person, who died far too young, and not a bad reporter. I miss him.

Plenty to drink. Both the Post Dispatch and The New York Times today carry stories to the effect that Anheuser-Busch is preparing to fight the takeover by InBev. Here in St. Louis we’re hoping that can be done — the city and region stand to lose a good corporate citizen whose relations with workers and other local businessses have on the whole been good over many decades and whose philanthropy has shaped other local institutions so numerous that one can’t even attempt to list them. If the takeover goes through, A-B will be replaced by a corporation whose relations with workers recall those of Wal-Mart and whose willingness to continue A-B’s philanthropic relationships seems questionable. All this to benefit a group of stockholders who for the most part don’t live here. InBev has now filed suit in Delaware Chancery Court to establish its ability to approach A-B stockholders individually, “to ensure that Anheuser-Busch shareholders preserve their voices.” No doubt we’ll be invoking sainted grandmothers with a few shares of A-B stock protecting them from the wolves as beneficiaries of the InBev raid. But the real wolf is InBev, itself.

High water. While the flood waters have yet to recede entirely upriver, we’re pretty dry in St. Louis. The city is built on bluffs. It’s outlying towns, particularly in areas of the flood plain where levees have broken that have suffered. And of course Iowa City, where the Iowa River rose many feet above the level of 1993, and the university remains closed with many buildings permanently damaged. The media are full of praise for FEMA’s response to midwest floods this year, but we’ve heard otherwise here. More about that later — it’s summer now. The Gettysburg Address will be on display at the new Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois until sometime in August. We’re thinking of making a trip to see it.

. . . about snakes

Posted on by

In the extended family of my boyhood there was a cousin known as Bubba. The name carried no connotation of ignorance or redneckery — we were all southern folk. It was a carryover from babytalk, like a lot of nicknames, and it meant “brother.” I’m unable to account for the morphing of Bubba from sobriquet to media cliché meaning “dumb hick,” but this week’s Newsweek cover has got to deserve Waylon Jennings’ Wurlitzer Prize for obnoxious camp (though the cover story isn’t bad).

And speaking of that, the sneering and condescension of Michael Gerson and Charles Krauthammer on today’s Washington Post op-ed page is only exceeded by the Post’s front page teasers reading “Asleep at the Pew” for Gerson and “Ex-Uncle Wright” for Krauthammer. We hear a good deal these days about the encroachment of bloggers, whose endless typing threatens the public mind, more properly nourished by the (presumably slower) typing of wise, disinterested, and brainy types who occupy slots in major media outlets. Golly, gee, I can’t wait for the next brainy and disinterested excursus about immigration from Lou Dobbs! And that Krauthammer really gives me food for thought when he sneers in Latin; mirabile dictu, indeed.

New duck on the block. One of the nice things about living in St. Louis is the city’s multiplicity of neighborhood restaurants and pubs. My beloved and I have been saddened recently by the closing of two favorite places, Pestalozzi Place and Tanner B’s. But we were happy last night to be able to walk across the alley again and find Pestalozzi Place reincarnated as The Shaved Duck, a lively new bistro featuring a tapas-style menu with wonderful entrées (we both had a trout entree that was superb), local cheeses, and craft beers. Here are a couple of enthusiastic reviews: [1], [2]. Owners of the Shaved Duck also operate The Scottish Arms on Sarah, just off Laclede. Last night’s opening was great fun, and, to judge from the crowd, a big success.

. . . about snakes

Posted on by

A greater part. There are good reasons to regard the style manual of the American Psychological Association as the best academic style manual around these days. Chicago is more comprehensive and probably should be everyone’s manual of last resort, but the APA Manual is elegant and practical. I started using it with the third edition back in the 1980s. It’s now in the fifth, and I suspect a sixth edition isn’t far off. Here’s a short section from its guidelines regarding gender bias in language.

Lesbian and gay male are preferred to the word “homosexual” when used as an adjective referring to specific persons or groups, and lesbians and gay men are preferred terms over “homosexuals” used as a noun when referring to specific persons or groups. The word “homosexual” has several problems of designation. First, it may perpetuate negative stereotypes because of its historical associations with pathology and criminal behavior. Second, it is ambiguous in reference because it is often assumed to refer exclusively to men and thus renders lesbians invisible. Third, it is often unclear.

Having said that, I’d like to say as well that Fr. Mark Harris has recently posted the best statement about human sexuality I have yet to read. It too is elegant and practical, entitled “We rise to play a greater part.” It is also pious, in the best sense of that term. Here’s Fr. Harris’ powerful conclusion:

In an age of great venality and greed, in a time in which governing begins by inducing fear, in a country that has tamed the Lord Jesus and domesticated the Scriptures and bought the silence of the churches, I see no virtue or even moral efficacy in the condemnation of committed relationships in which there is some comfort, companionship, joy and sexual delight, simply because those relationships are between two persons of the same sex. Indeed making something of relationships, let us call it making love, is the only adequate response to an age that attempts to reduce everything to owning, grasping, greed, power and war.

Read the entire statement here.

Relativism. Nicholas Knisely has written an incisive piece a few days back about the bugbear of relativism and how shrub and the press misunderstood and mischaracterized Pope Benedict’s statement in regard to relativism as “The Central Problem for Faith Today.” As Dean Knisely puts it, “Apparently the President’s people based the President’s remarks on the title of [this] essay and not the actual text.” An old dig at English professors has it that they know more than you do and if you wait long enough they’ll tell you about it. As a now-superannuated English prof, I’ve always been convinced that physicists really do know more than the rest of us. Still, I’m not sure that uncertainty in physics and epistemological uncertainty have the same basis, though I accept them both as facts. I’m working on some thoughts about some of the Pope’s teaching statements, and I’ll publish them in a bit.

Read the rest of Dean Knisely’s essay here, or here.

Lambeth. I’m grateful to Susan Russell for catching me up with the ABCs plans for tea at Lambeth Palace. Dr. Williams’ statement–read it here–seems mostly benign, calling as it does for a time of prayer and fellowship which he hopes will make all the attendees “better bishops.” And since Bishop Robinson has let all his colleagues off the hook and urged them to attend, I guess I should be grateful that the thing seems to be going forward. But there’s some language about covenants that disturbs me in the ABC’s talk. Here’s part of it.

We don’t want at the Lambeth Conference to be creating a lot of new rules but we do obviously need to strengthen our relationships and we need to put those relationships on another footing, slightly firmer footing, where we have promised to one another that this is how we will conduct our life together. And it is in that light that at this year we are discussing together the proposal for what we are calling a covenant between the Anglican Churches of the world.

This disturbs me because it begs a good many questions. I’d like to know who decided that we need the things Dr. Williams says we need. I told my own Bishop recently that I didn’t want a covenant, any covenant. He said he didn’t either but that one might be forced on us. I don’t want to have to confront that eventuality. Pastor Russell notes the ABC’s admission that Lambeth “has never been a legislative body.” I’m not sure I should take any comfort there, after the Windsor Report.

Moreover, I can’t see what use it will be for the Bishops who attend the Lambeth conference to spend solemn hours discussing a putative covenant when the Bishops who have forced the issue are boycotting and apparently well on their way to organizing a rump third world church that will continue to stick its finger in the eye of the Americans and the British. A covenant, unless it stigmatizes gays and lesbians, is unlikely to make this writer happy. And if Lambeth is indeed “a lost cause for the orthodox,” what’s the point?

Let’s talk about snakes . . .

Posted on by

I’ve noticed that other bloggers sometimes use recurring titles for posts that mention various content items without trying to pull them together into an essay. In thinking about what I might use for such a title I remembered that my major prof in graduate school liked to come into a Friday class sometimes and say, “Let’s talk about snakes.”

Cheney in Iraq: This morning’s Credo Action carried a subversive piece by Michael Kieschnick about the current troubles in Iraq. According to Kieschnick:

[T]he single best explanation for the violence now wracking the country is that [Vice President] Cheney traded American military support and the lives of our soldiers for taking down the Sadr movement in return for ISCI [Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq] backing the elections that are required to show progress that gives McCain a better story going into our own elections.

Kieschnick’s primary evidence is this suspicious coincidence:

On March 17, Cheney visits Bagdhad, and has a private meeting with Abdul-Aziz Abdul Mahadi, the leader of ISCI. Almost immediately thereafter, the ISCI vice president announces support for elections. And several days later, the central government, backed by US troops and airpower, begins its assault on Sadr neighborhoods in Basra and Baghdad.

So, we’re supporting Mahadi’s attempt to suppress a political rival in order to give McCain something to claim as a political accomplishment of the surge, something guaranteed to be popular in the US, like the last Iraqi election — “remember the purple fingers of Iraqis who had voted all over the mainstream television broadcasts?” It’s believable in light of the political connection between this war and shrub’s second term in office, but here’s a different take.

Read the rest of Kieschnick’s argument here.

Obama, politics and theology: Fr. Mark Harris put me onto a post at Covenant entitled “Racism and the meaning of Baptism.” Actually, it’s a fairly lengthy excerpt from an article, by Professor J. Kameron Carter of Duke University, in Theology Today. That, in turn, led me to this Carter opinion piece in the Des Moines Register. I especially like this paragraph:

The challenge of Obama’s speech is that it advanced a politics of race that says post-racial politics cannot amount to a refusal to remember. It requires memory, even though it is more comfortable not to remember. We remember for the sake of being responsible for the present so that we can chart a new American future.

But Professor Carter’s language here is quite different from the language of the reflection quoted at Covenant. There’s an edge to the newspaper piece, a seeming willingness to be adversarial. Among other things, he argues that one cannot speak politically about race in America:

To speak of such unsavory matters in the context of politics is to be deemed a “race man.” And once deemed a race man, a candidate is dismissed, his political aspirations dashed against the stones.

And with respect to Jeremiah Wright, he says:

It is worth noting that in disavowing his former pastor’s remarks, Obama also held up his former pastor as a symbol of the larger frame of black prophetic Christianity. This Christianity is a voice of the nation’s conscience, calling us to our better lights.

But as I say, the language of the Theology Today essay is quite different, and the difference is not just that Carter’s scholarly idiom is larded with postmodernist jargon. His argument appears to be that in the context of trinitarian Christianity, baptism entails a renunciation of all oppositional thought and behavior.

To be baptized into Christ is to move beyond the hegemonic-counterhegemonic polarity. Indeed, it is also to move beyond the dialogical I-Thou polarity, which is but another oscillating and, finally, oppositional metaphysic. It is to move, again in Perkinson’s language, into “a different form of power” precisely because it is entry into a different body-politic, namely, the trinitarian body-politic of Christ. It is this baptismal body-politic that discloses “[t]he reality of what is,” a reality that is a different way of being in the world.

This language seems to devalue the prophetic, as Carter does at the beginning of the quoted excerpt, framed as a response to another theologian whose manner of argument, like Jeremian Wright’s, is shaped by a type of black liberation theology that Carter finds lacking in understanding of “what it means to be a Christian, along with an understanding of the theological task that is transparent to that meaning.” I’m neither moved nor persuaded by this argument. It seems just a fancy-dress version of the age-old argument for quietism in the face of injustice. But I don’t want to say anything else, and should perhaps not have said this much, because I’m aware that I may not be fair.

Professor Carter’s new book, Race: A Theological Account, which I suspect will include the essay I have quoted, will be available from Oxford University Press on August 25, 2008, which happens to be my birthday. I look forward to reading it.

Mobs and smart mobs: Thinking about how the Jeremiah Wright videos have gone viral has reminded me of Howard Rheingold’s theory of smart mobs. The mob that’s after Jeremiah Wright, and Obama because of his association with Wright, may be a smart mob. At least one of the respondents to the Carter op-ed piece at the Des Moines Register thinks so.

When all is said and done, this episode will be viewed as just one more time that the press/media has taken the bait and let itself be led around by an hysterical fringe element. We’re already seeing the electorate stop in their tracks, do their own research and thinking, and concluding that maybe they don’t know as much about the black experience as they ought to but more clearly that they don’t think a contest to see who will denounce, reject, and disown the greatest number of people they disagree with is anything to brag about.

But to judge from the majority of responses to that same piece, this mob may be just an ordinary mob. It’s amusing to a geezer like me to read all the flaming directed at somebody who stands accused of nothing more than using extreme language. But verbally lynching Jeremiah Wright is very serious indeed, and somebody I’ve read has used the term McCarthyism to describe the attack on Obama over his association with Wright. It’s infinitely worse than that — infinitely worse. Obama may recover politically — likely he will. Wright’s reputation, and we’re talking about a good man who has had a distinguished career as a clergyman — Wright’s reputation may never recover.