THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

I think that high art reposes on popular art; without one there cannot be another. Taking this into account, I would prefer that there is a French subculture in France as opposed to an American one. Even if I admire American cinema enormously, I think that each nation should guard its cultural hegemony; otherwise things could become dangerous.
-- Eric Rohmer

Kevin Michael Grace, 2.47 am, 31 January 2006►

AN INTRODUCTION TO ERIC ROHMER

Everyone who's never seen anything by Eric Rohmer because he's certain he'll hate it (and is proud of his prejudice) can quote Gene Hackman's line from The Conversation:

I saw a Rohmer film once; it was kinda like watching paint dry.

Eh bien. One could as easily say, "I saw a Coppola film once; it was kinda like watching ambition congeal." But that would be as just as unjust -- and more to the point, pointless -- as Hackman's gibe.

The best description of Rohmer's films was given (quite coincidently) by "Charlie Kaufman" in Adaptation:

I don't want to cram in sex or guns or car chases or characters learning profound life lessons or growing or coming to like each other or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end. The book isn't like that, and life isn't like that, it just isn't. I feel very strongly about this.

There are no surprises in Rohmer; there is only the revealing of character. His primary interest is epistemology -- or more precisely, the limits of knowledge, particularly self-knowledge. The foundation of his worldview is the belief that there is only One who does not see through a glass, darkly. Rohmer is a moralist, certainly, but he is a gentle moralist. He has no interest in scoring points off his characters. Goethe said, "Know thyself? If I knew myself, I'd run away." To Rohmer, this is a cry of despair. He teaches us that pride is the greatest sin and that knowledge of our own failings is essential to the attainment of the highest level of humanity.

Rohmer (rear) on the set at age 78: A gentle moralist

Most of the prejudice against Rohmer is simple hatred of the French. The rest is reverse snobbery. "People don't talk like that" -- in complete sentences, even complete paragraphs. One could say the same of Jane Austen. Some people do talk like that, and in any event, articulacy is to be preferred over incoherence, if only because clarity of expression is inseparable from clarity of thought.

According to CDUniverse.com, only about half (17) of Rohmer's features are available with English subtitles in North America. Caveat lector: 13 of these, including Ma nuit chez Maud, are produced in atrocious transfers by Fox Lorber. Of the remaining four, I would recommend starting with Pauline à la plage (Pauline At The Beach), which looks as good as one would expect from a film shot by Néstor Almendros. This is a droll comedy about sexual fatuity and the shameful childishness of "mature" behaviour. I must confess that Pauline was painful to watch, as I saw how much Pierre, with his petulant protestations of moral superiority that make him ridiculous, resembled myself, and how much Marion, with her ceaseless trading of carnal favours as a substitute for love that make her pathetic, resembled an old lover of mine.

The holy grail of Rohmer DVDs is available only in Britain: The Eric Rohmer Collection, eight films (including Pauline) produced by Arrow Films in by all accounts excellent transfers for the absurdly low list price of £40. Of course to even consider buying this I would first need to buy a PAL/NTSC compatible Region 0 DVD player. Not bloody likely. As they say, however, where there's breath, there's hope.

Kevin Michael Grace, 2.45 am, 31 January 2006►

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Reason protests in vain; it cannot set a true value on things.
-- Blaise Pascal, Pensées

Kevin Michael Grace, 11.59 pm, 30 January 2006►

GREAT MOMENTS IN CINEMATIC SMOKING (FIRST IN AN OCCASIONAL SERIES)

Smoking is stylish. There's no denying it. The Church of Jesus Christ the Non-Smoker denies it, but then they're the same people agitating to censor smoking in movies. I signed on to Scenesmoking.org this afternoon, and a counter at the bottom of the page informs me that as of this moment 270, no, wait, 271 "kids have become addicted from seeing tobacco in movies since you hit this site." In other tortured methodology news, scenewanking.org informs me that 577 "kids have become addicted to self-abuse from seeing those scenes in any of the American Pie movies since you hit this site." 

And in Thank You For Being Idiots news, Scenesmoking's crack spy team informs me that Thank You For Smoking apparently contains scenes of smoking. Golly! Who woulda thunk it? (The counter is now up to 287 doomed kiddies.)

Q: Does smoking in movies lead to more smoking kiddies? A: If so, good. It will give them something to do with their hands and will put paid to PDS (Putative Dehydration Syndrome), by which I mean those ambulating fools who must needs tote water bottles and coffee cartons everywhere. The savings realized thereby will result in them having the sufficient readies to afford the smoking habit, which will result in them looking so much more stylish, which is where I came in. (Counter: 309 doomed kiddies.)

As a poke in the eye to the anti-smoking church but more as a tribute to the glorious freemasonry of smoking, I shall be posting in this space memorable smoking scenes from the silver screen. The pictures are from my personal collection, plus whatever I can dig up on Google Image Search. (The greatest smoking scene ever is in Mervyn LeRoy's Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, but this Greatest Generation classic remains inexplicably unavailable on DVD, so I can't show it here. I should be most grateful if any reader with a VHS copy and the means to make screen captures would contact me.)

First up is Eric Rohmer's Ma nuit chez Maud (My Night At Maud's). This is a film about the philosophy of Blaise Pascal, grace versus predestination and the demands of Catholicism in an age of moral relativism. Smoking serves as a signifier (see, I know my Saussure), and what it signifies is concupiscence. 

In our first scene, Jean-Louis, a handsome, unmarried Catholic engineer, has been tricked by an old university friend, Vidal, into staying the night at the apartment of worldly atheist and divorceé Maud. Until this time, we have not seen Jean-Louis smoke, but when he realizes the implications of Vidal's trap, he liberates the Gitanes from his pocket. (332 kiddies now condemned to eternal perdition.)

Jean-Louis and Vidal: Desire's fire is lit

After the drunken, jealous Vidal departs, Jean-Louis is confronted with an abstract problem made flesh. Having previously declared a lack of interest in casual sex, he finds himself in what Catholics call "an occasion of sin." Maud is captivated by his seriousness, even as she mocks him. When she invites him to light her cigarette, she makes known her willingness to be seduced but cruelly twists the knife by forcing him to make a conscious act of will. Is she the Devil, a sad, lonely woman or simply a playful one up for a bit of fun?

Jean-Louis and Maud: An invitation is profferred

Jean-Louis does not have sexual relations with that women, but he has lusted after her in his heart, and she has exposed him as a hypocrite. Later, in one of the seeming coincidences this film abounds in, he again meets the real object of his desire, the enchanting Françoise, the seeming opposite of Maud's worldliness. The same snowstorm that led to Jean-Louis's night with Maud now leads to another occasion of sin, at Françoise's student residence. This time Jean-Louis is given his own room to sleep, but as he tucks in to read a book called Of True And False Conversion, he realizes he is out of matches. They -- and Françoise -- are on the other side of the door. He knows not whether she is another seducer, but he cannot resist the temptation.

Jean-Louis: From darkness into light -- or further darkness?

(386 doomed kiddies. Oh, poor doomed, damned kiddies! But better to live 50 years as a smoker than a slighter longer period as a wuss, I always say.)

Kevin Michael Grace, 11.36 pm, 30 January 2006►

SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM

Oh, this is just too good.

Kevin Michael Grace, 4.59 pm, 30 January 2006►

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

I like being old. I don't have to talk to my parents. No one asks me to help move their stuff. I don't need to understand today's "edgy" TV sitcoms.
-- Professor Farnsworth, Futurama, "Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles" (Jeff Westbrook)

Kevin Michael Grace, 11.54 pm, 29 January 2006►

ELECTIONEERING

This is what greeted me after I followed a Wikipedia Radiohead link. An opportunity to voice my outrage at Stephen Harper's anti-people policies and a chance to win a free iPod? Talk about win-win! These guys certainly know where I live.

Kevin Michael Grace, 2.28 am, 28 January 2006►

DEAR KATIE HAWTHORNE

Sweet, sweet Metrosexual: Sign on from Lexington if you will; cloak yourself with Firefox if you must; dial up from AOL if you can bear it. The Ambler knows from whence you came.

When I compare
What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
Little room do I find for pride. 

I am aware
How many days have been idly spent;
How like an arrow the good intent
Has fallen short or been turned aside.

But who shall dare
To measure loss and gain in this wise?
Defeat may be victory in disguise;
The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.
-- "Loss And Gain," Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Kevin Michael Grace, 4.40 am, 27 January 2006►

STILL NO GARLIC

Bouquets of Gray comments on my No Garlic post:

There may be some truth there. But we have to keep things in perspective. Same-sex marriage was only one of a number of questions competing for the voters' attention. And even if a candidate were out of step with their constituents, SSM could hardly turn a safe-seat into a marginal one.

What we need to be interested in are those marginal ones, and the fate of socially conservative candidates within them.

Last spring, the Globe and Mail published a couple articles pointing out that several Conservative nominations had been won by candidates who seemed to reflect a religious right agenda. I tried to identify candidates that fit (see here and, coming up with only a dozen or so names, concluded that they were not numerous enough to be a threat (here and here).

What happened to those candidates? Here is last summer's list, with some figures:

1. Andrew House in Halifax. Lost. Came in third with 18%, improving on the 2004 candidate's 15%.

2. Rakesh Khosla in Halifax West. Lost. Came in third with 23%, improving on the 2004 candidate's 21%

3. Paul Francis in Sackville-Eastern Shore. Lost. Came in third with 22%, improving on the 2004 candidate's 21.5%.

4. Darrel Reid in Richmond. Lost. Came in second with 39%, improving on the 2004 candidate's 35.3%.

5. Cindy Silver in North Vancouver. Lost. Came in second with 36.7%, improving on the 2004 candidate's 36.4%.

6. Marc Dalton in Burnaby-New Westminster. Lost. Came in third with 27.6%, slipping from the 2004 candidate's 28.3%.

7. Kevin Serviss in Sudbury. Lost. Came in second with 21%, the same as the 2004 candidate's 21%.

8. Ron Cannan in Kelowna. Won with 49%, improving on the 2004 candidate's 48%.

9. Rondo Thomas in Ajax. Lost. Came in second with 32.8%, slipping from the 2004 candidate's 33.6%.

10. David Sweet in Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough. Won with 39.1%, improving on his 34% of 2004.

11. Harold Albrecht in Kitchener-Conestoga. Won with 41.2%, improving on the 2004 candidate's 35.4%.

So, what's the pattern? Most Conservative candidates' totals improved, perhaps not as much as we'd otherwise expect -- the Conservatives nationwide were up 6%, and only Albrecht had that much of an increase. (Rondo Thomas, who was perhaps the most openly evangelical about his evangelicalism, actually went down.)

But even so, these figures suggest that being regarded as a religious activist would only cost a candidate a couple percent. In some races, of course, that can be enough.

CPCer Thomas: Rondo alla loser

Based on Bouquet's First XI, I'd say there's more than "some truth" to my original analysis. A "couple percent" would be statistical static. In the event, "homosexual marriage" was only one consideration of many in the ridings listed above, and not a particularly important one. In Rondo Thomas's case, I'd suggest his belief in Young Earth Creationism was more pertinent to his defeat than his stand against SSM.

Or Stephen Harper's stand (such as it was). I have it on unimpeachable authority that Harper never cared much about SSM and was shocked when it became a popular outrage. If you're going to do the time, do the crime, I always say, but the Right (such as it is) persists in allowing its enemies to circumscribe the limits of its expression on "contentious" issues. The Left says, "What's ours is ours, and what's yours is ours," and the Right replies, "We can live with that."

Every social conservative with a brain (and there are a few) understood that Stephen Harper's stand was a sham. 

Stephen Harper has funked his own historical moment. He refuses to take a formal stand against same-sex marriage. With two-thirds of the voting population shown in polls to be opposed to it and crying out for his leadership he is playing the safe neutral. (David Warren, 6 March 2005.)

And that abjuring the use of the notwithstanding clause (after mincing around it for two years) was running up the white flag.

A serious Conservative leader would instead have declared that he is prepared to use the "notwithstanding clause", not only to repeal “same-sex marriage”, but repeatedly -- on every single government bill if necessary -- to get the courts out of the legislative business, and restore the authority of Parliament. Confronted by the Grits' growling media footpoodles, he could smile like Trudeau and say, "Just watch me!"

The Conservatives should have begun immediately after the last election, making the urgent case against court-written law. For that, in the end, is even more important than “same-sex marriage”. It is a direct threat to democracy in Canada, that cannot be ignored. From the polls, Mr Harper could have had well over half the Canadian electorate solidly behind him. He had only to sound the trumpet eloquently. (David Warren, 17 December 2005.)

Even Egale Canada, the "national organization that advances equality and justice for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans-identified people and their families," recognizes that "Harper ducked the marriage issue." Here are its facts and figures:

• Over the 56 days of the election, Stephen Harper raised the equal marriage issue only once, on the first day of the election. He then made an additional substantive statement in answer to a question during the first two debates, when he said he wouldn’t use the notwithstanding clause. Aside from that, Mr. Harper avoided raising the issue. None of his 121 press releases ever mentioned it.

• Mr. Harper talked about his 5 priorities over and over again. They are the Federal Accountability Act, cutting the GST, cracking down on crime, helping with the cost of raising children, and patient wait time guarantees. Re-opening equal marriage is not one of these priorities.

• The Conservative website (www.conservative.ca) lists 6 key issues: Accountability, Opportunity, Security, Family, Community and Canada. The Family issues page talks about child care, medical wait times and seniors. It makes no mention of equal marriage.

• The Conservative website lists 30 Issue Backgrounders. None deal with equal marriage.

• The Conservative Federal Election Platform is 46 pages long. It is the only document on the website that mentions equal marriage. It is organized by the 6 key issues. Buried on page 33, the last item in the “Stand up for Families” section, is a brief blurb saying a Conservative government will hold a vote on whether to “restore the traditional definition of marriage”. There is no mention of Mr. Harper’s promise not to use the notwithstanding clause. Mr. Harper made a speech to tell the media and Canadians what was in the Platform. The speech was 2,499 words. It made no mention of the equal marriage issue.

• The Conservative website lists 37 Announcements on subjects ranging from small business to veterans to family farms to immigration. None deal with re-opening equal marriage.

• The Conservative homepage lists 38 Ads, Videos and Speeches. None deal with re-opening equal marriage.

• The Conservative website lists 121 news releases between November 27 and January 22. None mention marriage.

• Conservative candidate websites mirrored the main Conservative website in that they almost never made any mention of equal marriage. Of the new candidates, about whom voters know the least, Egale identified the 34 most anti-equality candidates, including all those who responded to the Campaign Life Coalition questionnaire indicating opposition to abortion, equal marriage and euthanasia. Of those 34, only three mentioned the marriage issue on their websites.

Egale is perfectly correct that "the Conservatives have no mandate to reopen equal marriage." Never mind that Stephen Harper will use any means necessary to ensure that "equal marriage" will not be reopened in this Parliament in any real sense. Every public figure with a brain (i.e., not Larry Summers) understands that if you're going to argue against elite opinion, you best be willing to argue long and loud; otherwise, keep your mouth shut.  

Harper's pusillanimous posturing on SSM served only to depress his base and elate his opposition. It provided further false positives in support of the claim that "social conservatives are poison." For example, this from Egale: 

The clearest example of the public’s negative reaction to hidden agendas came in North Vancouver, where Cindy Silver was defeated. Though it was widely predicted she would win, the revelation in the final week of the campaign that she was an anti-equality activist dealt a death blow to her campaign.

My good friend Jay Currie is somewhat less tendentious, but remains economical with the actualité: 

My own analysis is that it would have been somewhat surprising to see candidates winning or losing on the SSM issue in most of the ridings in Canada. However, the shutout experienced by the CPC in the three largest metropolitan areas in Canada may have had a little something to do with both the issue in itself and, perhaps more to the point, the issue as a symbol of a general uneasiness with socon positions.

This uneasiness must be a rather recent development. Otherwise, how to explain that Cindy Silver's riding of North Vancouver went Reform in 1993 and 1997 and Canadian Alliance in 2000? Stephen Harper is a piker in the "scary hidden agendas" department compared to Preston Manning and Stockwell Day.

Cindy Silver lost North Vancouver because its non-white population has topped 20% (according to the 2001 census) or 30% (according to the CBC estimate). The three largest metropolitan areas in Canada are no longer white, and non-whites vote for the Liberal Party. They were bought and paid for years ago. (See my 2004 VDARE election analysis for the demographics.) 

One social conservative with a brain was not so long ago obtuse on this issue:

Why aren't [the Conservatives] mobilizing the huge number of immigrants with explicitly Christian right-wing views? (David Warren, 4 July 2004.)

(Oh, I don't know. Perhaps because since the 1970s the vast majority of immigrants have been pagan or Muslim and that immigrants have precisely one motivating issue: immigration.)

Eighteen months on, our brainy socon was singing the Mark Steyn Blues:

Westerners blame Ontario for refusing to accept any party that has a Western base. There is something in that, but not what appears. The truth is that Ontario has been demographically altered so rapidly and to such a degree, that it is no longer the same province that elected Mike Harris, as recently as 1999. And yet a huge, still basically WASP, semi-rural Ontario continues to exist out there and continues to share precisely the same ethos and outlook as Alberta -- minus the will to live. I believe the “tipping point” that was reached, after decades of weighting the Ontario electorate with “new Canadians,” has had its effect on the old Ontarians, too. They no longer think of themselves as “maîtres chez nous.” (Go ahead: call me Jacques Parizeau.) (David Warren, 14 December 2005.)

Frankly, I don't give a toss about Ontario, but it's a bit thick to blame Ontarians (or Canadians anywhere else) for lacking the "will to live" when their physicians instruct them repeatedly that they're dying. Canada is not half in love with easeful death; it is being murdered. The Liberals I understand; Canada's carcass is their meat. As for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives, the question is whether they remain invincibly ignorant or whether they are hell bent on joining the Liberals in Antenora. 

Kevin Michael Grace, 3.35 am, 27 January 2006►

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Peter Simple by ffolkes

I have been spending a few days's recess from the column on a country estate in Shropshire near the Welsh border, a part of England which has still to some extent escaped the blight of industry, particularly the tourist industry.

Although I was staying as a temporary tenant in one of the apartments of the house, it reminded me of my own Simpleham, with its broad parkland and noble avenues of oak and lime, its lakes where swans were serenely gliding, even its melodious chiming stable clock.

I could have sat and indeed did sit, for hours listening and looking at the green recesses of this earthly paradise, in what Housman called "the country for easy livers, the quietest under the sun." Needless to say, in that high summer there was perfect sunshine every day, and even after we had left this blessed place, its benign influence persisted.

What will England be when no such secret, quiet places remain? It would be a country fit only for mad people who will find relief in violence varied by vile moronic entertainment. It was no good our trying to forget that outside and beyond this enchanted realm there still waited our familiar multicultural society of terror and confusion. Is this to be our only future?
-- Peter Simple, 1913-2006

Kevin Michael Grace, 11.34 pm, 26 January 2006►

NO GARLIC

Remember how Stephen Harper's tepid, cynical, pro forma opposition to "homosexual marriage" (Now With Added Guarantee: No Notwithstanding Clause!) was going to doom the Conservatives? Everyone seemed to believe this, even though legalizing SSM was something only a noisy handful of Canadians was ever going to care much about.

Percentage of Canadians likely to contract a "homosexual marriage": less than 1%. Percentage of Canadians who have had an abortion: greater than 20%. There's the difference. Homosexual marriage was always a boutique enthusiasm. Of course this is Canada we're talking about, the country where every boutique enthusiasm becomes a "defining national characteristic" within a decade.

Surveying the electoral battlefield to quantify the slaughter of the anti-SSM MPs, I noticed something strange. There was no slaughter. Bouquets of Gray, a blogger who supports SSM, counted the anti-"homosexual marriage" MPs who lost to pro-"homosexual marriage" MPs and vice versa. It was a wash.

More significant, Bouquets reviewed the 35 seats which had been held by Liberals who voted against their own party on SSM. Twenty-nine were re-elected; six defeated. All six of the defeated lost to Conservatives, strangely enough, only one of whom (Garth Turner) is known to be pro-SSM. 

QED. If Canadians were so hell bent on punishing those known (or suspected) to harbour retrograde notions on the dignity of gay nuptials, they would have rejected Conservative MPs en masse. And they would have rejected the Liberal holdouts in favour of the only party in English Canada with a monolithic position on SSM (pro): the NDP. That didn't happen either.

But the "social conservatives are poison" argument was never based on any empirical evidence. Of course this is Canada we're talking about here, the country where truth is not a defence. I mean that literally, by the way. You could look it up.

Kevin Michael Grace, 12.34 am, 26 January 2006►

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Critics are fond of displaying their erudition. If they're hostile to a film, they maintain that this or that was stolen from Antonioni; if they like it, they point out the wonderful allusion or homage to René Clair, etc. The cinema is a living language, and once a technical process has been used successfully it becomes part of the medium's vocabulary. The public has merely to be able to understand and interpret it.
-- John Boorman

Kevin Michael Grace, 6.49 am, 25 January 2006►

HARPER'S 'HIDDEN AGENDA' REVEALED?!

It always seems to be the way that whenever traffic to this site spikes dramatically, I'm too busy with other things to take advantage. The last few days have seen me chained to my keyboard, in large part composing belles lettres no one will ever see. But there was also this, about yesterday's Canadian election, composed for the mighty VDARE.com:

Stephen Harper remains an enigma. He has been bedevilled in two consecutive elections by charges he harbors a “hidden agenda.” It is easy enough to dismiss this as scaremongering, but I can say with all honesty (and I have studied the man extensively for a decade) that I have absolutely no idea of what his agenda really is. Harper is a man of many surprises. It would be foolish to suppose his trick bag is empty.

The trick that Harper sprang on the Liberals this year was to return to his roots as a disciple of former Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney and a devotee of his praxis vis-à-vis French Quebec. Mulroney won two consecutive elections by out Liberaling the Liberals in pandering to Quebec, delivering much more money and many of the appurtenances of the sovereign state...

Given that Harper knows well the lessons of the Mulroney debacle (and benefited greatly thereby, in an earlier political incarnation) one might ask: What sort of game is he playing?...

Stephen Harper, in the not-so-distant past, was a quasi-separatist himself, an Alberta separatist. (See the “Alberta Agenda” for details.) At that time, he opined that the Canadian federation was little more than a vast blackmail-bribery scheme. Now he is Prime Minister of that federation; and together with the Bloc commands a majority of seats in Parliament.

As the example of Czechoslovakia proves, countries can be brought to an end without referenda; they can be dismantled legislatively. Could it be that Stephen Harper’s “hidden agenda” is a Czech-style Velvet Divorce?

In any event, the National Question is being answered. Like all open marriages, Canada’s union is doomed. Quebec has become a nation-state, and Canadian Confederation is now nothing more than a not particularly convenient administrative convenience...[More]

As you can see, my essay is deliberately provocative. But not, I think, needlessly so. I defy anyone to demonstrate that Canada is held together by anything other than inertia. Small is beautiful. Stand in the place where you live. More later. Sleep now.

Jacques Parizeau, 30 October 1995: Truth will out

Kevin Michael Grace, 9.08 pm, 24 January 2006►

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY [SPECIAL PERENNIAL ELECTION DAY EDITION]

Who cares about this stupid election? We all know it doesn't matter who gets elected president of Carver. Do you really think it's gonna change anything around here: make one single person smarter or happier or nicer? The only person it does matter to is the one who gets elected. The same pathetic charade happens every year, and everyone makes the same pathetic promises just so they can put it on their transcripts to get into college. So vote for me, because I don't even want to go to college, and I don't care, and as president I won't do anything. The only promise I will make is that if elected I will immediately dismantle the student government, so that none of us will ever have to sit through one of these stupid assemblies again! … Or don't vote for me! Who cares? Don't vote at all!
-- Tammy Metzler, Election (Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor)

Kevin Michael Grace, 3.42 am, 23 January 2006►

POETRY CORNER [TO RCN, MONDAY, 23 JANUARY 2006, 3.04 AM]

The Flaw In Paganism

Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
  Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
  (But, alas, we never do.)

-- Dorothy Parker

Kevin Michael Grace, 3.32 am, 23 January 2006►

POETRY CORNER [TO RCN, SUNDAY, 22 JANUARY 2006, 2.47 AM]

Late, Late, So Late!

Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill!
Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.

No light had we: for that we do repent;
And learning this, the bridegroom will relent.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.

No light: so late! and dark and chill the night!
O let us in, that we may find the light!
Too late, too late: ye cannot enter now.

Have we not heard the bridegroom is so sweet?
O let us in, though late, to kiss his feet!
No, no, too late! ye cannot enter now.

-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from Idylls Of The King, "Guinevere"

Kevin Michael Grace, 10.32 am, 22 January 2006►

IN FOR A PENNY, IN FOR A POUND

Four observations on last night's Saturday Night Live. 

1. Watching Peter Sarsgaard in the "Cat Fancy" sketch, I was reminded of what an old DJ once told me: Make one mistake, and you'll make three. In the event, Sarsgaard made four.

2. Question for Julian Casablancas of the Strokes: Would you take career advice from Michael Jackson? No? Then why are you taking sartorial advice from him? Those leg-warmers over the hands were a nice touch, though.

3. Memo To Writing Staff I: Oh satire, where is thy sting? Taking the mickey out of Drew Barrymore and then inviting her on to "be a good sport about it" is not satire; it's celebrity pandering. There are already 177 TV shows that do that. 

4. Memo To Writing Staff II: Here's a bottle of whisky and a loaded revolver. I'm leaving now and closing the door behind me. You know what to do. As Steve Martin told John Candy in Planes, Trains & Automobiles: "And by the way, you know, when you're telling these little stories? Here's a good idea -- have a point. It makes it so much more interesting!"

Barrymore: Swing free or die

Kevin Michael Grace, 1.26 am, 22 January 2006►

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY [SPECIAL ONE-STOP IRAQ FIASCO EXPLANATION EDITION]

How is the world ruled, and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.
-- Karl Kraus

Kevin Michael Grace, 11.58 am, 21 January 2006►

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

The age of mutual compliments is gradually sinking into its grave. Frankly, we are not minded to assist its resurrection. He who does not attack the bad, defends the good but halfway.
-- Robert Schumann

Kevin Michael Grace, 11.15 am, 20 January 2006►

RIDING OFF INTO THE SUNSET

My tribute to Ang Lee's The Greatest Story Ever Told provoked a pleasing succès de scandale on Oscarwatch.com but was sadly unincluded in Antonia Zerbisias's Golden Globes Hatecrime Roundup. [Editor's Note: The text is interrupted here. A splenetic outburst worthy of John Osborne was composed and then deleted.]

In compensation for the snub, I received a unusually thoughtful note from a fellow called Jeff Snyder (an American, of course), which reads in part:

I think most have missed the real significance of Brokeback Mountain. It is not, despite its subject matter, about homosexuality or about the universality of love. 

Snyder referred me to his website posting on the subject:

At the risk of being ridiculous by commenting on a movie I have not seen and will not likely ever see, my idea of the cultural significance of this movie runs counter to that thus far offered in reviews or comments I have seen.

The movie has been characterized as a romance, and based on the trailer I saw and reviews I have read I don't doubt it for a second. In Love in the Western World, Denis de Rougemont explored the development and meaning of the modern Western notion of love between the sexes, which he saw as a rejection of the Christian notion of love. One of his key points, as I recall, is that romantic love, and the intense passion of romantic love, could not and did not exist without obstacles preventing its consummation. This love was love thwarted, was a love fundamentally in love with an ideal of love. So it is that in the standard romance movie, the story ends with successful consummation, because that is the end of the passion itself. Remove the obstacles and there is no more passion. De Rougemont, who was a Catholic, had little trouble demonstrating that such love was more obsession with self and self-love than actual love of another, in the Christian sense.

In this light, Brokeback Mountain perhaps signifies, not so much the normalizing and increasing acceptance of homosexuality, or stereotype-busting deconstruction of masculinity represented in traditional Westerns, as the death of romantic love between men and women. There being no real class, cultural or moral obstacles these days to "true love" between men and women, Hollywood and our writers of fiction must now have recourse to historical eras and to the few remaining taboos that exist, albeit in ever tenuous form, in order to create a romance.

If this is correct, the significance of Brokeback Mountain is that romance, in the modern Western world, is on its last legs.

This is exactly right and explains many things. For instance:

1. The disappearance of the love song. If they no longer stand in the way of our love, what's left to sing about? 

2. Closer and Sex In The City: adultery and sexual predation becoming chick things. The men are surfeited -- "Stay me with Xbox, comfort me with porn: for I am sick of love" -- so the women take up the slack. 

3. Gay "marriage." Hey, they are standing in the way of our love! Well, not our love, exactly, but rather its full recognition by the State -- and the concomitant rending of garments by priests and bigots (same thing) this will engender. So we see that after gay "marriage" is everywhere made licit, interest in it will vanish, as the legalization is the consummation.

Romantic love is on its last legs, but how will the end play out? As "love" has been completely politicized, first by Marxists, then feminists and finally by multiculturalists, we shall now witness attempts to force the State to legitimize the few sexual perversities that remain "transgressive": polygamy, pedophilia, bestiality, etc. They are still standing in the way of those loves. But for how much longer?

It is customary at this point for "progressives" to froth at the mouth, but here's the funny thing about slippery slope predictions: every single one made by social conservatives in the past 50 years has come to pass. 

From an Amazon.com review: "When he accepted the Tony Award for Best Play in 2002, Edward Albee said he was grateful that there was room on Broadway for a play about love." 

(For those who don't listen to NPR, he is the fellow who taught John Waters, "There was another value system, there was another kind of beauty and smartness and coolness." It goes without saying he is America's most honoured writer.)

From another Amazon.com review: 

Welcome to the quagmire of human sexuality. The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?... places the audience in the jury box. The accused are Martin, his wife Stevie and their gay teen-aged son Billy. Albee challenges us to question the nature and meaning of love. Can love and shame coexist? Who defines normal? Who, or what, has been betrayed? Who decides which behaviours are acceptable? After the evidence has been presented and issues debated we realize that this play isn't about bestiality or infidelity, but rather intolerance, nonconformity and the arbitrariness of societal standards. Does Albee provide any answers? No, he insists, as he always has, that you find your own. A truly great play.

Yes, Albee's hit is about a married man -- played by Bill Pullman and Jeremy Irons, among others -- who falls in love with a goat. And no, you just can't get a jury to convict these days.

Albee and muse: Hate is not a family value, etc.

Kevin Michael Grace, 11.04 am, 20 January 2006►

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

The apologists for Mao are discredited or forgotten. It is easy and safe to recognize, among fashionable people and in publishing houses, that Mao’s regime was a murderous horror and Mao himself an unlovely monster. Today’s apologists for China are not naive old communists but naive young capitalists.

They look at the shining towers of Shanghai and at China’s new passion for consumption and production, and they think that liberty will arrive alongside prosperity. In many cases, they believe this because they have made the same mistake about the West, imagining that free markets are automatically connected with liberty in general, and that democracy is a matter of form rather than content. The Reagan-Thatcher development of a new populist conservatism made a god of the market and ignored the great moral and cultural issues, such as defence of the family and opposition to the cultural Marxism known as political correctness. These, as it turned out, are far greater menaces to private life and individual liberty than any foreign enemy now in existence.
-- Peter Hitchens

Kevin Michael Grace, 9.12 am, 19 January 2006►

IF VOTING COULD CHANGE ANYTHING, IT WOULD BE ILLEGAL

And the winner of the 2006 Strange New Respect Award (™Tom Bethell) goes to ...

Stephen "I'm Shortly To Be The Government, And I'm Here To Help You" Harper. The reason I've had so little to say about the election is that I'm disinclined to conflate the State with Almighty God and have no patience with those who do. "Conservative," my ass. Stephen Harper is what David Cameron hopes to be when he grows up.

Point of personal privilege: If the Liberals continue to use my work as a stick to beat Steve-O with, I'm going to have to demand royalties.

Jay Jardine writes:

The Tory election platform basically contains an affirmation of every single solitary Liberal entitlement program and government agency that the conservative movement has spent the last 13 years hollering about -- wrapped up with a big blue ribbon on top.

You need more evidence? Here's the obiter picta:

Lickspittle Newfie Rick Mercer assumes the (new) position

As always, one laughs lest one weep, but honestly, how depraved is a country when its leading "satirist" pimps government agitprop for cash? But I've quoted Patti Smith before, and I'll do it again: "The only way to sell is out." So where's my payoff? High Commissioner in London would be nice. You have an option, Mr Martin, sir!

Kevin Michael Grace, 10.35 am, 17 January 2006►

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

One of the principal functions of “conservatism” in our liberal society is to praise, laud, and glorify the reigning liberal values that the liberals themselves, having moved to the left, no longer believe in. Thus, while it’s questionable whether many white leftists still enthusiastically celebrate Martin Luther King, since that would imply that there’s something about America worth celebrating, white mainstream conservatives very much celebrate him, seeing him as a great figure, truly deserving of his own national holiday. But has it ever occurred to these conservatives that the main idea for which they honor King -- the idea that race-blindness is the highest value, and discrimination and intolerance the greatest wrongs -- is also the main source of the West’s current inability to defend itself from its enemies? To me, this is the most important aspect of King’s legacy. He is one of the fathers of Western suicide.
-- Lawrence Auster

Sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal?: The sainted 'Dr' King
found this image particularly amusing, see here and here

Kevin Michael Grace, 10.15 am, 17 January 2006►

ÉPATEZ LA BOOBOISIE

If the Golden Globes are any indication, the 2006 Academy Awards will be for the GLBT community what 2004 wasn't for Christians: Homecoming Day. Last night, Ang Lee's Romeo + Juliet took four gongs: best drama, director, screenplay and song -- Rufus Wainwright's haunting "It Hurts (Like A Bugger) To Be In Love" -- while Huffman and Hoffman were honoured for Transamerica and Capote. 

Is anyone surprised? How long before Hunchback Mountain becomes a "teachable moment" in every high school in North America? ("In accordance with their religious convictions, Caleb, Schlomo and Mohammed are excused to the library for the rest of the day.") 

Showing the requisite love for Ang Lee's Tristan & Isolde is already mandatory for adults. How long before David Stern forces Larry Miller to make the requisite, grovelling apologies -- one is never enough -- for his "recent act of blatant discrimination"? "Unapologetic, openly gay sportswriter" LZ Granderson takes up the story at ESPN.com, and let the show trial begin:

In addition to the [NBA's Utah] Jazz, Miller owns Megaplex 17, a movie theater in Sandy, Utah. Two Fridays ago it was scheduled to begin showing Brokeback Mountain ...

According to the Salt Lake City Tribune, Miller didn't know the subject matter until a radio interviewer asked him about it the day it was supposed to open. Less than two hours after the interview, Brokeback was pulled from the theater ...

Now, we could assume that just because [Miller] doesn't want a film about gay people to play at his movie theater, that doesn't necessarily mean he's intolerant. He could, for instance, just be making a business decision, worried about a backlash from the good people of Sandy. That would make him a coward, not a bigot ...

But perhaps the greater injustice is that few, including the NBA, have taken Miller to task for it. After all, if he opted to pull Glory Road because he found out the black team won, I'm sure Jesse Jackson and Nancy Grace would be on the first flight to Utah.

Oh, the injustice! The Dreyfus Affair was as nothing to this. Perhaps Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy could hold hearings on revoking Utah's statehood. They could solicit testimony from Heath Ledger, who bids fair to become the Rosa Parks of our time, as theSuperficial.com explains:

Ledger has lashed out at the ... theatres in Utah that refused to show his movie Penis Party Brokeback Mountain.

“Personally, I don’t think the movie is [controversial] but I think maybe the Mormons in Utah do. I think it’s hilarious and very immature of a society,” Ledger said in the Herald Sun. “I heard a while ago that West Virginia was going to ban it but that’s a state that was lynching people only 25 years ago, so that’s to be expected.”

Damn those religions and their damn ... religious convictions. It's obvious they should spend less time praying and more time watching gay cowboy movies and climbing to the top of Mount Man-Butt. Thankfully Heath will show us the way. And while I'm not the American history scholar that Ledger obviously is, I'm fairly certain that West Virginia hasn't been lynching people in recent history. But hopefully he'll travel there in the near future and prove me wrong.

Did I mention that I love the NSFW (or anywhere else) theSuperficial.com and its anonymous author? The real injustice will be if he doesn't win the Pulitzer for commentary. It's heartening to know there's one real man left in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Ledger: An old denim coat will never let you down

Kevin Michael Grace, 3.06 am, 17 January 2006►

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Einstein said “I think the fish will be the last to know water.” I don’t think it would take much stretch of the imagination to say that the modern citizen will be the last to know technology, the reason being that it's no longer something we use but something we live. The popular myth of neutrality, that technology is “neutral” and it’s the use or misuse of it that determines its value, I think is woefully inadequate.

Modern technology was devised, I guess, as a buffer from the ravages of nature, which is at once beautiful and horrible. But instead, it separated us completely from nature to the point that now technology is our new nature -- instead of anima mundi, it’s techno mundi. Mystery is gone to the certainty of technological principles. So the real terror, the real aggression against life comes in the form of the pursuit of our technological happiness.
-- Godfrey Reggio

Kevin Michael Grace, 7.43 am, 16 January 2006►

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