A Pilgrim’s Digression

…or is it fiddlin’ while New Orleans sinks?

You’ll see the above picture linked to on many Lefty blogs today and used as political fodder in the war against George Bush. However, the picture seems to me less important than what Bush said in a speech shortly before being presented the guitar.
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[Spoilers ahead, for those who haven't read the latest Harry Potter novel]

At the moment I am on a “Harry Potter” marathon re-reading in preparation for the upcoming Goblet of Fire [hereafter known as GOF] movie. I finished reading GOF last night and will begin re-reading “Order of the Phoenix” [OP] tonight. I read the sixth book, “The Half-Blood Prince,” [HBP] in the weeks after it first appeared back in July.

On top of all that reading, I am also reading for the first time C. S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew because that book, too, will premiere in theaters this Christmas. Having never read the Narnia books, I don’t want my first impression of the story to be a movie, even though the movie looks to be quite good.

Fantasy is hot in Hollywood.

Incidentally, I wonder if anyone has noticed that the character Cedric Diggory in GOF may be named after the little boy named Digory in Lewis’s Narnia books? It seems likely. After reading Lewis, I may have more parallels between the works to point out.
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March of the Penguins

We took Brendan to see this film on Saturday. It was a rainy, cool day, and tired of remaining inside all day we went to the movies. I was a little skeptical that the film would hold his attention, and I wanted to see the new Disney movie Valiant. I’m rather glad my wife overruled me. The reviews of Valiant have not been stellar; March of the Penguins, however, turned out to be quite good, and though it was a documentary, it held a four year old’s attention quite well. Or perhaps it was merely Morgan Freeman’s voice that held his attention.

The plot, such as it is, is simple: it follows the course of about a year in the life of the Emperor Penguins of Antarctica, from the time they come out of the sea to mate, to the time their offspring return to the sea to live and feed for four years until reaching their own maturity.

Children enjoy the scenes of penguins sliding on their bellies over the ice and snow, sometimes even slipping and falling on the ice. The best laughter-inducing scene is of two penguins trying to dive through a hole in the ice at the same time. Scenes of penguins leaping from the water and sliding on their bellies across the ice also draw great laughs.

However, the movie does not spare children from facing nature’s crueler aspects. In one scene, a leopard seal hunts the penguins underwater and makes a feast of one of them. In another, a Giant Antarctic Petrel catches and kills a baby penguin while adult penguins stand by, doing nothing to stop it. Brendan and other children in the theater were most disturbed by the latter scene. Brendan asked what the bird was doing, and we lied to him. My wife said the Petrel was gathering feathers for its feather collection. To which Brendan responded rather archly, “For the feather collection in its stomach?” So she told him the truth, that the Petrel was going to eat the baby penguin.

As an adult watching the film, I was most captivated by two things: the loyalty of the male and female penguins in raising their baby; and the wonder of adaptation that allows these animals to live in the harshest environment on earth. The loyalty of the penguins the narrator, Morgan Freeman, calls “love,” which I think is a bit unscientific, though it feels good. However, there are some beautiful scenes of penguin pairs expressing what might be termed affection for one another and for their baby. What is most incredible is how the male and female take turns travelling up to seventy miles to the sea for food, which they bring back in their stomach and regurgitate for the baby. The male, who is chiefly responsible for incubating the egg, goes the longest without food, spending up to several months protecting the egg from the deadly elements while the mother is away feeding. While this sacrifice can be explained scientifically as necessary for the survival of the species, there is something nonetheless awesome about it.

On the issue of adaptation, I found myself wondering about how and especially why these birds adapted to life in Antarctica, rather than leaving the continent as it grew colder. I’m not sure science can offer an explanation for that. Contemplating the “why” of Evolution is a bit like pondering the mysteries of God’s judgement. Sometimes the only answer we get back is “This is just the way it is.”

I rise at 4:30 in the morning to get ready for work; typically, I read a chapter from my Bible before leaving the house to go to the bus stop.

This morning, I read 1st Samuel chapter 8. The Israelites ask the prophet, or seer, Samuel for a king to rule over them “such as all the other nations have.” Samuel is displeased. The Israelites are not supposed to be like “all the other nations.” Up until now, Jehovah alone has been their king.

So Samuel prays to God, and God tells him to give them what they want, but warn them about the consequences.

10 Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the Lord will not answer you in that day.”

The Israelites refuse to listen to Samuel, saying “No! We want a king to rule over us.” Samuel gives them Saul, “a man without equal,” who eventually becomes mad with power and paranoia and leads Israel into a dark time.

As an instructive story, this tale has several morals. The moral of the story is “be careful what you wish for because you may just get it.” The moral of the story is also that as Christians we should not desire to be like everyone else, but should stand apart. Maybe there is even a warning here for those of a religious temperament not to become too involved with politics. There also seems to be some lesson here about erecting human institutions that either on purpose or unintentionally replace God as our King.

Medieval folk, not heeding this lesson, believed that the human King was God’s representative on Earth and was due unswerving obedience. The Great Chain of Being that stretched from the lowest creature to God included a link in the chain for the Monarch, who stood next only to God.

However, the story of Saul is not only a warning against monarchy, which would be of no relevance to modern Americans, but it is also a warning about the tendency of all governments towards corruption. Note that Samuel’s choice of Saul is almost democratic in nature. In modern parlance, he is responding to “the will of the people.” Thus every bit as much as dictators, leaders in supposedly “free” countries convince our sons and daughters to fight their wars; leaders in Democratic societies tax us to support themselves, their acolytes, and the limitless bureaucracy that thrives like a pod of leaches on the skin of a nation; in short, our leaders enslave us to their selfish causes, and like the Israelites we still say “We want a king to rule over us!” Why? Why? I ask this question every time I read another sad story about the death or maiming of a soldier.

Yesterday, I read that the President now justifies the war in Iraq by saying that the “mission” in Iraq must go forward to honor the sacrifice of those who have given their lives for it, i.e. Americans must continue dying so that those who have alread died did not die in vain (boy, the Vietnam parallels just keep mounting, don’t they?). Why? Why must death follow upon death in such a vicious circle?

I think we want a king because we are afraid of the alternative, which is freedom. Freedom means living in a state of persistant insecurity regarding our mortality. Freedom means living with the fact that we cannot prevent our own death, whether by an act of terrorism or by an ordinary crime or by natural causes. For some reason, this insecurity is unbearable for some people. I understand why it is unbearable for politicians—another terrorist attack will end careers, thus ending the gravy train.

But why is the possibility of dying so unbearable for common people? I live in a city where it’s not only possible that I’ll experience a terrorist attack, but (so I am told again and again by our leaders) I live in a city where another attack is extremely likely. Even barring a terrorist attack, I live in a region of high crime. I drive my car. I don’t exercise enough. Death is literally at my door from the moment I rise in the morning, and considering that a large number of people die in their sleep, maybe I don’t even have to get out of bed in order to face death.

And yet people cannot face death. Thus they cannot face freedom. Give us a king to rule over us so we do not have to consider the arbitrary, all-too-fleeting nature of our lives. A king will help us beat back death. A king will give us a tangible enemy, a physical representation of death, whom we can fight and slay. We’ve taken Donne’s poem “Death, be not proud” and turned it on its head. We put our hope for an end to death not in Jesus Christ, but in a politician who promises eternal war against the forces of Death.

Therefore fighting death, we die; and the King tells us more deaths are required to stop death. When we’ve finally had enough and cry out for relief, will the Lord answer?

The Capitol Lounge on Pennsylvania Avenue SE burned yesterday morning. It caught fire about six AM and was still burning as I walked to work about 6:30. Fire trucks had C street blocked from 2nd street to third, and Pennsylvania and Independence were also blocked all the way to third street. It was quite a fire.

As I crossed Independence Ave., I was almost hit by a car heading the wrong way down the street. I hadn’t even looked for traffic before crossing because the street was blocked off; there wasn’t supposed to be any traffic on it. A cop directing traffic yelled “What the hell are you doing?” I thought he was yelling at me for jaywalking. He was yelling at the car going the wrong way. It had squealed to a halt right beside me. “What are you doing?” He yelled again, sounding more exasperated than angry this time. I couldn’t hear what the driver said.

I expect if I continue living in this city any length of time, I am probably going to be struck and killed by car.

This morning, the Capitol Lounge was boarded up and closed and there was little trace of the fire, except for some soot on the sidewalk and the scorched “DC Doughnut” sign hanging in the window. The cause of the fire is said to be a smoldering cigarette thrown into a trashcan.

However, rumors are that this must be an act of terrorism. Terrorists are trying to disrupt the social life of Capitol Hill staffers, sowing chaos in an attempt to change how we live our lives. We will be steadfast in the face of this threat; we will not be cowed. We’ll go to Bullfeathers for lunch instead.
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Simpsons Season 6

The box may have changed, but the DVD set of “The Simpsons” sixth season provides the best laughs yet of the series. So far, I have watched only disc one, and I can already say that this season contains two of the best episodes ever: “Itchy and Scratchy Land,” a biting satire on the Disney themeparks, and “Sideshow Bob Roberts,” in which the Republicans nominate a convicted felon to run for Mayor of Springfield.

What amazes me most, watching the latter episode roughly a decade after it first aired, is how relevant it is. The episode begins with Homer and Lisa in the family car, listening to Springfield’s Conservative talk radio host, Birch Barlow, an unmistakable parody of Rush Limbaugh. Barlow even crackles paper in front of the microphone and taps his desk, imitating Limbaugh’s trademark tics. The name “Birch” is probably a reference to the racist organization, the John Birch Society.

When Sideshow Bob Terwilliger phones the Barlow show from prison to complain about his wrongful incarceration, Barlow takes up his cause and calls upon his listeners to petition Mayor Quimby to have Bob released. Quimby, saying that he knows which way the wind is blowing and he can blow, too, releases Bob who soon becomes a rival candidate for mayor.

Meeting at GOP headquarters—a spooky, Transylvania-like castle on a hill—Mr. Burns and fellow Republicans, including Barlow and a sallow-skinned vampire, choose Bob to represent the Republican party in the upcoming election. Bob’s campaign tactics consist of literally wrapping himself in the American flag, smiling in a mechanical way that suggests painful intestinal gas, and slogans meant to demonize his oppononent as weak, corrupt, and unable to act. There is even a scene in which Bob accuses Quimby of flip-flopping.

Unable to compete with Bob’s antics, the equally corrupt Mayor Quimby runs the famous “Quimby For Mayor” campaign ad, the concluding line of which is “It’s not the mayor’s fault that the stadium collapsed.” And on election day, Bart and Lisa campaign for him at the polls (something that is in fact illegal, but then this is a cartoon, right?) by telling people “This time he really is the lesser of two evils.” What Lisa is in fact pointing at is the classic nineteen-nineties paradox that an unabashedly sleazy, philandering politician is better than a faux-upright, sleazy politician.

Perhaps the best line of all comes when Bob is exposed for voter fraud. In a rage, he tells a courtroom that though their guilt prompts them to vote Democratic, what they really want is a cold-hearted Republican to “brutalize criminals,” cut taxes, and rule them like a king.

It’s surprising that we have to go back a decade to find such a cutting satire of Republican politics. Living today in a decade in which Conservatism has triumphed, and the Birch Barlows can be found not only on AM radio, but on FoxNews as well as every other cable news channel on television, a political satire such as the “Sideshow Bob Roberts” episode would never be produced today. Indeed recent episodes of “The Simpsons” have never even touched the politics of the times in which we live today. It has been left to cruder programs, such as “Southpark,” to satirize the modern political condition, and frankly, judging from the film Team America: World Police “Southpark’s” creators are far more likely to skewer the GOP opposition than the GOP which rules us. We cannot look to Parker and Stone for comic relief from the sanctimony and crushing paranoia of the modern Republican party.

“The Simpsons” season six has been a pleasant surprise to me, so far, having forgotten about the character of Birch Barlow and Sideshow Bob’s brief stint as a Republican mayor. I wish that Barlow would make a reappearance on the show in the new season coming up, perhaps after spending some time in rehab. We need to remember what it is like to laugh at those who claim to be our moral and intellectual superiors.

When I was growing up, I always hated my last name. It was odd; it was different from all of the names of my classmates. People were always misspelling it or mispronouncing it. To this day, when I spell my name for people I have to spell it two or three times before they get it right.

McCready. McGrady. McCrudy. McCurdy. McCravy (and it’s variant, McGravy).

These are just a few of the ways I’ve seen it spelled over the years.

McCrappy was the nickname my Middle School torturters assigned to me.
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http://www.washingtonpost…5082201255.html

Talk Show Host Graham Fired

Washington radio station WMAL-AM fired talk show host Michael Graham yesterday after he refused to soften his description of Islam as “a terrorist organization” on the air last month.

Graham had been suspended without pay from his daily three-hour show since making his comments July 25. The station had conditioned his return to the midmorning shift on reading a station-approved statement in which Graham would have said that his anti-Muslim statements were “too broad” and that he sometimes uses “hyperbole” in the course of his program. WMAL also asked Graham to speak to the station’s advertisers and its employees about the controversy.

But Graham refused both conditions, prompting the station to drop him.

According to WMAL, Graham said “Islam is a terrorist organization” 23 times on his July 25 program. On the same show, he also said repeatedly that “moderate Muslims are those who only want to kill Jews” and that “the problem is not extremism. The problem is Islam.”

Not unsurprisingly, Graham resorted to a Liberal argument in his defense, saying that his right to freedom of speech had been abridged. Graham said, “As a fan of talk radio, I find it absolutely outrageous that pressure from a special interest group like CAIR can result in the abandonment of free speech and open discourse on a talk radio show.”

Some other Conservative talk show host should tell Graham what they have been telling Liberals for years: you have a right to free speech in this country, but you do not have the right to a forum for your speech.
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Despite the fact that I frequently complain about summer and prefer fall or even winter, I always feel a bit sad when summer comes to an end.

I have been off work the past two days. My wife started back to school late last week; her students return today. However, Brendan doesn’t start back to Montessori until tomorrow. Rather than paying a babysitter, I decided to take off yesterday and today to spend some final hours with him before he goes back to school.

So far today, we went to a local diner for breakfast (Brendan likes sitting at the counter); we’ve read a stack of Little Golden Books while waiting for a mechanic to change the fuel filter on the car; we’ve both had a haircut at the barber’s; and we’ve built an elaborate track layout for his Thomas trains in his bedroom. Now we’re watching “Maisy” on Noggin. Nothing special about today, except that the summer is done, another year is about to begin.
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On “Special Report With Brit Hume” last night, Hume’s guest host, Chris Wallace, interviewed Michael Barrone of U.S. News and World Report about the Sheehan protest in Crawford.

It’s odd how news programs have changed over the years. “Special Report” is Fox’s primetime equivalent of the six o’clock news. Having a decent memory of what the six o’clock news used to be, an anchor would never interview another reporter as if that reporter was an expert, unless the reporter was on location. Yet that is exactly what Hume and his guest anchors do on that program. Almost everyone who sits at the desk with Hume for discussion is another reporter, and rather than news, or facts, what we get is exclusively opinion (but opinion presented as unspun truth).

Barrone was contemptuous towards Sheehan, saying that her protest was overreported. He said that comments Sheehan has made indicate she is now part of “the fever swamp left wing,” an inventive phrase I’ve never heard before. Barrone also questioned Sheehan’s stability, drawing an analogy to a hypothetical bereaved mother who journeyed to Hyde Park to protest World War II. He said such a woman in the forties would have been viewed as “a victim of a personal tragedy and who had gone over the bend and they [the media] would have given her no publicity.” He blamed a sensationalist media for declining support of Bush’s war, saying that “in World War II we had a press that wanted us to win that war and today we have a press many of whom don’t want us to win this war.”

Fair and balanced, as they say.

My support for Sheehan and her efforts need no further commentary. I’m going to pull a few quotes from recent news stories and let those stand by themselves as commentary on what I think about Republican efforts to portray Sheehan as part of the “fever swamp left wing” and as an hysterical, emotional female.

First an example of Conservative support for our troops:

Memorial to troops killed in Iraq is vandalized

Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, who has set up a vigil near President Bush’s ranch here, said today that she was “very disturbed” that hundreds of small crosses bearing the names of dead American troops had been knocked down, and that her now 10-day protest was “only the beginning” of national movement to bring all American forces home from the war…

On Monday night, the police arrested a resident who they said had used a truck to mow down about half the 500 small wooden crosses that were hammered into the roadside dirt. The crosses were put back in place by Ms. Sheehan’s supporters this morning as flowers, including crates of long-stemmed red roses, continued to arrive from around the country.

And another neighbor of Bush’s demonstrates his Compassionate Conservatism:

Bush neighbor suffers protest fatigue

Larry Mattlage created quite a stir earlier in the day when he fired his shotgun over his property. The Crawford rancher told reporters he was practicing for dove season.

Mattlage expressed frustration about the ongoing anti-war protest taking place near his property, and said other neighbors are also getting aggravated by all of the protest activity on their quiet country road.

Yeah, it’s a damn inconvenience for a wealthy Texas rancher to be reminded that there are soldiers dying every day in Iraq. And what the hell for? Every day we’re told that terrorists are going to strike us again here in America; it’s only a matter of time.

And finally, Cindy Sheehan reminds us what it’s really all about:

Turning out to support a mother’s protest

At the vigil here at Camp Casey, named for Ms. Sheehan’s dead son, about 200 supporters marched along the roadside in the prairie dusk with lighted candles, read aloud the names of dozens of dead over a coffin drapped with a flag, then sang “Amazing Grace.” Ms. Sheehan, her voice breaking, said she had pretended that she was holding her son’s hand as she had walked hand-in-hand with a supporter at the vigil.

“I’ll never get to see him again,” she said. “I’ll never get to hear his voice again. I’ll never to get to hug him or kiss him or joyfully welcome my grandchildren. This is about flesh and blood. This is what we’re here for.”