Context is everything

From that magnificent Year of Our Lord 1961, this is sublime.

The Dave Brubeck Quartet (he's on piano) performing "Take Five" -- written by alto-sax man Paul Desmond -- in glorious black and white . . . and monophonic sound. (And why isn't there more good jazz on TV nowadays?):


FROM THE Year of Our Inner Barbarian 2007, Ernest Sands' "Sing of the Lord's Goodness" is not only highly derivative, to say the least, but in the context of the sacrifice of the Mass certainly brings home the concept of "pick up your cross and follow me."

Preferably to a church where there's a music-free Mass.

And this video represents this song sung as well as it ever will be:

Ooooooooh eeeeeh ooh ah ahhhh! Ting! Tang! Wallawalla bing-bang

They're not your father's head shrinkers.

AND, ACCORDING to Reuters, Congolese men say it's not just short tempers that plague them, thanks to those dadgum sorcerers:

Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

"You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten," Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.

"I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said.

"But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'," he said.

THERE ARE REASONS Kinshasa is not projected to become the next New York City, London or Tokyo.

Consider me alarmed

The following column from Monday's Wall Street Journal is why, boys and girls, we're about to put in the biggest garden we ever have.

Journal columnist Brett Arends doesn't want us to panic, but given that some big-box food sellers are having to ration rice and such, the Hysteria Express already may have left the station:

I don't want to alarm anybody, but maybe it's time for Americans to start stockpiling food.

No, this is not a drill.

You've seen the TV footage of food riots in parts of the developing world. Yes, they're a long way away from the U.S. But most foodstuffs operate in a global market. When the cost of wheat soars in Asia, it will do the same here.

Reality: Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.

"Load up the pantry," says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street's top investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual fund. "I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent. They think it isn't going to happen here. But I don't know how the food companies can absorb higher costs." (Full disclosure: I am an investor in Quaker Strategic)

(snip)

And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They're all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.

These are trends that have been in place for some time.

And if you are hoping they will pass, here's the bad news: They may actually accelerate.

Why do we fight?

Got 99 minutes? Then watch this and be enlightened . . . or at least, if not enlightened, be caused to think really hard about some things.

THE AWARD-WINNING 2005 documentary Why We Fight is what "this" is, and its premise is why we're in Iraq -- and all of the historical reasons that made it inevitable that we would be in Iraq, and fighting in the Middle East for God knows how long -- has a hell of a lot more to do with profit than "freedom."

The bottom line is that we had a republic, but didn't heed Ben Franklin's warning, when a group of citizens asked him at the close of the Constitutional Convention what kind of government the framers had devised.

The founder's reply from 1787 today convicts us: "A republic, if you can keep it."

It's apparent that what we have today is an empire. Empires don't fight for "freedom." Empires fight for empire.

AND WE PAY THE PRICE with our dollars and with squandered opportunities for social justice at home. We pay the price in integrity and ask "What is truth?"

We pay the price with the lives of our young men and women. Or if not our own, other people's.

We have paid the price for empire with our republic. Which we couldn't keep.

Oh, Mandy . . . well you came and you raged without reading, so I sent you away, oh Mandy

I'm not sure how a person with an alleged college education can get out of my April 17 post on Aliza Shvarts -- Yale's "abortion artist" -- what blog bigot Amanda Marcotte got out of it . . . but OK.

WHAT, THEN, I need from you, dear reader, is a good -- well, less bad, actually -- way of breaking to my wife of 25 years that I believe women are subhuman. And what I mean by "less bad" is a way to gild the lily so that a cast-iron skillet does not make forcible contact with my skull.

Those subhuman types go right for the kill, don't you know?

Really, to be honest, I didn't know I thought women were subhuman . . . or that I had likened Ms. Shvarts to a devil . . . or that women needed to be second-class citizens, lest the devil make them do it. But if someone who had to quit the John Edwards campaign said it, then, it must be true.

Or not:

The belief that women are subhuman. Rod Dreher called Shvarts a "monster". Mighty Favog likened her to a devil, invoking a history of belief that women need to be second class citizens because Satan has more sway.

FIRST, I did not liken Aliza Shvarts to the devil. That is sloppy reportage, and I would sue if I gave a flying fug about Amanda Marcotte's inability to keep anything straight -- including her slurs. Besides, she's gettin' me hits, baby.

And I didn't have to stoop to "creative fiction," like a certain demented Yale coed.

What I did was liken Ms. Shvarts to Nazi slimebags from the Third Reich. That's a whole rank lower in the Army of Abject Evil.

And second . . . huh????????

Really, I can't tell you what Mandy thinks, because I have yet to ascertain that she does think. But I can tell you what I think of my wife, who is both a woman and a far better human being than myself.

And I can tell you about the great tragedy of our lives -- something precious we were denied, and which monstrously deluded individuals like Shvarts and Marcotte (let's call them S&M for short) have devalued utterly.

IN THE WORLD of S&M, everything precious is regarded as dung, and dung is lovingly embraced like a pearl of great price. In the world of S&M, though, the pearl of great price is death.

Who -- or what -- in the world would want to do that . . . rejoice in doing that . . . be absolutely desperate to do that? The S&M gals would. In full cooperation with a certain someone's agenda for world domination.

All right -- ahem -- ladies. Now I've just likened you to the devil.

Oh, man! I am, like, sooooooo f***ed up!

Yes, we are.

Not only do the kiddos like their ganja at Colorado, some have decided that getting wasted is a freakin' grand cause. And someday, after reality intervenes, they'll be living in a van down by the river -- and sating their muchies with government cheese.

What?

OH, YEAH . . . like, the Boulder Camera, which, like, isn't really a CAMERA, man . . . it's, like, this newspaper, you know, like, in Boulder, which, like, really isn't a big rock, dude, but is, like, this city by the Rockies, which, like, are these really big mountains, man -- this Boulder Camera, and like, dude, you know it's not really a CAMERA, right? They did this really sweet story on the big 4/20 bash, man! Check it out!

"Nine, eight, seven ..."

A crowd of about 10,000 people collectively began counting down on the University of Colorado's Norlin Quadrangle just before 4:20 p.m. Sunday.

Yet the massive puff of pot smoke that hovers over CU's Boulder campus every April 20 -- the date of an annual, internationally recognized celebration of marijuana -- began rising over the sea of heads earlier than normal this year.

"Oh forget it," one student said, aborting the countdown to 4:20 p.m. and lighting his pipe early. He closed his eyes, taking a deep, long drag.

"Sweet."

Although it's become an annual and renowned event at CU, this year's 4/20 celebration was different in some ways than in many previous years: The crowd was so large it migrated from the long-traditional site of Farrand Field to the larger Norlin Quad; festivities kicked off earlier than normal with daytime concerts; and CU police handed out zero citations.

“At this point, none are anticipated,” said CU police Cmdr. Brad Wiesley.

(snip)

Smoke-out participants — thousands of whom wore green or T-shirts promoting pot — climbed trees, played the bongos, snapped pictures and had miniature picnics.

That, of course, after they sparked the weed they had come to smoke.

CU freshman Emily Benson, 19, of Kansas City, said she thinks the decriminalization of marijuana will become a hot topic in the upcoming political season and said she felt part of something bigger than just a smoke-out on Sunday.

“We’re at the starting point of a movement,” she said. “This is a big part of the reason I applied here — for the weed atmosphere.”

YOU'LL BE HIGHLY GRATIFIED to know that Emily Benson's parents are paying somewhere between $26,000 and $35,000 a year for their little darling to attend the University of Colorado and smoke dope.

Weed not included.

The (almost) work of a madman!

Here we have yet another Associated Press dispatch from some average American place full of average Americans recounting yet another American atrocity or near atrocity.

Fortunately, this one -- in South Carolina -- was of the "near" variety.

It's easy for folks to say "The work of a madman!" -- as in Walker Percy's dystopian novel, "Love in the Ruins" and then change the subject. One has to wonder, though, how many atrocities -- and near atrocities -- have to occur before we stop, scratch our collective head and ask, "What the hell is going on here? What gives?"

And now, the latest AP filing from yet another American anteroom of Hell. What gives?

A high school senior collected enough supplies to carry out a bomb attack on his school and detailed the plot in a hate-filled diary that included maps of the building and admiring notations about the Columbine killers, authorities said Sunday.

Ryan Schallenberger, 18, was arrested Saturday after his parents called police when 10 pounds of ammonium nitrate was delivered to their home in Chesterfield and they discovered the journal, said the town's police chief, Randall Lear.

The teen planned to make several bombs and had all the supplies needed to kill dozens at Chesterfield High School, depending on where the devices were placed and whether they included shrapnel, Lear said. Ammonium nitrate was used in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 that killed 168 people.

"The only thing left was delivering the bombs," the police chief said.

Schallenberger kept a journal for more than a year that detailed his plans for a suicide attack and included maps of the school, police said. The writings did not include a specific time for the attack or the intended targets.

‘He also left an audio tape to be played after he died explaining why he wanted to bomb his school. Lear wouldn't detail what was on the tape except to say Schallenberger was an angry young man.

"He seemed to hate the world. He hated people different from him — the rich boys with good-looking girlfriends," Lear said.

Fifth column in the Fourth Estate

Eisenhower On The Military Industrial Complex - The best free videos are right here
President Dwight Eisenhower, in his farewell address to the American people in 1961, tried to warn us about a military-industrial complex with a vested interest in war unceasing.

HE TRIED TO TELL US that, unchecked, this necessary modern evil would lead to much greater evil.

Now we see what he meant.

Exhibit A: George Bush's dirty little war in Iraq, and the lengths to which his government will go to make sure we "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain." And that we will come to believe what is so plainly so . . . isn't.

It's all in today's New York Times:

The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.

“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.

Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at the National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. “This was a coherent, active policy,” he said.

As conditions in Iraq deteriorated, Mr. Allard recalled, he saw a yawning gap between what analysts were told in private briefings and what subsequent inquiries and books later revealed.

“Night and day,” Mr. Allard said, “I felt we’d been hosed.”

(snip)

Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.”

Though many analysts are paid network consultants, making $500 to $1,000 per appearance, in Pentagon meetings they sometimes spoke as if they were operating behind enemy lines, interviews and transcripts show. Some offered the Pentagon tips on how to outmaneuver the networks, or as one analyst put it to Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, “the Chris Matthewses and the Wolf Blitzers of the world.” Some warned of planned stories or sent the Pentagon copies of their correspondence with network news executives. Many — although certainly not all — faithfully echoed talking points intended to counter critics.

“Good work,” Thomas G. McInerney, a retired Air Force general, consultant and Fox News analyst, wrote to the Pentagon after receiving fresh talking points in late 2006. “We will use it.”

Again and again, records show, the administration has enlisted analysts as a rapid reaction force to rebut what it viewed as critical news coverage, some of it by the networks’ own Pentagon correspondents. For example, when news articles revealed that troops in Iraq were dying because of inadequate body armor, a senior Pentagon official wrote to his colleagues: “I think our analysts — properly armed — can push back in that arena.”

NOW . . . HERE'S what Eisenhower, who knew jes' a leetle bit about the military himself, tried to tell us. Are we listening now?

Is it too late even if we are?

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

3 Chords & the Truth: This one's for Danny

This episode of 3 Chords & the Truth is for Danny -- Danny Federici, longtime sideman for Bruce Springsteen who lost his battle against melanoma Thursday. He was 58.

FEDERICI HAD BEEN a member of the E Street Band, playing keyboards and accordion, since 1973's "The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle" LP -- and he'd played in various bands with the Boss since the late '60s. If you've heard his accordion solo on "4th of July Asbury Park (Sandy)," you know you'll never forget it.

This episode of the Big Show, which will feature the music of Springsteen and the band, also is for the people -- the country -- he lovingly writes about. This episode of 3C&T is for the people who bust their butts chasing the promise America makes -- a promise that is looking more and more like mere national mythology -- but too often can't deliver on.

This episode is for the folks with piles of broken dreams, who wonder what went wrong as they soldier on against the odds.

This episode is for the E Street Band's America. God help us, every one.

Much happier and far less bitchy 2.1

Get over your insane notions of the sanctity of life and you'll be much happier and far less bitchy.

(Anonymous) 4:06 PM

Much happier and far less bitchy 2.0

Get over your insane notions of the sanctity of life and you'll be much happier and far less bitchy.

(Anonymous) 4:06 PM

Much happier and far less bitchy

Get over your insane notions of the sanctity of life and you'll be much happier and far less bitchy.

(Anonymous) 4:06 PM

Godwin's Law: I call bulls***

Godwin's Law is the informal combox protocol stating that the first person to call another a Nazi automatically loses the argument.

Faced with a culture where a Yale "art student" can claim to have inseminated herself and then taken herbal abortifacients so she might smear the menstrual blood and any "products of conception" all over a cube, upon which she intended to project video of herself "miscarrying" into a cup . . . I call bulls*** on Godwin's Law.

If you can't call that evidence of a Nazilike disregard for humanity and the sanctity of human life, then you are left with no words at all to describe the horror afoot in this "culture." In fact, "Nazi" only begins to cover the degree of evil to which Yale's malevolent maven of murder art and her ilk have handed themselves over.

And whether what Aliza Shvarts, Class of '08, has committed is "merely" astoundingly sick "performance art" or, instead, some monstrous neo-Seinfeldian display of "murder about nothing," what we now face is a historical replay of the point at which Weimar debauchery and decadence intersected with the Nazi death cult. All that is required now is some appeal to the greater good beyond the freedom to rut with impunity.

Then again, for all the Aliza Shvartses of the world, I suppose rutting with impunity would be reason aplenty.

AND THERE ARE other Aliza Shvartses out there, though not all have her proclivity for blood-soaked "artistry." Take this comment left for the "Devil and Woman at Yale" post. I won't post it there, but I will put it here for all the world to behold -- and with the expletive partially deleted:

Who gives a s***? At 2 days old it's a bundle of cells and nothing more.

Get over your insane notions of the sanctity of life and you'll be much happier and far less bitchy.

(Anonymous) 4:06 PM

ALIZA SHVARTS' stated purpose of highlighting ambiguity and constructing an "artwork" entirely out of uncertainty is nothing more than a postmodern, mumbo-jumbo recasting of Pontius Pilate's "What is truth?" Likewise, mindless, callous and death-dealing comments such as the one above is just another contemporary echo of a sad and ancient tale.

Ancient Israelite idol-worshippers offered up their children to Moloch. Aztec priests cut the hearts out of virgins to appease their blood-thirsty gods. The Turks killed a million Armenians. Josef Stalin starved between 6 million and 7 million Ukrainians. Pol Pot slaughtered millions of Cambodians in the 1970s.

And we all know what Adolf Hitler did.

Obviously, none of these genocides were marked by "insane notions of the sanctity of life."

I wonder whether Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot were "much happier and far less bitchy."

Danny Federici, RIP

Terrible, terrible news this morning for those of us who, for all these years, have counted on Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band to get us through.

From The Associated Press:

Danny Federici, the longtime keyboard player for Bruce Springsteen whose stylish work helped define the E Street Band’s sound on hits from “Hungry Heart” through “The Rising,” died Thursday. He was 58.

Federici, who had battled melanoma for three years, died at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. News of his death was posted late Thursday on Springsteen’s official Web site.

He last performed with Springsteen and the band last month, appearing during portions of a March 20 show in Indianapolis.

“Danny and I worked together for 40 years — he was the most wonderfully fluid keyboard player and a pure natural musician. I loved him very much ... we grew up together,” Springsteen said in a statement posted on his Web site.

Springsteen concerts scheduled for Friday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Saturday in Orlando were postponed.

AND GO to the Springsteen site and watch this video (scroll down a bit).

The 'art' was a hoax. The depravity is real.

Oh, OK. So now Yale says that Aliza Shvarts was faking the whole thing about inseminating, then aborting, herself for an "art installation."

That it was "a creative fiction."

AND THAT is supposed to make it much less barbaric, disgusting and -- yes -- demonic?

There is no end to how, in fiction, this "art" is no less troubling than if Shvarts' hanging cube had really and truly been smeared with the cellular remains of murdered fetuses. The evidence starts with this update in The Washington Post:

Shvarts told classmates that she had herself artificially inseminated as often as possible for much of this past year, then took legal, herbal abortifacient drugs and filmed herself in her bathtub cramping and bleeding from the miscarriages. She said her work will include video, a sculpture incorporating her blood mixed with Vaseline wrapped in plastic, and a spoken piece describing what she had done.

She declined to comment yesterday. Shvarts presented a mock-up of the project in class last week -- the final piece will go on display at the undergraduate senior art show at Yale on Tuesday -- and told the Yale Daily News that she wanted to provoke debate about the relationship between art and the human body but that the intention of the piece was not to scandalize anyone.

(snip)

In a statement yesterday [Thursday -- R21], Yale spokeswoman Helaine Klasky said: "Ms. Shvarts . . . stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages. The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman's body.

"She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art.

"Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns."

Shvartz, an arts major, told the Yale Daily: "I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity. I think that I'm creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be."

WELL, THEN. Let it be understood that, at Yale, a woman who depicts an act of unutterable evil in an approving -- and most graphic -- manner for the sole sake of stirring up s*** is considered to be an "artist" by the highest authorities. Furthermore, these university authorities consider a pseudo snuff film projected on a blood-smeared cube to be "art."

Yale officials also contend that Shvarts "has the right" to engage in "performance art" that is not only indecent -- if the final piece resembles what was advertised -- but assuredly obscene in the broad sense of the word. (And maybe debatably so in the legal sense.)

And so long as a student's "art" doesn't get you raided by federal or state authorities, more power to the little wretches, right? One is compelled to ask, when considering the modern university, who is teaching whom? And what?

Don't answer that. I think I know.

What's equally troubling is how -- before we knew Shvarts' "art" was a scam -- this was as worked up as Yale's pro-lifers could get:

CLAY member Jonathan Serrato '09 said he does not think CLAY has an official response to Schvarts' exhibition. But personally, Serrato said he found the concept of the senior art project "surprising" and unethical.

"I feel that she's manipulating life for the benefit of her art, and I definitely don't support it," Serrato said. "I think it's morally wrong."

Later, in The Washington Post, the president of Choose Life at Yale was worried about matters of taste:

Students gathered in Beinecke Plaza near the administration building to protest yesterday afternoon [Thursday -- R21], said sophomore John Behan, president of Choose Life at Yale. "CLAY and the entire Yale community, I think, are appalled at what was a serious lapse in taste on the part of the student and the Yale art department."

TO BE FAIR, it wasn't clear from the Post story whether the reporter interviewed Behan before or after the hoax became public. Nevertheless. . . .

Serious lapse in taste?

Surprising . . . unethical . . . morally wrong?

No. Janet Jackson giving God and everybody a Super Bowl peek at her ta-tas was "a serious lapse in taste."

An average day in the life of the Hillary Clinton '08 campaign might be characterized as "surprising," "unethical" or "morally wrong." As would Bill Clinton's canoodling with Monica Lewinsky in the Oral Oval Office.

ABORTING ONE'S CHILDREN for "art's sake" is monstrous on the Hitlerian end of the scale. Pretending to do so in the name of "creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman's body" is equally high on any moral-depravity index, with the only mitigating factor being that no human fetuses actually died in the process.

When one is "pro-life" but still unable -- or afraid -- to call evil by its rightful name, that in itself is a compelling sign that what remains of our Western "civilization" is being sucked into a politically correct vortex that ultimately defines all deviancy, no matter how glaring, down to something approaching . . . normality.

In dealing with lost souls in a fallen world, our culture needs modern-day St. Francis of Assisis. But it needs its Jeremiahs, too:

26
As the thief is shamed when caught, so shall the house of Israel be shamed: They, their kings and their princes, their priests and their prophets;
27
They who say to a piece of wood, "You are my father," and to a stone, "You gave me birth." They turn to me their backs, not their faces; yet, in their time of trouble they cry out, "Rise up and save us!"
28
Where are the gods you made for yourselves? Let them rise up! Will they save you in your time of trouble? For as numerous as your cities are your gods, O Judah! And as many as the streets of Jerusalem are the altars you have set up for Baal.
29
How dare you still plead with me? You have all rebelled against me, says the LORD.
30
In vain I struck your children; the correction they did not take. Your sword devoured your prophets like a ravening lion.
31
You, of this generation, take note of the word of the Lord: Have I been a desert to Israel, a land of darkness? Why do my people say, "We have moved on, we will come to you no more"?
32
Does a virgin forget her jewelry, a bride her sash? Yet my people have forgotten me days without number.
33
How well you pick your way when seeking love! You who, in your wickedness, have gone by ways unclean!
34
You, on whose clothing there is the life-blood of the innocent, whom you found committing no burglary;
35
Yet withal you say, "I am innocent; at least, his anger is turned away from me." Behold, I will judge you on that word of yours, "I have not sinned."

THOSE STILL CAPABLE of seeing evil for what it is need to distinguish between St. Francis moments and Jeremiah moments in the hard slog of redeeming a culture on its death bed. It's a matter of life and death.

For the culture . . . and for us.



UPDATE: If you want another example of how far gone we really are -- particularly in academia -- read this. It really is possible to be so "open-minded" that your brain falls out.

Devil and Woman at Yale

What's the difference between Aliza Shvarts, Yale '08, and Goebbels, Himmler and the Big Kahuna himself, Adolf Hitler.

I don't know. You tell me:

Art major Aliza Shvarts '08 wants to make a statement.

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts' project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock, saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion.

But Shvarts insists her concept was not designed for "shock value."

"I hope it inspires some sort of discourse," Shvarts said. "Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it's not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone."

The "fabricators," or donors, of the sperm were not paid for their services, but Shvarts required them to periodically take tests for sexually transmitted diseases. She said she was not concerned about any medical effects the forced miscarriages may have had on her body. The abortifacient drugs she took were legal and herbal, she said, and she did not feel the need to consult a doctor about her repeated miscarriages.

Shvarts declined to specify the number of sperm donors she used, as well as the number of times she inseminated herself.

JOSEPH GOEBBELS, Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler murdered millions and millions of Jews (and others as well) because they wanted to build a "master race," to "perfect" humanity. According to their sick and murderous ideology, the Jews and Gypsies, etc., etc., were in the way.

According to the Yale Daily News, Aliza Shvarts repeatedly inseminated herself and aborted herself -- repeatedly killed her own offspring -- for no grand cause or ideology, but instead for the sake of dubious "art." And to facilitate "some sort of discourse."

That's it.

If you want to do a comparative study of abomination, at least the Nazis of the Third Reich had going for them the mitigating factor of having committed unspeakable evil in a quixotic, whack scheme to "better humanity." At least as they understood it.

Aliza Shvarts enticed men to "donate" their sperm, inseminated herself like breeding stock and then aborted her children -- over and over and over again -- for the sake of a glorified snuff film. For a senior project at an Ivy League university.

And some professor approved it.

And the university, apparently, is going to "exhibit" it:

"I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity," Shvarts said. "I think that I'm creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be."

The display of Shvarts' project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Shvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Shvarts' self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

Shvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.

School of Art lecturer Pia Lindman, Schvarts' senior-project advisor, could not be reached for comment Wednesday night.

SNUFF VIDEO AND BIOHAZARD for a senior project. This is the level of complete depravity we have come to in this country, in this time.

I can't even make myself pray "Lord have mercy" anymore. Mercy we've received, and we've crapped upon it and thrown it back in God's face.

If the sick, pathetic spectacle of Aliza Shvarts represents, in any sense, who we are and what we do as Americans nowadays, the Lord needs to take us out as soon as possible -- before we destroy the rest of His creation. It will not be pretty.

Congratulations, Aliza Shvarts and Yale University. You've made the Third Reich look comparatively reasoned and sober, because when it comes to one's reasons for atrocity, you just can't beat "What the f***."



UPDATE: Yes, I know Aliza Shvarts has turned out to be a hoaxer -- a.k.a., performance artist.

That changes the particulars, but not the metaphysics. Go here to the newer post.

Taking the bishops to school?

Some commenters have reacted with surprise that Pope Benedict XVI has tackled the monster so directly.

OTHERS THINK he's whitewashing over the depth of the American episcopal rot that allowed the monster -- the Catholic Church's sexual-abuse crisis -- to run so amok for so long.

I think, given the occasion -- vespers with the U.S. bishops at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington -- and that he's a guest in this country, of the American Church, and that his remarks were shown live on EWTN and the cable-news channels, what we saw just might have been an exquisitely diplomatically correct taking of the American bishops to the woodshed. And not just over the sexual predators who hid behind their Roman collars . . . and behind their enabling prelates.

Among the countersigns to the Gospel of life found in America and elsewhere is one that causes deep shame: the sexual abuse of minors. Many of you have spoken to me of the enormous pain that your communities have suffered when clerics have betrayed their priestly obligations and duties by such gravely immoral behavior. As you strive to eliminate this evil wherever it occurs, you may be assured of the prayerful support of God’s people throughout the world. Rightly, you attach priority to showing compassion and care to the victims. It is your God-given responsibility as pastors to bind up the wounds caused by every breach of trust, to foster healing, to promote reconciliation and to reach out with loving concern to those so seriously wronged.

Responding to this situation has not been easy and, as the President of your Episcopal Conference has indicated, it was “sometimes very badly handled”. Now that the scale and gravity of the problem is more clearly understood, you have been able to adopt more focused remedial and disciplinary measures and to promote a safe environment that gives greater protection to young people. While it must be remembered that the overwhelming majority of clergy and religious in America do outstanding work in bringing the liberating message of the Gospel to the people entrusted to their care, it is vitally important that the vulnerable always be shielded from those who would cause harm. In this regard, your efforts to heal and protect are bearing great fruit not only for those directly under your pastoral care, but for all of society.

IN HIS REMARKS, the pope didn't have to note what a mess some bishops made of things. But he did. Definite slam.

And did he have to remind the roomful of "shepherds" that "It is your God-given responsibility as pastors to bind up the wounds caused by every breach of trust . . . "? Ideally, no. Practically, yes.

So necessary that Benedict said it twice . . . "it is vitally important that the vulnerable always be shielded from those who would cause harm," coming just a paragraph later.

To tell you the truth, the entirety of the Holy Father's remarks to his brother bishops struck me as a comprehensive reminder to -- in short -- do your job, dammit.

Here in America, you are blessed with a Catholic laity of considerable cultural diversity, who place their wide-ranging gifts at the service of the Church and of society at large. They look to you to offer them encouragement, leadership and direction. In an age that is saturated with information, the importance of providing sound formation in the faith cannot be overstated. American Catholics have traditionally placed a high value on religious education, both in schools and in the context of adult formation programs. These need to be maintained and expanded. The many generous men and women who devote themselves to charitable activity need to be helped to renew their dedication through a “formation of the heart”: an “encounter with God in Christ which awakens their love and opens their spirits to others” (Deus Caritas Est, 31). At a time when advances in medical science bring new hope to many, they also give rise to previously unimagined ethical challenges. This makes it more important than ever to offer thorough formation in the Church’s moral teaching to Catholics engaged in health care. Wise guidance is needed in all these apostolates, so that they may bear abundant fruit; if they are truly to promote the integral good of the human person, they too need to be made new in Christ our hope.

As preachers of the Gospel and leaders of the Catholic community, you are also called to participate in the exchange of ideas in the public square, helping to shape cultural attitudes. In a context where free speech is valued, and where vigorous and honest debate is encouraged, yours is a respected voice that has much to offer to the discussion of the pressing social and moral questions of the day. By ensuring that the Gospel is clearly heard, you not only form the people of your own community, but in view of the global reach of mass communication, you help to spread the message of Christian hope throughout the world.

Clearly, the Church’s influence on public debate takes place on many different levels. In the United States, as elsewhere, there is much current and proposed legislation that gives cause for concern from the point of view of morality, and the Catholic community, under your guidance, needs to offer a clear and united witness on such matters. Even more important, though, is the gradual opening of the minds and hearts of the wider community to moral truth. Here much remains to be done. Crucial in this regard is the role of the lay faithful to act as a “leaven” in society. Yet it cannot be assumed that all Catholic citizens think in harmony with the Church’s teaching on today’s key ethical questions. Once again, it falls to you to ensure that the moral formation provided at every level of ecclesial life reflects the authentic teaching of the Gospel of life.

YOU THINK THE BISHOPS would have figured all that out by now. And, by almost any measure, little of what the pope said needed to be done is being done -- at least effectively -- by the American Church. That is clear from the statistical data of the recent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, and it is clear to anyone who has toiled in the rocky fields of religious education or youth ministry.

You think a pope would have been content to stick to generalities and a review of the bright side of life. But he didn't.

Somebody had to say it. And, if you consider the speech and the context, you might conclude that the pope said a lot, indeed.

Can't wait to see what else Benedict has to say this week.

Back in the US, back in the US, back in the USSA

I don't know how to beat a dead horse with any degree of panache, nor do I have the inclination to try, but the dead horse of America's present proto-fascist torture regime -- alas -- does still require more flogging.

And it needs to be kept up until the impeachment proceedings and criminal trials begin -- or until the war-crimes trials begin in the Hague, Netherlands. Whichever comes first.

That is the ugly business of democracy which, unfortunately, we have no stomach for at present. Along this present path lay tyranny.

I really have nothing else to add. I'll just let MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and law professor Jonathan Turley fill you in on the particulars.

HAT TIP: Catholic and Enjoying It.

No, not 'no-knock' warrant. . . .

I guess legislators in my home state also missed the memo about how, in what used to be called Christendom, we don't mutilate people as punishment for crimes.

THAT'S ALL ABOUT to change in what -- when I wasn't looking -- must have become the Islamic Republic of Louisiana, as this Associated Press report indicates:

The most serious sex crimes should be punishable by castration, with drugs or surgery, the Louisiana Senate voted on Tuesday.

The bill by Sen. Nick Gautreaux, D-Meaux, would give judges the option of imposing chemical castration on those convicted of sex crimes including aggravated rape, simple rape and indecent behavior with a juvenile. Chemical castration would be mandatory on second offenses, and the offender would have the option of choosing physical castration instead.

Senators voted 32-3 to send the measure to the House.

(snip)

The drug treatment would be mandatory on a second offense, though a medical expert would have to determine that the treatment would be effective.

Once ordered to undergo the treatment, the offender would have the option of physical castration — which Gautreaux said some offenders might prefer to avoid any drug side effects or in hopes of permanently curbing impulses that led to his offense.

WELL, IF THIS BILL becomes law, and if the Gret Stet becomes truly vigilant about ferreting out and prosecuting sexual abuse, the population of some corners of, say, Livingston Parish might be decimated.

And if you fail to get my drift, let me just say that 25 years ago, while working on a news story in that parish, I had a school administrator tell me -- without any hint of humor or irony -- what a horrible problem his school faced with incest. That, sadly, only confirmed what was common knowledge about that neck of the woods at the time.

Last I heard, incest is a sex crime -- even in Louisiana.

So let us hope for swift and vigilant enforcement of the Louisiana criminal code. In a generation or three, we well might be rid of the kind of inbred morons who can elect an assembly such as this.

It's the 'My town's in a song' post

This is the provincial, not to mention stereotypical, "Hey, there's a song about my town on the radio" post. Right now, that song is "Omaha Nights," off of ex-Jayhawk Gary Louris' new album.

Of course, it helps when the song with your town in the title doesn't suck. Louris' "Omaha Nights" passes that test. Good melody, great chorus, well written.

Can't ask for more.