Defending the 12th century since the 14th; blogging since the 21st.

Catholicism, Conservatism, the Middle Ages, Opera, and Historical and Literary Objets d'Art blogged by a suburban dad who teaches law and writes stuff.


"Very fun." -- J. Bottum, Editor, FIRST THINGS

"Too modest" -- Elinor Dashwood

"Perhaps the wisest man on the Web" -- Henry Dieterich

"Hat tip: me (but really Cacciaguida)" -- Diana Feygin, Editor, THE YALE FREE PRESS

"You are my sire. You give me confidence to speak. You raise my heart so high that I am no more I." -- Dante

"Fabulous!"-- Warlock D.J. Prod of Didsbury

Who was Cacciaguida? See Dante's PARADISO, Cantos XV, XVI, & XVII.


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The upcoming feasts

Christmastime is full of subsidiary feast days, some of which showcase the suffering that is never far away from rejoicing, and indeed was part of the original Christmas. I've already posted stuff about the Sts. Stephen and John. Coming up are:

Dec. 28 -- Feast of the Holy Innocents, anciently called Childermass. (Presumably the origin of the name of the Bellairs character, which apparently has been borrowed by the Jonathan Strange people.) The appropriate song is The Coventry Carol. (Via Eve.) The appropriate opera is BORIS GODUNOV. (The best commercial recording is this one, featuring Martti Talvela as Boris and using Mussorgsky's original orchestration. The second best is this one, with Nicolai Ghiaurov as Boris and Talvela as Brother Pimen, and using Rimsky-Korsakov's pimped-up re-orchestration. Since neither is in print, I'll tentatively recommend this one.)

Dec. 29 -- Feast of St. Thomas Becket. Usually inexcusably overlooked. Obviously the movie is Becket. The play is also Becket, or Murder in the Cathedral. The carol -- there isn't one, so I wrote one. Tune: Good King Wenceslas.

Good King Henry Two got whipped
On the Feast of Becket
Great his heart and eke his tongue
When that he could check it

But one day, said he, "This priest,
Who shall rid me of him?"
Now he's got five Saxon monks
Swinging whips above him.

Dec. 30 -- Feast of the Holy Family. (Usually second Sunday in the octave of Christmas, but moved this year because that would fall on Jan.1.) Your priest will tell you that we don't have to follow St. Paul literally any more. I don't know who your priest is, but he'll say that. If you're playing Homily Bingo, take five points if he uses the word "sexist." "Time-bound" only gets you three points -- but if he uses both, you win.

Jan. 1 -- Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, in the current calendar. In the old calendar, before the clergy filled up with the kind of guys who can't stand the sight of blood, it was the Feast of the Circumcision. One doesn't wish to deny Our Lady another feast day, but I think it was a shame to, um, cut this one. Hee hee, hoo hoo, ergghhhhh. Anyway, use either name. Since I'll be visiting Jewish relatives, I know which one I'll use. (I think the Greco-Yiddish word for the Feast of the Circumcision is Chrisbris.)
posted by Cacciaguida at 4:26 PM

 
Feast of St. John




(El Greco's St. John and the Goblet of Fire??)
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:11 AM

 
Pope Benedict, fashionplate

...[T]hose who know Joseph Ratzinger from his years as head of the Vatican's doctrinal office dismiss any notion of vanity in the new pope's dressing habits.

"He wouldn't know Gucci from Smoochi," said Marjorie Weeke, a former official at the Vatican's Social Communications office....

Former? Why can't we hang on to Vatican spokesman who can talk like that? Wouldn't it be great if cardinals gave that kind of quote?

"He probably donned the cape because it was in the papal closet and would keep him warm on a winter evening," she said of the mozzetta.

....When he came out on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica to give his first blessing minutes after his election April 19, an inappropriate black sweater peeked out from under the cuff of his hurriedly donned white cassock. Apparently there was no heating in the Sistine Chapel where the conclave was held, and the new pope might have needed some woolen comfort.

I'll bet it has an embroidered "J" on it and his mum made it.
posted by Cacciaguida at 1:54 PM

 
Feast of St. Stephen: It's more than just "looking out"


posted by Cacciaguida at 1:06 PM

 
It was windy in western Iraq tonight. You could hear it on the phone when Jonathan Lee called. He's doing well; now living in quarters inside the Dam itself, rather than at the Villa. Access to priests has been a problem; there's a shortage in the military chaplaincies, as elsewhere, and understandably, their first priority is where the heaviest fighting is. Today however (yesterday, Iraq time), a priest from the Navy chaplain corps came to the Haditha Dam for Christmas Mass.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:26 PM

 
Urbi et orbi: Pope says there are signs of hope in Mideast. Pictures from the Holy Father's Midnight Mass here, thanks to Reuters.uk.
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:25 PM

 
Now burn, new born to the world,
Double-natured name,
The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled
Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame,
Mid-numbered He in three of the thunder-throne!

-- Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ, The Wreck of the Deutschland, 34
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:18 PM

 
Saint Francis and Saint Benedight
Blesse this house from wicked wight;
From the night-mare and the goblin,
That is hight good fellow Robin;
Keep it from all evil spirits,
Fairies, weazles, rats, and ferrets:
From curfew time
To the next prime.

-- one "Cartwright," quoted in Washington Irving's Christmas at Bracebridge Hall
posted by Cacciaguida at 5:35 PM

 
U.S. Monitored Muslim Sites Across Nation for Radiation. Well I should bloody frellin' well hope so.
posted by Cacciaguida at 5:31 PM

 
New opera: Tobias Picker's AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY

I've just listened to the Met's broadcast of a new opera that the Met itself commissioned: AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY, by Tobias Picker, based on the novel by Theodore Dreiser, which was based on a real murder case in 1906. I won't take up Christmas time with a long commentary (the press bumf about "the dark side of the American dream" gets old real fast), but, two points:

1. It's really cool that new operas are being written in the tonal, accessible, grand-orchestral style kept alive by Samuel Barber, Douglas Moore, Robert Ward, and Carlisle Floyd, in defiance of the atonalism and/or minimalism demanded by the critics and academics. (I happen to like the first atonal opera ever produced, Berg's WOZZECK, which the Met will broadcast next Saturday, but what's interesting in one early and highly fitting dramatic setting should never have been allowed to create a new politburo for classical composition.)

2. I haven't read the Dreiser novel, and I'm not sure I can promise to slog through a thousand pages that promise to show me "the dark side of the American dream." But here is one observer who thinks the opera is lame in comparison to the novel because it refuses to take a stance of bitterness towards the hero's Christian upbringing. In fact, in the opera, Clyde goes to his execution repentant and calling on Jesus. If that's not Dreiser's take, all the more reason to prefer Picker's.
posted by Cacciaguida at 4:54 PM

 
A merry gentleman, dismayed

Elsewhere in the Telegraph, we find an unusual defense of public celebration of a confessionally Christian Christmas. Simon Heffer writes: "I rejoice wholeheartedly as an atheist that I live in a Christian culture, and I know that, in that undeniably hypocritical act, I am not alone."

I don't know if this is a piece to be glad about or not. He's right as far as he goes (setting aside his acceptance of the Protestant nature of the English religious establishment, which is secondary to his main point). But I'm leary of the notion that non-Christians can endlessly freeload off the Christian "spirit of Christmas." If I had thought so, I might not have converted.
posted by Cacciaguida at 1:22 PM

 
Daily Telegraph columnist Tom Utley sums up the case against same-sex marriage. Not all will appreciate his rather self-dramatizing repentance on the question of public criticism of gay conduct per se, or the success of the aggressive emotional blackmail by "Desmond," but the pay-off is here:

Now I am going to spoil it all, and risk being frozen out again by Desmond, by repeating my belief that the CPA is an utter nonsense, in the most literal sense of the word, and that gay marriage can only ever be a ludicrous parody of the real thing.

Sexual intercourse has three functions: to make babies, to give physical pleasure and to give us a means of expressing our affection for each other. Only that first purpose should concern the state. The other two are no more the Government's business than Sir Elton's bedroom practices are any business of mine.

Every time I think of the Civil Partnership Act, I think of my two sisters - one of them a single mother - who have shared a house for most of their lives and bring up my niece together. They are expressly forbidden by the CPA from forming a civil partnership, for two reasons: (i) they are siblings; and (ii) they have not the slightest sexual interest in each other.

If Sir Elton dies before his partner, Mr Furnish may now inherit all his property, free of inheritance tax - and all because they fancy the pants off each other. When one of my sisters dies, the other will almost certainly have to sell their house to pay the tax bill. Where is the justice in that - and how does it serve the interests of the state?

posted by Cacciaguida at 1:13 PM

 
Pius XII: Nose-seph dearest, nose-seph mine....
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:18 PM

 
Father David Choby: Pardon me, boy, is that the Chattanooga Bishop? (Yes: the Diocese of Nashville includes the entire state.) [But see comments.]

Yet another non-monsignor diocesan administrator promoted to the top job. A sign Pope Benedict is looking for proven talent rather than proven clubability? ("Clubability" means suitability for club membership, though Lord knows the other possible meaning occasionally intrudes into the imagination.)
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:05 PM

 
What the well-dressed Pope is wearing: via Greg here, and the Curt Jester here. Re-mainstreaming the traditional liturgy may take a little longer, but Renaissance-era vestments are coming down from the attic and onto the Holy Father almost daily. Go, team!

I suppose this will provoke the usual snarking about Pope Benedict's sartorial punctiliousness. I'm so tired, frankly, of the formula gay = well-dressed, straight = slob. I'm seriously thinking of starting a link section listing my favorite clothing sources and titled "Where the straight guy gets fabulous." Since I'm not a cleric and don't have to weigh the merits of Gammarelli and its competitors, I would probably list J. Press, Brooks Brothers, Jos.A. Bank, L.L.Bean, and Land's End. Links in due course. Suggestions welcome.

Meanwhile, I say to the Holy Father: keep going, and take it all the way -- the Papal Tiara!

EDITED TO ADD: According to Zenit, "camauros date back to the 12th century. They fell into disuse, until the papacy of John XXIII. After that pontificate it fell into disuse again -- until today, to the surprise of observers." And yes, some tourists, and Englishmen, thought it was Santa Claus get-up. And on St. Nicholas/Santa Claus: some history here, Elinor here, and me here.
posted by Cacciaguida at 10:18 PM

 
OK, now to engage a little with Eve's review of the Goblet of Fire movie:

I. What I loved:
The opening. Scary and spooky and wonderful. And we get Barty Crouch Jr. in the very beginning, so the later revelation isn't quite so "...and that came from where?!"

Quite so. The opening of Patrick Doyle's score reminded me of "Mars the Bringer of War" from Holst's The Planets, and it couldn't have been more appropriate. As for putting Barty Jr. in that scene, I read somewhere that they ran this past JKR and she was like, yeah, could've happened. Which could mean, I should've been more clear about that, thank you for correcting my narrative blooper.

Neville. Adorable in every scene. So much love!

In the books, by the way, I cordially loathe Neville. In his scenes with Snape, I have to remind myself in Very Firm Tones that my religion says even morons don't deserve humiliation. (A maxim from which I have frequently benefited.) But in the movies, and most especially GOF, I love him and I see what his fans are talking about.

He grows on one. He starts off as comic relief, and slowly turns out to be much more.

Rita's Quill: I'm only "heh" about Rita herself--fun, but not quite fun enough--but her salacious quill is hilarious. (Oh, and yes, I picked up on her cheek-stroking with Fleur. Rita, you scamp!)

Eve catches that, I catch (in HBP) Slughorn carrying the torch for Lily and rolling out the redhead carpet for Ginny. Gaa, buncha pervs, the lot of us.

Chaos at the Quidditch World Cup: Well done, and very "life in wartime." But we lost the entire political angle of Muggle-baiting, the ethical questions of Levicorpus by Death Eaters vs. Obliviate by Ministry goons....

...and Ton-Tongue Toffee by the Twins. Just "desserts," or Muggle-baiting? Arthur condemns it as the latter, though he can see what Dudley is; yet he has no problem with memory-mod.

2) That's a lot of damage to the school. Is Harry's performance, as shown in the movie, really admirable? The other champions managed not to destroy half the towers and roofs around them.

Well, that we know of. Maybe it was overkill for the groundlings, but nothing a little "reparo" can't fix.

III. Strong dislike:
Beauxbatons: What'n Ah say What'n was up with their idiotic swoony entrance?

Butt'n Ah say butt. Those skirts didn't get that way by shrinkin' in the wash. Or if you mean the little dovecote dance move -- eh, just pageantry, like the once-inevitable ballet in act II of an opera. This is a more operatic movie than the first three; more on this in a mo'.

Cute Krum. In the book, he's described as sallow-skinned, hook-nosed, and generally Snapeish. I really hope this description foreshadows an interesting Krum character arc. Regardless, I would have loved another Snapey heartthrob.

Cute? Attractive, I would guess (right, Lauren?), but not without menace (still with me, Lauren?). Anyway, whatever his past or future, Krum weighs in as a nice boy in this novel/movie. I say that because no one with death-eating proclivities would have made himself as vulnerable to a (supposed) male rival as Krum does in the "Harry, a vort" scene in the book.

More importantly, we get no sense of why Hermione gives him the time of day. In the book, he was bookish (I think? at least he spent lots of time in the library, though I can't remember if that was merely a ploy to woo Hermione--even so, good on him for recognizing this aspect of her character) and seemed somewhat distant from a Durmstrang that came across as manipulative and unpleasant. In the movie, it's all very He Saw Her Across A Crowded Room; which... ick.

Good point. The viewer who hasn't read the book would assume she was just bowled over by being asked to the Ball by the BMOC. And she's not that type -- or is she?

"'You only like him because he's handsome,' said Ron scathingly.
"'Excuse me, I don't like people just because they're handsome,' said Hermione indignantly.
Ron gave a loud false cough, which sounded oddly like 'Lockhart!'."

-- GOF, "Beauxbatons and Durmstrang"

Shrill Hermione: So I love Hermione in PS/SS, and even in COS and the book of POA. She's believably awful ("You've got dirt, on your nose. Just there. Did you know?") and believably adorable. In the movie of POA she started getting kinda generic action-heroine, which is just not who Hermione is. And in GOF she plays almost the entire movie in Fishwife mode. I didn't sense her love of the boys (especially Ron) and I really missed the text's understanding of her ruthlessness (captive Rita).

Well as a confirmed "heroine addict," it's my view that the Hermione of the GOF movie is no shriller than the Hermione of the book. She has a certain amount to be distressed about: what Mad-Eye is up to with those curses, mother-henning Neville (which she has done since, literally, before we first met her in PS), mediating the Harry-Ron falling-out, and worrying about whether Harry will get killed in the tasks.

Anyway, I can't agree that he's predominantly in Fishwife mode in the movie in which she has her first date, and her first big prom-like event, and so obviously gets in touch with her inner goddess. Emma Watson said of the Yule Ball scene: "I didn't know there that many ways to walk down a flight of stairs." If it was like that for the actress, what must that moment have been like for the character?

Moaning Myrtle: I love Myrtle. She's hilarious and fun, and serves as an effectively spooky guide to the characters' maturation. But in this movie she basically assaults a 14-year-old, and it was just gross. Like, she gives Harry Potter an unwanted lap dance. Seriously icky.

The suggestive line about the bubbles going away was in the book, but Myrtle simpering in the crook of Harry's arm definitely was not. Yeah, ick.

Daniel Radcliffe Can't Cry. Sorry. Loved the setup of that scene--everyone cheering the victory until they realize what's happened--but loathed the execution.

Well, it worked for me. Robbie Coltrane handled very well the business of slowly ceasing to applaud as realization dawns. Also a nice reminder that while Hagrid may be an overgrown child, he's not dumb.

The ending: Anticlimax defined.

No: music-driven. Get the album and listen to the tracks called "Another Year Ends" (really, a funeral hymn for Cedric) and "Hogwart's Hymn" -- not a school march, but a meditation full of echt-English, Elgarian melancholy and grandeur. Very operatic. (I know, Elgar never wrote an opera, but he was about the most operatic symphonist of his time, and The Dream of Gerontius, set to a text by Cardinal Newman, is highly operatic as oratorios go.)

The rest of Eve's points have to do with Snape, and potentially crucial developments in this crucial character that didn't make it into the movie. But that's for future posts -- and not, I think, my next Potter post. That one will be about the Weasleys in light of St. Josemaria Escriva's teachings of the virtues of "large and poor families."
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:31 PM

 
NSA eavesdropping: grow up, everybody. Stop thinking your amours and your recipes and (gasp) your pictures of your grandchildren are all that fascinating to federal agents, some of whom actually get promoted on the basis of crimes solved or prevented. They know more about you from your tax returns than from your e-mails and phone calls.

I'm not saying it's good, I'm just saying it's government in the post-Progressive era. At least the Bush people may have stopped some terrorist acts; all the Clinton people wanted to know about was which Republicans (especially impeachment advocates) were diddling somebody. And the Bush people haven't yet, afawk, pawed through raw FBI files on former Democratic political appointees. Take a deep breath, everybody. Worry about torture, not extendable ears.

Or, if you want some big-government worries, worry about the behavior-modificiation implications of socialized medicine, or about prosecutors who subpoena people who mouth off at them.
posted by Cacciaguida at 6:20 PM

 
Church appointments:

* Salt Lake City Bishop George Hugh Niederauer replaces Archbishop Levada as Archbishop of San Francisco. The Salt Lake Tribune calls Niederauer "an articulate and sharp-witted advocate whose well-chosen words cut to the heart of a matter."

* Fr. Alexander Sample, Chancellor of the Diocese of Marquette, MI (the "upper peninsula" -- Moosylvania) becomes its Bishop. And not even a monsignor first! No very clear reason why former Bishop James Garland, appointed by JPII in 1992, is retiring a year early. Local paper says: "Recently, Sample was appointed to an investigative team that, in response to the Catholic sex abuse crisis in America, visited seminaries in Detroit and Chicago to screen potential priests." And he evidently likes good pens, so that' s a plus.

* "Msgr. James F. Checchio, a priest of the Diocese of Camden, N.J., has been named rector of the North American College, the U.S. seminary in Rome." I don't know anything about Msgr. Checchio, including how he pronounces his name (normal Italian spelling rules would suggest "KEK-yo"), but I do know that Camden Bishop Joseph Galante has a good reputation among the good guys (Richmond Bishop Francis diLorenzo was one of his co-consecrators), and when the bishop is a good guy, his team-members get promoted (just ask Archbishop Chaput).

Anyone else have some 411 on these fellows?

There, that's enough clerical gossip for at least a year -- though whether it'll really be a year until I post some more, we'll have to see.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:44 AM

 
Broke-Camel's-Back Mountain

There's a Los Angeles Times story about Brokeback Mountain that's being widely reprinted around the MSM, as for instance here in Long Island-based Newsday. Note the, ah, headline: breathlessly hopeful; almost small-"e" evangelical. In its attitude toward the benighted fly-overs, generous hope vies with long experience of those stiff-necked people: maybe this flick will draw a few hardened Christians to the altar-call ("Just A-- I Am"), but more likely Ang Lee will have to shake the dust off his feet and move on.

Meanwhile, whatever the USCCB's movie-rating office has covered itself in over this, it isn't glory. Catch up on that here (Jimmy Akin guest-writing on Mark Shea's blog). One can argue about whether the Bishops' reviewers and their airheaded rating-categories should be changed, but perhaps the larger question is: in the age of the "empowered laity," and with dozens of on-line movie rating services available, why exactly does any of the contents of our collection envelopes go to pay bureaucrats to review movies? This would be a scandal even if those reviewers were reliably Catholic. The only case I can see for the Office of Film and Broadcasting is that it without it, those same people might be doing liturgy.
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:13 AM

 
New York Sun:

Saddam's WMD Moved to Syria, An Israeli Says

By IRA STOLL - Staff Reporter of the Sun
December 15, 2005

....The Israeli officer, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, asserted that Saddam spirited his chemical weapons out of the country on the eve of the war. "He transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria," General Yaalon told The New York Sun over dinner in New York on Tuesday night. "No one went to Syria to find it."....

Read the rest. (Hat-tip: WorldwideStandard.com) Since I have never believed that Saddam didn't have WMDs right up until the invasion (I guess I officially differ from the Bush administration on this), this story surprises me less than it might others.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:37 PM

 
Cacciadelia at the podium: "Mom likes the Irish Tenors, but do you know what I would hate? If a bunch of ladies got together to form the Russian Sopranos. Nzgghhhh!"
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:06 PM

 
I am your blowback: a Wall St. Journal reporter becomes a Marine officer. Much, much to think about here. Excerpts:

....A year ago, I was at my sister's house using her husband's laptop when I came across a video of an American in Iraq being beheaded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The details are beyond description here; let's just say it was obscene. At first I admit I felt a touch of the terror they wanted me to feel, but then I felt the anger they didn't. We often talk about how our policies are radicalizing young men in the Middle East to become our enemies, but rarely do we talk about how their actions are radicalizing us. In a brief moment of revulsion, sitting there in that living room, I became their blowback.

....The officer-selection officer wasn't impressed with my age, my Chinese language abilities or the fact that I worked for one of the great newspapers of the world. His only question was, "How's your endurance?"

Well, I can sit at my desk for 12 hours straight. Fourteen if I have a bag of Reese's.

He said if I wanted a shot at this I'd have to ace the physical fitness test, where a perfect score consisted of 20 pull-ups, 100 crunches in two minutes, and a three-mile run in 18 minutes. Essentially he was telling me to pack it in and go home. After assuring him I didn't have a criminal record or any tattoos, either of which would have required yet another waiver (my age [31] already required the first), I took an application....

I made a quick trip back to New York in April to take a preliminary physical fitness test with the recruitment officer at the USS Intrepid. By then I could do 13 pull-ups, all my crunches, and a three-mile run along the West Side Highway in a little under 21 minutes, all in all a mediocre performance that was barely passable. When I was done, the officer told me to wipe the foam off my mouth, but I did him one better and puked all over the tarmac. He liked that a lot. That's when we both knew I was going for it.

Friends ask if I worry about going from a life of independent thought and action to a life of hierarchy and teamwork. At the moment, I find that appealing because it means being part of something bigger than I am. As for how different it's going to be, that, too, has its appeal because it's the opposite of what I've been doing up to now. Why should I do something that's a "natural fit" with what I already do? Why shouldn't I try to expand myself?

In a way, I see the Marines as a microcosm of America at its best. Their focus isn't on weapons and tactics, but on leadership. That's the whole point of the Marines. They care about each other in good times and bad, they've always had to fight for their existence....

Read the whole thing.
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:48 PM

 
Mitt Romney's presidential candidacy -- the "M-word" isn't Mormon, it 's Massachusetts. Nonetheless, our English-speaking-world brethren at The Times -- you know, the one in London, the The Times -- ask whether "America is ready to elect a Mormon as its president."

It's not clear what the spin is: that the Yanks are so backwards that their red-staters (outside of Utah, of course) will never elect someone from a funky religion? Or that our blue-staters are so terrified that they'll secede and return to the mother country if Mitt is elected? (The latter is more likely, I'd say.)

Now, me, I'm a Brownback man for the time being. But Mitt gave a heck of a good audition speech at the Federalist Society convention last month, and he's worth taking a look at.

The Times winds up with:

Mr Romney can also take encouragement from the experience of his Mormon father, George Romney, who was Governor of Michigan. His 1968 presidential bid imploded after he said that he had been “brainwashed” into supporting the Vietnam War. “But until then,” Steve Hess, of the Brookings Institution, said, “there was no question he could have been elected.”

Actually, there is the gravest question. The elder Romney was not born on American soil (his folks were travelling in Mexico at the time of his birth, as I recall). He was therefore ineligible to be President (U.S. Const., Art. II, Sec. 1, clause 5), just as Ahnuld is, and a constitutional crisis would have loomed if he hadn't dropped out of the race. (Finding a plaintiff with standing to bring the suit would have been dicey, but I daresay any primary opponent could have sought an injunction barring George Romney from the ballot. Whether the courts would or should have dismissed this as a non-justiciable "political question" is another matter. Sometimes the American people just have to enforce their own Constitution.)
posted by Cacciaguida at 7:18 PM

 
Oi, did this ever need to be said! British Orthodox-Jewish scholar Levi Sokolic, writing in The Jewish Press (hey, that's what these chaps call their newspaper -- I'm not going all E. Michael Jones on you about the media in general!) notes first that support for Israel by conservative Christians appears to be based on deep conviction and not just a passing alliance. Then he goes on:

What is it that many Jews really fear from the perceived power of the Christian Right? They fear for the secular leftist causes, beliefs, practices and values that they espouse and hold dear. But then, Torah Judaism is even stronger in its opposition to what these secular Jews believe and how they define themselves.

....[T]he reason many Jews are reluctant to acknowledge or accept any alliance with conservative Christians — when clearly it is secular liberals who are the greater threat, both immediate and long term — is that such an alliance exposes a major fault line among those who call themselves Jews, a fault line many Jews prefer to pretend does not exist.

Namely, it makes salient the division between secular and Reform Jews on the one hand, and Torah-observant Jews on the other. It reveals to one and all that there is not one Jewish people, but at least two, and that these two peoples are often highly antagonistic to one another, each with a different conception of what “Jewish” means. Each has different interests, and these interests frequently clash.

Life would be so much easier for many Jews if conservative Christians were open, rabid anti-Semites. Unfortunately for such Jews, these are found largely on the Left.

(Hat-tip: Zorak)
posted by Cacciaguida at 3:27 PM

 
From far away we come
And farther we must go.
How far, how far,
My blogwatch star?


Seven+ habits of highly defective poets (hat-tip: Eve)

Zorak is vigilante

Choosy girls choose Ron

Curt Jester didn't expect the Vanish Inquisition

American Thinker: Joe Wilson, Frogman? (Hat-tip: Never Yet Melted)

ThreatsWatch: Heavy voter turnout in town near Haditha.

Oscarswatch: Fox is putting up Ian McDiarmid for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the Chancellor, later Emperor, in Revenge of the Sith -- probably the only award the picture clearly deserves.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:25 AM

 
Daily Torygraph: Oxford caves in on state selection

By John Clare, Education Editor
(Filed: 15/12/2005)

Oxford colleges are to lose their 800-year-old right to select undergraduates in response to Government pressure to admit more students from state schools and lower social classes.

Instead, admissions will be centralised to encourage applications from comprehensive pupils, who find the present arrangements "confusing and opaque", the university said yesterday.

Pupils will apply to the university, not a specific college, and will be interviewed and selected by the appropriate department, not by their potential tutors.

The university admitted that as a result, colleges will lose autonomy and individuality.

Candidates will be able to state a college preference once they have been offered a place but in principle all successful applicants will be centrally ranked on the basis of their performance, then distributed randomly.

Not Slytherin, not Slytherin!
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:18 AM

 
New Brit Conservative Party leader David Cameron -- score, or snore?
posted by Cacciaguida at 5:43 PM

 
CNN: Funeral directors boost high school recruiting efforts. Hey, I thought we were into "safe schools" and all that....

Oh, you mean recruiting for the profession. Well, have they tried sponsoring youth sports teams? "The Springfield Stiffs: We only look dead!" "The Unionville Caskets: This One's For You!"

Reminds me of the parish bulletin I once saw in a washed-up, former coal-mining town in Pennsylvania: most of the ads were for funeral parlors, and a large banner-ad proclaimed: "Patronize our advertisers."
posted by Cacciaguida at 5:01 PM

 
You want lyrics? I got lyrics:

It came upon a midnight clear,
That indirect fire of old
From insurgents with RPGs
Along the palmy grove.
Pieces of shrapnel in my chipped beef
I strain out when all-clear is heard.
Next morning early we shoot him back,
That bloody insurgent turd.
posted by Cacciaguida at 6:43 PM

 
Top Ten Haditha Dam Christmas Carols:

SURCing Through the Snow
Argh, the Sergeant Tries to Sing
Ad Semper Fidelis
Pieces Flowing Down the River
We Three Kings Disoriented Are
Deck the Halls with Books of Ollie
O Come, O Army Manuel (solo: John McCain)
Bring a Torch, Let’s Light Up the Villa
Indirect Fire We Have Heard on High
Tomorrow Shall Be My Flightwatch Day
posted by Cacciaguida at 4:41 PM

 
Immaculate Conception roundup:

Greg explains the doctrine.
Lauren gets the picture.
Laodicea: Tota pulchra, es, Maria....
Quenta Narwenion quotes Newman.
Zadok the Roman quotes Lumen Gentium.
Monkey spill beans on how to get plenary indulgence!
posted by Cacciaguida at 4:31 PM

 
Jonathan Lee news: Haditha Dam Security Unit in the blogosphere!

First, Bill Roggio has semi-suspended his blog The Fourth Rail and is now blogging as part of a news-agg site called ThreatsWatch. I have adjusted my Crusaders' Corner links accordingly.

Second, Bill is currently touring Marine bases in western Iraq -- and he stopped at the Haditha Dam, where Jonathan Lee is! Here is his report, complete with several photos of SURCs (small unit riverine craft) in action, and a picture of one entire SURC crew (not JL's, however).

Check out the tall gun in the middle of the SURC. Unless I'm much mistaken, that's the .50 cal. gun that JL mans when he's out on patrol.

Bill mentions the Dam Security Unit's commander, Maj. Joe Cleary. I met Maj. Cleary at Camp Lejeune, right after JL had finished his SURC training. Marine officers are great at chatting up the parents, and Maj. Cleary ("Joe," he wanted me to call him, though I didn't) had some fine patter. He said, "I tell these guys, it's not a million-dollar SURC that makes you Jedis -- it's your training as Marines!" Plus, he had some kind things to say about Jonathan Lee. Naturally I think he should be the next commander of all Marine forces in Iraq, and then become Commandant.

The NCOs aren't quites as smooth witht the parents as officers are, but they're very diligent in keeping parents in the loop through regular e-mails. The latest from one of JL's 1stSgts affirms that JL's platoon has in fact returned to the Dam (and to the house the Marines are using there, called "the Villa") after various missions at points between Haditha and the Syrian border. Excerpts:

Well, the other half of the Company returned to us Sunday. They had a successful mission and are glad to be home here at the dam. Now we are turning towards recertification training on them and getting ready to get them back in the mix. We finished up our mission on the lake side here with Operation Bullfrog and now we are waiting on our next assignment. The Marines are all doing well. We have our Christmas tree up in the Villa, and we are starting to decorate the other living areas that the Marines and Sailors live in. Mail has been good, so we want to thank all for that. We have several things on the plate for this week, BZO ranges, classes, weapons, vehicles, radios, and boat PM's. CMR reconciliation.

We're still waiting to find out what BZO ranges, PMs, and CMR are (and why CMR has to be reconciled, and with what or whom). But that kind of uncertainty is part of life with the Marines (LWM).
posted by Cacciaguida at 4:10 PM

 
Bartok's BLUEBEARD'S CASTLE: Spiritual doorfare

"Seven doors. Why are they bolted?"
"So that none can see inside them."
"Give me the keys to all the doors."
"You don't know what's inside them...."
"Bluebeard, I love you...."
"Judith, Judith, do not do it...."

(Best recording in English. Well actually Sally Burgess gets a little screechy toward the end, but Gwynne Howell is a perfect Bluebeard, Mark Elder and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales play above their weight, and it's also the only recording in English since the one with Jerome Hines and Rosalind Elias, conducted by Eugene Ormandy, is out of print.)
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:12 PM

 
I have in hand a "survey" from an organization called U.S. English. Some of the questions, and possible answers:

"Do you favor policies that encourage foreign-language speaking immigrants to continue to primarily use their native languages here in America?" Your question includes a split infinitive. You might be more convincing on the English-only issue if you learned it yourself.

"In the past, the federal government has used your tax dollars to pay for foreign language road signs. Do you believe this is a good policy?" Tush, that's just too easy for anyone who's ever hung out with libertarians. No, sir, I don't support use of tax dollars for road signs: I think roads should be private. And btw, you'll want a hyphen between "foreign" and "language" in that question -- you know, for correct English.

"Healthcare professionals and hospitals receiving federal funds are being forced to provide and pay for translators and non-English-speaking patients. Do you agree that precious medical resources should be spend on providing costly interpreter services?"
a. News to me that money, per se, is a medical resource. The feds give you money, the feds earmark how some of it will be spent -- that's problematic, how?
b. No, the federal government shouldn't required translators: that should be done by state or local law and paid for with state taxes.
c. No, I think it's funny when foreigners keel over dead b/c they can't communicate with doctors. Wtf??????

I may have to cut back my conservative magazine subscriptions if I keep getting on these creepy mailing lists.
posted by Cacciaguida at 12:48 PM

 
"'Deep-seated' is the new black!" And it gets even better from there as Eve shows why thinking with one's loins, or other seats of comfort-seeking, instead of with our minds and our rightly-formed consciences, fixes us way below the standards of human dignity that God sees in us, and even below those that no society can do without.
posted by Cacciaguida at 12:50 PM

 
Headline in the current print National Catholic Register, on an interview with a Maritain expert: "Dead Frenchman Reads Today's News." Hey, I'd tune in for that! Details at 11!
posted by Cacciaguida at 12:04 AM

 
A me Roberti e il Giudice del Fisco....

OK, I kind of want to support the McCain Amendments concerning torture (text here). I have two unanswered questions, though: one concerning protection of civilians, one concerning the incentive structure within the military. More on these in a mo'.

First, the legislative procedural posture. McCain has shown his seriousness by attaching the amendment both to the Defense authorization bill and the Defense appropriation bill. Authorization bills are the way Congress pretends to legislate; appropriation bills are the way it actually legislates. Major government agencies go un-"authorized" for years at a stretch; as long as money is appropriated for them, they can go on functioning.

That means that if you have a policy goal about which you're serious, you have to attach it to an appropriations bill, because authorization bills are at high risk of never passing. Then the Appropriations Subcommittee members and their staffs -- referred to as "the appropriators," as who should say, "the ephors"; Appropriations Subcommittee chairmen are literally called "cardinals" -- will ream your butt for "legislating on an appropriations bill." The horror! As if much legislation ever passed Congress any other way.

Nonetheless, I doubt the McCain amendment will pass. The very lopsidedness of the Senate vote in its favor is a source of my suspicion. Since the House equivalents lack the McCain language, this difference will have to ironed out in a "conference committee" of specially chosen members of each house, called "conferees." Do you think the Senate will instruct its conferees to go to the mat for the McCain language? Do you think the Brooklyn Bridge would look nice on your mantelpiece? Depend on it, those 90 Senators include quite a few who would not have voted for it if they thought it would ever go into effect.

OK, now for my questions:

1. Civilians. I would want some assurance that the McCain Amendment is not a backdoor way of ratifying the Geneva Additional Protocol I of 1977. The U.S. never ratified this, because, as Prof. Yoram Dinstein of the University of Tel Aviv points out in his textbook The Conduct of Hostilities under the Law of International Armed Conflict (pp. 44-47), it is a threat to civilians.

In Articles 43 it dilutes the previously recognized criteria for lawful combatancy, and then in Article 44 it goes still further and extends the POW privileges of lawful combatants to unlawful ones as well.

By depriving the lawful combatants whom we must fight of any incentive to identify themselves as lawful, Additional Protocol I would force our servicemen into the exact diabolical Hobson's choice that jihadists are forcing them into anyway, but, so far, without our official connivance: the choice between treating the entire local populace of a war-zone as combatants -- and you know what? That's not good for civilians! -- or treating them all as civilians, including the ones who are about to shoot you and blow up your buddies.

Why did the U.N. float this puppy in 1977? Oh come on -- you remember the mid-70s. You don't? Well I do; I was a student at the United Nations International School in those days and I'll tell you in plain words. It was the heyday of Soviet-sponsored "wars of national liberation" in those Third World nations that still tilted to the U.S. in the Cold War, and of dominance of the U.N. by Third World governments that tilted toward the USSR. Additional Protocol I of 1977 transparently aimed at giving "liberation movements," "popular front guerrillas," and other terrorists equal status with lawful combatants, as that term had been understood in centuries' worth of the law of war and in the original Geneva Conventions.

The amazing thing is that even under Jimmy Carter, the U.S. said no, on the whole, we don't think we'll agree to treat the PLO, the Khmer Rouge, and the Baader-Meinhof Gang as the legal equivalent of an army that wears uniforms, carries its weapons openly, answers to an orderly chain of command, and observes the other requirements of lawful combatancy. But thanks for askin'.

Does the McCain Amendment have anything to do with the Additional Protocol? You tell me. By its terms, it applies the Army Field Manual to all detainees in DoD custody. The Field Manual, I presume, was drafted to comply with the Geneval Conventions -- the pre-1977 ones, that is. Apply the Manual to all DoD detainees, and you're applying it to unlawful combatants as well as lawful ones. If that's not the Additional Protocol, it'll do until the Additional Protocol comes along.

2. Incentives within the military. Some may fear that even if enacted the McCain Amdendment won't actually be obeyed. That's possible. But it's also possible that it will provide a new and improved way for ambitious officers to build careers on the ruins of those of accused subordinates. Does anyone remember the sequelae to Tailhook, and how the military can get when it places apparent freedom from error over actual honor and victory? The Pentagon reads the Washington Post just like the rest of us. Winning wars and training others to win wars are, unfortunately, not the only ways to become a hero within the iron triangle of the E-Ring, the Hill, and the media: you can also do it by becoming known as a veritable lion on sexual harassment, or torture, or whatever the outrage-generator du jour.

Aquittal, ashmittal. A military career is over as soon as the investigation begins. The fact of being investigated remains in your service "jacket." Aquittal following court martial means you won't get sent to the stockade, and that your discharge might be higher than dishonorable. But the military career you chose? Fuhgeddaboutit.

Those most at risk will be younger servicemen placed in charge of unlawful combatants. (No one we know, of course.) Under McCain, as I understand it, those combatants will have to be treated the same as lawful ones. The guys in "legal" -- those nice REMFs (RE = rear echelon) -- will be watching for infractions; time-serving superiors will be looking for JAG investigations coming down the pike.

So. I'd like to support the McCain Amendments. (See Catechism 2297-98, 2312.) But I'd also like to get some answers to these questions.
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:06 PM

 
Pope: plenary indulgence will be available on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Brush up your Latin: the official announcement from the Apostolic Penitentiary (they let them out to make announcements -- kidding!) is here.
posted by Cacciaguida at 6:33 PM

 
The King's good servant, but the queens' first. (Biretta-tip: Uncle Di at Catholic World News.)
posted by Cacciaguida at 12:55 PM

 
Teddyfone.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:53 AM

 
While the Met retains its own, very beautiful, very traditional production of Wagner RING cycle, in June of 2007 it will play host to the Kirov Opera's more modern staging.
posted by Cacciaguida at 4:30 PM

 
Dark Mark foreseen for 2012 "World Cup"
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:24 PM

 
Good news for Snape fans: here (taken by Mugglenet and its sources from a forthcoming calendar) is a scene apparently deleted and, one hopes, being saved for the director's cut. Apparently Newell didn't shortchange the Snape-Karkaroff confrontation as completely as appeared.
posted by Cacciaguida at 5:15 PM

 
Then-Msgr, now-Archbishop Diarmuid Martin seems to have progressed a lot, and not in a good way, since I shared a three-bottle-of-wine lunch with him in Rome twenty years ago. I recovered; did he?
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:32 PM

 
South Korea has better Yule Ball posters than we do. (They also have more broadband and more cardinals-per-diocese). The posters: Hermione and Viktor; Harry; Ron; Hagrid and Olympe

(Sorting Hat-tip: Mugglenet.)
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:52 AM

 
Cho in China. Probably needed a double-praetorian guard, touring a country where government tyranny has produced a catastrophic girl shortage. With a bit more human rights, gentlemen, you wouldn't need Scotland to produce your Chinese superstars.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:03 AM

 
O beautiful for Pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom built
Across the wilderness.
America, America,
God men thine every flaw.
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.

This Calvsymp moment brought to you by Governor William Bradford, Myles Standish, and all their flock with their radically screwed-up theology and their quite breathtaking courage.
posted by Cacciaguida at 12:51 PM

 
"The document" arrives. Text here. Nuanced reportage here. Fact-challenged whining here. Greg explains it all for you here.
posted by Cacciaguida at 12:30 PM

 


"Just because it's taken you three years to notice, Ron,
doesn't mean no one else has spotted I'm a girl!"

^O-O^ Let's see.... I loved the movie!

Teenagers can be so awful, but it's so nice to read, or watch, stories about ones who are brave, relatively innocent, and who have two neurons to rub together, sometimes more.

This movie, like the book, presents squarely a vital question of our times. Which is the scariest: fighting a dragon, facing the re-embodied and newly mighty Dark Lord, or inviting your crush to a dance?

As Jack Benny once said in another context: "I'm thinking, I'm thinking!"

Now, to bring this door-stopper of a fourth volume down to a two and a half hour movie, a few things had to be omitted. These included:

* The Dursleys. Just as well. Richard Griffiths (Falstaff in the Arkangel Shakespeare audio recordings) and Fiona Shaw (the Nurse in an audio of Romeo and Juliet starring Kate Beckinsale) will have enough to do in later episodes. Yes, that also means no floo-network break-in and no Ton Tongue Toffee, but what we get instead is better. Here, Harry is already at The Burrow when the nightmare jolts him, and it's Hermione who shakes him awake. She's fully dressed and has quite evidently just come upstairs from the room she's sharing with Ginny. This gives us the movie's first of many moments of chaste sexual tension, as Hermione nudges Ron awake, and, even though he's perfectly decent, he reacts to her seeing him in his nightshirt by shouting "Bluddy 'ell!" and pulling the cover up to his neck.

("Bluddy 'ell" is also the widespread male reaction later on as the Beauxbatons girls sashay into the great hall. Funny -- but it doesn't quite make up for omission of the Veela, the boys' reactions to the Veela, or, funniest of all, Hermione's reactions to the boys' reactions to the Veela. "Honestly!")

* S.P.E.W. Good job, too. Since I love Hermione, I favor deleting anything that makes her look like an idiot. More regrettable, however, is that along with S.P.E.W., we also lose Winky -- in fact, we get essentially no backstory about la maison Crouch. Indeed, the only purpose observably served by the veritaserum is making Barty Jr. divulge that he isn't Mad-Eye (which we were about to find out anyway, as the polyjuice potion wears off) and making him reveal where the real Mad-Eye is. Those learning the story for the first time are left to guess who killed Barty Sr. ("And they say I'm mad.") I daresay the movie stands up without all this; director's cut, perhaps.

N.B. Very cool shot of Snape holding Barty Jr. at wandpoint, no? Even with no one watching, I don't think Snape was looking at the kid like any kind of pal.

* Durmstrang girls and Beauxbatons boys. Only Hogwarts is coed in the movie. I actually don't remember whether there were Durmstrang girls in the book, but there certainly were Beauxbatons boys: at the Yule Ball, a bunch of them rescue the Patil twins from the sour inattentions of Harry and Ron.

* Rita Skeeter, virtually. Her part was so drastically reduced that there could be continuity problems in the movie of OotP if Hermione has to extort Skeeter's cooperation and no one knows why she can do it. It's as if, having engaged Miranda Richardson (who is superb), they couldn't cut her out entirely, but only almost. I really wanted to see her bottled up, because some people just don't learn any other way: don't get spiney with Hermione!

* Correct French. Oh, the Beauxbatons girls are fine, but Dumbledore pronounces their school's name "Bo-battons." Gaah.

* Richard Harris. Duh. The question is, how good a replacement is Michael Gambon? Here, being an opera fan gives me an advantage: there's nothing we're more used to than seeing and hearing different singers portray the same character. In fact, it's one of the things we live for: collecting, say, the Toscas of Callas, Tebaldi, Price, and Milanov, then arguing about them. This happens even within cycles: in the Solti RING, George London is Wotan in DAS RHEINGOLD, while Hans Hotter takes over the part in DIE WALKURE and SIEGFRIED. In the Karajan RING, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau hands off Wotan to Thomas Stewart after RHEINGOLD, and while Jess Thomas sings Siegfried in the opera of that name, Helge Brilioth takes over that character in GOTTERDAMMERUNG.

So how is Gambon's Dumbledore different? You mean, apart from the strange traces of American accent that keep breaking through? Well, he's less too-good-to-be-true than Harris, and that may be a good thing. Harris was too loveable to be looked at objectively. Gambon's Dumbledore could conceivably make mistakes.

Now I'll tick off a few things that were especially cool:

* The entire cast. A few specifics: Brendan Gleeson -- a brilliant find for Mad-Eye. Alan Rickman -- one treasures every moment. Emma Watson -- I'll stop there. Ralph Fiennes -- my relatives in show biz tell me that's all him, except for the flat nose: that's CG, but the rest is all him, with the movements based on observing (a) reptiles, and (b) videos of Hitler. Katie Leung -- my, these Scots-Chinese are cute the way they talk!

*Patrick Doyle, the composer, replacing John Williams. William's main Harry theme is used once or twice, but otherwise this score is all Doyle, and, despite my great admiration for Williams, I think the change was well-advised. You may remember Doyle's scores for Kenneth Branagh's Shakespeare movies. GoF calls for the solemn touch that thrilled us at Hero's "funeral" in Much Ado About Nothing and in the Non Nobis in Henry V. Doyle's art is on display from the very first, call-to-arms measures, through Harry's triumphs and Voldemort's horrors, culminating in a fitting funeral hymn for Cedric and an Elgarian end to the school year.





Do the Hippogriff!


EDITED TO ADD: The Paladin of Faith and Reason had the same reax I did: loved it, but would have welcomed an hour more, including e.g. the actual World Quidditch Cup game. And yes, I did notice Krum showing his flying! That could not be left out: Krum's overall fanciability is too important to the later plot.
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:07 PM

 
NRO: The Badlands of Al-Anbar
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:17 PM

 
Feast of Christ the King



Eight Spanish Civil War Martyrs Beatified, Oct. 29, 2005

Pope Pius IX, Quas Primas: On the Feast of Christ the King (See esp. paragraphs 15 through 18 for Pope Pius's balanced view of the spiritual and civil aspects of Christ's Kingship.)
posted by Cacciaguida at 8:54 PM

 
"Fans pack theatres for Potter film." Creative team says: Expecto Moneyum! My relatives in the biz saw an advance screening and say it rocks. Hopefully it will show, at least, that chivalry lives!

posted by Cacciaguida at 2:22 PM

 
Back to SURC!

We've heard from Jonathan Lee. He spent a week at al-Qa'im, guarding detainees. Al-Qa'im is a town near, but not quite at, the Syrian border; if you look hard you can find it on this map. Bill Roggio has more news here on operations in that region, as does Blackanthem here.

Jonathan Lee is now back at the Haditha Dam, where the routine of river patrols, crypto work, and life at The Villa now resumes. For a Marine, it's a bit humdrum; for his parents, it's nice to take a few deep breaths.

It occurs to me that as Operation Steel Curtain rolls west-to-east, it may drive fugitive insurgents ahead of it, such that eventually, it won't be just fishermen that one finds out on one's river patrol. Oh well. You can't spell Euphrates without YOU!
posted by Cacciaguida at 1:50 PM

 
It's not Iwo, but it's not a training exercise either

Nothing's certain, but from reading the war-reporting blogs and exchanging e-mails with other parents of the boys in Jonathan Lee's unit, we gather that he is out supporting Regimental Combat Team 2 in Operation Steel Curtain. Sitting around "The Villa" at the Haditha Dam, doing two or three river patrols a week, was getting old. Well, there's supposed to be more of that, when JL and the other Dam Security Unit members get back from their assignment with RCT 2, which the 1stSgt says will be "within the week."

More news and views on Operation Steel Curtain here and here.
posted by Cacciaguida at 1:02 AM

 
The paperback edition of I am Charlotte Simmons has a redesigned cover:




The cover art on the hardcover was simply a Ivy-style seraphed TW in "Dupont University" colors, with the title illegibly scripted over it. The paperback cover, though giving even less play to the actual title, nonetheless carries art that takes us much closer to the heart of the book: Charlotte herself, uncertainly looking around at her world, in a too-plain dress, some hair conspicuously out of place, not knowing what to do with her hands, a partial silhouette to be filled in, oh and by the way notice her cross-country runner's legs -- all this measured against a background weirdly composed of a pennants and synapses. Cover art matters, and this is a big improvement.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:18 AM

 
My DOJ job application was pretty good, but Sam Alito's was even better.
posted by Cacciaguida at 4:46 PM

 
This quiz was meant for girls; it apparently has no male outcomes.

That said, I'm delighted to have scored as Elinor! But I have a question: how anyone can be 75% Elinor and 72% Marianne? Does that mean one is 73.5% a mixture of Elinor and Marianne? And wouldn't that mixture, like, explode?

You scored as Elinor Dashwood. As Marianne's older sister, Elinor lives at the other end of the emotional spectrum. She rarely reveals her intense feelings and is more concerned with being honest and loyal than having what she deserves. Even though her intentions are pure, she sets herself up for loss by constantly placing other people before her own needs. Overall, Elinor is gentle and rational but is just as capable of radical emotions (despite her withholding them) as her sister. Elinor Dashwood 75% Marianne Dashwood 72% Emma Woodhouse 69% Jane Bennet 66% Elizabeth Bennet 53% Lady Catherine 44% Charlotte Lucas 34% Which Jane Austen Character are You? created with QuizFarm.com

posted by Cacciaguida at 2:53 PM

 

You scored as Unipolar Depression. Congraulations! You are depressed! You know just how it feels to bear all the world's burdens, and the value of a 19-hour night's sleep. And you really hate that circle-guy thing on your Zoloft pill packets. Unipolar Depression 67% Antisocial Personality Disorder 25% Borderline Personality Disorder 25% Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder 0% Schizophrenia 0% Eating Disorders 0% Which mental disorder do you have? created with QuizFarm.com

posted by Cacciaguida at 2:42 PM

 
I have de-linked Papa Ratzi Post. In retrospect, it was too much to hope for that anything associated with the New Oxford Review would nonsuck for long.

But more particularly, Mr. Rose's choices of articles to link to (and he does nothing else on the blog) are strange at best, and form inevitable lead-ins to his unmoderated comment boxes, in which anonymous homosexuals spread innuendo about high-octane Church leaders, and a stream of Church-watching Statlers and Waldorfs grousing about how things aren't being done fast enough to suit them.

F that.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:59 PM

 

In these years [1816-1844] there were other expeditions and actions in more faraway places, against pirates, slavers, and sundry unenlightened heathen.

-- Brig. Gen. Edward H. Simmons, USMC(Ret), The United States Marines: The First Two Hundred Years, 1775-1975, p. 29

Nunc pro tunc, Happy 230th Birthday (last Thursday, Nov. 10) to the Marine Corps!
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:47 PM

 
Jordanians rock. (Well, a great many of them. There are still problems like this. But that's an Islamic problem. I didn's say Muslims rock; I said Jordanians do.) This blog expresses solidarity with Jordanians in their grief over this past week's bombings, and thanks them and their king for their stand against Al-Qaeda.
posted by Cacciaguida at 1:07 AM

 
Capt. Ed writes in the Daily Standard:

[T]he French have already heard from people who claim that they can negotiate an end to the violence. Local "emirs" representing the sink estates want the French police to withdraw from the territories and allow sheikhs from the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization with ties to al Qaeda,to arbitrate an end to the riots. "All we demand is to be left alone," says Mouloud Dahmani, an "emir" who promises a return to quiet in exchange for autonomy. It is, in effect, a land-for-peace proposal aimed at the heart of France and Christendom.

posted by Cacciaguida at 12:10 PM

 
"Bar weenies." I don't think Harriet Miers needs any more bashing than she's taken, but I couldn't resist posting this Slate piece about law firms and bar associations in "Texas in the late 1980s and early '90s, a time and place in which truly outstanding lawyers pawned off their 'leadership' duties on those who wouldn't be much missed from the billable-hours assembly line."

(This might be the right point at which to put in a plug for the National Lawyers' Association, a pro-life organization that aims to become a full-service bar association and a real alternative to the ABA.)
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:46 AM

 
Court says parents not sole providers of kids' sex education

Are you sure that's real substantive due process? Well, it's not very good, is it?
posted by Cacciaguida at 3:06 PM

 
Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me! No, not Somalia -- the lobby of the Family Research Council.
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:09 PM

 
This looks like a job for OBVIOUSMAN! Wall St. Journal headline this morning: "Muslim Groups May Gain Strength From French Riots"
posted by Cacciaguida at 7:36 PM

 
Operation Steel Curtain is designed to get jihadists out of western Iraq and seal off the influx of them from Syria, which obviously Syria is not about to do. There has been a Marine KIA in this operation. We pray for his soul and for his family.

On the strategy, Bill Roggio of Fourth Rail says:

When looked at in isolation, individual operations in Anbar province may be interpreted as a futile game of whack-a-mole, with the Coalition blindly striking at the latest insurgent hot spot against an elusive enemy that will rematerialize elsewhere. But a careful look at the past year's operations and efforts to train and deploy the Iraqi Army westward shows the Coalition has a plan, and is executing it.

The hotlink in the above text takes you to Bill's flashpoint narrative of the Anbar campaign, to the tune of the Patton March. Also, check out the CNN video segment on the fighting in Husaybah, to which Bill also links.

And what about Jonathan Lee? Over at the Haditha Dam (well east of the current fighting), things have been quieter since the October 15 vote on the constitution. The worst news is the bad food, and the best news was the steak dinner they had for Halloween, cooked over a grill made from on old fuel drum.

In other Haditha Dam news (motto: One Dam thing after the other), a bunch of young Marines tried to form -- without proper authorization -- a boxing club, to be called The Villa Rumble. (I gather "the Villa" is the name of the house they're living in.) Jonathan Lee did not join, because he objects on principle to organizations that recruit by shining a flashlight in your face at three in the morning.

But really, when is an unauthorized boxing club going to recruit? The funny thing is that successive generations of Privates, PFCs, and Lance Corporals think 1st Sergeants don't know what's going on. They do -- and this one was not persuaded by the theory, advanced by some of the younger guys, that The Villa Rumble was a chess club.
posted by Cacciaguida at 10:40 AM

 
"After four somnolent years," says Mark Steyn, "it turns out finally that there really is an explosive 'Arab street,' but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois." He goes on:

For half a decade, French Arabs have been carrying on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc. The concern of the political class has been to prevent the spread of these attacks to targets of more, ah, general interest. They seem to have lost that battle. Unlike America's Europhiles, France's Arab street correctly identified Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war for what it was: a sign of weakness.

The French have been here before, of course. Seven-thirty-two. Not 7:32 Paris time, which is when the nightly Citroen-torching begins, but 732 A.D. -- as in one and a third millennia ago. By then, the Muslims had advanced a thousand miles north of Gibraltar to control Spain and southern France up to the banks of the Loire. In October 732, the Moorish general Abd al-Rahman and his Muslim army were not exactly at the gates of Paris, but they were within 200 miles, just south of the great Frankish shrine of St. Martin of Tours. Somewhere on the road between Poitiers and Tours, they met a Frankish force and, unlike other Christian armies in Europe, this one held its ground ''like a wall . . . a firm glacial mass,'' as the Chronicle of Isidore puts it. A week later, Abd al-Rahman was dead, the Muslims were heading south, and the French general, Charles, had earned himself the surname ''Martel'' -- or ''the Hammer.''

As if to stress the point, the Belmont Club notes:

The tactics of the "youths" may have evolved spontaneously, and probably did. Nevertheless, because form follows function, they bear an eerie resemblance to tactics employed by the Chechens against the Russian Army in Grozny, and may have been fertilized by ideas from that source.

posted by Cacciaguida at 5:10 PM

 
Secretary Rice celebrates Ramadan with due CAIR. Diana West comments, with many more details.
posted by Cacciaguida at 5:06 PM

 
I've just realized -- the point of The Republic is that you can't control eros, so the philosophically "just" city fails; in fact it's hard enough to control one's own necessary eros (without which there's no philosophy) so as to avoid the temptation of tyranny. Hence, the best possible regime, despite its faults, is democracy; but the best way to participate in it is as a private-life-living philosopher.

Whew.
posted by Cacciaguida at 10:55 PM

 
The end justifies the medians. (If Machiavelli had been a statistician....)
posted by Cacciaguida at 10:39 PM

 

Has the Democrats' War on President Bush turned into a quagmire?

Maybe it’s time for them to look at reality of the Senate and, if appropriate, start formulating a comprehensive plan for withdrawal.

And more like that from IMAO. (Hat-tip: Mr. Z.)
posted by Cacciaguida at 10:31 PM

 
All Saints' Day. Appropriate artwork chosen by Greg.
posted by Cacciaguida at 6:53 PM

 
When is a Supreme Court nominee's religion fair game? When the President or his surrogates pointedly refer to it as one of the nominee's qualifications, especially when there are precious few others. Thus, Roberts's religion was not fair game, Miers's was.

Alito's? Not, because neither the President, any of his surrogates, or any spokesmen for the nominee's cause are out there saying what they said about Miers -- which, mutatis mutandis, would come out something like: "This nominee is OK because he attends this great church, see, it's really really old, and they have this kickin' international posse headed up by a guy in Rome who can get air time for the askin', and, and, and, oh his pastor is pro-life and he thinks most of his congregation is too" etc. etc.

So the Left will say: "Well of course Bush isn't stressing Alito's religion -- he doesn't have to, given Alito's record." And I say: "Right then. My point exactly. Let's debate the record."

But that will leave unsatisfied those opponents who actually wish Bush would stress Alito's religion, because that would authorize public discussion of it as it did with Miers, and that would be good for these folks, see, because, really, they actually don't want another Catholic on the Court.

Whatever the reason, the subject does seem to be coming up. UPI, now owned by the entity that owns The Washington Times, has a story out that begins: "The Roman Catholic Church could have a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court if Samuel Alito is approved to join the body." The Houston Chronicle heads a story: "Alito would give court a Catholic majority -- Nominee's confirmation would mark a religious milestone for the high court." Satirist Jeff Koopersmith appropriate's the Pope's image for a humor piece that's pretty openly anti-Catholic and anti-Italian. And New York's most reportorially-challenged daily goes with hedder: "Alito Could Be 5th Catholic on Current Supreme Court."

The third graf of the Times story gives us just what we always wanted -- the opinion of a Sweet Briar College professor on Catholicism and the Court:

"This would add a whole new meaning to the Catholic rite of confirmation," said Barbara A. Perry, a Supreme Court expert at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. "This would mean that the religion factor no longer matters."

Except that it matters enough to you to make lame jokes about it, and enough to the Times and other outlets to focus attention on it. But you might as well go back to prepping your students for the Magnolia Ball, honeypot: that nice lady from New York doesn't care about your views, only about your jokes at the expense of Catholicism, and it's not very likely she'll call again.
posted by Cacciaguida at 12:24 PM

 
It's...

Certiorari Sam!

posted by Cacciaguida at 10:37 AM

 
"The point of 'Othello,' among other points, is that it is impossible to know another human being," says actor Patrick Page.


Avery Brooks as Othello,
Patrick Page as Iago

"I am not what I am." -- Iago

"My lord is not my lord." -- Desdemona

"She that so young, could give out such a seeming..." -- Iago

"Men should be what they seem." -- Othello and Iago

"Fathers, from hence trust not your daughter's minds
By what you see them act." -- Brabantio

"This cannot be
By no assay of reason: 'tis a pageant
To keep us in false gaze." -- 1st Senator

Eve wrote:

I was worried at first: None of the moments that define Iago, for me, were underlined. ("Are your doors locked?") There seemed an over-credulous emphasis on Iago's various undermotivations--his thwarted ambition, his fear that Othello had cuckolded him. There were some fun bits--Othello comes across as much more of a salesman or politician than usual, his playing on Desdemona's emotions (girls love hurt/comfort narratives!) nicely paralleled with Iago's machinations--but I worried that we would get an Iago reduced to comprehensibility. Fortunately, as the play rolled on, the sociopathy began to show: a barely-human, racking laugh; an affectlessness that only snapped into appropriate emotion when someone was watching. Any Iago has to keep the character's ending in mind: that ferocious denial of intelligibility, "Demand me nothing: what you know, you know:/From this time forth I never will speak word." Patrick Page earned that line, and slammed it home.

Ang Greg wrote:

I had to remind myself that Desdemona wasn't doing all this stuff, because the actor who played him was so convincing. During the intermission I was thinking "how am I supposed to clap when that guy goes on stage for his curtain call?! He's a slanderer and a bigot and a..oh.."

As an opera man, I can tell you that curtain calls serve not only to permit applause, but also to break tension. The Met even keeps to the tradition of having them after every act, and good job too. There are scenes in opera of such tension that we need to applaud the singers -- and break the tension by seeing them out of character -- before we can even go on with the rest of the opera. Who could imagine Tosca and Scarpia not taking a bow together after Act II of TOSCA? Or Violetta and Alfredo after the scene at Flora's ball in TRAVIATA? Or Simone, Paolo, Gabriele, and Amelia after the Council Chamber Scene in SIMON BOCCANEGRA? Or Amneris after the Judgment Scene in AIDA? Or all six principals after Act II of WALKURE?

Well, I can say that I have never seen a production in the spoken theater at which curtain calls were as emotionally necessary as this Othello. And they were executed in evident awareness of this need. The dirge-music continued throughout them. As usual, the secondary characters bowed in groups, the principals bowed individually, and then the entire company bowed. But then we departed from custom. First, the secondaries and some of the principals departed, and Othello, Iago, Desdemona, and Emilia took a group bow. (Colleen Delany and Lise Bruneau totally rocked in these parts, btw.)

Next, the ladies departed into the wings. Left along together, Othello and Iago bowed deeply to each other, and only then turned back and bowed again to the audience. Then they departed, not into the wings, but through doors on opposite sides of the rear wall of the set.

It was an ingenious and appropriate cap to a very memorable evening of tragedy.

N.B. In the above-linked W.Post story, director Michael Kahn notes that he directed an Othello at Stratford, CT, in 1980, but wasn't satisfied with it. I saw that production too. It starred James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer. Plummer spent that summer at Stratford doing Iago and Henry V. Some people have way too much fun! -- and in fact, too much fun was arguably what was wrong with his Iago. He was getting too much enjoyment out of his life as a treacherous, murderous manipulator. "Iago is profoundly miserable," objected a friend at the time. I'm not sure I agree with that; rather, I think this time out, Kahn, with Page, got it right: Iago is incapable of either joy or misery.
posted by Cacciaguida at 8:23 PM

 
Two new blogs:

Why Fret? Catholicism, guitars, politics, culture, software, etc.

Never Yet Melted (file under Conservative Blogs)
posted by Cacciaguida at 7:42 PM

 

Announcing...

...that my son Greg, hereinbefore known as Caccia di Gregorio, is now blogging!

(Actually I've had a link to his blog for some time, but he's only recently decided that the public may know I'm his dad.)
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:30 PM

 
White House used Souter crony to help with Bush crony

I'm not going out of my way to find further material for recriminations about the Miers debacle, but this cannot be passed over in silence. John Fund writes:

Similar pressure has been applied in New Hampshire, site of the nation's first presidential primary in 2008. Newsweek has reported that "when George W. Bush's political team wanted to send ambitious Republican senators a firm message about Harriet Miers (crude summary: 'Lay off her if you ever want our help')," they chose loyal Bush ally and former state attorney general Tom Rath to deliver it. Plans were even launched to confront Virginia's Sen. George Allen, a likely 2008 candidate for president, and demand he sign a pro-Miers pledge. Luckily, the local Bush forces were warned off such a move at the last minute.

Mr. Rath didn't return my calls, and local sources say he is laying low now that reporters have uncovered his key role in pushing the nomination of David Souter in 1990. "It was Rath and [then-Sen. Warren] Rudman who convinced [then White House chief of staff] John Sununu to back Souter," recalls Gordon Humphrey, a former U.S. senator from the Granite State who at the time supported Judge Souter as a member of the Judiciary Committee. The profound disappointment conservatives experienced when Justice Souter, another stealth nominee, veered left is a major reason for the resistance to Harriet Miers.

Un-frickin'-believable.
posted by Cacciaguida at 5:44 PM

 
New nominee: Sam I am?

Apparently it's looking real good for Judge Samuel Alito, U.S. Ct. of Apps., 3rd Cir. This is good news. When Planned Parenthood v. Casey reached the 3rd Circuit, Alito was the only panel member to vote to uphold all the abortion restriction in the statute, including the one (spousal notification) that was disallowed by the panel and later by the Supremes.

Luttig, Owen, and Williams are still in play too. Of all of these, perhaps the best would be Luttig, but I'll pop the cork just the same if it's Alito.
posted by Cacciaguida at 1:55 PM