This Is For You, Bud

Suppose you are the CEO of a company. During your sixteen years in charge, the company's profits have dramatically increased. Your share-holders and employees are well compensated, and your customer base has grown significantly. There is, though, a problem. There have been rumors of illegal conduct for years--assertions that, if true, would go some way to explaining how it is that your company was able to do so well. But happy with the increasing profits and the satisfaction of customers and employees alike, you simply ignored them. Eventually, the evidence of the truth of the rumors became overwhelming and you were threatened with legal action. So a decade after the first audible whispers of wrong-doing were heard, you make a few cosmetic changes. This staves off the lawyers for a time, but with the mounting evidence of illegal activity and the superficiality of the initial reforms, they come back. Eventually, you agree to an indepedent review of the allegations. With only a very few exceptions, your employees refuse to cooperate with the investigation. Even so, when the report is completed, over 80 of your employees have been reported as engaging in illegal activity that directly relates to job performance. Furthermore, any reasonable person will extrapolate from this and conclude that a great many others (perhaps more than half) of your employees are or were guilty of the same.

When this report becomes public, what would you expect your future with the company to be? Not bright, I'd say. But if you are Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and your bosses are just happy to be making money hand-over-fist, you get a three-year extension to your $15 million annual contract.

So much for accountability.

Favorite Songs of 2007

There is a long and respectable tradition of music geeks making lists of top albums. The geekier of the geeks also make lists of favorite songs. As a geekier geek, I hereby give to you my favorite songs of the year CD mix. Your mileage may vary.

(Okay, I can't resist saying more: I worry about how the songs hang together and since I give a playlist of these songs to family and friends, I also worry a bit about the kids in the audience. My favorite song this year is Springsteen's "Long Walk Home" but for various reasons I couldn't make it fit on this playlist. So I went with Bruce's wonderful-remake-of-10th-Avenue-Freeze-Out "Livin' in the Future.")

1. “Tournament Of Hearts” by The Weakerthans from Reunion Tour
2. “Reinvent the Wheel” by Bright Eyes from Four Winds EP
3. “Livin' In The Future” by Bruce Springsteen from Magic
4. “Killing The Blues” by Robert Plant & Alison Krauss from Raising Sand
5. “Butterfly Nets” by Bishop Allen from The Broken String
6. “1 2 3 4” by Feist from The Reminder
7. “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” by Spoon from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
8. “We're From Barcelona” by I'm From Barcelona from Let Me Introduce My Friends
9. “The Angels Hung Around” by Rilo Kiley from Under The Blacklight
10. “The Golden State” by John Doe from A Year in the Wilderness
11. “Tell it to the Raven” by The Mendoza Line from 30 Year Low
12. “Fire In The Canyon” by Fountains Of Wayne from Traffic And Weather
13. “Two” by Ryan Adams from Easy Tiger
14. “The Part Where You Let Go” by Hem from Home Again, Home Again
15. “The Temptation Of Adam” by Josh Ritter from The Historical Conquests Of Josh Ritter
16. “Missed the Boat” byModest Mouse We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank
17. “A Bad Sign” by Michael Penn from Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947 [2007 mix]
18. “Down Here Below” by Steve Earle from Washington Square Serenade
19. “I'm On A Roll” by Over The Rhine from The Trumpet Child
20. “Heavenly Day” by Patty Griffin from Children Running Through
21. “Sky Blue Sky” by Wilco from Sky Blue Sky
22. “Without a Struggle” by Golden Smog from Blood On the Slacks EP
23. “Words” by Lucinda William from West

R.I.P. The Biden Campaign

It's been six months since I've posted and I have no reason to expect anyone to read this. But it should surprise no one who read my last entry that I'm saddened that Joe Biden has dropped out of the race. He was always a long shot and I knew that. But the unexpected sometimes happens in politics and I was hoping this would be one of those times. Joe has the experience in foreign policy that we sorely need (and that no other candidate from either party has, save John McCain) and the combination of good sense combined with a deep knowledge of the issues that makes him (to my mind) the person we need in the Oval Office. But he's done now and I need to accept that and move on. As a Democrat, there are really only two possibilities: Hillary and Obama. And the truth is that I'd be happy with either as president. Hell, I might even be content with Mike Huckabee as president (although I didn't agree with everything he did as governor of my state, he was sometimes inspiring in his ability to put aside politics and just do the right thing). McCain I could live with but I'll need a truckload of Prozac if Romney or Thompson is in the White House.

Mostly, I'd be happy to have a president that well-intentioned people from both parties could respect. From where I stand, that means that we'd better elect Obama, (maybe) Edwards, McCain, Huckabee or (maybe) Giuliani as our next leader. (I think there is no good reason for Hillary to not be respected by both parties--and people who have followed her record in the Senate and her ability to reach across party lines there should agree that she's generally respectable--but that reality hasn't seemed to sink into the perspective of the standard Republican, so that's why I'm not considering her to be someone who would be respected by members of both parties.)

Still, I think Joe might have done more to bring people together than any of these folks. God speed, Senator Biden; and R.I.P the Biden Campaign.

Biden for President

According to the main-stream press, there are three (count 'em) candidates that you should pay attention to: Hillary Rodham Clinton (her husband was president), Barrack Obama (he's photogenic, non-white, and a political rock star), and John Edwards (former VP candidate with amazing hair). I don't know why these are the only three the press pays attention to, but there it is. And between them they have less than two full terms in the U.S. Senate and zero terms in the U.S. House. In addition to the Big Three, there are other, arguably stronger candidates who are generally being ignored. One of them has been a senator for 30 years and has an actual view about what our policy in Iraq should be (and, no, just saying "we should leave Iraq" doesn't count as a sensible policy, no matter what your polls show, senators Clinton and Obama). But maybe because he isn't raising money hand over fist, and he doesn't command rock-star status, Senator Joe Biden's sensible, experienced, and well-informed views go unnoticed by the Wolf Blitzer/Anderson Cooper crowds of cable news.

This isn't to say that he's not getting noticed. Salon.com has a helpful interview with him here. And columnist Mark Shields has also written about Senator Biden.

For those of you who give a damn about what happens to this country, I ask you to pay attention to what the senior senator from Delaware has to say. He might not be the most photogenic politician or have a cadre of pollsters telling him what to say. But if you care that our next president have significant experience in international and domestic affairs, a scholar's understanding of the Constitution, and a long-record of decency, please visit JoeBiden.com and have a look.

God speed, Joe.

Farewell to Fallwell

I think my reaction to the death of Jerry Falwell is atypical—at least given that I am a politically-liberal philosophy professor at a large state university. And in many ways I understand and even agree with the views of most of my colleagues. To those who only knew of him through his statements of social morality and political conservativism, he was a pompous ass, a poster child of arrogant intolerance. God knows he said things for which he should be ashamed (and I trust he now is). Again, if this is all I knew of him, I’d join in the chorus of condemnation.

But if you think that this all there was to Jerry Falwell you aren’t seeing the whole picture. By all accounts of people who really knew the man, Jerry Falwell did have a concern for the poor (even if his stress on preaching the gospel over meeting physical needs seems out of balance to many of us), for single, scared pregnant women, and for the souls of those he thought were bringing down divine judgment on our country. Even Al Sharpton, hardly a man given to saying nice things about conservatives and in particular those who initially resisted the civil rights movement, commented on Larry King's CNN show that he counted Jerry Falwell as a friend. Jerry would call Sharpton just to find out how his family was doing and to chat. Sharpton also commented that Falwell never failed to speak to and show concern for the "little guys" who served him food and whose existence is often ignored by those with equal celebrity. People who paint Falwell as a one dimensional conservative moral monster just don’t know what they are talking about. Like most of the rest of us, he was a man with contradictions. But I believe that the most straight-forward measure of the moral compass of a person is how he or she treats the persons in his or her life, and in particular the people who are in servant roles. Everything I’ve read about Falwell leads me to believe that he was at least my moral equal on this score, and likely my superior (since he walked on a more heady stage than I ever will). So I’ll cast no stone in his direction. Yes, I think he sometimes hurt the true cause of Christ as it relates to social/political agenda we should be pursuing. But his convictions were at least in part a result of the time and place in which he was raised. In judgment, we should be merciful--even to the judgmental. The bottom line is that if I were in need and had to appeal on a personal level to someone in the public eye, I rather suspect I couldn’t do better than to ask for the help of the Reverend Falwell.

May God have mercy on your soul, Jerry. May God have even more mercy on mine.

A Busy Time for a Music Fan

The first quarter of 2007 has seen the release of a rather remarkable number of good (or at least interesting) albums. Among those added to my collection (several only in MP3 form--thanks eMusic.com!) in the past three or four months are the following:

Bright Eyes: Cassadaga
Bright Eyes: Four Winds [EP]
Andy Palacio: Watina
Arcade Fire: Neon Bible
Patty Griffin: Children Running Through
Lucinda Williams: West
Norah Jones: Not Too Late
Neil Young: Live at Massey Hall 1971
Graham Parker: Don't Tell Columbus
Fountains of Wayne: Traffic and Weather
Modest Mouse: We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank [sic] (Surely they meant to call it: We Were Dead Even Before the Ship Sank)
Michael Penn: Palms & Runes, Tarot and Tea: A Michael Penn Collection
Michael Penn: Mr. Hollywood, Jr. 1947 (this is a remastered, re-release of his 2005 masterpiece)

Of these records, my strongest endorsement goes to the pair of Michael Penn albums. My goodness can the man write a pop song! Clever, word-play-rich lyrics embedded in beautiful and hooky melodies all delivered in a McCartney-esque voice. *Palms and Runes* is a retrospective done right: every track a gem, some new versions of old favorites (well, at least for those of us who know him as more than just "that guy who did the song about Romeo in black jeans") sequenced in a way that does more justice to sound and content than it does to chronology. *Mr. Hollywood, Jr, 1947* is Penn's ode to 1947. It's what a short-story writer would do if trying to capture a place at a time in a collection of independent, although thematically related stories. This is my favorite of all of Penn's records, mostly for it's thinner production and overall unity.

Neil Young's *Live at Massey Hall 1971* is also wonderful. Neil is solo and at the top of his vocal game. If you've ever thought of him as a good songwriter/guitarist whose voice is a drawback, you need to listen to this record. But then I've raved about this record on this blog before.

Other quick notes: I at least like all of these records, although some I've yet to fully absorb. Still, I'd say that the Graham Parker album is a bit disappointing (not nearly as good as 2004's *Your Country*), as are the Norah Jones and Fountains of Wayne records. (Keep in mind that I have high expectations of records by all these folks, so "disappointing" does not mean "bad.") I just don't really get Arcade Fire, the Bright Eyes album is a bit over-produced (do we really need to hear him bleat with an orchestral background?) as is Patty Griffin's (although she still owns the most amazing female voice in pop music). Still you could do a lot worse than support these artists and spend some quality time with some quality popular music.

The Boys of Spring

"While Scully danced over the airwaves/Scully surfed over the airwaves..."

Terry Taylor, "Bakersfield"


'Tis spring and a boy's thoughts turn to that which his nature compels him: the high heat, the roundhouse curve, the check swing, the gapper, and (let us not forget) the 6-4-3 double play. Baseball's back and every decent American feels renewed. April is a time for hope, when even the worst of teams is but a few games out of first place.

As always, my loyalties are torn. On the one hand, I've been a Cubs fan forever. And with the addition of Sweet Lou Pinella and Alfonso Soriano (who may well be the best pure athlete in baseball), this is a season that might turn out to be "the" year. But then again I live in Cardinals country and I fully understand why the people around me have a loyalty to the Redbirds. The Cards embody all that is good about baseball. The team is composed of smart trades, can't miss free agents, and homegrown talent the likes of which is not seen east of the Mississipi or west of the Ozark mountains. Or anywhere else in North America.

Despite my love of mid-America baseball, I have to admit that long-time Dodgers announcer Vin Scully is the Prince of the Airwaves. His silky voice and literate accounts of the goings-on on the field greatly out-distance my ability to describe.

Scully dances over the airwaves indeed. (Thank God for Mlb.com's audio subscription.)

The Sorry State of Public Discourse

In the interest of at least partial disclosure, I should note first of all that I'm a Democrat. I'm not, however, a yell0w-dog Democrat (that is, a Democrat who would vote for any candidate her party runs, even if it is a yellow dog). And I'm not the sort of party member who will back whatever any member of her party says in a debate with members of The Other Party. I'm a Democrat who isn't always towing the party line.

Now we've all had it with the talking heads on cable news shouting each other down. That is not the kind of public discourse that will lead to serious understanding, and (even more) found areas of agreement and compromise. We are also all tired of hearing politicians say what they think we want to hear, politicians who will say almost nothing that hasn't been market-tested in advance. We might differ as to which politicians provide the best example of this, but we agree that many are guilty. And we don't like it one bit.

So far so good. But there is another problem of public political discourse that is less obvious but also troubling. It's the decision to simply ignore the relevant, serious problems of one's position that are presented by one's political foes. While I'd like to be convinced that I'm wrong, I have to say that the most obvious recent examples of this come from the Demos. Exhibit #1: Reasonably (to my mind, anyway) the Democrats want to limit how long our troops stay in Iraq. It's been four long, costly years and there doesn't seem to be any reason to think that things will be better tomorrow, next month, or next year. But the President counters by saying that if we leave before Iraq is a stable democracy, then all hell will break loose. The country will likely become a Shiite theocracy that might well be run by extremists (think Taliban, only Shiite), and that will be a disaster for Iraq, the Middle East, and (ultimately) the U.S. What the President is saying here is not (to my ear) implausible. So I'd like to hear what the Democrats who want to push a time table for withdrawl have to say about it. What's that? I'm not hearing anything. What we get are lots of reasons why we've been in Iraq long enough (or even too long) and why the Iraqi's have to be responsible for their own security. But what do the Democrats say about what would happen if we leave on a certain date no matter what the country's condition is then? From what I can tell only Joe Biden takes this seriously (and he has a plan that doesn't involve withdrawl on a particular date).

Still related to the war in Iraq and withdrawl, there is the issue of to what extent telegraphing our pullout date to the enemy puts us in a bad military position. The Democrats, sure that the war was wrong to begin with and has been poorly managed (two points on which I am definitely in agreement), insist that we can't stay there forever and that we need to specify a date when we will pull out. While that is, in itself, not unreasonable, there is still the legitimate question about to what degree our announcing our date of departure might be a significant aid to our enemies. So far, I've heard no Democrat take this issue head on. Why is that? Why is it that the good concerns/objections of our political opponents aren't deemed worthy of response? From what I can tell the reason is that in our current political climate what matters is scoring points with voters/poll-respondents today and not with what is really in our long-term national interest. This is surely a deplorable state of affairs for anyone who cares about where our country is heading.

We should call upon our leaders to address the key objections to their policy views and to tell us why their position is correct even with their opponents best objections in mind.

Snarky Bubblegum

"I'm From Barcelona" by We're From Barcelona

Okay, I had planned to spend this morning working on my book and writing an insightful post on the sorry state of political discourse in the United States. But along the way I made the tactical error of turning off the classical music I had playing and popping Paste Magazine's latest sampler into my CD player instead. It's now an hour later and I've been to the band's website and MySpace page, and have found the above video to the song on YouTube. If this song and video don't brighten your day, you should seriously reconsider increasing the meds.

Stan Heath: A Nice Guy and a Winner

Leo Durocher once said that nice guys finish last. When I saw Stan Heath’s face on the local news tonight as I sat in the coffeehouse trying to do a bit of work before picking up my son from baseball practice, I knew I was seeing one more instance of Durocher’s Law in practice—or if not Durocher’s Law at least a corollary: In the dog-eat-dog world of big-time collegiate athletics, nice guys tend to get fired. See, until this morning, Stan Heath was the head coach of the men’s basketball team at the University of Arkansas. From a man long on anger and resentment (former coach Nolan Richardson), Heath inherited a team almost entirely bereft of talent. Five years later the UA has a men’s basketball team that has made the NCAA tournament two years running and has been represented by a man with deep pockets where integrity, professionalism, and Christian charity are concerned. I guess an extra win in March matters more.

Here’s to Stan Heath….an exceedingly fine human being and a damned good basketball coach.

A Perfect Pop Song: "A Case of You" by Joni Mitchell

Since my last post was (loosely) about pop songcraft, particularly as it was practiced in the early 70s, I thought I'd post a example of a perfect pop song and performance. It doesn't get any better than this.

The Art of the Popular Song

As a child of the late 60's and 70's, I have the art of the pop song in my blood. Well, let me amend that: I have an appreciation of a well-crafted pop song coursing through me. It's not that I can write or perform one, but I like to think I know (and like) one when I hear it. And I understand the term "pop" in a pretty broad sense--as in the "popular arts." So looking at today's musical landscape, "pop" doesn't refer only to whatever it is that is played on Top 40 radio, but rather to anything that doesn't strive to be a part of the classical arts in contemporary music. So "pop" as I mean it covers everything from rock to hip-hop to bubblegum to country to dance to jazz to anything else you might hear on non-classical music stations. For my money (and my money might well be colored significantly by my status as an old fogey), what matters primarily to a great pop song is the melody, the lyric, the vocal, and the performance. And if these are reasonably good standards, then there is no doubt that the newly released old Neil Young performance Live at Massey Hall 1971 counts as a great piece of popular music. These songs range from folk to rock to (kinda) theatrical even though Neil limits himself to voice/guitar and voice/piano in every case. In virtually every case, the melody haunts, the lyrics arrest, and the vocal pierces. It is a remarkable performance by an artist who has given us 40 years of quality work.

This is an album I can recommend to old coggers like myself and to my university students. If you like popular music (in the sense defined above), you'll find a lot to like here.

The Real Face of Christ

Christians in the media seem to be mostly an angry lot. We hear about how gays are "attacking" the institution of marriage, how illegal immigrants are undermining our economy, how Hollywood has declared a culture war on Christian values, and how Islam is essentially a religion of violence. Now there may or may not be something to these claims (for those keeping score at home, the answers are "no, no, maybe, and not necessarily"). But can anyone deny that the most obvious and pure recent public example of the love of Christ is produced by those who care least about what our popular culture represents: the Amish of Lancaster County, PA? They've offered forgiveness for the killer of their children and financial support for his family. If you are at this moment at a place where tears won't embarrass you, please read these articles.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06280/728083-85.stm

http://ottsun.canoe.ca/News/National/2006/10/08/1978049-sun.html


This, my friends, is the face of Christ.

What's Wrong with this Picture?

I understand that Bill Clinton was far from a perfect President, let alone a perfect husband and Christian. In fact, it is clear that for much of his marriage, he's been a pretty poor husband. And I would not want to excuse his affair with Monica or the way he lied about it to the country. That was all wrong and showed a significant defect in character.

Still did the man really deserve to be impeached for lying to a court about his sex life? When you consider what a distraction this was to the real issues of his presidency (like, for example, hunting down a terrorist named Osma Bin Laden) and how minimal his descretion was vis-a-vis the way he carried out his oath of office, you might come to think that punishing his wrongdoing wasn't worth the damage that his impeachment would do to the country or to the office of the president.

Compare Clinton's case with that of our current President. I'll buy that President Bush was sincere in leading us to war--he was trying (I believe) to do what was in the best interest of the country. (Although, from the reporting of Bob Woodward it seems that his primary reason for wanting to go to war had more to do with a desire to build a democracy in the cradle of the Middle East rather than concern over WMD, although there was undoubtedly that too.) But his over-confidence and arrogance led him to not consider all the intelligence with the seriousness it deserved. He oversaw a Defense Department that made no plausible plans for the protracted war that was to come. He instituted policy of tapping phone calls of American citizens without gaining even post facto warrants. He's ruined our reputation as a nation that protects human rights by his blatantly declaring that the Geneva Convention doesn't apply to the prisoners we take. Bush has done all of this and has not had to worry about impeachment. Now I ask you, which is worse: leading a country to a pre-emptive war without paying attention to all the relevant intelligence and violating the Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens (when getting post facto warrants was always a possibility if he only cared to) or lying about oral sex?

The question answers itself.

What a Godly Person Looks Like

I have a twelve-year-old son who is (in part, anyway) named after Billy Graham. Now I don't know that I agree with every aspect of BG's theology and ministry, but he's always been a person of integrity. In the late-mid 20th century he could have had "it all." He was popular, telegenic, well connected and articulate. If he wanted to make lots and lots of money, and make himself the story, well, that would have been an easy thing to do. But he didn't. The gospel of Jesus, and not the celebrity of Billy, was his commitment. The cover story in the latest Newsweek makes it clear that Graham has as little time for the politics of the Christian right (or left, for that matter) as he did for his own celebrity. I can't think of a better of example of godliness, Christ-like humility, and lovingkindness than one finds in this profile:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14204483/

God bless you, Billy.

Late Night Anxiety

I make no assumptions about having readers. And had I had any a few weeks back when I began this blog, I've surely run them off by my inactivity. Oh well, the past is what it is.

Still, I find myself wondering if anyone else has been finding him-or-herself rather full of anxiety these days. I suspect that separation anxiety is one of the causes of my unease. My oldest daughter recently spent three weeks in Europe, traveling and seeing friends from high school and from her freshman year of college (she'll be a sophomore this year). Although she is now home safe and sound (and with a rather large digital card full of wonderful pictures), I'll admit to feeling a bit nervous with her an ocean away. Then this whole war in the Middle East has sort of freaked me out. I just don't see where it will end. You've got a strong militaristic state (Israel) who justly feels persecuted by other states in the region, and fanatical Islamic groups (and in the case of Iran, nations) who want to wipe said state from the face of the earth. Caught in between is the United States (and her nominal allies), Russia, and moderate Arab states. Oh yeah, and most of the world's supply of oil. It doesn't take too much pessimissm to see the beginings of WWIII in this picture. And even if we manage to avoid that, there are God-knows-how-many nuclear warheads that were once assigned to countries that are now in the former Soviet Union and that may or may not be accounted for, and hence may or may not be available to various terrorist groups who would love nothing more than to make 9/11 seem like small potatoes.

Oh, and have I mentioned global warming? Despite the reaction of those who reactively reject any claim by the American left, there seems to be good scientific evidence that this is indeed happening, and that we have no good idea where it will all lead.

Two mornings ago, I thought about all of these things between 4:00 and 4:30 am. And while I kept reminding myself that the God who brought the universe into existence by the mere fiat of his will, and who counts the falling of each sparrow--that this God is finally in control of whatever mess of things us humans make, still I couldn't help shake the thought that God would still let us suffer the consequences of our foolishness, even if in the end such consequences are only temporary. God is just and yet gracious. God help us.

So I'm wondering if anyone who might read this has the same problem: do you wake up in the middle of the night, feel the weight of the world, and worry that your kids will end up paying for the foolishness of our generation (after all, it's not our kids' faults that we've wasted natural resources, neglected signs of global warming, worried more about our income than about the poor, and elected George W. Bush (twice!) as President)?

Jerusalem

Steve Earle is a remarkable songwriter. Apart from his writing he can be a complete horse's ass (and he can be a semi-horse's ass in his writing---see "Condi, Condi"), but the man can write a song that'll bring a tear to your eye. If his song "Jerusalem" doesn't do that for you, then (or so it seems to me) you should think a bit harder about your faith in the context of the people who live in the Middle East.

Earle's song "Jerusalem" is on the album of the same name and also on a new live CD to be released this week.

Jerusalem (Steve Earle)

"I woke up this mornin' and none of the news was good
And death machines were rumblin' 'cross the ground where Jesus stood
And the man on my TV told me that it had always been that way
And there was nothin' anyone could do or say

"And I almost listened to him
Yeah, I almost lost my mind
Then I regained my senses again
And looked into my heart to find
That I believe that one fine day all the children of Abraham
Will lay down their swords forever in Jerusalem

"Well maybe I'm only dreamin' and maybe I'm just a fool
But I don't remember learnin' how to hate in Sunday school
But somewhere along the way I strayed and I never looked back again
But I still find some comfort now and then

"Then the storm comes rumblin' in
And I can't lay me down
And the drums are drummin' again
And I can't stand the sound
But I believe there'll come a day when the lion and the lamb
Will lie down in peace together in Jerusalem

"And there'll be no barricades then
There'll be no wire or walls
And we can wash all this blood from our hands
And all this hatred from our souls
And I believe that on that day all the children of Abraham
Will lay down their swords forever in Jerusalem "

Amen.

A Folkie Star Spangled Banner

As I tuned in the Cubs/White Sox baseball game on Sunday, I was pleasantly surprised to find that singer/songwriter Michael McDermott was performing the national anthem. He managed to somehow both perform the song traditionally and yet to make it his own without upstaging the dear ol' gal. So on this 4th of July it seems only appropriate that I share this wonderful performance with the one or two of you who might eventually read this post. If you are interested (and you should be!), you can see it here:

http://www.cshs86.com/forum/downloads/McDermott_7-2-06.mov

Happy Birthday, USA.

Happy Independence Day

Those of us whose politics tend toward the left on the American political spectrum are often accused of not being sufficiently patriotic. And, truthfully, I can understand this accusation. A not implausible first stab at a definition of patriotism sees it as equivalent to supporting the policies of our country in international relations simply because they are our policies. If that's correct, then us in the middle/left tend to be less patriotic than those on the right. Yet while "My country right or wrong" is often confused with patriotism but a little reflection is enough to see that such a definition is mistaken. What a true patriot wants is a country he or she could die for and be noble in so doing. No one (or at least no decent person) wants to die for Hitler's National Socialism. To die in service to an evil institution is to waste one's life.

Patriotism, then, should be thought of as a well-founded commitment to the institutions of one's native or adopted land.

By these standards, American liberals ought to be exemplars of patriotism. For our country was formed on the principles of freedom and equality. And while we've often done a damned poor job of living up to our own standards (or of even interpreting them aright), ours is still a country founded on a democratic and even egalitarian ideal, rather than ethnic/tribal pride and purity. This is something we ought rightly to celebrate and even take pride in. So tomorrow, on July 4th, I'll be celebrating the principles that our country was founded upon: freedom of the individual to worship as he or she sees fit, the equality of all persons, the belief that the government should generally let people live as they see fit, and the conviction that our God has given us rights and responsibilities of self governance.

Happy Fourth of July, y'all.

The Pregnant News

I can understand people's fascination with the lives of the famous. In unguarded moments, I sometimes feel the voyeuristic impulse to look at photos of the glitterati. I expect that these reactions are pretty wide-spread, and that there isn't anything particularly wrong with them--at least as long to they mostly kept in check. But they often aren't kept in check. That in and of itself, isn't particularly surprising. What I do find disappointing and even somewhat unexpected is the way that the mainstream media have decided that pandering to our rubber-necking instincts is acceptable journalistic behavior. For example, one might hope that CNN would be committed to bringing us serious news stories. But their website frequently has "top stories" about the reported pregnancy of a starlett or the couch-jumping confessions of a former ersatz top gun. Fox and MSNBC are no better on this score.

What I would dearly love to see is a network that would decide that the private lives of the famous are, well, private (and mostly uninteresting--at least to our higher natures) and which would steadfastly ignore the gossip and celebrity worship that infects the other news networks. I'd pay extra, I think, for the uncompromised integrity.

Any takers?