When I first came out, I read and enjoyed Edmund White’s early fiction Nocturnes for the King of Naples and Forgetting Elena.  His later work become increasingly sloppy and solipsistic; sometime in the 1990s, I stopped reading his stuff.  Of the gay writers writing today, White is perhaps the most gifted stylist — or at least was in his early work.

Last night, however, when Walter Olson linked an essay White had written, reflecting on his years at Cranbrook, the “boys’ prep school outside Detroit” that both he and Mitt Romney attended, though at different times, I discovered the writer I had once enjoyed. He reflected on his own years at the school, then considering the nature of the place and the background of the studies, turned his thoughts to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and considered the recent allegations of the candidate’s adolescent antics:

On the one hand he had an embarrassingly famous father, the governor of Michigan, whom he idolized as the youngest child. On the other he was the sole Mormon, a member of what was definitely seen as a creepy, stigmatized cult in that world of bland Episcopalian Wasps (we had Episcopalian services at chapel three mornings a week). When his father was president of American Motors, he lived at home and was a day student, an envied status. When his father was elected governor and moved to the state capital of Lansing, he became a boarder. Suddenly he was surrounded by other Cranbrook students and the strict “masters,” 24/7. He no longer had the constant support of his tight-knit family. Now he had to win approval from the other boys.

No wonder he became a daring and even violent prankster. He who worried about his own marginal status couldn’t bear the presence of an unapologetic sissy like Lauber, with his long bleached hair (the Mormons, then as now, have insisted on a neat, traditional, conservative appearance, especially in their young missionary men whom they send out all over the world). In scorning and shearing a sissy student and leading a gang of five other boys in this “prank,” Romney may have felt popular and in the right for the first time.

Emphasis added.   (more…)

On this the 192nd anniversary of the birth of the greatest English novelist, let me offer, in slightly modified form, the tribute I have offered in years past.  It is also the 115th anniversary of the birth of my late, beloved Aunt Ruth.  In her life, that great lady embodied the qualities of a heroine of an Eliot novels.

A few years back in anticipation of Eliot’s birthday, I watched the BBC version of Silas Marner, perhaps her most accessible novel.  The story got to me as the book always does.  It’s odd I who love books so much and am moved cry so little when I read (yet tear up frequently when watching movies).  Wwhenever I hear the story of the lonely weaver of Raveloe, however, whether in print, via the spoken word (i.e., book on tape/CD) or on screen, I am always touched, always lose it, so to speak it.

Ben Kingsley’s Silas plea to keep an apparently orphaned child who had strayed into his home, “It’s a lone thing; I’m a lone thing. . . . It’s come to me,” is the plea of every human being who has ever felt cut off from his fellows.  Indeed, that line in quintessetially George Eliot who so understood human loneliness and recognized our need for the companionship of our fellows.

And how meaningful that companionship can we find it.  Or how powerful the presence of someone who listens to our concerns and manifests sympathy for our plight.

George Eliot so delighted in the effect of a child on an adult with an open heart:

She [that child] was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep–only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky–before a steady glowing planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a silent pathway.

I rediscovered those words when I re-read Silas Marner a few years ago. When I opened the book I had just purchased containing the novel and some of Eliot’s short fiction, I did not quite arrive at the short story I had just begun.  I plunged instead right back into the novel, starting this time in medias res, reading well over two chapters before sleep overtook me.

Such is the power of George Eliot’s prose, the images she invokes, the ideas she presents, the emotions she expresses. She helps us find words for our deepest thoughts and shows compassion for our everyday weaknesses. She seems to see into the troubles of all our lives and finds the balm in tender relations with our fellows.

And that was how I introduced my George Eliot birthday post: (more…)

Albert Camus has long been one of my favorite writers.  Indeed, I quoted the Nobel Prize-winning author in my very first blog post (with the quotation reposted here).  While Camus always considered himself a “man of the left,” I have long called him “the first neo-conservative“.  He had always strongly opposed tyranny which he first witnessed in fascist societies, particularly under the Nazi occupation of Paris, but soon began to see not just in Communists societies, but also in leftist movements.

His opposition to Stalin and Stalinism earned him the scorn of his one-time allies in the French left, including Jean-Paul Sartre, an apologist throughout his life for Soviet tyranny — and a man who dressed up his own participation in the resistance to Nazism.

Sartre became increasingly jealous of Camus after their split, particularly since the Algeria-born Frenchman had produced a far broader range of work than had he. I’d often wondered if maybe Sartre had leaned on his friends in the KGB to dispose of the more talented writer. Camus died in a car accident on January 4, 1960.

Now, David Zincavage, based on an account in an Italian newspaper asks, “Did the KGB arrange the death of Nobel Prize winning writer Albert Camus in a car accident in 1960?”

An article which appeared in the Italian paper Corriere della Sera on August 1 quotes Eastern European scholar Giovanni Catelli, who discovered that the complete version of the Diary of Czech poet and translator Jan Zábrana contained a reference to the death of Albert Camus omitted from abridged French and Italian translations.

Read the whole thing.  Well, this story doesn’t support my speculation about Sartre, but does raise some interesting questions.

Remember, Albert Camus was one of the first prominent literary men of the left to publicly criticize Communist.  His outspoken critiques of the brutal system could cause more intellectuals to question their defense of the Soviet Union. (more…)

I put this post in our “Random Thoughts” category because I put it out there, as kind an observation with a question mark, wondering if the “test” really works.

As many of our blog readers know, I am a huge fan of the English novelist George Eliot.  Along with J.R.R. Tolkien and Albert Camus, she ranks as my favorite prose author, with Homer, Wordluf (AKA the Beowulf-poet) and Wordsworth ranking as my favorite poets.

I have often believed that if you really want to date someone, you would show an interest in their passions.  For example, before I came out, a German woman was obsessed with me, yet entirely indifferent to the things I loved, refusing to understand why I would prefer to sit at home reading than to go to a crowded club with loud music playing.  It seemed she was attracted to the surface and remarkably uncurious about what lay beneath.

Over a decade ago, I met a nice intelligent, attractive, libertarian man in a relationship and we struck up a friendship.  When I met him at his office for lunch, I caught sight of a brand new volume of Wordsworth’s poetry.  He had bought it because of my love for the great English Romantic.  I was flattered.  I also recognized that all was not well with his (then-)relationship.  In retrospect, I wondered if I should have done something more, given this obvious interest.  He would later break up with the boyfriend, but foolishly perhaps, I never pursued the matter.

Only later, much later, did I appreciate how significant his act was, going out of his way to buy a book of poems because I loved the poet.

I doubt I had that experience in mind when I bought Silas Marner, Eliot’s shortest, sweetest and most accessible novel for a close friend (but it may have been lurking in my subconscious).  When we first met, we started dating, but realized there wasn’t a romantic spark, so enjoying each other’s company, remained friends.  As to the book, he couldn’t, he claimed, get past its first few pages. (more…)

Just received word from Amazon that my copy George R. R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Five (that I pre-ordered when I finished its mediocre “prequel” A Feast for Crows) has shipped.  And while my enthusiasm for his saga has somewhat lessened since I first blogged about Martin’s books, I expect to spend the better part of my free time in the coming week reading Dance.

In that earlier post, I noted that while I found much wisdom in Martin’s “tale, particularly in how the individual characters face their particular challenges,” I wondered if his story “was wise as is Tolkien’s trilogy, Tolstoy’s novels and Homer’s epics.”  After four books, we still don’t know and may not know even after reading the latest installment.  We may well have to wait until the last book comes out.

Martin’s wisdom lies, by and large, in how he portrays many of his many characters, particularly in showing the strength of the “outsiders,” characters who find themselves on the periphery of his imagined society similar to the chivalric world of the High Middle Ages.  We see how Jon Snow, the bastard brother in the family at the core of the saga, comes into his own, how Brienne, the woman with the strength, skills and values of the men of her society, faces her challenges and fulfills her duties, how Sandor Clegane, despite his burned face and gruff manor embodies the code of the knights whose honors (and title) he rejects, how the obese Samwell Tarly, who stumbles when he attempts to fulfill the obligations of his sex, shows unusual pluck when it’s most needed. To give put a few examples.

In just the first book (the subject of a recent HBO miniseries) A Game of Thrones, we see early on that Martin has crafted characters fare more complex than those we usually find in fantasy fiction.  When the aforementioned Jon Snow walks out of a banquet held at his father’s seat, feeling out of place because his bastard birth prevents him for enjoying the same honors as his siblings, he encounters the deformed dwarf Tyrion Lannister who has spent his life overcoming the disadvantages of his deformity in a family known for the beauty of its members. (more…)

In the days leading up to my trip to the Bay Area, I haven’t been able to blog as much as I would like and write as many “essayistic” posts as is my wont because I’ve had a lot on my mind unrelated to politics.  With some many ideas rambling through my head, I thought it would best to take it easy this weekend and watch a silly, “escapist” type movie at home tonight.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, as the case may be), I picked a flick which reminded me why I love Hollywood so much and why I moved here, eager to become part of the biz.  Having just purchased *batteries not included for under $5 while at the Target in Livermore on my way back to LA, I popped my new acquisition into my DVD player.

Sometime in the 1990s, I used to catch pieces of the film on cable. It always moved me, so I finally bought the VHS so I could watch the whole thing.

Well, last night, at first, I wondered why I had loved it so. Neighbors didn’t communicate with one another, an old building, standing alone amidst the wreckage of its former neighbors seemed a symbol of what happens to all of us when we age, isolated, alone, with younger folks waiting for us to collapse, even to accelerate the process.

No one in the building knew how to reach out to one another.  And then the miracle happens, something which brings everyone together, neighbors start talking, one silent man finds his voice, connections are made. (more…)

Just after midnight last night, I pre-ordered the next volume in George R.R. Martin‘s .A Song of Ice and Fire, A Dance with Dragons. And while my criticism of the works has increased since I first blogged about this fantasy cycle, my enjoyment has not lessened. That said, these books differ from the other great fantasy cycles I’ve read in their absence of defining relationships. To be sure, there are relationships, but each seems limited to a particular volume, sometimes limited even to a series of chapters.

One character falls in love with another, either to see his feelings consummated or remain unrequited, yet certain to see the beloved perish shortly after the love was declared or otherwise acknowledged.  We see a growing sympathy develop between two seemingly opposed characters, only to have them part company, likely never to see each other again, even as each has helped transform the other.

It seems that in good fiction (and yes, this is good fiction, far more readable and offering more insight into human nature that much literary fiction) as in great movies, there is always a defining relationship, oftentimes several. In Star Wars, we see the mentor-mentee relationship between Obi-Wan and Luke Skywalker as as well as his fraternal relationships with Princess Leia and Han Solo, the latter bond which causes the space smuggler to come back and help our hero destroy the Death Star. (Indeed, one friend believes it the absence of just such a character (Solo) which accounts for the weakness of the prequels; I believe that it’s also the absence of the hero’s relationship to a character like Han that makes Anakin Skywalker far less compelling than his son.)

Indeed, once director Francis Ford Coppola has established the character of Don Corleone character in The Godfather, the movie only really gets going when he notices the absence of his son Michael as the family poses for the requisite wedding picture. “Where’s Michael?” he asks, “we’re not taking the picture without Michael.” Later, when, through the blinds, he sees his son arrive at the reception, we know there is something significant about this relationship.  And it is that relationship which will define Michael’s journey in the film. (more…)

I am finally getting around to reading Ursula Le Guin’s science fiction classic, The Left Hand of Darkness, a book that over the years, numerous friends and acquaintances have encouraged me to read, largely because she explores a topic that has long fascinated me — sexual difference.*

About half-way through the book, I find it at once the most brilliant work of science fiction I have ever read  – and among the most frustrating.  Brilliant because of Le Guin’s insights into how human sexual difference has defined our culture — the book is set on a planet where the humanoids are hermaphroditic.  Frustrating because, at times, it seems less a story than a reflection on sexual difference via conversations with and character sketches of some leading figures on the Planet Gethen (also called Winter), the setting for this novel.

What really got me thinking (and there is much in this book to get one thinking) was this paragraph in the chapter on “The Question of Sex”:

Consider: There is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattel, active/passive.   In fact, the whole tendency to dualism that pervades human thinking may be found to be lessened, or changed, on Winter.

Perhaps, it is serendipitous that at the moment I read this book I am watching some lectures of Joseph Campbell on DVD.  That great scholar of myth is constantly talking about the images of difference which recur in mythological narratives and artwork (i.e,. the ying and the yang).  Carl Jung, one of Campbell’s mentors once wrote, “there is no energy unless there is a tension of opposites“.  Without sex difference, Gethenian culture would necessarily lack such tension. (more…)

“It,” Mark Twain quipped in Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, ”could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”  That most American of writers didn’t have a very high opinion of our elected federal legislators, attributing the “kindly feeling” Congresses had “for idiots” to their “personal experience and heredity”.

It seems most Americans share his disdain for Congress.  For a post yesterday, I tracked down Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s favorability ratings, I expected them to be low, but what I also noted was that both Republican leaders, House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are slightly underwater, with each having an unfavorable rating slightly about his favorable, 4 and 2 points respectively.  The Democratic leaders by contrast have even more significant deficits, 29 points for Mrs. Pelosi and 26 for Mr. Reid.  While a plurality of Americans give the Republicans unfavorable ratings, a majority give such ratings to the Democrats.

And no matter which party is in power, congressional disapproval remains high.

This lead me to wonder has there even been a time period when Americans had a favorable opinion of the legislative branch — and its leaders?

(more…)

I believe I first heard about George R. R. Martin’s fantasy saga in response to a posts I had written on fantasy fiction.  I had begun the first book earlier this month and today am well into the second, A Clash of Kings, likely certain to finish before the week is out.

More than any other writer of fantasy I have read since I was a child, reading and re-reading and re-re-reading Tolkien, loving Terry Brooks and devouring Stephen Donaldson, Martin has crafted a series which avoids the pitfalls* of much fantasy fiction.  And he’s a really good writer to boot, with some sentences as well crafted as those in literary fiction.  While the prose of most fantasy writers is serviceable, relating the facts of the tale and details of the imagined realm, in language that is clear enough for our understanding, Martin writes in a flowing — and sometimes even musical — manner.

Yes, he does occasionally include a clunky sentence of two, but these stand out because they are so rare.

And we believe his characters.  He has transported individuals that we see in contemporary life to this realm of his imagination, clearly crafted after serious study of castles and chivalry in the late Middle Ages.  Had our readers — and the books’ other fans — told me Martin’s Song was less a story of a quest and more a kind of War of the Roses set in a fantastic landscape, I likely wouldn’t have read it.

But pick it up I did.  And I can hardly put it.  This is not the type of fantasy fiction I typically enjoy, more Ivanhoe in medieval England than Aragorn in Middle Earth.  And I was longing for a quest against a Dark Lord with delusions of grandeur and a desire for omnipotence.  This series, at least so far, gives us something entirely different.  And to its credit, it lacks the overdependence on magic which seems to drive, if not define, all too much fantasy fiction.

Much as I enjoy this new series, I disagree with our reader who lamented that this series “probably outdoes even” Tolkien.  And while, to be sure, both are works of fantasy fiction set in a a medieval landscape, as far as narrative structure goes, you can’t really compare the two.  There are a number of plot lines, instead of one overarching quest.

Martin’s books read more like historical fiction set in a fantastic landscape while Tolkien’s are more akin to myth.   (more…)

Just about a year ago this time, I was intensely working on my dissertation, re-reading (and re-re-re-reading) several key passages in the Iliad and the Odyssey, even delighting in some of the scholarly work on these epics.  As I read about Achilles, Telemachus and Odysseus, I often thought I was reading about people I know, in some cases, I felt I was reading about myself.

I saw in the way Athene manipulated her father in the first book of the Odyssey techniques my sisters used to manipulate our father — and my teenage nieces to manipulate theirs.  These stories may have been set in the Bronze Age where supernatural beings intervened on a regular basis in the lives of mortal men and women, but they addressed themes and related experiences similar to those we face today in a world where we’ve banished deities and developed technology that the ancients couldn’t even conceive.

And just as the Olympians have been banished from our stories, all too often those who wield power in academia seek to banish the works once called the “Great Books.”  They replace stories put to paper by dead white males with current accounts by more contemporary authors who address themes these scholars believe more “relevant” in a world of rapid technological progress and instant communication.

In reality, however, students assigned such “relevant” stories find themselves bored and sometimes even cheated, as David Clemens relates:

My former student Joshua, now ambivalently quartered at UC Santa Cruz . . . has an article in Literary Matters about cheating.  Not students cheating; students who feel cheated.  He’s found a couple of excellent literature classes (Cervantes) but most just use books as a vector for stone-cold political ideology.

When he was at Monterey Peninsula College, Josh was the midwife who helped deliver a great books program to a college that had been out to axe all its literature courses.  In my Intro. to Lit., class he heard me refer to Robert Hutchins’s metaphor for Western literature as a “Great Conversation,” and in Literary Matters he writes

“Within weeks other members of the class and I were meeting on our own time to discuss the Great Books. We read Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. We read Sappho. We felt and spoke as if we had rediscovered some long-forgotten treasure abandoned by the generation before [my emphasis].” (more…)

On this the 191st anniversary of the birth of the greatest English novelist, let me offer, in slightly modified form, the tribute I have offered in years past.  It is also the 114th anniversary of the birth of my late, beloved Aunt Ruth.  In her life, that great lady embodied the qualities of a heroine of an Eliot novels.

A few years back in anticipation of Eliot’s birthday, I watched the BBC version of the novel (featuring Ben Kingsley).  And the story got to me as the book always does.  It’s odd I who love books so much and am moved cry so little when I read (yet tear up frequently when watching movies).  Wwhenever I hear the story of the lonely weaver of Raveloe, however, whether in print, via the spoken word (i.e., book on tape/CD) or on screen, I am always touched, always lose it, so to speak it.

Ben Kingsley’s Silas plea to keep an apparently orphaned child who had strayed into his home, “It’s a lone thing; I’m a lone thing. . . . It’s come to me,” is the plea of every human being who has ever felt cut off from his fellows.  Indeed, that line in quintessetially George Eliot who so understood human loneliness and recognized our need for the companionship of our fellows.

And she delighted in the effect of a child on an adult with an open heart:

She [that child] was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep–only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky–before a steady glowing planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a silent pathway.

I rediscovered those words just a few nights ago. When I opened the book I had just purchased, I did not quite arrive at the short story I had just begun.  I plunged instead right back into the novel, starting this time in medias res, reading well over two chapters before sleep overtook me.

Such is the power of George Eliot’s prose, the images she invokes, the ideas she presents, the emotions she expresses. She helps us find words for our deepest thoughts and shows compassion for our everyday weaknesses. She seems to see into the troubles of all our lives and finds the balm in tender relations with our fellows.

And that was how I introduced my George Eliot birthday post: (more…)

Ever since I saw him on Saturday Night Live, I have considered Steve Martin one of the funniest men alive. So, when I saw his memoir Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life on the bargain table at a bookstore in West Chester, Ohio (that I visited with a reader after we lunched together), I quickly snatched it up.  I mean, at six bucks, it seemed a steal.

The book alas wasn’t worth more than its (marked down) cover price.  I had been reading it since I bought it, carrying it with me on at least two trips out of LA, but only finishing it last night.  At times, the prose is stale, with Martin merely jotting down the facts of his life, as if he were just typing up his notes without trying to craft a narrative.

He seems reticent about his feelings, rarely going into much depth about his various relationships with women or describing his friendships with his fellow entertainers.

Yet, we do learn that he had a trying relationship with his father.  When he was a boy and his father suggested they play catch.  ”This offer,” Martin writes, “to spend time together was so rare that I was confused about what I was supposed to do.” Later, the elder Martin wrote a “bad review” of his son’s first appearance on SNL (leading a co-worker to chide the action as “wrong”).

He got his showbiz start selling guidebooks at Disneyland, soon moving on to the magic shop there.  While in the park, he would visit the shows, watching and learning from the performers.  Later, he performed himself at nearby Knott’s Berry Farm and at various theaters around Los Angeles, then at small venues across the country.  He wrote for television, appeared on “The Tonight Show” and finally got the call for “Saturday Night Live.” (more…)

Whoever thinks that he alone is wise,
his eloquence, his mind, above the rest,
come the unfolding, shows his emptiness.
A man, though wise, should never be ashamed
of learning more, and must unbend his mind.

Antigone, trans. by Elizabeth Wyckoff.

Please, Mr. President, unbend your mind; your policies aren’t working.

I just finished Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage (which I first reference in a post that occasioned much controversy).

I don’t know if I’ll offer it a full-blown review, but will admit to have pretty much liked the book though, to be sure, she often balanced out her often enlightening anecdotes and observations with an infuriating condescension toward social conservatives, indeed, pretty much anyone of a faith not of the New Age.  And she just couldn’t hide her political or social prejudices — prejudices which contributed little if anything to her overall narrative, disjointed as it often was.

That said, in her brief consideration of gay marriage (pp.  71-76), she offers a better defense of the expanded definition of the institution than do most gay activists (but a defense which corresponds with the lives of many gay couples).

While she herself is not wise, she offers nuggets of wisdom throughout the book.  I say she is not wise because she spends the whole book fighting against her own prejudices, without really confronting them on an intellectual level (at least at times, she does seem to acknowledge them).  She can’t really stand outside herself or her own experiences — though, to be sure, at times she does try.  And sometimes her anecdotes work beautifully, other times they fall flat.

In one, however, she even echoes (perhaps unconsciously) the oldest story about matrimony, The Odyssey:  ”This,” she writes on page 239, “is intimacy  the trading of stories in the dark.”  When the long-suffering Odysseus was finally united with his beloved wife Penelope who had remained faithful as she waited a full twenty years for her betrothed’s return, his patroness Athene delayed the dawn so that the married couple might both share their stories and, um, well, share the pleasures of, um, well, love-making.

Her anecdotes nonetheless become both the greatest strength of the book and its greatest weakness.  She is at her best (both stylistically and narratively), engaging and sometimes informative, when she tells her own stories.  But, while the book purports to offer a “historical study” of the institution, she offers only a cursory treatment of the topic, never footnoting her sources and breezily summarizing the two (or was it three or four?) books she read on the institution.  She doesn’t seem to have consulted anything that defends the social conservative understanding of the institution. (more…)

Shortly before I left on my cross country trip, while browsing in the Barnes & Noble bookstore in the Grove, I chanced upon a book which seemed particularly relevant to the current debate on gay marriage, Elizabeth Gilbert’s, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage.  The title itself sounds like a reference the gay movement’s sudden embracing of an idea which many activists, until quite recently, so passionately rejected.

Reading the dustjacket and learning how this bestselling author was “forced” to marry her Brazilian sweetheart so they could live together in the United States, I wondered if any gay marriage advocates had done what she had done, studied the institution of marriage to better understand it meaning:

Having been effectively “sentenced to wed”, Gilbert decided to tackle her fears of matrimony by becoming a student of the institution, trying once and for all to understand what this befuddling, vexing, and contradictory, yet stubbornly enduring habit of human marriage actually is. Over the next ten months, as she and Felipe wandered haphazardly across Southeast Asia, waiting for the U.S. government to permit them to return to America and get married, the only thing she talked about, read about, or thought about was this perplexing subject.

Committed tells the story of one woman’s efforts through contemplation, historical study and extensive conversation with every soul she encountered along the way — to make peace with marriage before she entered its estate once more. Told with Gilbert’s trademark wit, intelligence and compassion, the book attempts to “turn on all the lights” when it comes to matrimony, frankly examining questions of compatibility, infatuation, fidelity, autonomy, family tradition, economic realities, social expectations, divorce risks and humbling responsibilities. (more…)

Those who have actually read my various posts on Jack Abramoff know that I see my charismatic former College Republican colleague as a complex man.  I have never once defended his activities as a lobbyist, indeed, have criticized his behavior from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s.  

But, just because a man engages in criminal activists does not mean that he himself is entirely lacking in good qualities.  Were that the case, world literature would be poorer and Francis Ford Coppola would not be considered one of the giants of filmmaking.  

Almost since the dawn of storytelling, our bards and playwrights have been exploring why good men go bad.  Indeed, it often seems that religious literature (including ancient myth) serves to remind us of human weakness in order to prevent us for falling prey to our darker passions.

With that in mind, I ask you to consider a comment from one of our critics in response to my post on my old drinking buddy Ralph Reed and our past association with the aforementioned Abramoff.  It offers an insight into the narrowness of certain narrow-minded liberals who blind themselves to the complexities of human conduct when it comes to conservatives caught in corrupt and criminal activities:

I mean this and the Abramoff piece from a couple of days ago. Coming out to the world as a friend and admirer of the absolute lowest corrupt scum in American politics.

You have zero credibility when it comes to criticizing anyone in politics, on just about anything. And judgement???? my gawd….

Yes, I once admired Jack and considered him a friend.  But that was long before he had engaged in corrupt and criminal activities.

I wrote about Jack both to share my experiences with a man who suddenly found himself in the spotlight and to join in the conversation of the ages in attempting to understand human weakness, why men with such great potential do bad things. (more…)

If I were no so deep in dissertation mode right now, I would devote more attention to the George Rekers story because there is far more to it than the bloggers covering it have considered.  First and foremost, the story reminds us of the pseudo-science behind much of the “scholarship” folks like Rekers use to address the causes and supposed “cures” of homosexuality.

It’s unfortunate that all too many of those who have written about it have been determined to focus on the tawdry aspects of the relationship.  And unfortunate that gay bloggers have taken it upon themselves to track down the young escort, make public his profession and torment him with their questions.  They should have left him out of this — or at the very least not made public his name.

The (very) young man is caught in the crossfire, so to speak, while Rekers acts out one of the oldest pathologies in the book, seeking solace with a younger companion to fill the emptiness in his own life.

The real story here is not just the contrast between Rekers’ public life and his private passions.  It’s too easy (though, in this case, not entirely inaccurate) to call him “self-loathing” (as at least one person has done) or to dwell on his hypocrisy.  The real story is what human beings do to address their loneliness, to feel connected with our fellows.

George Rekers is, by all evidence, a very lonely man.

As I have been reading about his European travels with a young escort, I am reminded of a passage describing such loneliness John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley.   (more…)

Exit polls in the UK show a “Hung parliament with Tories as largest party with 307 seats. Lab[our] 255. L[iberal] D[emocrats] 59.”

This may not be as hung as some people would like if British exit polls, like those over here, undercount conservative performance.

UPDATE:  From the updated link above, why does this sound familiar?

2242 Lord Mandelson on BBC1: “People have voted for change but they don’t know what type of change they want”. So that’s cleared things up.

UP-UPDATE:  Tories take King Offa‘s seat!  Been following some of Michael Barone’s coverage of the British election at the Washington Examiner and just learned that the Tories captured the first capital of England: “Conservatives gain High Peak (a suburban district outside Manchester) and Montgomeryshire in Wales (where the Lib Dem had won big in 2005), Leicestershire Northwest , Aberconwy, Basildon South, and they’ve gained Tamworth from the Lib Dems.”  In the 8th century, Tamworth was the seat of King Offa, the first man to be called rex Anglorum–or King of the English.  The word Englisc (so spelled but pronounced as we pronounce the language we speak) did not appear until two centuries later.

Technically, Offa was King of Mercia, but the various kingdoms, Wessex and Kent for example, looked to him for leadership and protection.  Only the Nothumbrians did not fall under his sway.  He was most famous for building Offa’s Dyke, which was, contrary to some of our readers’ hopes, not the court lesbian, but a great fortification protecting the English from Welsh raids.

Several Beowulf scholars believe that that, the greatest poem written between the early days of the Roman Empire and the first stirrings of the Italian Renaissance, was written in Offa’s court.

Thus, the Tory taking of Tamworth has great historical significance.

So I’m currently reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (I know, I know… But anyway…).

I won’t go into how it’s killing my mother, the effect it’s having on my prospects for finding a boyfriend, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

Point is, I just went through Chapter 11 of Part 2 (“Ellsworth M. Toohey”). Howard Roark had just selected Steven Mallory to craft a sculpture for the Stoddard Temple. After what can only be called an epiphany of spirit, Mallory explains what the commission (and by its nature, Roark’s great understanding of his own demons) helped him discover. Tell me if it reminds you of anything:

“I know that the terror exists. I know the kind of terror it is. You can’t conceive of that kind. Listen, what’s the most horrible experience you can imagine? To me—it’s being left, unarmed, in a sealed cell with a drolling beast of prey or a maniac who’s had some disease that’s eaten his brain out. You’d have nothing then but your voice—your voice and your thought. You’d scream to that creature why it should not touch you, you’d have the most eloquent words, the unanswerable words, you’d become the vessel of the absolute truth. And you’d see living eyes watching you and you’d know that the thing can’t hear you, that it can’t be reached, not reached, not in any way, yet it’s breathing and moving there before you with a purpose of its own. That’s horror. Well, that’s what’s hanging over the world, prowling somewhere through mankind, that same thing, something closed, mindless, utterly wonton, but something with an aim and a cunning of its own. I don’t think I’m a coward, but I’m afraid of it.”

Who knew Ayn Rand could so perfectly describe the Speaker and the “drooling beast” that the Stalinization of Health Care Act of 2010 has become, way back in 1943?

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)