La trahison des clercs

As with every single reform movement of the 1960's, it metasticized. Every good idea of those days has become a deformed exaggeration of itself.

Let the Church Be a House of Wonder - Crisis Magazine:

"Only academics can think themselves into pretending to like verse without music, music without harmony, painting without skies or flowers or animals or people. Intellectuals are the original smashers of images. It was not quarry workers who demanded that their communion rails be knocked out with sledge hammers. It was not little children who pleaded with their pastors to cover paintings with whitewash. It was not housewives who demanded that the high altars with all their draperies and candelabra be replaced with tables so bare and spare that they would not do for an ordinary kitchen."

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Minority privilege

Guess who gets to keep their holiday intact and whose gets reduced to a non-offensive inclusive generic that requires the erasure of its real name?

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Race has nothing to do with it!

This sacred slogan of all queens of denial has to contend, among tons of other evidence, with this:

(Even in California and New York!)

and this*:

*2012 results were not significantly different. See original, plus much more here, including a gender breakdown. (Spoiler: women of all conditions voted for O by the same large margins that men of all conditions voted for Romney.)





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Deformed offspring

Spain church criticized over Cordoba monument name - Yahoo News:

You can spend your blood and treasure for 800 years to drive the African Mohammedans out of Europe, but centuries later your "evolved" descendants will be looking to stab you in the back.



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Monday Morning Miscellany

On our grey and wet, and mildly chilly, December mornings, the pleasures of life include a hot cup of strong coffee --in my trusty old thermal Starbucks mug-- and a nice chunk of panettone from Dianda's bakery in the Mission, courtesy of Mr B.

My old friend C, mon frère ainé, died on the weekend. Infirm for the last several years, it was a chromosomally-originating blood disorder which carried him off.  Blessedly, and despite my own recent negligence, I got to visit with him in Toronto while I was back East for Thanksgiving, and to say goodbye to a 37-year connection. He was a very good-hearted and very complicated man whose life was full of painful contradictions. And the best of cooks. I feel sad for the loss of him, and sad for his partner of almost 40 years, who tended to him faithfully to the very end and who must now face life without him.

Pie Jesu, dona ei requiem.

I have always liked Advent. It's the introvert's season. And without the obsessive moralizing of Lent.

Mr B and I had our eighth (!) annual Santa Lucia dinner at his house on Saturday. The feast of that saint was the first time he invited me to his home for a meal, back in 2007, a few months after we first met. I remember it very well. This year the festivities included a rack of lamb (my contribution) and roast Dungeness crab (his). Yum.

How can anyone be a vegetarian?

Everyone has a dominant fault. At least one. The one of mine that I find the most irksome is procrastination, a variant of sloth. But if I could boutique my next lifetime (just imagining, not asserting at all), what other fault would I choose to dominate it instead? The seven capital sins are pride, rage, sloth, gluttony, greed, lust and envy. What a cheery set of choices.

I think I'll get back to my panettone.

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Pathological altruism,continued

Australia hostage siege: Muslim leaders condemn 'criminal' act as IllRideWithYou trends worldwide - Australasia - World - The Independent:

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Hmmm

Salty old Aussie broad Colleen McCullough, authoress of The Thorn Birds, opines:

"There are two types of writers: there are those who write because they can't talk. Those who talk so much no one listens any more, so they write. No prizes for guessing which I am,"

Ditto.


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Suicidal Sons

Sons of Anarchy spoilers here.







As with Breaking Bad, I wound up only watching the final few episodes. Do I have a thing for endings?

Superficial comment.

Charlie Hunnam as Jax is hot stuff. Young Viking redivivus. He certainly kept my attention in all his scenes. I remarked to Mr B, who is not one to look for homoerotic subtexts, that all these hypermasculine criminal Samcro members seemed to be in love with him. "Sure," he said.  So if he saw it...

And who can blame them?

Less superficial comments.

Charlie Hunnam is a Brit. Once again, the US goes out of country to find an actor who can be both a leading man and believably lethally masculine.

Jack Donovan's brilliant distinction between being a good man and being good at being a man is played out in this character. Not a good man, he is yet definitely a man, an alpha male, with an abundance of strength, courage, skill and a code of honor. In my own terms, he is father, fighter, feeder and friend. Other men are happy to submit to follow him. And if Mr B and I are right, to fall in love with him.

The romance between Tig and Venus, a gang member falling for an MTF transexual with breasts and a penis, is unbelievable, even if the acting is top notch. That a group like Samcro would tolerate such a thing beggars belief. The liberal moralizing narrative at work, even among criminals.

And along with Jax's Christlike atoning suicide at the end of the show, we have his, again, unbelievable, decision to integrate the Sons and bring on their first Black member. The liberal combo of guilt and noblesse oblige infects the story. But hey, suicide is what liberalism is all about. Since the last 50 years have taught us what a spectacular success integration is, I guess he decided to take down the whole organization with him when he killed himself.

Even murderous criminals get to be redemptively PC.

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Jews and Whiteness

Ashkenazi Jews are not white – Response to Haaretz article | Hila Hershkoviz | The Blogs | The Times of Israel:

Ms Hershkoviz makes a good point. She's not White and doesn't wanna be. No how.

But context is also real.

If the Jewish homeland is in western Asia, they are not really White, ie, with a homeland in Europe.
But in a race riot, as I have said, both me and Harry Schwartz --and Ms Hershoviz--would be honkeys.



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The biology of feminism

How Women Avoid Consequences | Chateau Heartiste:

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