Jesus: Target of Liberal Hatred?!?

Say it ain't so, Mrs. Bill!

(With deepest apologies to Joseph Jefferson "Shoeless Joe" Jackson (Career batting av. - .356, 3rd highest), the Chicago White Sox, and Major League Baseball.)

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. - Psalm 20:7

I report and link. You decide. - BJon

If you still think it isn't Christ whom liberals hate, remember: They hate Falwell even more than they hate me.

From an Ann Coulter .com article, JERRY FALWELL, more follows:

JERRY FALWELL — SAY HELLO TO RONALD REAGAN! [/] May 16, 2007

No man in the last century better illustrated Jesus' warning that "All men will hate you because of me" than the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who left this world on Tuesday. Separately, no man better illustrates my warning that it doesn't pay to be nice to liberals. [/] Falwell was a perfected Christian. He exuded Christian love for all men, hating sin while loving sinners. This is as opposed to liberals, who just love sinners. Like Christ ministering to prostitutes, Falwell regularly left the safe confines of his church to show up in such benighted venues as CNN. [/] He was such a good Christian that back when we used to be on TV together during Clinton's impeachment, I sometimes wanted to say to him, "Step aside, reverend — let the mean girl handle this one." (Why, that guy probably prayed for Clinton!)

For putting Christ above everything — even the opportunity to make a humiliating joke about Clinton — Falwell is known as "controversial." Nothing is ever as "controversial" as yammering about Scripture as if, you know, it's the word of God or something.

From the news coverage of Falwell's death, I began to suspect his first name was "Whether You Agree With Him or Not." [/] Even Falwell's fans, such as evangelist Billy Graham and former President Bush, kept throwing in the "We didn't always agree" disclaimer. Did Betty Friedan or Molly Ivins get this many "I didn't always agree with" qualifiers on their deaths? And when I die, if you didn't always agree with me, would you mind keeping it to yourself?

Let me be the first to say: I ALWAYS agreed with the Rev. Falwell. [/] Actually, there was one small item I think Falwell got wrong regarding his statement after 9/11 that "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians — who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle — the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'" [/] First of all, I disagreed with that statement because Falwell neglected to specifically include Teddy Kennedy and "the Reverend" Barry Lynn. [/] Second, Falwell later stressed that he blamed the terrorists most of all, but I think that clarification was unnecessary. The necessary clarification was to note that God was at least protecting America enough not to allow the terrorists to strike when a Democrat was in the White House.

(If you still think it isn't Christ whom liberals hate, remember: They hate Falwell even more than they hate me.)

I note that in Falwell's list of Americans he blamed for ejecting God from public life, only the gays got a qualifier. Falwell referred to gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle. [/] No Christian minister is going to preach that homosexuality is godly behavior, but Falwell didn't add any limiting qualifications to his condemnation of feminists, the ACLU or People for the American Way. [/] There have always been gay people — even in the prelapsarian '50s that Jerry Falwell and I would like to return to, when God protected America from everything but ourselves. [/] What Falwell was referring to are the gay activists — the ones who spit the Eucharist on the floor at St. Patrick's Cathedral, blamed Reagan for AIDS, and keep trying to teach small schoolchildren about "fisting."

Also the ones who promote the gay lifestyle in a children's cartoon. [/] Beginning in early 1998, the news was bristling with stories about a children's cartoon PBS was importing from Britain that featured a gay cartoon character, Tinky Winky, the purple Teletubbie with a male voice and a red handbag. [/] People magazine gleefully reported that Teletubbies was "aimed at Telebabies as young as 1 year. But teenage club kids love the products' kitsch value, and gay men have made the purse-toting Tinky Winky a camp icon."

In the Nexis archives for 1998 alone, there are dozens and dozens of mentions of Tinky Winky being gay — in periodicals such as Newsweek, The Toronto Star, The Washington Post (twice!), The New York Times and Time magazine (also twice). [/] In its Jan. 8, 1999, issue, USA Today accused The Washington Post of "outing" Tinky Winky, with a "recent Washington Post In/Out list putting T.W. opposite Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche, essentially 'outing' the kids' show character." [/] Michael Musto of The Village Voice boasted that Tinky Winky was "out and proud," noting that it was "a great message to kids — not only that it's OK to be gay, but the importance of being well accessorized."

All this appeared before Falwell made his first mention of Tinky Winky. [/] After one year of the mainstream media laughing at having put one over on stupid bourgeois Americans by promoting a gay cartoon character in a TV show for children, when Falwell criticized the cartoon in February 1999, that same mainstream media howled with derision that Falwell thought a cartoon character could be gay. [/] Teletubbies producers immediately denounced the suggestion that Tinky Winky was gay — though they admitted that he was once briefly engaged to Liza Minnelli. That's what you get, reverend, for believing what you read in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time magazine and Newsweek. Of course, Falwell also thought the show "Queer as Folk" was gay, so obviously the man had no credibility.

Despite venomous attacks and overwhelming pressure to adopt the fashionable beliefs of cafe society, Falwell never wavered an inch in acknowledging Jesus before men. Luckily, Jesus' full sentence, quoted at the beginning of this column is: "All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved." [My ellipses and emphasis]

Jim :) Smiling aka Brother Jonathan aka Toto Of Kansas | Link to my Blogs, Forums & Essays

Our Unbelievably Brave New World!!!

With deepest apologies to William Shakespeare and Aldous Huxley.

O, wonder! / How many goodly creatures are there here! / How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world / That has such people in't! - Miranda in Shakespeare's "The Tempest" (V.i.181-4)

"Community, Identity, Stability" is the motto of Aldous Huxley's utopian World State. Here everyone consumes daily grams of soma, to fight depression, babies are born in laboratories, and the most popular form of entertainment is a "Feelie," a movie that stimulates the senses of sight, hearing, and touch. Though there is no violence and everyone is provided for, ... - Amazon review of Huxley's "Brave New World"

I report and link. You decide. - BJon

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. - Psalm 20:7

From a Breitbart .tv AFP video clip, "Transsexual Pageant Contestants Kiss Monkeys to Warm of Global Warming",Click to view (Seeing is believing):

[Captions:] Transsexual Pageant Contestants Kiss Monkeys to Warm of Global Warming

"Global warming is one of the most serious problems the world faces today."

Much more innocent fellowship with animals and big time beauty pageantry occurs in the video clip for those whose stomachs are not particularly weak.

Jim :) Smiling aka Brother Jonathan aka Toto Of Kansas | Link to my Blogs, Forums & Essays

POLL ToK Bible Against Death Penalty?!?

See linked scripture below, and: Vote! Make your opinion (or lack thereof) count!!

Vote at Christian AAA Bible Study Forum Thread 30343!!! (Choices and link also given after article below.) - Toto of Kansas.

Scripture and Links for Poll Choices

(Text is King James Version. Links are to containing chapters. Alternate versions may be easily selected if available at Bible Gateway .com.)

1. Exodus 20:13 Thou shalt not kill.

2. Matthew 22:39 Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

3. Romans 12:18 If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.

4. Matthew 26:52 Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

5. John 12:47 And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.

6. John 18:36 Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.

14. Genesis 9:5 And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. 6 Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.

15. Romans 13:3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: 4 For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.

16. John 19:10Then saith Pilate unto him, Speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee? 11 Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin.

Poll Question: Bible Against Death Penalty?!? | Poll choices:

1. Yes. Thou shalt not kill. / 2. Yes. Love thy neighbour as thyself. / 3. Yes. Live peaceably with all men. / 4. Yes. Put up again thy sword. / 5. Yes. Not to judge the world, but to save. / 6. Yes. Kingdom is not of this world. / 7. Yes. All or most of 1 thru 6. / 8. Yes. / 9. Possibly. / 10. Possibly. Consider present day values. / 11. Possibly. Consider moral values. / 12. Possibly. Consider personal values. / 13. No. / 14. No. By man shall his blood be shed. / 15. No. He beareth not the sword in vain / 16. No. Power to crucify was from above. / 17. No. All or most of 14 thru 16. / 18. No opinion. Scriptures on both sides. / 19. No comment. / 20. No opinion. / 21. This poll is worthless. / 22. This poll is of negative value. / 23. Other.

Vote at Christian AAA Bible Study Forum Thread 30343! Vote!! Make your opinion (or lack thereof) count!!!

Jim :) Smiling aka Brother Jonathan aka Toto Of Kansas | Link to my Blogs, Forums & Essays

Minorities Cheating Radio Advertisers?!?

Say it ain't so, Jesse 'n Al!

(With apologies to Joseph Jefferson "Shoeless Joe" Jackson (Career batting av. - .356, 3rd highest), the Chicago White Sox, and Major League Baseball.)

Of course it is also possible that the cheating is being done by white liberals who are so conscience stricken over past injustices that they not only cheat in their listener diaries but also misrepresent their ethnicity to Arbitron.

Modern Technology (in the form of "People Meters") Marches On!!!

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. - Psalm 20:7

I report and link. You decide. - BJon

Other stations with high proportions of minority listeners were similarly affected. The urban adult contemporary station WBLS 107.5 dropped from No. 1 to No. 12. The urban contemporary station WRKS 98.7 fell from No. 3 to No. 9. [/] Previously, Arbitron had used paper diaries from sample listeners to determine ratings that were used to set prices for advertising. Under pressure to provide more detailed and accurate data, Arbitron has gradually swapped human memory for computer technology, in the form of pocket-size devices that detect radio frequencies to automatically determine which station is on.

Because advertisers purchase radio time by the ratings point, declines in reported listening could have serious effects on radio stations’ incomes. [/] Vinny Brown, the program director for WBLS, said people meters were “not a friend to ethnically designed radio stations. If we get hit with 30 or 40 percent loss of revenue, it will be difficult for us to remain in operation.”

From a New York Times article, New Way of Counting Radio Listeners May Cut Ad Income, more follows:

New Way of Counting Radio Listeners May Cut Ad Income [/] November 12, 2007 [/] By BRIAN STELTER

The test of a new method for measuring radio audience in New York showed big ratings declines for stations appealing to blacks and Hispanics last week, causing considerable consternation among station owners and programmers.

Arbitron, which measures ratings for the radio industry, has been testing a new electronic measurement tool that monitors exposure to radio stations throughout the day. The results of the so-called personal people meter in New York followed the pattern set by two earlier tests, in Houston and Philadelphia, in which stations appealing to minorities also fell.

The results also seem to echo a decline in ratings for minority television programs when Nielsen Media Research switched its measurement system in 2004. The change led to an intense lobbying effort by networks and some black leaders to postpone the widespread introduction of the new ratings system.

In Arbitron’s New York test, WPAT 93.1, a Spanish-language adult contemporary station, was ranked No. 7 in Arbitron’s summer ratings but fell to No. 19 in October’s personal people meter test among 25- to 54-year-olds. Sister station WSKQ 97.9 dropped from No. 4 to No. 7.

“No format changes were made. This is the same music, the same on-air personalities, and yet we’ve seen severe shifts in reported listening,” Frank Flores, the general manager of the WSKQ and WPAT, said.

[...] The test data won’t be used to set advertising rates until early next year. Still, the drastic ratings changes raised red flags about people meter methodology, and Arbitron agreed on Friday to have an independent board review the system in New York.

Tom Mocarsky, a senior vice president at Arbitron, said the declines at individual stations are a side effect of more precise measurements. Another interpretation is that a greater number of people are listening to more stations. According to diaries, the average African-American person in New York listens to radio 13.7 times a month. According to the people meters, the average number of listening occasions rises to 20.4.

“Your total time with radio is being divided among more stations and more occasions,” Mr. Mocarsky said. As a result, he said, each radio station’s share becomes smaller.

Mr. Mocarsky said Arbitron seeks a representative sample of each local market, with specific benchmarks for ethnic groups, genders and ages. He said the sample difficulties are most prominent not among races, but among age groups. [My ellipses and emphasis]

Jim :) Smiling aka Brother Jonathan aka Toto Of Kansas | Link to my Blogs, Forums & Essays

Just How Kooky Is the Fringe Left?!?

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. - Psalm 20:7

I report and link. You decide. - BJon

"[W]e see candidates who are willing to pander to this politically paranoid, hyper-partisan sentiment" [,,, / ...] "[T]he netroots often argue from anger rather than reason, and too often, their object is personal release, not political persuasion."

From a WSJ Opinion Journal .com "Best of the Web Today" entry, Strange Bedfellows (scroll down), more follows:

Strange Bedfellows [/] Sen. Joe Lieberman gave a speech yesterday in which he had tough words for the left wing of his party:

There is something profoundly wrong--something that should trouble all of us--when we have elected Democratic officials who seem more worried about how the Bush administration might respond to Iran's murder of our troops, than about the fact that Iran is murdering our troops.

There is likewise something profoundly wrong when we see candidates who are willing to pander to this politically paranoid, hyper-partisan sentiment in the Democratic base--even if it sends a message of weakness and division to the Iranian regime.

Jon Ward of the Washington Times reports on another speech yesterday that struck a similar theme:

Karl Rove teed off this afternoon on the liberal netroots, the coalition of far-left blogs and advocacy groups who are a new power bloc in the Democratic party. . . .

Mr. Rove cited the results of a study that found that writers and commenters on liberal blogs such as DailyKos.com cursed far more than writers and commenters on conservative Web sites such as FreeRepublic.com.

"My point is not that liberals swear publicly more often than conservatives. That may be true, but that's not my point," Mr. Rove said. "It is that the netroots often argue from anger rather than reason, and too often, their object is personal release, not political persuasion."

When Al Gore's running mate and George W. Bush's political strategist sound like echoes of each other, that gives you some idea of just how kooky the fringe left is.
[My ellipses and emphasis]

Jim :) Smiling aka Brother Jonathan aka Toto Of Kansas | Link to my Blogs, Forums & Essays

World Financial Sky Has Fallen!?!

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. - Psalm 20:7

When Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reported from Washington, he was head and shoulders above the local talent in uncovering and reporting facts about the reality of Clinton moral defects. He is now reporting facts and expert opinions on the extent of the current worldwide credit debacle.

I report and link. You decide. - BJon

Connolly says the Fed-led pack of central banks have made such a mess of capitalism by blowing credit bubbles (with low rates in the late 1990s and 2003-2006) that they now have no alternative other than to relaunch the "Ponzi Scheme", or risk depression.

This will have political consequences, of course. "The looming threat on the horizon, or just over it, is that the socialization of risk will be accompanied, in many countries, by the socialization of wealth," he said. [/] [...] "This rescue has back-fired. The central banks don't want anything to do with it. There is a fear that the big four US banks are trying to hide their debts," said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas.

[...] Even so, equities have not begun to reflect the reality that the 2006-2007 credit bubble has popped and cannot be easily reflated at a time of stubborn, lingering inflation. Spare me the mantra that the "fundamentals" are sound. Credit is the ultimate fundamental. [/] Woe betide Wall Street if the Fed fails to slash rates dramatically over the Winter, starting on October 31. [/] Woe betide the dollar if it does.

From a Telegraph [U.K.] blog article, The sky has already fallen, more follows:

The sky has already fallen [/] Posted by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on 25 Oct 2007 at 12:36 [/] Ambrose has covered world politics and economics for a quarter century, based in Europe, the US, and Latin America. He joined the Telegraph in 1991, serving as Washington correspondent and later Europe correspondent in Brussels. He is now International Business Editor in London.

If you are a bear, you must accept that you will always be wrong in polite society, and you will continue to be wrong all the way down to the bottom of recession. That is the cross that bears must bear. [/] Over the last three months we have seen a rolling collapse of speculative debt and real estate across half the global economy, yet friends still come over to my desk at the Telegraph, with that maddening look of commiseration on their faces, and jab: "so when is the sky going to fall then, eh?" [/] Well, excuse me. The sky has fallen. The median price of new homes in the US has crashed from a peak of $262,6000 in March to $238,000 in September. (Commerce Department). This is a 9pc drop nationwide. [/] The slide in existing homes is catching up. They have come down from $229,200 to $211,700 in three months. (National Association of Realtors). Yet we have barely begun to see the default hurricane as teaser rates contracted in 2005 and 2006 on floating mortgages kick up venomously over the winter, peaking around in the Spring of 2008.

[...] In Britain, we have had the first bank run since the City of Glasgow Bank collapsed in 1878. The Fed has cut the interest rates a half point and vastly increased the pool of eligible collateral for Discount operations. The European Central Bank has injected over €400bn of liquidity in the biggest intervention since the euro was created. [/] Japan is in recession. Housing starts fell 23.4pc in July and 43.4pc in August. [/] The US dollar has fallen below parity with the Canadian Loonie for the first time since 1976, and to all-time lows on the global dollar index.

All it will take now for a full-fledged rout is a move by the Saudi and Gulf states to break their dollar pegs, which they may have to do to prevent imported US inflation causing havoc; or for the Asian banks stop buying US Treasuries - as Vietnam, Singapore, Korea, and Taiwan, have gingerly begun to do. [/] What more do you want? [/] It is true that stock markets have once again decoupled from the realities of the debt markets. But they did this in the early summer, when the Bear Stearns debacle was already well under way. They caught up famously in August.

Nobody I talk to in the City credit trenches believes for one moment that the crunch is safely over. Indeed, they think that we are edging back to extreme stress levels, and the longer it goes on, the worse the damage. [/] [...] Once you go down the chain, the picture changes fast. The iTraxx Crossover index measuring spreads on mid to low-grade corporate debt has jumped 100 basis points or so in the last week to around 360. It costs companies 1.8pc more to borrow than it did in the halcyon days of the credit bubble in February, if they can borrow at all. [/] The ABX indexes measuring subprime debt - those infamous CDO packages of mortgages sliced and diced, and sold to German pension funds and Japanese insurers with a lot of lipstick -- are still falling to record lows.

[...] This means that the toxic BBB tier has lost almost four fifths of its value. Even the AA has lost a third. [/] Now, remember that the total stock of subprime and Alt-A (close kin) debt issued from early 2005 to early 2007 amounts to $2 trillion. Ben Bernanke's estimate that losses would be $100bn looks wildly optimistic.

[...] These SIVs (structured investment vehicles) are 'conduits' - in City argot - that allow banks to juice profits by speculating off books on high-risk debt. They borrow short (three to six months) to invest long (five years of so), making money on the interest arbitrage. Until the game blows up, of course. [/] Some $370bn still needs to be rolled over, and there lies the rub. The strong suspicion is that Hank Paulson's $75bn SIV rescue for the big four US banks is intended to cover up the problem by feeding out losses slowly, rather than allowing firesales to cause a cascade. [/] As the Bank of England warned, the Super-Siv should not be used to prop up fictitious valuations. [/] "It stinks, as does the Treasury's sponsorship of the scheme. It seems designed to prevent price discovery." says Bernard Connolly, global strategist for Banque AIG.

Connolly says it resembles the slippery practices at the start of the Bear Stearns debacle, when creditors quickly abandoned attempts to force CDO sales by the Bear Stearns hedge funds as soon as they realized that prices were collapsing - exposing the awful truth that hundreds of billions were falsely valued on books. [/] Nauseating though Paulson's MLEV -- 'Master Liquidity Enhancement Conduit' - may be, it probably has to be done. [/] [...] 39 comments [My ellipses and emphasis]

Jim :) Smiling aka Brother Jonathan aka Toto Of Kansas | Link to my Blogs, Forums & Essays

Cyber-Space: A False Religion?!?

I report and link. You decide. - ToK

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. - 2 Timothy 2:15

From a New York Times article, The Outsourced Brain:

The Outsourced Brain [/] October 26, 2007 [/] Op-Ed Columnist [/] By DAVID BROOKS

The gurus seek bliss amidst mountaintop solitude and serenity in the meditative trance, but I, grasshopper, have achieved the oneness with the universe that is known as pure externalization. [/] I have melded my mind with the heavens, communed with the universal consciousness, and experienced the inner calm that externalization brings, and it all started because I bought a car with a G.P.S.

Like many men, I quickly established a romantic attachment to my G.P.S. I found comfort in her tranquil and slightly Anglophilic voice. I felt warm and safe following her thin blue line. More than once I experienced her mercy, for each of my transgressions would be greeted by nothing worse than a gentle, “Make a U-turn if possible.” [/] After a few weeks, it occurred to me that I could no longer get anywhere without her. Any trip slightly out of the ordinary had me typing the address into her system and then blissfully following her satellite-fed commands. I found that I was quickly shedding all vestiges of geographic knowledge.

It was unnerving at first, but then a relief. Since the dawn of humanity, people have had to worry about how to get from here to there. Precious brainpower has been used storing directions, and memorizing turns. I myself have been trapped at dinner parties at which conversation was devoted exclusively to the topic of commuter routes. [/] My G.P.S. goddess liberated me from this drudgery. She enabled me to externalize geographic information from my own brain to a satellite brain, and you know how it felt? It felt like nirvana. [/] Through that experience I discovered the Sacred Order of the External Mind. I realized I could outsource those mental tasks I didn’t want to perform. Life is a math problem, and I had a calculator. [/] Until that moment, I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive servants — silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge. We can burden these servants and liberate ourselves.

Musical taste? I have externalized it. Now I just log on to iTunes and it tells me what I like. [/] I click on its recommendations, sample 30 seconds of each song, and download the ones that appeal. I look on my iPod playlist and realize I’ve never heard of most of the artists I listen to. I was once one of those people with developed opinions about the Ramones, but now I’ve shed all that knowledge and blindly submit to a mishmash of anonymous groups like the Reindeer Section — a disturbing number of which seem to have had their music featured on the soundtrack of “The O.C.”

Memory? I’ve externalized it. I am one of those baby boomers who are making this the “It’s on the Tip of My Tongue Decade.” But now I no longer need to have a memory, for I have Google, Yahoo and Wikipedia. Now if I need to know some fact about the world, I tap a few keys and reap the blessings of the external mind. [/] Personal information? I’ve externalized it. I’m no longer clear on where I end and my BlackBerry begins. When I want to look up my passwords or contact my friends I just hit a name on my directory. I read in a piece by Clive Thompson in Wired that a third of the people under 30 can’t remember their own phone number. Their smartphones are smart, so they don’t need to be. Today’s young people are forgoing memory before they even have a chance to lose it.

Now, you may wonder if in the process of outsourcing my thinking I am losing my individuality. Not so. My preferences are more narrow and individualistic than ever. It’s merely my autonomy that I’m losing. [/] I have relinquished control over my decisions to the universal mind. I have fused with the knowledge of the cybersphere, and entered the bliss of a higher metaphysic. As John Steinbeck nearly wrote, a fella ain’t got a mind of his own, just a little piece of the big mind — one mind that belongs to everybody. Then it don’t matter, Ma. I’ll be everywhere, around in the dark. Wherever there is a network, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a TiVo machine making a sitcom recommendation based on past preferences, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a Times reader selecting articles based on the most e-mailed list, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way Amazon links purchasing Dostoyevsky to purchasing garden furniture. And when memes are spreading, and humiliation videos are shared on Facebook — I’ll be there, too. [/] I am one with the external mind. Om. [My ellipses and emphasis]

Jim :) Smiling aka Brother Jonathan aka Toto Of Kansas | Link to my Blogs, Forums & Essays

Has Rock and Roll Ruined Everything?!?

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. - Psalm 20:7

I report and link. You decide. - BJon

Bloom distills rock lyrics into three dominant themes: “sex, hate and a smarmy, hypocritical version of brotherly love.” First the sex: “The sexual revolution must overthrow all the forces of domination, the enemies of nature and happiness. From love comes hate, masquerading as social reform. A worldview is balanced on the sexual fulcrum. What were once unconscious or half-conscious childish resentments become the new Scripture. And then comes the longing for the classless, prejudice-free, conflictless, universal society that necessarily results from liberated consciousness—‘We Are The World.’”

From a New Criterion article, Twenty years ago today, more follows:

Counterpoints: 25 years of The New Criterion on culture and arts [/] Twenty years ago today [/] By Mark Steyn

We are all rockers now. National Review publishes its own chart of the Fifty Greatest Conservative Rock Songs, notwithstanding that most of the honorees are horrified to find themselves on such a hit parade. The National Review countdown of the All-Time Hot 100 Conservative Gangsta Rap Tracks can’t be far away. Even right-wingers want to get with the beat and no-one wants to look like the wallflower who can’t get a chick to dance with him. To argue against rock and roll is now as quaintly irrelevant as arguing for the divine right of kings. It was twen- ty years ago today, sang the Beatles forty years ago today, that Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play. Well, it was twenty years ago today—1987—that Professor Bloom taught us the band had nothing to say.

I don’t really like the expression “popular culture.” It’s just “culture” now: there is no other. “High culture” is high mainly in the sense we keep it in the attic and dust it off and bring it downstairs every now and then. But don’t worry, not too often. “Classical music,” wrote Bloom, “is now a special taste, like Greek language or pre-Columbian archaeology. Thirty years ago [i.e., now fifty years ago], most middle-class families made some of the old European music a part of the home, partly because they liked it, partly because they thought it was good for the kids.” Not anymore. If you’d switched on TV at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 1999 you’d have seen President and Mrs. Clinton and the massed ranks of American dignitaries ushering in the so-called new millennium to the strains of Tom Jones singing “I’m gonna wait till the midnight hour/ That’s when my love comes tumblin’ down.” Say what you like about JFK, but at least Mrs. Kennedy would have booked a cellist.

“Popular culture” is more accurately a “present-tense culture”: You’re celebrating the millennium but you can barely conceive of anything before the mid-1960s. We’re at school longer than any society in human history, entering kindergarten at four or five and leaving college the best part of a quarter-century later—or thirty years later in Germany. Yet in all those decades we exist in the din of the present. A classical education considers society as a kind of iceberg, and teaches you the seven-eighths below the surface. Today, we live on the top eighth bobbing around in the flotsam and jetsam of the here and now. And, without the seven-eighths under the water, what’s left on the surface gets thinner and thinner.

So the “Music” chapter is the most difficult one for young fans of The Closing Of The American Mind—because it’s the point at which you realize just how much Allan Bloom means it. And by “young fans,” I mean anyone under the age of Mick Jagger, who features heavily in that section. A couple of years ago, Sir Mick—as he now is—spent an agreeable hour being interviewed by a pleasant lady he’d carelessly assumed had been dispatched by one of the hip young magazines surfing the cutting edge of the zeitgeist. He was furious to discover subsequently that she was an emissary from Saga, the magazine for British seniors. They put him on the cover as the Pensioner of the Month, and he wasn’t happy about it, although one could see their point: When you think about it, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” makes a much better anthem for seniors than it ever did for rebellious youth. He should be grateful they didn’t send their medical correspondent: “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” “Well, it’s a common problem at your age. But the good news is that often it’s just psychological.” Twenty years on from Allan Bloom, this is the triumph of rock’s pseudo-revolution: elderly “street-fighting men” with knighthoods—Sir Mick Jagger, Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John, Sir Bob Geldof, Sir Bono.

[...] Yet, in the course of a day, any number of non-rock-related transactions are accompanied by rock music. I was at the airport last week, sitting at the gate, and over the transom some woman was singing about having two lovers and being very happy about it. And we all sat there as if it’s perfectly routine. To the pre-Bloom generation, it’s very weird—though, as he notes, “It may well be that a society’s greatest madness seems normal to itself.” Whether or not rock music is the soundtrack for the age that its more ambitious proponents tout it as, it’s a literal soundtrack: it’s like being in a movie with a really bad score.

[...] So Bloom is less concerned with music criticism than with what happens when a society’s incidental music becomes its manifesto. The key to what’s happened is in the famous first sentence of the book. “There is,” writes the author, “one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.” To quote the African dictator in a Tom Stoppard play, a relatively free press is a free press run by one of my relatives. A relative culture ends up ever shorter of any relatives to relate to. In educational theory, it’s not about culture vs. “counter-culture” but rather what I once called lunch-counterculture: It’s all lined up for you and you pick what you want. It’s the display case of rotating pies at the diner: one day the student might pick Milton, the next Bob Dylan. But, if Milton and Bob Dylan are equally “valid,” equally worthy of study, then Bob Dylan will be studied and Milton will languish. And so it’s proved, most exhaustively, in music.

[...] Allan Bloom quotes Gotthold Lessing on Greek sculpture: “Beautiful men made beautiful statues, and the city had beautiful statues in part to thank for beautiful citizens.” “This formula,” writes Bloom, “encapsulates the fundamental principle of the esthetic education of man. Young men and women were attracted by the beauty of heroes whose very bodies expressed their nobility. The deeper understanding of the meaning of nobility comes later, but is prepared for by the sensuous experience and is actually contained in it.”

What happens when, instead of beautiful men making beautiful statues, angry men make angry songs? “Keepin’ it real,” in the current black vernacular, means the rapper Nelly making a video in which he swipes a credit card through his ho’s butt. “Keepin’ it real” means songs in which men are “angry” (as John Kerry says) and violent and nihilistic, and women are “sluts, bobbing chicken heads, and of course bitches.” “Authenticity” is surely a more reductive view of the black experience than your average nineteenth-century minstrel show ever attempted. I think we can guess how Nat “King” Cole would have felt about gangsta rap. Duke Ellington has more in common with Ravel than with Snoop Dogg. Scott Joplin had far more reason to be “angry” than any hip-hopper but he didn’t put it in the music. To eliminate a century and a half’s tradition of beauty and grace from your identity isn’t “keepin’ it real,” it’s keepin’ it unreal in deeply unhealthy ways. [/] Rap is, of course, an outlier, as the statisticians say, but it illustrates what happens when pop culture becomes unmoored from its inheritance, and can only justify itself in social terms.

[...] Recall Bloom’s list of what he calls “the three great lyrical themes: sex, hate and a smarmy, hypocritical version of brotherly love.” That’s not a critique of pop music but of society as a whole. First, sex: The narcissism and self-gratification of adolescent romance—the “slavery to self,” as Professor Robert P. George called it, that Bloom asks us to rise above—is now presumed to be the only basis of true fulfillment in the modern world. Then, hate: the bogus “social reform” that’s little more than a bit of cover for trashing the past. And finally, the “smarmy, hypocritical brotherly love,” the sappy one-worldism in which we sing songs about global brotherhood in order to avoid having to give a thought to the world.

This is the heart of the Bloom critique that “such polluted sources issue in a muddy stream where only monsters can swim. It is of historic proportions that a society’s best young and their best energies should be so occupied. People of future civilizations will wonder at this and find it as incomprehensible as we do the caste system, witch-burning, harems, cannibalism and gladiatorial combats.” Confronted by these sentiments, many young readers just shrug: The old man doesn’t get it. Not his fault. He’s just old. In a way, their reaction or lack of it vindicates his final point: “As long as they have the Walkman on, they cannot hear what the great tradition has to say. And, after its prolonged use, when they take it off, they find they are deaf.” He’s mouthing away but they can’t hear. Like Britney when the lip-synching goes awry.

[...] Shorn of the other seven-eighths of the iceberg, the present-tense culture is insufficient. At my local school in New Hampshire, the music teacher eschews the classics and teaches boomer rock, much to the bemusement of her young charges for whom forty-year-old pop songs are as remote as 400-year-old sonatas. Children are asked to pick a favorite Beatle. Why would a six-year-old have such a thing? The Fab Four split up thirty years before he was born. It’s like my old music teacher asking me to pick my favorite member of Paul Whiteman’s Yacht Club Boys. [/] But she never did. And that’s the biggest difference between 2007 and 1987. What Allan Bloom observed in his students can now be found in the teachers. [/] This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 26, November 2007, on page 18 [My ellipses and emphasis]

Jim :) Smiling aka Brother Jonathan aka Toto Of Kansas | Link to my Blogs, Forums & Essays