Ross Douthat Review of Flags of Our Fathers

By now almost everyone knows the story. Once upon a time Clint Eastwood made brutal, violent, and implicitly right-wing movies like Dirty Harry. Now he makes brutal, violent, complicated movies like Unforgiven and Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby — movies that subvert America’s sunny ideas about itself; movies that demythologize our culture of violence; movies that win Academy Awards. He used to be Harry Callahan, doling out vigilante justice from the barrel of a gun; now he’s Saint Clint, teaching us about the costs of bloodshed.
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The war itself, as Eastwood portrays it, is the only commentary on war the movie needs. But instead Flags of Our Fathers shuttles back and forth between Iwo Jima and the bond drive, the better to contrast the horror of combat with the kitsch of the home front. The point of these scenes is at once obvious (war is hell, and nobody at home knows it) and obscure (should the government not have sold war bonds?), and the actors don’t give us any purchase: Phillippe glowers, Bradford mugs, and Beach sobs and drinks, drinks and sobs. And then, as if the studio — or maybe screenwriter Paul Haggis, he of bogus-uplift films like Crash — reminded Eastwood that this a Greatest Generation flick, dammit, the movie stops complicating the war effort and starts elegizing it, with sensitive boomers sobbing over their World War II vet dad.

The result is a film that’s at war with itself — part melodrama and part docu-drama, minimalist and bloated all at once. It’s an Eastwood effort, so the critics love it, but those seeking a movie that actually says “something new and urgent about the uses of war and of the men who fight,” as the Times’s inevitable rave puts it, are better off looking elsewhere.

The Strengths & Weaknesses of the Internet

I thought I'd shop amazon.com for cereal bowls for my wife. We're missing a couple of what was once a complete set. I searched for "bowls" and discovered a wide variety of styles and patterns. I vaguely remembered something....what was it...something like "Falzgraph".

So I typed in "falzgraph" and came up empty. But never fear, I googled falzgraph and it suggested an alternate spelling of pfaltzgraf, which got me closer. It asked: "Did you mean 'Pfaltzgraff'? I cut & pasted that into Amazon and got a variety of styles and patterns, none that look like ours.

Ah well, the 'net can't do everything for you.

Hope

Amy Welborn writes of the Holy Father's essential optimism, of how he sees...

...that eventually, when presented with the truth, people will eventually find their way to it. Don't you think that has marked almost every talk that has come from Benedict? A conviction that, first of all, God is real, human beings are made by God, in his image, and find their peace in Him. (yes, Augustinian, indeed.) All of the competing voices and temptations out there will eventually fail us, individually and collectively, and we'll eventually figure out that what God is offering us is not a prison sentence, but a key to unlock the prison in which we've locked ourselves.

This is persuasive, that love is first patient (1 Cor 13). There are young people I know making incredible, unbelievable mistakes, mistakes that will cost them dearly in body and in spirit, and there is a great desire to do something, anything, to head them off the track they've headed down. But I recall the parable of the prodigal son, and how the father did not try to stop his son but in fact he enabled him by giving him the inheritence early. The son eventually came back, came to his senses. Panic, negativity, force, manipulation all stink of hopelessness.

Quotable

The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. - GK Chesterton

Patristic Rosary Download

Get your Patristic Rosary here from Fr. Z.

HT to Bill White for hosting it!

'Blogging' Hits Front Page of Our Diocesan Newspaper

...with an article on local blogging priests.

Father Patrick Toner, pastor at Plain City St. Joseph, operates two blogs, one for Scripture and another for current events in the parish....That blog’s address is www.breakfastandbible.blogspot.com. Father Toner’s other blog site, “Saints Alive,” at www.saintjosephplaincity.blogspot.com, offers “a forum for the exchange of opinions and information about the life of St. Joseph Catholic Church.”
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Paulist Father Larry Rice has been operating his blog for about six years, since his time in Washington, D.C., working for Paulist Media Works. While there, Father Rice felt it appropriate to update his form of communications, especially while working with the youth.

“It’s the best way to get to people,” he said.

Since then, his blogs have gone through several different versions.The latest blog is at www.corporalworks.com/wordpress, where the “bulk” of his web logs are taken from his homilies. But he also includes hobbies and other “personal interests.”

Let's Play...

...Why's my Bookbag So Heavy?

Talked to Ham of Bone, and we both agreed that a surfeit of politics hath been reached, so in a rather obvious change of subject and stack pusher-downer I return to an old favorite: Why is my bookbag so damn heavy? My interest lately has been the subject of suffering and its discontents. I'm more than half-way through Balthasar's The Christian and Anxiety and it's been helpful. Thomas More's The Sadness of Christ just arrived and looks to be rich in content. The introduction poses familiar questions. Another area of interest is Irish Catholicism and its discontents. (I'm seeking a surcease to saying "...and its discontents" at the end of every other sentence.) Catholic Ireland wasn't so Catholic prior to the famine, at least as measured by frequency of Mass attendance, and there are a lot of books that attempt to answer that 'why'. My favorite so far is Larkin's The Historical Dimensions of Irish Catholicism. As a needed break from heavy reading, I'm also packing heat in the form of Ambitious Brew - the Story of American Beer, although I find beer itself most helpful in that regard. Finally, Updike's Terrorist rounds out the contents.

Election

Rock Wren on different sorts of ambition.

Robert Miller...

...helps teach English to the English-speaking:

“My intent was to expose a hypocrite,” says the male prostitute who revealed last week that evangelical pastor Ted Haggard had been paying him for homosexual sex. To be sure, the charge of hypocrisy resonates, with some people repeating it with unseemly glee and others sadly acquiescing in it. Haggard himself seems to concede it, accusing himself in his deeply affecting letter to his congregation of being a deceiver and a liar. The charge of hypocrisy, however, is unjust. Haggard is no hypocrite, and that so many people think he is shows only how sloppy our thinking about morals can be.

A man is not a hypocrite because he violates a moral norm in which he sincerely believes.

Yes...

...Jody Bottum hits the nail on the head....The Left is wrong so often that one is tempted to use their sentiment as a "contrary indicator". My trust in Scowcroft and his gang is likewise very tepid.

The way I personally was treated by the leftist poetry world in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq is one of the things that helped convince me to support the war: If their objections to the invasion were all culture-war retreads—the open expression of anti-Semitism and hatred of Christianity were particularly appalling—then I figured I should be for the invasion...

A lot of paleoconservatives railed against the war, and maybe they were right, though I’m not convinced. And a lot of religious conservatives, too, strongly objected to the war. But you point to a different set of people, Ross, that should have objected to the war at the beginning and are now declaring that they are empowered by the Republicans’ defeat on Tuesday: old conservatives of the Reagan and Bush-I eras, such as Brent Scowcroft or George Will.

Forgive me if I say that conservatism passed out of these guys’ hands for several good reasons—and chief among those reasons was abortion. They were the squishes, and the country-club types who imagined themselves better than the great unwashed pro-lifers, and the financial conservatives embarrassed by religious believers. The pro-life movement got nothing from them—and it’s gotten Justice Roberts and Justice Alito out of the new fusionism.

As I say, I still support the war, but even solely on pro-life grounds, if the choice is between the old bait-and-switch cons and the neocons, I’ll take my stand with the neocons. Right or wrong about Iraq, they are at least not those cynical old hacks of days gone by. And they’re against abortion.

Woody Allen Interviews Billy Graham

Finally got around to watching this interesting late '60s You Tube interview. Graham really held his own. HT: Terrence Berres.

Nigerian Scammer Email Wastes No Time Getting to the Point

This one was almost refreshing:

Hello Friend,

In order to transfer out £12.500.000.00 {Twelve Million, Five Hundred Thousand British Pounds} from our Bank. I have the courage to look for a reliable and Honest Person who will be capable for this Important Business Transaction...

He didn't bury the lede.

Elsewhere, Scammin' the Scammers:

Thank You Rolling Stone & Keith Olbermann & moveon.org...

My friend Ham o' Bone volunteered his time as a poll-worker Tuesday and had a very unpleasant episode.

A large man, a registered Democrat, presented a birth certificate as ID in order to vote. Ham checked with the other poll-workers and consulted the rules and found that that is not legal documentation (you need to be able to prove your current address). The guy became belligerent, cursing "f--k you, you're not going to disenfranchise me!" and he mentioned more about how he was going to vote now, today, and not let the Republicans stop him. "You're probably a Republican," he screamed at Ham, refusing to look at any of the other pollworkers. He then physically threatened him after getting right up in his face.

There were two registered Democrats and two Republicans pollworkers (Ham said the Democratic pollworkers kept making racist remarks, one of them pointing to a black man saying, "I know they vote our way, but they're dumb as rocks" ...ahh, yes the Democratic Party, home of the pure and unprejudiced). There was also the documentation that said birth certificates would not be accepted, which Ham showed the individual. Ham told him he would still be able to vote but that he would have to give him a provisional ballot. After a long scene in which another pollworker tried repeatedly to get the madman's attention, he eventually stormed off. He came back twenty minutes later, still mad as hell and with the smell of alcohol on his breath, asking for Ham's name so that he could report him to the Board of Elections. Ham gave it and now has to live with the threat that this deranged would-be voter will hurt his family.

So if you think someone like Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, or a magazine like Rolling Stone (who printed Robert Kennedy Jr's baseless lies with respect to Kerry's '04 Ohio election results) are harmless then think again. Lies have consequences, and to say there was fraud where no fraud exists creates a fertile climate for unstable individuals like the one Ham encountered.

If We Can't See It, It Doesn't Exist

The above sentiment is a good part of the reason why abortion is legal. There weren't ultrasounds back in 1973 when Roe v. Wade was handed down and if there were I doubt nationally protected abortion would exist. Public sentiment has turned, and mostly just because we can see babies in the womb.

This also applies to numerous and other things more subtly.

For example, not all war casualties are equal - quiet deaths don't bother consciences as much as loud, bombing deaths which involved destroyed infrastructure.

It's also a truism that the withholding tax - whereby the gov't takes it's bite before we get our paycheck - is a really fine way to tax without the public feeling any pain. Similarly the gas tax. It's ingenious. Everyone thinks that the price of gas is the price you pay at the pump when in reality it's at least thirty to fifty cents a gallon less.

It's interesting that yesterday all six state ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage passed. My working theory is that they passed because voters think it's something they can give to other people for free - i.e. higher minimum wages without negative repercussions either for the minimum wage workers or to the voter himself. It's a "win-win", since we don't connect lost jobs with higher taxes or higher wages. As Rich Leonardi wrote, "According to most independent economists, i.e., those not on a government or union payroll, mandatory wage hikes are job-killers. When you make the supply of something more expensive without a commensurate increase in demand, buyers — in this case employers — want less of it."

I submit that if that wage amendment was worded such that Ohioans would pay an increased tax in order to pay for the minimum wage increase, it never would've passed. And yet we'll either pay for the increased wage in higher prices for goods and services - the best case scenerio and one I can easily live with - or, more likely, the poor will pay for it with fewer job opportunities.

Too Funny

HISTORIC VICTORY FOR DIEBOLD!
By Ann Coulter

History was made this week! For the first time in four election cycles, Democrats are not attacking the Diebold Corp. the day after the election, accusing it of rigging its voting machines. I guess Diebold has finally been vindicated.
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Three cheers for Deibold's rehabiliation! I haven't heard any Republican complaining about Diebold in this election, have you?


Worker at Diebold can smile again; Democrats won = no Deibold malfeasance.